Work Text:
The thing about gymnastics is that it's a lot of work. And time. And busted muscles. And calluses everywhere. (Yes. Even there.) And having no social life whatsoever, which... it's not like you can drink anyway. Not when you're "in training" pretty much every day of the year, including Christmas and Thanksgiving, and you try avoiding stuffing because the carb overload will mess with your evening workout. Just try it.
And all that for the distinction of being really good at gymnastics. Which does not exactly bolster Stiles's already tenuous masculinity.
It's not like he's ashamed; gymnastics is hard. You need some serious muscle to hoist your butt over your own feet on the parallel bars. Or hold an iron cross with just your biceps connecting you to anything solid. Any elite gymnast tends to have an enviable set of abs. (Stiles is pretty fond of his, to be honest, though it's not like he's, you know, named them, or anything. That would totally be dumb.)
But as taught and rippling as the Swiss Family Musclesons are (shut up shut up) Stiles's best event has always been the high bar, which tends to reward speed and dexterity over the ability to club an attractive lady and drag her back to your cave. You know. Evolutionarily speaking.
What Stiles is saying is there are some guys on the team who can make a spandex unitard look like the latest Gears of War armor upgrade, but he is not one of them. He didn't get the nickname "The Chipmunk" for nothing. (It's because he's fast and nimble, NOT, no matter what Jackson says, because of how many nuts he can fit in his mouth.)
Which... whatever. No one likes Jackson anyway.
"Stilinski, stop showing off, you asshole."
Speak of the devil.
Stiles jerks his head up, train of thought broken, and promptly falls off the pommel horse he had been doing lazy rotations on. Jackson readjusts one of the crutches he's used to prop himself up and smirks down at the pile of limbs and chalk dust and angry mutters Stiles has ended up in. "Graceful, Chipmunk."
"Still better than you on your best day," Stiles tries to say. It comes out more like "better... you..." and a wheezing cloud of white dust. He feels vaguely like he's swallowed the entire chalk bowl.
"Come on," Jackson says, looking a bit less smug now. "Team meeting time. I've got news from the trainer."
—
The news is not good.
Jackson, it turns out, didn't just sprain his ankle at nationals the other week. He tore a ligament, which in even the best case scenario has him out of commission for a month. Just in time for London. No chance of Keri Strug-ing his way through the games, the trainer says; Jackson won't be competing.
Which means there's an extra spot on the team.
Stiles supposes some people in his position might think that's good news. Only, well. Is good news supposed to make you want to vomit up the burrito you had for lunch four hours ago? Stiles doesn't think so, but he may be wrong about that. Scott's certainly grinning at him hard enough as he claps him on the back (and oh god that burrito is really working on its comeback tour) and says "Welcome to the team, Stiles."
—
Stiles... was not prepared for this eventuality.
He did at least have routines in the works just in case the entire world went crazy and he ended up competing at the Olympics, but this was not the problem. The real problem was,t Derek, nephew of the Team Coach and general figurehead for Team USA, who, generously described, was freaking out.
Which, okay, Stiles gets it. Jackson was one of their best hopes for an all around medal. The other, of course, being Derek himself, and now Derek has to shoulder that responsibility with Scott stepping up as second in their lineup. Scott's a good guy, and a great gymnast, but Jackson is the reigning world silver medalist and Scott once missed a competition because he got lost in a corn maze with his girlfriend at the time.
Still, Stiles feels like maybe Derek is reacting more poorly to Jackson's injury than is really reasonable. An opinion that only gets stronger when he gets stuck late at practice one day, about two weeks before they leave for London.
One of Stiles's wrist grips has gone missing. He had just broken it in, too, and he swears he will find it if he has to crawl under every disgusting towel bin and grimy locker room toilet to do so. Which is exactly what he's doing when he hears something very loud and very heavy crash to the ground from the weight room across the hall.
Stiles jerks up, hitting his head on a urinal and oh god he really doesn't want to know what he just got on his hair. Instead of contemplating that bit of horror, he crawls out from under the toilet and makes his way out into the hall, peering cautiously into the weight room to see if there's been a dumbbell fueled assault of some sort.
Instead he sees a shirtless, furious Derek, shoving a 20 pound weight back on to the end of a barbell in the middle of a pile of weights that he has apparently been lifting.
"Are you still working out?" Stiles asks, and watches Derek visibly startle and almost drop the weight again. "Are you working off stress, or what?"
Derek glares at him and hoists the weight over his shoulders, eyes dark and piercing. Stiles feels something in his stomach flip at the look. It's gotta be fear, he thinks. Derek has the glare of a man who would have no qualms about shoving Stiles into a NutriBullet and drinking him as a protein shake.
"Go home, Stiles."
Stiles watches a rivulet of sweat trickle down the sharp line of Derek's abs. It is deeply unfair for someone so angry to be rocking such a tight core, truly.
"You should really get a spotter," Stiles says after a moment, reminding himself people find it off-putting when you stare at them silently. Not that Derek would have any room to complain. "You're going to get yourself hurt, too..."
"Go home, Stiles," Derek practically yells.
Stiles steps back and puts his hands up in defeat. Whatever. He's not going to worry about it. Stiles is worried enough about falling off the pommel horse and being the first gymnast ever to get a negative score and get deported for being a shame upon his native land. He doesn't have time to worry about his teammates dying in an angsty pile of barbells.
"Fine!" he yells back, and goes to grab his bag, leaving his lost grip to suffer in whatever corner it's ended up in.
"And put a shirt on before you get your gross sweat all over the weight room," Stiles yells as he storms out of the gym. He doesn't wait for a response.
—
Stiles barely speaks to Derek after that. The whole team barely speaks. Not in the tense two weeks of practice before they head off to London. Not on the even more tense flight to London.
Scott makes kicked puppy faces the entire trip because Allison isn't leaving for London until the next day, so they can't hold hands and gaze lovingly into each other's eyes while crossing the Atlantic.
Jackson flew out on his father's private jet to "root the team on" (read: attempt to hook up with the beach volleyball team) and already arrived in London a week earlier.
Boyd kicks Isaac out of his assigned seat so that he could have Erica, women's beam expert and his girlfriend (not that he'd admit it), sit next to him. Which means Isaac is relocated to between Stiles and Derek, where he waxes poetic about how amazing first class is and did you know this is his first time not in coach and oh my god are they bringing us hot towels until Derek just... growls at him, puts on an eye mask, rolls over to face the window, and goes to sleep. They don't talk much the rest of the flight.
Like Stiles said. Tense.
—
In London, Derek works them hard in the lead up to the team prelims. It's not like Stiles is complaining. He's more than a little terrified about his new standing on Team USA and can probably use the practice. But they barely have time to settle into Olympic Village before they're back in the gym, with Derek peering over their shoulders as they run their routines again and again, and Coach Peter peering over Derek's shoulder as he does his own workouts, staying hours later than the rest of the team.
It's a bit worrying, is all Stiles is saying, and he's got a sneaking suspicion it's not the world's smartest build-up to competition.
Which, well, Stiles is not going to gloat over being right because the team prelims? Are not funny.
Derek's up on high bar first. It's not his signature event, and Stiles has a sneaking suspicion he kind of hates the thing, but it's one he's always been solid at in competition. Only, today he looks nervous. Stiles doesn't think he's ever seen Derek nervous. As he's lifted up to his starting position, Stiles sees Derek grit his teeth and then his arm shakes.
Now it's not just Stiles looking worried. That was a big enough shake that even Scott noticed. And Scott spent the entire walk out of the warm up rooms making moon eyes at Allison in the stands.
It only goes downhill from there. On his first upright hold, Derek's arm shakes again. His second release, he nearly misses his grip and isn't able to finish the skill. Ten seconds later he does miss his grip. Derek hits the mat below him with a gut-wrenching thud. Stiles feels a bit like he's going to vomit.
Boyd has his eyes closed and a pained expression on his face. Isaac looks a bit like someone has just told him Santa Claus isn't real. Scott is actually wringing his hands and, wow, Stiles had thought that was just a figure of speech.
Stiles looks at Derek, who's wearing the sourest expression he's ever seen a human being make. He's all pursed lips and his patented I cannot believe I am surrounded by such morons glare, only... well, this time apparently he is the moron.
Derek finishes his routine with a minimum of mistakes, but the damage is done. That score is going to have to be dropped. There's no way he's going to all-arounds.
Stiles barely has time to think about it though, because Scott's on parallels next and then twenty seconds later it's his turn on pommel and he's got to at least attempt to focus.
He spends his first event more than a bit distracted. He can't get Derek's crap score out of his head, and he can't stop imagining what it will be like to go home with no medals at all and have let down America and freedom and democracy. Probably they'll be met at the airport by a cadre of weeping bald eagles and nothing else.
So yeah, Stiles is a bit distracted on the parallel bars, but they're one of his better apparatuses so he pulls out a pretty decent score regardless. Then when he's doing his floor routine he gets distracted by the thought of Scott's kicked puppy dog face facing down a crying bald eagle in a battle of the Saddest Image Ever and somehow gets an even better score. Then he spends most of high bar wondering if disappointment in his nephew will make Peter lurk even more creepily, and he actually gets the best score he's ever gotten on that routine and it turns out this kind of distraction is working for him?
The thing is, everyone has always called Stiles flakey. Unreliable. He's capable of brilliance, especially on high bar, where his speed and dexterity can get him huge difficulty scores, but everyone always seems to assume he just doesn't work hard enough.
The truth is that Stiles overthinks everything. He's so busy thinking three, four, ten moves ahead in his routine that he gets tangled in his own thoughts and falls on his butt. It tends to make people write him off.
Right now, though, he's reached such a transcendental stage of stress about everyone else on the team, from Derek and his failure to move on to all-arounds to the thought of millions of Americans pinning an avalanche of hopeful, adorable, soul-crushing dreams on Team USA, and suddenly he can't even think about his routines. He just has to do them.
Apparently he just does them very well, because when he finishes up on rings, his absolute worst apparatus, he looks at the scores and nearly crumples in shock. He's, uh. Well, he's in first.
And Scott's in second.
And apparently the hopes of Team USA, an entire nation, and the last remaining gently weeping bald eagles are resting on him and his best friend.
He's about three seconds away from a panic attack when Scott comes up to him, grabs his hand in the world's most enthusiastic bro hug, and then holds up an iPhone.
Apparently a photo of Derek looking pissed after his rings routine has gone viral on the internet under the caption "DEREK HALE IS NOT AMUSED."
Scott's still scrolling through pictures as the very same unamused Derek storms past them towards the locker room. Stiles pauses to wonder what he did right in his past lives to deserve a best friend like Scott, then he takes a deep breath and makes a decision. It is time for their dear team leader to lighten the hell up.
—
Plan Get Derek Hale To Stop Acting Like Someone Put His Tighty-Whities in the Freezer was, to be fair, a little slapdash. Whatever! Stiles didn't have a lot of time to figure out the best way to cut the deathly tension among his teammates, and after getting glared out of Boyd's room and finding out that Isaac's best suggestion was "I don't know... maybe he just needs a hug? That always makes me feel better..." Stiles was stuck with Scott as his only accomplice. Not that Scott had any better ideas.
What Scott did have was an iPhone and an agreement with Stiles that, yes, Derek was pissed off enough that it was probably going to affect the team's chance of winning a medal. Or even just leaving London without anyone dying of a stress induced coronary. Because Derek is snarling at literally everyone who crosses his path, be they team member or innocent bystander. Peter is lurking around literally every corner, which is not helping anyone's sanity, and Scott keeps trying and failing not to giggle at tumblr. (Look! Now Derek is not amused with Kim Jung Un! Now he's not amused with Mitt Romney! Oh my god you have to see this they photoshopped his face on Nicholas Cage.)
Finally Stiles gives up. The atmosphere in their Olympic Village rooms have reached gouge-your-eyes-out-just-for-a-distraction level of toxic and he is more than a little bit freaked out about his own routines tomorrow and if something doesn't get fixed soon they're all going to fail so miserably the internet will feel too sorry for them to even immortalize them in meme form.
Stiles tells Scott to grab a coat, get their dear leader, (tell him Stiles has broken his leg or something, Stiles doesn't care, whatever gets him out of the gym where he's once again endlessly, angstily lifting weights) and meet him downstairs.
Ten minutes later Derek runs into the dorm lobby and rushes up to Stiles, going straight for the leg which - wow - Stiles hadn't thought that would actually work. Surely Derek would have wondered why Stiles was lying in the dorm lobby with a broken leg instead of, you know, heading to a hospital.
Stiles was clearly correct in thinking he needs some stress relief STAT. He says just that as Derek peers at his unbroken leg.
"So your leg isn't broken, then?" Derek says. His phone beeps and he stops staring at Stiles's lack of injury to check it.
"We are leaving the village, okay?" Stiles says. Derek grunts no. His phone beeps again.
"We are going out and relieving stress," Stiles says. "Otherwise we are all going to die of aneurysms and we will win no medals at all."
Derek starts angrily texting back. He hits send, and five seconds later his phone beeps yet again. "If you're not dead yet, I'm going back to my room," he says as his phone continues to beep. Derek goes to respond, but Stiles gets there first, grabbing it out of his hands before he can respond.
"You've got two choices," Stiles says as he scrolls over to Derek's messages to see who in the world won't stop texting. "Either I change your ring tone to Call Me Maybe and make it so you can never change it back - and no, don't even question it, you know I can make that happen," Stiles says before Derek can interrupt. "Or we turn this off and you actually enjoy one day in London. Just one day."
Stiles scrolls through the messages and, wow okay, there are hundreds and they are all from Peter. He swipes open the latest one.
I hope you didn't cut warm-ups short again this morning. Wouldn't want to let anyone else ease up and hurt themselves the way you let Jackson.
Well, Jesus. That actually explains a bit.
Stiles looks up. Scott has started to hum Call Me Maybe. Derek's eyebrow twitches with annoyance.
"Fine."
Stiles holds out the hand Derek's phone isn't in to get a fist bump from Scott. "That was the right choice," he grins and holds the power button down until Derek's phone shuts itself off.
At first Derek mostly just... glares. Glares as Scott hails them a cab. Narrows his eyes when the cabbie starts to say "hey aren't you those blokes..." Stiles cuts him off before he can get any father with "Look like who now?" in a passable British accent that throws the guy off their scent. (What? He'd grown up with Harry Potter okay, and Stiles believed in 100% Halloween costume accuracy)
Derek continued to glare as Stiles makes them ride the London Eye. ("Too expensive" is the only reaction they can get out of him.)
He glares when Scott suggests trying out some real British beer at a particularly scummy looking pub, muttering "No alcohol" and dragging Scott back to the cab. Stiles is inclined to agree that time, if only because the place looked like you could get a nice case of historically accurate bubonic plague with your authentic British ale.
Derek continues to glare when Scott then makes them get out to peer through the fog at 221 B Baker Street, but Stiles swears he cracks half a smile when they start bickering about why Scott is so insistent. ("What? I read books occasionally! Okay, I saw the Robert Downey Junior movie, but that totally counts. Stop laughing Stiles.")
He finally stops glaring when Stiles drags them all to King's Cross to take awkwardly nerdy photos. Possibly he stops glaring because he's too busy flailing as Scott shoves him into Platform 9 ¾ while Stiles snaps pictures with his phone and yells "You have to believe harder Derek! We're going to miss the Hogwarts Express!"
But after that, as they all buy awkward football scarves for teams they don't follow and 'London 2012' shot glasses from a man peddling knockoff souvenirs on the street, there's a lot less glaring all around and once, Stiles swears to god it is like seeing a unicorn appear in the wild, an actual smile. Derek is... somehow even more attractive when he smiles.
Unfair, Stiles thinks again, before grabbing Derek by the wrist and pulling him towards a cart selling ice cream.
By the end of the day, Derek is looking a lot less like he's going to be tossed into the Olympic torch as a sacrifice to the gods of Gymnastics. Actually, Scott looks a bit less tense too, and Stiles realizes that somewhere between trying to explain to Scott that Spotted Dick really isn't what it sounds like and Derek actually asking for them to take his picture with a guard at Buckingham palace, the knot that's been in his stomach ever since Jackson got hurt has sort of disappeared.
They head back to the dorms as the sun begins to set, and Stiles has honestly forgotten they turned off all their phones until he nearly misses getting dive-tackled by Isaac in the dorm lobby five seconds after they wander in.
"Where have you been?" Isaac asks, as Stiles finally digs his phone out of his pocket and turns it back on. About a million messages pop onto the screen as Isaac says, "We were worried you guys had died. Peter's resorted to calling me. Derek, will you please make him stop."
Derek pulls his phone out of Stiles's hand as well and looks at Isaac. "It's fine. Just ignore Peter."
Isaac looks like he's slightly worried Derek has been body-snatched and replaced with a doppelganger. Derek does not assuage this worry when he speaks next.
"Just go grab Boyd and Jackson. Let's just... watch a movie in my room and then get some rest before finals."
Now Scott is staring at Derek alongside Isaac. Stiles, however, just grins and thinks he can hear some bald eagles in the distance drying their tears. Maybe Team USA has a chance after all.
—
They watch a movie. Stiles flops on Derek in an attempt to annoy him some more (a fun hobby Stiles has decided to embrace fully!) but shockingly Derek doesn't complain. Just wraps an arm around Stiles's neck and tucks him under his arm, pinning him there in a weirdly comfortable body hold.
"Mmph" Stiles says into Derek's general armpit region.
"Shh," Derek responds. "Movie."
They are watching something with what appears to be many fast cars and unrealistic explosions. Stiles can't really see from where he's tucked into Derek's side, but after a moment he decides he doesn't care.
The team slowly slinks off to their own rooms as the night goes on, standing up with sleepy yawns to dust popcorn off their laps and head out one by one. The mood is... nice. Stiles can tell, even from his position still half buried under the block of muscle that is Derek's arm and chest, that the panic from earlier weeks has dissipated. He's hopeful about tomorrow in a way he couldn't have imagined just a few days ago.
Finally, the only people left are Stiles, Derek, and a definitely asleep Scott curled up in the corner making truly adorable huffing noises. Stiles doesn't know what he'd do without Scott as a roommate. It's like white noise at this point.
Stiles suspects he should head out too. It's long past objectively weird to still be tucked into Derek's side, but he doesn't want to. It's so comfortable and... firm here. Derek's shirt smells like laundry detergent and something sort of leathery and cool. Maybe a hint of eucalyptus that Stiles may be fully imagining.
He lets it stretch as long as he can, before the nervous paranoia in his chest that he's being fucking weird and Derek is only humoring him at this point out of obligation overwhelms his enjoyment of the situation. Then Stiles wiggles out from under Derek's arm, propping himself up on an elbow for just a moment to get a look at the guy. Maybe he's fallen asleep? That would explain a lot.
Derek isn't asleep. What he is, is looking directly at Stiles. Possibly directly into Stiles's soul. It seems like that shouldn't be possible in this dark a room.
Light from the tv flickers across his face, and Stiles's mouth falls open. Just a bit. Derek's gaze drops, briefly, and Stiles thinks: no way. But he knows an "I want to stick my tongue down your throat" look when he sees one.
He bites his lip, and, yep. Derek's eyes go dark and even more intense.
Well.
Stiles is full of new and unprecedented confidence these days. He's an Olympic fucking athlete. He might as well go for the gold, he thinks, as he grabs Derek by the collar of his shirt and pulls him in for a kiss.
And holy shit. Turns out Derek totally did want to stick his tongue down Stiles's throat, because it only takes seconds before he's licking past his lips, mouth hot and one hand moving up Stiles's back until it comes to rest, firm and solid, on the back of his head.
Stiles presses himself against Derek's chest, taking every bit of contact he can. He pulls back after a moment, just long enough to catch his breath and grab the comforter, pull it up over them in a vague nod to privacy. Derek growls at the separation, and Stiles pauses to check if it has woken Scott, but then Derek is on his mouth again and he stops caring so much.
Stiles isn't sure how much time passes like that. It can't be too much, because the movie is still going, some sort of climactic looking explosions taking place in the background that he couldn't care less about. But eventually Stiles detaches himself, clenching up at the annoyed whine Derek gives but pulling together what is, he feels, a truly supernatural level of self control.
Making out under a blanket is totally fine. Maybe even a little over the clothes action. But putting his hands down Derek's pants while Scott snores gently in the corner is totally not bros. And that's definitely going to happen, like, immediately if they don't stop now.
Plus there's the whole competing for an Olympic medal tomorrow thing. Stiles should probably sleep.
He pulls Derek in for one last kiss, slips him some tongue just to make sure he'll be thinking about this when he falls asleep that night, then rolls off the bed and goes to shake Scott awake.
"Hey," he says over his shoulder, after he's shoved an adorably blinky Scott out into the hallway. "I'm gonna make out with you a lot after we win tomorrow."
And, swear to god, absolutely no lie, Derek chuckles in response.
—
Derek feels more calm than he's felt in a long time as they march out into the arena the next day. He doesn't even bother finding Peter's smirking face in the crowd. For the first time in years he doesn't really care what his uncle is thinking of him - of his team - right now.
He watches patiently as Stiles and Scott line up for their first events; as, one event after another, they rack up some of the best scores either has ever hit. He hasn't felt like this since he first saw the pair walk into his family's gym the day they first switched trainers, laughing and wrestling and showing so much promise it almost hurt to watch.
Everyone but him had done well at prelims, but had very clearly been fighting through terror to do it. Today, though, it really looks like the nerves are gone. Derek swears he can see Stiles grinning as he does his most difficult catch and release on high bar. Scott definitely turns to wink at Allison after he dismounts from parallel bars.
For once, in years of endless training and expectations and failure, Derek finds he isn't thinking about medals. His hands itch to get on the rings. It's always been his best, his true favorite event. For once, he just wants to compete.
And possibly make out with a grinning Stiles Stilinski some more.
When they finish their final routines, Scott looking more graceful than should physically be possible for a teenage boy who can, and has, tripped trying to pick his car keys off the floor, Derek doesn't even have to watch the scores come in to know the results. Just watches the elation on his teammates' faces to know they are golden.