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“I’m worried about her,” Derek says, his face twisting in concern.
Stiles is debating the best way to get his laptop to run faster, so he only half-hears what Derek is saying. “Worried about who?”
“It’s been two months,” Derek continues, “or close to it. She’s probably pretty close to giving birth and I’m not sure if she has a safe place to do it. It’s supposed to rain all week.”
Stiles has just discarded “throwing it out the window” as an option for dealing with his laptop–he cannot afford a new one–when he registers what it is that Derek’s said. He whips around from his perch on the barstool and nearly sends his water bottle careening to the ground. “Wait, what? Giving birth? Who’s pregnant? Is it Cora? Oh God, is it Lydia? Wait, no, I’d have noticed that.”
Derek finally turns to look at him–he’s been staring broodily out the window for the past ten minutes–and gives Stiles the most patently unimpressed bitch face on the planet. “I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about Cocoa.”
This is a new name. “Cocoa,” Stiles repeats, hoping Derek will take the clue and elaborate.
“The black cat who lives in the alley?” Derek says, like this is something Stiles should just know. “The one I’ve been feeding every day for the past four months?”
“I know you think I know everything about everyone, big guy, and I do appreciate that assessment of my abilities, but I have actually been more concerned with college recently,” Stiles points out.
Derek rolls his eyes, but thankfully doesn’t press the point. He turns back to the window and fixes his glare there.
“So why don’t you take her to the vet or something?” Stiles asks.
“She won’t let me get near enough,” Derek says. “She’ll eat the food I let out, but she still won’t let me pet her.”
He sounds so sad about this. Stiles tries very hard not to find it adorable, and fails utterly. “I’m sure she’ll be fine,” he says, in an effort to make Derek feel better. “You can probably just put out a bucket or something for her? A makeshift shelter that’ll stay dry?”
“Yeah,” Derek says, still staring off into the alley. “Maybe.”
***
Stiles returns the next week to find a loud black cat and four tiny, mewling, equally black kittens lounging on a blanket pallet in Derek’s guest room.
“Not a word,” Derek orders him.
Stiles holds up his hands and smirks. “I didn’t say anything.”
“For once,” Derek mutters.
Stiles lets him have that one. Besides, he didn’t say anything about no pictures, and Stiles is more than happy to snap roughly 300 photos of Derek Hale and the tiny black kittens and save them all for when he needs to coo over the most adorable thing in the world.