SIAND - PDF - Hot Mess.pdf

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://download.archiveofourown.org/works/3690126. Rating: Archive Warning: Category: Fandom: Relationship: Character: Additional Tags: Stats:

Explicit No Archive Warnings Apply M/M Teen Wolf (TV) Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski Stiles Stilinski, Derek Hale, Scott McCall, Kira Yukimura Human!Derek, clumsy/awkward/fuckup stiles, car sex!! yaayyyyy!!, excessive wine drinking, Neighbors AU Published: 2015-04-06 Words: 20458

Hot Mess by standinginanicedress Summary

“I really -” Stiles rips his hand free of Derek's and clears his throat, taking stock of all the other things that were in his basket, how strewn all over the floor of the grocery store they are. “...I'm a normal, functioning human being, I swear I am.” “Right,” Derek says, and his mouth starts quirking up even more. Like he's amused, and like he absolutely positively does not believe for a second that Stiles is normal. or the one where Stiles is a literal human disaster that ruins everything, and Derek finds it incredibly attractive

Notes

So! I found a prompt list for meet-uglies, and as is my tendency I had a really hard time choosing just one to work with so I got the idea - what if Stiles and Derek "meet-ugly" about...four times in a row. And Stiles is a freakish spazz and Derek kinda likes it for some reason. Hence this fic was born! This is the list I found at first, and I really only use a couple off of it~ I actually had to do research! For the sex scene in this fic lmao I had to find this in-depth

analysis of what the inside of Stiles' Jeep looks like - and even then, I'm still not 100% positive that there'd be enough room in the Jeep in real time for what they do. I made it as realistic as possible I think but jfc it's tight back there

See the end of the work for more notes

I Stiles stands at his window with his arms crossed over his chest. The early morning sun spills across his face through the blinds in slats of light, his eyes squinted against the illumination, and he looks, more or less, like the villain in a children's movie. Glaring outside through the halfopen blinds at the car parked out in front of his house, mouth set firmly down into an enraged frown, ensconced in darkness. This is the tenth time that the asshole that lives across the street has parked in front of Stiles' house. This is the tenth straight time that Stiles has had to drive around aimlessly looking for someplace to dump his Jeep for the night. The tenth straight morning he's woken up convincing himself it'll be gone now and there's absolutely no reason for you to freak out and get the baseball bat because the car is gone now and you can move the Jeep. The stupid black car is still there. And his Jeep is still three blocks away, waiting in front of the park for Stiles to come and pick it up at bumfuck o'clock because there are time limits to how long a person can park there as soon as seven am hits, and one toe out of line, and he gets a two hundred dollar ticket he most definitely cannot fucking afford. He knows the Sheriff's department on a very, very personal level. He knows they know exactly whose blue Jeep that is, and if any of the deputies (or, God forbid, his father) saw him parked illegally, they would not hesitate to give him a fucking ticket. Ten. Times. He's crawled out of bed at 6:45 am and blearily stuttered out into the early morning sunshine in a pair of ratty plaid pajama pants, slippers, and a tie-dye v-neck just because the fuckwad across the street apparently doesn't understand the concept of, like, the unspoken rules of the neighborhood? When you live on the left side of the street, you park on the left side of the street. When you live on the right side of the street, you park on the right side of the street. It is common courtesy. It is common fuckin' courtesy and Stiles doesn't! Give a fuck! If the other people living in the duplex with that guy (whom he's only ever seen the retreating back of – while standing in the exact same position he's in now, glaring out his window and trying to laser eye his way through the back of his head with hatred) have two cars and take up the entire front of his place! He should park at the god damn park, and leave Stiles' parking spot the fuck alone? Like he didn't see Stiles' Jeep parked there when he first moved in two months ago. As if he doesn't know that it's Stiles' spot, as good as a tree stump that he's peed on to let the other animals in the forest know. Ten times has Stiles come home from work, hands smelling like high lighter ink and white-out and his computer keys, exhausted, drained out from getting yelled at by aggravated customers through his headset while gritting out I'm so sorry to hear that, what can I do to help? through his teeth and squeezing a stress ball until his hands turn red, to find the stupid rich-boy Camaro

is parked in his. Spot. It's a war. It's a god damn war. Stiles has started leaving work earlier, and earlier, getting sideeyed by his co-workers as he rushes through his paperwork and literally runs out the door with his tie undone, just to shotgun it back to his neighborhood in hopes that he'll beat out tall-darkand-dopey. Sometimes he manages it, and whoops in delight as he slides into the spot that's rightfully his, grinning from ear to ear, just barely resisting the urge to paint sucka! on the side of his Jeep in huge red letters. Sometimes, he comes home and Camaro is there already. The most annoying part about that is that every single time Stiles loses, it's only just. Like, as in seconds. Stiles sccrrrss over the righthand turn onto his street, scrrsss again down to his block, sees the black Camaro parked in his spot, starts seeing red around the edges; and then sees the wide expanse of the asshole's back as he skips up the steps to his front door. Twirling the keys around on a thick finger, probably whistling and snickering to himself. Like he knows, somehow, exactly what time Stiles is going to get back, knows when Stiles is going to be slowing down to a crawl to watch as the fuckwad goes inside of his house, and shows up just in time just to fuck with him. Stiles swears he knows. He doesn't know how, and he doesn't know why, and all his friends look at him like he's gone absolutely off the deep end every time he brings it up, but he knows that license plate number 6SFS789 is a hell-beast that's been brought here to rain torment down on Stiles' head in the form of being forced to walk three blocks out of his way to get to his own home. Now, at 6:54 am, Stiles decides that he's had just about e-fucking-nough of this asshole and his white tank-tops and leather jacket and sunglasses – and don't get him started on how much he hates the car itself. The most pretentious car on the entire fucking block! Stiles would expect to see something like that lurking around in the wealthier neighborhoods across town, but every other car aside from Stiles' piece of shit Jeep and whatshisface's sleek black Camaro is a minivan or a mid-sized sedan or something like that. At night, he imagines taking a baseball bat to the hood, and the headlights; smashing the windshield in and knocking the rearview mirrors clean off, ripping the windshield wipers off and throwing them through Camaro guy's living room windows. So. Yeah, it's been getting pretty intense. The silent battle – Stiles vs. Some Guy He's Never Actually Met Before, an endless game of cat and mouse, catch me if you can, also probably anything you can do I can do better and watch your fucking back and also I swear I am going to come for you in the middle of the night and kidnap the fish right out of the tank in the window.

Stiles hasn't quite sunk down to the level of fish-napping yet; but holy shit, is he ever getting there. He decides to leave a note. A note is absolutely and positively the correct thing to do, right? One Monday night, in the twilight of the fading summer day, he rips his messenger bag open, pulls out a pen and an index card, before using the hood of the car as a desk for him to scribble out – this is my fucking parking space and I swear on Lucifer's unholy grasp if you don't stop parking here I'm going to He huffs. Bunches that index card up in his fist. Pulls a brand new one out of his bag. Starts over. Hi – I live in the house you're constantly parking in front of like an inconsiderate jagaloon and Bunches it up. Reaches for a new card. Hi! I live at 317 Roundup → right there! And you've been kinda stealing my spot :( Could you find a new place to park, please? Thanks! Stiles scrunches his nose up in distaste at the scribbles he has written down on the card, thinking it sounds absolutely nothing like him whatsoever and he wants to flatten out the Lucifer's unholy grasp one again because that one was more direct and to the point and way more honest – but he doesn't think insulting and threatening the guy in a note on an index card is the best way to make friends in the neighborhood. Not that Stiles wants to be Camaro guy's friend. Oh, God no. He'd sooner chew his own wrists off than be that douchebag's fucking friend – he can tell, without even having seen the man's face before, that he is exactly the kind of guy that Stiles avoids at all costs. But the point is that he's trying to get the guy to actually stop taking his parking space; not just make him really, really mad and annoyed. Because, first of all, the guy is ripped as fuck and could tear Stiles' limbs off of his body if he really felt like it, and second of all...well, that about sums it up, actually. Stiles values his limbs very much. So he leaves his little index card wedged underneath the left windshield wiper, feeling proud of himself, and heads inside his house to begin his nightly ritual of dinner and Netflix before turning in for bed with a book. When the alarm goes off at 6 am the following morning, he groans before climbing out of bed to shower and dress and eat a quick breakfast – and then steps outside into the early morning sunshine. He walks past the Camaro, and his index card is still wedged underneath the wiper – so he assumes that the guy hasn't come outside to see it yet. He goes to work. He squeezes his stress ball and spins around in his spinny chair and eats a

chicken wrap in the break room and gets yelled at for hours on end and gets stared at by the creepy peach-guy that sits next to him, and by the time he's strolling out the doors and into the burning heat of his Jeep (the air conditioning broke many, many years ago) he's irritable, pissed off, and just about ready to rearend someone for stalling too long after the light turns green. About halfway home, Stiles remembers the index card that he left on Camaro guy's car, and a surge of relief courses through him, like ahh, yes! Because yesterday I was such a good person and calmly and nicely asked him to stop parking in front of my house! The universe will reward me by way of karma for my good deeds, what goes around comes around, birds singing, sun shining! As if writing a two sentence long note on a fluorescent pink index card and wedging it underneath a windshield wiper was an act akin to that of something Mother Theresa had done. He should've definitely known better. He should've known from the very first time that he saw Camaro guy's leather jacket, the very first time he watched the guy slam his mailbox closed a little too roughly, the very first time Stiles glared out at the window and saw him bent over and ripping dandelions out of his lawn that Camaro guy was not a good guy. Camaro guys aren't good guys. They're not nice, dammit. They drive pretentious fuckboy cars and park in other people's spots and don't care! About how nice you are in your pink index card message left on their windshield! When Stiles pulls onto his block, and sees the Camaro sitting in almost the exact same spot it was in when he left (approximately one foot closer to Stiles' mailbox, like he almost ran the thing over but thought better of it at the last second), sans pink index card, he slams to a stop and clenches his jaw. Clearly he went somewhere today, he thinks, scanning his eyes across the perimeter between their two houses; this time, the man is nowhere in sight. But he obviously went somewhere and obviously read Stiles' note and – and fucking did it again? Again? When Stiles asked nicely? With a :( face and all!? Stiles goes immediately into what Scott has time and time again referred to as The Red. Stiles has a series of problems. The first of which is that he has a tendency to overreact in the moment, to freak out and do something without thinking it through well enough. The second of which is that he has another tendency to literally blunder everything in sight (specifically events - do you have any idea how many of his own birthday parties he ruined growing up because he somehow managed to drop the entire cake on the floor? After his 8th birthday, his mother started making cupcakes instead.) The third of which is that he has a hard time keeping his mouth shut. The Red is the first of these - wherein he gets so fucking worked up, so angry, so over the god damn top and overflowing with emotions that are about to burst out of him, that he just sort of...blacks out. Sees red around the edges of his vision, parks his Jeep illegally beside the

yellow section of sidewalk right in front of the Camaro and beneath the NO PARKING sign with the arrow, and leaps out of his car. This has gone on for too long. For far, far too long. Stiles has let Camaro guy jerk him around, knowing full well the entire time that the fucker knew exactly what he was doing. This isn't just some person who has nowhere else to park; oh, no. However legitimate and probably completely factual that explanation might be, Stiles knows better. He knows this is a personal attack. When he rounds the front of the Camaro and sees the pink index card ripped in half in the storm gutter, he transcends above The Red. He goes clean through The Red and streams headfirst into The Black; a dark, dark place inside of his head where horrible, awful decisions are made spur of the moment. Like the time he and his dad got into an argument when he was sixteen and Stiles tried to punch his fist through the fridge – that had ended in a hospital visit and a handful of stitches, and you'd think Stiles would learn to not let himself get so worked up anymore. But. Here he is. Worked up. Clenching his start-up key in between his fingers like a knife, brow furrowed, breaths coming out fast and heavy and thick. This is not good; he knows that as it's happening, but distantly. Muted – a tiny little voice in the back of his head saying um – bad idea? Really, truly horrible idea, Stiles. Stiles! Do not. Don't! Too late. One second he's thinking oh, what a nice paint job, fuckwad! What a truly great paintjob! Did your daddy buy it for you! And the next, he's digging his key into the passenger side door and dragging it with a ssccrrrrrrrrrreechhhh across the paint. It leaves a somewhat satisfying long silver line as the black paint chips away around the harsh and sharp edges of the key, and the sound is nearly orgasmic to Stiles; kind of like the way the sound of someone he hates getting a good slap across the face is music to his ears. It might not be a smashing baseball bat to tail lights, but it's every thing he's been wanting for the past two months, a victory, finally after all this time! After all the times he came home and was Bang. A huge hand slams down on the hood of the Camaro, and Stiles flicks his eyes up to find – to find... ...Camaro guy. Who, as it turns out, has a face that is about a thousand times more attractive than Stiles was imagining in his head. Since Stiles only ever got the back-view, all the muscles and strength and all that good stuff, he kind of let his mind assume that he had a really jacked up face. It kind of satisfied him, in a way, to think that Camaro guy would be on the less-attractive side. This – this Greek god with cheekbones to die for and green eyes glowing in the fading sunlight and perfect bone structure – this is not satisfying. Or, it sort of is. But in, like, the most embarrassing way possible. “What are you doing?" It's not said particularly angrily. Just out there - a question. What is Stiles

doing? Stiles stares at him for another couple of seconds longer as he tries to recover from whatever minor heart attack he's currently suffering from. The oh, my God, my neighbor is hot type of heart attack, mashed together with the I just fucked up kind, and then, last but not least, I got caught doing the single most immature thing imaginable brand. The trio altogether makes for one Hell of a brain short circuit. He glances down at his hand – the key is still jammed into the passenger side door of the car. The evidence is right there, incriminating him like a pair of gloves in his backseat covered in the victim's blood. He glances up to Camaro guy, can't stand the sight of his beautiful face so flicks instead to stare out at the sunset. “Um -” he clears his throat, slowly withdrawing the key from the Camaro, “...you kept stealing my spot?” It sounds so fucking ridiculous now. Everything always sounds ridiculous when Stiles comes back to himself after going through one of his certifiable fugue states, it all seems over the top and Stiles can never believe he did it. But this, right here? This is definitely the worst that it's ever been. Camaro guy raises his eyebrows at him, and blinks several times in a row. Other than that, it's dead silence. Stiles understands loud and clear what's being signed to him, here – and this was a reasonable response? Stiles stares at the key in his hand, and then at the long silver line running through the sleek, perfect paint of the Camaro, and puckers his lips in shame as his cheeks probably go so red that he looks like a strawberry, with his green work shirt as the leaves. “I – I'll -” he swallows heavily, still can't look Camaro guy in the eyes, choosing instead to glare pointedly at his Adam's apple (which doesn't help the whole Stiles finding him bizarrely and insanely attractive bit at all). “...I'll pay for it?” This time, the eyebrows scrunch together, and there's a flick his gaze over to Stiles' haphazardly and illegally parked Jeep – one wheel up on the curb. And then those green eyes dance over the long indent in the left side from when Stiles accidentally hit Mrs. McCall's garbage cans on his way out of their driveway, over the cracks in the windshield from when a goose hit him in the middle of a roadtrip (and no – he didn't hit the goose, the goose hit him), over the chipping paint, and then rests back on Stiles. Again. The message is received loud and clear without him having to speak a single fucking word – you don't seem like you have the money to go around buying paint jobs, asshole. Offended, in spite of the dead silence he's been met with thus far ever since the man first

accosted him, Stiles sets his jaw and drops the puppy-dog look off his face. “How much does a paint job cost? What, like, a couple hundred?” He snorts and rolls his eyes. “I have a couple hundred, believe it or not!” Camaro guy crosses his arms over his chest, those rippling fucking arms Stiles thinks perversely, and blinks. “Closer to a thousand, actually.” Stiles' heart sinks into his chest. Oh. A thousand dollars. Then, the man shrugs. “Probably more.” Probably more. Stiles doesn't have a thousand dollars to spend on much of anything, and he really doesn't have probably more to spend on absolutely anything whatsoever at any point in time; he barely has enough money for gas after food and bills as it is ever since his shitty roommate moved out. How could Stiles ever be so fucking immature and stupid as to do something as thoughtless as this? Keying a car? A fucking fancy twenty thousand dollar car? He thinks about just ramming his head as hard as possible into the passenger side window to give himself serious head trauma and get the Hell out of this horrible situation he went and put himself into – all over a parking spot. The panic must be written clear as day all over his face, because Camaro guy lets out a long sigh through his nose and drops his arms down to his sides. “You know – forget about it.” Stiles blinks. “But I -” “It's fine,” he says curtly, scanning his eyes down Stiles' body like he's sizing him up or something. “I don't think it is fine, because I -” “You think I can't afford a new paint job?” He asks incredulously, raising his eyebrows up into his hairline. “I bought the car in the first place, didn't I?” Not the point, Stiles thinks. Not the point at all. Just because Camaro guy has the money to pay for Stiles' fuck up, doesn't mean that he should? “I can pay it off,” he insists stubbornly, taking stock of the long scratch once more, “might take me a few months, but I can pay you back.” “You really don't -” “I can do a thousand dollars in – I don't know – four months?” Like this somehow pisses the guy off, or is insulting, his jaw tightens and he gives Stiles what would easily quantify as a death glare. “No. I don't want your money.”

With that, like the conversation has ended just because he decides it is, Camaro guy turns around on his heel and starts huffing it across the street without looking both ways, leaping up the steps to his house and pushing open his door without even glancing back in Stiles' direction once. Which just leaves Stiles standing there with the key-weapon in his hand, staring after him with a frown, confused out of his ever loving mind and – possibly slightly aroused? II Scott and Stiles have a standing appointment, every Friday night after Stiles gets off of work, to either go to the bars or go out to dinner – and this Friday, Stiles decided on dinner, much to Scott's obvious chagrin. Stiles picks dinner almost every single time it's his turn to choose, as a matter of fact, because bars aren't really his favorite scene on the face of the planet. Especially not the bars that Scott is always dragging him off to. Like, seedy straight-guy bars with twenty-seven year old women in cocktail dresses eyeballing him like he just might be the future father of their children or something like that. So, again, not really Stiles' scene. He much prefers to sit at Pizza Hut gorging himself on ultimate cheese lover's pizza – which is, incidentally, exactly what he's doing right now, with Scott across from him going on his ten thousandth rant about the upcoming wedding ever since the big proposal happened. And, if Stiles thought that the proposal itself took a lot of planning (two months, six hundred hours of bro-planning over the phone logged, and an indeterminable amount of time spent picking the ring together), then he had no fucking idea what he was in for when it came to the actual, like, event. Apparently there are aspects and details of weddings that Stiles has never once in his life given thought to. For example, place cards and seating arrangements and floral decorations all over the walls and miles upon miles of fabric samples for table cloths and so many cake samples that Stiles had to lie down on the floor of the bakery just to keep himself from vomiting everywhere. “I'm telling you,” Scott says now, tearing at his leftover crust with pinched fingers and a sour expression on his face, “I'm going to die before I make it to the alter. She's going to kill me. And if she doesn't, then her mother definitely will.” “That's the spirit, buddy,” Stiles winks at him, “put that in your vows. I guess I'll be reading those in your place.” “It's not funny,” but his lips quirk up slightly around the corners, like it is just a teeny bit funny. “Kira keeps insisting that it's important to her that I'm, like, involved in all the planning and making decisions together and all that stuff but -” and now, he leans in conspiratorially like he's about to tell Stiles the single most shocking secret of all time. Stiles plays along, leaning forward himself while munching on a piece of cheesy bread. “...to be honest? I don't really care

about any of this stuff.” Stiles didn't have to be told that to know. Scott would be perfectly fine going down to the court house and getting a marriage license the old fashioned way (or maybe it's actually the more modern way, these days), would be absolutely fine without the pomp and circumstance, wouldn't mind having their honeymoon in the Motel 8 down the street from their shared apartment, eating a continental breakfast every morning with lucky charms and lukewarm orange juice. The whole idea of anything being grand and big is kind of foreign to Scott, and he's obviously floundering with the planning and the mother-in-law and the dress and the cake and the everything. But, it's important to Kira. So he sits here and rants and raves and gets all his frustrations out as he rips a slice of pizza apart with his fingers; and then he takes a deep breath, goes home, and spends the rest of the night sifting through the flower mart with Kira with a smile on his face. Stiles is mostly just here for moral support. Best man and all that, but that title mostly just means he's going to show up in a tux and get roaring drunk at the reception, falling all over the place while making song requests at the DJ station like play 1D, dude! The perks of being single and pathetic, Stiles thinks to himself around a bite of pizza while Scott talks about how if I never see another pig in a blanket again I'll be a very, very happy man. Stiles doesn't entirely mind being single (at least, not always), because he gets to do cool stuff like stay up until three in the morning watching marathons of Hell's Kitchen without having to worry about there being some guy trying to get him to do what he wants him to do. It's nice. But, sometimes, Stiles wishes there was some guy saying stop watching Hell's fucking Kitchen and come to bed. Eh. Sometimes. When they're rising out of their booth, Stiles is carrying a brown box with two slices of pizza inside of it – which he plans to eat at midnight tonight alone in his kitchen in the dark – and Scott is saying I just haven't seen it yet! “How long have we been friends?” Stiles demands, narrowing his eyes as they start walking through the maze of booths and tables towards the exit. “How long have I been saying...” “I know,” Scott whines – and Stiles doesn't blame him. They've had this exact conversation a zillion times before. “I know that! Every time I try to watch it, something just, like, gets in the way!” “In the way,” Stiles rolls his eyes. “It's true! I've tried to sit down and watch it like a dozen times!” They're rounding the corner to the glass double doors that spill out into the parking lot, and Stiles

starts using his free hand to gesture wildly in the air. “There is no,” arm flap, “trying!” wild waving of his wrist, “when it comes to Star Wars, Scott!” He throws his arm out dramatically like he's pointing at something, about to make some really great point like classic movie and pop culture phenomenon and on and on and on, when his hand smacks into something hard and warm and...fleshy. Face-like actually. It wouldn't be the first time he's accidentally slapped someone in the face; seriously, his friends have learned to steer clear of him. Stiles retracts his hand instantaneously, whirling around to say oh, dude, I'm so sorry like he does whenever he winds up in this exact situation – and then stops short. Standing there, staring at Stiles with intense eyebrow and cheekbone and jawline action, is Camaro guy. He's wearing his leather jacket and dark jeans, a light gray shirt, and Stiles stares at him with his jaw dropped for a couple seconds too long. This cannot be happening, he thinks, even as the man raises his eyebrows at Stiles in that familiar way and eyes him up and down just like he did the last time they saw each other. This cannot be happening. Stiles hasn't seen Camaro guy in about two weeks. Not since fucking stupid idiot Stiles was caught literally driving his key into the man's car in an act of revenge, all over a fucking parking spot. He hasn't seen Camaro guy since that terse conversation about what Stiles can or cannot afford, and he hasn't even seen the Camaro since then, either. It's never outside of Stiles' house, anymore. Whether that's because he finally wised up and realized he was being a dick about that parking spot, or because he lives in genuine fear and concern for the safety of his car, Stiles isn't sure. All he knows is that he has no idea where the guy is parking his fucking car and he's been seeing a lot less of his retreating back vanishing inside of his house as of late. Stiles knew that if he tried to show up and give the guy a check to pay off the scratch mark and the paint job, he'd just glare at him and rip the check up right in front of his face or something. He just seems like that type, right? So, instead, he baked a batch of pumpkin chocolate chip cookies (his best, if he does say so himself), put them on a decorative plate wrapped in colorful saran wrap, with another fluorescent pink index card reading sorry :(. That was an entire nine days ago. And Stiles hasn't gotten his plate back, hasn't received a thank you for his delicious cookies (no, seriously, they're fucking life-changing), hasn't heard a single word from sourpuss over here. Stiles knows he doesn't have a right to be mad that the guy isn't coming over grovelling at his feet just because Stiles made him some cookies – relatively, when thinking about why Stiles made the cookies, what event lead him to put his apron on and buckle down to work...there's

absolutely no reason that he would have to say thank you to him, in terms of all that. But, like? Acknowledgment? Maybe? “Um,” Stiles squeaks out, cheeks already turning red hot in embarrassment; something about having Camaro guy's eyes on him just instantly turns him into a socially awkward teenager with a crush. “Sorry. For punching you in the face just now.” Camaro guy shrugs. Like no big deal. There's a light mark on one of his cheeks from where one of Stiles' fingernails must've dug into the skin, but eh, shrug, no big deal. Stiles swallows. Blinks around at his surroundings as if he's completely forgotten where he is and what he's doing here, what planet he's on at all. “Er – pizza?” Blink. “Yeah. I'm here for pizza.” Stiles wants to punch himself in the fucking face for being such a complete idiot. Er – pizza? Jesus Christ it's not even a full fucking sentence. Beside him, Scott flicks his eyes from leather jacket, to Stiles, and back again, like he's solving a math problem in his head (which, for Scott, is always dangerous.) The silence drags on for a few more seconds with Stiles just standing there holding onto his pizza box and Scott looking in-between the two other men and Camaro guy looking like he's just about to turn away and hightail it away from this horribly awkward situation and Stiles' horribly awkward face-hitting, car-keying self; and then Stiles speaks up. So fucking stupidly. Stiles speaks up. “My name is Stiles,” he blurts out. It sounds high pitched, desperate in his own ears, and it's a voice he fucking recognizes. It's the same voice that the older women at the clubs Scott drags him to use, that same desperate fucking needy voice, coupled with an awkwardly intense snort masquerading itself as a laugh. Camaro guy stops turning, freezes in place, and furrows his brow. It's humiliating. Stiles knows he just sounded like he was trying to, like, make a move on the guy he's barely met; there's no reason for Camaro guy to need to know his name! There's none! Whatsoever! This is all going downhill so god damn fast, everything is spinning, and realistically he knows that it's not that big of a deal, but a lifetime of anxieties and ADHD can make a person susceptible to social faux pas. And Stiles – humiliated and as red faced as the sauce on the pizza inside of the box he's holding – back peddles so fucking fast that he nearly whiplashes Camaro guy in the face all over again, before he can get his own name out. “And this!” Stiles jerks a thumb in Scott's direction. “Is my – he's my -” “Friend,” Scott clarifies slowly, as if he's trying to teach the word to an alien from another

planet. Then, he sticks his tan hand out with a crooked grin in Camaro guy's direction, and says, “Scott McCall!” Scott has been saving Stiles from awkward situations like this since they were kids. He is a master at turning the conversation around, getting everyone's attention away from Stiles when he's lying flat out on his ass after a bad fall, smiling and shrugging and saying "he's so funny, right? Always pulling jokes!" Stiles' accidents and disasters are never fucking jokes. They're real things that just happen to him out of his control - but people laugh and smile and think Stiles is a jokester instead of a spazzoid, so it all works out. Unbelievably, the bigger man takes his hand and shakes it, offering out a simple, “Derek Hale.” And just like that, Stiles knows that Camaro guy has a name. And Stiles knows what it is now. And he also knows that his best friend just saved him from the most humiliating moment of his life, and that Camaro guy – Derek Hale – is giving them an excuse of my sister's waiting, nice to meet you and flicking his eyes to Stiles, lingering for a couple of seconds. Stiles knows that he's thinking Christ, I just had to wind up moving next to Spongebob Squarepants, didn't I? Fucking socially awkward, nerdy square sponge, that's exactly what Stiles is, and his cheeks are probably practically purple by the time Derek's eyes shift and he's walking away to find his sister. For a couple seconds, Stiles just stands there watching after him, mouth hanging open around unspoken words. Derek's about to round the corner, to vanish into a booth with a probably pretty dark haired girl with similar green eyes and unbelievable cheekbones, and Stiles... ...spazzes. Can't have his famous last words be “is my...he's my....” like a fucking nerdy idiot, and practically shouts out, “did you get my cookies?” For the second time, Derek's shoulders tense and he turns back to face the two standing at the door. Scott looks just about ready to grab Stiles' arm and haul him out, because Stiles just knows that his best friend can see clear as day what's going on here. What started out as a genuine hatred is quickly and without any pauses turning into one of Stiles' dorky nerd crushes. And it's going – in a word – horrible-terrible-awkward-shitty-mortifying. Derek blinks at him. Says, “you put them in the wrong mailbox.” “I – what?” He angles his body back around fully, rakes his eyes up and down Stiles again. “You put those cookies in the mailbox of the people who live above me.” He blinks again, tilts his head to the side, and it almost looks like he's about to smile. “I thought that was weird when I saw it.”

How can everything in Stiles' life go this wrong? How is it possible that he was stupid enough to not doublecheck that the golden metal numbers outside Derek's door matched with the stickered numbers on the mailbox he chose? Why? At least now he knows that Derek wasn't just purposefully ignoring the cookies, didn't just trash them in the garbage somewhere out of anger and hatred. “Oh.” Like he can sense or smell Stiles' mortification from where he's standing, he says, “I'm sure they were good.” They were good. They were fucking delicious. There is nothing better than his pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, nothing in this world. Stiles and Derek could've been, like, friends by now, having tea parties at Stiles' house, if he had just chosen the right mailbox. Because those cookies could've ended the Cold War. Yes. They're that good. “Sorry about your car,” he says, for lack of anything else to say, and Derek's face goes sour like he's annoyed at Stiles even bringing it up. So, that's about when Stiles decides to caw out a bye! around an awkward laugh, grabbing Scott's wrist and dragging him along towards the glass doors until they're outside in the sun and far, far away from Derek and his prying eyes. “Dude,” Scott says as they're climbing into the Jeep. “That was painful.” “Don't.” Stiles warns in a low voice as he jabs his key into the ignition. “Don't.” “Is that the guy whose car you keyed?” He demands with a snort, pointing his index finger at the Pizza Hut. “You talked about him like you fucking hated him. Meanwhile, here you are today, acting like you want to -” “Don't.” “-I mean, he's good looking and all, but-” “Scott!” “-don't you think he seems like kind of a douchenozzle?” He does seem like a fucking douchenozzle. That's just the fucking thing of it – he is so obviously and clearly a douchenozzle with a fucking douchey car and a douchey leather jacket and douchey sunglasses. He is the epitome of douche, the douchemaster, and – yeah. But on the other hand. When Stiles literally destroyed the fancy paintwork on his car, he just glowered and said don't worry about it. When Stiles nearly knocked him over by gesturing too wildly to his friend, in the face, he shrugged like it wasn't a problem at all. That's not douchey, Stiles thinks to himself as he pulls away from the Pizza Hut, sees Derek's Camaro parked a couple rows behind where his Jeep was. That is certainly not douchey at all. That's a nice guy thing; and looking at Derek, the last word that comes to mind is nice guy, with

his set jaw and angry looking eyes and tough guy exterior. He's the last person Stiles would ever imagine would shrug and say don't worry about it, and mean it. The last person that would say I'm sure they were good cookies. III Stiles becomes somewhat determined, dangerously so, to get Derek a plate of his cookies. Now that he knows which mailbox is his beyond any shadow of a doubt, there's nothing stopping him. He'll make a second batch, even better than the first, and then while he's at it he'll go to the neighbors that stole the cookies (that were in their mailbox – a technicality) and cuss them out for eating them when they were obviously and completely meant for somebody else? It becomes an obsession, the way he used to hyper-focus on shit when he was a teenager. He lies awake at night bouncing his fingers on his chest, thinking God, he would love those fucking cookies. Everyone loves my god damn cookies! My cookies are so fucking good and he needs to get a chance to taste them so I can redeem myself and not be this huge spazz, my cookies can change lives, and then he starts thinking about how cookies starts sounding like some sexual euphemism and he laughs quietly to himself like well, those cookies as well! And he realizes he's exactly as nerdy and lame as Derek already thinks he is, and no cookie on earth could change that. But, dammit. Stiles has to try. So, he goes to the supermarket on a Saturday afternoon. He's made these cookies so many times that he doesn't need a recipe list, has the entire thing stacked up in his brain like the words to a song or a list of his ex-boyfriends (which fits perfectly, since every time he's broken up with one of them he's drowned himself in these exact cookies). Like he's said, they can fix nearly any problem. Never in a million years did he imagine the cookies causing him problems. Never in his worst fucking nightmares could he have predicted the horror that the cookies would wind up bringing him. Chocolate chips dumped into his basket, followed by some nutmeg since he knows he's nearly out, and then he's cruising down the pasta aisle to grab some spaghetti for his dinner. Everything's going fine. He's thinking about grocery store stuff – watching out for little kids that get underneath is feet, making sure he's not forgetting anything, does he need toothpaste, and on and on and on, and then he's about to turn down the aisle towards where the pumpkin puree' is waiting for him. When, conveniently, he spots a display two aisles down, in the middle of the store. Conveniently, yes.

What are the odds. What are the odds that on the exact day that Stiles decides to make his cookies, there would be a display sitting dead center of the store with a huge white and red sign blasting pumpkin puree' – two for one! right in his face. In the middle of summer. Who the fuck makes pumpkin flavored anything in the summer time? It's the kind of thing one would expect to see on September 1st – not mid-fucking July. All the same, Stiles glances down the aisle where the normal cans of puree' are waiting, and then decides against it. He goes for the display, even though the two for one deal probably still applies to all cans of the stuff in the store regardless of where he picks them up from. Because at the display, they're all aesthetically pleasing. At the display, he can admire the craftsmanship of whoever was forced to get here at five am to sit stacking cans into a fancy looking pile. At the display, he can reach his hand out towards a can on the top, trip over his untied shoelace, fall forward, smack his body into the pile, send cans flying in every single direction with a crash so loud it rivals the noise of Titanic slamming into an iceberg. Stiles winds up starfished over the few cans that somehow managed to be spared from rolling away, smacking into people's feet, disappearing down into the produce aisle so quickly it looks like they're running to freedom with minds of their own. There's a low murmur of surprise and shock among the other patrons of the store as Stiles goes into what could easily be classified as shock; it takes him a couple of seconds to realize that, yup, that actually just fucking happened, and he's really lying face first on a pile of cans, and he really just made life a living hell for some poor service worker. All because the fates are working against him. Someone up there, be it God or the devil or possibly even the ghost of Michael Jackson himself, has it out for him. That's clear now. The only thing that's gone right is that the can that caused all the trouble in the first place is still in his hand. With a huff, his limbs aching from being pelted on by rogue cans, he starts trying to pull himself up into a sitting position while what sounds like a middle-aged mom says honey, are you okay? Not even remotely, honestly. Not even in the most remote sense is he okay. He's just opening his mouth to say, “I'm all right, haha,” when he raises his head and sees... ...Derek Hale. Standing there with a bottle of windex and a roll of paper towels, a can of pumpkin puree' sitting directly in between his feet as he stares with an incredulous expression at where Stiles is lying out on the cans. And Stiles literally cannot fucking believe it. How can this be happening? Again? What? Are? The? Odds?

The eye contact lasts, and the mom is clucking her tongue and saying untied shoe, exactly what I thought, and Stiles starts thinking about rolling away himself like one of the cans and winding up underneath a cart somewhere so he can be run over and die peacefully before having to live through yet another round of mortification in front of Derek Hale. Then, Derek is smiling gently, almost apologetically, and stepping forward. He wedges the roll of paper towels under one arm as he gets closer, and then holds the hand this frees up in Stiles' direction as soon as he's close enough. Once Derek is in earshot, Stiles is saying, “this isn't what I'm like.” It is exactly what he's like just...not normally this often. Not normally in front of the same person again and again. “Mmmhmm,” Derek says, jiggling his hand in front of Stiles' face. Stiles stares at it for a second, pursing his lips, and then begrudgingly takes it with his own free hand. Derek's strong arm manages to get Stiles' lanky form up into a standing position, climbing out of the can pile with very, very little grace, nearly knocking into Derek in the process. Like things could get any worse. As if something could ever be worse than this. Well. Taking Derek down with him in a second humiliating public fall would definitely be worse. “I really -” Stiles rips his hand free of Derek's and clears his throat, taking stock of all the other things that were in his basket, how strewn all over the floor they are. “...I'm a normal, functioning human being, I swear I am.” “Right,” Derek says, and his mouth starts quirking up even more. Like he's amused. His eyes scan over the cans all over the floor, raising his eyebrows. Stiles himself stares down at the can of pumpkin puree' in his own hand, thinks et tu, brute? Because, like he said, the cookies were his comfort. Now, he'll probably never be able to bake them again without having intrusive, horrible memories of the time he knocked over an entire display in the grocery store and his stupidly-hot crush was standing there watching the entire thing. Et tu, brute indeed. The ultimate betrayal. Stiles feels like throwing the can as hard as he can in the opposite direction of himself. A couple of sad, tired looking teenagers in blue vests with acne riddled faces show up, hands on their hips as they accost the damage, and Stiles turns away from Derek. “Hang on -” he says, making his way over to the pair, nearly tripping over a can in the process, “you don't have to clean this. It's my fault – I'll -” “Sir,” one of them says in an exhausted sounding voice, “that's not a problem. It's our job.”

“No,” Stiles insists. He grabs his basket and sets it in an upright position on the ground, dumps his personal can into it, and then starts fishing around on the floor for more, collecting them into the crook of his arm. “At least let me help.” The kids look at each other for a second, like, is this guy serious? And Stiles huffs out a breath as he starts stacking the cans back into their original positions to the best of his abilities. Maybe it's not quite the artistic pile that it was when it first started, but cans are cans and a pile is a pile, right? After a moment, the kids sigh and join him, while most everyone else, the mom from earlier included, rolls their carts away and starts their shopping experiences back up again now that the issue is being dealt with and the scene is mostly winding down. Derek, however, puts his windex and paper towels down, and bends down right next to Stiles, reaching for the same can that he is at the exact same time. Stiles fingers jolt when they meet the back of Derek's hand, and then he turns in surprise to look into those green eyes. “You -” he swallows, clears his throat – wonders why he cannot for the life of him have a normal conversation with this man without turning into a stuttering, freakish mess. “...don't have to.” Derek shrugs. “I don't mind,” he says, and Stiles stares at him as he takes seven cans into his arms easily, and then keeps on staring while he stacks them up alongside the teenagers. And this is yet another thing that he honestly cannot believe. Here is this man – he weighs, give or take, 180 pounds. Somewhere in that general range, Stiles would wager. He's over six feet tall. He walks around in a leather jacket and drives his dark black Camaro like he's a top secret vampire and has some wide-eyed girl following him around like I'm not afraid of you... And yet, also, somewhat paradoxically, he's also the nicest person Stiles has ever met? And in the weirdest way, too. Not in the smiles, and friendly, and laughs at Stiles' lame jokes way. But just in a considerate way. The asshole that used to steal his parking spot every single fucking day is actually nice. Two months ago, Stiles would've scoffed at the mere idea of it, but now – watching the guy collect cans and help teenagers clean up the mess that Stiles himself made – it's really hard to see him any other way. In spite of the glowering. After the cans are collected (at least all the ones that they could find) the teenagers thank them and disperse back to their regular jobs, and then it's just Derek and Stiles standing there awkwardly with one another.

Derek picks up his paper towels and windex, and without asking or having to be asked, grabs Stiles' basket and hands them back to him, as well. Stiles takes it with a small smile. “I meant what I said,” he presses, keeping his eyes firmly planted on Derek's jawline because looking him in the eyes after what just happened is a nonoption. “I'm not – like, this much of a spazz on the daily.” “Right,” Derek says again. Then, he points to the can of pumpkin puree' in Stiles' basket and says, “more cookies?” Stiles blinks, and then nods. “Er – yes. I was going to make some more cookies...” he wonders if he should say the next thing as he swallows for time, decides to go for it, “...for you.” The bigger man scrunches his face up. “Why are you so hellbent on giving me cookies, Stiles?” “Um?” He adjusts the basket in his hand, raising his chin in the air. “Because I ruined your car? And you refuse to let me pay for it? I have to do something.” Derek rubs along his jawline like he's exasperated or annoyed, and then rolls his eyes. “I don't care about that. I was an ass about that, anyway.” “No?” Stiles insists. “You weren't? I keyed your car, dude. Like a seven year old.” “I don't think a seven year old would've had the strength to dig that key in as far as you did.” Like that's supposed to make Stiles feel better? Who is this guy? Stiles narrows his eyes and tightens his fingers around the handles of his basket. “I'm making you cookies.” “It's really, really not necessary to -” “I'm making,” he takes a step forward, pointing a finger into Derek's face menacingly with his lips set down in a firm line, “you cookies.” Derek raises his eyebrows up into his hairline, and he starts smirking again. “Maybe knock on my door and give them to me personally this time,” he shrugs his shoulders casually, and then takes a step back to start walking away, “just to be careful.” “I -” “But you might somehow get lost or hurt along the way.” He's being teased. He's being teased by his asshole next door neighbor in the middle of the grocery store. Normally when Stiles gets teased or made fun of for his clumsiness he bristles like a porcupine, shooting out clever insults and perfectly acidic sarcasm in response, shooting down anyone who dares to come for him in that capacity.

Now, all Stiles can do is feel his cheeks heat up in embarrassment and also some level of pleasure, watching as Derek slowly backs away with a smirk on his face until the man whirls around and starts walking towards the registers. Stiles stands there staring, lips parted and wide-eyed. Was that – flirting? Did Derek just invite Stiles to his house, kinda? The man is a conundrum. Stiles can never fucking make up his mind. He's a paradox, a walking talking problem that Stiles keeps trying to solve – one minute he hates him, the next he's flustered around him. One minute he's keying the guy's car, and the next he's trying to make him cookies. And all the while, Derek is just there to shrug and say not a problem, don't mind, it's all right like he's simply along for the ride that Stiles is dragging him onto; like he's pulling him onto a rollercoaster and Derek is just rolling his eyes and letting himself be pulled. Stiles thinks he kind of finds it attractive. Though, that's not really news at this point, is it? IV Stiles bakes Derek the cookies. To perfection, might he add. Because this is something he can do right. This is something he has done right hundreds upon hundreds of times in his life, success after success, birthday party and holiday party and cheer-ups and the whole lot. These cookies have gotten him through it all. And, yes. Okay. The most pivotal ingredient of the cookies kind of got him into a hot mess the other day. But the fact remains that he and these cookies have a history; one that cannot and will not be marred by one incident. Maybe that's like he and Derek himself, he thinks after dropping the cookies down outside of Derek's front door because he's too nervous to ring the doorbell and talk to him face to face. Maybe the whole car-keying thing was just the same as Stiles being backstabbed by pumpkin puree'. Like, a hump in the road, so to speak. Or a mistake, an accident that can be overlooked when looking at all the positive stuff. Right? That makes sense. Maybe Derek and Stiles have quite a few bumps at this point. But those can be worked over. Like a complete and total creep, he sits on his couch on Sunday afternoon while flicking his eyes over to his window to try and see if he can catch Derek coming outside to pick up the cookies waiting there for him. Stiles watches a five episode long binge of Kitchen Nightmares, twilight starts falling over the day to bring it to a close, and Derek never comes out. Disappointed, upset, and more than a little dramatic about the entire ordeal, from the part where he keyed Derek's car to the part where his cookies aren't being appreciated, Stiles decides to get fucking drunk.

The whole drinking alone thing – Stiles pretty much has that on lock. The entire point of drinking, for the most part at least, is to have fun with your friends and let your inhibitions down so you can be more candid with new people you meet. But then there are times when a person just wants to drink wine, listen to really sad songs all by themselves, and get emotional about people they don't talk to anymore, ex-boyfriends; that sort of a thing. Nobody wants to hang out with the sad drunk, so Stiles reserves his sad-drunkenness for special occasions. Like tonight, apparently. He guzzles four glasses in front of the television, makes the executive decision that, yup, he's drunk, and has a fifth glass. It's only eight o'clock at night, and he's stumbling around in his living room with a bottle of wine in his hand, staring pointedly at one of the picture frames he has hanging up on the wall and trying to focus his eyes on it without having to watch it sort of...shift around. This is his drunk test. If he can look directly at something without thinking that it's spinning around or moving on its own accord, especially if it's a thing that is normally completely immobile, then he's not too drunk. He is currently failing the drunk test. Miserably. “Fresh air,” he decides out loud to himself – or maybe to Tyra Banks, who's talking to a group of girls on screen about making their necks look longer in photographs. Tyra ignores him, and he snorts indignantly as he stumbles his way towards his front door, tracing his fingers along the wall and muttering about how he should've jumped at the chance to audition for America's Next Top Model when he had the chance – how different his damn life could've been. How he'd be so much better at impressing Derek Hale if he were America's Next Top Model; how if he had a coach to teach him how to walk properly he'd never have punched Derek in the face, never have knocked over an entire tower of cans while Derek watched. Jesus Christ. At least he knows that things can't possibly go anymore downhill than they already have. Well. Until the doorbell rings and he shouts, “who dares disturb my slumber!” at the top of his lungs, expecting Scott or Kira or even his father or maybe the guy who works next to him at the customer service office that eats peaches every single morning while staring eerily at Stiles like he's planning on chaining him up in his creepy basement, but instead peers out his curtains to see Derek Hale standing there. With Stiles' familiar white plate rimmed in dark blue – empty of any cookies. Stiles throws himself back against the opposite wall, wide-eyed. Mutters fuck under his breath. Stares at the picture of himself and his mother from when he was nine years old hanging on the wall across from him, watches as it shifts back and forth, back and forth. “No,” he says to himself. “No. You are sober. You are sober and you are – you know what's

happening. You are in complete control right now.” The doorbell rings again. Derek can probably hear him. Stiles doesn't have a choice. He has to do this. He got himself into another. Fucking mess. With Derek Hale. He laughs for a second to himself, scraping his hand up and down his cheek and shaking his head; he thinks about how Derek probably expects nothing more and nothing less from him at this point as he pulls the door open and leans against the doorframe for balance. “Sir,” he says slowly, and then curses himself internally. That does not sound like something a sober person would say. Derek takes good stock of him. He takes a look at the pajama pants Stiles is wearing, and the slippers with bunnies on the toes, and the white t-shirt with wine stains on it, and the way Stiles' eyes are watery and glazed over, the way he's smiling much much too widely and awkwardly for him to be sober. From the look on his face, Derek can absolutely fucking tell that he's lit. Because he tilts his head to the side, squints, and says, “oh, Christ.” “What?” Stiles goes for feigning ignorance. “Hello. Can I help you?” Derek rolls his eyes. “I don't think you can even help yourself, Stiles,” he holds the plate out, smirks. “The cookies were delicious.” There's a pause, where Stiles takes the plate as soberly as he can (slowly, mechanically, sliding it out of Derek's hands like it's a newborn child.) “I think I remember asking you to knock.” Stiles laughs. Maniacally. Like, should-be-medicated-immediately. That kind of a laugh. “I think I remember asking you!” Derek blinks. “Asking me what?” “To not be – to not be so -” Stiles lets the plate drop onto his carpet with a thump, like out of nowhere it's much too heavy for him to handle and he's exhausted, and Derek watches it fall down and sighs, mutters Christ...under his breath again, shakes his head. “Am I responsible for this now?” He sounds like he's talking to himself more than he is to Stiles. “Am I really responsible for this now?” Before Stiles can make any kind of retort, can even understand what's being said, Derek is taking a step inside of his house, cautiously like he's waiting for Stiles to tell him to get the fuck out. When no such attack comes, he takes another two steps inside, brushing past Stiles – who jumps at the contact of the leather jacket against his bare skin – before he slams the door closed behind him. “Tall,” Stiles says, blinking rapidly in Derek's general direction. He doesn't know what's going

on, why Derek is suddenly in his house (not that he minds), why he's standing there looking at Stiles like he's looking at a child. “Yup,” a hand wraps around his upper-arm, starts tugging on it. “How about some water?” “I still have half a bottle left,” Stiles argues in a slur, pulling against Derek's hand. “Have some! Let's party together!” “That's a nice offer,” Derek says, like he means it, “but I think it's about time you went to sleep, huh?” Stiles cannot conceptualize the fact that he's being babied. All he can really think about is Derek's warm hand on his arm as he gets tugged off to his own kitchen, how close he is to Derek at this point in time, how much he genuinely wants to, like, make out with the guy. And what a fucking joke this entire thing is. What a fucking nightmare, and he doesn't even know. He has no idea that Derek is wrastling him into a chair in his own kitchen, has no idea that he keeps leaping up out of his seat to try and run back to the bottle of wine sitting on the coffee table while giggling like a little kid, has no idea that Derek is shoving a glass of water into his face and saying something along the lines of tell me again how you're a fully functioning human, Stiles. I'd really love to hear that line again. “Okay,” Stiles says after downing an entire glass of water, leaning the top half of his body across the table, stretching his arm out in Derek's general direction. The man himself is sitting in the chair across from Stiles with a moderately amused expression on his face, but there's also some hints of annoyance, there – like he cannot believe this is happening, hates it so much, but can't help but laugh at Stiles' expense. “I wanna tell you something. Camaro guy.” “Camaro guy?” “S'what I called you before you were,” he gestures oddly in the air, and it doesn't mean anything, “...you.” “Okay,” Derek agrees slowly. “Because you always stole my parking spot.” “Right.” “With your Camaro.” “Sorry about that.” Stiles snorts hysterically and pulls himself back up from the table so his back smacks against his chair. “I key your car and you apologize to me?” “Was there somewhere you were going with this?”

He rubs his hands down his face and shakes his head. Stiles is not the sort of person who says things they regret in the morning; he's been drunk a lot, done a lot of humiliating things – Derek would know – but he's never really had a moment where he's really and truly made a drunken ass of himself. Not just vaguely embarrassing conversations about buttcheeks, which has happened, and not just tripping over himself and falling into a rain gutter, which has happened, but like...nightmare material embarrassing shit. He's never done something like that before. And, apparently, drunk-stiles is taking it upon himself to rectify that right now immediately. “I'm trying to say -” a pause, where he hiccups, burps, and Derek smirks, “...I think you're really hot.” “Ah,” Derek says, and he doesn't react to it much. Just a raise of one eyebrow, propping his ankle up on his knee, shaking his head. “And I need you to know – if I die tonight -” “Christ...” “-that I've thought about you naked.” “Okay,” Derek chuffs out a laugh and rises from his chair, like he's suddenly very uncomfortable. Stiles follows his movements with wide, confused, delirious eyes, and then Derek's clapping his hands together and saying, “okay, let's go. C'mon. You need sleep.” “I've thought about it in the shower.” “Stiles.” Derek grabs Stiles' shoulders and tugs him gently up from the chair, guiding him with his fingers towards the living room. “Where's your room?” Stiles points vaguely towards the carpeted stairs and mutters something that not even he himself understands, and Derek starts wrestling him towards the steps to get him upstairs. Once it becomes apparent that the only way Derek is going to get Stiles up those steps is if he picks the man up, and once it becomes apparent that Stiles is going to violently refuse to be picked up (by kicking his feet into Derek's sides every time he tries to bend down and wrap his arms around his waist), Derek changes course towards the couch in the living room. He dumps stiles down on top of it, wedges a pillow up behind his head that keeps lolling too far to the left, and sighs down at him. “You know,” he says, bending down to rip the bunny slippers off of Stiles' feet, “I came over here to ask you out.” Stiles' eyes are closed. He is very, very quickly drifting into sleep, and he's getting that feeling that he gets whenever he's drunk and lies down like he's falling through the air and it makes him giggle a bit to himself sleepily. A blanket gets draped over him, and then he's asleep. V

Stiles – since you probably don't remember me saying it, the cookies really were good. I meant what I said. You should've knocked. He stares down at the note in his hands for what feels like hours on end but in reality cannot be longer than five minutes. His brow furrowed, his lips curled up in anger – at himself. Because, unbelievably, he did it again. Britney Spears has got absolutely fucking nothing on Stiles. How many times can a single person humiliate themselves in front of the same hot guy? It was one thing when he was keying the guy's car. And it was one thing when he was accidentally punching him in the face. And it was one thing when he fell into a pile of pumpkin puree' cans. But it is another thing entirely that Derek knows what Stiles is like drunk. Not just club tipsy! and not just dancing sensually to Beyonce'!, but 3/4's of a liter of red wine, home alone, pajamas, bunny slippers, slurring and staggering around and double vision drunk. Stiles remembers pretty fucking vividly Derek saying that he liked the cookies, actually. He also remembers in flying colors Derek putting up with his drunken ass for a solid forty-five minutes, forcing water down his throat, stopping him from trying to write on his rented fridge with a sharpie, standing back and leaning against the counter watching Stiles eat cold chicken with his hands. Without a single complaint, at that. Stiles knows that he didn't tuck himself onto the couch with his favorite blanket, so Derek must've done it; though Stiles has no memory of it whatsoever. So he doesn't remember the truly humiliating stuff, mostly, like his brain is trying to shield him from it all in an act of self-defense to protect him from a mental breakdown. He showers with a headache, slams back two tylenol, and goes to work without any lunch because he ate his chicken out of the Tupperware last night. Which is all right, he thinks, since he needs the hangover food of a burrito and french fries. Eats it at his desk while getting stared at by the peach-guy, thinks about puking everywhere, swallows it back down. Gets yelled at by a woman who's upset that her laptop won't turn on for ten minutes on end until she realizes that the battery charger wasn't plugged in after all like Stiles asked her about twenty times. Throughout his entire day, he's thinking, that's it. That's the final nail in the coffin for he and Derek Hale. There comes a time and a point where something in beyond salvaging, and Stiles' relationship with Derek has definitely reached that fucking point. It has been at that point ever since Stiles punched him in the face, actually, but maybe Stiles has been denying it because the guy is just so... ...sexy. And nice? Which, again, who'd have thought? And meanwhile, Stiles is this horrible lanky freak, an asshole who keys cars. It is so far from a match that Stiles can't believe he ever thought for ten seconds that he could impress the guy.

He pulls into his sorely-won parking spot and doesn't feel so good about the fact that he can park right in front of his house anymore – doesn't feel good in general, actually – and right as he's pulling his keys out of the ignition, there's a faint rapping of knuckles against the driver's window that makes him jump. When he sees Derek peering in at him, wearing a dark black shirt and frowning into the sun, he sighs through his nose. Doesn't move for a couple of seconds. Derek taps the glass again, but his facial expression doesn't soften. With another sigh, Stiles rolls the window down slowly, and Derek rests his elbows on the inside of the door. “Feeling okay?” Stiles quirks his eyebrows and averts his eyes, shrugging. “Like shit, actually.” “I figured as much.” A couple seconds of silence pass, and then Stiles gently punches into his steering wheel with his fist and bites the bullet. “Look – I feel like I owe you about fifteen apologies at this point...” “Stiles.” “I mean – I mean!” He shakes his head to himself, staring out into the fading sunlight. “I keyed your fucking car,” “You keep bringing that up, and I've told you I don't care.” “When you should care?” Stiles insists, whipping around to look him in his eyes for once to try and get his point across as clearly as possible. “Dude! I punched you in the face.” “On accident.” “I knocked over an entire display in the grocery store and then you had to help me clean the entire thing up.” “Again,” Derek's lips quirk into a smile, “accident.” “And last night! The fucking cherry on top of it all! I made a complete ass of myself, I was piss drunk at nine o'clock at night, and you had to take care of me like I was some little baby,” he glowers at the thought, looking away from Derek again. “Eating cold chicken, refusing to go upstairs, trying to kick you...” There are a couple moments where Stiles can see Derek from the corner of his eye rub a hand through his hair, open his mouth like he's thinking about saying something, closing it like he's decided better. Then, opens his mouth again. “Going into detail about how attractive you think I am?”

Time stops. Time absolutely goes into slow motion, like Stiles is falling through a time hole somewhere, like entering the fucking Matrix, or maybe coming out of the Matrix into the real world. He turns slowly to Derek, mouth dropped, and says, no inflection, “what.” Derek grins. Bunny-teeth out on display, eyes crinkling up at the corners, like he's enjoying this, and says, “how you think about me in the shower.” “Oh, God!” Stiles slaps his hands over his face, breathing shallowly into his palms, muttering oh, God...again and again...and again, shaking his head so hard his neck should dislocate from his body. “You're lying. Please tell me.” “Not much for lying, Stiles.” “God!” Stiles thinks about crying in humiliation. Or maybe pushing his car door open and smacking Derek with it to knock him over, knock him out, to give Stiles a chance to run inside his house and draw the curtains and hide in there forever; alone in his bedroom like The Virgin Suicides, burn his records, have sex with skeevy guys on his roof. Just so he never has to see Derek Hale again. “Stiles,” Derek says his name the way he always does – with a bit of an exasperated sigh. “It's fine.” “I'm so fucking -” he rubs his hands off his face, chances a glance in Derek's direction to find him with that same amused smirk, and for once he doesn't feel bad about keying the guy's car. “I – let me make it up to you. I, like, owe you so much...” “Can you stop with that?” He sounds annoyed, but the smirk is still on his lips. “You don't owe me -” “Let me give you -” he's shoving his hand into his pants pocket, pulling his wallet out. “I'm two away from a free pizza,” he says as he fishes his Pizza Hut punch card out and shoves it in Derek's direction. He was really excited to have another pizza night with Scott with that free pizza, but – Derek deserves it more after what he's suffered. Derek blinks at the card, like he's trying to make up his mind. And then, with a sigh through his nose, he takes the card from Stiles' fingers. Stiles kind of thinks that's that. He's repaid his debt to Derek Hale via punch card, and he can go on just seeing Derek occasionally from a distance, and they'll wave at each other from their respective yards, and that'll be that. Right? Derek kind of throws a wrench in that plan when he says, “want to get pizza with me?” “What?” A shrug. “Help me get my two punches,” he waves the card in front of Stiles' face and smirks again.

“You -” Stiles thinks he's going into cardiac arrest – or that he's having some kind of fucking delusional episode, because there's no way. There's no fucking way that Derek is – is actually – he can't be? “After everything that's -” “Do I have to spell it out for you?” Derek tilts his head to the side and looks Stiles' face over a few times. “Maybe you need me to be as blunt with you as you were with me last night.” “Um -” “I thought you said you found me attractive.” “Well, yes, but -” “So let me take you for pizza.” Stiles sets his jaw. He rears around in his seat so that his entire body is facing Derek, and the bigger man doesn't move his elbows, so their skin keeps brushing the longer that Stiles stares at him. And he really stares at him – searching for some sign of a joke, or a ruse, or some mistruth. But Derek's face is serene, calm, amused. Honest. Stiles has always been a disaster. He has always been spur of the moment car-keying material. He has always been clusmy, he has always been awkward, always made a fool of himself, always been that friend that everyone rolls their eyes at and goes "Stiles, at it again!" With Derek, it's been...worse. Than normal. He knows that nothing, not a single thing, about any of the interaction he's had with Derek should be appealing at all. Derek should, by all counts, be turning and running for the hills, should've done that long ago, should've packed up and moved far, far away from Stiles the second he came outside and found him keying his car. But he didn't. And now, he's standing there blinking at Stiles all earnestly, asking him out on a date. Derek Hale, asking out human-disaster Stiles Stilinski on a date. “No,” Stiles decides, throwing his chin in the air, “I'm taking you.”

Stiles' Jeep makes a horrible sound when it starts up. Something crossed between a cat dying, a machine trying to grind its gears together to come back alive, and a woman screaming hysterically in the background. He winces at the sound while Derek just sits there in his passenger seat with a blank expression on his face. “Sorry,” Stiles laughs nervously, “not quite the sensual purr of your camaro, huh?” “Don't mind it,” Derek shrugs. Stiles narrows his eyes and smiles at the same time, the first time he's ever made that kind of facial expression, but with Derek, he can sense that he'll be making it a lot more often. It's annoying that Derek is constantly so chill and cool and just yeah, whatever about everything, while simultaneously somewhat endearing, and probably exactly the kind of

person Stiles needs in his spazzy, trainwreck life. At Pizza Hut, Stiles says “I really like white sauce pizza, do you?” and Derek says “never had it before. I'll try.” And Stiles promises him that he is in for the ride of his fucking life, because, holy shit, the first time he had white sauce pizza he saw the heavens open up. Derek smirks, and gives Stiles a steady look as he says, “I'm sure I am,” like there's a double meaning hidden somewhere in there, and it makes Stiles grin back at him happily. For some reason, talking to Derek is easy. Stiles spews out sarcastic remarks, smirks maliciously at him and crosses his arms over his chest, tilts his chin up defiantly and winks while teasing, and Derek responds by smirking right back and raising his eyebrows, matching Stiles' teasing with flat, sardonic remarks of his own. It's banter. It's easy. It's fun. It is much easier to talk to him when he's not making a complete fucking ass out of himself; but naturally, Stiles has spoken too soon. Stiles accidentally knocks over the cup of red sauce that Derek ordered extra in the middle of telling a story about Kira and Scott. The sauce spills across the table to dribble down onto Derek's pants, and Stiles spazzes. Naturally. “Fuck,” he says, bunching up a handful of napkins and stupidly trying to sop it up – making it worse, because he's just pushing the sauce down onto Derek's lap while the man just sits there and raises his eyebrows like he'd expect nothing less. “Shit. Sorry.” “It's fine,” Derek says easily, taking a handful of his own napkins and wiping across his pants with a shrug. “You know you've been dripping cheese onto your shirt for the past ten minutes, right?” Stiles, with hot cheeks, glances down at his gray t-shirt to see that, yes, in fact, there is a line of stringy cheese stretching from his collar down towards his belly button. “I swear,” he says, picking at the cheese with a frown, “I am not like this all the time.” “You keep saying that,” Derek bites into a mozzarella stick. “You have yet to prove it.” “I'll prove it,” Stiles straightens up in his seat, dropping the cheese down onto a napkin. “I'm going to go the rest of this night without an accident.” “Okay,” Derek agrees easily, finishing off his mozzarella stick and raising his eyebrows. Five minutes later, Stiles laughs so hard that he kicks his leg out and winds up nailing Derek directly in the shin with his converse-clad foot, eliciting a grunt mixed with a surprised laugh from the man. Stiles blubbers out his thousandth sorry to Derek since the first day they met, and Derek says his thousandth variation of no problem followed by a crack of I should start wearing protective clothes around you making Stiles glower down into his pizza, too embarrassed to come up with a witty retort.

They get into an argument over who pays – I owe you about 1200 dollars Derek, and you know it, I'm paying for this damn food – I've told you upwards of a million times you don't owe me anything – shut your god damn mouth – while the waitress looks on with a nervous smile on her face. Finally, Stiles throws his credit card at the girl and tells her to run. Once she's around the corner and gone from view, he turns to Derek with a smug expression on his face, leaning back in his booth seat. “I win.” Derek huffs out a laugh and nods. “For once.” When they're back in Stiles' Jeep, it starts downpouring, thunder clapping – making Stiles jump every time – and lightning flashing across the sky every couple of minutes. The windshield wipers on his Jeep leave quite a bit to be desired, and most of the trip home consists of Stiles leaning forward and squinting out into the rain, going well under the speed limit and getting honked at by everyone behind him. “Sorry,” he says to Derek with a sheepish smile at a red light as the rain pelts on the hood. “Probably not the horse power you're used to with your -” “Will you stop with that?” He says this around an incredulous laugh, his brow furrowing in genuine annoyance or disgruntlement. “Do you think if I had a problem with you, or your car, I'd be sitting here right now?” Stiles takes stock of Derek in the passenger seat, glancing over briefly to make sure the light is still red. He's just sitting there, in his usual dark clothing, no leather jacket because before the rain started up it was a beautiful night. And he looks out of place, here, in Stiles' beat up old Jeep from the 70's, while at the same time... ...kind of looking like he blends right in. Like the oddity of Stiles' Jeep somehow compliments the straight-cut and careful lines of Derek. “I don't get it,” Stiles says back honestly, pressing on the gas and turning away to glare at the green light. “I'm -” a nervous laugh, “I've been kind of a freak with you.” “You don't get what?” Stiles swallows and stares out into the rain, shaking his head. “Why you'd ever wanna go out with me after all the -” “Stiles. If you fucking bring up the car-keying again, I swear I will get out and walk.” “Well!” He caws indignantly as he turns onto their street. “It was really bad! And I'm still, like, lowkey humiliated about it!” “Lowkey?”

“As opposed to highkey?” Stiles snorts. “Get with it, man.” “Look,” Derek turns in his seat, whips his seatbelt off even though they're two blocks away from stopping outside of Stiles' house, and gives him a very, very, firm look. “This is the last time I'm saying this. Stop apologizing to me,” “But -” “I told you. I don't mind it. I really, really don't mind you, Stiles. I – I actually find it all a bit,” he waves his hand in the air, “charming.” That is not the word for Stiles. Charming is not the fucking word at all. Stiles is awkward, super smart and simultaneously inept, makes references no one understands, trips over everything, loud, annoying – charming? No. But Derek says it so – earnestly. As if he's been waiting to say it, has pondered the word for a long time while squinting at Stiles before finally nodding and saying yes, that's it. “No one I've ever met is like you, Stiles. People I've dated in the past have been really...put together. On-center.” “Like you?” Stiles offers as he pulls up against the curb in his parking spot, and Derek nods. “No one I've ever met before would've ever dreamed of keying my car.” “You say that like it's some sort of weird kink fantasy you've had?” Derek huffs and narrows his eyes at Stiles. “What I mean is that I like you. So you don't have to walk on eggshells around me and say sorry every time you trip up.” Stiles stares at him for a long moment, and Derek stares right back. Lightning flashes, rain pours, and Stiles says, “come in?” Like he was hoping Stiles would say that, Derek grins, and nods. Out they go, and Stiles knows that Derek knows that he hasn't just been invited in so they can continue their thoroughly enlightening conversation. They're not just going to sit at Stiles' kitchen table drinking tea and eating cookies gabbing about this that and the other thing – they're going to have sex. Walking side by side with Derek in the pouring rain, up the steps to his front door, while the energy between them of sex soon sex soon sex soon floats around in the air, Stiles laughs incredulously. “What?” Derek asks him over the pounding of the rain. Stiles fishes his keys out of his pocket, shaking his head. “I just – I used to really fucking hate you. Your car, your clothes, your back.”

“My back?” He waves his house key in the air for a second, nodding. “It's the only thing I ever saw of you, back then.” Derek doesn't look perturbed that Stiles is stalling them out here in the rain. He just nods his head and smirks back at him. “I hated you, too. Your Jeep, your flannels, your hair.” “Then I met you,” Stiles says. “Then I met you,” Derek agrees. It's a moment. Pouring rain, emotional confessions, sex happening in a matter of minutes. A complete and total moment. Nothing could ruin this, Stiles thinks, shaking his head as he jabs his key into the lock. Absolutely nothing could go wrong with this. The key gets jammed, like it does sometimes, and he jiggles. Jiggles. The jiggling starts turning desperate, more like ripping and pulling, and Derek goes, “um-” and it's too late. There's a snapping noise, and then Stiles' hand is falling away from the lock. He holds his hand up in between them, and they both set their eyes on the key that's been ripped in half. Stiles stares at it with a face of complete and utter disbelief, Derek looks at it like yup, thought so and then he glares down into the lock itself. There's a jagged edge of the key sticking out of it, and Stiles curses. “Not a problem,” Derek says, “we'll go to my place. Right over there.” Right. Right. Because Derek lives right across the street; for the first time, this feels incredibly lucky. In any other situation this could've been dubbed a disaster of massive proportions. Derek pats at his jeans, reaching into his left pocket, then his right pocket, frowns. Pats at his back pockets, and his eyes nearly bulge out of his head. “Are you -” he pats every single pocket one more time, more frantically, and Stiles recognizes the movements of a man desperate. Slowly, Derek slides his eyes closed, purses his lips, and says, “I forgot my keys.” “Oh. My. God.” “I never forget my keys...” he says this like he's pissed off at himself, going over his decisions and movements right before he left the house like how the fuck could I have done that, and Stiles starts laughing. Things like this honestly do not happen this often. Stiles know he's said it a zillion times, knows he's said it to Derek, said it to himself, convinced himself of it - because it's true. He is not normally this much of a fucking mess. Things do not normally go this wrong this fucking often.

This is - a fluke. There's something about Derek that brings out all the of the spazzy parts of himself, amplifies them, makes things just go bad, go wrong, ruined, broken keys, drunken tirades, cans falling all over the floor. Like he and Derek together is some kind of a storm. Derek doesn't normally forget his keys. But, of course, since Stiles is involved, he naturally does. Because that's just how Stiles' life is. “Ha!” He points in Derek's face. “Now who's the spazz!” “Does this really feel like a win to you, Stiles?” He goads, wiping water droplets off of his face. “We're locked out of both our houses at ten o'clock at night in the middle of a thunderstorm.” “I'm rubbing off on you!” Stiles presses forwards, still laughing and doing a tiny dance in place. Derek tilts his head back, raises his eyes to the sky, and then comes back down with a huff. “Well.” And Stiles' glee starts fading off into – him being wet and cold and turned on and having no place to go to get off because they're both locked out of their houses in the middle of the night, no locksmith to call, nowhere to fucking go. “How strong are the locks on your windows?” He asks, taking a couple steps away to glare into the closest window, looking it up and down. “Mine won't break. I know that.” Because Derek would have military grade locks on his windows. He's just that type. “What? Are you going to break in?” “Options?” Derek shoots back, tugging at the bottom of the window, muscles rippling as he does so. “Other choices?” Stiles puffs out a breath. Derek strikes him as definitely the type of dude who would break into a house no questions ask, would punch his fist right through the glass, and while Stiles would spazz at the blood and 911 emergency hospital Derek would shrug his shoulders and go just a flesh wound. So he stands there and watches Derek tug at his window for a couple of seconds, thinks to himself, that is strike – what? Six? Seven? “Or,” he says out of nowhere, making Derek turn his head and look at him through the rain. “...we could just get into my car.” Derek pauses. His fingers dance along the edge of the window. “In your car.” Stiles nods up and down, smirking. “In my car.” He slides his eyes to where the Jeep is parked, raises his eyebrows, and makes a thoughtful quirk with his lips. “So you're just going for it.”

“That's how I operate,” Stiles tells him as he takes a step towards his stairs. “Locked out of both our houses, and you want to have sex in your car.” “Is that a yes or a no?” Derek stands at the window for two more seconds, watching as Stiles slowly descends the steps towards the car, before he curses underneath his breath and moves quickly to catch up, knocking his shoulder into Stiles' as he does so. When Stiles pulls open his driver's side door and motions for Derek to get in, the guy shakes his head and does as he's directed like he seriously cannot fucking believe he's agreeing to do this right now. Once he's settled in, Stiles climbs up, swinging his leg over Derek's lap, and dropping himself down hard onto Derek's crotch. Derek blinks up at him as the door slams closed behind them, and then it's just the muted sound of the rain. And Stiles is straddling Derek when they haven't even kissed yet, staring down into his eyes like they've known each other forever already, and Derek just stares right back. Cautiously, Derek drops his hands onto Stiles' thighs, slides them up and down the wet jeans. “I assume we're going to make out.” “Make out?” Stiles says back with a bark of a laugh. He leans down, pecks his lips against Derek's as lightly as possible. “We're soaking wet,” he breathes against his mouth, “locked out of our houses,” flicks his tongue out to lick Derek's bottom lip, “and you think we're just going to make out?” Derek makes some kind of incredulous, turned-on sound, and Stiles responds by sliding his tongue in between Derek's parted lips, licking inside his mouth and pushing his hips forwards hungrily. That sets them both off. One second Derek is wide-eyed like a deer in headlights, just a doll underneath Stiles' hands and lips, and the next, he growls in the back of his throat and grabs at Stiles' body – pressing it closer to his own, angling his hips upwards as he deepens the kiss himself. They go on like that for a couple of moments. All hot, and breathy, and desperate, and – hot. Again. Sort of an awkwardly hot mess, altogether, because once Stiles' head clears enough, he notices a couple of things all at once. He pulls back with a smacking of lips, furrowing his brow. “Okay – you know...” The steering wheel is digging into his back. That's one thing that needs to be rectified asap immediately. And he keeps nearly slipping off the seat, and Derek's so fucking needy and desperate and humping upwards against Stiles' groin hard enough that it's almost sending him tumbling backwards and it's just – not really working that well. “Hold on a second.”

Derek stills his hips, rips his lips off of Stiles' neck, and says, “okay.” “I just think -” he appraises their situation while trailing off into silence. Derek underneath him, hands grabbing and kneading at Stile's ass through his soaked jeans. Stiles wedged uncomfortably between Derek's huge body and the steering wheel, with very, very little room for him to move. And sex usually involves some movement – usually Stiles likes there to be, you know...lots of movement. It's just not going to work. “Maybe we should...” he bites his lip as he scans the inside of his Jeep. There's really no place else to go. He'd suggest let's just do it on the front lawn in the rain but he doesn't think that the mother of three that lives next door to him would appreciate that very much at all. His eyes land on the backseat, and he grimaces. There's really not a lot of room inside of his car – it's tiny as far as cars go, probably even smaller than Derek's Camaro in terms of seat space which surprises a lot of people who see his Jeep from the outside. The backseat is narrow and tight and there's not a lot of space between the edge of the bench and the back of the front seats, and the only thing he can do to make that better is slide the driver's seat up a bit closer to the steering wheel. So, not ideal. Not ideal at fucking all. But, it'll have to do. “Backseat?” He suggests to Derek, who's just been silently watching him go through this mental debate with no complaint, just like he's never complained about anything before. Along for the ride, as always. He glances back there himself, scans it a couple times over with his eyes, and says, “Jesus Christ.” “It's the only way,” Stiles says this the way people in movies say it's the only way we can save her, man, we have to do it! But something is being saved here. After trainwreck, followed by another trainwreck and then, would you look at that, another trainwreck, after the rain storm and the keys and the weird sexual tension and everything...the backseat is their last fucking hope. Stiles fumbles to climb onto the center console, throwing his arms out in front of him and pulling himself up over the back of the seats. “Are you sure you should -” He goes head first down towards the floor of his car, legs dangling awkwardly over the backs of the seats, hands flailing around as he tries to get him right again. After a solid five seconds of struggling, he realizes that it's absolutely no fucking use; he's wedged the top half of his body in

between the seats and is just stuck there with his ass and legs in the air. “Fuck.” His voice is muffled. Derek snorts out a laugh and Stiles hears him moving around in his seat. “Maybe we should just -” “No.” Stiles affirms this with as much conviction as he can muster in his current situation – staring at the empty McDonald's fry containers and mountain dew bottles underneath his front seats. “We're having sex, Derek.” A pause. “Can you get me out of here?” “I was just going to leave you there for the rest of the night,” Derek's voice is toneless as he adjusts more and puts his hands on Stiles' thigh, like he's about to start pulling on it. “I mean, like,” Stiles kicks his leg, trying to get Derek's hand off of it, “push my seat back and climb back here and pull me up on top of you.” “Ah,” the driver's door creaks open, and a slant of light from the streetlights above them casts across his face. He can see Derek's silhouette against it as he pokes around below the seat to find the lever, and he thinks for the zillionth time since they've met fucking god he's fucking huge and this time, it's more of an oh fuck...type of way because – how the literal Hell are they going to be able to have comfortable sex back here? Well. It just won't be comfortable then. But who fucking cares about comfortable? Derek pushes the seat forward with a metal screech and Stiles winces against the noise as one of his legs falls backward, dangling outside the door. Warm, wet fingers grab onto his ankle to push the leg aside, and then Derek's got both hands on his hips, pulling him up and dumping him sidelong onto the bench in the back as if he weighs about as much as a sack of potatoes, and it's strangely arousing to Stiles to be manhandled like that, to know that Derek is really that buff and that strong that he can just throw Stiles around if he felt like it. Mostly because he has a hard-on anyway. He climbs up inside the Jeep, slamming the door behind him with his head ducked, and Stiles pushes himself into a sitting position to make room for him to plop down beside him. The bench bounces a bit as he does so, and Stiles can't remember the last time anyone else except for Scott was sitting back here (while Kira commandeered the passenger seat and the aux cord.) “So,” Derek starts, pushing his soaking wet hair back and sniffling. “How's this going to...” he gestures in between them, and Stiles gets the point. Stiles reaches down and unbuttons his jeans, sliding the zipper down, and then leans back against the seat, pushing his hips out until he can effectively starts sliding both his soaping pants and damp boxers down along his thighs. “Isn't it obvious?” Derek is watching him, eyes laser-pointed on Stiles' erection and his milky

white thighs and the couple of moles dotted along them – absentmindedly, he licks his lips and clears his throat. “I wanna ride you.” The pants go down into a wet heap on the floor, and Stiles turns to look at Derek just in time to see those lips part in surprise and desire, just in time to see those green eyes flutter around several back to back blinks, before they lift up to meet Stiles'. “Okay,” his voice is strained as he undoes his own jeans, fumbling his wet fingers like he suddenly has no idea how to use them. “All right – yeah. Yeah.” “Yeah,” Stiles agrees, watching as the man next to him pushes his own jeans down to the ground. He takes in the sight of Derek's dick and it's hard not to hear Church music in his head as he sweeps his eyes up and down the length and width of it; which if any actual Church-goers heard him say that when I look at this guy's dick I hear religious hymns in my head at the thought of putting it in my mouth because it's so fucking tasty looking they'd probably try to stone him to death. But that's the reality of the situation. Derek's dick just looks – good. He pulls his flannel off and deposits it beside him on the seat, and then he tries for his sopping undershirt, which is, unfortunately, much harder to do in the cramped space. He goes to raise his arms above his head, and his elbows knock into the ceiling of the Jeep with a fucking hell and Derek laughs again. “Why are we such a fucking mess?” He asks around a guffaw while helping Stiles pull his undershirt off. When Stiles is free of his shirt and is completely and totally naked next to a halfnaked Derek, he snickers himself. “I'm rubbing off on you,” he winks as he leans closer to Derek's face, licking his lips to make his intentions clear, “that's why.” With that final word, they're kissing. It's wet and sloppy and messy and Derek's lips taste like rain water and so do Stiles' most likely, and when Stiles puts his fingers on the side of Derek's face, his cheeks are cold from the weather outside. But it's nice. It's a nice kiss. It's especially nice when halfway through, Stiles paws around Derek's thighs until wrapping his fingers around the head of his cock, gently working it up and down. Derek groans into Stiles' mouth and bucks his hips forward into Stiles' fingers, making them slide all the way down to the base and then back to the tip again. “Cheating,” Stiles says breathlessly as he pulls his lips away, grinning into Derek's blissed out face. “I'm just trying to do some warm-up here.” “Don't need it,” Derek murmurs as he bucks up again, tilting his head back. “Need you.” What a relief it is to hear that, Stiles thinks, pulling his hand away from Derek's crotch and

grinning again. Because, oh man, has Stiles been needing Derek like fucking hell these past couple of months, needing him like burning, like wet dreams, like porn coming to life. For fuck's sake, Stiles baked him cookies; he was sorta hoping the feeling was mutual. Derek pulls his own shirt up and over his head, while without much preamble, Stiles rises up so he can swing his leg over to the bit of space between Derek's thigh and the side of the car. Derek drops his shirt down and shuffles a bit to accommodate him until he's successfully straddling the bigger man's body. Once he's settled, Derek puts his big hands on Stiles' hips and gazes up at him hotly, and it's like Stiles can read his mind, can see clear as day exactly what he's thinking – because Stiles is thinking it too. He tilts his head to the side, staring down into Derek's face with a placid smile, and says, “finger me open.” “Fuck,” as if it's the first time Derek has ever had anyone say something like that to him, he breathes out in surprise; the breath is stuttered, stilted around a half-laugh. Probably because, like Derek has said himself, most of the people he's been with and had sex with were kind of...not like Stiles. More adult and grown up and serious, vanilla missionary sex in a bed and then lights out three minutes later, instead of soaking wet, backseat of a tiny car with fogging windows during a rainstorm sex. All the same, he slides his hand back and feels around Stiles' skin, pokes his index finger against Stiles' entrance. “There's, um – lube in my jean pocket.” Stiles raises his eyebrows incredulously, and Derek's cheeks go hot and red like he's embarrassed about something. “You planned for this,” Stiles accuses at him with a laugh. “You think I'm easy!” “I was prepared,” Derek corrects with an embarrassed smile, “and now you're benefiting from it, so.” With a short sigh, Stiles leans away from Derek until he's about to fall off – luckily Derek still has one hand firmly wrapped around his hip – and starts fishing around in the pile of Derek's wet clothes until he feels something firm and stubby. Derek watches this, rubs his free hand up and down Stiles' stomach and chest, ghosts his fingers along his hard dick, bites his lip like he's just so fucking annoyed about things like lube and fingering and wants to get right into it. As soon as Stiles squeezes a quarter sized amount into Derek's waiting fingers, the man is poking at Stiles' ass again, sliding one finger in quickly and working it around and around. Stiles can't do much except for watch Derek's face as Derek watches Stiles' face right back, staring into each other's eyes in a way that is way, way too romantic and sexy and personal for two people who really hardly fucking know one another outside of their shared disasters. Stiles doesn't mind though, and neither does Derek, and soon there are three fingers ramming around inside of him and Stiles is saying okay, that's good, let's go, come on.

For a couple seconds, neither of them is sure what to do. As they are now, it's not going to work; or at least, not work well, since Derek's dick is almost pressed flush against Stiles' instead of anywhere near where it should be. So Stiles puts his hand on Derek's chest, and says, “lean back as far as you can.” Derek complies easily, dropping himself lower and lower, shifting his hips underneath Stiles as much as he can, until he's spread out and his dick is poking at Stiles' backside. Like this, Stiles' only real support is Derek's body; if he tries to rely on the seat too much he'll go sliding right off of Derek's dick onto the ground to get wedged and stuck again. Stiles doesn't care much. He reaches underneath himself and gets a firm hold on Derek, tosses his head back and lines himself up with the tip. Derek swallows audibly, like he's nervous or excited, and then Stiles is pushing down and taking the full length of Derek in one slow, easy drop and roll of his hips. “Fuck,” Derek says again, his grip on Stiles' hips turning hard like he has an intent to bruise him. Stiles rolls his hips again, reaches his hands out to grip the seat behind Derek's head for leverage to push himself up and down. Leaning forwards as much as he can towards where Derek is more or less below him, he breathes his pants out into Derek's face, and Derek does the same right back to him. It's slow going, at first, as Stiles gets used to the size and width with small sounds from the back of his throat and Derek's fingers pressing deeply into his skin. Then he tightens his grip on the seat with both hands, and slams as hard as he can down onto Derek. The reaction is pretty great – from both of them. Derek nearly yells “fucking shit” and Stiles just about cries a moan out, before doing it again. And again. Until the pace is steady, and Stiles feels confident in calling this a fucking as he watches Derek's facial expressions, wonders what his own look like. At one point, Derek moves his hands from Stiles' hips, grabs onto both of his ass cheeks, and starts helping Stiles move by digging his fingers into the fleshy skin like a massage and pulling and pushing him along, jerking his hips as much as he can in his position (which isn't much.) With the extra help, now, Stiles thinks he can take one hand off the back of the seat and fist his own dick in his fingers, stroking himself off in time with Derek thrusting upwards inside of him, throwing his head back so hard he almost smacks it into the ceiling of the car. Derek watches this with hooded eyes, biting his lip and panting through his nose, before he blurts out, “I'm going to come inside of you.” “Good,” Stiles says back breathlessly, working himself harder, “I want it.” “Yeah?” Derek thrusts harder, deeper, making Stiles cry out. “I'll come on you,” and it's supposed to be said all teasing and light and snarky like Stiles usually is, but instead it comes out like a wail, or a whine, all sex-hot and breathless.

Derek pushes himself up into Stiles once, twice, three more times, before he's thrusting himself through a shuddering orgasm; fingers turning painful as they dig in deep to the flesh of Stiles' ass. Stiles keeps stroking himself as Derek comes everything he has inside of him out, making small sounds to accompany the noise of the rain pelting against the hood of the car. Lightning flashes outside, illuminating them eerily for milliseconds, and Derek pulls out of Stiles with a nasty sound. “I'll do it,” Derek says, gently putting his hand on top of Stiles' fingers, stilling them in their desperate ministrations. Stiles allows this, of course he does, desperate to fucking get off already, and exhausted from having to work so hard for the past who knows how many minutes. Derek moves his fingers, still a bit slick from the lube, slowly and carefully over Stiles, like he's trying to learn every single inch of skin there, memorize it, watching in fascination as Stiles moans and bucks his hips forward. After a while of this, Stiles grits out, “c'mon, work me off,” and Derek complies by wrapping his entire fist around Stiles and jerking him off so hard and fast Stiles can't do much else except moan out Derek's name and grip hard onto the seat. He comes all over Derek's chest, as promised, and then drops his head down onto Derek's shoulder and his entire body on top of the other man's, panting. They stay like that for a few minutes, in a fogged out car, listening to the rain and each other's heavy breathing. Stiles feels – fucked out, obviously, and exhausted – but there's also something else. An ebbing in his stomach, that same thing that had him understanding Derek's fucking eyebrows and silent facial expressions when they first met, that had him staring into his eyes unabashedly during first time usually-supposed-to-be-awkward sex. Nothing about what just happened was awkward. Even though it all went wrong, for the most part, Stiles never felt out of place with Derek. He still doesn't, lying naked on top of the guy's body with his own come splattered all over the place. “Hm,” Stiles mutters to himself – and since his mouth is dangerously close to Derek's ear, he hears it. “What?” Stiles pulls his arm up to wrap around the other side of Derek's neck, and sighs against his shoulder. “I just think I like you, a lot.” He feels more than hears Derek's quiet laugh. “I think I like you a lot, as well.” "Kinda funny," Stiles says back, finally lifting up his head to look into Derek's eyes with a small smile. And it is, really and truly, kinda funny how they got to where they are now. While Kira and Scott have this story of meeting in a bookstore, reaching for the last copy of the same book, awkwardly bumping fingers and laughing and introducing themselves with dorky smiles. Scott rubbing the back of his neck with blushing cheeks and asking "so, coffee?"

And Stiles jammed his key into Derek's car and got yelled at for it. "Next time, your car." Derek smirks, raising his eyebrows at next time, the initiation of a second date, of let's continue this, keep the story going. "Next time, my bed." VI "Don't. Trip." Scott's hands are digging into Stiles' wrists so hard that he feels like the skin is bruising. "Stiles." Stiles glowers at his best friend, tugs his wrists free and rolls his eyes. "I don't appreciate the insinuation that I would!" "This is," Scott takes a step closer to him, pushing Stiles back against the wall, pointing a finger in his face; it's all Stiles can do to go cross-eyed as she stares at it. "...the most important day of my life. If you trip over the microphone wire, or knock over a vase of flowers, or -" "I'm not!" Stiles swats Scott's finger out of his face and pulls at his bow-tie, adjusting it back to its former glory. "I have eyes, you know. I'm literally going to be walking ten feet and standing next to you for twenty minutes - what is the worst that could happen?" Scott looks like he's about to punch Stiles in the face, go on a tirade, grab him by the lapels of his suit jacket and start shaking the shit out of him. And Stiles gets it - he's been wound up for two weeks about this, freaking out, calling Stiles in the middle of the night, having long-winded conversations with his best friend while beside him Derek listens in and grumbles something about tell him to calm down. This is, after all, the most important day of his life (assuming he only gets married once), so it's natural that he's freaking out. "The worst. That could happen." He says this slowly, narrowing his eyes. It's not a pretty look for his best friend, who's usually puppy-faced and happy, but today is wide-eyed and terrified and glancing all around himself like at any second he expects a bomb to go off and ruin his big day. "The worst? That could happen? Stiles? You wanna go there with me?" "Um..." Stiles swallows, pulls at his bow-tie again. "...no?" Scott goes there anyway. "You popped all the balloons at Kira's surprise party before she even got there because you were playing with the candles," the ones that don't go out no matter how much you blow on them. Stiles had been dicking around, waving them in the air dramatically, trying to force them to go out, and he dove the flames straight into the pile of balloons, popping them all at once in an explosion that had Lydia screaming and spilling soda all over her crisp white dress. "You knocked over an entire vending machine at graduation because you wanted a snack," nevermind the fact that Stiles got his punishment for that instantaneously by watching his life flash before his eyes as the thing started coming down on him, barely getting out of the way in time. "You were playing with a steak knife at -"

"Okay!" Stiles interrupts, putting his hand up and huffing. "Point taken! I'm a walking, talking disaster, we knew this already. I'll keep my hands and feet to myself and walk in a straight line. Jesus." Scott adjusts his own blazer, smooths his hair back over his skull, and nods. "I swear to God." It doesn't end there. Lydia comes clacking up to him when they're all waiting in the back, in her royal blue bridesmaid dress and high heels, touching daintily at the flowers done up into her hair, and says, "should I have the ambulance on speed dial, Stiles?" "Lydia-" "I'm just saying," she pats him on the shoulder, sadly, like she's pitying a small child. "You have a tendency to-" "I know what my tendencies are," he snarls, dodging away from her hand. And he does. Remember? Overreactions, misjudgments, clumsiness, loud-mouthed, bungling errors. His own father, in a crisp suit and tie, frowns at his son as soon as he sees him, shaking his head. "Keep yourself together today, son." It just doesn't fucking end. Stiles knows he has a history - he has a very, very serious history. He is well fucking aware of exactly what kind of history he has. Filled with broken bones, ruined cakes, crashed cars, and on and on and on. Don't get him wrong; it's never that often. Like he's said before, with Derek everything was just amplified. Every single move he made was a fucking disaster because he was so nervous all the time and just a spazz and - it was a fluke. Just a fucking fluke. He's not normally like that on the regular. He is a fully functioning human being. But. After the Derek thing. And after he told all his friends the story of them meeting and getting together when he dragged Derek along to one of their get-togethers, they all blinked at him, shook their heads, and said, "Jesus, Stiles, really?" Derek had smiled his small smile, said, "I didn't mind it," but no one listened to him. He became dubbed the king of disasters. Wrapped in caution tape. Like all his disasters from high school and beyond suddenly were indicators of who he really and truly is. Like he's not to be trusted with people's babies (and, good. He doesn't want to hold anyone's fucking baby anyway). Like he'd ruin his own best friend's wedding day by being such a fucking spazz? As fucking if. When Derek shows up, hair wind-swept and in the suit Stiles helped him pick out, the first thing he says is, "You look nice." Stiles smooths his hands over his blazer. "You, as well." He waits for the inevitable don't fuck it up Stiles, or don't blow up the entire church Stiles, but Derek just leans forward and kisses Stiles on the lips, puts his hand on the small of his back,

looks around himself and starts commenting on the decorations and how nice every thing looks. Which is just how Derek always is. While Stiles and his friends all freak out and go batshit over every thing, while there's arguing and people throwing pizza rolls at each other and wrestling each other on the ground, Derek just sits there with a bemused look on his face, usually snacking on something or making a sarcastic comment to whoever he's sitting next to. While everyone else is on Stiles' fucking case about every thing, every single fucking thing and driving him absolutely nuts, Derek just shows up all neat and done up and calm, doesn't say a single thing about Stiles' tendency to fuck up. He might be thinking it. Of course he probably is; everyone keeps giving Stiles wary glances like he's a bomb about to go off. But he doesn't comment on it. Instead of getting even more worked up, even more riled, Stiles calms down. He leans into the hand on his back and huffs out a sigh, listening as Derek muses about the stained glass windows and the structure of the church. In spite of every thing the two of them have been through together, the sheer number of times Stiles has dropped a lasagna as he was taking it out of the oven, that Stiles has knocked over a lamp and shattered the bulb, that Stiles has jabbed a meatball onto his fork and waved it around in the air until it went flying off to land in someone's hair, that Stiles has just in fucking general been a hot god damn mess, Derek is always just there. Along for the ride, as always. Laughing lightly as he helps Stiles scrape food off the floor, sweeping broken glass into a dustpan, using the squirting function on the sink to wash red sauce out of Kira's hair. One time, he leans over in the middle of the night while Stiles is half asleep, apparently having woken up from a really interesting or revelation-riddled dream. He drops his chin onto Stiles' shoulder, and says, "you happen to me." Stiles muttered a sleepy response of "what?" as he flipped over to face Derek in the dark, staring at his silhouette with a frown. Derek just ran his fingers over Stiles' skin, shrugged. "You just happen to me. Everything you do, everything you say, the way you make me feel - you just...happen." At the time, Stiles was too tired and groggy to really understand what the hell Derek was going on about - and he has these weird late night revelations a lot, he's like Scott that way - so he just nodded like he understood, kissed Derek, and fell back to sleep. When he thinks about it now, though, he gets it. Stiles is, in more ways than one, a disaster. Of natural proportions. Hurricane, tsunami, the thunderstorm that he and Derek first had sex in. Which, sometimes is funny and awkward and "haha, oh Stiles!!", but other times is not so funny. The time Stiles accidentally sliced his arm completely open and fainted about all the blood and nearly bled out on the kitchen floor? Not funny. Not funny at all.

Well. Stiles laughed about it. Derek didn't so much. The point is - he's a fucking disaster. And like all disasters, there's no controlling it. He just happens. And Derek is the only one who has ever, ever braved that storm without complaint. So he gets it, now. And, it's been five months since they got together, and being at a wedding and seeing it all happen...who knows. Maybe it's too soon to tell, too soon to know, but Stiles is happier than he's ever been - and he's not spazzing out as much anymore. It's been a solid month since the last time he had any kind of embarrassing upset, and that, for him, is record time. The wedding goes off without a hitch. Stiles stands there the way he's supposed to, listening to Scott get dramatic in his vows, winking at Derek in the audience, and he doesn't trip over a single thing. The flower vases stay in tact, the wires don't trip him up, and he blows bubbles at Scott and Kira as they descend down the steps of the church towards the car. It's perfect, nice, and Derek looks so handsome and puts his arm around Stiles that same gentle way he always does. At the reception, Stiles falls face first into a pile of gourmet cupcakes, ruins his suit, gets a look of pure and complete disdain from Kira's parents, an embarrassed "that's not my son" glance from his father, and an earful from Scott. Derek squats down beside him where he's lying in the mess, holds his hand out with a light smile, and says, "you can borrow my jacket." Just like that.

End Notes

if you have a hankering for pumpkin chocolate chip cookies now, here's a recipe! And btw it's the recipe Taylor Swift uses...no big deal...I've made them about a dozen times since she shared the recipe and they are incredible haha they should be called cake-cookies they're so soft and moist

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