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“Stiles, another customer coming your way!”
At the sound of Erica’s yell, Stiles looked up from the Douglas fir tree he was settling into a display stand. A mother and daughter headed toward him across the blacktop parking area currently serving as Beacon Hills’ annual holiday tree lot. He grinned and waved at them.
“Amanda! Amanda’s mom! Hey, guys!” A bitterly cold gust of wind whipped across the lot and Amanda’s mom shivered, gathering her coat more tightly around her.
“Hi, Mr. Stilinski!” Amanda seemed unaffected by the cold and thrilled to see her second-grade teacher working at the tree lot.
“I didn’t realize you...also...did this,” Amanda’s mother said gingerly, trying not to look sorry for Stiles working two jobs. He got that a lot.
“Oh, I do it every year,” he beamed at her. “Have since I was in high school. I’m kind of a Christmas freak, this gives me an outlet.” He pointed toward the tinny speaker a few feet away playing “Jingle Bell Rock.” “Plus I get to listen to holiday music nonstop, which my dad would not be okay with at home.”
Now she looked like she felt bad for him for living with his dad. Stiles was half afraid she was going to try and slip him some cash. He thought about telling her that he lived with his dad for the company, and that 26 wasn’t that old, but decided not to bother.
Stiles squatted down to get eye-level with Amanda. “So let me guess - you’re here to get a tree.”
Amanda giggled and nodded.
“How big we talking?” he asked, looking up at her mom.
“It just needs to fit on top of our car,” she answered, sounding weary. Stiles guessed she was one of those Scrooges who wouldn’t even celebrate the holidays if they didn’t have to. He didn’t understand how those people operated. Like, cookies? Happy songs? Twinkling lights and presents and hot cocoa and crackling fires and and the old stop-motion Rudolph special? What’s not to love?
Stiles returned his focus to Amanda. “Okay, I think you are going to have the very important job of picking out the perfect tree. Do you think you can handle that kind of responsibility?” She chirped an affirmative and he pointed to a row of mid-size trees, out of sight of the biggest ones.
Her mom gave him a grateful look as they headed that way.
Stiles loved running into his students at the lot. Almost as much as he loved singing along tonelessly to the music, which he was doing with gusto when Erica ambled over. She was dressed like a slutty elf, a big improvement over yesterday’s slutty nutcracker, which was just disturbing.
“What up, girl,” he said as he pulled apart branches to fluff out the needles.
“Delivery from Hale Trees coming pretty soon.” She arched a suggestive eyebrow at him.
Stiles sighed and picked at the tree a little more aggressively. “I don’t know why you guys won’t leave me alone about that dude. He hates Christmas! He hates me! I don’t care if Derek Hale is the hottest hunk of man-meat to walk this earth in a thousand years, which he is by the way, because he’s a total Grinch and I am absolutely not into that.”
A throat cleared behind Stiles.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” Stiles asked Erica.
“I think I have some receipts to organize,” she said, grinning wickedly. “Ciao, boys!”
Apparently Derek Hale had some mercy in his heart, because he pretended like he hadn’t heard Stiles’ mortifying rant. “I’ve got a dozen of the 8-footers, want me to unload in the usual spot?” He spoke in his usual gruff, angrily-bored tone of voice. It matched his cutting jawline and thick, dark stubble.
Stiles took a long, deep breath and tried to avoid looking into Derek’s glittering pale jade eyes. That way lay madness.
“Sure,” he said, his voice small and resigned. Stiles managed to embarrass himself gravely in front of Derek at least once every winter, but this was definitely his most humiliating showing yet. At least he had never blatantly admitted to lusting after Derek’s bod before today.
Derek’s face remained as impassive as ever as he turned back to his truck to unload the trees. Stiles wondered, for the millionth time, why someone as grouchy as Derek decided to get into the Christmas tree business. This was the seventh year of their forced tree-delivery interactions and Derek only seemed to grow moodier with the passage of time. Prior to that, Hale Trees sent a lively brunette girl named Laura who would squeal at the ornament displays Stiles spent hours getting just right. He’s always wondered where she went.
Another parent-child combo summoned Stiles’ help and he went with them, grateful for the distraction from his humiliation. He tried to drag out their purchase process as long as he could to ensure Derek would be done and gone by the time he was unoccupied.
And he would have pulled it off, too, if a belligerent, heavily intoxicated man in a Santa suit (complete with fake beard) hadn’t marched up to their makeshift sales counter and demanded Erica give him all their money.
Stiles, highly attuned to any criminal wrongdoings as the son of the County Sheriff, heard the man’s demand from behind him and instantly whirled around to intervene. He moved quickly toward the man as the few customers in the lot started catching on and staring.
“All right, buddy, time to move it along,” Stiles said. He couldn’t help wrinkling his nose at the powerful whiskey stench wafting off the guy.
“Give me the goddamn money,” Santa yelled, spittle flying from his mouth and landing on Stiles’ cheek. “I know you only take cash, so there’s gotta be a lot and you need to give it to me!” He pulled a 9mm Glock from inside his costume and waved it at Stiles’ face.
“Ohhhhhhhh shit,” was all Stiles could get out. His brain whirred as he tried to remember everything his dad had ever taught him about these situations. He attempted to give Erica a signal with his eyes to tell her to text for help, but she was absolutely frozen, afraid to look away from the man. Stiles fervently hoped that someone else on the lot was better in a crisis than she was.
“Please put the gun away,” came the voice of Derek Hale as he approached the sales counter and stood next to Stiles. He seemed serenely calm, oddly more at ease than Stiles had ever seen him. He’d ponder that extensively later, when he wasn’t freaking out about his imminent death.
“Who the fuck are you?” demanded Santa. He thrust the gun at Derek, who didn’t flinch.
“I’m the guy who’s going to prevent you from doing something really stupid. So put that gun away and turn around and walk right on out of here, and don’t come back. You got that?”
Stiles and Erica both gaped at Derek. Santa grunted and shook his head. “Not without my money!”
Derek rolled his eyes impatiently, like he was being seriously inconvenienced by this guy and was now going to have to do something he really didn’t want to, like kick the guy’s ass. But before he could begin what Stiles imagined was going to be a very impressive display, sirens rang through the lot from nearby.
Stiles exhaled gratefully while saying a tiny prayer that his dad wouldn’t be one of the cops to show up; seeing his only child in peril always undid him and Stiles did not have the bandwidth to worry about him right now.
“The cops will be here in just a minute,” Stiles said, now feeling far less nervous. “If you just go with them and don’t give them any trouble, this whole thing doesn’t have to be a big deal for you.” He knew that probably wasn’t true, but he hoped it would help keep the arriving cops a little safer.
“Aw shit,” growled Santa. He shoved the gun into his waistband and then grabbed both Stiles and Derek at the same time, one hand on each of them.
“You two are staying right here. Everybody else,” he shouted toward the customers behind Stiles, “get out. You too, Blondie,” he said to Erica. She fixed Stiles with a terrified look and he nodded at her, grateful he wouldn’t have to worry about her much longer. She swallowed hard and then ran out to the street beyond the lot gates, all of the customers not far behind her. Stiles watched Amanda and her mom get out safely with great relief.
“So we’re your hostages?” Stiles asked, feigning calm.
“You’re a smart one, huh?” Santa jeered, blowing his sour breath in Stiles’ face.
The sirens got louder.
Santa grabbed a roll of twine sitting on the sales counter and unwound it a few feet. Then he grabbed Derek and Stiles’ wrists and bound all four together, quickly and tightly.
“Ow,” Stiles said, frowning at the pinch of the rough twine. Derek gave him a long-suffering look, which he answered with a shrug.
“Why do we need to be tied together?” Derek asked, his voice tight. “What does that accomplish?”
“Oh, you been a hostage before, kid? You know all the rules?” Santa spat at Derek’s feet. “Easier to keep track of you this way.”
By now three cars from the Sheriff’s Department had pulled up in front of the lot, lights blazing. Through a megaphone came the voice of Deputy Jordan Parrish (thankfully, thought Stiles, not his dad).
“Drop your weapon and come out with your hands where I can see them.”
Santa just laughed. “I got two hostages, you idiot. I’m not going anywhere.” He pulled Derek and Stiles out in front of him by their joined arms. “Ow,” Stiles said again.
“You come for me and I shoot these jokers!” Santa pointed at his hostages with an exaggerated gesture and then made a show of jabbing his gun at them. Stiles heard Parrish curse away from the megaphone when he saw Stiles. He sighed at being recognized; now the Sheriff would definitely get involved, and soon.
Derek threw Stiles a questioning glance at the sound of his irritated sigh, which must have sounded out of place in their current life-or-death situation.
“My dad’s the Sheriff,” he explained. “His deputy just recognized me, which means there’s no chance of him not knowing about this until it’s over. He’ll probably be here in under two minutes.”
Santa seemed delighted at this news. “Oh ho, I bagged a pretty good hostage, huh? Bet the Sheriff’ll give me whatever I want to hand you over in one piece.”
“You’re Sheriff Stilinski’s son?” Derek asked, totally ignoring Santa.
Stiles failed to understand how this was the right time to be chatting about familial relations. “Yes,” he replied irritably. In all of the scenarios in which he imagined himself and Derek getting to know one another, and there were many, none involved them being held at gunpoint.
“Go sit over there,” Santa commanded, pointing at one of the temporary partitions set up to divide the lot into different areas.
“Like, right on the ground?” Stiles asked. Derek groaned softly.
“Now!”
“Ugh,” Stiles said as he and Derek tried to lower themselves as one. It was awkward and definitely ungraceful.
They settled their butts on the frigidly cold blacktop, Stiles cursing the thin fabric of his worn chinos.
“You okay there?” Derek asked wryly. He didn’t seem cold at all, the bastard.
“Gee, I don’t know. I guess being held hostage outdoors in the dead of winter isn’t really my thing, but I’m weird like that, you know?”
“Just like the Grinch isn’t really your thing, right?”
Stiles winced and tried to move away from Derek, which was basically impossible with them tied together.
“Yeah, about that…” He couldn’t look at Derek.
“It’s fine,” Derek said in a dull voice. “Nothing I haven’t heard before.”
Stiles looked up. “Which part? The Grinch part or the…”
“Man meat?” Derek offered.
“Shit,” Stiles breathed. “I’m sorry. But yeah, which one?”
“Both,” Derek shrugged.
“Well, that sucks. The objectification part, I mean - you totally deserve being called a Grinch.”
Derek almost smiled. “Why do you think I hate Christmas? I’ve never said that.”
“Uh, you’ve never said anything, buddy. In seven years. And you always come in here looking like you’d rather be anywhere else, so I connected the dots.”
“You were missing a few dots, though.” Derek used one of his fingers to flick a dead leaf off his leg, rattling Stiles’ hands in the process.
“Oh yeah? Enlighten me?”
Derek raised an eyebrow. “Why should I? I don’t know you.”
“Um, I believe this is how people get to know one another? Do you have something better to do right now?”
“Stiles! You okay, son?” Stiles’ dad appeared outside the gates to the lot, looking frantic.
“Who the hell are you?” Santa said. Stiles’ dad wasn’t in uniform because he was off tonight. They’d planned to spend the evening watching bad action movies, and for a flash Stiles really feared that that wouldn’t happen, that he wouldn’t be getting out of this alive.
“I’m the Sheriff,” he said calmly, his smooth voice restoring Stiles’ confidence. “And I think you know you’re breaking all kinds of laws tonight. Why don’t you give me the gun and we can have a nice conversation when you sober up.” He stuck his hand through the gate, waiting.
“No way,” Santa said, shaking his head vigorously. “You’re not getting these boys out of here alive until I get a deal.”
“I’m thirty,” Derek huffed. Everybody ignored him.
“Okay,” the Sheriff said, ever calm. “How about you tell me your name? I think that’s a good place to start.”
Santa narrowed his eyes at the Sheriff, unsure. “You don’t need to know my name.”
The Sheriff chuckled. “Well, I can’t exactly make a binding deal with somebody who doesn’t exist.”
Santa thought about it for a second, cast a dirty look at Derek and Stiles for no apparent reason, then responded. “Mitch Daehler.”
“Shit,” Stiles whispered. Derek gave him a questioning look, but Stiles shook his head. Later, he mouthed.
“Okay, Mitch, nice to meet you. I’m Noah Stilinski.”
Mitch gave Noah a skeptical look. “You look more like a John to me.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Noah shrugged. “For some reason I get that a lot. Now, why don’t you tell me what you’re trying to do here.” He kept his voice incredibly neutral; Stiles felt proud.
“Isn’t it fuckin’ obvious? I wanted some fuckin’ money!”
“I get that,” Noah nodded, “but it’s going to be a little hard to enjoy the money if you’re in jail, isn’t it?”
Mitch shrugged and said, “I dunno,” petulantly.
“The good news is that you haven’t hurt anybody. And I don’t think you want to. You can give me that gun right now and we can go to the station and work something out.”
“No!” Mitch yelled. “I’m not stupid! I’m not just surrendering. I will shoot these kids, you better believe I will. You gotta make me an offer before I let them go.” He pointed the gun at Stiles and Derek to emphasize his point. Stiles could have sworn Derek scooted a tiny bit closer to him at the sight.
“Okay,” said Noah. “What are you asking for?”
Mitch scrunched up his brow like he hadn’t thought about that. “Um,” he said. Stiles rolled his eyes.
“I want $50,000, a bulletproof vest, another gun, and a getaway car. A fast one. A Camaro!”
“Oh brother,” muttered Stiles.
“Hey,” Derek said quietly, so the other men wouldn’t hear. “I drive a Camaro.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t, dude.”
“That doesn’t even make sense. Why not?”
“If you don’t know, I can’t explain it to you.”
Derek scoffed. “I should have known you’d be impossible. You’ve always seemed impossible.”
Before Stiles could ponder whether that meant Derek had thought about him before, his dad started talking.
“I’m gonna tell you right now that I think that’s too tall of an order. But I will go talk to my people. Don’t touch a hair on those boys’ heads.”
Mitch made a grumbling sound and slumped against the sales counter. He seemed to be moving into the “stupor” phase of his drunken stupor. Soon he was humming, face down, into the circle of his folded arms on the tabletop.
“This is fun,” said Derek.
“Mmm,” said Stiles, his eyes fixed on Santa, who was distinctly ignoring them. “I wonder how long we’ll be stuck here. Did you know the hostages in the Norrmalmstorg robbery were held for five days before the robbers surrendered?”
“The what?”
“You know, the big 1973 attempted bank heist in Stockholm? It’s where the concept of ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ came from, which isn’t an actual diagnosis in the DSM. Just a made-up media concept to explain why one of the hostages ended up boning one of the robbers. But I heard him on a podcast once, he’s pretty charming.”
“Is this your way of telling me you want to bone Santa over there? You did imply that you’re into people who are festive about the holidays.” Derek raised one eyebrow and kept his face impressively still.
“Have we come to the joking camaraderie portion of the hostage experience? Phew.” Stiles gave Derek a half smile and tried to choke down the butterflies crawling up his stomach. Gods, this man was cute when he tried to be sassy.
“Hey,” Stiles said, remembering something. “Why’d you ask about my dad? Do you know him?”
Santa began to snore.
“Uh,” Derek said, not looking at Stiles. “Yeah, kind of.”
Stiles smirked. “You got arrested for vandalism as a teenager or something, didn’t you? Or was it mooning little old ladies with your frat in college? Oh! I know! You got caught shoplifting something stupid, like a pack of gum, for your big youthful rebellion.”
“Not exactly.” Derek’s frown was back in full effect. “I met him when my sister Laura tried to make lasagna and set our entire house on fire.”
“Fuck.” Stiles couldn’t think of anything more eloquent to say.
“Pretty much. But it’s okay. Nobody got hurt. Then she moved to New York and left me to deal with a charcoal house.”
“Damn. I think I knew her. She used to deliver the trees before you, right?”
Derek’s mouth turned up into a small smile. “Yeah. She really loves Christmas.”
Stiles nodded. “She was really cool. Kind of a force to be reckoned with.”
Derek smiled. “That she is. Which is how she talked me into using the life insurance money we got from our parents to buy a fucking Christmas tree farm in the middle of nowhere when she was 25 and I was 20. And then left me to deal with it.” He shook his head at the memory, but looked fond.
“Shit, your parents?” Stiles said with sympathy. “God, no wonder you hate Christmas.”
Derek furrowed his brow. “Again, I never said that.”
“Well, you didn’t really need to. It was kind of readily apparent from your whole...thing.” Stiles tried to gesture at Derek but only succeeded in hitting Derek in the knee with his own hands. “Oops.”
“My thing?” Derek looked more amused than he should have.
“You know, with the eyebrows, and the frowning, and the muscles.”
“What do muscles have to do with hating Christmas?”
“I didn’t mean to say muscles, that was a mistake.” Stiles knew he was blushing and tried to turn his face as far away as he could from someone he was literally bound to.
Derek was kind of enough to just move along. “So why did you react when you heard Santa’s name?” He looked up to make sure Mitch was still asleep or passed out or whatever he was.
“Oh,” Stiles sighed. “Yeah. If he’s who I think he is, I went to high school with his son, Matt. He died in an accident when we were sophomores. So, like, ten years ago, I guess.”
Derek didn’t say anything, just pressed his lips together in a way that conveyed plenty of meaning. He surely understood losing family too soon all too well.
“Ten years isn’t really that long,” he said softly, watching Mitch.
“Is any amount of time enough?” Stiles asked, thinking about his mom and how he always missed her a little bit more at Christmas-time. And probably always would.
Derek just looked at Stiles and they shared a brief moment before Sheriff Stilinski returned and said Mitch’s name loud enough to rouse him.
“Wha?”
“Mitch, we’re still working it out. But I thought I would come and see if you’d like to talk to your wife, she’s here with the other officers.”
Mitch made a derisive snorting sound. “My wife? Nice try. She kicked me out two years ago.”
“Be that as it may,” Noah said patiently, “she is here now, and she would like to see you.” Turning to the hostages, he added, “You doing okay there? Your wrists okay?”
Stiles looked down at the twine, which had dug rosy lines into both of their wrists, but then got distracted by Derek’s luscious arm hair.
“What was that?” he asked.
“We’re fine,” Derek stated, looking sideways at Stiles.
“Why would my wife wanna talk to me? Why should I talk to her? I’ve been living in motels for two years because of her.”
“She made me an interesting offer, actually. She said she’d take you out of here, no questions asked, and get you some help. You just have to let those two go, and leave the gun.” Noah’s eyes flicked over the Glock hanging limply from Mitch’s hand.
“She said that?”
“She did.”
“Huh.” Mitch used the gun to scratch the side of his head; all three spectators winced. “Well, I need to think about that.”
“Go right ahead. Think you could untie those two in the meantime?” Noah pointed his chin toward Derek and Stiles.
“You think I’m stupid? No way. Now give me a minute to think, goddammit.”
Noah slipped back to the police cars after catching Stiles’ eye once more. His look conveyed fear, and love, and a promise. Stiles understood perfectly.
The three men sat in silence for a while, Mitch sometimes mumbling to himself. Derek and Stiles exchanged occasional glances. Derek started to wiggle his fingers restlessly, then stopped when he realized that it made their arms jostle together. It felt too weird to start talking again when Mitch would so obviously hear them. In a really perverse way, Stiles thought, it was like he and Derek were on a first date with a chaperone. Except really not that at all.
Because Derek, he reminded himself, was the guy who hated both Stiles and Christmas, and they were only talking in the first place because a man with a gun had literally tied them together.
He sighed, lost in his self-pitying thoughts. Derek raised an eyebrow.
“So you don’t hate Christmas?” Stiles decided to just pretend Mitch wasn’t there. He’d had enough silence. He wasn’t a big fan under the best of circumstances, and these were certainly not those.
Derek smiled fully for the first time that evening. For the first time ever, from Stiles’ perspective.
“I actually love Christmas.”
“Shut up.”
“No, I mean it. I always liked it, but then after our parents died Laura always made a super huge deal out of it, like she was trying to make up for what we didn’t have. And then after she moved away…”
“It was a way to feel like your family was around.” Stiles could relate to that; his mom had always put up holiday decorations on November 1st and baked at least a dozen types of Christmas cookies every year to hand out at the Sheriff’s station and the fire houses.
“Yeah,” Derek said. “But then I kind of just got into it.”
“So why do you always act like you’d like to set all these trees on fire?”
Derek’s cheeks turned pink. “I don’t.”
“Um?” Stiles spluttered. “You give me murder eyes every time you set foot in here. Your eyebrows can be terrifying, you know.”
Derek sighed. Very, very quietly he said, “I wasn’t trying to scare you off. Quite the opposite, actually.”
It took Stiles’ brain a very long time to process the last part, and when he did he practically shrieked. “What?!”
“Shut up!” barked Mitch. “How am I supposed to think with you two idiots here?”
Before Stiles could say something snarky in response, Noah reappeared.
“Well, Mitch? What do you say?”
Mitch sighed. “Can she come over here?”
Noah gestured to someone standing a few feet off behind a couple of officers. A middle-aged woman with long dark hair and glasses emerged and approached the gate.
“Hi, Mitch,” she said, a little shyly.
“Shelly,” he said. “Shel.”
She smiled. “I know it’s been a long time, but I think it’s been long enough, don’t you? I never would have kicked you out if I thought you wouldn’t get your act together and come back, ready to be the man I married again.”
Mitch’s shoulders drooped. “I didn’t think you’d want me to come back, no matter what.”
“Oh, Mitch,” she said sadly. “I always wanted you to come back.”
Mitch dropped the Glock and started to cry. Shelly started crying, too. Stiles almost started crying because it was hard to be around so many crying people and not get emotional.
“What do you say, Mitch?” asked the Sheriff. “Do you want to come out here and go home with Shelly?”
Mitch nodded, but started to cry harder. “But I can’t, I can’t.”
“Why not, honey?” Shelly asked.
“Because I’m a drunk and a mess and you deserve better.” He swiped at his running nose with the cuff of his Santa suit.
“I deserve the man I married, and I have full confidence that you can be that man again. The first step is walking out of here, though, okay?”
“Mitch,” Noah said, “why don’t we trade places.”
Mitch nodded again and shuffled to the gate, leaving the Glock on the ground. Once he got through Shelly wrapped him up in a huge hug and they just stood there, hugging and crying.
“This is basically a Hallmark movie,” Stiles observed.
Noah gave Stiles an exasperated look while he made swift work of undoing the twine. Both men gasped with relief when the tight restraints came off.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Is he really just walking away?” Derek asked, watching Mitch and his wife walk to her car.
“For tonight,” Noah said. “I’m gonna give him a chance to dry out and get his life in order and then we’ll see if we want to press charges. If he actually does turn it around, there probably won’t be a need.”
“Do you think he will?” Derek seemed genuinely invested.
“I don’t know, son. I sure hope so.” The Sheriff squeezed Stiles’ shoulder. “Glad you two are all right. See you at home?”
Stiles nodded. Soon he and Derek were alone.
“Sooooooo…” Stiles shoved his hands in his pockets. “That was fun.”
Derek smiled. “In a way, it sort of was.”
Stiles decided to be bold. If not after a brush with death, when? he figured.
“What did you mean by ‘quite the opposite,’ before?”
Derek grimaced. “That was me being really awkward and trying to tell you that I’ve actually always looked forward to seeing you here.”
“What?” Stiles gasped.
“Yeah.” Derek gave him a shy, nervous smile.
“Dude, you are terrible at flirting.”
Derek laughed then, a beautiful sound. “I’ve heard that before, actually. You’re not wrong.”
“I think maybe I should take the lead, then. Do you want to go out sometime?”
Derek stepped up close to Stiles. “Very much.”
“I guess it took a potentially violent criminal to get us talking, huh?”
“I guess the real test will be how we do on a date without Mitch.”
“We could always double with him and Shelly,” Stiles offered.
“I’ll pass, thanks.” Derek leaned in and placed a soft, lingering kiss on Stiles’ cheek.
Stiles blushed at the warm feeling of Derek’s lips on his face. “Um, not to be a dick, but did you finish unloading the trees?”
Derek groaned and turned to stomp back to his truck, but Stiles wound his fingers through Derek’s hand before he could get very far, and went to help.
TWO WEEKS LATER
Stiles rapped on the heavy metal door to Derek’s loft, a little nervous. So far they had only hung out in public places or at Stiles’ house, typically coinciding with the Sheriff being home. He had high hopes for tonight.
Derek slid the door open with a grin. “Welcome!”
“What the ever-loving hell,” Stiles whispered.
A coat of fake snow sparkled against the concrete of the floors. From the rafters high above hung hundreds of yards of tinsel and tiny lights. The smell of gingerbread wafted from the kitchen, and Mariah Carey’s Christmas album blasted from the stereo. Every textile in the room was green or red or shimmering gold, and at least 50 figurines - of elves, Santa, angels, little Christmas trees, everything - decorated any flat surface. A tree that must have been 50 feet tall stood proudly in the corner, bedecked with more ornaments than Stiles even knew existed.
And then there was Derek.
Derek, in green pants, a red sweater with a blinking reindeer on the front, a Santa hat, and little elvin shoes. With bells on the toes.
He looked so happy his eyes were sparkling brighter than the fake snow.
“Isn’t it great?” he asked, waving at the terrifying explosion of Christmas that filled every inch of his home.
A battery-powered toy soldier crossed the floor between them, beating a tiny drum.
“Yeah, we need to leave,” Stiles said.
“What do you mean? I thought you loved Christmas?”
“This,” Stiles responded, “is not Christmas. This is...this is like an entire workshop of elves had a circle jerk in here and blew their loads all over your apartment.”
Derek frowned. “I like it.”
Stiles swallowed. “Okay. That’s cool. And I like you, so...I’m sure I’ll adjust. I just think maybe you need to ease me in? Not just anybody can dive right in to a Derek Christmas, apparently.”
“Hmmm,” Derek said, thinking. “I have an idea.”
Stiles waited patiently, ready to agree to anything that wasn’t hanging out in the loft.
“There’s no holiday stuff in my bedroom,” Derek said.
Suddenly Stiles’ objections to the loft disappeared. He pressed a quick kiss to Derek’s mouth, then deepened it for a moment, a promise of more to come.
“Except,” Derek said, “for the mistletoe over my bed.”
“Oh god. What else am I going to find in there? Is Michael Bublé going to emerge from your closet and serenade us?”
Derek sucked in a sharp breath. “Oh man, I wish.”
Stiles leaned his forehead against Derek’s shoulder and sighed.
“But come on,” said Derek, nudging Stiles off and grinning at him. He sauntered toward the bedroom, making a show of jingling the bells on his shoes as he went. “Don’t you want to come...unwrap my package?”
Stiles moaned and said, “Maybe I should leave. I think I’m starting to hate Christmas.” But he followed Derek pretty quickly.
“Sure you do,” Derek smirked, taking hold of the collar of Stiles’ shirt and using it to yank him into his bedroom. “Now get in here and help me out of this gay apparel.”
“Great, now I’m going to get a boner every time I hear a Christmas carol.”
Derek scoffed and hopped back onto his bed. “Like you don’t already.”
“Ugh, how do you know me so well this soon into our relationship?” Stiles pulled his shirt and sweater over his head in one move and took in Derek’s appreciative gaze.
“Well, it has been seven years.” Derek waggled his eyebrows and started undoing his belt.
Stiles gulped at the view. “A lot of wasted time, huh?”
“Nah, I like a good slow burn. Now get over here and roast my chestnuts.”
Stiles’ groan could probably be heard across Beacon Hills.
But he did as he was asked.