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“It isn’t real.”
Derek blinks, startled, and looks up from where he had definitely not been staring at Stiles’ long fingers wrapped around the neck of a beer bottle. “What isn’t?”
Stiles leans in closer, eyes darting around like he’s afraid someone might be listening in, as he stage whispers. He is definitely at least buzzed right now. “Me and Scott. Our whole relationship. We faked it.”
That is... a lot to try to unpack all at once.
Derek’s known Scott and Stiles for a few months now, ever since they moved into the apartment building his mother owns. Derek lives one floor above them and acts as general manager and handyman for the place. Other than himself, all the other tenants are either couples or families, one of his mother’s stipulations for renters.
For these last several months Derek has believed Scott and Stiles to be one of the most loving and solid couples he’s ever met.
Now here he is, standing over a barbecue at the neighborhood block party, being told by a somewhat tipsy Stiles that the relationship is a lie.
“I’m sorry, what?” he asks, and then hisses as he smells one of the burgers he’s been flipping start to burn. He takes it off the grill and puts it onto a plate with the others.
Stiles takes a swig of his beer and then leans in a little closer. “We both really needed to find a new apartment, and this one was perfect. Great location, and way cheaper than anything else we could find, so...” He shrugs. And then his eyes go comically wide. “Oh god, please don’t tell your mom.”
“I...” Derek has no idea what to say. Stiles and Scott are just friends? Stiles... doesn’t have a serious, live-in boyfriend?
“Okay but seriously, we’re cool, right?” Stiles looks a little panicked now and suddenly a lot more sobered up. “I only told you because you and I are, like, bros now, or whatever. Or, well, you let me chill on your couch and eat all your stock-piled girl scout cookies. And you don’t complain anymore when I call you over just to change the batteries on the smoke detector.”
Derek can’t help himself from responding to that ongoing argument. “If you would just go buy a freaking stepstool--”
“That I would use once every freaking blue moon, when you’re just a floor away? I’m on a budget, Hale.”
Derek swallows. “Right. Which is why you apparently lied to get this apartment.”
Stiles bites his bottom lip and looks down, idly toying with the peeling edges of the label on his beer. “I mean, we really are basically married.”
He’s not wrong, as far as Derek’s been able to tell. Stiles and Scott are attached at the hip, and they move around each other like they’re psychically linked.
Derek turns his full attention back to the barbecue, scowling at a hot dog that’s a little too done. “Ask him out, then. I’m sure he’ll say yes.”
In his periphery he sees Stiles rear back, startled. “Uh. Come again?”
Derek flips a veggie burger and nods a distracted greeting at the couple from the second floor who both salute him in tandem with the hands holding their hard ice teas.
“I won’t rat you out to my mother, I’m not that much of a dick. But you guys are good together, and you obviously wish there was more there. Just ask him out. I can tell you right now he won’t say no.”
Stiles starts choking so hard, Derek makes to leave the grill and do the Heimlich.
But Stiles shakes his head and holds up a hand to stop him. “Sorry. Sorry, I just. Scott has a girlfriend? Who he is super in love with. And the idea of me ever being into the guy who is basically my brother is upsetting on so many levels, dude.”
“Then why are you telling me any of this?” Derek shakes his head, brow furrowed in confusion. “If you aren’t lamenting a lack of romance with the guy you’re pretending to be romantically involved with, then why...”
Stiles grabs the back of his neck, ducking his head, and a blush blooms across the pale skin of cheeks. “No real reason. Sorry. Probably best to forget I ever--”
“Stiles,” Derek interrupts. He sets down his spatula, takes Stiles’ beer from him to set aside as well, and steps forward.
He really doesn’t want to get his hopes up. There’s been too much heartbreak in his life that the idea of putting himself out there for more is terrifying.
But he’s been more than a little in love with Stiles since the guy first knocked on his door to borrow milk, and then unceremoniously set up shop in Derek’s living room to eat cereal and heavily critique every title in Derek’s Netflix queue. If there’s even a chance that Derek has a shot here, now that he knows Stiles doesn’t have a boyfriend...
“If you’re not actually with Scott, and you don’t want to be with him, is there maybe someone else that you do?”
Stiles looks up and meets Derek’s eyes, biting his lip. “Maybe,” he hedges.
“And is that someone possibly the same person whose freezer full of Thin Mints is now completely bare?”
“Hey, if you weren’t willing to share your stash, you never should’ve let me into your kitchen in the first place.”
“I seem to recall you hijacking my fridge all on your own despite me repeatedly telling you to get the hell out of my apartment.”
“Token protests.” Stiles waves a hand dismissively, a smirk forming on his face. “We both know you love me.”
Derek smiles, small but genuine. “I suppose we do.”
There is a moment where the rest of the world fades away as they just stare dopily at each other. Derek doesn’t care how much of an idiot he probably looks, only that Stiles has got his hand on Derek’s forearm now, and then they’re both leaning in, and then...
“Wait!” And then Stiles shoves Derek hard enough that he stumbles back a step, nearly right into the grill.
Which is starting to smoke a bit, so Derek immediately reins in the frown on his face to something more like a scowl and focuses his energy on checking the meat instead of feeling heartbroken.
“No, don’t-- I mean, I want to,” Stiles stumbles over his words in his urgency to get them out. “I really want to, I swear, but--” Derek looks back at him in time to see him gesture at all their neighbors around them. “I also really don’t want to get kicked out of my apartment, ya know?”
Right. Derek’s mom is pretty strict about the qualifications for tenants.
But she also has a soft spot for her only son, so.
“You said Scott has a girlfriend?” Derek asks, while taking off the apron he’s been wearing and waving it at Dave from down to block who’s been looking to step in all afternoon.
“Um. Yes?” Stiles replies, clearly confused.
“And they’re serious?”
“As a heart attack.”
Derek nods. “Good. So you’re both in long-term, committed relationships. I think I can sell that to my mom as being within her restrictions.”
“Wait, but I’m not--” It takes Stiles a second to get it, even as Derek’s taking Stiles’ hand in his and leading him towards their apartment building. “Oh,” he says, blinking, and tripping over his own feet. “Oh.”
Derek looks back at Stiles with a smirk and feigns a nonchalant shrug. “Worst case scenario, you can just move in with me and then she won’t have a leg to stand on.”
A burst of bright, delighted laughter erupts from out of Stiles. “Okay, big guy, but we might want to put off conversations about moving in together until after, like, the third or fourth date.”
“You practically live on my couch anyway.”
“I could practically live somewhere else in your apartment.” Stiles wags his eyebrows ridiculously. Derek is so completely gone on this moron.
Which is good, because Derek has a feeling that no matter how this all goes down, he has a very lengthy lecture from his mother to look forward to. But as Stiles kisses him at the door to his apartment, before Derek’s even managed to get his keys out, he couldn’t care less.
Stiles does, in fact, practically live “somewhere else” in Derek’s apartment for a very long time after that.