Work Text:
A little before midnight on New Year’s Eve, Stiles and Scott and Allison and Derek all go up to the roof to watch the fireworks. With COVID, it’s not like they can head out to a party, but at least they can celebrate in this small way. Only, it’s cold, and cloudy enough that they really can’t see that much, and after a while Scott and Allison start making out and go downstairs with sheepish smiles that aren’t fooling anybody.
“At least they're having a good night," Stiles grumbles.
Derek hunches his shoulders. “You can go down, too, if you want. I’m not stopping you.”
Purely because Derek clearly wants him to leave and Stiles is feeling contrary, Stiles says, “Screw you, I can sit up here if I want to. Why don’t you go downstairs,” but Derek doesn’t. He just looks away, glum and unusually quiet, even for him, and keeps sitting there, slouched, staring down at the flowing lights of the traffic far below on the street.
Stiles is pretty sure he hasn’t hurt Derek’s feelings too much—they say this kind of stuff to each other all the time, it’s just what they do —but… did he hurt Derek’s feelings? Crap. Stiles kind of wishes he hadn’t said anything now. It’s not like he meant it. Derek lives here too. He can sit up here all night if he wants, and Stiles wouldn’t mind. Derek’s not even bad company most times, not really. Stiles just acts like he is to keep up appearances, same as Derek does.
He should say sorry. But… no, he shouldn’t. If he apologized, Derek would probably think he’d been replaced by a pod person.
In the end he just bounces his dangling feet against the wall and sits quietly and watches the traffic, too.
Finally Stiles is starting to get sleepy and Derek is starting to get cold, so they decide to go back down and go to bed, only… only the door to the stairwell is shut.
It wasn’t shut when they all came up here, Stiles is sure. They always make sure to prop it open because it locks automatically. After almost three years of the four of them sharing an apartment here, they all definitely know this.
Stiles tugs on the handle, pointlessly, disbelievingly. It doesn’t budge.
“You were supposed to prop it open,” Derek says from behind him.
“I did, dumbass!”
“Well, you obviously didn’t!”
“Excuse you, I…” Stiles trails off, frowning. There’s a bit of spare pipe lying on the gravel by the door, and Stiles recognizes it. It’s the pipe he used to prop the door open. “Wait, Scott and Allison. They must’ve knocked aside the pipe when they went in.”
Derek reluctantly nods. “They were probably too distracted by each other to notice.”
For a second they share a commiserating look, same as the one they used to give each other back when Scott and Allison’s mutual pining was always the drama of the day.
Then a bit of a breeze picks up and Derek shivers, crossing his arms over his chest, and the moment’s over.
Stiles starts pounding on the door and shouting Scott and Allison’s names. It’s a bit of a long shot, since they’ve probably already hightailed it out of the stairwell and into the apartment for some activities Stiles is happier not imagining, but who knows. Maybe their old insomniac across-the-hall neighbor decided to take a stroll through the stairwell on this fine, slightly chilly night at one a.m. or… something.
Derek yanks on his sleeve—like a little kid trying to get his mom’s attention at the mall, Stiles thinks uncharitably—and hisses, “What are you doing? People are sleeping, Stiles! You’re going to wake people up!”
“Good,” Stiles says, and switches from knocking to kicking at the door. His hand is getting sore. “Or have you forgotten that if we don’t wake them up, we’re stuck up here?”
Derek glares and turns away. Stiles always forgets how much of a goody-two-shoes the guy can be sometimes. He acts all snarky and brooding so much of the time, but Stiles has seen the way he acts around Stiles’ dad, all “Yes, sir,” “No, sir,” and polite nodding. It’s kind of endearing.
But also, it’s New Year’s, so it’s like, the one day of the year people are likely to still be fully awake at this hour. Whether they’re sober is of course another question.
Stiles keeps kicking for another minute or so, just to show Derek, but... it’s obviously pointless, and now his foot is hurting, too. After one last half-hearted kick, he trudges over to where Derek has resumed sitting on the edge of the roof and sits down, too, in glum solidarity.
“Maybe if we just wait a while, someone will come up,” Derek says.
Stiles makes a show of checking his wristwatch, even though he can’t see it very well in the dark. “It’s one thirteen in the morning, Derek. Fireworks are over. No one’s coming up.”
“What about—” Derek makes a moment-of-enlightenment face, and Stiles stupidly gets his hopes up, until Derek finishes, “We’ll call someone!”
“With what phone?” Stiles points out, because Derek is always leaving his lying around the apartment, usually on the kitchen table or the sofa, because that way he doesn’t have to answer the phone if it rings. Stiles has never met another person who resents needing to own a phone as much as Derek does.
“With your cell phone,” Derek says slowly, like he thinks Stiles is being especially stupid.
“I don’t have it!”
Derek is incredulous. “What do you mean, you don’t have it? You always have it! It’s practically glued to your hand. You even take it with you in the bathroom. You’ve answered texts before even when you’ve been in the middle of taking a shower!”
“It’s on the charger, okay? God. Consequence of using your phone all day, you have to charge it more often.” He can’t help but add, a little defensively, “And even I can go without my phone for a few minutes. I seriously didn’t think we’d be up here that long.”
“Yeah, well.” Derek sighs.
They sit there a little longer, stewing on that, and then Derek gets up and goes to tug on the door again.
Stiles says, "It's not going to magically unlock itself.”
Derek snaps, "I know," and marches back over to sit on the ledge again.
It’s looking like they’re going to be up here for a long, long time.
Then Stiles slaps his forehead and leaps up. "I'm an idiot. There’s a ladder. Isn’t there a ladder?”
He races over to the other side of the roof. He thought he saw… Yes. There. There’s a discreet ladder bolted to the side of the wall, leading down to the fire escape on the top floor. Stiles thinks it’s probably for maintenance workers or something.
“I don’t think it goes down all the way,” Derek says from right beside him, and Stiles jumps. Derek smirks, briefly; sneaking up on Stiles always seems to bring him endless amusement. If he keeps it up, Stiles is going to die of heart failure one day, and then they’ll see if Derek still thinks it’s funny. Ha.
“Why wouldn’t it go down all the way?” Stiles says. “That’s a stupid design decision.”
“I think it’s so people can’t access the roof from the fire escape.”
Stiles starts climbing down, so Derek huffs and climbs down after him. And then—
“Why did you stop?"
Stiles grudgingly admits, "It's too short. It doesn't go all the way to the ground and it's stuck. It won't extend. You were right.”
He can't see Derek's face from this angle but he can just feel that he's smirking.
There's a drop from the end of the ladder to the floor of their balcony. It can’t possibly be that far—the ceilings in their unit are not exactly soaring—but it sure looks like a long way from up here.
"Just jump, it's not that far," Derek says.
"What? No. You jump."
Derek huffs. “Let me hang down from your legs and I'll drop the rest of the way."
“That's a horrible idea," Stiles says, but Derek is already climbing down around/over him on the ladder. There's an awkward moment when Derek is basically holding himself upright pressed against Stiles' body from shoulders to knees, but then Derek is continuing on down.
"Ready?" he asks.
"I'm holding on, but I don't think I can take your weight—"
"Sure you can," Derek says, and then it feels like there's a sack of bricks tied to his legs as Derek lets go of the lowest ladder rung to cling to Stiles' thighs.
"Fuck," Stiles gasps, because he has not been going to the gym enough to be even remotely prepared for this. He's got his arms wrapped tight around the ladder, and it feels like the metal rung is digging into the bone, and it's all he can do to gather the breath to say, "Up, abort, come back up here," only Derek doesn't, he just presses his forehead against Stiles' abdomen and grunts, "Can't."
"Then let go," Stiles bites out, but Derek apparently can't do that, either.
"Don't tell me now that you're scared of heights," Stiles groans, and Derek is suspiciously silent. Stiles can feel his fingers going numb. "Well, you better jump because at this rate your weight is slowly pulling my pants down and I know you don't want to see me in my underwear, so—"
Derek mutters, so quietly that Stiles suspects he wasn't meant to hear it, "Under different circumstances…"
Stiles says, "Wait, what?"
Instead of answering that question, Derek lets go of him like the coward he is to land gracefully (more or less) on the fire escape.
"We're going to talk about this," Stiles says, looking down at Derek.
Derek scowls and holds up his hands over his head. "Just jump, Stiles. I'll catch you."
“If you don’t, I’m going to kill you,” Stiles promises. Nothing for it—he squeezes his eyes shut and lets go.
He lands with a yelp on something soft, which turns out to be Derek. They both go tumbling to the metal grating of the fire escape. Stiles bangs his funny bone pretty hard and shouts, "Motherfucking ow!" and Derek makes an undignified grunting, wheezing noise from underneath him. Miraculously, it's not enough to bring either Scott or Allison to the window.
Stiles raises himself up on his smarting elbows to look down at Derek. "Do you really want to see me in my underwear or were you just joking?”
Derek closes his eyes.
“Because if you were joking, that's not funny. It's actually really mean and you owe me a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream. No, I take that back. A quart."
"I wasn't joking," Derek says, scrunching up his face like he’s bracing for Stiles to smack him, so of course Stiles has to kiss him. If it's an hour after New Year's instead of right at midnight, does the kiss still count as a good omen for the year to come? Stiles is going to say it does. It definitely feels auspicious.
*
When Allison happens to glance out the window fifteen minutes later on her way to the bathroom, Stiles and Derek are too busy making out to notice—at least until the camera flash goes off, accompanied by giggling.
Stiles reluctantly raises his head to look up at her. "We're kind of having a moment here, if you didn't notice."
"Oh, I noticed," Allison assures them, grinning. "Scott owes me fifty bucks."
Typical.
At least now they can go inside and make out in Derek's bed instead.