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Derek Hale, father and zoologist at the Beacon Hills Zoological and Research Institute, part-time werewolf, full-time babysitter for his fabulous husband and child, is stumped. Granted, he will always be agreeable to spending free time with the pack. He just isn’t precisely certain how they’d ended up here of all places.
It had to have been Stiles’s idea. No one else would do this to him. For Heaven’s sake, they are seated in the gorilla section. He narrows his eyes at his husband, seated across the table, apparently blissfully ignorant as he sucks down a noxious-looking green slurpee.
Stiles grins at him from across the table, the straw tucked between his teeth, “Don’t be such a Downer Derek, Der.” He reaches over to hand Ricky his crayons, carefully tugging his chair closer to the table, “Here, use lots of yellow and green. Dad loves those two colors.”
Derek scowls and ducks behind his menu, muttering sullenly, “I hate you.”
“No you don’t, boo. Now hush and order.” Stiles smiles at the waitress and points to Derek, “Eyebrows over there is ordering for us.”
Derek looks down at the menu and tries to make sense of the words printed in a font meant to resemble grass. His eyes fall on the word pizza and he figures it’s the safest thing on the menu.
“We’ll have the Brave New World Pizza,” he tells the waitress and looks over at Stiles, who is shaking his head at Derek.
“Where is your sense of adventure? We’re at the freaking Rainforest Cafe and you’re ordering PIZZA?” Stiles turns to look at the waitress and smiles, “We’ll have the Chimi-Cha-Cha to start.”
The waitress smiles, turning away from their group and moving to the table beside them. Erica is sitting sideways in the booth, rubbing her swollen belly absentmindedly while browsing through the menu. Boyd is reading aloud to the twins sitting on the inner curve of the table, and he pauses when they both exclaim loudly at the thought of actual Flying Dragon Pepperoni Pizza.
“Do you think it’s made of real dragons?” Maddy tucks a thumb between her teeth and holds onto her security blanket a bit tighter.
Erica reaches over and guides Maddy’s thumb out of her mouth, “No sucking your thumb, remember?” She passes her fingertips over the bangs falling into her daughter’s eyes, tucking them back. “It’s not real dragons, sweety.”
Matty’s eyes widen, “But Uncle Stiles says the food’s really what it says!” He points to the menu and turns his gaze to Stiles, “You said, right?”
Boyd gives Stiles a look and presses his lips together, “You told my children it was actual dragon?”
Stiles looks down into his glass, tongue chasing the straw around. He frowns and tilts the glass, straw eluding him as he mumbles, “Maybe?”
Erica flicks a straw wrapper at his head, “You’re an idiot. Now I know why they won’t eat their dino nuggets!”
Derek turns to the waitress with a smile, “Can you give us a few more minutes? We wouldn’t want you to witness the murder of my husband.”
“Hey,” Jackson calls down the line of tables, “This is a tropical restaurant, right? Can I get, like, a fish bowl of alcohol?”
“Yeah, rimmed in salt.” Stiles snickers, looking across at Derek, “It’s funny because he’s an a--”
Derek kicks him under the table, which shuts him up pretty quick.
Lydia purses her lips, “It’s also a family establishment. These are your friends. And this is your last warning.”
“What are you going to do, throw me to the gorillas?”
Just as she opens her mouth for an undoubtedly scathing retort, the lights cut out, and there’s a low rumbling, followed by a crack and flash of lightning. The waitress, awkwardly standing to the side of their party, gets lost in the pandemonium.
“Oh, lovely.” Derek mumbles, barely audible over the shrieks of kids throughout the room, “A typhoon.”
Isaac looks down, eyes glowing faintly as Scott and Allison’s four-year-old pats his hand, “It’s not really a real storm, okay?”
“See?” Stiles whispers, meeting bright red eyes in the dark, “Totally a bonding experience.”
“Yes, Stiles. This is a day to remember. I will remember it.” He doesn’t add I will be avenged, but it’s kind of coming across in the fine print.
“Don’t be such a drama queen,” Stiles exclaims, hitting Derek’s arm before reaching over to tap Matty’s left shoulder and laughing as the boy frantically turns his head to try and figure out who did it. He’s still laughing when the lights turn back on and the boy quickly turns to look at Stiles.
“Momma! Uncle Stiles hit me in the dark.” He cries, tugging at his mom’s shirt and Erica gives Stiles a glare before looking at Derek, who kicks him.
“You’re supposed to be on my side!” Stiles tells Derek, outraged.
“Not. Today.” Derek says and points to Erica with his chin.
“I am pregnant, Stiles Stilinski, but I will still kick your ass if you don’t behave.”
Diego gasps and whispers loudly, “Mommy! Tia Erica said a bad word!”
Allison, looking exhausted and typing away on her cell phone furiously, glances up. “I am here for the margaritas. Derek, control your pack.”
Derek sputters, “My pack, why are they only my pack when they do something wrong?!”
“Because,” Allison glares, pointing at him menacingly, “you’re the one that had the brilliant idea to bite Reproductive Reyes all those years ago.”
Erica gasps, “You b-”
Stiles whispers, “Shots fired,” under his breath as Lydia clears her throat and says, “Alright, you two, knock it off!”
Danny’s eyebrows come together in a typically artful expression of concern, “Guys, are we going to order, or are you seriously going to go Mortal Kombat in the middle of the mall? Keeping in mind that I refuse to be a part of another Cheesecake Factory-level incident.”
Stiles waves his hands around, “We’re not to speak of the Cheesecake Factory Incident of 2016 remember?! We made a pact! All of us!”
Derek shakes his head, helping Ricky properly color a Jaguar between the lines. “I will never look at peanut butter whipped cream the same way again.”
“Inbreeding,” Jackson mutters, “it has to be inbreeding.”
“Jackson, I will divorce you before we even get married. I am a woman on the edge, and there is not nearly enough tequila in the world for--”
“I’m hungry.” Ricky’s lip wibbles, and suddenly there is a problem. A low, staggered keening takes up from every juvenile throat at the table (including Scott and Isaac), and if they don’t order soon, every adult knows that there will be a flood.
“Sorry we’re late!”
Every head turns towards the new arrivals.
Melissa rolls her eyes, “We wouldn’t be late if you had just used the valet parking, John.”
“I’m not paying some teenage delinquent eight dollars to park our car, Mel. Really, it’s ridiculous. I can park the car just fine.”
“Yes, of course you can... 5 blocks away!”
“It’s good exercise, and…what happened here?”
And that’s when the floodgates fly open.
“Make them feed us!” Ricky cries.
“Mommy said a bad word!”
“Mommy said, like, five bad words!”
“Tio Jackson is just bad.”
“‘ita, sit over here!!!”
“Tio Stiles is a lying liar who lies!”
“What’s a keteela, ‘ito?”
“Well, I’m a whiskey man, mys--oof. Bad. Keteela is also bad.”
The nine adults at the table exchange glances and avert their focus to the menus. They are thoroughly terrified of the Sheriff, and Stiles is still secretly afraid of being grounded. All of them are secretly afraid of being grounded. The Cheesecake Incident, man...
Melissa moves to take a seat near little Diego and reaches into her purse. She pulls out a zippered pouch and sets it on the table, “All right! Everyone who owes the Swear Jar, you know the drill. Put your money in and pass it down.”
Jackson grabs it first and puts in a fifty, glances up at Lydia, who lifts an eyebrow at him, and deposits another bill before passing it to Allison. For a moment she just looks at it, then reluctantly pops in the two twenties Scott hands over and then tosses the pouch to Stiles, who empties his pockets, depositing a stick of gum, a condom, and a quarter on the table, finally reaching over and sticking a hand in Derek’s jeans and pulling out his wallet.
Derek mutters, “Why am I paying for your sins?”
Siles grins sheepishly, “Love?" At Derek’s skeptical look, he mutters, “I forgot my wallet.”
Derek rolls his eyes, “You knew we were going to dinner and you ‘forgot’ your wallet?” He sighs, leaning in to speak into Ricky’s ear, “Your dad is a sneaky sneak.”
Ricky whispers back, “He’s also lying, papa.”
Stiles gulps audibly and puts in a fifty before handing it over to Erica, who grumbles as she digs into her diaper bag and drops another fifty in before handing the bag over to the Sheriff.
The table is quiet as Melissa puts the clutch back into her purse. “My, your parents were naughty, weren’t they? What say you about getting some grub?”
The children cheer, and almost on cue the waitress appears. She jots down all of their orders quickly-”Fwying Dwagon Pizza with no weal dwagons pwease”-and rushes back to the kitchen.
Just in time for another typhoon.
This time the children are not alone in their cheering, the animatronic gorillas behind their table moving mechanically. They can’t tell if the Sheriff is playing along with the kids or is actually enjoying the spectacle, but Melissa is laughing and clapping along with the madness.
“Damn it! They don’t even make that noise!” Derek grumbles, ripping the wrapper to his straw into shreds.
“Wouldn’t you know, Monkey Man? You are amongst your own kind.”
Derek rubs at his temples, “Gorillas are not monkeys.” The statement carrying with it the edge of ‘I’ve explained this to you many times before.’
Stiles throws back his head and imitates the gorillas still roaring behind him. He pounds clenched fists against his chest, crowing from green-tinged lips, “I’m the Alpha!”
Derek is stuck between the need to kiss his errant husband silly, or stuff one of the cloth napkins into his gaping maw.
“This is the last time I’m going anywhere with you people. I don’t need anything else on my record.” Danny rubs the heel of his palm against his forehead, shooting Lydia the side-eye when she scoffs at him.
“Cheer up, Danny-boy!” Stiles exclaims from the front table, “They dropped the charges last time, remember?”
“Please say that a little louder, Stiles. It’s not like it was nepotism.” The sheriff drums his fingers against the tabletop before picking up a pink crayon and helping Ricky with his coloring.
Lydia’s perfectly-manicured nails stab out some no-doubt vitally important message and she bares her pretty teeth in a smile, “But Danny,” she coos, “it’s family night.”
“And family means no one gets left behind or forgotten.” Matty sagely proclaims, petting his Mommy’s belly, trying to feel the babies kicking. Erica guides his hand to the top of her belly, and the four year old looks awestruck for a moment.
“Maddy! Maddy! I felt ‘em kick!” He exclaims and Maddy practically climbs over him in an attempt to get to Erica’s belly.
“Momma! I wanna feel ‘em too!”
Ricky looks over longingly and chews his lip. He sniffs and goes back to his coloring, clearly not as into it as before.
John ducks to look at his grandson’s face, “What’s up, buddy?”
Ricky shakes his head, “Nuffin.” He reaches for the green crayon and scribbles his name on the placemat picture. Ricky looks up and hands the picture to John, “‘s for you,’dzia.”
“Thank you.” John smiles at him, “You know where I’m gonna put this?”
“Where?”
“On the fridge,” he pauses to think, “right next to the macaroni landscape you made for grandma.”
The waitress comes over to refill everyone’s drinks and Stiles takes a moment to admire the seating arrangement. It had taken them five tries before they figured out something that worked well for all of them and left no one vulnerable to murder or dismemberment. He glances down at Ricky, slumping his shoulders beside him before he reaches out to take the purple crayon. For a moment, Ricky latches onto it, clearly developing a mood, but Stiles taps his little hand with his thumb, "Papa wants to draw something for you. Is that okay?”
Slowly, Ricky uncurls his hand, and Stiles takes a spare napkin and sets about his drawing. When he’s finished, he slides it over quietly so that Ricky--just Ricky--can see it.
His pointer finger traces the stick figure family--Derek, with bared fangs and claws, marked with ‘Grr! says Daddy’--then over the figure of himself, and then over to Papa, who has a circle in his belly labeled ‘Pup’.
“We gettin’ a doggy?” Ricky says, a curious new light in his eyes. It’s not a little brother or sister, but it’s not bad.
Stiles shakes his head, “Nope.” He pops the ‘p’, lips a deep green, and grins.
In a moment or two, Ricky gets it. Really gets it. For a second, Stiles thinks the boy might pop, and he shushes him quickly. “It’s a surprise, okay? A surprise!”
The little boy sits on his hands, face turning red as the excitement builds and builds. Derek looks at the child with concern, wondering if he’s having some sort of allergic reaction. He glances at his husband, but if Stiles’ gigantic grin is any indication, Derek doesn’t want to know what he told their child.
The food arrives soon after, pizza slices being passed around. Erica asks for an extra side of buffalo sauce because that is a thing she craves non-stop, and Boyd looks exasperated as he cut chicken strips into smaller pieces for Maddy. She was shy, much like him, but had Erica’s temper when riled up. Her brother was much more independent, cramming pieces of pizza into his mouth one after another, but sticking close to Erica.
Ricky was eating his food slowly, casting glances at both of his parents. Papa said it was a secret, the baby, but he almost couldn’t contain himself! He wriggled and squirmed and spilled ranch down his shirt, and his food rarely made it into his mouth.
Stiles looks over at Derek, who is finally allowing his muscles to relax, apparently one at a time. There was a chance they’d have to hose down their child when they got home, but Ricky rarely ever fought when it came to bath time.
Small blessings.
“You okay, baby?”
Derek cracks an eye open, as if Stiles may, entirely by his own design, spontaneously combust and have them all expelled from the restaurant in a shower of gunfire and pyrotechnics the likes of which Beacon Mall has never seen nor shall ever see again.
You know. Just another day that ends in ‘y’.
“I’m fine. Glad that we’ll be out of here soon.”
And Stiles starts to chuckle which, in the comfort of their own home, is one of his favorite sounds. In public, it might as well be a sign of the end of days. “Oh, babe.” Stiles grins, “Did you forget about the gift shop?" Every one of Derek’s muscles seems to ratchet right back into hyper-tension, and Stiles reaches across the table, his grin dying down into a gentle turn of the lips. “Hey, cheer up, Buttercup.”
“I can’t. You have actually managed to land us in the one restaurant where the terror isn’t over when the check is paid.”
“Well, gee. I was hoping to save this for later, but...if you promise to cheer the f…frog up...you can help us pick out a onesie.”
“What.”
Stiles holds up his unoccupied hand, into which Ricky makes a direct deposit, non-transferrable high-five. Ricky finally bursts, exclaiming loud enough for the entire restaurant to hear that he was going to be a big brother. Stiles laughs, hands covering his face.
Derek hisses, “Are you fucking shitting me right now?!”
A collective gasp goes around the tables, followed by the kids screaming in unison, “Swear jar!”
“Guys, I think we’ll give tio a little break just this once.”
When they finally make it out of the gift shop, not one but two onesies (and countless other knickknacks) later, Derek finally lets out a sigh of relief.
Stiles notices and laughs, “Just wait until we go to Disneyland.”
“Yay, a giant rodent in hotpants. Daddy’s so excited.”