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The entire house reeked of stress when Derek came home after a long day under and inside cars. He’d been looking forward to heading straight into the shower when he arrived home but found himself heading towards the kitchen where the stench was most potent. Unsurprisingly, he found the source was his boyfriend of four years, who stood with his back to Derek, shoulders hunched and muttering to himself.
“Honey, I’m home,” Derek said, leaning in the doorway and holding back a chuckle when Stiles squawked. His hands flew into the air, sending a piping bag filled with orange icing flying through the air until it landed with a splat on the floor to Stiles’ right, the icing leaking out of the tip and creating a puddle while they stared at it.
“What’s up?” Derek asked, watching Stiles move through the kitchen to get a rag and clean up the mess.
“Nothing. It’s not important,” Stiles muttered, throwing the rag in the sink and tossing the piping bag onto the counter. Stiles’ heart rate was all over the place with the lie, and his scent soured even further with frustration and disappointment.
Moving towards the counter where Stiles had been working, he froze when Stiles grabbed him and started tugging him away from it. “No! You can’t look…”
He trailed off when Derek’s eyes fell on the cookies lining the counter. The sugar cookies were cut into different shapes; most Derek couldn’t identify. One though, the one Stiles had been working on, was clearly an orange and blue shirt reminiscent of the one he’d been forced to wear while Stiles objectified him to convince Danny to do some hacking for them.
He focused on the following cookie, picking it up as he tried to figure out the shape. A picture began forming in his mind when the cookie was ripped out of his hand, crumbling everywhere. “Just go away, Derek,” Stiles said, grabbing the rest of the cookies and dumping them into the trash. Derek managed to rescue the shirt one before it met its fate and hurried out of the room with it before Stiles could stop him.
He didn’t hear Stiles following him, so Derek continued upstairs, cradling the cookie gently. Heading into their bedroom, he laid the cookie on the dresser, hoping it would still be there when he was done showering. He also hoped that he would be able to figure out what Stiles was up to and why it had him so stressed out. Derek always managed to do his best thinking in the shower.
Stepping under the spray, his mind went back over the other cookies, especially the one he’d picked up. The shape was still familiar but just out of his reach. Frowning, he scrubbed shampoo through his hair. His hands dropped to his side when it hit him what the shape had been.
Without stopping to turn off the water, Derek jumped out of the shower and raced down the stairs to the kitchen. He found Stiles at the counter again, muttering while he mixed more cookie dough. “The triskelion,” he said, startling Stiles again, the cup of flour he was about to add to the mixing bowl flying out of his hand and hitting Derek in the chest, the powder sticking to his wet skin and hair.
“You’re naked,” Stiles pointed out. “And dusted.”
Derek rolled his eyes. “The cookie you ripped out of my hand was supposed to be a triskelion.” Stiles ducked his head, avoiding Derek in the eye. “What were the others?” He tried to remember what he’d seen. A longer one with a jagged edge. “The bone saw?” Stiles' shoulders hunched even further as Derek tried and failed to picture any of the other cookies. “Stiles, what were you doing?”
“It’s not important,” he repeated his earlier argument. “It’s stupid.”
Derek stepped forward and reached out to take Stiles’ chin in his hands, forcing him to look up into his face. “I’m standing here naked and coated in flour paste. It can’t be worse than that.” He counted it as a win when Stiles’ lips twitched. “You know you can tell me anything.”
Sighing, Stiles pulled away and moved to the counter, opening one of the drawers and pulling out a sketchbook that he sometimes used to draw flowers and herbs that they found exploring the preserve. Laying it on the island in the center of the kitchen, he flipped it open and slid it closer to Derek.
Moving closer, Derek studied the page. He identified the drawing of the cookies he’d identified as well as a few others. He laughed at the bottle of mountain ash and the pair of jeans with claw marks in the thigh. Every cookie brought back a memory from the years they’d been together. His eyes traced over the page until he reached the bottom where Stiles had scrawled the words Project Perfect Proposal.
“Proposal?” Derek asked, looking at him with raised brows, his heart stuttering at what he thought those words meant.
“Did you miss the ‘perfect’ part? Until I can achieve that, I can’t do the last one,” Stiles muttered, turning his attention back to the bowl and the canister of flour. “Shit, I forgot how many cups I used.”
“Are you counting the one coating me?” Derek asked, moving up behind him and wrapping his arms around Stiles’ waist. “Stiles, you know that whatever you are planning doesn’t have to be perfect to be successful, right?”
Stiles shook his head. “Everything you do is always perfect. This time I have to be perfect for you.”
Derek turned Stiles around in his arms, cupping his face and pressing their foreheads together. “Stiles, you are perfect for me.”
He could feel the heat of Stiles’ blush beneath his palms and savored it. “See, you’re perfect. Always saying the perfect thing at the perfect time.”
“Then how about I use this ‘perfect time’ to ask you to marry me,” Derek suggested without even thinking about it first.
“You asshole,” Stiles said, his smile belying any anger that the words held. “You had to even do that perfectly.”
“Well, I’m naked, coated in flour, and don’t have a ring, so how can that be perfect?” Derek argued, pressing their lips together.
“Because it’s you and me,” Stiles admitted after a thoughtful silence.
“Exactly, so no matter what the cookies looked like, they would’ve been perfect,” Derek said, pressing their lips together. “So, was there an answer in there somewhere?”
Stiles laughed. “There might have been.” He leaned back and used his index finger to write “YES!” in the flour on Derek’s chest.
Shaking his head, Derek bent down to throw Stiles over his shoulder and carried him towards the stairs. “Let’s go wash that answer off and get to celebrating, shall we?”
“I can’t wait to tell everyone how you proposed to me,” Stiles said, pinching Derek’s bare bottom.
“Just make sure to include all the details,” Derek teased, dumping fully-dressed Stiles into the still running shower.