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It all started with a puzzle.
Okay, that was an oversimplification. His current problem started with a puzzle, everything else went way back to when Scott’s call of the moon was still brand new.
Today, though, Stiles had come over in preparation for the weekly pack movie night Derek always insisted on hosting. While the end of high school had dispersed everybody around the country, they all returned to Beacon Hills one by one. And now everybody was living within ten minutes of each other, like a fucked up co-dependent family.
If the shoe fits…
The pack movie night also meant food, more importantly it meant somebody had to provide food. They were supposed to rotate, that’s why Stiles had worked hard to put a system in place right from the very beginning. But it usually just boiled down to Derek ordering takeout.
This time Stiles had magnanimously volunteered to cook, a rare treat for everybody since it involved making enough to feed a small army. He had just managed to stumble through the door, holding two armfuls of groceries that should have taken multiple trips to bring in, when he froze in place.
“It’s not that complicated,” Derek said from where he was sitting at a fold-out card table in the living room, carefully shuffling through puzzle pieces.
Not that complicated? Not that complicated? Oh, this was complicated. This was a whole new genre of complicated. This was Derek-wearing-glasses complicated.
“So, what’s all this about?” Stiles asked. Whether he was asking about the puzzle or the glasses he wasn’t sure, he was still trying to process what he was seeing. Then, finally noticing that he no longer had circulation in either arm, he carefully lowered the tote bags to the floor and shook out his arms to get the blood flowing again.
Receiving no reply, Stiles walked over to where Derek was sitting. “Puzzles? Really?”
“It’s relaxing,” Derek answered.
“I bet. Though, I didn’t ever picture you having a hobby that didn’t involve working out…or violence. Sometimes both.”
“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me,” Derek said without looking up.
“You’re so mysterious,” Stiles muttered as he walked back to the abandoned groceries and started trekking them into the kitchen one tote at a time. Now that he was inside the house, he didn’t care about making more than one trip.
“My mom used to put these together all the time,” Derek explained just as Stiles finished setting the last bag on the counter. “Laura and I used to help her sometimes - when we were really bored. I didn’t see the appeal for a very long time, but now…now I find them calming. I think it makes me feel closer to her – to all of them.”
Stiles paused, his own thoughts flashing through memories of him and his own mother. She had been the one to teach him how to cook. “I know what you mean,” Stiles said wistfully.
Willing the bittersweet memories away, he pulled out packages of steak and chicken. He was planning to have a fajita night. Normally, Stiles would marinate the meat overnight to really get the flavor going, but the combination of having a busy workweek and being lazy made him hold off until today. Which was fine, he still had like eight hours until the pack would descend on the house.
He was crouching in front of one of the bottom cabinets, rummaging in search of three large bowls that were buried somewhere in the back. Stiles swore that Derek had ordered the deepest fucking cabinets available, that or he had Deaton use his magic to expand them on the inside. It felt like going into Narnia every time he needed to find a plastic container.
“Need any help?” Derek asked, standing behind him.
Stiles jerked up in surprise, causing the bowls he had finally found to spill onto the floor. “Jesus Christ. Come on, man, we talked about this – no sneaking up on Stiles.” He got back up on his feet, cursing under his breath, as Derek picked up the bowls.
He noted that Derek had perched his glasses on top of his head, making him look like a grumpy librarian. Hot, grumpy librarian, his mind helpfully supplied.
Refusing to follow that thought any further, Stiles grabbed the bowls out of Derek’s hands and headed for the kitchen sink to rinse them off. “You can tenderize the steak,” he replied with his eyes glued firmly to the task.
Stiles was taken by surprise the first time Derek had offered to help. Considering that some of Derek’s previous residences didn’t have electricity, not to mention a functioning kitchen, Stiles didn’t expect the man to know how to cook. Maybe he was being biased – Derek did grow up in a large family. But the lack of homecooked meals, while he was living in the loft, only served to confirm Stiles’ suspicions that Derek had no culinary skills.
Nevertheless, Stiles learned that Derek wasn’t nearly as helpless in the kitchen as Scott, he was actually capable of following directions for once. They always fell into an easy rhythm – Stiles dished out what he wanted done, and Derek wordlessly followed. It became a pattern. A pattern that Stiles didn’t want to examine closely.
Stiles covered the three bowlfuls of marinated meat with saran wrap and placed them into the refrigerator. With that part done, and hours until he needed to start the actual cooking, he found himself standing in the kitchen with nothing to do. Derek had returned to his puzzle – glasses perched back on his nose – after Stiles had dismissed him.
He could always go home, Stiles thought to himself, and waste the hours by being bored out of his mind - there were a couple of video games calling his name. Or he could spend this time bothering the shit out of Derek, which would probably be more exciting in the long run.
Stiles drummed his fingers on the kitchen counter and pursed his lips in concentration before pushing off and heading in Derek’s direction.
“What’s with the glasses?” Stiles asked, feigning nonchalance. He grabbed a chair from the kitchen table and dragged it over to the fold-out table before taking a seat. “I thought your werewolf mojo was supposed to take care of ocular degeneration.”
Derek grunted but didn’t elaborate further.
Stiles let out a dramatic sigh and glanced down at what Derek was working on. The table was a mess of colorful pieces, but none of them were connected. He must have just started on it, Stiles thought to himself.
He continued watching as Derek sorted through each piece, adding them to a specific pile that corresponded with a color or a theme. The puzzle box was laying on the edge of the table; Stiles reached over and brought it closer for inspection.
He snorted at the image and ignored Derek’s pointed glare. It was a cliché scene, really – a cottage in the middle of a serene, woodsy backdrop accompanied by a garden of flowers and a lake. “I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this.”
He placed the box back onto the table and looked up to find Derek still glowering at him.
Stiles rolled his eyes. “Stop looking at me like that. You know that I, of all people, am not going to judge you for liking puzzles. Did you forget that Isaac and I joined a knitting club at the library a couple of years ago? I literally knitted you a pair of socks last Christmas.”
Derek huffed and returned to his sorting. Stiles counted that as a win, at least it got Derek to stop scowling.
Stiles took out his phone. He then proceeded to waste his time by texting Scott and watching bullshit YouTube videos as Derek entertained himself with his puzzle. They continued this way until the rest of the pack started showing up one by one.
“Oh my God,” Scott moaned. “I forgot how much I love it when you cook.”
Stiles preened as he watched Scott shovel food into his mouth. Everybody was spread out, with some preferring to sit at the table, while others were occupying the couches in the living room.
“Could you shut your mouth while you chew?” Lydia asked with a glare. “I swear, the lack of manners in this house is disgusting.” Scott mumbled out a quick apology, without shutting his mouth much to Lydia’s displeasure.
“Some of us here were raised by actual wolves, you can’t hold that against us,” Stiles answered as he piled food onto his own plate. He didn’t even have to look at Derek to feel his disapproving stare.
“That doesn’t make any sense, both you and Scott were born human,” Lydia argued.
“Yes, but most of our high school years were spent in werewolf company. And teenagers are very impressionable. Hence, raised by wolves.”
Stiles jumped when he heard Peter speak behind him. “If you were actually raised by wolves, you’d have better table manners.”
“How hard is it to not creep on people? Seriously, you need a fucking bell.” Peter laughed as he walked over to stand next to John and Melissa in the living room, who were in the middle of a serious looking conversation. “And what manners? I literally saw you ripping apart a deer carcass during the last full moon.”
“Are we going to get the movie started or what?” Erica complained from where she was sandwiched comfortably between Boyd and Isaac on one of the couches.
“You can reach the remote yourself, it’s not that hard,” Stiles yelled back. He sat his plate down and got ready to head over in the direction of the remote, but he was stopped by Derek’s hand on his shoulder. “I got it, you go ahead and eat.”
Stiles tried to convince himself that the strange feeling in his stomach had nothing to do with this interaction. It could have been anything. It could have been the food, or maybe it was in anticipation of rewatching the X Files again. But it definitely wasn’t Derek touching him.
It wasn’t.
However, that didn’t stop Stiles from stealing glances at Derek throughout the evening.
When he thought about it, Derek had been doing more of that recently – the whole touching thing. Ever since he built this house, and adjusted to life in general, Derek had become a lot more tactile with everybody in the pack. Nothing major, but there were the occasional shoulder pats or the side hugs, especially when one of them was having a bad day.
Peter had mentioned once how werewolves craved being in physical contact with their pack members. Maybe Derek was never comfortable enough, until now, to show this side of himself. Whatever the reason, Stiles got the same treatment as Scott or Erica or any other person in the pack did. And that was why Stiles didn’t need to look any deeper into this. He was pack, this was normal.
But no matter what he told himself, he still left the house feeling like he was in the Twilight Zone.
The increased physical contact aside, that puzzle had caused him to finally start acknowledging the giant elephant in the room, which had been around since he was sixteen if he was being completely honest.
It was a long time coming, especially when it came to the physical side of things. Stiles wasn’t blind, he saw how hot Derek was. But it wasn’t as if repressing his feelings in high school was a bad thing. On the contrary, that was the best outcome of this whole situation.
Back then he had been a teenager full of dumb ideas and low self-esteem. He was doing his best to navigate the shitstorm that was the supernatural world while trying to figure himself out. Derek, though. Derek was a werewolf disaster and sometimes homeless. The only thing he really had going for him, besides that winning personality, was that hot bod that kept on rocking.
And while said hot bod that kept on rocking did make some very steamy appearances in several fantasies, Stiles still had enough self-preservation to shove those thoughts and feelings aside, deep into the back of his mind. So deep, that he genuinely forgot they were still there this whole time.
But now, Derek was no longer a werewolf disaster, no longer occasionally homeless. Derek mellowed out and became an adjusted adult – he now had more things to offer than that hot bod, which was still very much rocking.
His behavior started to really change around the time of Stiles’ senior year of high school. They had just finished getting rid of the next big supernatural bad when Derek had decided that they really needed to upgrade their home base. And as with any other major life change, he failed to mention his plan.
It had been obvious that even though the loft had been an improvement from the various past depressing dwellings, it was still not ideal. There were too many attack angles, too many weak spots to make it completely safe.
That was when the rebuilding had begun.
By the time he and Scott had arrived at the Hale property, the burnt out husk of Derek’s family home was no longer standing. There wasn’t even any rubble left, just construction equipment and piles of brick and lumber.
“Please tell me you didn’t tear that house down by yourself,” Stiles blurted out the moment he got out of his Jeep. “Your life is already pretty depressing; this would make it so much worse.”
Scott joined Stiles side with an awestruck, “Dude.”
“Oh, God, you did, didn’t you? Why would I even ask that? You love hurting yourself – that’s like the only thing that brings you joy in life.”
“We would have helped,” Scott said as he surveyed the area. “We can still help with the building, I guess.”
Stiles snorted. “Yeah,” he agreed as he walked over to one of the lumber piles and hefted himself on top of it. “We’ll just need to watch a couple of YouTube videos, and maybe read a WikiHow article on building houses.”
“Thanks, but I already hired a contractor,” Derek replied.
Stiles looked over at Scott who shrugged. “Wow, I think I’m actually impressed.”
Derek let out a sigh and crossed his arms. “Was there a reason for this visit?”
“We thought we’d check in on you,” Scott answered. “Your loft was empty, and we haven’t heard from you in like a week.”
Stiles nodded along. “You going AWOL usually means kidnapping, not Home Improvement projects.”
Derek leveled Stiles with an unimpressed stare.
Stiles threw his hands up. “You can’t blame us for getting worried. At this point getting abducted is a regular thing for everybody in this pack. It’s like the pull of the moon, happens on a monthly basis.”
“Go home.”
“And leave you to brood alone? Nah, we’re not going anywhere.”
And so, they stayed. Stayed and got on Derek’s nerves. Derek hadn’t been bluffing when he had said that he had hired a contractor, which was good news for Stiles because no amount of self-helping videos would have prepared him for building a house from scratch. He was ready to paint walls or help with decorating, but that was it, his expertise ended there.
Nevertheless, the new house was built within a month. It had enough room for the whole pack to move in together at once, which, thankfully, was not necessary but still comforting. And on some level, it was hilarious because almost everybody, save for Peter, was leaving for college in less than a year.
“This whole situation is giving me such Beauty and the Beast vibes,” Stiles said as he dropped himself down onto one of Derek’s new oversized couches in the living room. “You’re the mysterious creature that lives in a huge house on the outskirts of town, scaring off trespassers that dare venture onto your land. Except there’s a lack of emotionally comforting household items and musical numbers. There’s Peter, I guess. Maybe he’d be willing to sing if we ask nicely.”
“Shut up, Stiles.”
But no matter the irony, it still made for a nice, relaxing space during the summer. There may have been a chance that he had overstayed his welcome, that house became his home four days out of the week. But how could he resist when Derek had gotten the best internet available and one of the rooms was a library. A fucking library.
Soon after Stiles had sort of moved into the new pack house, his dad had started coming around as well. There was a benefit to this arrangement, it certainly didn’t hurt to have the law on their side. This wasn’t to say that his dad wasn’t uneasy with the whole situation – it took a solid four months for him to come around the whole supernatural surprise. But he did get more comfortable around werewolves as time went on.
A little too comfortable when it came to a certain psychotic werewolf.
In his defense, he had been looking to take up a new hobby anyway. That’s what he told himself as he hit the purchase button on his phone.
Life had been quiet for a while; things were running smoothly, both in the pack and at work. But he needed to stay on top of his game, stay sharp, occupy his mind in the meantime. And puzzles were supposed to help with strengthening the mind or some shit. It wasn’t because of Derek. It wasn’t.
That’s what he tried to tell himself as he opened the first package containing a puzzle of some countryside landscape – another one of those cottages in front of a river. It looked innocent enough on the outside, a pleasant scene made up of one thousand pieces. But when he poured the contents of the box onto his kitchen table, which was barely big enough to hold two people, he quickly realized his mistake.
Stiles frowned as he toyed with the pieces. Yup, he had gotten ahead of himself, there was no way around it. A thousand pieces didn’t seem like that much, choosing anything with fewer pieces felt like taking the easy way out – he was an adult, not a child. But now that he was faced with the task of putting this monstrosity together, well, there were some regrets.
Derek made it seem so simple.
Stiles scoffed. Fucking Derek.
He drummed his fingers against the tabletop, trying to remember the setup Derek had in his house. If memory served him right, he had used bags to separate his pieces.
Stiles got up and went over to his kitchen cabinets, rummaging for a box of Ziplock bags that he knew were abandoned somewhere. He let out a triumphant ‘Aha’ as he grasped the box before bringing it back to the table.
With the bags in tow, and stone hard determination, Stiles set off on his quest to organize the jumbled up puzzle pieces. Which was easier said than done.
“Holy shit, how many fucking pieces are there?” There was barely a dent in the main pile after an hour. This was bullshit. How the hell did Derek make it look so easy?
He kept at it for another thirty minutes, but when the pieces all started looking the same, he decided to call it quits for the night. Stiles stood up and looked down at the mess on the table. He felt annoyed at not having made more progress - he didn’t even have all the edge pieces connected!
Relaxing my ass, Stiles thought to himself as he dropped himself down onto his bed. Whoever thought that puzzles were calming was full of shit, no offense to Derek and his mom. There was nothing calming about trying to decipher the difference between a tree and a rock. It was harder than it fucking looked.
But no matter how frustrating this activity got; Stiles was going to complete it, come hell or high water. There was no other option. He could do this.
“Is that a new one?” Stiles asked as he unceremoniously dumped himself in the seat across Derek. He had come over hours early of the weekly pack night and had found Derek working on another puzzle, glasses included.
Derek hummed in affirmation.
Stiles looked down at the organized mess on the table, taking note of the colors of the different piles and corresponding them to the different parts of the picture. In a mildly surprising twist, the puzzle wasn’t another one in the Kinkade series, and instead contained a scene of the San Francisco painted ladies. With the outline already set up, Derek seemed engrossed with the housing part of the picture, so Stiles decided to work on the sky.
The sky was arguably one of the more challenging parts of any landscape puzzle, and Stiles was willing to fight anybody who wanted to say otherwise. Of course, the level of difficulty varied depending on whether it was a sunset or, if the artist decided to be a dick, a clear sky. This one fell somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. There were a lot of clouds, but they were all in the same color scheme.
Stiles grabbed the bag containing the pieces resembling the sky and clouds and emptied them out onto the table. He needed to develop a game plan, a strategy, if he wanted to get anywhere with this part of the puzzle. The simplest path would be to separate the clouds from the sky, those were the major differences. Now all he needed was a picture for reference.
He glanced around the table and noticed that Derek had been using a poster of the picture that had been included in the box. Which was fine because it left the box itself available for Stiles. He reached across the table and brought it closer, setting it up to his right so he could orient where those fucking clouds were supposed to go.
“What are you doing?”
Stiles looked up to see Derek staring at him, brows drawn together. “Helping you. What does it look like I’m doing?”
Derek raised his eyebrows.
Stiles busied himself by connecting two of the cloud pieces together. He paused when Derek’s staring became unnerving. “Do you want to take a picture? It will last longer.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you suddenly decide to help?”
“Do I have to have a reason?”
Stiles continued shuffling through the pieces, trying to ignore the boring of Derek’s eyes. The truth was, he didn’t know the answer to Derek’s question. Or rather, he knew the answer but didn’t want to admit it. What would he say? ‘I have liked you for years, and I want to impress you by helping you put together a puzzle.’ No, his best option was to say nothing at all, and hope that he would figure something out in the long run.
Thankfully, Derek didn’t press the issue. It was for the best, even though a part of him had hoped that this subject would finally be brought up.
There were pros and cons to ignoring whatever it was they were dancing around. The unknown was always intimidating, and with the pack dynamic being stabilized, Stiles didn’t want to be the one to rock the boat. Besides, Derek deserved more than just a blatant admission of some high school crush that had carried over – he needed to be wooed, to be courted so to speak. And this was not the right time to do that.
So, he continued as he was, working on the puzzle while ignoring Derek’s stolen glances.
Friday evening was finally here, thank fuck. This week had been a particular trip to hell, and Stiles was glad it was finally over. He had a choice of either going home to wallow in his own exhaustion, or there was the option of going to the pack house to bother the shit out of Derek. Not having anything better to do, the latter option sounded a lot more inviting than a lonely night at his own apartment.
When he had finally made it over to the house, he had found that most of the pack was occupied elsewhere. Scott was busy with Allison. Erica and Boyd had roped Isaac into some sort of outing that may or may not have been a code for a threesome. Lydia was busy with Jackson, and nobody knew where Peter had fucked off to. Hopefully, whatever it was didn’t involve his dad, although lately those two seemed to be a little too close for comfort. Stiles seriously needed to have a talk with his dad, and maybe threaten Peter for good measure.
This left Derek at the pack house alone. Not feeling in a cooking mood, Stiles decided to pick up some Mexican takeout on his way to the house. They ate their food on the couch with a baseball game playing on TV in the background. Stiles rambled on about his day as Derek listened with a small smile on his face.
Those expressions never failed to leave Stiles with a fuzzy feeling in his chest. It was such a stark contrast to how Derek used to behave around everybody, especially Stiles. He didn’t even remember when he was last violently pushed against a wall. He wasn’t complaining, but at the same time he wouldn’t mind being stuck between a wall and a hard place.
And that was his que to redirect that train of thought, he didn’t need to embarrass himself so early in the evening.
But on a more serious note, it was nice to see Derek enjoying life for once. He deserved it. And with each passing day it became more and more difficult for Stiles to keep his feelings at bay.
The feelings of attraction had long ago started turning into genuine affection – he had effectively fallen for Derek. Stiles realized that he wanted everything with him, all the good and the bad. He wanted to wake up next to Derek in the morning, and he wanted to fall asleep next to him at night. He wanted to argue with him over pointless things like whether drinking pulpy orange juice was just as healthy as eating an orange (it wasn’t). He wanted to grow old with him.
But he couldn’t just blurt those thoughts and feelings out like that, not when he didn’t know if Derek even liked men. No, he couldn’t risk it, not yet at least. He needed to come up with a plan, a plan to woo Derek. That would kill two birds with one stone. It would need to be subtle and concise, nothing too dramatic but with enough of a flare to make it obvious.
Stiles was still brainstorming his options as they finished with their food. They then automatically moved to the fold out table to continue with a puzzle that Derek had started earlier that week.
“I knew you were attracted to me back in high school,” Derek casually stated as he emptied out the bag containing the tree pieces onto the table.
Stiles whipped his head up so fast he was sure he had pulled a muscle. “Huh?”
“I said I knew-” Derek started to repeat before putting on his glasses.
“No, I heard what you said, just…” Stiles opened and closed his mouth without saying anything, his mind going into overdrive.
Derek knew.
Derek knew all along.
Well, this was embarrassing.
But if he knew all along, why didn’t he ever mention anything? Stiles felt his stomach drop. Derek didn’t mention anything because he didn’t feel the same.
He looked back down at the puzzle in front of him, fidgeting with one of the pieces to keep his hands occupied. Working on keeping his breathing even, he was trying to tamp down the feelings of disappointment and humiliation.
“You’re thinking too much,” Derek interrupted Stiles’ spiraling train of thought.
Stiles’ hands paused and he looked back up at Derek, who continued as if nothing had happened. “I’m sorry, but I’m finding it a little hard not to think about that doozey of a confession.” He rubbed at his eyes with the palms of his hands. “I mean what am I supposed to do? Here I thought that I had done a good job hiding all of…” He gestured to himself. “But now I’m finding out that I didn’t hide shit. Not to mention, if you knew, that meant that everybody else probably knew. Oh my god.” He let his head drop into his hands and took a deep breath. “I mean, I know that that was years ago, but fuck…what am I supposed to think? That I was in the same boat as you? Am I to assume that my feelings were returned but you just never mentioned it?”
Derek said nothing. Stiles looked up and saw the telltale sign of a blush on Derek’s face. Holy shit.
“No way. Since when?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “There’s not an exact moment. I just know that I started…noticing you after you saved me from the Kanima. And you kept caring about me when nobody else did.”
Derek met Stiles’ stare head on.
A thousand feelings crashed into Stiles all at once. Derek had liked him back. Derek had liked him back. What the hell?
“But you never said anything!” Stiles exclaimed.
Derek let out a deep sigh and tapped a puzzle piece in his hand against the table in agitation. “You were sixteen. I couldn’t in good conscience-”
Stiles shook his head. “No, I get it, trust me. You don’t have to explain why you didn’t want to commit a felony.” Derek glared at him. “But I wasn’t sixteen forever; I have been perfectly legal for a while now, if you haven’t noticed.”
“I know, but I also wasn’t going to be the one to take away from your college experience. It was a new chapter in your life, you didn’t need to be held down by something like this.” ‘Someone like me’ was left unsaid.
Stiles wanted to argue how that statement was complete horse shit. His dad still lived here; he was going to be around anyway. This must have been his own way of saying that whatever his feelings may have been once, they had changed as Stiles got older.
They lapsed into a silence, neither one really working on the puzzle – each stuck in their own head. Stiles cleared his throat. “I’m actually glad that you didn’t, you know, back when I was in high school.”
Derek raised an eyebrow. “You are?”
“Yeah.” Stiles nodded. “I mean, let’s face it, high school me wouldn’t have known what to do with you, or with himself for that matter. Scratch that, he would have run at you dick first.” Stiles laughed nervously. “No, but seriously, I don’t think either high school me or young alpha-you knew what they were doing. And those things together…it wouldn’t have ended well – just a bunch of angst and drama mixed together.”
“And now things are different.”
“Yeah, way different,” Stiles agreed, wistfully thinking about having lost his chance. “For one, you’re no longer a full-time martyr. Just part time.”
“Thanks,” Derek replied in a dry tone.
“PRN. As needed.”
“I got it.” Stiles delightfully noted that Derek was struggling and failing not to smile.
“But you did willingly stay homeless for like a year. You didn’t have to – I know that you could have afforded any of the seedy motels in this town. Probably could have bought one. Why didn’t you?”
“Buy a motel?”
“No.” Stiles shook his head. “Just…why did you keep yourself miserable all the time?”
Derek remained quiet for a moment, thinking. “I thought I deserved to suffer,” he answered. “I thought it was atonement for my mistakes. But I also didn’t care. With Peter and all the other threats, there just wasn’t much room left for getting my life together, so I ignored it. Worked out pretty well for a while.”
Stiles snorted. “Yeah. What changed?”
Derek scratched his stubbled cheek. “A lot of things. Almost losing the pack. Realizing that my actions put everybody’s lives on the line. I was supposed to be the adult, I was supposed to know better, and yet I didn’t. I needed to at least try to be a leader.”
“And here I thought you were trying to impress me,” Stiles joked.
“I was,” Derek said as he looked meaningfully at Stiles.
Stiles felt his throat dry up.
“I wasn’t going out of my way to do it,” Derek continued. “But I also can’t say that a part of me didn’t hope that getting my life together would attract you.”
Stiles felt himself blush. What the fuck was happening?
Derek gave him a small smile, which Stiles instinctively returned, albeit the panic he was feeling may have made it look more like a grimace. Nevertheless, Derek politely ignored his galloping heartbeat, and they returned to working on the puzzle. And while the atmosphere hadn’t become completely awkward, there was an uneasy sort of energy surrounding them.
After twenty minutes of stolen glances and stilted conversations, Stiles decided to go home. It was better to express his frustration with violent video games instead of talking it out like adults.
This would have been the perfect opportunity, he thought as his character was killed yet again. He paused the game and drummed his fingers against the side of the controller. He let out an exasperated breath and let the controller drop onto the couch. Why was this so difficult? All he needed to do was ask if Derek still felt the same way. That was it! And yet…and yet he couldn’t do it. Why couldn’t he do it? Derek already admitted that he used to like him, he didn’t really say that he no longer felt that way. But he also didn’t say that he did either.
Feeling frustrated with himself, Stiles decided to call it a night. There was no use; he couldn’t concentrate on anything that wasn’t Derek related. And even as he took a shower and prepared for bed, Derek was all he could think about.
Maybe a good night’s sleep was what he needed, he thought to himself as he drifted off to sleep, with Derek still on his mind.
In a strange turn of events, Derek had come over to Stiles’ apartment instead of the other way around. Stiles hadn’t invited him, exactly, it was more of a play on words through text that ended up sounding like an invitation. And Stiles didn’t have the heart to say no to him.
So now here they were, sitting across one another at the dining room table, putting together that God forsaken puzzle that Stiles had never gotten around to finishing.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Derek stated as he emptied out the bag that was a mixture of trees and rocks.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m here now, aren’t I?” He tried to feign indifference, but he knew that Derek could hear his heart beating out of his chest.
Derek looked at him over the top of his glasses. Stiles refused to stand down and stared back.
“Really?” Derek asked. “The only reason you’re not avoiding me now is because this is your place.”
Deciding not to comment, Stiles returned to working on the water part of the puzzle, which was, hopefully, difficult enough to distract him. Being distracted was better than answering. To answer Derek’s question would be an acceptance of guilt, and Stiles was not about to incriminate himself. He hadn’t been avoiding Derek, technically, he just hadn’t been around as much lately.
Derek sighed but didn’t push the issue. They continued their work in relative silence, with Stiles’ Spotify playing in the background. After a few minutes, Derek’s voice interrupted Stiles’ trance-like concentration. “This doesn’t have to change anything if you don’t want to.”
Stiles paused and chewed on the inside of his cheek. It was an out – a way to say, ‘let’s forget it and move on.’ And it was tempting to say yes, even though Derek never did admit his current feelings.
But now that he thought about it, neither did Stiles.
“I’m still in love with you,” he blurted out, making sure to keep his eyes glued on the puzzle. He could feel Derek’s eyes boring into him, but he refused to look up.
“Hey, look at me.”
Sighing, he raised his head, but kept his eyes focused just to the right of Derek. He jumped when he felt Derek’s hand gently grasp his own on the table.
“I’m in love with you too, dumbass,” Derek said with exasperation. “Are you done running away now?”
Stiles stiffened before letting out a short laugh. “That’s rich coming from you,” he replied.
“Stiles.”
He finally met Derek’s eyes and was momentarily blown away by the adoration in them. Did Derek always look at him like that?
He didn’t know who moved first, but one moment they were staring at each other, and the next they were reaching over the table kissing.
Stiles clutched Derek’s shirt with one hand as he propped himself up on the table with the other. Derek gently grasped his face, adjusting their position in such a way that had Stiles letting out an embarrassing groan. He felt Derek smile against his lips. Stiles retaliated by letting go of his shirt and sneaking his hand to the back of Derek’s head, nipping at his bottom lip.
They pulled away from each other, both panting and smiling like idiots.
“I just want you to know, you’re probably going to be stuck with me forever,” Stiles muttered.
“I’m counting on that.”
He couldn’t resist diving back in for another peck, which Derek soon deepened.
“Wait, no, we have to stop,” Stiles said as he pushed Derek away.
“What? Why?” Derek scrunched his brows in confusion.
Stiles sat back in his seat and motioned for Derek to do the same. “We need to finish the puzzle first. It has just been sitting here and I can’t seem to ever get around to it. But since you’re here, I think we can get it all done in a couple of hours. There’s only like a third of the pieces left.”
Derek looked at him in disbelief. “Are you serious?”
Stiles stared back at him. “Why wouldn’t I be serious? I’ve been trying to get this finished for like two months now. I want to free up my kitchen table again.”
Derek suddenly got up, chair scraping against the floor, before heading over to Stiles and physically hefting him over his shoulder. “Hey! What the hell are you doing?”
“The puzzle can wait,” he answered as he carried Stiles to the bedroom.