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Admission orders fall from the desk in a flurry as Stiles rushes past. “Page peds!” he shouts at the charge nurse with a wave of his arms, not pausing to hear a reply. There’s coffee dripping from the nurse’s station to the floor, it having been completely upended as soon as Stiles heard his resident’s cry of “shoulders, Dr. Stilinski!” over the crackling intercom. Stiles throws his nametag at one nurse while the other helps him into his gloves as quickly as possible.
“All right, Allysha,” he says to the laboring mother, firm and with much more confidence than he actually feels. The woman’s eyes are wide and terrified, but she’s strong, Stiles knows. “You can do this.”
Sam, his resident, moves quickly, ashen-faced, as Stiles takes over, his strong hands bearing down just above Allysha’s pubic bone.
“No response to pressure or McRoberts,” Sam says, low and hurried. “I tried to disimpact the anterior shoulder.”
“Time?” Stiles grunts and he tries the disimpaction himself.
“Forty-five and counting,” one of the nurses answers.
“Okay, Allysha, you’re going to feel a lot of pressure,” Stiles says, slipping his hand past the baby’s head and into the vaginal vault. “But then you’re going to have a baby.”
--
Fifty-nine seconds. That’s all it takes to set a night from hell in motion. Fifty-nine seconds that feel like an eternity. Shoulder dystocia, a prolonged neonatal resuscitation, an hour and a half in the Operating Room with a post-partum hemorrhage, hours of replaying the entire incident in his head, and now this: Derek Hale, in all his scowling glory.
Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad if he didn’t stroll in at four-thirty in the morning looking completely unruffled. Looking like a goddamned Colgate ad, with his reassuring smiles and tight fitting purple Midwife scrubs. Purple, ass-hugging, biceps-highlighting scrubs. Stiles can barely get his greens to stay up on his lanky frame, and while Scott may insist that he rocks the disheveled look, he’s pretty sure he looks like he’s been possessed by a demonic spirit this far into a thirty-hour call shift.
He rolls his pen along his lips, ignoring the stack of admission orders he needs to review, and watches as Hale gathers his patient from her spot in triage and guides her along to her room, murmuring softly. He places his hand on her shoulder and her tension dissipates immediately, the deep lines of pain etched into her face smooth out. Stiles can hear his arrogant voice – medication-free labor is a possibility for every patient, Dr. Stilinski, if you only have the time to invest – which makes it impossible to concentrate. He huffs, resting his head on the pile of papers. Screw Hale and his magic hands – really, what do the nurses know of his hands, it’s not like he touches anyone who isn’t a patient, and Stiles hands are a fucking gift, all right, he saves lives, which is more than he can say for –
“Umm, Dr. Stilinski?” Stiles startles and the papers fly in every direction for a second time.
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry.” A crimson-faced medical student falls to the ground, scrambling to retrieve the papers.
“It’s okay,” Stiles reassures her, picking up the sheets himself. “Totally my fault. Did you have something to tell me?”
“There’s a patient in emerg,” she says, handing him over a consult sheet. “I would review with the resident, but she’s a post-operative patient you discharged a few days ago, and – well, she’s demanding to see you and she’s not very happy.”
Great. The cherry on top of his shit sundae of a night. “Thanks,” he says, smiling at the nervous student and stealing a glance at the Midwife suite. He’s willing to bet that Hale never gets disgruntled patients, even if they come in with birth plans that are three pages long and more demanding than a pop star’s rider. “I’ll see to it. Why don’t you go get a few hours sleep?”
“Actually, Derek and his patient invited me to observe the birth,” she says, looking torn between the automatic timidity that is programmed into every medical student who feels like they’re disobeying their staff physician and the same doe-eyed exuberance he’s seen from every person who has had more than three seconds of interaction with Hale. Derek. Whatever. “That sounds like a really great opportunity,” Stiles says, scowling as soon as her back is turned. The shrill sound of his pager spurs him back into action before he can properly ruminate on the fact that Hale has essentially poached one of his learners. It’s just as well, he reminds himself as he dials down to the emergency department to tell them he’s on his way, because he’s got much more important things to think about than a midwife with a superiority complex.
--
“That’s it, Becky. Deep breaths through the nose and out the mouth.” Derek places a hand on her foot, using the blanket to shield his arm from the medical student as he takes a little bit of Becky’s pain. The baby’s heartbeat is a steady thrum, just dipping slightly after particularly intense contractions in preparation for birth. He lets the medical student come forward and measure it with the portable Doppler, just for appearances.
“So much pressure,” she pants as her husband leans forward to wipe her forehead. He kisses her softly, murmuring words of encouragement he thinks no one can hear, and for the first time, Derek turns away. He feels an ache behind his chest at the profound intimacy of the moment.
“We talked about that,” he replies, schooling his features into a professional mask. “It’s soon going to be time to push.” This is always the hardest part. He can’t take away too much of the pain; feeling contractions is the best way to push effectively, and Derek refuses to have one of his clients end up with an unnecessary caesarean just because he was a little too ambitious.
The med student fidgets beside him, fighting back exhaustion. Fatigue clings to her like a second skin, and the lingering stench of blood, iodine, and cauterized vessels means that she must have spent a good portion of her night in the operating room. Not surprising, considering that the hospital’s newest staff physician, Dr. Stilinski – Stiles he’d introduced himself as – is on call. The young doctor, who (according to the nursing station gossip, which Derek tries but fails miserably to tune out) is barely older than a student himself, has barely any control over his bodily movements and blusters around the ward like overeager labradoodle, has evidently set out on being a scalpel-wielding, mightier-than-thou surgeon. Disappointing. Unsurprising, considering that cutting people open must seem so much more important than sitting beside them for hours while they worked through their pain, but disappointing all the same.
--
The first time Derek met Stiles, the young doctor had made a midhusbandry joke before running his fingers through his unkempt hair, and Derek had been simultaneously annoyed and aroused.
It’s been a running theme.
This is only the third time he’s been called in during one of Stiles’ call shifts, since the vast majority of his clients prefer home births, but the young doctor always seems so frazzled that he doubts it’s safe for him to be entrusted with laboring women. Still, he’s managed to earn the loyalty of the notoriously territorial nursing staff in a short period of time. The first and only time Derek had questioned his competence Melissa McCall, the charge nurse, had nearly had him run off the premises. It was only when armed with coffee and a jumbo cookie from the twenty-four hour shop across the street that he felt safe to slink into her workstation and grab the paperwork he needed.
Still, whether or not the nurses want to hear it, Derek has some serious issues with the way Stiles skates around the ward, upending instruments and scattering papers and chewing on pens. His scrubs never fit right and are always riding up to show patches of smooth, pale skin and his hair is frankly pornographic. It’s just so…unprofessional.
--
When three more weeks bring seven more run-ins with Dr. Stilinski, Derek is convinced that the universe has it out for him. Yeah, he’ll admit that when that one lady came into triage with the baby crowning and Stiles had stepped in, suddenly serious and confident, snapping gloves over his long fingers, he’d been pleasantly surprised. Still, it wasn’t like it was that impressive; Derek did the same thing all the time. Plus, as he’d pointed out, it was a flawed system that Stiles worked in if women didn’t feel confident presenting to hospital until the baby was ready to fall out. He’d never let that happen to one of his clients. Stiles had stalked away, muttering mutinously under his breath and leaving Derek wondering why he’d even been impressed in the first place. The guy had spent five years training in obstetrics; if he needed a pat on the back for delivering one baby then that was his damn issue.
The worst thing about these joint call shifts is the number of times Stiles mentions his girlfriend. It’s always Isla this and Isla that, and Derek is starting to think that Stiles has just made her up. Seriously, no one talks about his or her significant other that much; Stiles can (and does) bring everything back to her. Any fucking topic is fair game, as evidenced when he leaned over across the small station a few days ago, lips quirked in a half-smile, to whisper dude, mad eyebrow game as Derek tried to decipher the notes left on the chart by Erica, his practice partner. Derek had barely had time to splutter in confused indignation before Stiles tacked on the inevitable you could give Isla a run for her money. He’d pulled out his phone – presumably to show a picture – but Derek had stuttered an excuse, not bothering to try to decipher the way Stiles’ face had fallen or how disappointed he’d smelled because Derek wasn’t interested in his perfect relationship.
It’s the morning after a long and difficult home birth when Derek accidently finds out the truth about Isla. He’s with Erica, who he hasn’t had time to see since she returned from her own maternity leave, and she’s ranting about one of the Labor and Delivery nurses at the General, where Stiles works.
“And anyway,” she says, either not noticing or not caring that Derek has effectively tuned out the past five minutes of her rant. “Sexy Stilinksi totally came to my rescue.”
“Sexy St- what?” Derek chokes out, swallowing a gulp of his coffee too quickly.
“Stilinski, the new doctor,” Erica says, lip curled. So Derek has a type and she knows it – there’s nothing he can do about that. Clearly what she doesn’t know is how damn irritating Stiles is. “Have you met him?”
“A time or two,” Derek says, consciously controlling his heart rate. He pulls out his phone, feigning nonchalance, but who is he fucking kidding? Erica’s grin widens and not for the first time Derek wonders why the hell he gave the bite to someone who can see through him so easily.
“I’ll bet you have.” Erica leans closer and Derek wishes he could just rewind this conversation to a point where he wasn’t feeling victimized. Sensing that she’s making him uncomfortable, she switches to a different tactic. “You need to get into those scrubs, Derek.” She looks up with large, pleading eyes. “Do it for me. Boyd and I get to have sex like once a month, and I need vicarious hot-doctor boning.” She taps a blood red nail against the table and pouts. “We’re too pretty to be going without, and you don’t have the excuse of having a teething baby at home.”
“You could just bring her to my house more often, and then you could have your own hot sex –” he cringes at the very thought – “and leave me the hell alone.”
“If only,” Erica says, her eyes far away, and Jesus that is not what Derek needs to be smelling from his best friend. “We both know she won’t leave Boyd’s side when she’s upset. Now stop trying to distract me and focus. Those hands, Derek. That I-just-got-fucked hair. Those lips.” She moans and Derek flushes, sure that someone is going to overhear this humiliating conversation. “I bet Stilinksi goes down like a champ.”
“Jesus, Erica, you’re married! And a mother!”
“Funny, neither of those descriptors was ‘nun’ or ‘blind’.”
“He’s annoying.” Derek takes a sip of his coffee, one hundred percent ready to check out of this conversation.
“He’s interesting,” Erica counters.
“He’s arrogant.”
“He’s twenty-seven and a staff Obstetrician; let him have a little pride.”
“He’s got a girlfriend.” He crosses his arms and smiles smugly. For all her talk, Erica is unflinching in her loyalty and can’t abide by cheating.
“He’s – wha?”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t heard about Isla?” Derek had seen her a few days ago, picking Stiles up from work. She hadn’t been what he was expecting, being at least ten years older than Stiles, maybe more, but she did have some pretty impressive eyebrows.
“Isla?” Erica blinks and then bursts into delighted laughter. “You’re an idiot. Isla isn’t Stiles’ girlfriend. She’s his daughter.”
His daughter? Derek’s mouth hangs open for a good ten seconds before Erica takes pity on him and leans over to shut it herself. “Honestly. Hasn’t he ever shown you a picture of her? He only has like three thousand on his phone.”
“Stiles doesn’t even like babies,” he says weakly, thinking about the conversation he overheard sometime last week, remembering Stiles’ flood of anxiety whenever a baby was left in his arms for more than a minute. “He hands them over as quickly as he can.”
“Yeah, probably because he misses his own so much. She’s like, three months old or something.”
A baby. Once Derek’s brain latches on to the idea of Stiles with a baby, it’s hard to let go. He feels like an idiot for believing that Stiles would hate kids, because it’s incredibly easy to imagine him babbling at a baby, making funny faces and cooing. He feels a rush of warmth and refuses to look over at Erica’s smug face; she knows that he can’t resist babies. He still remembers exactly how he felt when Cora was born, when his mother let him wrap her in a blanket and carry her around the house on her first day home. She’d been more attached to him than any other member of the pack, his mother included, and he was so good at leeching away her tiny twinges of gas pain that she’d rarely wanted to be with anyone else. He’d been there for her first accidental shift, when she’d sneezed at three months and scared herself into her beta form. She’d called him Dewek for years and he would come home from practice four days out of five to find her asleep in his bed, her toys scattered on his floor. She hasn’t been back to California in five years – too many bad memories – and Derek misses her fiercely.
“What about her mother?”
“Took off right away, apparently,” Erica says. “It’s like the one time I’ve seen Stilinski stuck for something to say, so I didn’t really press for details.”
“Well, fuck.”
“That’s the spirit!” Erica says happily. “Fuck Dr. Stilinski! Many times, and in many different positions.”
Derek ignores her in favor of ordering a very large piece of cake, 10:00AM be damned.
--
Somehow, impossibly, everything is going smoothly. A lot of that probably has to do with the Chief Resident who’s on call tonight, but Stiles will take it. He’s spent all of his call shifts since becoming staff as a jittery, anxious mess and relaxation is just what he needs. He’s got a weekend off and a few clinic-free days coming up, and he doesn’t want to spend them worrying about the decisions he made on call and how they could have been better.
The worst thing about these quiet nights is it doesn’t take nearly as long to get tired. There are only two laboring women and both are primips, which means it’ll be hours before anything happens. It’s barely 11:00 and Stiles’ eyes are drooping. He doesn’t like to drink too much coffee – coffee plus Adderall plus cramming had landed him in the hospital for over a week in medical school – but sometimes it’s necessary. He pushes out his chair, feeling a satisfying pop in his neck as he stretches. “I’m heading across the road for coffee, any requests?”
“Would you mind if I came with you?” The voice is mild and hesitant and Stiles almost does a double take when he looks up and sees Derek Hale staring at him expectantly. “I – uh – yeah,” he says, dumbfounded, “of course.”
Hale finishes writing his note and then stacks his papers neatly at the nursing desk. No wonder the nurses love him; Stiles’ notes look like they were delivered from the middle of a tsunami and written in the dark.
The walk to the elevator is quiet and Stiles risks a glance at Hale out of the corner of his eye. He looks as unfairly perfect as ever, not even a hint of fatigue around his eyes. He’s got the scruffy look going and fuck is it ever working for him; he may be about as approachable as a honey badger, but even the chance of that stubble being dragged along his thigh is worth the inevitable ball-busting rejection.
“So you’re not bringing me out here to kill me, right?” Stiles asks. He’s never done well with awkward silences; ask anyone who has approached him in a bar, ever.
Derek just narrows his eyes, and dude, that should not be a look that makes him need to readjust his scrubs.
“So how’s your day – ” Stiles starts just as Derek asks him about Isla.
“Isla’s great,” Stiles replies, latching on to that topic as tightly as he can. Because she is great. She’s the best, as Stiles would be happy to tell anyone, anytime. As he’s tried to tell Hale in the past, only to be met with thinly veiled contempt. Stiles had been under the impression that Hale hated kids. “She’s doing this rolling thing where she just goes, like triple, quadruple rolling it. Sometimes she gets stuck halfway and does an awkward arm flail, which is nice, because it’s good to know there’s a little Stilinski in her.” He stops for a minute, worried that this may be too much, but Derek still looks interested. “She, uh, looks a lot like her mom,” he finishes.
“Is she –”
“She’s not around.” Stiles is abrupt, to the point. “She never was.” It’s silent again, and Stiles slips his hand into the pocket of his scrubs, scrolls through his photos. “Wanna see a picture?”
Hale nods and takes Stiles’ phone from his outstretched hand and grins softly as he looks down at Isla, all decked out in the purple and green sports clothes Allison had dropped off a few nights ago. Stiles knows his kid is cute – adorable, even – but he’s pretty sure he’s never seen Hale smile like that for anything, and seeing it directed at his baby is a little overwhelming.
“She’s beautiful, Stiles,” Hale says. Stiles is pretty sure he’s never going to get over the soft way Hale says his name.
“Yeah, well, I can’t take much credit for that I’m afraid.” Stiles laughs and runs a hand through his hair. “All she inherited from me was gangly limbs and colic.”
“She’s been colicky?” Derek looks at Stiles, feeling a little more sympathy for the dark circles under his eyes and a little more appreciation for his easy smile.
“Yeah.” Stiles glances up, looking almost embarrassed. “I mean, I know that breastfed babies are less likely to have issues and she probably would benefit from the comfort of nursing, and thought about all that a million times, but there’s just nothing for it, you know? I mean, I guess she likes the smell of her nanny, and I go all skin-to-skin when I’m there, but it’s just hard when I have to spend so much time away. If I could feed her, I would, I mean it’s just that I’m a guy and guys can’t – well, I mean most guys can’t, not trying to be transphobic or anything, but – ”
“Stiles,” Derek interrupts, “stop.”
“It’s just,” Stiles says as they walk up the steps to the coffee shop, “I know you’re all kumbaya all-natural and there’s really no way for me to do that.” He digs his foot into the ground, his voice low and flat. “There’s really no way for me to give her what’s best.”
Derek pulls open the door, letting the smell of fresh coffee and warm cookies envelop his senses. “You’re what’s best for her,” he says, avoiding Stiles’ shocked face. “You’re her dad.”
“Y-yeah?” Stiles sounds so hopeful, so starved for validation that Derek can’t help but feel bad for the way he’s treated him.
“Of course.”
Stiles ends up buying a box of coffee for the floor and lets Derek handle dessert. Derek, knowing that the nurses will never forgive him if he doesn’t come back laden with chocolate, may go a bit overboard.
“My sister had colic,” he says as they’re walking back to the hospital. “I was really the only one who could get her to calm down.”
“Oh my God, you have to come work your mojo on my kid!” There are bits of pastry caught between Stiles lips and it takes a few seconds for him to realize he’s even blurted anything out. “Fuck, I’m sorry, that was very rude and totally inappropriate.” He pauses, then tacks on, “figures you’d be a baby whisperer.”
“I don’t mind.” Stiles glances at him, wondering if he should ask him to repeat that. “Coming over, I mean. You could run errands, have some free time.” Derek hesitates, then adds, “go on a date. You know, whatever.”
“A date?” Stiles says flatly. The warmth that had been building in his chest dissipates and he wonders why he ever thought that Derek would be interested in him. Just because he likes kids doesn’t mean he likes their hyperactive dads. He takes a deep breath, snorts, and grabs another pastry from the bag. “As if that will ever happen.”
“Why not?” Derek looks genuinely curious and Stiles would probably be irritated at the hot-and-cold vibes he’s putting off, but it’s hard when the guy looks so goddamn earnest. “You’re young, attractive, a doctor…”
Stiles flushes and turns to watch for traffic so that they can dart across the intersection. “More like single dad before thirty, spastic, and overworked. Seriously, my idea of a perfect date right now is staying in, eating raspberry sorbet from the container, and cuddling. Not exactly high rolling.” He pauses to open the hospital door for Derek, then turns to glare at him. “Also, if you’re planning to use “Doctor” as a selling point, you may not want to sound like you’re talking about a Blast-Ended Screwt.”
“I don’t…I didn’t,” Derek huffs and yanks the pastry bag away from Stiles as he tries to sneak his hand in for the third time. He crosses his arms. “That would be an insult to Blast-Ended Screwts. Doctors are more the flobberworm of the caregiver community.”
Stiles gapes, then grins, long and slow. Derek can feel his face flush and storms past Stiles before he can make a bigger fool of himself. All he can think, as his arm brushes against Stiles’ briefly, is that he loves staying in and cuddling and eating sorbet. Sure, he prefers to eat from a bowl, but he’s nothing if not adaptable.
--
Stiles takes a mini-vacation and it’s over a week and a half before Derek sees him again. When he comes back he looks well-rested and happy and Derek just wants to reach out and rub himself all over that neck. Instead he just turns to his notes and waits to see if Stiles will approach him.
Unfortunately, Stiles gets caught up in a whirlwind. He has two ladies come in fully dilated and ready to push, gets called into an emergency C-section, and his resident is so sick that he sends her home before midnight. He does pause to drop a chocolate chip cookie in front of Derek as he’s charting in his partogram and smiles at him at various points in the night as he’s dashing from room to room.
Derek’s been there for four hours when his patient starts to push. She’s young, has had a pristine pregnancy so far, and he can feel her strength, but the baby is just not coming down. Derek grits his teeth in frustration as he tries to discretely help her with pain, but as the pushing goes by for one hour, then two, he knows he’s going to have to admit defeat. What’s worse is this is going to mean more work for Stiles, since his intern can’t handle midwife consults.
Irritated, he calls in a nurse to help his patient through her next few contractions and searches out Stiles. He approaches him with a quiet “Dr. Stilinski?” just as Stiles is running through an NST with his student. “Sorry to interrupt,” he continues, “but my patient has dystocia of the second stage and I’d like you to take a look at her.”
“Uh, sure,” Stiles says, apologizing quickly to his student. “I want you to read up on labour dystocia,” he says to her as he walks away with Derek. “We’ll chat about it at teaching tomorrow.”
He turns to Derek, looking a little nervous. “So, uh, does she have a birth plan?”
Derek flushes, remembering the last time he’d had to ask Stiles for help. He hadn’t known him at all then, and had let past experiences color their interaction. Not all doctors are like Kate Argent, he has had to tell himself countless times, and Stiles is even less so than most. He really does care, Derek knows, and even if he thinks that birth is overmedicalized he knows that Stiles is smart and talented and that he cares for all his patients. He hands Stiles the preprinted birth plan and waits patiently for him to finish it.
“Okay, so what do you think?”
Derek just stares for a second before finding his voice. “I-I think that she’s a strong pusher and that maybe three pushes with the forceps and she’ll be able to finish things naturally.”
Stiles considers Derek’s words, then nods. “Sounds reasonable. Well, let’s go have a chat with her.”
Stiles is charming, but respectful, and Derek’s patient seems relatively at ease despite her fervent desire to have a natural childbirth. Derek, who never takes the pain of contractions away from women who want to feel them, instead focusing on areas like their tense shoulders or tension headaches, feels that taking the pain of the metal forceps is only fair. Stiles stays calm, talks her through the three big pushes, and as Derek predicted, she’s able to finish the birth herself. Once the baby is wailing on her chest and the dad has cut the umbilical cord, Stiles just smiles softly at Derek and then gets back to his own patients. Derek spends the next ten minutes cleaning the baby in a daze, wondering how the hell he managed to get himself into this mess and what the hell he’s going to do about it.
When he finally gets cleaned up and his patient is off to the post-partum floor, Derek leaves the room to find Stiles waiting for him.
“Hey,” Stiles greet, his smile still bright despite the fact that it’s nearly five and he’s been run ragged for most of his shift. “Go team.”
“You’re too chipper for five in the morning,” Derek grunts, grabbing some post-partum orders from the nursing station. “It’s unnatural.”
“You’re one to talk,” Stiles scoffs. “Mr. I look perfect no matter what the hour.”
“Perfect, huh?”
“Like you don’t milk it to get the nurses to do your bidding,” Stiles says, his face flushing.
“Not everyone has residents and med students running all over the place. I take back what I said before; there’s no reason at all for you to be tired.”
Stiles throws a balled up piece of paper at him, hitting him squarely in the forehead. “Ass!”
Derek raises an eyebrow, just to see what Stiles will have to say about it. “Dr. Stilinski, do you use that kind of language around your daughter?”
Instead of laughing, Stiles just shuts down, immediately. “Um, no? I don’t know, maybe. Sometimes it just slips out and you know it’s hard to get used to someone else being around and I really don’t think – ”
“Stiles,” Derek cuts him off, the burn of shame making him hot despite the fan that nurses have set up. “I was joking, I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Yeah…” Stiles fiddles with his pen, spinning it in circles with his fingers. He reaches across the table for his phone before looking up at Derek. “Wanna see another picture?”
Derek holds out his hand, waiting for Stiles to find the photo he’s looking for.
“Adorable, huh?” Stiles asks when he sees Derek smile. “A little quality daddy-daughter time right there.”
Derek, who’s profoundly grateful that Stiles can’t hear his heartbeat, emphatically agrees. Little Isla is peering up at the camera, all smiles, with a pair of wire-framed glasses perched over her little nose. “I didn’t know you wore glasses.”
“Used to,” Stiles amends. “In college. I got Lasik in medical school; it was too annoying to stand in the OR with your glasses sliding down over your face and contacts would dry out over a night shift.”
Derek takes a second to curse overheated operating rooms everywhere, because if the thought of Stiles with a baby wasn’t enough, the thought of Stiles in glasses with a baby is enough to end him. If anything, he should be thankful that he doesn’t have to come to work and see that, because there are women here who depend on him to be coherent. “She looks happy,” he manages to say after a few seconds of processing time. “Is the colic getting better?”
“Well, she’s nice and happy between the hours of eight and eleven AM,” Stiles answers. “Then she’s miserable for the day and up half the night.” He smiles fondly down at the photo and something inside Derek just squeezes. “I just wish I could make it better.”
“I was serious about my offer to come help out.” Derek pushes Stiles’ phone back toward him. “I’d love to meet her and I have experience with an inconsolable baby.”
“I don’t want to pre-” Stiles stutters to a halt as Derek’s expression darkens. “I mean, I would love for you to come over. After work, sometime? I’m in clinic on Thursday, so in the evening would work?”
“Thursday is perfect. Erica is on call. Should I bring dinner?”
“Dinner?”
“Yeah, dinner. I know it’s hard to cook with a newborn around, so dinner’s on me.”
“Awesome,” Stiles says, licking his lips. “Sounds great.”
--
It takes Derek an embarrassing amount of time to get ready for his – visit, he tells himself, not a date – with Stiles. Derek knows how messy babies are, and he knows that Stiles isn’t going to be dressed up in his own home, but he still doesn’t want to look too casual. He almost folds and cancels when he throws the fourth shirt across the room in frustration, but then he thinks of the tired circles under Stiles’ eyes and forces himself to just pick something and get it over with.
He gets food from the Greek place around the corner from his loft, making sure to tip Lena, the owner’s granddaughter who’s working there while going to university. He had thought about texting Stiles to ask what he wanted, but then decided that it didn’t much matter. He’d seen Stiles buy Greek for his residents while on call before, and the food at this place was great. He wasn’t sure why, but the thought of picking the food out together made everything seem a little more date-like and a little less like lending a helping hand.
He doesn’t recognize Stiles’ address, and it takes him forever to find it using his phone’s GPS. He drives past Eastdale, the neighborhood where most of the doctors he knows live, to one of the lower-income parts of town. The house he pulls into is a split-level with cracked shutters and empty flower boxes, but it has an old, beat-up blue Jeep in the driveway, which was what Stiles had told him to look for, so he figures it must be the right place.
Before he knocks he hears the sound of a wailing baby, and decides to just let himself in. Now that he’s out here he can smell Stiles, and he knows for sure that he’s walking into the right house.
“Stiles?” He shucks his shoes by the door and puts the food on a small wooden table in the kitchen.
“In here!” Stiles calls, sounding more frazzled than he ever does at work.
“Come on, baby girl,” Derek hears him coo as he’s walking down the hall toward the wailing. “Daddy’s just trying to help.”
Not for the first time, Derek is supremely glad that Stiles isn’t a werewolf; the jolt of longing at hearing the doctor croon away to his daughter is intense. Unfortunately, Derek doesn’t have time to bask in his now-undeniable attraction, because Stiles looks incredibly stressed. Derek has seen him covered in blood, bombarded by patients, and trying to fight off angry relatives and still looking more calm than he does right now.
Isla, who is perched over the crook of his (long, tanned, surprisingly muscular) arm, has her little face contorted and is screaming in pain. The high-pitched wails are killer on his sensitive ears, and Stiles notices his wince of pain.
“I’m sorry,” he says, looking miserable. “She’s been like this for hours, and nothing that I do makes it better.” He changes position, moving the baby so that he can rub slow circles on her back. “I’ve tried feeding, burping, swaddling, singing, swaying, rocking. I’ve given her simethicone, but that doesn’t seem to make much of a difference. I just don’t know.” He looks completely defeated, and Derek just wants to gather him into his arms. Instead, he just holds out his hands, waiting for Stiles to pass the baby over.
“Are you sure you want to?” Stiles asks, “Because I know you – ”
“I’m sure,” Derek says, walking over and letting Stiles transfer the screaming bundle.
At first, Isla just wails even louder. She looks over at her father, blue eyes wide and betrayed, and Stiles just crumples. Derek’s worried that he’s going to snatch her back, but instead he just leans down and kisses her tiny head.
“This is Derek, sweet girl,” Stiles says, ignoring the shrieks in favor of trying to calm her down. He gets a little fingernail across the cheek for his trouble, but he doesn’t for one second stop murmuring softly to her. Derek seriously doesn’t know how he’s going to handle much more of this; Erica was right, Stiles is a fucking menace to society.
Derek flips Isla’s blanket – pink, homemade, and with pictures of little ponies across the front – over his arm so that he can slowly leach some of her pain. He’s careful to not to go too fast – he doesn’t want to shock the poor little thing – but slowly her cries subside, leaving behind little hiccups.
Slowly but surely, she quiets completely, and within minutes she’s looking up at Derek with a huge, gummy smile on her face.
“Holy shit, you are magic!”
Derek turns to find Stiles gaping at him. “I mean,” Stiles scrambles to correct himself. “Holy poop, you’re magic!”
Derek laughs, completely charmed by Stiles’ ridiculousness. “Just experienced,” Derek corrects. “I told you my sister had colic.”
Stiles doesn’t look convinced, but he ushers Derek out to the kitchen anyway. “So how old is your sister, then?”
Derek pulls Isla away from his face, beaming when she continues to smile. Christ, he thinks, this kid is cute. “Twenty-two,” he says. “I was ten when she was born.”
Stiles nods slowly, taking in the information. “Is that why you love babies?”
“Probably.” Derek settles Isla against his hip and starts taking out boxes with his left hand. “Here, sit.”
“I can get those.” Stiles rushes past, dragging the tablecloth and a few of the boxes with him. Derek just manages to catch the food before it goes tumbling to floor.
“Seriously, just sit.” Derek spies a Moby wrap in the living room and hurries over to tie it. Stiles just stares at him, open-mouthed, as he threads and knots the straps with ease.
“I knew it,” he mutters darkly, staring at the Moby like it’s single-handedly responsible for everything that’s gone wrong in his life. “I almost broke my nose trying to tie that thing.”
Stiles says thing the same way some people would say toxic waste, and Derek has to bite back a smile because he can totally picture Stiles flailing with the long piece of fabric. “It takes practice,” he says. “Erica and her husband have a thirteen month old, -”
“Yeah, Hannah’s adorable,” Stiles says through a mouthful of Greek fries. “I keep trying to set up a playdate, but you know…busy.” He looks back at his fries, smile gone now.
Derek picks up a fry and pops it in his mouth quickly to evade Isla’s outstretched hand. “Erica’s busy too,” Derek says. “Boyd just works from home and that makes things easier.”
Stiles nods absently, but he still doesn’t look convinced. “So how did you and Erica meet?”
“Through my mother,” Derek says. “She ran an outreach program for at risk kids, and Erica was always around. She was loud and annoying, and I was quiet and awkward, so we kind of just…stuck.”
Stiles grins through a mouth of food. “Good to know, since loud and annoying is pretty much my specialty.”
Derek tries to think of something to say, but Isla shrieks – happily this time – and he completely loses his train of thought.
Stiles smiles at her before turning to Derek. “You really have no idea how amazing this is,” he says. “Do you want to rent yourself out to me?”
Derek chokes on a piece of souvlaki and Stiles face flushes a brilliant crimson. “Oh my God,” he splutters, knocking into bags in an embarrassed frenzy. “I mean, like as a babysitter.” He drops his head to the table. “Isla really likes you,” he whispers, defeated.
“Stiles, she’s amazing.” Derek noses the top of her head, smiling when she coos loudly. “I’d be happy to come over and help out.” He looks away quickly, the tips of his ears turning pink. “I love babies.”
“You think?”
“Oh, shut up,” Derek says, glaring at him over the baby’s head.
Stiles balls up a takeout napkin and takes aim. “You shut up,” he says. He’s just starting to laugh as he chucks the napkin at Derek, but his face immediate turns to horrified disbelief when the napkin ricochets off Isla’s face. Her lip wobbles and Stiles moves to pick her up, but she’s wedged in the carrier against Derek.
Stiles looks up in white-faced horror. “Derek, I swear I didn’t think that was going to happen, oh my God I hurt her and I didn’t mean to, and…” Stiles continue to babble incoherently and in the process he mushes himself against Derek as he hugs his daughter. Isla doesn’t seem fazed in the least – she’s much less traumatized by the whole event than Stiles – and Derek is trying to refrain from burying his nose in Stiles’ hair.
“Stiles, calm down,” he says, pushing away gently. “She’s fine, I’m fine, you’re fine.”
“God, you’re going to think I’m such a horrible dad. First the breast milk then, then the swearing thing, then the – the abuse.”
Stiles looks completely miserable, and Derek realizes that the reason he’s so uptight is that he truly believes that he is a bad father. He can feel the guilt and shame radiating from him in waves, and fuck, but he’s never wanted to just wrap someone in his arms to badly in his entire damn life.
“Stiles,” he says gently, shifting the baby in her wrap. “You know you’re a great father, right?”
“Yeah.” Stiles waves his hand dismissively, clearly not wanting to go down this road. “Daddy of the year.”
Derek wishes he knew more about Stiles’ situation, about how Isla came into being and how many people he has around to support him. He wants to know everything, but he’s unable to ask even the simplest question. “I’m serious,” Derek presses. Derek can sense the bonds of love and pack and trust between Isla and Stiles, and he wishes there was a way to explain that other than, oh jeez, Stiles, the man who’s cuddling your infant child is actually a werewolf. Surprise! “She loves you.”
Stiles picks at the food in front of him, more serious than Derek has ever seen him. “That’s why she screamed all afternoon and has been sitting there with you, happy as a clam.”
Though he knows they shouldn’t, the words cut deeply. Derek wanted to find a way to connect with Stiles, not drive him further away. The last thing he wants to be seen as is competition for his daughter’s affection. He doesn’t know what to say, and just sits there, gaping, until Stiles realizes what he’s said.
“Oh Fuck – Gah!” He runs his long fingers through his hair, mussing it beyond repair. “I mean, shoot! I didn’t mean to take out my issues on you, Derek.” He looks up and smiles sadly. “I really appreciate your help.” He sighs and then draws his legs up until he’s perched in his chair like a bird.
Derek looks up, forcing himself to make eye contact with Stiles. “It’s okay if you want to, uh, talk about it,” he says.
“It’s a good thing you didn’t go to med school,” Stiles says with a harsh laugh, and Derek is horrified to realize that he’s sniffling. “How do you coach women through labor? You are like the least encouraging person I’ve ever met.”
Derek just raises an eyebrow and Stiles laughs shortly, hiccupping just as his daughter had earlier.
“It’s just,” Stiles says, looking over at Isla sadly, “I just really wish my mom was here, you know?”
Derek freezes and a wave of sadness washes over him, because he does know. Fuck, does he ever know. “Yeah,” he chokes out. “I do.”
Stiles looks sad, but he doesn’t push Derek for answers. “There are just so many things I wish I could ask her. When they had me my dad put in a lot of extra hours so that she could stay at home, and I just feel like there’s so much she could share. I know Isla would adore her.” He’s sniffling again and Derek wishes there was more he could do than just sit there.
“God, I really know how to bring down the mood, huh?” He looks down at Isla, who’s fast asleep against Derek’s chest. “I’ll understand if you want to get home.”
“I’m good,” Derek says, getting up from the table and walking toward the living room. “Come on, let’s watch one of those horrible movies you’re always going on about at work.”
Stiles smiles – an imitation of the grin that usually lights up his face, but Derek will take it – and leads the way.
--
Over the next few weeks, Derek spends a lot of time at Stiles’ house. They hang out, eat dinner (that sometimes Derek even makes himself instead of picking up), and Derek soothes Isla. Derek starts to feel guilty that he can’t just go over every night, because by the time he gets there her little belly is so tied up in knots and bubbles of gas that he feels like crying right along with her. Still, it takes less and less time to work out her pain once he gets to know her, and she seems to know something new with every visit.
“She must get that from you,” Derek says to Stiles one night as she’s babbling away in her dad’s lap.
“What a motor mouth?” Stiles lifts her up in the air, smiling as she squeals in delight.
“Her brain,” Derek replies. “She’s so smart already.”
Stiles flushes and Derek finds it completely endearing that someone who has made it through medical school and into practice as quickly as Stiles can be so pleased to hear someone call him smart. “You don’t know that comes from me,” he says.
Derek pauses for a second, wondering if this is an invitation to ask more. They’ve kept things light since the night Stiles brought up his mom, and Derek doesn’t want to make things weird. “Does it?” he asks, deciding to let Stiles take the lead here.
“Evidently so,” Stiles says. “No one with half a brain could give up on this little Princess.” He plants a noisy kiss on Isla’s head and lets her drool all over his shirt. Derek is completely in love.
Transfixed by Stiles’ chest and made stupid by the way he plays with his daughter, Derek doesn’t answer quickly enough. Not that it matters, since Stiles barrels on unattended, as usual.
“I had just broken up with my high-school girlfriend,” Stiles says. “We made it through six years with me in Poland and almost my entire residency, and then it was just over.” Isla reaches out to Derek and Stiles hands her over without pause; Derek’s chest warms at Stiles’ evident trust, washing away any ridiculous feelings of jealousy he has about a woman whose name he doesn’t even know.
“Her name was Malia,” Stiles says, like he can read Derek’s mind. “And she had spent so much time waiting on me that she didn’t really get to enjoy her own life. She didn’t want to be tied down, she certainly wasn’t ready for a family, and so it just ended.” He breathes deeply – a remnant from having to work through panic attacks in his teenage years, Derek now knows – and then settles back into the sofa. “I didn’t really know how to date, and who wants to have sex with someone who has had the same girlfriend since he was sixteen?”
Me, Derek thinks fervently as Stiles laughs, I would, if that person was you.
“Anyway, I didn’t really have time to meet people, I was studying so much for my boards. One night, a few drinks, and a wrong move with the tip of a condom, and little Isla came into being.” He rubs his fingers through Isla’s wisps of blonde hair and she tries to grab his fingers to put in her mouth.
“We made an appointment,” Stiles says, looking pained at the very recollection. “But she reconsidered after meeting with the social worker. I agreed to pay all the bills and she wanted to relinquish parental rights after the birth. I really only saw her at appointments and the night that Isla was born.
“I have a copy of her medical records for future purposes upstairs,” he says, waving in the direction of the hallway. “But that’s all that Isla will ever know about her mother.”
“I’m sorry,” Derek says.
“Don’t be!” Stiles smiles and pads over to the kitchen, his bare feet making barely any noise on the cheap linoleum. He grabs a tub of sorbet out of the freezer along with two spoons. “I wouldn’t change anything about what happened.”
He settles in beside Derek and hands him a spoon. Isla makes a grab for it first, but Derek plunks her down in her Exersaucer and she’s quickly distracted by a dangling monkey. Stiles’ hand brushes against his and Derek feels like this is the perfect time. Sitting here, with his arm rested against Stiles’ warm skin, scooping Sorbet out of the same container, he feels like he can tell him.
Stiles, I’m in love with you.
It should be easy. He knows Stiles is attracted to him – can smell it when he bends over to pick up a baby toy, or sometimes when he brushes against him in the hospital – and he knows that Stiles trusts him with Isla. He just needs to man up and do it. He should just lean over and kiss him now. He knows how it would feel – cool and slick – and taste – like raspberry – and it makes him hot and anxious and jittery to even think about it. He drops his spoon in the container, and when he looks at Stiles, he already has his lips parted to speak.
“So uh,” Stiles says, his cheeks tinged pink. “You know Jordan?”
“The anesthesiology resident?” Short brown hair, green eyes, stares at Stiles more than Derek cares for. Yeah, he knows him.
“He asked me out,” Stiles says. “On a date.”
“Oh.” Derek leans down to spin Isla in her exersaucer so that Stiles can’t see the complete look of panic he knows is on his face. He smiles down at the baby, only lifting his head when he feels he can look at Stiles without demanding he say no to the offer.
“Yeah, I didn’t know if you knew,” Stiles says.
Derek feels a rush of shame. There’s no way for Stiles to know that Derek most certainly knows. Stiles is nervous and sweaty, and his heart is thundering loudly enough for ordinary ears to pick it up. Derek really is a dick, making him worry over something like this. For making him think that he could ever be inadequate in any way. “You should say yes,” Derek says, schooling his features into a perfect supportive smile. “I can babysit. I picked up some new books yesterday.”
“Right,” Stiles says. “You can spend more time with Isla.” Derek racks his brain for something more to say – something supportive – but as always he comes up short. Stiles, for once, also seems to be at a loss. His smile fades, and a sour spike of disappointment permeates the room.
Derek supposes that it’s really for the best that he lost his window of opportunity; if he can’t even be a supportive friend, he’s clearly not ready for a relationship.
--
After that disastrous night Derek finds himself making excuses to avoid Stiles. He had a brilliant time with Isla on the night of the date, her quick smiles and soft fuzzy hair distracted him from his misery, but when Stiles came back home, flushed and full of another guy’s scent, he had barreled out of there so fast that Stiles had barely had time for a rushed thank-you. Isla had started wailing as soon as Derek started walking down the drive, but he had squared his shoulders as he started his car; Stiles wasn’t supposed to know he could hear, and it wouldn’t do for Isla to get too attached anyway.
After two weeks of complete silence he gets called into the hospital with a patient, and of course Stiles is on call, his name sitting on the call board right above Jordan-the-Anesthesiologist’s. Worried that he might (rightfully) reject any attempt to say hello, Derek sulks around triage until his patient arrives and then spends the rest of the night in her room.
Karla, his patient, is an anxious woman who had tried for over ten years to get pregnant. Knowing that this is likely going to be her only pregnancy, she’s intent on everything going perfectly. Her baby is big – at least ten pounds, Derek thinks – but the heartbeat is steady and strong; a bit fast, maybe, but Derek knows the baby is all right. He looks at Karla’s furrowed brows, her clenched jaws, and even though he’d rather be anywhere other than in this hospital, he thinks the least he can do is get her through this as smoothly as possible.
--
“I don’t like that strip.” Taylor, one of the seasoned nurses, clucks her tongue as she looks at the fetal monitor displayed on the screen on the wall. “That’s not a nice strip.”
“What?” Stiles whirls around in his chair, his scrubs falling a little further on his hips as he does. He’s tired – too tired to be safe, if he’s honest – but Isla has been inconsolable for the past three nights and he’s been surviving on two hours sleep for far too long. “That – who is that?”
“Derek’s patient.”
Stiles’ breath catches a little at his name. He hasn’t been over since the date with Jordan, and Stiles keeps trying to tell himself that it’s not because of the whole dude thing. He didn’t really know what else it could be, though. He’d been so adamant about Stiles getting out and seeing someone, and then turned into a fucking grump as soon as it happened. Stiles supposes that it’s possible that he really has been busy with paperwork, and then hosting a friend from college, and then swamped with home repairs, but he fucking doubts it. Nope, he’s pretty sure that Derek lives in a broad-shouldered, hypermasculine, locker-room world where it’s cool to half snuggle with dudes on their couch as long as you can no-homo your way out of there whenever it’s convenient. Still, Stiles isn’t about to hide who he is, not even for Derek Hale.
Somehow, his irritation doesn’t stop him from missing Derek’s stupid face, and he’s pretty sure his daughter feels the same way, if her all-day screaming fests are anything to go by.
“I’m sure that Derek has it under control,” Stiles says, vowing to stay out of the midwife’s business. It isn’t his place to second-guess another professional.
“The baby’s been tachy for a while,” Taylor says, not giving two-shits about Stiles and his unwillingness to approach Derek. “And I’m starting to see earlies.”
“Probably contractions.” Stiles fiddles with the strings on his hoodie, then takes out his phone to text his nanny. She’s sent him a picture of Isla, looking up at the screen with a sad pout on her face, and it makes his chest squeeze. He really wishes he could show Derek.
“I don’t feel good about it,” Taylor says darkly.
“Okay, fine, I’ll take a look.” Stiles gets up to examine the strip just as Derek sneaks out of his patient’s room – presumably to go to the bathroom.
He catches Stiles’ eye, completely by accident, Stiles is certain, and stiffens immediately. “Is that my patient you’re looking at?”
“Baby’s been tachy for a while,” Stiles says, defensive.
“The baby is fine,” Derek growls. “It’s really important to my patient to have a natural birth.”
Stiles is taken aback by Derek’s hostility. He hasn’t heard him speak like that for months now, and he snaps back almost out of reflex. “Yeah, well, we can’t always get what we want, can we, Derek?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Dr. Stilinksi.” He turns to walk away, but Stiles chases after him, his voice low. “I don’t care if you’re pissed off at me, Derek,” he hisses. “But I will not let you jeopardize the safety of that mom and baby just so that you can feel superior.”
Derek’s face contorts and his lips pull back in a fierce snarl. Stiles actually recoils, and he knows he’s going to have a bruise in the spot where his leg hits the chair. “Leave my patient to me,” Derek says. He sweeps back into his room in a flurry of purple scrubs, and Stiles storms out off the unit, ready to give him exactly what he wants.
It’s hours later when Stiles’ pager awakes him from a dead sleep. He’s sprawled across two chairs in the cafeteria, and his cell phone is lying on the floor in front of him. He swipes the screen to find at least twenty texts from nurses and his residents, and he feels suddenly sick. He checks his pager – three misses pages, all in the last five minutes.
Tugging at his scrubs he full-out runs to the unit, his nametag flying behind him.
“Room 221,” Taylor snaps as soon as he arrives. “The vacuum is already set up.”
Derek’s patient, Stiles thinks, his heart pounding in his throat. He’s dizzy with guilt and fatigue, but he schools it into a polite mask as he enters the room.
“I’m Dr. Stilinski,” he says to the terrified patient, ignoring Derek’s look of distress as he grabs the vacuum. His resident gives him a nod, signalling that she’s already been through the talk, and so he goes about his business as quickly as possible.
The head is high – too high, Stiles thinks, panicked – but he manages to get a good grip. The woman’s husband is pacing around the room, Derek’s sharp inhalations are like drumbeats, pounding in Stiles’ head, and the patient is making deep guttural noises that are impossible to tune out.
Still, amidst all that, Stiles manages to find calm. He breathes deeply, in and out, and focuses on the task at hand. Once the baby is low enough he hands off the vacuum – to whom, he’s not sure – and then tries to deliver the baby by hand.
“Can I get some pressure,” he grunts, as the baby’s shoulder refuses to deliver. It doesn’t help, and though he wants to panic, wants to just call for help, have someone save him for a change, he just repeats his algorithm over and over and moves quickly to the next step. He’s just about to make an episiotomy when the shoulder disimpacts and the baby delivers. It’s a girl – just like Isla, he thinks, horrified – and she’s floppy, flat, and gets handed over quickly to the pediatricians.
Stiles surveys the damage – a fourth degree tear, he realizes with a sinking heart – while his resident tries to calm the father.
The baby is getting CPAP and is ready to be transported to the NICU when Stiles starts stitching. The room slowly clears out as Stiles works his way methodically through the cut. He replays the birth over and over in his head, sick with guilt over not just calling the section when he had the chance. The baby better be okay, he thinks fiercely, tying knots in a blur of movement. Five, ten minutes pass before he realizes that the room is empty save for two visitors: the father, who is rubbing his wife’s shoulder, trying to calm her down, and Derek, who is staring at Stiles as if seeing him for the very first time.
When Stiles finishes suturing he doesn’t even glance Derek’s way. He goes straight to the bathroom and has his first panic attack in years. Then he strips off his bloody scrubs and walks into the disgusting hospital shower, where he stays until it’s time to hand over to the next doc on call.
--
Derek parks a couple streets down, so that he can turn around if he wants. He can’t stop replaying the entire day in his head: first, his childish refusal to look at Stiles at work; then, his stubborn need to keep Stiles away from his patient; and finally, the absolute awe of seeing Stiles sweep in and make everything better. He’s never had a patient crash like that before, and he doesn’t know what he would have done without Stiles. He knows that Stiles was doing his job, but he can’t help but think that part of it was for him. To help him, as much as he was helping the patient.
God, he’s been such a fucking prick.
As he rounds the corner he can hear Isla’s wails. The baby is screaming, as loudly as Derek has ever heard her, and that makes everything a hundred times worse. She depended on him, and he let his stupid jealousy get in the way of that. He was supposed to be there for her; he was supposed to be there for Stiles.
He tastes the bitter tang of blood, and realizes that he’s bitten through his bottom lip. It’s healed before he can swipe his tongue across, but it forces him to relax.
He walks swiftly up Stiles’ shitty walkway, and steadies himself for what’s to come. He knocks – once, twice – but he knows that Stiles can’t hear him and so he lets himself in.
When he turns the corner toward the living room, he comes face to face with a shirtless Stiles. His scrub pants are still tied loosely around his waist, his hair is sticking up in all directions, and he’s crying right along with the baby.
“You,” he chokes out when he sees Derek. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
He doesn’t even realize that he’s cursing in front of the baby, and Derek just steps out by reflex and takes her in his arms.
He doesn’t even bother to cover his arms, banking on Stiles’ fatigue and the long shadows in the living room to cover his veins. Isla stops crying immediately and Derek hugs her to his chest. “I’m sorry,” he whispers softly, which earns him a truly formidable eyebrow raise in return.
He smiles, softly, but when he looks up his brief instant of happiness disappears.
Stiles looks absolutely defeated. He’s standing there, scrubs hanging below his hips, hair mussed, and eyes bright with tears, and he just looks done. “I just fucking can’t,” he gasps, backing up until he hits a wall. Tears leak down his face and he slumps toward the floor.
“Stiles,” Derek says, panicking now. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” Stiles’ laugh is high and hysterical and Derek gently puts the baby in her exersaucer so that he can kneel on the floor. “What’s wrong,” Stiles says, “is that I fell asleep on the job and a woman nearly lost her child because of it. What’s wrong,” he says, jabbing his finger at Derek, “is that I was too pissed off and hurt to take you aside and talk things through like a goddamn professional. What’s wrong,” he says, a sob finally catching his breath, “is that I can never make her happy and then you come along for twenty seconds and she’s nothing but smiles. She’s my daughter and I – I just can’t help her.”
He buries his head in his heads and Derek wishes he could go back in time, just to have the opportunity to punch himself in the face. Stiles – funny, compassionate, perfect Stiles – doesn’t deserve any of this.
“Stiles, you are an am – ”
“If you finish that sentence I will cut you, Derek.” He must realize he’s half-naked, because he looks up just long enough to hook a dirty t-shirt with his foot. He pulls it on over his head and uses the hem to wipe his eyes.
“But it’s true,” Derek replies, desperate to make him understand. Derek may be the one to take away her pain, but it’s Stiles that Isla follows as Derek walks her around the house. It’s Stiles who makes her squeal in delight and Stiles who gently rocks her to sleep. She loves him, trusts him, needs him, and Derek knows that there’s no way he’s going to make Stiles believe that unless he tells him the truth.
Unsure of the best way to break the news, and desperate to make Stiles stop hating himself, he just picks the quickest option and shifts, right there in the middle of Stiles’ living room.
--
“A werewolf,” Stiles repeats for the seventh time.
“Yup.” Isla is fascinated by Derek’s beta form, and when his face smooths back into its human contours, she keeps slapping his forehead as if there’s a button to make him change back.
“You asshole,” Stiles says, though he’s laughing now. “Do you know how many hours I spent awake, wondering why my daughter loved you more than me?”
“I,” Derek starts. He’s still trying to process the fact that Stiles doesn’t care. That he’s letting him hold his daughter in his arms as if he isn’t some kind of creature. Some kind of beast. “I’m sorry,” he says, completely earnest. “I never wanted that to happen.”
“Yeah, well.” Stiles flushes, and the color spreads down past the thin neck of his dirty t-shirt. “I guess we’ve established today that I’m not really a paragon of stability here.”
“You’re perfect.” The words just tumble out of his mouth, and once they’re there, Derek can’t stop. He turns, and cups his hand around Stiles’ jaw. “You’re perfect,” he repeats, and Isla blows a spit bubble in agreements.
Stiles just gapes and even though his eyes are puffy from crying and too little sleep Derek has never seen anyone more fucking beautiful.
“I,” Stiles swallows. “I thought you were a homophobe,” he blurts. “You really didn’t seem to like Jordan.”
“Fuck Jordan,” Derek growls. Isla giggles and Stiles puts her down on her playmat, as if that will save her little ears from any profanity.
“I gave you a million opportunities,” Stiles says, his heart rate starting to pick up. “There’s no way you didn’t know.”
“I knew,” Derek says. “I haven’t had the best experience with humans.”
Stiles looks crestfallen, until Derek threads their fingers together. “They were nothing like you,” he says earnestly.
“But I’m – ”
“No one’s like you,” Derek continues, cutting him off. “I’m sorry,” he says, because he knows it needs to be said. He wishes he could go back and erase all the pain he’s caused Stiles, but he knows he’ll have to settle for repairing it instead. He’ll stitch Stiles back together, piece by tiny piece, no matter how long it takes.
“I love you,” he finishes, going for broke. “Both of you.”
This time, Stiles doesn’t have anything to say. He just surges forward, pressing his mouth to Derek’s. They topple over, and Derek’s skin feels like it’s on fire with Stiles’ fingers skimming lightly over it. Derek presses down and the moan that he coaxes out of Stiles is the best sound he’s ever heard. Everything is bright, and hot, and just as he’s pressing forward for more, more, more, Isla pulls herself up onto the couch. Her bottom lip is curled into a perfect pout, and Stiles’ mouth falls open.
“Holy shit,” he breathes. “She’s cruising!”
Derek laughs and scoops her up from the floor and onto her father’s chest. He cuddles behind Stiles, watching as the two of them makes faces at one another. He can’t remember the last time he was this happy.
“Well,” Stiles says as Derek leans in to brush a kiss against his neck. “I guess I’m gonna have to find a new babysitter.”