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Early February in Beacon Hills usually means warm and balmy weather, typical for early spring, with the occasional need for a sweater, maybe a light jacket for the chilly winds on the rare colder days, but there’s never snow.
This winter, however, the weather gods in Northern California are being unusually capricious, sporadically switching back and forth between toasty warm and vicious cold seemingly every other day. This resulted in an abnormally large influx of flu cases to the Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital. It seems half the high school population at BHHS becomes contaminated overnight, and Melissa McCall is woefully overworked for a whole week. The flu eventually makes its rounds among the human members of the Beacon Hills Pack, and Stiles, the last of them all to fall victim to the virus, has been confined to his room for the past three days.
Derek, in his ongoing efforts to be a good boyfriend, has been visiting Stiles every single of those three days, appearing like clockwork on the Stilinskis’ front stoop every morning at quarter to seven as the Sheriff is getting ready to leave for work, armed with a large thermos of homemade soup and an assortment of Stiles’s favorite snack foods, and then departing dutifully under Sheriff Stilinski’s watchful gaze every evening at eight, only to sneak back into Stiles’s room via his more accustomed route—through the window—to watch over Stiles, not budging until the Sheriff comes up to check on his son before going to bed himself.
Stiles slowly progresses from weak and delirious with fever to conscious but queasy and miserable to antsy and restless as he recovers from his ailments, and by Sunday morning he is loudly proclaiming himself back in perfect health and is all but vibrating out of his skin with pent up energy, jumping at the prospect of getting out of the house at last.
Sheriff Stilinski, who just so happens to have this Sunday off, has other plans for his son though. When Derek shows up at their doorstep that morning just after eight after a summoning text from Stiles, the sheriff politely but firmly sends him away, citing his resolve to reinstate the traditional Stilinski Father-Son Bonding Sundays and paying no heed to the stream of loud protests and pitiful whining from Stiles.
Derek shrugs and turns to leave, but Stiles yelps for him desperately, and, after much pleading and needling and bartering and finally outright bribing (three steak dinners—with real, red meat steaks—and a meat lover’s for their next pizza night; Sheriff Stilinski is a shrewd fox), finally manages to negotiate the evening off to have his ‘date thingie’ with Derek.
So Derek leaves the Stilinski men to their bonding activities—John looking incredibly pleased with himself and Stiles muttering darkly under his breath about all-veggie lasagne and pwning his dad at Monopoly as revenge for ruining his ‘awesome plans’—and heads back to his apartment to while away the time until five pm, which is when Stiles will finally be released from his father’s clutches.
He changes into a warm hoodie and some old sweats and tries to settle down to read, but finds he can’t concentrate, then tries to watch television, but the soaps and news programs that are on either irritate him to no end or bore him to distraction, and he’s not about to watch any of the movies the pack left lying around from previous movie nights by himself. He’s not that pathetic.
He ends up sprawled sideways on his couch, staring listlessly at the ceiling until his stomach growls its protest sometime in the early afternoon, he doesn’t know when exactly. Then he drags himself up long enough to make the sloppiest of PB&J sandwiches and scarf it down before slumping back on the couch.
The thing is, he misses Stiles. Yes, he’s seen him every day since he became sick, but the whole time Stiles had been too weak and fuddled from his fever to do more that sniffle and whimper piteously at Derek from his cocoon of blankets and demand cuddles and treats and that Derek read to him; and Derek had been too much of a gentleman to initiate anything beyond chaste pecks on the forehead and soothing backrubs—not when Stiles wasn’t in his right mind.
Sure, the three days of nearly constant cuddling were nice, but he really misses Stiles’s kisses and touches and wandering hands, his ridiculous innuendos and stupid jokes, and his terrible attempts at seducing Derek and instigating what he insists upon calling ‘sexytimes’ (which are definitely not happening before Stiles’s eighteenth birthday in a couple of months; Derek has had many a stilted and excruciatingly awkward conversation with Sheriff Stilinski on this subject; they have an understanding. And Derek was going to wait anyway).
What Derek misses most of all, though, is the way Stiles would look at him sometimes when he thinks Derek isn’t paying attention or after he finishes laughing when Derek says something he thinks is particularly ridiculous, the way his face would go all soft and sweet and fond, with that something in his eyes that Derek is still too afraid to try to put a name to yet.
He gets tired of his own moping by about two thirty and spends the next hour working out in his living room, ends up doing around five hundred each of push-ups and pull-ups and sit-ups. He’s thoroughly soaked with sweat afterwards, and though he had only limited success in working off his agitation, at least his muscles were pleasantly heated, and the post-exercise endorphin rush has him feeling loose and centered.
He takes a nice long shower, jerks off, cleans up and gets dressed in his good jeans, a button-down and the forest green sweater Cora sent him for Christmas. He hesitates before reaching for the bundle of multicolored wool tucked into one corner of his closet, pulling out the ridiculously long and fluffy and, well, flamboyant scarf that Stiles proudly presented to him on New Year's Eve, crowing about his 'super awesome knitting prowess'. Derek huffs and wraps the scraggy, lumpy thing twice around his neck, tucking the slightly wonky ends under the lapels of his favorite leather jacket. He snorts at the two roughly foot-long excess scarf-tails peeking out past the bottom of his jacket, trailing their vaguely misshapen tips over his crotch.
Derek's not exactly a big fan of scarves, as he’s always found that prolonged contact with wool tends to make him itch; plus werewolves tend to run hot anyway so it's not like he needs them. He can still catch a faint hint of Stiles if he buries his nose into the soft folds of this scarf, though. The wool tickles his nose when he goes to do just that, but he finds that he doesn't really mind.
His cell phone tells him that it's only a couple minutes past four, still quite a while before he really needs to leave for his date. He heads out anyway, opting to make the half-hour trek to the Stilinski household on foot.
When he steps out into the street, he's surprised to find that it had started snowing at some point, probably in the late morning soon after he reached home judging from the thin dusting of white already accumulated on tree leaves and roofs and the top of cars. The steadily falling snowflakes are small and feathery and quick to melt, barely make a pitter-patter as they land, even to Derek’s wolfy ears.
The sky is overcast with uneven clusters of dark grey clouds, but patches of blue are still visible in between. The air is chilly, but not unpleasantly so. Derek expels a slow breath and watches it turn misty white in the cold, then burrows his face in the scarf and stuffs his hands in his jacket pockets before embarking on his walk.
The wind is cold and harsh and comes in intermittent bursts, chilling his face and insistently brushing snowflakes everywhere to melt on his nose and against his cheeks and to get caught in his eyelashes, and before long there’s a light powdering of white on his black jacket and in the fuzz of his scarf.
The streets from his apartment complex to the Stilinskis’ house are typically very quiet, especially on weekend afternoons, but today the snow has drawn out hordes of excited children, followed by indulgent parents and restless, yapping dogs. Derek makes his way down block after block and manages not to trip over any toddlers, expertly blocking out the multitude of sounds, different voices and barking and the excited shrieking of children from the playground some five blocks away, and even remembers to nod and smile when people greets him.
He makes it to Stiles’s street without too much incident, only having to help return one overly adventurous small dog to its correct owner and stop to make awkward small talk thrice, so he counts it as a win. The house soon comes into view, and he halts hesitantly two doors down from his destination.
He’s nearly half an hour early. All things considered, he has no desire to deprive the sheriff of precious father-son time—John Stilinski is a good man and loves his son very much, Derek holds him in high regard and the sheriff has been kind to Derek, even after the big, terrifying reveal that Derek is in fact dating his a-few-months-from-legal-but-still-definitely-underage son, and even Stiles himself has admitted on several occasions that he’s been missing spending quality time with his old man. So he decides to hang around to wait.
Except then there is suddenly whooping laughter, bright and brazen and infectious and familiar, and, before he fully realizes what’s going on, the sound has already drawn him right around the Stilinskis’ house to the back to their slightly unkempt backyard.
It’s Stiles, of course, decked out in an oversized red hoodie and sweatpants and the grimy pair of tennis shoes Derek has seen gathering dust by their back door since his first visit, flailing with his whole body and all but running around in circles like an oversized, gangly and particularly bouncy puppy. He looks so happy and healthy, better than he has in days, and when the sun peeks out momentarily from behind the clouds to shine on him, he practically glows. He has his face tilted up toward the sky, eyes closed and smiling, and Derek feels his chest tighten with some unnamed emotion.
“Oh my god I just caught one!” Stiles is shouting gleefully now, the words warbled because he still has his mouth wide open, trying to catch more snowflakes with his tongue. Derek couldn’t quite hold back the huff of amused laughter that burst out of him as he also tips his head back to inspect the clouds and onslaught of falling snow.
He hears footsteps and the crunch of grass and leaves as a forewarning, and in the next moment these’s a solid shape barreling into him from the side. And then there Stiles is, pressing into him and wrapping both arms around his middle, squeezing him hard in an enthusiastic embrace.
“Derek! Look it's snowing Derek! Can you believe it? This is the best day ever!” Stiles seems even more excited than the children Derek had run across earlier, cheeks ruddy from excitement and the cold and bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet even as he’s still clinging to Derek’s midriff. He’s breathless with joyous laughter, even though his voice is still a bit scratchy and nasal, one last lingering reminder of his previous illness. “Wait, you're here already? What time is it?” Stiles pulls back slightly and squints up at him in suspicion from where he’s tucked his face under Derek’s chin. “Oh my god, were you skulking? Okay, be honest, were you being a creeper again just now?”
Derek hears a snort and turns in time to see Stiles’s father give them a droll look and an exasperated eye roll from where he's been standing at the other end of their backyard, and then John is waving jauntily and heading for the porch door. Derek hears a quiet, “curfew's ten, you know the rules,” before there is the sound of the door clicking shut.
The noise has Stiles swerving his head around to look too, and then he laughs quietly and calls out a, “thanks, Daddy-O!” toward the house before invading Derek’s personal space again. “My dad is the best dad,” he sighs happily into Derek’s neck, and then, after a brief pause, “why, this is a lovely scarf you’re wearing, Mr. Hale,” he says coyly, grinning and batting his eyelashes at Derek. There are fine little ice crystals clinging to those long sooty lashes, and Derek is powerless against those eyes.
He dutifully plays along. “My sweetheart made it for me,” he lowers his eyes demurely, and hears Stiles snigger.
“My, but you are a lucky young man, Mr. Hale,” Stiles continues in his falsetto, voice quivering with barely suppressed giggles. “Such craftsmanship! Your sweetheart must have very talented hands.”
“That he does,” Derek murmurs, doesn’t even have to look to know there’s a wicked glint in Stiles’s eyes.
Stiles wiggles his mitten-clad fingers and cracks up. “Oh man, your face,” he says after his tittering tapers off, and then adds, smiling bashfully and looking a bit more serious, “Thanks for wearing it.”
“’S warm.” Derek says, tugging at the scarf with one hand, suddenly feeling shy too.
They both shuffle their feet awkwardly until Stiles clears his throat. “There's snow in your hair you doofus,” he raises a mittened hand to clumsily paw at the top of Derek’s head.
Derek ducks away and shrugs lopsidedly, relaxing into familiar routine as they resume their usual rapport. “Pot, kettle,” he returns easily. It’s true, anyway. Despite Stiles having his hood up, there are tufts of hair sticking out in every direction and they are speckled with flecks of white. It’s kind of hilariously cute.
“There's snow in your stubble. Dude, there’s snow in your eyebrows,” Stiles shoots back, waggling his own eyebrows and cackling with maniacal glee.
Derek rolls his eyes affectionately. “Oh my god, so it’s a contest now. Wow, to think I walked in the snow for over half an hour just to have this conversation with you,” he says in the driest tone he can manage, punching Stiles lightly on the shoulder.
“Aww, admit it babe, it was so worth it for a glimpse of my adorable face and slammin’ bod, amiright?” Stiles elbows him back.
Derek doesn’t dignify that with an answer, but he doesn’t complain about the nicknames either. Stiles evidently takes notice and smiles down at the scruffy toes of his shoes.
The wind chooses that moment to pick up again, and a sudden strong gust, heavy with snow, has Stiles squeaking and sputtering.
“There's snow up my nose,” he complains, sniffling, and wipes at his face with both hands. “Bleargh. Cold.” He’s actually shivering a little now, trying to burrow closer into the warmth of Derek’s body.
Derek wordlessly unzips his jacket to let Stiles nestle against him, shielding him from the wind, then untucks one end of his scarf and unwinds one coil to drape it around Stiles's neck, ensconcing him further.
He uses the scarf to reel Stiles’s face closer until their noses bump, and then takes the opportunity to rub the tips of their noses together in an Eskimo kiss, surprising a giggle out of Stiles. Then Stiles groans and rests his forehead against Derek’s.
“Oh god, we're totally that couple,” he moans in mortification. But he doesn't pull back, only snuggles closer, settling his arms low around Derek’s waist under his leather jacket and humming contentedly.
“Yeah? So?” Derek smothers a grin into Stiles’s hair.
There’s a considering silence, and then Stiles lets out a guffaw. “Hella awesome, is what that is. Now kiss me. I want to see if nosy old Mr. G next door is gonna call my dad to complain about lewd behavior.”
Derek snorts but obliges anyway, pressing a slow, mostly chaste kiss against Stiles's wind-chapped lips. Stiles makes a soft sound in his throat and pulls him back for more, tilting his head to deepen the kiss so he can lick into Derek’s mouth, sweet and languid. The tip of Stiles’s nose is icy cold where it's pressing into Derek's right cheek and the wind is still howling, but Derek feels a buzzing warmth spread all the way down to his toes, almost like all the blood in his veins are replaced by molten lava, warming him from the inside out.
“Mm. I missed this. I missed us,” Stiles sighs into his mouth some minutes/hours/possibly days later. Snow is still falling silently around them, and they’re still bundled together, Stiles’s hands stroking lazy circles up and down Derek’s spine and digging into the softness of his sweater underneath the jacket.
“Me too,” Derek agrees readily, and steals another biting kiss. And they kiss, and kiss, until Derek feels the light shift behind his closed eyelids, and he looks up to realize the sun is setting, and there is a convenient parting in the clouds to let them see the magnificent play of color and light.
Stiles looks amused when he turns to see what the distraction is. His profile is painted gold by the sunset and he's glorious to behold. “Oh my god,” he says, sounding smug as you please. “Kissing in the snow bathed in the final blaze of the setting sun. Yup, we are now officially a cliché. Yay.”
“Go us,” Derek says on a low chuckle, and leans in to kiss him again.