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Derek knew what Stiles acted like when he had a crush. He’d spent many years watching him moon over Lydia, even spending night after night in uncomfortable hospital chairs waiting for her to wake up after Peter had attacked her. Derek had never forgotten the random tunes Stiles would hum under his breath whenever he thought about her or the way his heart beat just that much faster when she was in the same room with them. He absolutely didn’t want to remember the pile of poems written about her that he’d found one night while they’d been researching in Stiles’ room, and he’d gone in search of a pen.
The point was that Derek knew Stiles had a crush, and the boy obviously did at the moment. The problem was that Derek didn’t know of anyone that had captured Stiles’ interest. He’d been away at school, so it was logical that it was someone he’d met in college, but the only people he ever talked about were his roommate that he’d planned on murdering seven different ways within the first week and the lesbian couple that owned the campus coffee shop where he worked.
Tugging at his hair, Derek struggled to ignore the happy tune floating from the kitchen. Stiles had come over early that morning and taken over the kitchen in the Pack House to bake cookies, filling the air with the smell of warm sugar and chocolate, two scents that he already had in spades and messed with Derek’s senses in the worst way. Derek had been avoiding the room since that morning. He’d woken up to the sound of Stiles letting himself in with the key that everyone in the Pack had a copy of on their keyrings.
Now, his stomach was growling, and unless he wanted to jump out the second-story window and go in search of a rabbit, he was going to have to find courage and head into the kitchen. It wasn’t that he was afraid of Stiles. It was that he didn’t want to deal with watching the man he’d been crushing on for years crush on someone else. Then again, he could always poke and prod at Stiles until he confessed who the mystery person was while he ate. If he knew who the person was, he could vet them and make sure they were good enough for Stiles.
Not that anyone would be good enough for him. Hell, even Derek wasn’t good enough for the brilliant, compassionate man that held a wolf pack together in a way that no wolf ever had in Derek’s memory. Even his mother would have been impressed by the young man. Taking a deep breath, he tried to walk down the steps casually and managed to trip down the last two steps when Stiles called his name.
Entering the kitchen, he paused, staring at the plate of food sitting on the island in the middle of the room. Stiles sat a large glass of ice water next to it and shot a smile at Derek. “I figured you were probably getting hungry,” he said, nodding to the food before returning to the stove when the timer went off. “What were you working on up there? I figured I would hear banging around if you were remodeling something.”
Derek settled on a barstool and looked down at the plate. A sandwich thick with meat, cheese, and other toppings cut into fourths in the middle of the plate. Surrounding it were pieces of fruit cut into different shapes. Picking up an apple heart, he popped it into his mouth and licked his lips at the subtle lemon flavoring. “I was reading,” he said after swallowing and picking up a piece of the sandwich, sniffing it, and grinning at the subtle aroma of the fresh ground mustard Derek hid in the back of the fridge because he hated sharing it.
Turning around to scoop the cookies off the pan and place them on the cooling racks, Stiles raised his eyebrows. “Really? What were you reading? Something I might like?”
Derek was distracted by the chocolate chip cookies that Stiles was transferring. They were chocolate cookies with white chocolate chips. Derek flared his nostrils and smelled peanut butter, as well. Glancing away, Derek spied a bowl with white chocolate melts in them, waiting to be melted down so the cookies could be half-coated. “Are you making Death by Chocolate cookies?”
“I am. They are your favorite, right? I even added peanut butter chips to some of them because you mentioned once they might be good,” Stiles told him, smiling and grabbing the bowl of melts and setting it into the pot of boiling water on the stove, stirring at it. “So, the book you’re reading?”
Derek shook himself away from watching Stiles, lost in thoughts about how sweet and domestic the situation was and how much he’d like to do it every day if he could. Taking a bite out of his sandwich, he sighed at the perfect combination of ingredients. He peeled back the bread to spy sundried tomatoes. Glancing at the refrigerator, he noticed the grocery list he’d made and added that item to was now erased, and he looked back at Stiles.
“Did you go grocery shopping?”
“What?” he asked, looking over his shoulder as he took one of the cookies off one of the cooling racks and dipped it into the melted chocolate. When he was satisfied, he moved that to another cooling rack and repeated the process. “Yeah. I had Cora snap a photo of the list earlier, figured I would just pick everything up while I was getting things for the cookies. It was the least I could do since you’re letting me use your kitchen.”
“It’s the Pack’s kitchen, so it’s just as much yours as mine,” Derek pointed out, taking another bite and swallowing past the lump forming in his throat.
“You live here, I don’t,” Stiles pointed out.
“We could change that,” Derek told him, picking up another section of his sandwich. Stiles dropped the cookie he was dipping and cursed, trying to dig it out and sucking on his fingers. Standing, Derek reached in and plucked the completely coated cookie out and popped it into his mouth, moaning at the taste. “Amazing.”
He glanced down when the scent of spice grew more potent in the air. Stiles ducked his eyes away and moved onto the following cookie, avoiding looking at Derek. Sniffing, Derek stepped back in surprise. The spicy chocolate scent was wafting off of Stiles. The other man was aroused and not as he’d been all through his teenage years. This was a direct result of Derek in his space. “Stiles?”
“You have a little chocolate…” he gestured towards Derek’s mouth. Reaching a thumb up, Derek wiped away the offending chocolate before sticking his thumb in his mouth to suck off the white substance. As the spice in the air increased, he realized how it looked and stumbled backward. “Oh, hey...speaking of reading…”
Had they been speaking of reading? Derek’s mind was too busy going over a million other things that he’d already forgotten whatever conversation they’d been having. “I brought a couple of books I found at the used bookstore by campus. They’re in my backpack.”
Stepping back and snagging the bag off the floor next to the island, he pulled out a reusable shopping bag and reached inside. There were three paperbacks, all a bit worse for wear and of books Derek had mentioned loving as a teenager. He flipped through the pages of Where the Red Fern Grows and wiped at his eyes. “I...how…?”
“You mentioned once that your mom used to read that to you before bed. I figured it was lost in the fire, so I saw it and thought of you. You told me that The Outsiders was an awesome book, and you used to wear your dad’s leather jacket and pretend to be Dally. The last one, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure you had talked about, but I thought you had, and I liked it as a kid, so I thought you might, too. Even if it’s for little kids.”
Derek held up the copy of Bunnicula and chuckled. “I used to laugh so hard at these books. I convinced Cora that there was a bunny in the forest that was Bunnicula, and she was afraid to go out for weeks.” He laughed at the memory, laughing harder when Stiles snorted and joined in, knowing that he would end up torturing Cora with that information.
“So, after I clean up, you want to go for a hike?” Stiles asked, pulling out the last sheet of cookies from the oven. “I can finish dipping these later.”
“Yeah, we can do that, but I’ll help you clean up.”
Working together, it didn’t take long to load the dishwasher and get everything else put away. Derek grabbed a couple of water bottles out of the refrigerator and met Stiles on the front porch. He grinned when he saw that Stiles had his camera with him. “Planning on taking some photos?”
“You mentioned that you wanted some new ones for the walls in the library,” Stiles replied.
That statement was true, but Derek didn’t remember saying anything about it to Stiles, but it wasn’t unusual for him to talk more around him than he did around anyone else. The sun was hidden behind clouds, and the light breeze through the wind cool enough that they didn’t get too warm as they walked. Derek let Stiles set the pace, stopping whenever he found something interesting to photograph.
“Hey, we should go by that old Beaver Dam. You mentioned once that you thought it would make for some interesting photos,” Stiles said, looking around and following Derek when he started heading that way.
As the afternoon went on, Derek noticed something interesting. He’d lost count of how many times Stiles had said “You mentioned once” before repeating something Derek had said in casual conversation. Derek knew Stiles was observant, had to be to become a profiler as Stiles had always hoped, but this was even more so than usual for the hypervigilant boy. He also seemed to be making a concentrated effort to show Derek how much knowledge he’d gathered about him.
Stumbling over a root, Derek nearly fell into the river as an idea crashed into being in his head. After years of knowing Stiles, he knew how he acted when he had a crush on someone, and the number one thing that Stiles did when he had a crush on someone was learn absolutely everything there was to know about the person. He followed that up by giving multitudes of gifts because he couldn’t decide what would make the person happiest. He also knew that food was a major love language for Stiles, he used it with his father all the time and today had used it on Derek to no small degree.
“Your secret crush is me,” Derek breathed out, catching Stiles when he tripped over the same root that Derek had just done.
“What?”
“Your secret-”
“It was a secret?” Stiles asked. “I thought I was totally obvious. You didn’t know?” He rubbed a hand over his face. “How could you not know?”
Derek didn’t have an answer for that. The only thing he could think was that he was so busy hiding his own crush that he never thought for a second Stiles might feel the same way. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“And make a fool of myself? No, thank you,” he said.
“You wouldn’t have made a fool of yourself,” Derek argued. “You would’ve made life a whole lot easier for me. We could’ve...I don’t know...I mean, if I’d only known you returned my feelings…” Derek wanted to laugh at how much his rambling resembled Stiles’, but he just couldn’t get himself to form a complete thought. His mind was one flashing neon sign screaming, “Stiles is in love with you!”
“Returned your feelings? You mean that...are you saying that you...wait, am I your secret crush?” Stiles asked.
Those words froze Derek, and he focused on trying to remember how to breathe. He startled when Stiles laid a hand on his shoulder and forced him to turn around and face him. “Derek, are you in love with me?”
Derek swallowed hard and tried to come up with something to say but only managed to choke out, “Did I forget to mention that?” He relaxed when Stiles threw his head back and burst into gleeful laughter before reaching up and cupping his face in his hands.
“Yeah, you forgot to mention that,” he responded, leaning forward to press their lips together. Derek would be sure to remember to mention later that this was the best first kiss of his life.