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Stiles grunted as he was pinned to the ground, rough hands clamped around his throat and his not-injured wrist, large thighs straddling his hips and a handsome, impressively displayed pair of breasts tipping into his personal space. Normally, he would have no complaints. Why were the hot ones either cranky werewolves or hostile hunters? Seriously. The entire situation could be fifteen kinds of sexy if he wasn't a) bleeding b) in serious pain and c) about to be made dead by hunter number five hundred and thirteen. "Not to stereotype, but is there some rule that the extra-special crazy hunters always creepy old men or hot, violent chicks who confuse my libido?"
The hunter laughed and bent to kiss his cheek. She smelled like one of Lydia's fancy perfumes—the Chanel something-something one. "I think a fragile little boy who runs with wolves is crazier than me, especially when you're little more than a child."
"I'm twenty-one," Stiles replied, because that deserved respect considering everything he'd been putting up with since he was sixteen.
Still chuckling, the hunter drew back and loosed the hand wrapped around his throat. "A child, and one far too stupid to be training as an emissary. Your boyfriend must be soft on you; he looks the type to be easily wrapped around a finger."
What? Did she think Scott was his boyfriend? Wouldn't be the first time hunters had thought that. Allison was never very amused. Except something about that didn't seem right. Whatever, he'd figure it out later. "Could we skip all this bullshitting and just hurry along to the part where you tell me why you almost broke my wrist and clearly want to break the rest of me?"
"You're awfully flippant for a boy about to die."
"SSDD." Stiles tried to squirm and wriggle free enough he could buck her off, something, anything, but she must have Derek-levels of muscle because she didn't even twitch. "Oh, my god, just kill me already."
The woman smiled. He hated that kind of smile. It was an I was a vampire in a former life smile. Where the hell was Derek anyway? There was going to be a serious discussion about timely rescues of one's patrol partner. "Where's the fun in that? Watching an animal die isn't nearly as fun as watching it suffer first."
"One, no. Two, not a werewolf and you people are supposed to have a pretty firm policy against killing humans. Three, no. Four, go to hell."
"You're worse than a werewolf," she said, smile dropping from her face. "You’re a human who chooses to help them, keeps them thinking they're not monsters. You run with them. Fornicate with them."
"I'm not fornicating anyone right now, not that it's any of your business." Oh, how he wished, but that was a frustration for a different time where he was alone in his room.
She laughed. "You're a terrible lair, especially for a cop's son. Shouldn't you be better at it?"
"Shouldn't you be following a code? Or is this a No Code Zone?"
"You really do think this is all a game, don't you? No wonder the wolves like you—easy to play?"
All Stiles could hear then was the hysterical laughter that would be pouring out of Derek if he was there. Which he wasn't. Because he was an asshole who apparently couldn't handle being jumped by half a dozen hunters. "No, I don't think this is all a game. Not unless we're playing Calvinball, that would make sense." He took stupid pleasure out of the confusion that flickered across her face. "I prefer to think of my life as a whack fairytale." And someday his royal-type person would come, tralala.
"Fairytale, hmm?" She smiled again, but this time it actually scared him, all menace and malice. He hadn't thought about Kate Argent in a lot of years, but her memory rose up then, sharp like an old wound on a rainy day. It made him want to puke. "Then how about a fairytale hurt? That should do what I want just fine." The pitch of her voice changed then and she began to speak in a sing song tone, words Stiles didn't know but after a moment recognized as German. German-like? Deaton had never said anything about German stuff in his lessons. Not that that was really surprising. He tried to speak, fight it, but whatever she was doing rendered him mute, weak, and so fucking tired …
He jerked awake, gasping, staring up at the trees and the chunks of starry sky slipping through them. What the fuck? Groaning, he braced his good hand and managed to pull himself up to a sitting position. He felt drunk and hung over and beat to shit all at once. What had she done to him?
And where the hell was everyone?
"Stiles!" As if on cue, Derek broke through the trees and hurried over to him, Scott a few beats behind. Derek dropped down beside Stiles and looped an arm across his shoulders. Stiles hadn't realized until then, suddenly right up in Derek's space and ridiculous body heat, just how cold he had gotten. "You okay?" Derek frowned.
"Not—" The world lurched. "Not sure, leaning toward no. Gonna be sick now." He turned away just in time to avoid puking all over his own lap, heaving his dinner over the forest floor instead, grimacing at the smell and grateful the dark kept him from having to look at it and puke all over again. Ugh. He had a sinking feeling he was getting carried out of the woods. Again. God, Derek was so warm, the stupid, late jerk. "No damsel carries," he muttered, then promptly passed out again.
*~*~*
"Tell me that's a joke."
Deaton looked like he very much wished he could, and that it caused him real pain to have to repeat, "It's called a Fairytale Curse for a reason. If you cannot find your true love, and get them to kiss you before the next full moon then you—"
"Go all Sleeping Beauty, I got it, shut up please for the love of my sanity. What's left of it." He slumped against the counters and wished the whole damn gang was not around to hear his fate. It was only a matter of time before someone started laughing.
Surprisingly, though, no one laughed. Stiles slowly looked up and caught the tail end of Scott scowling everyone into submission. "So what do we do?" Scott asked. "There's gotta be another way to break it, right? I mean, how does a spell like that even work?"
"You'd get sick of the explanation before we were half done," Lydia said, looking up and snapping her book shut, shoving it at Jackson before giving them all one of her you're lucky to have me faces. "Give me time, I'll figure out either how to find your 'true love', or create a workaround."
Stiles spread his arms. "A workaround for True Love's Kiss. When the next full moon is five days away. And there are literally no records of such a thing having been done."
She narrowed her eyes at him. "Are you doubting me?"
"Never," Stiles replied.
"Do you have a better idea than anything I could come up with?"
Derek shot her a look. "Don't ask questions with answers we'll regretting hearing."
Stiles glared until Derek rolled his eyes, folded his stupid arms across his stupid chest, and looked away muttering. Worrying his bottom lip, Stiles went over the problem. True Love's Kiss. Find his true love, get a kiss. Not hard, except completely hard. Five days to do it. Probably it was someone in town, a curse like that wouldn't be cruel enough to put his true love all the way in New York or China, right? So he just had to figure out who in town … no … "I'm going for broke."
"What," Lydia replied, the expression on her face saying that she really hoped he did not mean what she thought he meant.
"No, it's a great idea," Stiles said. "Process of elimination. I'm going to start kissing everyone. Fuck it. Only way to do it."
Jackson gave him a pained look. "I don't understand how you're still alive. That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard. When are you going to stop being such a ballsack?"
Derek growled, quiet but with threat. Scott quelled them both with a look. Stiles ignored them. "It's great! Eliminate the ones obviously not it, like Deaton, Scott, and Allison to start with. Gotta hit pay dirt sometime." He smiled at Jackson. "Lydia, my love?"
Lydia rolled her eyes and stepped forward—jerked free of the hand Jackson shot out to stop her, casting a warning look over her shoulder before she turned back to Stiles. Leaning up, she kissed him softly. He grinned as she drew back, though he could still feel the heavy, achy, fatigue-inducing weight of the curse. She gave him an unimpressed look. "My plan is still better."
"Whatever, this will be a great plan." And hey, he was going to come out of it with all kinds of hot kisses and a true love. Screw everyone, this was gonna be great. "Scottie, take me home. How long was I out? Does my dad know? Why isn't he here? Did we ever figure out what the hell the hunter who did this wanted? What happened to the rest of her crew?"
Smiling in that way of his, Scott threw an arm around Stiles's shoulders and started to lead him out of the room. Movement caught the corner of Stiles's eye and he froze. "Isaac! You have to kiss me."
Isaac heaved a sigh he must have picked up from the Hales. "Whatever gets you to leave me alone the fastest." He moved in close enough Stiles squawked in alarm, grabbed his shoulders, and leaned in to give Stiles a quick, sharp kiss that tasted like tea and steel. "Later, weirdo."
His gaze flicked past Stiles, mouth quirking, eyebrows going up, but Stiles didn't care about what silent conversation he was having with who as Scott hustled him out of the room and began to answer all his questions. He had been unconscious about three hours. His father knew and wasn't happy, but had to go deal with the fallout of the other hunters, who had wound up heavily maimed and strongly advised to be several states away as soon as possible. They had never been clear about what they wanted, no, past 'kill the werewolves'. The woman was the only one to get clean away. "Sorry we didn't get to you sooner, they used some wolfsbane net I've never seen before. Even Derek seemed surprised by it. The electricity running through it didn't help."
"Glad everyone is okay," Stiles replied as he clambered into the passenger side of his new Jeep—newish, and the green was arguably uglier than the old blue one, but it was enhanced by his dad's buddies to be a bit more durable against all things supernatural.
Scott eyed him as they drove out of the vet's lot. "Are you seriously going to go around kissing people, dude?"
"Yes. Why not? It's totally a brilliant plan."
Scott just smiled and shook his head. Stiles contemplated taking offense, cause he could tell Scott thought he was full of more crazy than usual, but whatever. They wouldn’t be able to say anything when he broke the curse all on his own. And then he would have true love!
A few minutes later they pulled into his driveway; Stiles tumbled out, nearly faceplanting as dizziness and exhaustion washed over him. "Woah. That needs to stop."
"You alright?" Scott asked, coming around and steadying him.
Stiles pushed him away, patted his shoulder. "Fine, fine. Just need some more rest before I go out on my Find True Love kissing fest." He'd need to make lists, start making a list of 'definitely not' to save time. He yawned as he headed up the walkway to his house—and broke into a grin as he saw his hot mail carrier coming down the steps. "Maaaary! Hello!"
"Hi, Stiles," she said. "It's a little early to be drunk, don't you think?"
"I'm not drunk, except on excitement," Stiles replied. "You should kiss me!"
"What?" She stopped, eyes widening as Stiles gently cupped her face and gave her a quick kiss, cheeks going red. She smacked a hand on his chest and pushed him back. "Stiles Stilinski! You behave! What would your father think?"
Scott gave a nervous laugh and shoved him toward the house. "Medication, Mrs. Reginald. It's making him a bit crazy. Not that he's crazy for kissing you. A man should be so lucky. Right. Have a nice day." He waved, then grabbed Stiles by the back of his shirt and hauled him into the house. "Are you insane?"
"The consensus is probably yes, but I also do not care," Stiles said. "Did you think I was lying when I said Project Kiss Everyone was a go?" He shrugged Scott off. "Thanks for getting me home. I'm going to go shower and pass out."
"Eat something," Scott replied. "And don't leave the house alone. Call me, or at least someone, to go with you wherever you go. We don't know where that hunter went and if you're going to go through with your crazy plan you should have someone to keep you from getting dead when you accidentally kiss the wrong person."
"Yes, Master Alpha, sir," Stiles said, and gave a flippant, swirly salute before spinning around, knocking his head into the door frame, and stumbling-grumbling up the stairs.
Four hours later Stiles left the house alone, with no plans of meeting anyone anywhere. Like hell did he need supervision on a kissing expedition. He chugged coffee as he settled into his Jeep and headed off across town to the club that had replaced the Jungle when a horde of fire-happy gremlins had put it out of business for good. Not that it had been so great anyway, with the rumors surrounding it of all the crazy things that happened there, the more-than-a-few bodies that had resulted.
Hopefully there would not be a redux at the Birdcage.
Stiles parked his Jeep across the street, then hoofed it to the door, blowing by the long line that had just started to wrap around the block. The bouncer, a huge over-muscled guy with a bright green Mohawk, nodded at him and let him by. "Hey, Robbie, you should kiss me."
Robbie snorted. "Why the hell should I do that? I don't play with customers."
"Cause I have to find my true love and I won't know who it is unless I kiss them."
"I can never fucking tell when you're joking." But he grabbed the front of Stiles's shirt, yanked him up off his feet, and planted a nicotine flavored kiss on his mouth. "Did it work?"
"No, but I totally made that chick with the green braids ridiculously jealous, have fun tiger!" Stiles slipped inside the club, promptly ran into a cute little blonde boy and planted one on him. He tasted like cotton candy and beer, kissed like he was already well on his way to drunk.
He stole a kiss from the bartender next, Robbie's sister Latarsha, who rolled her eyes at him, gave him a beer, and told him to get out of her face.
Stiles made it through two beers and twenty-three kisses before someone finally punched him. He scowled at the guy, the woman cuddling against him and cooing—the woman who had been more than happy to kiss Stiles two seconds ago and hadn't mentioned a boyfriend—then rolled his eyes and walked away.
After that the night became decidedly less fun. A handful of fun, sweet, pleasant kisses, but by the fourth slap/punch Stiles decided that was enough for one night. Thirty-three attempts, thirty-three fails. Combined with Lydia, Isaac, Mary, Robbie and Latarsha, that was zero for thirty eight.
Not bad, right? He couldn't expect immediate success after all. The club had been a good warm up. He should have gone on kissing expeditions forever ago. Why hadn't he tried it in high school? On second thought, that really wasn't such a mystery.
He would consider giving it a try when school resumed for spring semester, but there wasn't going to be a spring semester for him because he was going to fucking die if he didn't find his true love in a hurry. On the positive side, if he lived, he wouldn’t ever need to go on kissing expeditions again because he would have already found his true love.
And that was heartening, after seeing all the mushiness around him, the slow movement of the pack and his buddies at college as they all settled into something or happily drifted around. Stiles had tried that. Found out quickly, to his eternal frustration, that he wasn't very good at it. He had shaken off the Lydia thing, but not the eternity thing. He just couldn't seem to find anyone who wanted him eternally.
Yeah, he was only twenty-one. He'd be way less stressed about that if he didn't live a life that could turn to death in very sudden, terrifying ways—nevermind all the non-paranormal ways that could get him just as easily.
Bailing on the club, waving to Robbie on his way out, Stiles climbed back into his Jeep and tried to decide what to do next while he checked his phone to see if he'd missed anything.
It was a testament to his life that he didn't jump when someone tapped on the window. He even knew that particular tap-tap-taptap. Hitting the button to open the window, not bothering to look up as he skimmed an email about a class he'd wanted to take, he said, "Hi, Isaac."
"You totally should have punched that last dude."
Stiles sighed. "What part of 'leave me the hell alone' do none of you understand?"
"I'm just following orders," Isaac replied, smoothing down the maroon scarf Allison had given him as a birthday present the year before. "I was perfectly happy playing Call of Duty. Orders are orders."
"I'm going to kill Scott," Stiles muttered.
Isaac opened his mouth, then snapped it shut again. "Let me in."
Stiles heaved an aggrieved sigh, but unlocked the doors so Isaac could slide inside. "You better not try to make me go home."
"While we all wish that was possible, I know better, unlike some idiots I could name," Isaac replied. "Where are we going next?"
"Food. Diner?"
"Diner," Isaac agreed, and plugged in his own phone, calling up music that made Stiles want to beat his head against the steering wheel.
"You have shitty taste in music."
"You have shitty plans."
"Whatever, it's a great plan," Stiles muttered. "You're just jealous."
"I kiss people way more often than you on the average day."
Stiles took a right turn sharper than necessary when Isaac was distracted by picking what song to torture him with next. He smiled brightly when Isaac's head thwacked against the glass, pasted on his best innocent look when Isaac glared at him. "You should have stayed at home playing Call of Duty instead of doing Scott's bidding."
"It's not—" Isaac snapped his mouth shut, shook his head. "Believe me, I tried."
Shooting him a quizzical look that Isaac ignored, Stiles huffed and focused on his driving. The diner was mostly empty when they arrived, as it tended to be that time of night at that time of year. A group of four—two women, two men—was coming out as they headed in, and Stiles leapt on the opportunity. "Kisses!" He lightly grabbed the shoulders of the first guy and planted one on him, getting chapstick and a hint of chili for his efforts. That startled the rest of them long enough Stiles managed to steal more kisses—until he got to the last one, the second woman, who covered his face with her hand and slammed his head back against the door jam.
Isaac moved in front of him. "Sorry, folks. He's drunk and prone to being too affectionate. No harm meant." He didn't move until they had stomped out, then took Stiles's arm and led him to a booth all the way in the back well away from the few other people in the diner. "You do realize that most would consider what you're doing sexual harassment."
"Yes, I know," Stiles said grumpily, folding his arms on the table and burying his aching head in them. "Needs must, Isaac. I'm not just going to sit around and wait for Lydia to maybe come up with a solution. Better to do something than nothing, etc etc."
"What'll it be?" a waiter asked tiredly. Stiles lifted his head just enough to smile up at the man and say, "Coffee, black, and the French toast plate, eggs scrambled."
"I'll have the roast beef, water," Isaac said, and when the waiter had gone asked Stiles, "How's your head?"
Stiles grumbled it was fine, even though it felt more like an egg smashed against a wall. Whatever, he took worse from his own team all the time when they decided the best way to get him out of harm's way was to throw him on or at something. Werewolves.
"So this is what you're going to keep doing?" Isaac asked. "Kissing random people all over town, taking the random hit for harassment—assault, I daresay—until something works or you die a little earlier than planned?"
"You don't have a whole lot of room to go judging people's life plans, buddy," Stiles said. "Or do you want to talk about your ex-girlfriend?"
Isaac shot him a nasty look, one he'd refined since his high school days and thankfully usually reserved for threats in need of death. "You could have noticed sooner she was a faerie."
"Pixie."
"Whatever," Isaac grumbled. "Are you sure your head is okay?"
Stiles heaved a sigh and sat all the way up. "If you're hoping one stupid knock to the head is going to halt my kissing expedition, you had best extinguish said hopes now."
"We already have enough weirdness in our lives, why do you have to heap more upon it?" Isaac scowled at the salt and pepper shakers until their food arrived, then began to eat in typical Isaac fashion: like he feared it would be taken away from him if he took too long to bolt it down.
Stiles would mock, but they all had habits they couldn't shake. It was more fun to mock Isaac's taste in music anyway. "My brand of weird is awesome, don't even bother trying to deny it. My weirdness does not come with pain and torture and death."
"Just insanity," Isaac groused. "I can't wait until it's somebody else's turn to watch you, because I'm just going to start letting you get yourself beat up."
Stabbing his fork, loaded with French toast, in Isaac's direction, Stiles replied, "Like you've tried to stop anyone from hitting me all night, Stalker Junior. Shove it. I have roughly four days left to find my true love. How the hell would you do it if you were in my place?"
"I'd at least start with the people I've ever crushed on or had a particularly good time with," Isaac said, then paused to take a bite of roast beef and mashed potatoes. He narrowed his eyes at Stiles. "Then I'd move on to anyone I ever had a hate crush on."
"I don't have crushes, or hate crushes, or any type of crush," Stiles said, stabbing at his scrambled eggs, hating to admit it. He'd burned out fast on the playing around thing, and usually his life was too full of danger and recovery to do something as ordinary as date. His only real crush had been Lydia, and of the few people he'd been with … eh. He hadn't thought about a single one of them since being told about his curse. He supposed he could track them down for the sake of double checking, but they were all hours away at school. Way more logical that his true love was in town.
He hoped. Not that it mattered, he had every confidence Lydia would come through and he probably was wasting his time … but who could resist the lure of a true love? And how the fuck else was he ever going to find his? He didn't have Scott's luck, or Lydia's … Lydia-ness.
"You're dumb," Isaac said. "But you're not usually this dumb. On the other hand, you can be willfully dense."
"Did Scott tell you to therapy me while you pretended at bodyguard? Cause you suck at both. Stop trying to be helpful and just go back to being Silent and Broody 2.0. My plan is fantastic and there's not a single one of you who could stop me even if it wasn't." He shoved another forkful of scrambled eggs into his mouth, then muttered around them, "Seriously, shut up or I won't pay for your food."
Isaac heaved a long sigh, but otherwise remained silent.
*~*~*
One day before his doom, Stiles sat at his desk with an icepack pressed to his forehead, trolling the internet for a glass coffin he could get shipped overnight cause if he was going down he was going down enthusiastically tacky.
The door creaked open, and Stiles slumped at the familiar tread. "Go away."
"We found the hunters," Derek said gruffly. "They came here to confirm that the Argents had gone rogue and, once confirmed, kill them."
Stiles jerked up and around, ice pack dropping forgotten to the floor to land in some laundry he really needed to get around to washing or shoving in his closet or something. Except he was going to be dead(ish) soon, so what did it matter? He laughed. "So what, they thought cursing me would keep the werewolves sufficiently distracted enough to give them a crack at Chris and Allison? Are they stupid?"
Derek shrugged. "Obviously."
"I hope Allison tore them apart. Did you make the crazy chick undo her damned curse?"
"It's not—it doesn't work that way." Derek moved further into the room, leaned against the wall that gave him full view and easy access to both door and window. Stiles had learned in his senior year to make sure those pathways were always clear. "Curses can't be undone, just broken. Lydia has it covered, if you don't get yourself killed kissing everybody first, which you would deserve."
Shrugging, Stiles retrieved the icepack and pressed it to his forehead and wondered if his stomach could stand a couple more ibuprofen. "Whatever. I've pretty much given up, anyway. Two hundred and nineteen failures seems to be pretty firmly in the 'not going to work' end of things. My stupid true love probably lives in China or fucking Narnia, assuming I have one at all." He slammed the page down button with particular vehemence, made a derisive noise at the price summary, and tabbed over to a different page. "Do you think I should go with frosted glass etchings? What about colored glass, it's not that much more."
"There's something seriously wrong with you."
"Screw you," Stiles replied. "If I'm going down, it's with style. You can put me in one of your many tragic, abandoned bolt holes and glare broodingly through the glass at my sad, beautiful face. You'll be a better guardian than seven dwarves or a castle of sleeping people." He tabbed over to another page, accidentally went too far and pulled up the one he had open on fairytale curses. Tons of them, and no one was entirely certain if the curses had been stolen from the tales or if the tales had borrowed them from reality. And most curses ran their course, were never broken. The few that had been the victims were usually a Scott with an Allison.
Stiles blinked rapidly, refusing to give in to panic or tears after he had been so fucking great about resisting them so far. He was not going down crying, goddammit. "Stupid," he muttered. "Why couldn't I get a cool curse? No, I had to get True Love's Kiss. Two hundred and nineteen kisses—"
"Stop whining," Derek rolled his eyes as only the Hale family could. "Lydia is close to breaking it, which you would know if you hadn't been gallivanting around town kissing everything that more or less had a pulse."
"I'm allowed to be distraught!" Stiles threw out his arms—sending the icepack right out the open window, whoops. "I'm going to fall asleep tomorrow! I'm basically going to die! I've kissed over two hundred people and I still can't find my true love! I'm never going to! I'm going to sleep forever and wither and die because I don't have a true love!"
Derek gave Stiles his with my teeth look. "Please. That's not even trying."
"You don't know! You weren't there! I am a desperate and dying man who has kissed everyone who's come across his path! I kissed my mailman! I kissed Robbie! I kissed the scary woman at the grocery store and the freaky dude at the gas station! I am this close to kissing Greenberg!"
"You can't be that desperate if you haven't resorted to kissing me," Derek snapped—then froze, eyes popping wide, glimmering brilliant blue for the barest moment.
Stiles gaped right back, as a whole lot of little things suddenly struck him. "Oh, my god. She didn't mean Scott. She meant you."
"What?" Derek looked like he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer.
"She said my boyfriend must be soft on me. I thought she meant Scott, but I hadn't Scott all day. You were the one patrolling the woods with me. Oh, my god." Things the others had said filtered back to him, especially all the stupid, annoying shit Isaac had been saying. "You're my hate crush," he breathed.
Derek pinched the bridge of his nose. "I hate you more than anything else in the world."
"Yeah," Stiles agreed, still not able to stop staring. Derek was … a lot of things he had apparently been cataloguing in silence and not communicating to the rest of himself. Bad Stiles. He licked his lips, not quite able to make himself move, because all of a sudden he didn't want to be wrong. He wouldn’t be able to handle it.
They both jumped, Stiles yelping as he fell out of his seat and toppled to the floor, as Lydia banged the door all the way open and stepped in. "I figured out how to circumvent the curse."
Stiles stared at her, stared at Derek. "Fuck it. I got this." He launched himself from the floor, across the room and right up against Derek, throwing his arms around Derek's neck and dragging him down into a kiss. Two hundred and nineteen kisses, and quite a few of them had been good, even excellent. Not a single one was as memorable as number two hundred and twenty, rough and soft all at once, the way only Derek could be, hot enough Stiles half-expected to burn, hand warm and heavy against his back where Stiles's t-shirt had rucked up in his haste, Derek's other hand threaded through his hair to hold him steady. Because Derek always held him steady, be it by literally holding him still or going head to head or just walking silently along as Stiles did most of the talking. He laughed against Derek's mouth as he felt the curse fall away, like mud that had dried and was flaking off with every movement.
Derek gave a soft, low growl and dived back into a kiss that left Stiles feeling punch-drunk with giddiness.
Neither one noticed Lydia roll her eyes and hand a twenty to the Sheriff. "You were right."
"I know my son," the Sheriff replied, smiling as Lydia swept past him, closing the door quietly before he followed her down the stairs.
"Stupid," Stiles said, combing through Derek's crazy-soft hair, running his thumbs behind Derek's ears, down to cup his neck before finally resting his hands on Derek's shoulders. "You could have said—"
"You never considered me," Derek said, shrugging. "I didn't think I gave a damn, until …"
Stiles laughed, fingers twitching, digging into Derek's shoulders, enjoying the way they moved beneath his touch. "Idiots. We're both idiots. Kiss me again. Lots of tongue. This isn't some stupid G-rated fairy—" His renewed laughter was lost in Derek's mouth, and faded away entirely as Derek pressed him gently down onto the bed.