Work Text:
From Love not Lust
Stiles chewed on the top of his pen, inhaling the aroma of books and coffee as he sipped the mocha latte that was more chocolate than coffee, exactly how he liked it. It was half the reason he spent pretty much all his lunch breaks here. The other half was the sour-faced owner whose shadow fell over him at that moment.
Stiles ran a finger around the edge of his cup to scoop up the escaping whipped cream and licked it as he raised his gaze to meet Derek’s. “That’s a sour face for a warm autumn afternoon,” he offered brightly, the soft orange glow of the sun illuminating the store through the full glass frontage. When Derek just continued to glare at him with his dark green Books & Coffee apron that really complimented his stupidly beautiful eyes, Stiles took another swig of his mocha.
“Dude, what’s up?”
“What are you doing?” Derek asked darkly.
Stiles just blinked, because he came in here often enough for Derek not to question him. Sometimes he made a point of annoying Derek and sometimes he kept to himself, but either way Derek had pretty much grown used to his presence. He’d probably considered it a high risk factor when he and Cora had decided to return to Beacon Hills, along with Isaac, to turn the old abandoned book store into Books & Coffee.
It’d been on a whim of Cora’s, Isaac had confided to Stiles on his first visit, when he’d been home from college to visit his dad almost five years ago.
Sitting there now, on his lunch break wearing his deputy uniform, it was hard to imagine a time when it’d all felt shiny and new. It felt like it’d always been here, with its warm buzz of lunchtime business and familiar regulars.
Stiles watched Cora and Isaac showcase their usual workplace romance as they moved in perfect tandem together behind the counter, with Cora working the cash register and Isaac passing over his meticulously prepared pastries and cakes. Apparently it was something Isaac had done with his mom as a kid and had picked back up while he was incommunicado. They were the kind of sickening, cute kind of happy where they ribbed each other with gentle little jibes and glittery damn eyes. It was the kind of love only two people that had lost everything, healed and then found each other could possess.
Even Derek was softer around the edges these days. True he kept to the book side of the shop mostly, stocking and restocking, organizing the titles and on the rare occasion offering recommendations on books. But he was more relaxed, more at peace with himself in the calm quiet that had become Beacon Hills in the last few years. He seemed pretty content, like he’d found an inner strength and tranquility. Even when he was scowling down at Stiles as if he’d just set the store on fire.
“I’m drinking my mocha and reading my book, the same as I do everyday,” Stiles answered wryly.
“What are you doing with the pen?” Derek demanded through gritted teeth.
Stiles twirled the ballpoint absently, before the question registered in his mind. “Oh, I guess…annotating?”
Derek’s nostrils flared, dark brows drawing together in a familiar scowl that had long since lost its effect on Stiles. “You’re writing and doodling all over the books.”
“Only the margins. Mostly. And anyway it’s not like it’s one of yours. Or…well it was. It’s the one I bought a week or so ago. You know, the one you sold me?”
“I know what book it is,” Derek said curtly, gesturing at the copy of Northern Lights open on the table with a look of restrained dismay. “You can’t just…” He set his teeth. “They’re not for writing in like you’re some high school kid.”
A small, fond smile crept across Stiles’s lips. “You’re like…a real little bookworm huh? A guardian of paperbacks.”
Derek’s scowl intensified and Stiles gave a soft laugh. He swore the affection in it made Derek’s cheeks colour, just a bit. Setting down the pen with a self-deprecating little sigh, Stiles dragged his hand through his hair. “It’s just something I used to do when I was a kid. I used to highlight bits I liked, bits I didn’t, noted down my thoughts on things in the margin.” He shrugged. “Sometimes thoughts about the book, sometimes just what I had going on in my head.”
Derek stared at him in that carefully blank way he always did when a million thoughts were flittering through his mind. His lips parted abortively and he gave Stiles a short nod, nostrils flaring again before he turned and headed back into the bookshelves.
“He caught you doodling in a book?” Cora offered with a raised brow when he went to grab a second coffee to-go on his way back to work. “I’m surprised he didn’t rip your throat out. I dog-eared his copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when we were kids instead of using a bookmark and he shifted right in the middle of the living room and tackled me to the ground.”
Stiles’s lips quirked. “Was this really when you were kids? Or was it last week?”
Cora laughed, eyes sparkling in the same way Derek’s did.
*
Stiles finished the book a week or so later. He was parked in his usual spot in the corner by the bookshelves, just killing time until his dad came off shift so they could go to dinner together and he sat back as he finished scrawling his final notes on the back pages.
“How did you get into it?” Derek asked as he took the seat opposite him at the little round table. “Writing in the books.”
Stiles shrugged. “I found it helped me focus on the story if I could jot my thoughts rambling through my head down, keep them to one side as I read, I guess.” He gave a sad little smile. “There are books and books somewhere from just after my mom died where I’d write my feelings down, the ones I couldn’t express out loud, you know? My dad kept them.”
Dark brows drew together. “So…it’s only a sad thing then?”
“It used to be. But lately I just find I enjoy it, I guess.” He chews his lips for a moment, thinking, before asking, “I was wondering why Pullman spelled it ‘daemon’. So I looked it up. Supposedly the way we usually spell it refers to purely an evil spirit, but the way Pullman spells it refers to a benign supernatural creature. And I got to thinking, are werewolves ‘daemons’ in that case?”
His question was mostly rhetorical, but something in Derek seemed to brighten in response. When he responded, they grew locked in a conversation that carried them far into the evening hours.
They sat together for some time, until the shop was nearly empty and close to closing. Derek, Isaac and Cora took turns doing the closing shift and it seemed Derek was the only one manning the floor tonight. He and Stiles talked, or bantered as they usually did but then a question Stiles had always wanted to ask came to his lips unbidden.
“Why did you buy this place if you don’t like people?”
Derek blinked with an odd, surprised little expression that made him look years younger, the look Stiles had only seen there a handful of times before.
“I didn’t care what we did when we came back, only that we did,” Derek replied simply, looking just left of him to avoid looking in his eyes. “But Cora likes to be surrounded by people and Isaac had been studying food when we caught up with him. So when Cora saw the old bookstore was still abandoned she wanted to buy it.”
Stiles offered him a teasing grin. “So Cora wanted pastries for Isaac and books for you?”
Something like a smile flickered at the corners of Derek’s mouth. “Something like that.”
Out the front windows, Stiles saw his dad’s cruiser pull up and he rose to his feet and headed for the door. “See you tomorrow then. I’ll probably have to buy the next one if you have it?” He waved the book in his hand demonstratively.
Derek looked awkward for a moment, but then reached behind the corner and withdrew another paperback. “I thought you might so…” He came to stand in front of Stiles, uncertain and stiff as he offered him the book.
When Stiles took the copy of The Subtle Knife and flicked through it instinctively, he saw neat red writing in the margins. His heart skipped.
Derek had re-read the book and put notes in the margins. His thoughts, his feelings. For him. Stiles was the one to flounder in surprise then, lips moving soundlessly, speechless for one of the first times in his life. Before he could find his words, however, Derek spoke.
“Can I read it? What you wrote?” He tipped his chin toward the copy of Northern Lights tucked under Stiles’s arm.
Stiles hesitated for just a beat. “I show you mine and you show me yours, huh?” He smirked, passing the book over.
Their fingers brushed as Derek took hold of the pages holding Stiles’s personal thoughts and feelings. The highlighted quotes that had stood out to him, the silly little passing thoughts that had occurred to him that were completely irrelevant as he read. He passed them into Derek’s hands and offered him a little quirk of a smile as he stepped through the door and out into the night.
*
It became a thing after that, the book sharing. He and Derek read all kinds of books, made notes in the margins of their thoughts while reading, sometimes in regards to the book, sometimes just thoughts in general. Sometimes Stiles even left little doodles for him.
When Stiles was particularly stressed at work, a lot of his notes in A Feast for Crows were full of nervous ramblings about his fears of never living up to his dad’s reputation or wishing he were stronger, faster, better. They were like letters, he supposed, only better because this way he could be as obscure or as blatant as he liked. Sometimes he circled single words that fit his mood on the page or sometimes he highlighted entire passages that spoke to him.
Sometimes he liked the books Derek picked, sometimes he didn’t. The journey through them was always fascinating though, enhanced by the glimpses into Derek’s private thoughts, the things he related to, the things that he connected with. Their debates on each other’s notes often carried them well beyond the shop’s closing time and he got to see Derek animated and enthusiastic, open and passionate in a way he thought few people had ever seen.
It felt like a precious intimate connection, a bond solidifying between them with every word. And he had bonded with Scott over video games and movies and with Lydia over saving the world but this was different. It was more and sometimes, when Derek had to help serve customers in between their conversations, he would glance up and find those stunning eyes riveted to him.
He’d always found Derek attractive, who wouldn’t? But what he felt when their eyes met wasn’t just an awkward rush of ill-timed physical appreciation. That focus, that connection made something in his stomach quiver blissfully, warm and fluttering, until his breathing came out in little shudders and his face heated with feelings he didn’t quite understand.
*
He realised just how strong that connection had grown over the Fourth of July weekend. Buried in the paperwork of his fellow deputies who had fallen prey to the virus travelling around the station, his head was pounding with stress and fatigue when he glanced up and started at the sight of Derek in front of his desk. He was standing there in just a t-shirt and jeans, a not-quite smile on his face, a cup holder with three tall coffees in one hand and a couple of large paper bags with Books & Coffee printed across them.
Stiles had worked so much overtime in the last few days and his brain was so fried that at that moment he felt he might cry with relief at the sight of him. “Dude, I love you,” he groaned appreciatively, making grabby hands for the reusable coffee cup that had ‘Stiles’ scrawled across it with a Sharpie in Cora’s neat script. His coffee cup she always served him his coffee in - containing his coffee order. He sipped at it greedily and groaned aloud in sweet bliss.
Derek’s expression had that familiar warmth to it, even as he said dryly, “well, we were thinking of expanding into deliveries so we figured we’d make you the test run.”
Stiles frantically cleared a space for Derek to sit at his desk with him with his free hand, without relinquishing his coffee.
“Sandwiches in one, doughnuts in the other,” Derek said as he set the two bags down and sat in the chair opposite Stiles. He placed the book that had been tucked under his arm beside them too and Stiles’s heart skipped.
Derek had brought their ‘book lunch’ to him. And Derek was looking at him curiously so Stiles was sure his burning face and skittering breath were giving him away. Luckily, his growling stomach saved him from having to make any excuses. He set his coffee down reluctantly to reach for a sandwich portion with one hand and a doughnut with the other.
“You are literally my new favourite,” Stiles crooned, devouring the entire sandwich half in a few bites before rounding on the doughnut. “Mmm, talk, talk so I know you’re not staring at me in silent horror at my appalling eating habits.”
Derek laughed softly, ducking his head as he shook it in disbelief and opened up his own sandwich. “I was literally raised by wolves,” he deadpanned. “Our Sunday family dinners were like a free-for-all.”
A snort of laughter burst out of Stiles unbidden. The image of a young Derek fighting his sisters for the last potato or slice of beef had done it, offered so freely by Derek himself and with one of those private little smiles that seemed to be made just for him.
“Did book group come to me today?” Stiles asked, when all his half of the sandwiches were gone and he was more than half way through their coffee. He tilted his chin at the book on the table.
“I’m not sure if you’re up to this reading level, if I need to explain to you the definition of a ‘group’.”
“We can be a book couple then,” Stiles waved him off, delighting in the way Derek fidgeted awkwardly in his seat. “I’ll grab yours out of the Jeep before you go. It’s one of my favourites.”
Derek nodded, passing his book over to Stiles. There was an odd little frisson of tension in him as Stiles pulled it into his lap. Divergent by Veronica Roth. But as Stiles opened the cover and started to flick idly through it as he took another doughnut, Derek rose to his feet.
“Hey, where are you going?”
“I brought enough for your dad too,” Derek said, too quickly, as he plucked up one of the now empty sandwich plates and set a couple of doughnuts on it before heading toward the main office. “Don’t eat all the glazed ones.”
Stiles hurriedly stuffed the rest of the one he’d been eating into his mouth and grabbed another as he browsed the pages of Derek’s book choice. He glimpsed a few random notes about people not putting books back in the proper section, as well as actual annotations on what the characters were up to on the page. But when Stiles came to a chapter that seemed quite thin on notes, he spotted a dark scribble in the margin that completely obscured whatever Derek had written there before. Next to it was an asterisk, one that corresponded to a line from the text that was underlined with stark red ink.
‘Something about him makes me feel like I am about to fall. Or turn to liquid. Or burst into flames.’
Stiles lifted his head slowly, the world seeming to whirl into slow motion as he watched Derek through the windows in his dad’s office, watched him smile politely at his dad, watched his dad tuck into one of the doughnuts he’d been given.
What had Derek felt when reading that line that had made it stand out? And why had he changed his mind about letting Stiles know his thoughts on it?
In a total contradiction to his character, he didn’t ask.
*
When the air turned cold with the approach of winter, Stiles felt a warmth unrelated to the perfect mocha and the scarf Lydia bought him for Christmas last year when Derek joined him for lunch at Books & Coffee on Stiles’s day off.
Isaac didn’t serve anything more than cakes, pastries or cookies but he always rustled up some sandwiches for the staff lunches. Apparently Stiles counted as staff, since Isaac had set the BLT to end all BLTs in front of him not long after he’d taken his usual seat. Isaac didn’t though and when he disappeared back behind the counter on the far side, Stiles couldn’t help but notice that Derek was a little tense. His brow was furrowed in a frown that Stiles hadn’t seen on his face for months, one that spoke of uncertainty and worry. He had a book in his hand but he didn’t pass it to Stiles right away.
If Stiles had learned anything over the years, however, it was how to deal with sour-wolves.
His mouth ran away with him as it always did. He was on to rambling about the increase in stray cats being related to them finally setting the Nemeton to sleep a few years ago before Derek finally seemed to find his words.
“That scarf. It’s not really your style.”
Stiles blinked at the randomness of the insult. Huh. “You don’t like my scarf?” He wasn’t really a scarf man to be fair, but it was understated, universal and cosy and he hated the cold.
Derek grit his teeth, dragging a hand over the back of his neck as if he were annoyed with himself. “No, I…I didn’t…” He exhaled through his nose. “It’s a nice scarf, I just didn’t think you’d pick something like that, that’s all.”
“Because it’s nice?” Stiles teased with a raises brow.
Derek’s lips twitched, his unease dwindling a little at Stiles’s mischievous tone. “Well it doesn’t have a novelty print on for a start.”
Stiles laughed and he swore Derek averted his gaze at the sound but he couldn’t quite be sure. “Lydia bought it for me last Christmas; she knows I hate the cold. I have a beanie that goes with it but I guess I took it off before you saw.”
Derek’s face became unreadable at that and his fingers wrapped around the book on the table in front of him distractedly, still shielding the title from Stiles’s view.
“She loves you.” It wasn’t a question. It also wasn’t exactly wrong.
“We love each other. She’s…well after all we’ve been through, she was there for me when no one else was. And when I went away to college, she always made an effort, you know?” He grimaced a little. “I mean I love Scott too, you know I do. But, well…” He shrugged. “I’d die for Scotty, and he’d do the same for me, but our friendship changed. So did my relationship with Lydia. Just…I think when Scott became the alpha, his priorities had to change and that’s fine, but Lydia has always made me a priority, even when we both realised we loved each other more like a brother and sister than a girlfriend and boyfriend.”
Scotty was still his best guy, Lydia was just better for him. She knew that perfect balance of how to take care of him and how to give him freedom. Plus she had a tongue sharper than his and the same dry sense of humour.
“That’s life I suppose,” Derek murmured after a thoughtful moment. “Our relationships with people change as we find out who we really are.” His face looked dark all of a sudden.
“Like me and you?” Stiles prodded gently, a whisper of a smile accenting his words to try and banish the heavy atmosphere that had settled between them. “I bet you never thought you’d be spending your Saturdays with me when you first laid eyes on me in those woods all those years ago, huh?”
Derek studied him for a beat, but then something in him relaxed a fraction. He set his elbows on the table and folded his fingers just under his mouth. His eyes were sort of hazel-green. They almost had flecks of burnished gold in, Stiles thought. He’d never noticed before.
“You’re quite welcome to spend your Saturday with someone else if you’ve got a better option.” Derek’s words carried that familiar biting, teasing tone that he often used with Stiles, the one that made Stiles’s insides twitch. But Stiles thought there was something else there too. He wasn’t an idiot but Derek was still holding back. He’d been hurt before and Stiles knew, because he was nosy, that Derek hadn’t been with anyone since his fling with Braeden years ago. So if Derek needed time, he’d be patient. Let him move at his pace. Stiles was in no hurry.
“Nah, I’ll keep my harem as back up if you ever realise what a dork I am.”
Derek laughed, soft and breathy and his cheeks suffused with a barely-there hint of pink. “I know you’re a dork.” With that, he nudged the book in front of him across the clean table and Stiles finally looked at the cover.
The King’s Name by Jo Walton. He’d never heard of it before. He told Derek as much with eager delight, always excited to find something new. The books that Derek picked revealed so much, he thought. About what he liked, what he didn’t. That was the reason he felt a personal rush when he handed over a new book.
Sometimes it meant more than others. Like now, for example, he grinned devilishly as Derek opened his copy of The Wolfman by Jonathan Maberry that Stiles had given him, outright laughing when Derek scowled at the note inside the front page:
Just for the LOLs.
Today his book was just for fun. But he couldn’t guess what Derek would read from Stiles’s notes throughout.
Judging by Derek’s hesitance to hand his book over though, it meant something more profound to him. Something so important he was nervous to share. He kept glancing at it as they talked over coffee and their sandwiches, as if he wanted to snatch it back and change his mind. Stiles subtly tucked his elbow on top. That baby was his.
*
Stiles read the book and Derek didn’t have to spell it out for him in exact words in the margins for him to get why Derek gave it to him.
It’d been a while since he had needed to unleash his ‘Google-Fu’ but by the time the sky had started to thin into pinkish pre-dawn, he’d found his way through most of the reputable websites it had to offer, as well as a few disreputable ones.
By the time the alarm meant to wake him sounded, he’d found himself reading through the forum for Beacon County’s AAA, Aromantic Asexual Alliance. Thankfully it was his day off. One of the few days he and his dad had off at the same time and so the day of the annual Stilinski breakfast. His stomach growled in anticipation of sustenance because he hadn’t moved since he’d sat down in his chair last night, after he’d read enough of the book, enough of Derek’s seemingly inconsequential annotations to understand exactly why he’d chosen it.
He glanced at the clock in the corner of his screen, running his knuckles absently across his lips as he thought.
He bookmarked the forum for reading later and headed out for a shower before his dad got up and realised he hadn’t been to bed.
*
In typical Stiles research mode, he found out everything he could. After breakfast with his dad, he made an excuse abouting trying to Skype Lydia then shut himself away until dinner, soaking up information like a sponge to water.
As predicted the AAA forum for Beacon County was the most helpful, run by real people with real experiences. While it didn’t tell him everything, it told him a lot. He discovered how different people who identified as asexual or aromantic could be. He learned that some people were indifferent to sex, while some were actively repulsed by it, could feel a mixture of the two on any given day.
He wondered what Derek liked, what he didn’t. Then he got caught up in thoughts of Derek’s fling with Braeden, the thrall Jennifer Blake had ensnared him with, the just sixteen year-old Derek and everything Kate had done to him on the back of his innocent high school romance that had been cut fatally short.
His thoughts kept him up well into the night, swirling around and around in his head. He rolled over onto his side at around two in the morning and found himself staring at the shiny hardback copy of Allegiant, the third book in the series Derek had started him on. He hadn’t started it yet, had been intending to make it his next book to share with Derek, a fitting choice, he’d thought. He snatched it up, flicked the light on and dug around in his bedside drawer for his favourite yellow highlighter, Then he snuggled down into his blankets as he started to read.
He sank into the story, jotting down his thoughts of Derek and the thousand questions he wanted to ask him but didn’t know how to phrase respectfully aloud. The things he thought he should ask, thought he shouldn’t ask. They occurred to him at random, often nothing to do with what was on the page. But he still highlighted the lines or passages that spoke to him. That fit them.
‘We are not people who touch each other carelessly; every point of contact between us feels important, a rush of energy and relief.’
Are you asexual? Aromantic? Somewhere in between?
‘It is the same urge, I realize, that makes me want to kiss her every time I see her, because even a sliver of distance between us is infuriating.’
Does sex repulse you? Or is it just like meh?
‘Yes, well, I realized that we’ve never been on an actual date.’
Dude, we’ve totally been dating the last few months without realising. And I like that. I think you liked it too?
‘”Why’s he bleeding?”
“Because he’s an idiot.”’
This line gives me dejavu. Multiple dejavus actually.
‘I feel like, if I read this book, I can reach backward through all the generations of humanity to the very first one, wherever it was—that I can participate in something many times larger and older than myself.’
I am so hungry right now. But the kitchen is so far away. I think I have half a packet of Oreos in my bag. They’re probably still good.
‘How many young men fear that there is a monster inside them?’
How long were you internalising all your confusion and fear about this before you figured it out?
‘Her absence stings worst of all.’
I miss you sometimes. Even when I’ve just seen you. That’s weird, isn’t it?
‘How have I never realized before that for all the strong, kind parts of him, there are also hurting, broken parts?’
I’m not afraid of any part of you, you know? Or repulsed by you. I think all parts of you are pretty beautiful actually.
‘“A group of scientists told you that my genes were damaged, that there was something wrong with me–’
You know there’s nothing wrong with you, don’t you?
‘“That you’re whole, that you’re worth loving, that you’re the best person I’ve ever known.”’
I can research until my eyes start bleeding but no internet forum or web article is going to tell me the most important thing, which is what you like and what you don’t. How you feel about me.
*
By Sunday evening he’d finished the book and found himself worrying about his usual lunch with Derek the next day. Worrying about all the ways he could be an insensitive prick with verbal diarrhoea and say something accidentally offensive or ignorant or just plain stupid.
He’d been staring at the closed book for nearly an hour before he made a decision.
His dad was on shift that night, so he took him his dinner via the Tupperware and on his way back, he stopped at Derek’s apartment that he shared with Cora and Isaac. It was a sprawling converted loft apartment above the shop that spanned over two floors.
Of course he wasn’t in. Apparently he was picking up some new books with Cora from the city but Isaac let him in and Stiles left Allegiant on Derek’s bed before ducking out, knowing Isaac would respect Derek’s privacy and not touch it.
It occured to him as he climbed back into his car that Derek might be overthinking things even more than him, second-guessing revealing such a personal part of him to Stiles and so on impulse he sent him a quick breezy text.
Bring me back a present from the big city!
*
He woke the next morning to his reply.
You better not have touched anything when you were in my room.
Stiles continued to grin all the way to the station, his anxiety that he’d written the wrong thing or completely misjudged the situation appeased by the easy teasing he could hear from Derek even in a text.
*
Of course that was the one day all the criminals in Beacon Hills decided to make themselves known. Stiles didn’t stop all day and his lunch break was instead occupied with an aggressive shoplifter as high as a kite. It took three of them to subdue him, because whatever he’d taken had made him not know how to stop, even though he’d nearly given himself a broken nose on the pavement by the time they managed to get him into a cell to cool down.
Stiles did manage to shoot Derek a hasty text before leaping to aid the front desk with aggressive high shoplifter’s even more aggressive mother, who’d stormed the station after he’d been booked.
It’s crazy here today. Can’t do lunch. Meet me after?
By the time he got to go home, his cell battery had died, he was starving and restless from bad station coffee. But all of that fell away when he walked out the front doors and saw Derek leaning up against his Jeep. He was dressed in a dark grey sweater that made him look so soft and cosy that Stiles just wanted to sink into him.
He was stiff, apprehensive as Stiles approached, but there was also that barely there little smile that he reserved just for Stiles.
“Have you been waiting out here for me my entire shift?” Stiles asked apologetically.
Derek shrugged. “I waited here for a bit, then I heard your dad say if you weren’t out of there in twenty he would fire you, so I took my chances and hit the drive-thru down the street.”
It was then that Stiles saw the bag hanging from his hand.
He snatched it from him and unlocked the Jeep, not even protesting when Derek slid into the driver’s side so he could ride shotgun and devour the burger and extra large fries within. “I’m not even going to pretend to be pissed at your supernatural eavesdropping if it means you always know when to bring me food.”
Derek rolled his eyes and took the keys to start the ignition. As he pulled out onto the road though, he seemed on the precipice of speech for some time. It wasn’t until they approached the first junction that he asked, “can we…go somewhere?”
Stiles only hesitated a moment before nodding, his mouth full. Then he flicked the heater on to ward off the biting evening chill. Derek glanced at him, clearly giving him a once over before he took a left at the lights.
When Stiles realised, even in the dark that they weren’t heading for Derek’s place or downtown or even the preserve he paused between bites. “So…did you mean ‘go somewhere’ to bury my body?”
“We’re heading to your house,” Derek replied without looking away from the road, his voice giving nothing away. “You’re not dressed for anything else.”
Stiles snorted. “Is that you refraining from scolding me for forgetting my coat?” When Derek didn’t reply, the next words fall out of Stiles’s mouth, unbidden. “Don’t you like me in my uniform?”
He panicked internally as he thought of how stupid that was to say, especially given the conversation they were likely to have imminently. Especially since he didn’t know where Derek stood on that stuff. Had he just made Derek really uncomfortable? Before he could scramble to apologise, he just caught Derek side-eyeing him in a way that Stiles could only identify as appreciative.
So…not uncomfortable then. A bit embarrassed at being caught out, most likely, but most definitely not uninterested or unaffected.
His dad was back at the station still, so the house was quiet when they stepped inside. Stiles grabbed two sodas from the fridge and offered one to Derek, who took it silently leaving Stiles to dither on the spot for a moment before leading him into the living room.
He was equal parts relieved and reassured when Derek took the seat beside him on the sofa.
They sat there for a while, consumed by silence and the knowledge that what came next would determine their relationship. It didn’t help that neither of them were particularly well-versed in saying the right thing.
In the end, Stiles stared at the place where he was rubbing his palms together, fingers fidgeting with each pass before he managed, “did you…read the book?”
Derek exhaled slowly. “I read what you wrote.”
Stiles stopped, turning his head slightly from where he was leaning forward to meet Derek’s eyes. He still couldn’t make out what was going on behind them. He licked his dry lips. “Do you…? I mean…” He sighed in frustration and sat back to look at Derek fully. “Oh god, are you pissed at me? Did I completely misread the situation? About you? About…me and you?”
Derek seemed to startle a little at the bluntness, floundering for words.
Stiles showed restraint and patience for the first time in his life and waited.
“You didn’t misread anything.” His fingers worried the neck of the unopened bottle in his hands, almost just to anchor himself in that moment. He seemed to study it for a long time, the longest Stiles himself had ever sat still and silent in his life. Then, softly, carefully, Derek’s voice eased into the quiet again. “While Cora and I were in South America, we spent some time with a pack there.”
Stiles nodded, refraining from reminding Derek that he knew this, that he and Derek had even talked about the pack and the way they ran things down there.
“Two of the betas there, the ones that we stayed with while we visited, they were ace.” Derek still didn’t look up but his tone remained even. He wasn’t distressed, wasn’t worried in any way. It was just hard for him to explain, Stiles realised, to put into words something that was so natural, so innate to him that it eluded simple explanation. Because Derek had never had to put it into words for anyone before.
“When I realised what that meant, it felt like the validation I’d been waiting for my whole life.”
Stiles nodded thoughtfully. “And you…I mean I know all of the things it can mean, but what does it mean for you?”
Derek turned his face to look at him at last, calm and entirely comfortable in his own skin and so different to the scared, uncertain young man Stiles had seen in the woods the day after Peter had attacked Scott. He wasn’t confused about what he felt, he wasn’t lost. He’d spent that time in South America and even the last few years here finding himself.
“I just don’t want sex,” he said. “I don’t think I ever did.”
Stiles didn’t have to ask to understand the unspoken truth in those words, to understand the confusion and inexperience that had driven a more vulnerable, younger Derek to believe sex was the only way to make connections. He wondered about the journey that Derek had taken to this well-adjusted man in front of him. Derek had told him so much already but there was a lot he felt he’d yet to learn.
“So it’s not repulsive to you? You just…don’t want to?”
“I’m not disgusted by the idea of it I’m…Eloa and Lucas, the couple we stayed with–”
“The ace couple?”
Derek’s lips twitched, obviously pleased at the sound of that word coming so easily to Stiles’s lips. Derek knew him well enough to know he had spent every spare moment in the last couple of days researching frantically for every scrap of information he could find. There was a fond appreciation clear on his face as he replied, “yes. They called it being ‘sex positive.’ I’m not disgusted by it, I just don’t want to do it.” His gaze wavered briefly.
“I used to force myself to, when I liked someone, like that was the only way I knew how to feel…” He cleared his throat, shrugging slightly. “So I did it. But it turned things sour and it wasn’t until South America that I started to realise why.” Derek hesitated, searching Stiles’s eyes before he added more softly, more vulnerably. “I don’t want that with you.”
Exhaling shakily, his voice husky with caged emotion, Stiles asked, “and what do you want with me, exactly?” He had to be sure. “I’ve got quite the overactive imagination; you’ll probably have to spell it out for me. Just in case.”
Derek’s gaze turned molten with tenderness, burnished gold-green-brown alight with affection that makes Stiles’s heart flutter. “I can show you?”
Stiles couldn’t breathe.
Derek’s thick lashes fluttered as he leaned in, tentatively cupping the back of Stiles’s neck. He edged in, so slow, as if he were wading into unfamiliar waters until their lips brushed. It was all tenderness, sweet and soft. It made Stiles’s skin prickle all over with warmth, Derek’s thumb brushing his cheek. Derek drew back to look into his eyes, to ask a million silent questions, and to each one the answer was yes.
When Derek leaned back in Stiles exhaled shakily, not from arousal but from the sheer overwhelming intimacy of it as Derek rubbed his cheek against Stiles’s. His beard was just long enough to be a soft prickle against Stiles’s cheekbone, his jaw, his neck. It was like scenting, more personal than any French kiss or messy tumble through the sheets. Because this was Derek, holding him close, nuzzling into his hair and kissing the side of his mouth, his cheek, breathing him in like he was the first breath of clean air after a lifetime of living underground.
He wasn’t entirely sure where to put his hands, or how far was too far for Derek, how much would be too sexual. But the hunger he felt wasn’t for sex so much as to hold Derek as close as Derek was holding him. To show him, to make his head spin the same way that Stiles’s did.
“Is this what you like?” he asked breathlessly, kissing Derek’s lips gently, softly dragging his nose along the line of Derek’s. He brought his own hand up to stroke down the back of Derek’s head through his hair, before letting his fingers cup Derek’s nape in a mirror of the hand curled around his own.
Derek melted into him, the strings of apprehension that had been holding him back sagging with relief. “I like that,” he assured Stiles, voice low yet soft with emotion. He’d undoubtedly had experience with relationships more to his taste since South America; with how confident he was in what he liked and what he didn’t. By the way his breath skittered against Stiles’s cheek as their foreheads touched, however, by the way his fingers gripped Stiles’s hair, like he was barely in control, Stiles knew he’d never felt quite like this.
Neither of them had ever felt like this before.
Just like that, Derek showed Stiles how he liked intimacy, physical contact, kisses and the way Stiles nuzzled behind his ear. He liked the way Stiles pressed against his neck and just breathed there, warm and close.
Stiles felt flushed all over, arms finding their way around Derek, gently, hesitantly, looking for any cue that Derek might not be comfortable.
“Can we...lie down?” Stiles asks in a barely there voice. “Is that…?”
“Yeah,” Derek drew back to study him, “yeah that’s…yeah.”
Grinning at Derek’s inarticulacy, Stiles shimmied down the worn, comfy sofa, fitting into the shape of Derek’s body when he lay down beside him. It was awkward at first, not the least because they were two full-grown men squeezed onto one sofa, but also because at first Stiles wasn’t sure how close to press, or where. He was definitely over thinking this but he couldn’t stop, he wanted to do this right and…
Then Derek’s arm came around him, as much to hold him close as to stop him from falling off the sofa onto the floor. Stiles gave a little huff of laughter into the hollow of his throat and just relaxed against him, one arm trapped between them, the other settling against Derek’s chest, his ever-moving fingers fiddling distractedly with the collar of Derek’s sweater.
They stayed like that for a while, melting together in the cosy quiet of the house. At some point, Stiles let his eyes fall shut to the sound of Derek’s heart thudding close to his ear. He murmured soft questions into the fabric covering Derek’s shoulder and Derek answered every one as easy as breathing.
“So we could do this like…in a bed and that’d be cool?”
“Mmm,” Derek answered the affirmative.
“What if I accidentally touched your butt or something? Or if you saw me naked?”
Derek gave a snort of amusement. “As long as you didn’t expect sex it doesn’t matter to me. I won’t be…offended by it. It’s hard to be uncomfortable about your body or nudity in general when you’re a werewolf. That’s not what it’s about for me. We’re naturally comfortable with all of that.”
“Supernaturally, even.”
Stiles didn’t have to see Derek’s face to know he was rolling his eyes.
“So if I like, stayed over, or you stayed over here or in the far future we lived together like an old married couple – or hypothetically were an old married couple – and I jerked off in the shower and you happened to overhear?”
Derek shrugged, still not seeming too perturbed. “I would give you privacy. It wouldn’t matter as long as you didn’t do it with me next to you or pressure me to join you.”
Frowning, Stiles lifted his head. “I would never pressure you, ever. And if I ever do it by accident I’d want you to tell me, because there are some things even Google doesn’t know, dude. All the research in the world isn’t going to tell me everything I need to know about what’s okay for you and what isn’t.”
Derek pushed up then, the movement forcing Stiles to edge onto his back on the sofa with Derek hovering over him, so that he could look into his eyes when he spoke again. “I just…you’ve got a sexual appetite and I don’t have a problem with it, Stiles. I’m not going to lose my shit any time it surfaces. It’s a part of you. I just need to know…”
For the first time that night, Derek sounded unsure of himself and Stiles could practically read the unspoken ‘is this too much to ask?’ in his voice. “I need to be sure you know what we’re getting into here. What I can offer you, what I can’t. It’s not personal but I’m never going to want to have sex with you. Not because I’m not attracted to you, or that I don’t want you, but because…” He winced as he struggled for words, “because I express closeness in a different way. I don’t need or want sex to validate how I feel about you.”
Stiles wondered if Derek realised he hadn’t actually said how he feels felt him yet. His lips parted to say just that but Derek cut him off.
“I know that…to some people who feel a desire for sex it can feel like…settling. And I didn’t want to ask you to give up something you like. So I didn’t ask. For a long time.”
Stiles exhaled shakily, gently squeezing Derek’s shoulders so that they could roll back up to sit next to each other, still touching, still close, but able to look each other in the eye from the same level which felt important at that moment.
“I’m glad you asked. Because if you think I wouldn’t give up having sex once or twice a week or whatever to do this–” Stiles gestured between them, to their easy proximity, the place where they’d been cuddling moments before, “–with you then I think you’re not clear on how I feel about you either.” He swallowed thickly. “I wouldn’t consider it as ‘giving up’ anything. Not really.”
Derek looked a little flushed, his eyes bright with the soft glow of the lamplight. He was trying to tell Stiles that this was ‘all’ he could ever give him, but Stiles was trying to show him that there was no sacrifice in that. Not to him. It was just something they didn’t feel the same about, a difference in desires in just one aspect of their lives and it was a fairly significant difference, but it wasn’t everything. It didn’t counter all the other ways that they did fit together.
He didn’t feel restrained or awkward or hungry for something Derek couldn’t give. He just wanted to be with him, everyday, as close as Derek would have him.
It would probably take some time for them both to understand each other’s feelings, their likes or dislikes, but that was a part of any relationship, with or without sex.
“I’m not saying it’s not going to be an adjustment,” Stiles said, “that I won’t fuck up sometimes, because yeah I do find you attractive in all ways. Sexually included, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to pressure you or resent you. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to see where this goes. I want you. What I feel for you, this closeness we have? It comes from love, not lust.”
It wasn’t a passionate inferno that was going to burn out in a few weeks or months, but a warm, glowing heat they could cultivate and sink into, wake up to every morning and fall asleep with every night.
“Am I going to have to go get a book so we can iron out the creases?” Stiles mused.
Derek looked thoughtful for a moment. “Not tonight.” He smirked. “I have to finish the last book first.”
Stiles laughed, and on impulse, leaned in to kiss the corner of Derek’s mouth. Derek looked pleased, if a little giddy when Stiles pulled back. “So for now, you’ll have to help show me the boundaries as we go, right?”
Derek nodded, expression soft, hair all mussed, eyes crinkling a little at the corners.
“So…there’s a hefty portion of cheesecake leftover in the fridge. Would the boundaries be good with it joining us on my bed upstairs for some sort of movie-snuggle-type situation?”
Derek’s smile was subtle and devastating all at once. “The boundaries would be good with that.” And he dipped his head a little with that shy little nod Stiles had only seen a few times before. And even if it wouldn’t always be as easy as this, if he could see Derek look at him like that, he thought they’d do just fine.
“What book were you on when you realised you loved me?” Stiles asked as they sat on his bed a little later, fighting with two forks over the best bits of the leftover Oreo marshmallow cheesecake while the opening of the movie sounded on his bedroom TV.
“Probably somewhere around Casino Royale and The Book Thief,” he answered, a teasing glint in his eye. “Although I started to question how much I really liked you when you gave me The Wolf Man.”
Stiles cackled delightedly and while he was distracted, Derek stole the last piece of cheesecake.
The End.