Chapter Text
Ten Years Later
Red and Wolf's was always busy on Saturdays. Then again, as Beacon Hills' only cupcake shop, it was almost always pretty busy. It had the added cachet of being attached to Beacon Hills' premiere comic and game shop which also funneled its fair share of traffic into the bakery. Of course, Derek didn't have to deal with the customers much. That task fell to Liam and Mason, under the supervision of Kira or Stiles if he was home. The boys weren't bad workers, but like most high school students, they needed someone to keep them from executing their more crazy ideas.
They were also the newest additions to the Hale pack in a situation quite similar to Scott and Stiles with Liam being a newly minted werewolf and Mason his best friend. Kira was Stiles' age and a kitsune. She was also the daughter of a friend of Derek's mom and a newly graduated web designer. She'd both built the shop's website and managed Derek's staff. These days he needed at least two people out front while he baked in the back. There were days when he couldn't believe how far the shop had come.
It had started as something to keep Derek distracted while Stiles was away at grad school. The two of them had managed college just fine with Stiles attending Thomas College. They'd been about two and a half hours away from one another which had been quite manageable. Even Stiles last year after Derek had graduated hadn't been two bad, though Derek probably spent more time skyping Stiles than talking to other people in person. But when Stiles had decided to go to grad school, Derek had been pretty much stuck in Beacon Hills due to pack politics with the territory the university had been in, and he'd started to go a little crazy being away from Stiles.
The business had actually been Jordan's idea. He's suggested it when Derek had offered to provide cupcakes for his and Laura's wedding right after Derek had graduated college, but Derek hadn't really considered it until he was driving his mom crazy with his moping around the house. Red and Wolf had started out as an online business with Derek making the cupcakes in the Hale kitchen and delivering them himself. By the time that Stiles had graduated with his masters, Derek had needed to recruit Isaac to help out with deliveries as well as moving into a space of his own. There had been a couple of fights with his dad about who's turn it was to use the kitchen.
So Derek had moved into a loft which he'd renovated to have an industrial kitchen, and six months later, Stiles had come home and moved in with him. Living together had been both wonderful and crazy making at the times with Derek was running his business out of the loft while Stiles was trying to get his own business off of the ground.
While Stiles might have gotten a degree in Forensic Psychology, his connection to the supernatural had led him to become something of an expert on supernatural creatures in general. He'd decided to set up a little consulting firm helping out when small supernatural communities were dealing with problems their local lore didn't cover as well as working to collect and preserve accurate lore. Stiles had gotten a lot of support for the idea both from Talia Hale as well as from a number of other alphas and various supernatural creatures.
So Derek baked cupcakes and Stiles fielded crises, often at the same time. It had been a little surreal the afternoon Stiles was giving instructions on how to deal with a pack of pixies while Derek was frantically trying to bake four hundred blueberry cupcakes. But despite the screaming arguments over whose turn it was to do laundry or not calling and letting someone know when you ran into a group of yeti and were going to be late, they had managed to stay together. It hadn't always been easy, but it had definitely been worth it.
The pair of them had also started dabbling in RPG games. Derek had gotten into a group during college, but it had been Stiles who came up with the idea of creating a game based on real supernatural lore. The project had mostly been something that the couple just played around with up until two years ago when Derek had gotten to go on Cupcake Wars. That had been an adventure and a half. He'd ended up bringing Stiles with him as an assistant since his only other option at the time had been bringing his cousin, Malia, and she could burn water. He and Stiles didn't often bake together, but at least Stiles had been around Derek baking and knew when to help and when to back off.
They had lucked out as well in the event they were making the cupcakes for. Dragon and Crown Games, a tiny company from Britain which had had viral success with their Arthurian based RPG game, was bringing its game to the States, and the winner's cupcakes would be featured at the launch party at Pax Prime in Seattle. Derek had the good fortune to have at least heard of the company before and know something about the game, and that fact had been appreciated by the guest judges, the co-founders of Dragon and Crown. None of the other contestants seemed to know anything about gaming in general or this particular company, so that had been an edge.
The whole competition had been crazy, but Derek had emerged victorious even after a minor mishap in the second round. But the major result of winning, besides the startup money that was the down payment on Derek's store front, had been a new friendship with Merlin and Arthur, the company's owners. Before long the four of them had put together Teen Wolf, a supernatural RPG game, and the pair of Brits were opening their very first brick and mortar store right next door to Derek's cupcake shop. Both shops had gone over quite well. Derek had given most of the cupcakes pop culture or fairytale names, and it seemed like all of that had been well received. These days both shops did brisk business, and Stiles' little consulting firm was well respected in the supernatural community.
The rest of the pack was doing quite well too, even if the younger members were a little spread out. Cora and Isaac were currently globetrotting while Cora took pictures and Isaac wrote pieces for a variety of magazines and websites. Laura had come home from school, married Jordan, and opened her own practice as well as had started taking over some of Talia's alpha duties.
The star-crossed pair of Scott and Allison were still going strong as well. In fact, Derek had provided the cupcakes for their wedding last year. Scott was now Deaton's partner at the veterinary clinic while Miss Allison was the most beloved and most obeyed third grade teacher at Beacon Hills Elementary, known for being both strict and fun in the classroom. Lydia was teaching math down at Stanford while Jackson was actually running a kids sports program nearby. Danny had met a werewolf from another pack and fallen for him, and Ethan had ended up join the Hale pack. The two of them ran a computer business together now. Erica and Boyd had been happily married since Erica graduated from university. She was currently building her reputation at a firm in Oregon while Boyd worked for the Forest Service nearby.
The pack elders were much the same as they always had been except for the fact that his mom was beginning to hand over her duties as alpha to Laura, and his dad was talking about opening a new restaurant now that all of their children were grown. Sheriff Stilinski and Melissa McCall had actually gotten married during Stiles' and Scott's senior year of undergraduate much to the glee of the two young men. So all in all, things were pretty good for the extended Hale pack. There had been a couple of major issues over the years as well as so minor shenanigans, but nothing that they couldn't handle together.
"Something in here smells amazing," the sound of his fiancé's voice pulled Derek out of his thoughts. "Are you experimenting again?"
Derek shook his head. "No, just the blueberry cupcakes for Laura. I have the feeling that she and Jordan are getting ready to announce a baby."
Stiles grinned. "The pack is going to go crazy if that's the case. First new baby in the pack in a couple of years."
The timer went off, and Derek pulled the cupcakes out of the oven. Stiles perched on one of the countertops.
"So, I just wrapped up the Perez case. Three days early."
Derek smiled as he set the cupcakes in a rack to cool. "Are you hinting at something?"
"It's a holiday weekend. The shop's going to be closed. Nothing's going on with the pack. We could nip up to that bed and breakfast you like on the Oregon Coast for a couple days. You're done with the baking for the day, and I'm sure Kira and the boys can handle things for the rest of the afternoon. We could leave tonight."
Derek stepped between Stiles' legs and leaned in to kiss him. "Sounds like a plan. Maybe we could get some of the wedding planning done?"
"I think we could manage that." Stiles wrapped his arms around Derek's neck and nuzzled their noses together. "Love you, Der."
"I love you too. I just need to frost Laura's cupcakes then we can head home."
As Derek reached for a pastry bag to fill with icing, he caught sight of the cookbook perched on a self. When he'd first gotten it all those years ago, he hadn't been able to imagine a future for himself, let alone one this happy. Now he couldn't imagine anything else. He had his pack, cupcakes, and Stiles. He couldn't ask for anything more.