Work Text:
Stiles tugged his backpack higher up on his shoulders, glancing around to be sure no one was paying attention to him. He paused in front of the locker that matched the number on the piece of paper in his hand. Studying the combination, he shoved the paper into his pocket and quickly unlocked the locker. Glancing around, he moved quickly to empty the contents of his backpack before slamming it shut and racing away down the hall.
He switched out his own books when he got to his own locker, nodding at his best friend, who watched him with a knowing glint in his eyes. “What did you do?”
“Do? Me? Nothing,” Stiles said, cursing when a condom fell out of his backpack and onto the floor. He snatched it up and shoved it into his pocket before slamming his locker shut and heading down the hall to class, which took him back in the direction of the first locker he’d visited that morning.
Scott fell into step next to him. “Why do you have a condom in your backpack?”
“I don’t,” Stiles responded. “No prophylactics of any sort in my backpack.”
Scott narrowed his eyes. “Alright, then why do you have a condom in your pocket?”
Stiles opened his mouth to refute the accusation when a commotion erupted down the hall. Mr. Harris stepped into the hall, glaring toward the loud cursing echoing through the halls. Stiles tried to bite back a laugh as the evil chemistry teacher strode in that direction. Scott and Stiles hurried after him, and Stiles held back a beam of pride when Scott burst out laughing.
Derek Hale, king of the senior class, stood surrounded by condoms and bottles of lubricant. A few still fell out of his locker as his face turned red. “Mr. Hale,” Harris said, sneering at the detritus surrounding him. “Perhaps you should learn to be more careful with your personal items. And your language.” He nudged one of the bottles with his foot. “Clean this up, and then we are visiting the principal’s office.”
Stiles bit back a grin that quickly faded when Derek glared at him, his eyes shining and the tips of his ears bright red. Sighing, Stiles set his bag down and started helping Derek clean up the mess. He hadn’t meant to get the other boy in trouble. He just wanted to aggravate and embarrass him a little bit. The prank war was ongoing between the two of them for as long as Stiles could remember.
That was a lie; he could remember a time when he didn’t spend his days coming up with creative ways to embarrass Derek. At one point, the two of them were practically best friends and probably would have been if they were in the same grade, but then Derek went to high school and got too important for some middle school kid. It probably would’ve been okay, and everything returned to normal when Stiles caught up the following year, but then Valentine’s Day happened and -
Derek grabbed everything out of Stiles’ hands, startling him out of his stroll down the nightmare branch of memory lane. Shoving everything back into his locker, he slammed it shut and turned to follow Harris down the hall to the office. Stiles debated going to confess everything to the principal, but when he took a few steps forward, the bell rang, and he ducked into his classroom instead, taking advantage of Harris’ absence to chat with Scott.
Scott was sitting at his desk with his arms crossed over his chest, a frown on his ordinarily sunny face. “Do you think you went too far?” he asked.
Although that was precisely the thought Stiles had had, he wasn’t about to confess it to Scott. “Nope,” he said. “He deserved it.”
“Sometimes I’m thankful I’m your best friend because being your worst enemy is a scary thing,” Scott admitted as Harris strode back into the classroom, closing the door with a slam.
Stiles watched the teacher with apprehension. The ordinarily stoic man looked ready to murder the next person that breathed too loudly. Stiles ducked down in his desk, knowing that Harris already had it out for him since he recorded him being an asshole to the class and played it for the former principal. He just hoped that for once, luck would be on his side.
Unfortunately, Lady Luck was not his mistress, and when Stiles flipped the cap of his highlighter into the air and caught it in his mouth, things quickly unraveled. Harris turned from the board just as he’d caught it, and he’d wound up inhaling when the teacher snapped, “Stilinski,” and choked on the cap until a hard slap on his back from Scott ejected the cap. In the final strike of absolute misfortune, the cap flew through the air and bounced off Harris’ forehead before landing with a splash in his cup of coffee, sending droplets over the front of his light grey pants.
The class burst into laughter, and Stiles earned a one-way ticket to the principal's office. Dragging his feet, he should’ve known that he would run smack into Derek exiting the office, his eyebrows drawn together in exasperation. Stiles opened his mouth to ask if he’d gotten in trouble, but Principal Thomas was already gesturing him into his office with a frown. “Mr. Stilinski,” he greeted. Stiles grinned and gave a double thumbs-up ignoring the cut-off burst of laughter behind him. “Just get in there.” At least the man wasn’t glaring anymore, but he wasn’t smiling either.
At lunch, Stiles dropped into the chair next to Scott with a huff. “Detention,” he responded to his friend’s questioning glance. “Today after school with Harris. I’m not sure which of us is unhappier about it.”
Scott laughed and dragged out his peanut butter and jelly sandwich, holding it out to Stiles to trade for the ham and cheese he’d packed for himself. Stiles made the trade and made another mental note to start packing himself two ham sandwiches every day. When Scott’s hand started inching towards the Oreos sticking out of Stiles’ bag, he thought he should just start packing two lunches for the two of them.
Derek sat across the room with his friends Erica and Boyd, the three of them had their heads close together, and Stiles feared what they might be planning. His fear turned into pure terror when Erica threw her head back, blond curls bouncing, laughing loudly enough to draw everyone in the lunchroom’s attention. Even worse, she turned to look directly at Stiles with an evil smirk on her face as she bit into her apple before wiping away a drop of juice with the pinky of the finger holding the fruit. That was one terrifying woman.
He soon forgot about her when Scott started talking about the new girl in his English class, Alice or something. Stiles listened with half an ear while he began planning out his next English paper in his head. He had hated the book but knew he would be able to pull off a decent enough composition in time if he started on it that night. Otherwise, he’d be working all weekend, and that would cut into his video gaming time.
After an eternity, the school day and his detention were over. Hopping into his Jeep, he hurried home, hoping to catch his father before he left for the night shift. He knew he’d get the classic “Disappointed Sheriff” face for having detention, but since it was Harris, his father would be a bit more understanding; he couldn’t stand the bastard either. He let out a cheer when he saw the cruiser still parked in front of the house. Nearly falling out of the Jeep, he ran for the house, hand touching the doorknob just as his dad pulled it open, dressed in his uniform and the aforementioned look on his face.
“Harris,” was all Stiles said, and the look slipped slightly, and his father pulled him into a hug.
“I’ll be back for breakfast,” he told him and stepped off the porch, turning back as Stiles started to shut the door. “I’m glad to see you and Derek are working things out.”
“Yeah,” Stiles responded, mind already on the contents of the refrigerator and what he would have for dinner. He yanked the door back open when the words sunk in. “Wait, what?” he called, but his dad was already pulling away from the house. “That was weird,” Stiles thought. He shrugged it off, heading to the stairs to get changed into something comfortable—the exciting life of a relatively unpopular high school junior.
Stepping into his room, he hit the light switch and froze. On the wall across from him was a giant spider. All the breath left Stiles’ body on an ear-splitting scream. Once the sound ended, his breathing rapidly fell into the familiar pain of a panic attack. He tried to back out of the room and ran into something hard and fell to his knees. He pulled his hands into his chest and tried to slow his breathing when a hand landed on his back.
“Stiles! Stiles!” the person shouted his name while the hand started rubbing circles into his back. “Should I call your dad? Fuck, Stiles. I don’t know what to do!” He heard the distant sound of a phone ringing. “Sheriff, it’s Derek. Something’s happening.”
Stiles lost track of what was being said as soon as he heard Derek’s name. What was Derek doing in his house, in his room? He glanced up, eyes falling on the spider again, and he keened as he buried his face in his hands. The hand on his back disappeared, and the light in the room went out.
“Stiles...Stiles...name five things you can see,” Derek said. Stiles shook his head and covered his eyes. “C’mon, Stiles. Open your eyes and tell me five things you can see.”
“Sp...sp-ider.”
“No. No! The spider isn’t real. You can’t see it anymore. The light’s off,” Derek said, and Stiles shook his head, the words not making any sense to him. “Eyes open. Five things you can see.”
It took a few more minutes before Derek convinced him to open his eyes and look around. “All-Time Low poster. Blue and orange shirt.” Derek snorted. “Snowboarder. Laptop.” He turned his gaze to Derek. “You?”
While he studied Derek’s face, his eyes dim with concern, he could feel his breathing slowing down. He couldn’t believe Derek was in front of him, briefly wondered if it was a part of his panic attack, a hallucination. He used to see his mom during them after she’d died. His father used to walk him through this grounding technique after the psychologist told him about it, so he knew each step but rarely had to go all the way down to one thing he could taste.
“Four things you can touch,’ Derek said, rolling his eyes when Stiles patted his cheek and let out a large breath. “Good, deep breaths and three more things you can touch.”
Stiles settled back onto his butt, rubbing his hands over his face. “I’m good.” His eyes darted to the wall over Derek’s shoulder, eyes widening. “Where’d it go?”
“What?” Derek asked, following Stiles’ gaze. “The spider? I told you, it’s gone.”
“But where?”
Stiles searched the walls as Derek stood up. Crossing over to the lamp, Derek reached up inside of the shade. It rattled for a moment before he withdrew his hand and walked over to Stiles. Kneeling in front of him, he held his hand out, and in the palm sat a small construction paper silhouette of a spider.
“A prank? This was a prank? In my room?! How did you…” He trailed off as he remembered his father’s words. “You tricked my dad!”
Derek looked ashamed. “Not exactly. I came over to talk to you about today, and he assumed we’d made up. He sent me up here, and I saw the construction paper on your desk and the scissors in your pencil cup, and well…” He closed his hand around the paper. “I forgot about your arachnophobia.”
“Big thing to forget,” Stiles muttered as he rose to his feet. He watched Derek for a moment before holding out his hand to pull Derek to his feet. “You can go now.”
“Can we talk about this ridiculous prank war?” Derek asked. “Maybe end it before something bad happens. Something worse than what just happened.”
“Did you get in trouble?” Stiles asked. “With the condoms and everything?”
Derek shrugged his shoulders. “I have to attend sessions with Morrel to discuss ‘promiscuity and youth.’” He rolled his eyes. “Could be worse. Could have gotten detention with Harris.”
“Shut up,” Stiles responded, grabbing the sweatpants he’d come up for in the first place and went into the bathroom to change, assuming Derek would let himself out while he was showering.
Stiles stepped into the kitchen after changing and decided that today was not going to be his day when he found Derek standing at the stove. “What are you doing?”
“Making something to eat while we talk,” he explained.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Stiles responded but crossed the kitchen to check what Derek was cooking before setting the table.
“I think there is, and I think it’s long overdue,” Derek told him as he transferred the grilled cheese to the plates that Stiles handed him. “I’m not even sure what happened to us or how we ended up in this battle.”
“Sure, you don’t. You started it,” Stiles said, getting out two cans of soda and setting one next to Derek’s elbow.
“I started it? You sent me Oreos filled with toothpaste!” Derek said, setting his can down on the table.
“That was in retaliation for what you did,” Stiles said, and Derek gaped at him.
“What I did?” He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t do anyth-” His eyes flew open. “The heart attack.”
“Is that what it was called? Cause it very nearly caused that,” Stiles snapped. “I woke up, and popsicle sticks with little paper hearts covered the lawn! Every single one of them said ‘D plus S.’ It was so cruel!”
“Cruel?” Derek asked. “How was it cruel?”
“Making fun of my crush on you! What would you call it?” Stiles asked, tearing his sandwich into small pieces, crushing each one into a little ball, and dropping it on his plate.
Derek dropped his sandwich before it reached his mouth, staring at Stiles. “You had a crush on me?” Stiles snorted and started smashing the little balls of the sandwich together. “I’m not asking to be an asshole, Stiles. I’m asking because I seriously didn’t know.”
“How could you not? I followed you around the entire summer before you started high school. I showed up at your house every day that I could get a ride, even when you ignored me for your older friends,” Stiles said, his fingers smashing what had become of the sandwich into his plate with his thumbs. “And then what you did...humiliating me. Making fun of me!” Stiles screamed and sent the plate flying off the table when he flailed.
“I wasn’t making fun of you,” Derek said, his face pale and voice eerily calm as he gripped the edges of the table hard enough that Stiles was surprised it didn’t crack under the pressure. “I was trying to ask you out.” He clenched his teeth, the words barely slipping past as the tips of his ears burned bright pink under the dim glow of the overhead light.
“What?”
Derek sighed, running his hand over his face. “You said all of the hearts said ‘D plus S’?”
“Exactly!”
“No,” Derek said, shaking his head. “No. Just the ones closest to the house. When you got further away, they said something else.” Derek dug into his pocket and dug out his phone. He started scrolling, mumbling under his breath. “I don’t think I saved the email, dammit.”
“Email? What email? What did they say?” Stiles asked, his curiosity beginning to get the better of him as his brain tried to jump from every thought except Derek actually wanting to ask him out when he first started high school.
“I sent pictures to Laura at college,” he said. “Dammit. You didn't even look at them when you cleaned them up?”
“I didn’t! I was so embarrassed I hid under my bed, and my dad cleaned them up,” Stiles said.
“You hid under your bed?” Derek asked, lips quirking.
Stiles pointed a finger in his face. “I was traumatized by the cruelty of my former best friend! No laughing!” Derek raised his eyebrows, and Stiles paused, his own lips twitching. “Okay, it’s a little funny.”
“I’m guessing your dad threw away the hearts,” Derek said, and Stiles started to nod before freezing.
Jumping to his feet, Stiles ran up the stairs to the second floor, stopping to reach up to pull down the stairs leading up to the attic. He sneezed when he reached the top and swung his arm around blindly, looking for the string leading to the light. He blinked when he succeeded, eyes scanning over the boxes of things that he and his father had stored up there, everything they didn’t want to look at but wasn’t quite ready to throw away.
He tried to ignore the boxes with his mom’s name on the side and the ones with his name written in her hand. Swallowing, he pulled himself up to stand, rounding his shoulders slightly to avoid bumping his head on the low ceiling. He couldn’t guarantee that what he was searching for was there, but it made sense for his father to have stashed it here when Stiles had pushed it to the top of the stairs from his room before sending it down the stairs. He was surprised the contents hadn’t spilled out, but the box had held.
Moving aside a box with his dad’s name on it, he made a noise of discovery. Pulling the box to the center of the room, he let out a screech when he found Derek standing on the stairs with his head sticking up through the opening. “Did you ever consider that bell I suggested?” Stiles grumbled, ignoring Derek’s amused snort.
“What’s that? Why does it have my name on it?” Derek asked, moving up through the opening and stepping onto the floor.
Stiles felt the heat on his face but kept it turned away from Derek as he pulled open the flaps on the box to reveal its contents. Once Stiles came out from under his bed, he’d put everything that reminded him of Derek into the box. There was the baseball glove Derek had given him for his fifth birthday when the two of them decided to play baseball together for Beacon Hills’ little league. Moving it to the side, he pulled out a couple of polaroids from the days when Stiles wanted to be a photographer; they were awful, but he didn’t take the time to go over them.
He kept removing items, focusing on what had happened after that Valentine’s Day. Stiles had retaliated against Derek by leaving Oreo cookies with the filling replaced with toothpaste. He’d even signed the card, unafraid to let Derek know who was behind the prank. That had been the beginning. While none of the pranks had been particularly harmful, they were all memorable. Stiles had vowed never to stop until Derek did, and he wondered if Derek had the same idea.
“Wait, is this all a prank?” he asked.
“What?”
“This!” Stiles gestured between the two of them and the box he was digging through.
“If this were part of this ridiculous prank war, which you started-” Stiles interrupted with a scoff, but Derek continued speaking. “It would be your turn.” Derek wiggled his fingers in a way that must have been to indicate the spider, and Stiles shuddered at the memory. He dropped his hands and suspiciously studied Stiles. “What would you have done?”
Stiles shrugged. “Haven’t had a chance to spin the wheel yet,” he responded as he returned to digging through the box.
“The wheel?” Derek questioned as he picked up the stuffed fox that Stiles had set to the side. Stiles watched him from the corner of his eye, smirking when Derek ran his hands over the toy’s still-soft fur. It had been a gift from Derek when Stiles had his tonsils out. Derek refused to go to school until Stiles was released from the hospital, and his parents had allowed it with fond smiles on their faces.
“Whenever I see an idea for a really good prank, I put it into a computer program that adds it to the wheel. When it’s time to pull a prank, I spin the wheel.” He spoke matter-of-factly and then let out a shout of discovery.
Turning around, Stiles sat down, leaning against the box and then sitting up when the box slid away from him. The shoebox was leftover from a pair of Chucks that he’d been so proud of his freshman year of high school. It used to sit in his room but had disappeared right after that infamous Valentine’s Day. It made sense that his dad would’ve used it to pack away the evidence of the day.
Pulling open the box, Stiles swallowed back the rise of bile at the memory of stepping out on the porch to all of the tiny red hearts littering the front lawn. Taking a deep breath, he reached into the box and pulled out three of the sticks. Turning them to show Derek the “D + S” written on each one in black marker. Glitter from around the edges drifted onto Stiles’ jeans, and he chuckled.
“Must have taken you a long time to make all of these,” he commented.
“Three weeks,” Derek responded, reaching out and taking them. He settled down across from Stiles and leaned over to look inside the box. “It looks like more than I remember.”
“Funny, it looks like a lot less to me,” Stiles responded. He reached in and pulled more out. “They all say the same thing.”
“No,” Derek insisted. “They don’t. Three weeks, Stiles. I do remember what I wrote on them all.”
Stiles huffed. “Like you’ve ever given it any thought.”
“You’re kind of an asshole, you know that?” Derek tried to reach into the box, but Stiles slapped his hand away.
“Takes one to know one,” he muttered.
“Are we back in grade school?”
Stiles chuckled. “Well, we are actually in the same room without glaring daggers at each other.”
“You were the only one who glared daggers. I’ve spent the last two years trying to figure out what I did wrong.” Derek’s voice was soft, and Stiles looked up in surprise.
Studying his face, Stiles saw something he hadn’t noticed before. Although Derek’s eyebrows were lowered into a glaring position, his eyes held hurt and confusion. Thinking back, he realized that he had missed that same thing over the previous years. Frowning, he began to wonder if it really was his fault that they’d stopped being friends.
Glancing down at the box, he found a few polaroids at the bottom. Pulling them out, he saw the front lawn with the hearts in it. His father must have snapped the photos before cleaning the sticks up. Flipping through them, he stopped when he came across a photo taken right by the mailbox. A gathering of hearts at the base of the mailbox was different than the ones that Stiles remembered.
“Be my valentine, Stiles,” he read out. “Love, Derek.” He’d never seen those hearts, and he knew his father had tried to tell him something before he’d removed the hearts, but he’d been hiding under his bed. “Fuck.”
“You wanna?” Derek asked. “I’ve got a backpack full of supplies.” Stiles’ head jerked up. “Hey, you’re the one that bought them. I’m surprised your dad didn’t hear about it and give me a safe sex lecture when I showed up on the porch.”
“I picked it all up when I was out of town for the Science Olympiad last weekend,” Stiles responded.
“Oh yeah, you got first place for cracking codes or something, right?” Derek asked.
“Codebusters,” Stiles said, his voice distant as he continued to study the photograph. Suddenly his head snapped up, and he locked eyes with Derek. “You really wanted to ask me out.”
Derek pressed his lips together and nodded. “Yep. Then the next thing I know, you’re ignoring me at school, and I have a box full of minty-fresh Oreos on my front porch.” He rubbed his hands over his thighs. “I thought it was some twisted form of flirting, so I had your dad let me into your room, and I wrapped everything in aluminum foil.”
“That was pretty good,” Stiles admitted, remembering spending hours unwrapping items in his room. Just the other day, he’d found a pack of gum wrapped in foil that had fallen behind his desk.
“When you got back at me by filling my locker with shaving cream, I finally clued in that you were upset.”
“You always were a bit thick,” Stiles commented, but he was smiling as he started to put the hearts and photos back into the shoebox before replacing it in the larger one. Rising to his feet, he picked the box up and carried it toward the stairs.
“What are you doing?” Derek asked as he rose to his feet.
“Taking this down to my room. I have a feeling I’m not getting rid of you anytime soon,” Stiles told him as he made his way carefully down the stairs. Derek followed, closing the stairs when he reached the bottom.
Stiles took the photo of the hearts around the mailbox and pinned it to his bulletin board. He fidgeted with it for a minute while Derek came into his room, standing awkwardly in the doorway. “So...do you want to grab dinner, maybe? Or go for a walk or a movie?”
Stiles turned to him. “You asked if I wanted to fuck not five minutes ago, and asking me out is making you tongue-tied?”
Derek huffed. “The last time I tried to ask you out, I inadvertently started a prank war. I’d like to avoid losing another two years, if I can.”
Stiles’ laughter echoed in the room, and Derek’s low chuckle joined in a moment later. “Well, I suppose we could always consider the prank war foreplay.”
Derek groaned and ran a hand over his face. “That was just...no. C’mon, let’s start with dinner and see where things go from there.”
Stiles nodded. “I could do dinner,” he said. Derek turned to leave the room. “Then maybe I’ll do you.”
“Keep it up, and we’re going back to the prank war.”
“Excellent, the wheel still has plenty of options,” Stiles responded. “It would be a shame to let them go to waste. I’m going to have to cancel my order for that universal remote.”
Derek stopped in the middle of the stairs and turned to stare up at him. He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times before shaking his head and continuing down the stairs. “Nope. I don’t even want to know.”