SIAND - PDF - Peculiar Interesting.pdf

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://download.archiveofourown.org/works/3220895. Rating: Archive Warning: Category: Fandom: Relationship: Character: Additional Tags:

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Explicit No Archive Warnings Apply M/M Teen Wolf (TV) Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski Derek Hale, Stiles Stilinski, Scott McCall, Allison Argent, Lydia Martin derek and scott are best friends!, Scott is an Alpha, Derek and Stiles are Neighbors, derek is a bit of a spazz, romantic ~rain~ ending, Tattooed Stiles Published: 2015-01-24 Words: 14400

Peculiar / Interesting by standinginanicedress Summary

“Don't you think he's strange?” The boys watch as Stiles drops his half eaten donut on the ground, flails for a second before glancing all around as if checking to make sure no one's watching – and then scoops the glazed treat right back up and takes another bite, albeit with a guilty expression on his face. “Strange?” Scott repeats, furrowing his brow. “Yeah. Like – you know. Peculiar.”

Notes

first of all I know I still haven't finished my other fic - because...I'm the worst...tbh. I'm just stuck on it and when I get stuck on stuff I just start doing other stuff hence this fic suddenly existing the entire thing is based around one moment in Buffy s4 when Riley says "you don't think she's...peculiar?"

See the end of the work for more notes

“I know that kid!” Scott caws happily around a mouthful of scone, pointing one tanned finger in a vague direction. “He was in my business class a while ago!” Derek glowers a bit at his next door neighbor, Stiles Stilinski, across the courtyard of his apartment building as he breezes down the stairs in sweatpants and a pullover, chomping on a donut and staring blearily out at the world like he only just woke up ten seconds ago and a cruel, vengeful god forced him out of bed against his will. The kid lives in the apartment directly beside Derek, has all kinds of weird habits (like buying groceries at three o'clock in the morning and making a huge amount of noise right outside of Derek's door when he returns home) and weird conversations (“Kira, I'm telling you, there's a ghost in this apartment building, I've felt, like, presences”) and stays up at all hours of the night baking cookies and eating ramen because he can't afford anything else, and is – well... Attractive. That's one way to put it. Stiles is aesthetically appealing to Derek in a...in a very sexual manner. He walks around with his happy trail peaking out of his shirt, his hair tousled like someone had just been grabbing and tugging on it, and on good days Derek can see the dark black tattoo peaking out from behind his collar. He's sex walking. Unfortunately, whenever Derek starts liking someone like he's in 5th grade, his defense mechanisms (the ones he built up after Kate Argent sent his entire life up in smoke) tend to lash out in interesting ways. Denial. Nitpicking. Feigned annoyance. All of it directed at Stiles' nothing-but-friendly demeanor all day, all the time. Which is the most fucking annoying thing about Stiles because no matter how callous or rude or cold Derek is towards him, he still waves and smiles and asks what his star sign is and Derek...are you a Scorpio? I'm getting Scorpio vibes. Derek is a fucking Scorpio. It's so infuriating. Scott raises his eyebrows at Derek, waiting for a response; so Derek clears his throat, squints, and says, “don't you think he's strange?” The boys watch as Stiles drops his half eaten donut on the ground, flails for a second before glancing all around as if checking to make sure no one's watching – and then scoops the glazed treat right back up and takes another bite, albeit with a guilty expression on his face. “Strange?” Scott repeats, furrowing his brow. “Yeah. Like – you know. Peculiar.” “Peculiar?” Stiles shoves his key in his mailbox, and even from all the way back here Derek can hear that it's the wrong key. The absolute wrong key. It grinds against the small confines of the slot and he's amazed, absolutely amazed, that any one person could be this oblivious. With sick fascination, Derek watches as his bizarre neighbor tries to rip the incorrect key out of the too-

small hole, cursing and muttering under his breath the entire time. “Maybe a little.” The donut falls out of Stiles' mouth for a second time, and this time Stiles just kicks it with a vengeful foot, sending it skittering to a stop right beside where Derek and Scott are sitting. One last tug, and snap. The key breaks in half with one half still lodged inside his mailbox, and Stiles stares at the remnants of it left on his key ring, amber eyes wide and upset. “Is he nice? I never got the chance to talk to him in class but he seemed nice.” Scott says, sipping his coffee distractedly. Derek is still staring at the donut on the ground, at the indents of Stiles' teeth marks, thinking, Stiles' lips have been all over that thing. His saliva. Because maybe Derek has spent a little too much time staring at Stiles' lips as discretely as possible whenever they passed each other in the hallway or wound up crammed into the elevator together. Maybe while Stiles prattles to him in the awkward silence, after pressing the button for floor ten thousand times in a row because he has no patience whatsoever, all Derek does is hone his eyes directly onto the younger man's pink, soft, immaculate“Is he nice?” Scott repeats the question more forcefully and Derek finally snaps out of it. “Nice? He's – he's just odd.” “Well,” Scott says, taking one last bite of his scone, “he's coming over here.” Derek whips his head around to the mailboxes, where Stiles was standing just seconds earlier, and finds that there's no indication that Stiles was ever there except for his key still wedged into the lock on his box. He's just about to start scanning the entire courtyard when the familiar rasp of Stiles' morning voice comes from behind him. “I think that's mine.” Derek turns around to be blessed with the sight of Stiles' amber eyes, shining in the early morning sunlight, up close. He smiles down at him, and then slides his eyes to Scott briefly, before pointing down at what's left of his donut. “My breakfast.” He bends down, grabs the donut up out of the leaves and dirt, and holds it with two fingers slightly away from his body. “You're not -” Derek swallows, looking at the way several pebbles have clung to the glaze on the donut warily, “you're not going to eat that are you?” Stiles blinks his bambi eyes at him. “Do you seriously think I would eat this?” Derek has seen Stiles eat a lot of things. He buys those ninety-nine cent chili dogs from the sketchy looking guy who comes every Saturday afternoon, comes stumbling into the building at three in the morning with a big mac half eaten in his hand, eats pickles straight out of the jar as a snack while sitting in his car; not to mention the time Derek caught him shoveling packaged shredded cheddar cheese into his mouth while he was drunk and locked out of his apartment. “We just saw you pick that thing up from the ground and start eating it again not even two minutes ago.”

Stiles gawks, looking genuinely offended, and holds the donut even further out from his body, closer to Derek. “Have you ever heard of the five second rule?” Like it's one of the 10 Holy Commandments, he says this. “This thing was grounded for at least fifteen seconds.” Derek eyes the donut skeptically. “So that's why you won't eat it? The amount of time it spent on the ground?” Stiles raises his eyebrows, and nods. “Not the fact that it has dirt and animal feces and dead grass all over it?” “If I didn't know any better I'd think you were trying to get this,” he shakes the donut in his hand, “all for yourself.” Derek snorts, rolling his eyes. “You got me.” With one last dazzling grin, Stiles dumps the dirty donut into the trash can, wipes his hands on the back of his sweatpants (not that Derek follows the movement with his eyes like some kind of pervert in a horror film scoping out his next victim...not at all), and then disappears towards the building manager's office. Probably to go find someone to help him get his key out of the lock. Derek watches him until he's completely out of sight, and then turns back to his friend with a sigh. “See what I mean?” Scott, for his part, is looking at Derek with an oddly knowing smile. A smile Derek has been getting since they first wound up in a pack together six years ago – the I know something you don't know smile. Derek's least favorite smile of all. “What's with that face?” His best friend sips his coffee innocently, shrugging. “I don't know what you're talking about.” ---The next time Derek sees Stiles, he's in the parking lot of the complex waving a wrench around in the air with the hood of his shitty car pulled up, yelling at himself about how he needs to take better care of the thing. Not that any amount of TLC could ever bring that car back to whatever former glory it once held – Derek has to physically stop himself from towing it away in the middle of the night to save Stiles and all other drivers on the road. Derek narrows his eyes as he walks past to his own car, shaking his head and murmuring just so bizarre...under his breath. Another time Derek sees Stiles, the kid has a banana in his hand. Not a bag of groceries, not a bunch of bananas, but a single, bright yellow banana. Derek just got to his front door to find Stiles at his own door a few feet down. He's trying to hold his phone to his ear while also holding the banana and pushing the key into the lock on his door, all at the same time, and predictably...

The banana slips from his fingers and he curses, staring at the yellow fruit down on the ground. “I can't eat this now!” Derek narrows his eyes, slides inside his own apartment, and wonders at how Stiles can literally eat a glazed donut off the ground, but apparently can't eat a slightly bruised banana. He buys weird art from weird street vendors, sings songs from 2006 at the top of his lungs while he takes his nightly shower, tries learning how to cook (fails at learning how to cook), attempts fixing the leak underneath his sink on his own and winds up bursting it open even more, and in general drives Derek up the fucking wall. Then, Stiles starts his New Year's Resolution (on March 23rd, the idiot starts his New Year's Resolution) to put more muscle onto his naturally lean and thin frame. The elevator dings open, with Derek waiting outside, to Stiles dragging a gigantic gym bag across the floor, grunting the entire way. “It's weights,” he tells Derek around a round of huffing and puffing, “I'm going to start working on my bod.” “Right,” Derek says in response, stepping inside the elevator with raised eyebrows – thinking maybe the polite, gentlemanly thing to do would be to stop and ask Stiles if he needs any help with that. But then, watching Stiles half bent over with a sweaty neck, lower back exposed from his shirt riding up, all while panting is...much more fun, Derek decides. Much more fun. He stands there and watches the scene unfold before him for as long as he can before the elevator doors close, trying his hardest to look nonchalant or possibly even playfully mocking - but knowing that if Stiles were to really look at him or pay him any mind at all, he'd notice the clear mark of arousal all over his facial features and body language. After that, Stiles actually does start working out in his apartment; and it's the single worst thing that's ever happened to poor Derek Hale. For sometimes an entire hour, after dinner time but before Stiles' nightly shower (Derek doesn't eavesdrop, okay, it's hard to not just overhear shit as a werewolf), Stiles runs on his treadmill and lifts his weights. And it's so fucking horrible. For one thing, Derek can smell the endorphins and sweat a mile away, and that alone is hard enough to fucking deal with; because Stiles normally smells appetizing enough. Add in a few drops of workout sweat and bursts of adrenaline, and it becomes...orgasmic. For another thing, just to add insult to an already festering injury, Stiles makes near pornographic noises the entire fucking time. He says shit like love the burn, love the pain, feels good it's – it's just uncouth. It is fucking uncouth is what it is. Sometimes when he has his personal Derek time, alone in his bed in the dark, sliding his hand underneath the waistband of his briefs, Derek hears the echoes of Stiles' idiotic workouts. It's humiliating and embarrassing, and Derek has half a mind to bang on the door and tell Stiles to keep it in his pants. Deep down Derek knows that, really, Stiles keeping it in his pants is the literal last thing he wants. But he's still kind of denying that whole bit.

---Stiles leaves an entire basket full of his clothes down in the laundry room. On his way downstairs with his own bag full of sweat stained articles, he caught Stiles' scent so strong that he assumed the kid would be down there himself; drinking coffee black and bouncing all around the walls while folding his things neatly and chattering to someone about how management really needs to get better dryers. Instead, he comes into a dead silent room, not a single machine running, with a basket of freshly washed and dried Stiles clothes sitting dead in the center of the table. Derek furrows his brow, because who the hell spends two hours down here washing and meticulously folding their laundry only to completely forget about it? With a huff, he throws his own load into the wash, grabs Stiles' basket and hops back onto the elevator. He tries to ignore the way Stiles' scent wafts directly up inside his nostrils, the way it curls around his brain and separates itself off into specific perfumes – honey, lemongrass, pumpkin... Stiles smells fucking good, all right? There. He said it. After two months of studiously ignoring the way the scent sometimes wafts in underneath his door when Stiles walks by, or the way it sneaks in through the vents, or that it clings to him after standing in the elevator with the kid, he acknowledges that it isn't exactly the most offensive scent he's ever encountered. A basket full of his clothes, including underwear, really puts the scent on overdrive. The urge to just kind of...pick up the shirt sitting on top of the pile and wrap it around his face, choke himself with it like some kind of primal caveman, is a little bit overwhelming. He clenches his jaw and wills the elevator to go faster. Two sharp knocks on Stiles' door, and then he hears the pittering of Stiles' feet on the hardwood floors, closer, and closer, before, “who is it?” Derek huffs. “It's Derek. From next door.” A series of locks unclick (he has at least five of them – that's nice and safe – not that Derek cares about whether or not Stiles is safe or anything, holy shit) and then Stiles is standing there in nothing but a pair of ill fitting pajama bottoms, a pen hanging out of his mouth, glasses askew on his face. Before he can help himself, Derek's eyes roam down Stiles' pale, creamy chest, and he gets his first real look at the tattoo Stiles always has hidden underneath a shirt. It's a huge, hulking, black thing outlined with water colors and intricately lined out wings and colors and lines and Derek thinks it looks like a bird but he can't put his finger exactly on which bird because its claws end right at Stiles' nipple and - “Is that my laundry?” Derek blinks away, to look into the kid's eyes, and luckily it seems like Stiles didn't notice Derek eye-fucking him and his tattoo seconds before. “You left it down in the laundry room.”

Stiles gets a surprised look on his face, before shrugging. “That makes sense. How'd you know it was mine?” It's an innocent enough question, said with a small smile and a tip of the head, with curiosity instead of any kind of accusation, but all the same Derek freezes up the same way he always does whenever anyone asks a question whose truthful answer goes something like well, you see, every full moon... Swallowing, Derek says, “I recognized the shirt on top.” Stiles glances down at it – the maroon shirt with HARVARD written across it, and then in smaller print down below, just kidding that Stiles wore last time he bought his 99 cent chili dog and Derek watched with narrowed eyes through the curtains in his apartment – muttering about calories. “And how many people own a shirt that idiotic, right?” Stiles flashes his white teeth and scoops the basket out of Derek's hands. “Thanks for bringing it up!” Then they just stand there for a few seconds, with Stiles smiling politely and Derek hovering in the doorway like a socially awkward tool. “Did you-” Derek clears his throat and scratches nervously behind his ear, “did you...get your mail ever?” Stiles looks confused, as he drops the basket full of clothes down onto the ground and sends a wave of Stiles' apartment smell in Derek's general direction. Honey and lemongrass, like always, but mixed with the macaroni and cheese baking in the oven and the candles he's burning in his bedroom. Derek clenches his jaw against it. “Oh!” Stiles smacks his forehead with the palm of his hand and snorts. “Because I broke my key in my mailbox the other day! Right. Um – yeah. I got my mail after the dicklord of a manager charged me up the ass for the box replacement. Like it's my fault that I-” “Used the wrong key in the lock.” Derek finishes for him, raising his eyebrows. Stiles blinks at him. “How'd you know I used the wrong key?” Derek is literally burying his fucking grave with every single word he says to his kid. Even if he weren't a werewolf, the implication that he just stands there and stares at every thing Stiles does is mortifying enough to put him in his tomb. “I just guessed.” Stiles finally fixes his crooked glasses and appraises Derek like he always does – the same way he did when he guessed his zodiac sign correctly. “Do you wanna come inside?” More than anything in the entire known universe, a perverted, horny voice in the back of Derek's mind snarls with intent. But real Derek, the one with half a brain, stutters for a moment, before coming up with, “actually, my laundry's in the wash so I should...”

The kid waves his hand like it's no big deal, gives Derek one last killer smile, and closes the door. ---“Dammit. Fuck. Come the fuck on...” That's what wakes Derek up at four in the morning – Stiles cursing and muttering to himself out in the hallway accompanied by the jingling of his keys and the telltale sound of him trying to stuff a key into a lock – metal clanging and scraping against metal. Thinking that he has to be able to unlock his door eventually, Derek just rolls over and tries to go back to sleep. The muttering continues. So does the metal and the jingling, more forcefully this time around. Derek lays there and listens to this for at least five entire minutes, staring up at the ceiling with a sigh as he rubs his eyes. Stiles coming home super late is one thing – he does it literally all of the time. He stays out all night drinking or grocery shopping or god knows what else and then stumbles home, making a racket and waking Derek up and reminding the wolf that yes, I exist, and I smell good. Normally though, he's at least able to open his god damn apartment door without driving Derek near insane. Derek is just about to throw his covers off his body to go yell at him, or something even worse, like proposition him or ask him out on a date, when a small noise from the hall stops him. The jingling and scraping has stopped, and instead has been replaced by...crying. Stiles is crying outside his apartment door at four in the morning Alarmed, Derek focuses his hearing and takes a few sniffs out of the air. The usual smells of Stiles permeate as he expected, but there's something else there. A tinge of something sour and metallic – Stiles is hurt and crying. When he gets outside his door, he finds Stiles crumpled down on the ground beside his own door, back against the wall, crying with a small, thin cast is wrapped around his wrist. For a few seconds Derek just stands there, and Stiles looks up at him through teary eyes, bitterly trying to swipe them out of his face before the other man notices. But of course, he knows that Derek has already noticed – it would be impossible not to. “Hey,” Stiles says with a tight throat, still swiping tears off his cheeks. “I was just...” The silence hangs on for a few seconds, before another round of near hysterical sobbing breaks out of Stiles' chest, and Derek acknowledges that, whatever this is, he's a part of it now. With a long suffering sigh, and a glance towards the ceiling, Derek takes two steps closer to the ball on the ground that is Stiles, and bends his knees to crouch down beside him.

“Need help?” Without waiting for a response, he picks up the key ring that Stiles had dropped down on the ground. He sifts through the keys, about to ask Stiles which one opens his front door, when his fingers land on one bronze key with a piece of beige electrical tape stuck on the top with the word HOME written in sloppy writing. Derek frowns. “You shouldn't mark your keys like this.” Stiles sniffles. “I always forget which is which.” For a second, the wolf just stays crouched there, indecisive. He could just open up the door, manhandle Stiles inside, and then wash his hands of the entire situation, forget it ever happened, go back to grunting acknowledgments at him as they pass in the hallway or get stuck together in the elevator. That would probably be the best option. Instead, he scratches his face with another heavy sigh, and asks, “do you wanna, like, talk about it...” Stiles sniffles again, more deliberately, and wipes his eyes with his good hand again. “It's nothing. I was just – I was just...” Derek waits, sweeping his eyes all over Stiles' face – cheeks reddened and hot from the tears, eyes bloodshot with accentuating purple bags underneath, hair a complete wreck. Maybe it's fucked up to think – or it's definitely fucked up to think when he's crying in front of him – but Derek thinks Stiles looks particularly enticing, like this. “I sprained my wrist,” he finally chokes out, huffing out a broken sob, “because I was being stupid and they dragged me to the hospital even though I already owe them-” He doesn't finish the sentence, but Derek can understand well enough. Stiles has debt. Like every other 20 year old on the face of the planet, Stiles has a lot of debt, which explains the ramen and the fact that he drives the world's shittiest old Jeep and wears clothes that all look about six years old. Derek had assumed he didn't have money. “It's stupid,” Stiles continues on, a short laugh coming out of his throat. “It's really stupid. I'm being stupid. Just...my dad's really mad at me and my friends are really mad at me...and I just couldn't open the door and I woke you up and I know I wake you up all the time because I'm the worst neighbor ever and-” Derek rises from his crouch and shoves the HOME key into the lock, twisting it open with a familiar creak. Stiles looks up at him, amber eyes wide. “Well, come on,” he says gruffly, bending down to grab at his elbow gently to pull him to a standing position. “Up you go.” Stiles complies with a dazed look on his face, and into the darkness of Stiles' apartment they go. One flick of the light, and Derek can't say he's surprised by what he finds. He's never been inside

this place before, has only seen the shock-red color of the walls and a few of his odd trinkets from over his shoulders, but looking at it in all its glory...yeah. Derek isn't surprised. It's not messy per se, or at least not messy in the sense of dishes and trash and clutter everywhere, but it's hard to see any sense of organization or theme. Just bizarre decorations (like a tiny dragon made out of paper mache' perched on top of his ancient looking television) and strange shaped furniture (his couch looks eerily like a hamburger) and weird tapestries with deities Derek has never seen before stitched into them hung over the windows. The scent of Stiles is even stronger standing inside his home – it's wafting off of every square inch of the place and Derek feels about ready to wrap himself inside one of the tapestries and inhale like a starving man. Luckily he's pretty good at controlling himself, because otherwise... Stiles plops down onto his hamburger and sighs. “I'd offer you something to eat, but...” all I have is ramen and kraft macaroni and cheese, Derek finishes in his head. “You should probably go to bed anyway,” Derek supplies, eyeing the way Stiles looks about ready to pass out at any second. “I won't sleep,” Stiles says ruefully, with a strange smile that doesn't match the rest of his face or his words. “Can't sleep lately. I think -” he leans in, almost conspiratorially, like he's about to tell Derek some huge secret, “...I think this place is haunted.” The wolf has heard Stiles say as much on the phone to his friends before, and has even more times heard him mutter it to himself when he's alone late at night and thinks no one can hear him. Stiles' voice carries a lot more than he thinks it does. Especially when he has a werewolf living right next to him. “It's not haunted, Stiles.” Because Derek would've been able to sense a presence, malicious or benign, within two seconds of being inside of it. “It's an old place. Pipes clang and floorboards creak.” Stiles doesn't look convinced. He just casts his eyes all around his living room with a suspicious air to him. “I sense energies.” Derek nearly has to slap his hand over his mouth to keep himself from heckling at him. “You think you have the sixth sense?” “That's not what I mean,” his voice is low, serious. Probably more serious than Derek has ever seen him before. “Sometimes...I just get the sense something's off around here. Like I'm not seeing the whole picture.” “Hmmm,” Derek says; if Stiles hadn't been crying five minutes earlier, he'd be laughing directly in his face. “Maybe it's the chili dogs.” Stiles turns to look at him with a bemused smile on his face, and then squints his eyes slightly.

“He makes a good chili dog.” “He uses dirty, old water and even older chili.” “He gives me a discount.” “How can you discount something that's already ninety-nine cents?” “It's fifty cents for me. I have a punch card and everything.” “Is that something you look forward to every week? Buying your chili dog?” Stiles huffs out a laugh, and then leans back on his one good hand while the other stays tucked against his chest. For a second he just appraises Derek, all puffy eyed and smirking, before saying, “you make me laugh.” No one's ever said that to Derek before. Because, honestly, Derek isn't funny. He's not even really that interesting or enticing. The only thing even vaguely unique or enthralling about him is something that he has to keep a secret from everyone he meets – color him surprised that Stiles would say something like that to him. He really doesn't know what to say in response. So, instead of trying to follow down that path, he decides to swerve the car in a completely different direction. “How'd you hurt yourself?” Stiles glances down at his wrist, as if remembering its handicapped state, and frowns. “Fell off a trampoline at a weird angle.” That's exactly the kind of thing Derek would expect Stiles to get hurt doing. In his mind he can picture the kid flipping around on his dinky little trampoline happily, bouncing back and forth like a little kid, not a single care in the entire world. Even when he fell off and hurt himself he probably laughed through it; either that, or he started going on and on about fate and how the universe works in mysterious ways. “Well. I'll leave you to – whatever it is you plan on doing.” As Derek is walking out of the apartment, into the safety of air that doesn't absolutely reek of something Derek would really like to hump, Stiles calls, “thanks for helping me,” at his retreating back. ---“Exactly, that's exactly what I said.” Derek is just getting out of the elevator when he hears Stiles' voice around the corner, coming towards him, presumably to get on the elevator himself. “...not that anyone ever listens to me...” Derek is, out of nowhere, paralyzed to the spot. One foot inside the lift and the other resting on the tiled floors of the hallway – and a decision has to be made as Stiles' voice gets closer, and

closer... He could either just get out of the elevator and walk past Stiles to be greeted with the kid's perfunctory HEY! enthusiastically mouthed at him like he does every single time he passes by Derek while on the phone – and then consequently spend the next thirty minutes of his life cursing his stupidity at not saying or doing anything in response. Or... He could slide back inside the elevator like he had just gotten in and bask in Stiles' bizarrely comforting scent for fifteen seconds, while listening to his soothing raspy voice that somehow has a talent of making its way straight down to hisStiles is rounding the corner, and Derek leaps back inside the elevator, breathing out a shaky breath and wondering what the actual hell he thinks he's doing. “...I can help you do your job. I love to help, you know that! I'm not as stupid as you seem to -” “I don't think you're stupid, Stiles,” the range is close enough now that Derek can hear the kid's father's voice on the other end of the phone. “I think you're a kid.” “I'm twenty three,” Stiles comes into sight right as Derek is pressing the open door button to leave it open for him. Upon seeing Derek standing there, he grins, HEY! with his mouth, and slides into the elevator beside Derek. “I don't want to see you sniffing around my case files anymore. That's final.” “But -” Derek can hear that the other line has gone dead, and then Stiles is muttering under his breath, something about stupid dads and not just a kid with a series of expletives thrown in for good measure. He glances down at the buttons on the elevator, looks at Derek, and then says, “are you just hanging out in the elevator for fun, or...?” Derek furrows his brow, before remembering one pretty important little detail. He never actually pressed any of the buttons on the stupid panel to indicate which floor he was planning on going to. So now he's just standing there, staring into Stiles' amused face, looking like a complete fucking idiot who doesn't know how to be a normal human being. Reaching forward, he slams his thumb down on floor. “Me, too,” Stiles says, waving his arm (with the cast still intact) in the air a bit. The doors slide closed, and Stiles' scent gets trapped inside the steel box, enticingly mixing with Derek's – and for a few seconds Derek shuts his eyes and imagines what it be like to have this smell all of the time. Like, in his apartment. In his bed. That interesting mix of honey and lemongrass and pumpkin thrown in with Derek's own scent of ash and cinnamon and gunpowder, all around him, on him. On his clothes and hands from running the tips of his fingers down Stiles' exposed neck and -

“Thanks for helping me out the other night,” Stiles snaps Derek out of his inappropriate fantasy with a nervous voice. Like he doesn't really want to be saying it, but knows he should say it anyway. “It was – nice of you. Embarrassing of me, but...” Derek clears his throat, like he's about to say something super great and profound – or at the bare minimum something more than a grunt and a shake of his head. But, alas. A grunt and a headshake is all Stiles gets in response, and he doesn't even look put out or hurt or annoyed or anything. He actually looks like it's exactly as he expected, from the way he just smiles shyly and looks away, biting down on the bottom of his full pink lips. The elevator slams to a stop, and just before it dings, Derek blurts out in a rush, “What's your tattoo?” “Hmm?” Ding. “What's my tattoo of?” The doors slide open, and Derek nods. Stiles smiles more widely now, showing all of his bright white teeth off even in the dim, shitty lighting of the elevator shaft. “It's an eagle. It's supposed to be this, like, symbol of the triumph of light over darkness, you know?” Out in the lobby, Mrs. Norris is standing there with narrowed eyes, shifting them between Stiles and Derek, waiting for them to free up the elevator. “I don't know, I just got it because...I wanted that kind of feeling where I knew I was going to come out the other side, no matter what. Maybe it's stupid.” It is stupid. It is so fucking stupid and full of that weird ooga booga bullshit Stiles is always going on and on about, like sensing presences and zodiac signs and burning incense and meditating for hours at a time, all things that make Derek roll his eyes and scowl. The doors start to slide closed, and Derek throws his hand out in between them – begrudgingly, they slide back open again. Mrs. Norris looks like she wants to start whacking the two of them with her purse. Stiles in general is stupid. He's – he's fucking weird and he says weird shit and does weird shit, and pisses Derek off, and always has that stupid smug look on his face. He's just peculiar. He eats donuts off the ground! He probably has thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of debt wracked up, along with nothing more than 67 cents in his bank account! He drives the world's worst car and is a huge nerd about working out and a nerd in general, and he has a stupid tattoo with a stupid meaning and Derek likes Stiles. Likes him, likes him, yes, in a romantic sort of a way Derek is interested in Stiles. The revelation is absolutely terrifying to him, really more like paralyzing and debilitating altogether, so he just stands there with his mouth hanging open, after Stiles has just told him what his stupid tattoo means and Mrs. Norris still is just standing there waiting for them to get the hell out and make room for her on the lift. “It's -” Derek swallows, trying to look anywhere but at Stiles' ridiculously adorable eyes, “it's nice. I think it's nice.”

Stiles grins once more. “I like yours, too.” Out the doors he goes, with a nod and a hello to a disgruntled Mrs. Norris, and all Derek can think as he stares at the contours of the kid's back is when the hell has he ever seen my fucking tattoo. ---“I can't like him Scott,” Derek says two days later, peeking out his curtains at an oblivious Stiles, who's currently walking across the courtyard towards the parking lot, swinging his keys around on his index finger. “He's not my fucking type.” “Your dick disagrees,” Scott replies loftily from the other end of the phone. Derek watches with narrowed eyes as Stiles drops his keys and flails around – as if surprised that swinging the stupid things around on his finger would ultimately end in him losing them on the ground somewhere. “My dick is one thing. Being physically attracted to him is one thing, because...” “...because he's good looking?” Stiles is on his hands and knees on the concrete, pawing with his long fingers at the pebbles and dirt, trying to find his lost keys. Apparently, his wrist had healed enough for him to get the cast removed. “Good looking is too small a word for it, Scott. He's fucking – he's -” “He's hot!” Scott has this tendency to say every thing the way a nine year old might say ice cream! So it all comes out like an excited cartoon puppy bounding around, no matter what the subject matter is – even when it comes to matters like this. Serious fucking matters. “But me actually liking him? In a more than shallow way? It doesn't make any sense because...” “...because he's hot?” “He's weird is what he fucking is,” Stiles still hasn't found his keys, even though Derek can clearly see them glinting in the dimming sunlight a few feet away from where he's currently pawing, “and I guess I like that?” Scott makes an excited noise, and then there's the distinct sound of him giving someone a high five – Allison, more likely than not. “Nice! When are you gonna ask him out?” Stiles is just sifting his keys out of the dirt pile they wound up in, grimacing at the stuff getting all over his hands, and Derek slams the curtain shut and drifts away from the window as if afraid of Stiles hearing his best friend say ask him out. “What? Who said anything about asking anyone out?” “Derek...”

“I'm not asking him out! He doesn't – he wouldn't – he's not...” “Anyone would be lucky to be asked out by you,” Scott's voice is careful, measured on the other line, “you know that, right?” Derek sighs, but doesn't bother arguing. “Plus, I feel like I got vibes between the two of you the last time I was there. And, like, not just from you. From both of you. There were mutual vibes.” “I don't even know what a vibe is, Scott.” “Like...emotions. Related to the dick.” “Christ!” Derek pinches the bridge of his nose hard and tries to block out the noise of Stiles revving up his shitty, old engine from the 80's. “It's not just that he's weird, you know! I don't think he's the most stable person on the face of the planet. He has debt, he's crying in the hallway in the middle of the night, he's getting drunk all the time – does that sound like a person I really want to ask out on a date?” “Not to deal below the belt – but it's not exactly like you're the most put together person yourself, Derek.” Scott has a point there. Scott certainly has a point there. Aside from Scott and Allison and the occasional glimpse of Lydia, Derek doesn't have very many friends. Not to say that he isn't happy where he is - because Scott is good enough of a best friend to account for four separate friends all on his own, and Allison is always there for wisdom and advice and a tender hug, and Lydia to tell him when he's being a fucking idiot – It's just...sometimes. He gets dark. That's the only way he can think to describe it, is dark – because all through the first half of his life, he had a family so huge with so many different personalities and likes and dislikes that he was never ever lonely, not even for a second. After the fire, and after everything happened and he found himself more or less alone in the world...it just took him a very long time to get used to the idea of not always having someone over his shoulder to push him in the right direction or stop him dead in his tracks. Now, he likes the silence; he worked hard to get to the point where he enjoyed solitude. Most of the time. Other times he thinks there's something missing, like some empty space buried so deep inside of his own head that he can't quite find it. “At least promise me you won't do that thing where you start to like someone and shut them completely out before they even get the chance. Stiles seems like a genuine person! I would know – he was in my business class, remember?” “You know, you could just use your alpha powers to force me to talk to him.”

Scott humphs. “If I were a bad friend, I would!” ---Derek can always hear when Stiles leaves his apartment. He thinks that even if he weren't a werewolf, he'd be able to hear Stiles leaving his apartment, the guy makes so much fucking noise. First it's shoes shoes shoes, where are the shoes, come to me shoes, can't find the shoes set to the tune of Shake It Off for a solid three minutes. Then it's keys, keys, where are the keys in no identifiable rhythm that Derek can discern while his sneaker clad feet slap against the hardwood of his apartment, back and forth, and back and forth. Then, Derek's favorite – when Stiles trips over the corner of his rug that he accidentally bent upwards a few weeks ago, followed by a swear and gotta fucking fix that, before the door opens and closes with a slam. Then, swish swish swish as he walks past and his scent glides underneath Derek's door, infiltrating. Today, though, the swish swish swish stops right outside of Derek's door, the scent permeating every thing, and there are three gentle knocks. Derek freezes in the middle of eating a pretzel. Stiles has never knocked on his door before. Stiles has never even glanced at the inside of Derek's apartment. Stiles is standing outside his front door and Derek still hasn't decided what he's going to do about the fucking issue at hand. He glances around himself. Every thing is clean and neat and tidy, like it always is, and there's nothing to be embarrassed about sitting in plain view should Stiles actually come inside, God fucking forbid it, so with a deep breath, he rises from the couch and approaches the door with a heavy heart. God, he feels like he's about to be sent off to war. As soon as the door opens, Stiles is flashing his teeth at him. “Can I ask you a weird favor?” What other kind of favors would Derek expect Stiles to ask for? “Um – I guess.” “My shower keeps spurting this weird brown goo whenever I try to turn the water on and I suppose if I were some sort of river creature the thought of bathing in that would really get me going, but as it is...” he holds his arms out, “I'm painfully human.” Painfully human, Derek thinks. Really, truly, painfully. “So...is it okay if I ask to use yours?” Derek's brain short circuits, and he finds himself going oh yeah, of course, make yourself at home, ushering Stiles inside and pointing him in the direction of the bathroom. Before he knows it, Derek is lurking in the kitchen, munching as hard as he can on his pretzels to drown out the sounds of Stiles using Derek's shampoo and Derek's body wash and rubbing his

naked body all over the walls of his shower and getting his scent all over everything, mixing it together with Derek's, infecting the entire place. Normally, Stiles sings in the shower – but today, he's downgraded himself to just a couple of choruses to popular songs underneath his breath. Because, foolishly, he thinks Derek can't hear him. He can hear every thing. The click of the shampoo bottle, the sound of the goop landing on Stiles' open and waiting palm, the squelch of noise as he starts lathering his hair with the stuff... Derek crunches on five pretzels at once, glaring out the window. He knows there are going to be Stiles hairs left over in the drain, and lord knows that Derek doesn't have the self control to not unscrew the drain just so he can fish the strands out, like some kind of weird animal. If he doesn't get the strands out, though, his shower will continue to reek of Stiles for weeks. Of course, Derek's body is saying yes...yes to that. Love that. Need that. But Derek's mind is saying are you a fucking pervert? ` Derek isn't sure anymore. He doesn't know, dammit! IS HE A PERVERT? MAYBE! All he's completely sure of is that he's trying his absolute damnedest to not think about the fact that Stiles is completely ass naked less than ten feet away from where Derek is currently standing, and the thought makes his toes curl. Eventually, the shower turns off. And so, the moment Derek has been dreading happens when Stiles opens the door, in what feels like slow motion, and out comes the steam. Oh, Christ, the steam. The fucking steam, the vaporized version of the Derek/Stiles scent dampening Derek's skin while Stiles himself wafts out, holding a damn towel in his hands and raising his eyebrows at Derek in the corner of the kitchen. “Hamper?” Hamper. Right. Right. Because Derek isn't going to take that thing and use it as a pillow tonight. Not at all. “How long have you been living here?” Stiles asks as Derek deposits the towel in the proper place. “About a year, now.” “A year?” He looks all around himself with his doe eyes, biting his lip. “You've kept the place pretty...neat.” The wolf frowns; imagining that Stiles finds him boring, and by all rights, he probably does, but it really doesn't sit well with him. He wants Stiles to find him as fascinating as he finds Stiles, he wants Stiles to think he's this really cool guy with lots of accolades and friends and a life... “How'd you know about my tattoo?”

Stiles turns to him with a dropped jaw – not in shock, but like he was about to say something else and got cut off by Derek's intrusive, conversation changing question. A faint blush curls up Stiles' soft cheeks, and the telltale sound of his heart rate speeding up pounds against Derek ears. “I, er -” Stiles scratches the back of his neck, bashful, “remember that fire scare when I had just moved in?” Derek did remember the fire scare. The dude who lives below him, a thirty something going through an intense crisis because he can't find a wife and brings home all these different girls from bars, set a lasagna on fire in the oven and the entire building was evacuated. Derek had been napping on the couch at the time the alarms went off, and went stampeding outside in nothing but his sweatpants. That was the first night that Derek noticed there was something peculiar about Stiles; because Stiles came strolling out without a care in the world, holding a mug of coffee, elbowing all the tenants in the sides and saying how about them firefighters, amirite? Of course everyone else loved him, or at least were friendly and pleasant to him, but Derek found him off from the get-go. “That was the only time I ever saw it.” He seems embarrassed to admit it; like it's some huge humiliating secret that he might've slightly checked a shirtless guy out. Little does this poor little man know about all the insanely intimate details about himself that Derek knows. “Does it mean anything?” Derek smiles. He has a human-proof excuse for this. “It's for the three women I had in my life. Mother, two sisters.” Stiles blinks a bit at the word had, and Derek is scared for a few seconds that he's going to put on the kicked-puppy face that everyone always gives him and say oh no, what happened? It's one thing that doesn't ever stop being hard. Having to explain every thing to everyone, again and again – really, that's why he doesn't like to date much. Tragic backstories, and sharing details about himself...it's just not something he enjoys. But, instead, Stiles just raises his eyebrows and grins honestly. “That's awesome, dude. I've been thinking about getting a tattoo for my mom but – the only idea I have is a bit out there.” Derek knows, from accidentally overheard conversations, that Stiles' mother passed away a long time ago, so he doesn't ask. “What's the idea?” “She really liked nature, and she used to take me out to the preserve a lot for picnics. It was kind of, like, our thing – and I thought I would get her favorite animal...” another bashful smile crosses Stiles' face, as he traces an index finger up the length of his lower arm. “...a wolf, right

here.” Another fizzling happens in Derek's brain, and he short circuits once more. The thought. The image. Of Stiles having a wolf tattooed on his skin somewhere – it fucks with Derek's brain. It absolutely fucks with him. That's really the moment that Derek knows he's in too fucking deep now, to ever really turn back. So when Stiles leaves, Derek just gives the fuck in and fishes the towel out of his laundry basket and shoves it into his face, inhaling so deeply that Stiles' scent lingered on the sides of his nostrils. ---“A man with a car like yours should not live in a place like this,” Lydia has been making this same exact comment every single time she's come over; which, granted, hasn't been very many times because she more or less boycotts the place, but still. It gets old. “I think it's great!” Scott butts in, bounding up the steps at the head of the group while holding tightly onto the basket of sandwiches Allison made. “It has lots of charm! Right?” Allison hmm's in agreement. The pack has a standing agreement to eat a potluck style meal at one person's house every month – it's gone around in rotation, and now it's Derek's turn yet again. It's not that Derek doesn't enjoy hosting a lunch party for his friends, it's just that he'd... really rather not ever have to do it. Ever. He's rather have someone else do it, always. He had to go to the grocery store and buy the soda Scott likes and the specific kind of fancy water that Lydia likes, and he had to actually cook something (potato salad, harder than it sounds, if you're Derek) instead of grabbing takeout from one of the menus he has magnetized to his otherwise bare fridge top. Maybe it's nice to have some kind of tradition. Maybe. Once they all gather around Derek's door waiting for it to be unlocked, with Lydia chattering to them about all the latest drama in her family (there's always something going on in Lydia's family), Derek hears the telltale sounds of Stiles' own front door opening and closing, and his hands completely freeze. Logically, the smarter thing to do would've been to thrust the door open as fast as possible and herd everyone inside before they could even glance in the kid's direction, but with Stiles...lately he's just been doing the complete brain malfunction thing. Stiles, for his part, just flashes a friendly grin at the group as he locks his door behind him – but Scott turns to Allison with the single hugest grin ever seen on his face (which is really, really saying something) and mouths that's him.

“That's him?” Lydia whispers, crowding around Scott to get a better look at Stiles obliviously struggling with his lock. “Hmmm...” All three pairs of eyes are staring at him, so when he lifts his head to walk away, he gets a bemused look on his face. Derek absolutely wants to lay down and die, right here on the ground. Just fucking get the pain over with already. “Hey!” Scott is the first to speak, waving a tan hand in his direction. “I was in your business class a year ago!” Stiles smiles back at him with equal verve, taking a couple steps forward. “I think I remember you. You were the kid who would call his girlfriend every day before class started.” “Yeah!” Like this is something to be proud of, he agrees with a nod. Then, he points at Allison next to him and says, “this is Allison,” then to a scrutinizing Lydia, “and Lydia.” Stiles smiles at them all individually, before sliding his eyes to Derek, who's still stuck frozen still with his hand on his doorknob. “These are your friends?” The wolf swallows, avoiding eye contact because looking into those amber eyes always fucks with him. “Yes, my friends. These are – these are my friends.” I have friends, he thinks, I'm not a freak! “Have you lived in Beacon Hills your entire life?” Lydia asks, stalking a bit closer to Stiles like she's sizing him up, or trying to see through his skin to figure out if he's a snake person underneath it all. Stiles takes it all in stride, blinking at her with a faint smile. “I mean, I went to college in New York, but other than that, yeah. I bet you've all met my dad,” a beat of silence as he grins, “the Sheriff?” Derek wants to punch himself in the face for not putting two and two together a lot sooner. Stilinski. How many Stilinskis could there possibly be in Beacon Hills? Of course Stiles is related to the Sheriff that had to wrestle his sixteen year old self into the back of a cop car to calm him down after his entire house went up in flames. Now that he thinks about it, recalling the older man's face in his mind, the resemblances are almost startling; aside from the eyes. The eyes, Stiles must get from his mother. “You're the Sheriff's son?” Allison sounds incredulous, eyes wide. “You're Stanislaw?” Allison Argent knows the entire police department on a pretty personal level; or at the very least spends enough time with them that she's heard the Sheriff talk about his unruly son Stanislaw. Hell, the entire pack knows the police department inside and out. Yet Derek's never even seen Stiles before – how's that possible?

Stiles holds his hands out in a ta-da! fashion. “I am.” Derek has never heard Stiles' real name before. He knew that Stiles couldn't possibly be the name on his birth certificate, and some nights he stayed up wondering what name could be so horrible that he'd rather go by Stiles. Now, he stands turning Stanislaw over and over again in his head, separating the letters out, repeating the syllables – he definitely doesn't look like a Stanislaw. “The way he talks about you, I imagined you being more...” Scott trails off, waving his hand in the air a bit, searching for the words. “...wild.” Stiles laughs, eyes crinkling at the corners, while his fingers play with his keys. Derek tries to avoid looking at how long and slender his fingers are, at the veins in his arms. “I bet he tells everyone that I'm two steps away from winding up in Guantanamo.” Derek gets a vision of Stiles in handcuffs and that's the final fucking straw. “Okay, well, we should...” he pushes his door open with a creak, and starts ushering the pack inside quickly. “It was nice seeing you!” Scott calls from inside the apartment, waving enthusiastically over Derek's shoulder. Stiles gives a small wave as he walks past the door, making direct eye contact with Derek, right before the door slams closed behind Lydia. She raises her pristine eyebrows at Derek, red lips pursed in annoyance, and says, “what, exactly, is the issue?” Derek feels cornered. His three friends are all staring at him, waiting for his response. “Um – with what?” “With him.” “He seems nice,” Allison interjects, putting a bowl of salad down on Derek's counter. “I know he's nice, actually – he's really nice, and really smart, if what the Sheriff says is anything to go by.” “He was in my business class,” Scott says for the trillionth time, unpacking a sandwich and pulling at the plastic wrap lazily, “he was always on time and he always had his homework.” Derek narrows his eyes down into slits. “Just because someone's nice and a good student doesn't mean that I have to date him.” “No,” Lydia agrees, clacking into the apartment and dropping the cake she baked onto the kitchen table. “But because someone's nice, interesting, funny, smart, and really good looking-” “Really good looking!” Scott agrees, winking.

“Yeah, he's – he's a looker.” Allison joins in. He's officially been ganged up on. It's officially three against one, with Derek in the minority, staring bleakly down at his shoes. “You guys don't get it. He's strange, all right?” “Interesting, sweetheart,” and Lydia says it like she's correcting a word that Derek accidentally mispronounced. “Interesting is the word you've been looking for.” “Who wants to date some normal person?” Scott asks around a mouthful of sandwich. “Like – who honestly wants to date a nine to five, Subaru, golden retriever person? Do I have to remind you, Derek, that you're not exactly normal either?” “The truth about you is much odder than whatever it is you think is so strange about him,” Allison gives him a sincere smile, holding a sandwich out towards him. “I guarantee it.” Derek takes the sandwich out of her hand and grimaces down at it for a few seconds, pursing his lips in a firm line. Nothing they're saying is inherently wrong; in fact, pretty much every thing they're saying is right beyond any shadow of a doubt. Stiles is all those things, all those positive adjectives they listed, and then some. He's attractive and genuine and intelligent and...interesting. In a way that no one else he's ever known has been. And there's literally no way that whatever is so interesting about him is any more interesting than Derek's whole deal; not a shot in hell. If he were supernatural at all, Derek would've sensed it by now. The only thing Derek ever gets in the way of secrets from Stiles is that he occasionally sugarcoats things, or phrases them in just the right way, when talking to his father. And – what twenty-something doesn't do that to their parents? No – Stiles is not supernatural. And...maybe that's exactly the problem. “What if -” Derek huffs out through his nose, still staring directly at his sandwich, “...what if he's not the issue, though.” He can feel all his packmates' eyes on him, but none of them say anything. This is a unique moment, a Derek is opening up moment, and they're all probably too scared to speak up in case they cut him off and the moment is lost entirely. “...Stiles isn't the one with the problem.” For all intents and purposes, however many times Stiles gets that existentialist look on his face and starts talking about spirits and presences and zodiac signs, he's still...normal. “I'm the one with the problem, because I'm - you know.” “A werewolf?” Allison offers quietly, taking a seat on the couch a few feet from where Derek is standing, her own sandwich resting carefully in her lap. Derek curls his upper lip and spits out, “dangerous.” Scott inhales a sharp breath, while Lydia just crosses her arms beside him and gives Derek the give me a fucking break look. “Dangerous? Come on.”

“Last time I was with a human-” “Last time you were with a human you wound up watching your psycho uncle claw her throat out.” “Exactly. Things like that – horrible things like that...they follow me around.” “It's not the same, at all, Derek,” Scott insists, waving his sandwich reprovingly in the air. “It's completely different! Stiles isn't Kate, all right? Stiles is -” The silence hangs there for a few seconds, all four of them looking at each other, waiting for one of them to provide the proper adjective to describe the off-center kid who lives next door. “Peculiar.” Derek settles on, nodding his head. “Interesting.” Lydia corrects, one finger in the air with reproach. “I was thinking more along the lines of not a killer but that works just as good, I guess.” Stiles definitely isn't a psycho killer. Stiles would never have even half the balls it takes to kill someone in cold blood, to murder an entire family, to set someone on fire and listen to their screams of agony and pain and feel nothing but disdain. In fact, the very concept of anything like that would disgust him, Derek thinks. “You know,” Allison begins from the couch after swallowing a mouthful of cheese and bread, “I think you should just stop thinking about it. You have a way of thinking yourself out of things, making things a lot more complicated than they have to be. So...” she shrugs with a small smile playing on her lips, “I think you should just go for it. No thinking allowed.” “Now, are we going to have lunch or are we going to stand around moping?” Lydia grabs her own sandwich, and instantly the conversation is dubbed as over with. ---After the pack leaves, it starts to rain. Not just a light drizzle, either, but a full on rainstorm – thick droplets pounding against the windows, wind whistling underneath all the cracks of the building, lightning flashing off somewhere in the distance. Derek has always enjoyed the rain; he finds it soothing, and calming, because it blocks out all the excess noise of the outside world that sometimes gets a little bit overwhelming. It's like someone puts the mute button on everything else while turning the volume up on the white noise. So, it's raining – storming – when Derek glances out his window and sees two headlights shining brightly in the darkness in the middle of the building's parking lot, and he knows within seconds it's the lights to Stiles' Jeep. Focusing his eyesight more clearly through the rain and fog and darkness, he can spot Stiles' blurry, rainsoaked form, climbed completely underneath the hood of

his car, his lips set in a grim line as he paws around inside the engine. Derek narrows his eyes. The absolute last place any sane human being should be during a thunder storm is lodged between a car engine and a car hood. Didn't the Sheriff ever teach Stiles how to not get electrocuted and die? Did that conversation ever come up in their household? He shrugs into his jacket, and heads out the door. When Stiles catches sight of Derek coming over to him, he smiles a bit ruefully at him through the rain, sitting up as straight as he can in his current position. “Need any help?” Derek asks in a bit of a yell so he can be heard over the roar of the weather. “I'm hopeless at cars,” he remarks, dropping his wrench down on top of the engine and sighing. “I probably should get a car that actually works, one of these days.” “Come down from there, before you hurt yourself.” Derek holds out his hand, and Stiles grabs onto it without a second's hesitation – his long, soft, languid fingers fitting perfectly around Derek's calloused skin – and Derek helps him climb out from underneath the hood. He almost slips a bit, but Derek manages to catch him right on time; he receives a breathy laugh close to his ear for the effort, and then Stiles is standing on his own two feet down on the ground. Derek knows that he doesn't necessarily have to keep holding onto Stiles' hand like this, that actually it's a little bit weird he still hasn't let go, but he's taking his time with it. Slowly pulling his fingers out of Stiles', relishing the way Stiles' smooth skin feels up against his own. “What's the problem?” The wolf asks as soon as he gets his wits about him again, hand dropping down to his side. “I think it's dead, dude,” and it's funny hearing someone like Stiles use the word dude so casually. “Like, doorknobs.” “Doorknobs?” “Dead as. Dead as doorknobs.” Derek can't argue with that. It would be in Stiles' absolute best interest to get a new car – but he's eyeing the thing with such a sad expression on his face, as if he's just sent his only son off to war, that Derek finds himself saying, “it'll get fixed, I'm sure. Just...not in the middle of a thunderstorm.” Stiles snorts a laugh, before reaching forward to undo the prop from underneath the hood, the creak of metal mixing with the zings of the rain. “Well, I should probably prepare for the possibility that it'll never run again. Get driven around everywhere by my dad, or something – God, how embarrassing would that be? Getting rides in the back of my dad's cruiser.” He slams the hood shut, and runs a shaking hand through the completely soaked brown mop on top of his head. Droplets of water come flinging out as he does so, and Derek watches as the

Stiles-infested water goes dripping down onto the ground, getting washed out by the rest of the rain pouring down around them. Never in his entire life has he seen any single person look so incredibly enticing when soaked completely through by the rain. Stiles' huge doe eyes are framed by lashes clad in droplets, his face reddened and raw from Stiles wiping the water off his cheeks, white undershirt clinging to his chest so hard that Derek can see the outline of his tattoo clear as day through the wet fabric. He looks like some wet dream of Derek's come to life right in front of his very eyes, smirking and dripping wet. What Derek wouldn't give to lean forward and rip those wet clothes clean off of Stiles' body, to shove him back up against the hood of his car and just – fuck him. Derek really wants to fuck Stiles. To be crystal clear – he doesn't want to have sex with him or do it or make love. He wants to fuck every last brain cell out of his head until the kid can't even talk anymore. It's probably that train of thought that leads Derek to sputter the following words - “I could – drive you around. If you needed rides places, I could be the one to – um – drive you. Places. I have a car.” It's the single most depressingly convoluted thing Derek has ever uttered, and he can already feel the embarrassment and humiliation wrapping its tendrils around him – urging him to say um, nevermind and go running off into the woods somewhere to sulk. Stiles grins at him, though, like he finds it endearing. “Oh? What kinda places would you drive me to?” It takes Derek several seconds to piece together the fact that Stiles is kind of flirting with him, in a really obvious no-doubt-about it way, too. Like the way stereotyped blonde girls in movies always flirt after pulling their dresses up a bit more. “Um – I could drive you to a place where...people typically eat dinner?” “If I didn't know any better,” Stiles takes a step closer to him, so there's only about five inches of space in between their chests, so Derek can feel the heat radiating off of Stiles' skin, “I'd think you were propositioning me.” Derek swallows and tries to read the younger man's face. His eyes are as huge as ever, but slightly lidded – and he doesn't look annoyed, or put off, or disgusted. He looks, dare Derek say it, turned on. Even though ten seconds ago he was lamenting the possible death of his car. “I am. Propositioning you. For dinner. This is me, asking you out.” Stiles smiles straight into his face, all white teeth and moles and upturned nose that Derek kinda wants to nibble on. “This is me, saying yes.” They just stand there for a few seconds, Derek probably grinning like an absolute idiot down at the smaller man (and he is smaller – even if he's only a couple of inches shorter than Derek, his body type in general is just...small when compared to Derek's huge, broad frame), while Stiles grins right back up at him, eyes scanning his face every few seconds, like he's mapping something out.

“Well?” He says, finally, grin fading away into a smirk. “Are you gonna kiss me?” Which is what leads to the two of them making out in the middle of a thunderstorm beside Stiles' old beat up Jeep, what leads to Derek finally getting to put his hand on Stiles' bare chest as he slides it underneath the damp material of his shirt, what leads to Stiles licking into his mouth with such energy and enthusiasm that it really all goes straight down to Derek's dick in a flurry of feeling and blood rushing through his skin – and then Stiles pulls away and says, “are you gonna invite me to your place, before I catch a cold in these wet clothes?” Which is what leads to them stumbling into the lobby of the building, dripping rain water everywhere and tracking mud in their wake. Stiles laughs, and caws a half-hearted sorry! to the general manager behind his glass window, narrowing his eyes at the two men making a mess of his once-clean floors. The elevator doors shut behind them, and they each stand on either side of the elevator, facing outwards towards each other, panting. Stiles looking long and lanky and unbelievably gorgeous, hair a mess on top of his head, lips parted, eyes lidded – while Derek just leans back against his side of the elevator and tries his hardest to not look like he's fucking the shit out of Stiles in his mind; but Stiles...senses energies. In Stiles' words, he senses energies. So, he sweeps his eyes down Derek's body, raises his eyebrows, and says, in the single most pornographic moment of Derek's entire life, “are you going to fuck me?” Derek leaps across the elevator, pins Stiles back against his side, and like someone he doesn't even fucking recognize (someone who definitely isn't himself, or at least not himself in his right mind) shoves his entire hand down Stiles' wet jeans and paws at his dick almost angrily. Stiles spreads his legs a little, dropping his mouth in a silent moan, staring directly into Derek's eyes, and Derek stares straight back; reveling in the faces he can make Stiles make just from putting his hand against him. “You're really hot,” Stiles breathes out, biting his lip. “Which I know is a really – nngh – lame thing to say, and not at all creative or interesting, but – it's true. I find you aesthetically appealing. To my eyes.” Derek's hurrumphs in response, apparently going non-verbal at this stage of sexual arousal, and the elevator dings open to their floor. If it weren't for Stiles shoving Derek's hand out of his pants and saying, “we can't fuck in the elevator, Derek,” then Derek probably would have actually just ripped Stiles' clothes off right then and there and started fucking him in an elevator car. The doors would've slid open on the second floor to Mrs. Norris, who'd have a heart attack and die right there on the spot at the sight of seeing two men engaged in lascivious sex acts. “And, also, I think your car is hot,” Stiles says to Derek as he struggles to open the front door to his apartment, keys jingling and slipping through his wet, rushing fingers. “I can't wait for you to drive me to dinner in that car.” The door flings open and the second it's closed again, Derek is ripping his jacket off and flinging

it in a wet clump somewhere on the ground, followed by his shirt. In front of him, Stiles is backing away towards the couch, keeping his eyes trained on Derek, as he sheds his own clothes piece by piece. “I can't wait to fuck you in that car,” Derek says – and it, once again, doesn't sound like something he'd normally say – so he thinks that Stiles' scent does something funny to his brain. Like, turns him into some kind of hyper-dirty, sex-depraved animal. Which makes sense, looking at him and smelling him like this. “Whoa!” Stiles caws around a laugh, raising his eyebrows again. “Before or after dinner?” “Both,” Derek stalks towards him, wearing nothing but his unbuttoned jeans while Stiles doesn't have a stitch of clothing on him, completely naked in the middle of Derek's living room, still damp from the rain. Stiles drops onto the couch with a smirk, raising those ridiculous eyebrows again, and it's really on autopilot that Derek drops down to his knees in front of him and shoves his face into his bare crotch, inhaling. Derek has always known that a person's natural scent is always stronger in the groin area, of course – it's basic 101 stuff to him, after being a werewolf his entire life. But, like this, sniffing at Stiles after months of only having the surface level scent...it's like he's finally been given water again after wandering around in the desert for a week. Which is really dramatic, and not normally the kind of thing Derek thinks or says about other people, because it's dangerous to be that invested in another person, but – it's also just plain true. Stiles' scent is almost intoxicating, as Derek noses gently at his balls, laps experimentally at the tip of his dick, and for a few seconds Derek thinks I could literally do this for hours, until Stiles pulls gently on his hair. “C'mon,” he groans out, his hips spasming forward of their own accord. Looking up from his spot on the ground, the sight that Derek sees is truly one he wishes he had a camera for. Stiles sprawled out, all long limbs and flushed face, panting with his eyes screwed shut and pink lips parted – that's something Derek wants to see all the time. Framed in a picture on his bedside table, for him to look at every night before he goes to sleep. Without further ado, Derek sucks Stiles up into his mouth, slowly and carefully working his tongue around the length of him. Stiles' fingers tighten in Derek's hair as he turns to absolute putty everywhere else; just going limp and letting Derek do whatever he wants. Derek reaches his hand up and feels down along the skin where he knows that the tattoo is, runs his hand all along the ink, sliding his fingers around a nipple. After a few seconds, though, Stiles starts to get chatty. “I've wanted you since that time – with the fire – and the lasagna,” his fingers begin threading gently through Derek's hair, “you didn't have a shirt on.” Derek hmm's around Stiles' dick and Stiles shivers.

“I wanted you so much, so fucking much, I -” That just about does it for Derek's control. He releases Stiles with an obscene pop, and flips him over easily; shoving his lanky body forwards until his elbows are resting on the back of the couch, his dick wedged in between the cushions. When he turns around and sees Derek, he flashes him a lazy, slow grin, watching with hooded eyes as a bottle of lube is pulled from the back of the drawer in the center of the coffee table, as a condom is dropped down onto the cushion right near Stiles' leg. “Is that bubblegum flavored?” Derek narrows his eyes as he squirts some onto his fingers, and then sighs. “It was a gift.” From Lydia. A sick, sick gift that Derek had sworn he was going to throw out, but...wound up keeping. Good thing, he guesses, looking at where he is now. Stiles laughs, his whole body shaking with it, and keeps on laughing even as Derek slides two fingers inside of him; like it's nothing to him. “It's hard for me to imagine you with bubblegum anything.” “You don't have to imagine it – two of my bubblegum fingers are in your ass right now.” Stiles laughs even harder, clenching slightly around Derek's fingers as he tries to work him open. Derek smiles a little himself, shaking his head – how any person could possibly heckle like this while two meaty fingers are inside their asshole is beyond him, but here Stiles is, doing exactly that, looking over his shoulder at Derek with another one of his blinding grins. “You make me laugh,” he says – a callback to something he said a couple of weeks ago, when Derek was still wrestling with the fact that he found Stiles attractive at all. It makes Derek's chest swell up with something, maybe something that a sixteen year old would call butterflies, and he slides a third finger in before leaning forward a little, closer to Stiles' face. “You are so peculiar.” He has the decency to wince just slightly as the three fingers work harder at him, and then smiles just as brightly as before. “Compliment?” Derek nudges at Stiles' prostate, earning a high-pitched mewl in response, and nods. “Definitely a compliment.” Sliding his fingers out, he rubs the condom onto his own hard length and runs a hand down Stiles' bare back – relishing in the way the skin feels underneath his fingertips, in the way Stiles shivers slightly at the contact, and rocks back towards Derek's body. For a few moments, Derek just kneels behind him, hand on his back, dick waiting for him to do something; but it's like he's paralyzed there in disbelief. After almost three months of near constant fantasies, some of them incredibly unwanted, he's really about to fuck Stiles Stilinski.

He's about to shove his dick inside the Sheriff's son, holy shit. Stiles looks over his shoulder again, and huffs in annoyance. “Are you going to fuck me? Or just think about it for a second?” Derek slides inside slowly, making sure to watch as much of Stiles' face as he can see for any signs of distress or serious pain, until he bottoms out. Stiles pants, adjusting his elbows on the back of the couch. “Okay?” Derek asks, stroking at his back again. Stiles nods, so Derek starts to move. Slowly, at first, all the way out, and then all the way in, in a slow back and forth motion that has Stiles dropping his head and making tiny, adorable sounds into his chest. “You feel,” a breath, shallow, “good.” He really does – hot, and tight, and the smell, the scent of Stiles' arousal and the sounds he's making, all of it together is starting to feel a lot like too much in Derek's mind; sex hasn't been this fucking good since... Sex has never been this fucking good. “Duh,” is what Stiles chooses to say in response, remaining cheeky even with a dick up his ass, “of course I do.” For the third time, a little piece of Derek's control slips clean out of his fingers, and he shoves Stiles forward until his elbows buckle out from underneath him, until his ass is as high in the air as Derek can manage to get it, and starts fucking him – just the way he imagined it when they were still outside in the rain storm. With complete and total abandon, giving into whatever strange side of him that Stiles manages to drag out. Stiles, for his part, starts making the single most incredible sound Derek has ever heard in his entire life; some weird cross between a moan and a cry, every single time Derek smashes into his prostate, and it eggs him on to go harder, faster, even when he doesn't think he can anymore without breaking Stiles clean in half. “Fuck,” Stiles draws out – the word stuttering around the pounding his body is receiving, “I'm so fucking close, just-” Just three more thrusts, as luck would have it, and then Stiles spills all over the cushions of Derek's couch with a moan that everyone in the tri-state area probably heard. Scott definitely heard it with his alpha senses, from three blocks away. He probably raised his fist in the air for Allison to bump her own against, cawing, “Derek finally put it in Stilinski!” to get a small laugh out of his girlfriend. Derek follows soon after, bending completely over Stiles' limp body and sliding himself out carefully. “Holy shit,” Stiles pants underneath him, “nice.”

“Yeah.” Derek agrees distantly, climbing off of Stiles to flop down on his ass on the couch beside him. “Yeah...” “Yeah,” Stiles is still on his knees, “I came on your couch.” He says this like it's something he's embarrassed about now – as if there's really anything to be embarrassed about in front of person who just had his dick in their mouth. “I came in your ass,” Derek counters, trying to assuage him. “You came in a condom.” “It's the thought that counts.” “Oh, my God,” Stiles is laughing yet again, finally lifting his head up to look at Derek through laugh-squinted eyes. “What does that even mean?” Derek doesn't know how to answer that, so he just lays back against his couch cushions and waits for Stiles to become fully cognizant again – or for him to at least get off his knees and stop panting like he just ran a marathon. It takes about twenty more seconds, but eventually, Stiles flips over and sinks into the cushions opposite Derek, laying his long fingers across his stomach and smiling sleepily. “Nice.” Derek stares back at him with a tiny grin. “Me, or the sex?” “Hmmm...” Stiles makes a show of tapping on his chin, thinking about it, hemming and hawing, tilting his head from side to side. It's adorable and Derek wants to lean over and kiss him, really badly, but he's still so spent. “Both.” “You're hilarious,” Derek says flatly, still keeping that doofy smile on his face. “You're hilarious.” But he says it sincerely, with a pointed finger lazily swinging around in the air. “You're more hilarious.” “No, you hang up first!” Derek laughs, and Stiles laughs, and Derek wonders in the back of his mind why he ever thought just because Stiles was strange that it was inherently a bad thing – no one he's ever met before would laugh while getting finger-fucked the way Stiles did, or crack jokes like this in the afterglow. It is odd, and bizarre, and there's just no one like Stiles. And it's not a bad thing. Peculiar, yes. Bad? Not at all.

---Three weeks after that, at what Derek has learned is Stiles' favorite Chinese place, they begin their annual fight over who gets which fortune cookie. “This one is closest to me,” Stiles says, pointing at the one Derek is trying to reach for, “so that means it's my fortune.” “Those fortunes aren't real,” Derek has only said this ten thousand times, but no matter how many times he says it, Stiles still gets that pinched expression on his face. “Half of them aren't even fortunes, Stanislaw. You are fun to be around. How is that a fortune?” “You only try to reach for my fortune,” Stiles scoops the plastic-wrapped cookie away from Derek's reaching hand quickly, narrowing his eyes, “because you know it'll piss me off. You're such a sourpuss.” Derek watches as Stiles breaks open his cookie, stares blatantly as those huge amber eyes scan over the red writing on the tiny slip of paper – and keeps right on staring as he smiles hugely and waves the fortune in Derek's face. “You will walk the land of many countries. Now that's a fortune. I wonder...European countries? I hope so, I've always wanted to go to Europe.” Like always, Stiles treats the fortunes like prophetic visions, and Derek lets him this time around. “Maybe Canada.” Stiles laughs, like it's the funniest thing ever, and shrugs. “Maybe! Open yours up,” he leans forward across the table, balancing his chin on one hand, “let's hear your future.” Derek's hand hovers over the cookie, waiting for him to scoop it up, while Stiles stares at him with a soft smile, genuinely excited to hear whatever Derek's ridiculous fortune is going to end up being, and he knows that this is the right moment. He doubts that there's ever really, truly, a completely right moment to say what he has to say. But the restaurant is completely empty aside from the two of them and the bored staff, and he knows he can't keep the secret for any longer, because if he does, it'll just blow ridiculously out of proportion when he finally gets around to do it and gets the balls. So he pulls his hand back, runs it down the side of his face, and says, “I have to tell you something.” Stiles frowns, picking his chin up off his hand to straighten up. “That doesn't sound good.” “It's not – it's not bad,” Derek rushes to cover himself before Stiles' mind starts churning out a million different horrible scenarios, the way that it always does. “It's not bad. It's just...it's just something I need to say.” Those amber eyes blink at him across the table, wide and curious, waiting.

Derek inhales deeply, swears under his breath, and says, quietly, “I'm a werewolf.” Stiles scrunches his face up, like what the fuck, and he reaches for his water glass with a roll of his eyes. “That's it?” “Um-” “I already knew that.” Stiles sucks long at his water, until it starts making that obnoxious noise at the bottom of the glass with all the ice, and Derek gapes. “What – what do you – you knew?” Of all the reactions Derek was expecting, this was definitely, definitely not one of them. “Of course. I figured it out within the first week of us dating.” “How?” Stiles grins, picks up Derek's fortune cookie, and holds it out to him with a shrug of his shoulders. “I told you. I sense energies.”

End Notes

I know that ending is ambiguous as fuck and very reminiscent of Parrish (i.e. WTF IS HE?!?!?!) but I couldn't help myself lmao. Thanks for reading!!!

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