Chapter Text
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Chapter 6~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Stiles wasn’t quite sure what to make of the house he stood in. It was surreal. Just the entryway was breathtaking. Lovely and no doubt very expensive vases adorned it, just tempting fate for him to stumble into them. Stiles hasn’t felt more scared since this whole disaster started.
Only God and the Hales knew how much those decorative pieces cost and he was sure he was going to break one and have to pay for it with his non-existent money, which meant he would have to get a job, but nothing paid well enough or fast enough so he would have to turn to turning tricks, which would lead him down a dangerous path that, with his carelessness, meant ending up getting caught by his dad, who would be disappointed (among other things) but the worst thing that would come out of it was that HE, Stiles, with his low inhibitions, would get addicted to sex and the dangerous life, the one with client lists and money that would pay for just about everything—it would be something out of a TV show.
And come to think of it he broke some decorations during his interview, didn’t he? Was that the reason Derek chose him, so that he could work off what he damaged through sexual favors?
He was going deeper and deeper into the fantasy life that when Derek’s voice finally registered, his first reaction was to argue his position.
“I am a class whore. At least a thousand for just a BJ, got it?” His voice echoed back at him. To say he was embarrassed would be understatement. His ears felt like they were burning but he stared defiantly. He always stood by what he said, even if what he said was crap that was, well, crap.
Derek didn’t say anything, just raised one of his lovely impossible model eyebrows and pushed past him.
Stiles took that as his cue to follow and did so, passing the lounge—because that was the only word to describe it, living room didn’t do it justice, didn’t even touch it—and through the long corridor where family pictures and hand-painted portraits was hung, dating back to times long before Stiles’ dad. And suddenly he found himself leaving a patio and entering the woods surrounding the Hale mansion (because calling it a house was being extremely modest).
“So we aren’t staying in the cool and way-too-expensive-for-words mansion?” Stiles isn’t one for tact most times. If ever, really.
Derek said nothing and Stiles continued on, as always. “Okay, the woods it is. We’ll be like barbarians or wild animals. I feel so much better about this whole thing now.” This wasn’t the first time he had a conversation with himself and if Derek was going to be like this the rest of their time together, then this wasn’t going to be the only time either. “Your silence ignites such passion in me! This union is going to go so well, I can just see it now: me the nagging wife, you the beer-gut husband that turns up the TV volume to drown me out. Sitcom romcom here we come.”
Derek grunts in response.
“Wow, he can grunt, we’re halfway there! Now just phonate your way into actual sounds and we might just make it out of this alive.”
Stiles was about to add something amazingly witty when he tripped on something—probably a root, these trees were huge—and the world flashed by, barely giving him time to try to shield his head when a strong arm wrapped around his waist and pulled him up.
He was held up roughly against Derek, leading Stiles to realize that not only was the werewolf hot, as in metaphorically hot, but literally hot as well. The heat spread from where Derek’s arm was touching his hip, spreading upward and settling in the base of his skull and quite possibly his face because there was no way he was blushing. But just as soon the arm was gone and he was facing a cabin.
“Not complete savagery. Good to know.” His mouth needed to learn to not talk, at all, ever.
“This is our place, just for us,” Derek said, still ignoring Stiles and walking up the steps that led to the front door. “No one else is to enter without my explicit permission until the mating is over.”
After his few words of what can only be surmised as wisdom, Derek yanked the door open. Stiles stared.
“Seriously?!”
When Derek didn’t deign him with a reply, he plowed on, proving yet again that his mouth was trying to kill him.
“Are you aware of how many awesome things you could have said? I know you and civilization aren’t best friends at the moment, but come on.” Stiles continued to complain as he walked up the steps, chasing after his current boyfriend-not-yet-lover who apparently decided that ignoring him was his new pastime. “How about ‘Here is where the ravishing shall commence,’ or ‘Welcome to our love shack’? You know, something cool, and . . . .”
The rest trailed off because he had arrived inside and ‘shack’ didn’t do it justice.
“Are the Hales allergic to ordinary things or what?” Stiles said, looking around. “This is better than my house and I’m pretty sure it's bigger.”
Derek looked at him before dumping his duffel bag on the floor. He went around touching everything, picking up throw pillows, and messing up the nice blankets on the arm of the very soft-looking and no doubt very expensive leather sofas. “We have a kitchen in here.”
No more needed to be said, Stiles pushed past the two tons of muscle going into said kitchen that was decked out in what looked like the latest kitchen appliances and what seemed to be a microwave the size of an oven.
“Dude, you’re like werewolves, the hell you need all this for?” Stiles pointedly looked at the salt and pepper shakers shaped like adorable tiny little chicks. It was a kitchen housewives hoped for and never got, and it was inside what, from the outside, looked like a shack. The architect deserved all the awards for taking the saying ‘bigger on the inside’ and making it a reality.
“This can almost be a TARDIS,” he whispers to the pepper shaker he picked up. Derek had yet to answer his question but that wasn’t going to deter him.
“The refrigerator is stocked in case you want to hole yourself up in here instead of going to the main house,” Derek finally said and Stiles looked up, surprised, nearly dropping the chick in the process.
“I don’t have to go to the main house?” He raised his eyebrows, his eyes likely wider than they’d ever been. “Main house, you hear yourself? Who says that? Rich kids, that’s who,” he answered to himself, as always.
“No, you don’t,” Derek said, answering his first question and ignoring the rest. That was the only reason Stiles thinks that this might just work. Derek didn’t seem like someone to waste his time with things he didn’t like. “I heard you and Abigail weren’t the best of friends.”
“Try other descriptive phrases like enemies of the state, frenemies, people who hate each other’s guts, and the classic she is the joker to my batman.”
Derek, for the most part, did a jerky movement with his head that could be taken as nodding and Stiles stood in the kitchen, pepper shaker chick in hand.
“So, aside from those two lovely house rules, how are we doing this?”
Stiles put down the little shaker and proceeded to go take a seat in the armrest directly in front of Derek, who raised an eyebrow.
“Will you let me get through the explanations or are you going to interrupt me every five seconds?”
It was the most Derek had said to him that weren’t an order. Stiles was too surprised to comment and settled for nodding.
“That isn’t an answer.”
“Seriously? Come on.”
Derek arched his eyebrow again and Stiles grumbled under his breath.
“Look, you might have been gone for however long and you and me, we’ve never actually met, so let me make this clear first and foremost. Me and not interrupting is like earth without oxygen—it’s impossible for survival. The sooner you accept that, the easier this will be on the both of us. That’s if I have much of a say in this, seeing as I am completely and utterly against this whole thing to begin with and yet seem to be smack-freaking-dab in the middle. I—” Derek had gone from one eyebrow up to two and crossed his arms, waiting for Stiles to get to the point. “I am willing to try, but will not make any promises because I know myself and I know my mouth will never shut up. So wherever this is going, let’s get to it since if you let me ramble I can go on for days, clearly.”
“I can see that,” Derek said, shaking his head, “but we have to screen the whole place first.”
Stiles shot Derek a confused look.
“I may have been gone from ‘civilization’ for a while, but I know my sisters, and I know my family. They would have had this place bugged so unless you feel like having everything you’ve said or done here brought up at the most inopportune moments, I’d suggest you start—”
Derek didn’t have to finish his sentence, Stiles was already on the move. Couch cushions were flying and blankets were hitting the floor, unraveled and rumpled.
“So you can listen,” was all he got from Derek as the werewolf went into the kitchen. Stiles stuck his tongue out at him. This wasn’t the time for petty fights. After they de-bugged their love shack maybe.
The very thought of Abigail or anyone else being privy to their ‘little adventures’ or in Stiles’ case, his last night as a virgin, was absolute horror. It sent a wave of cold down his body and raised the hair on the back of his neck.
Seriously, was nothing sacred anymore?! Wasn’t it bad enough that he was stuck in this damn situation, but now he had to have the whole Hale house knowing how Stiles did the horizontal tango?
What, exactly, was wrong with these people? Was it that they were partly wolf? Because if Stiles had to guess from their décor, the partly wolf had nothing on it, so maybe they were just all fucked in the brain.
“It’s mostly to make me miserable.” Derek’s voice floated to him from the kitchen and Stiles slowly turned to face it, standing precariously on the small and very wobbly side table as he rummaged through the drapes.
“What?”
“You were thinking out loud.”
Stiles suddenly felt his face heat up again, but pushed down his embarrassment. “For how long exactly?” he braved, finally deeming the curtains clear of bugs.
“Décor,” Derek answered, coming out of the kitchen with a small device held between his fingers.
“You weren’t kidding.”
Stiles felt his whole stomach drop. He hoped in the back of his mind that Derek was just messing with him but apparently he wasn’t. He walked up to Derek to take a look at the small device.
“So? Are they listening right now?”
“Knowing Laura and Uncle Peter, yes.”
Stiles glared at the infernal thing.
“Oh, you know what? It’s on. Got that, missy? I might not know you, though I probably met you before but I highly doubt it, but just so you know you messed with the wrong scrawny dude!”
Derek crushed it between his fingers before he could say more.
He looked up at Derek. “I went overboard again, didn’t I?”
“At least you’re aware. First step in the recovery process, I hear.”
Derek walked toward a door that Stiles knew was the bedroom, the room he was trying to avoid in hopes of convincing it that it didn’t actually exist.
“Hey! You are so not leaving the whole living area for me to search, are you?!”
Derek didn’t respond, which Stiles took as a yes.
“Well, just so you know, if anything romantic or mushy that comes out of your mouth ends up in dining room conversation, it’s not my fault.”
Stiles tried to ignore the small crunch that answered from the room.