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“The wedding is off!” Stiles shouted through the bathroom door.
Scott dropped his head against the wood while Lydia stood with her hands on her hips. “Stiles, the wedding is in five minutes.”
“No!”
“Dude, you need to get out here and marry Derek. The Wolf and the Spark need their happily ever after,” he said.
Derek leaned against the wall across from the bathroom, hands rubbing over his face. He couldn’t count on the entire pack’s fingers how many times he’d heard Stiles call the wedding off in the past two months. Once they’d decided to get married, the both of them were eager for it to happen. Unfortunately, they’d disagreed about everything from the colors to the drinks to the flowers and everything in between. Each disagreement had been an excuse for Stiles to call the wedding off again.
Added to arguments, they’d been dealing with Stiles’ magical instability. Although they’d thought it was a side effect of their run-in with a bad batch of killer mushrooms, the instability had only grown worse after the ill effects had worn off. Derek had gone to see Deaton for advice, something he only did out of desperation, but the man had been cryptic as ever. He’d spoken about the subconscious being a tricky thing with which to deal.
Derek heard a strange sound from the other side of the door. It sounded like tapping against glass. Flaring his nostrils, Derek imagined Stiles trying to break through the window and crawling down the side of the building just to get away from Derek. “Maybe we should listen to him,” Derek said.
“No, Derek,” Lydia said, her voice soft, and he knew he must look pretty pathetic for her to be so sympathetic with him. “Stiles loves you. He wants to marry you. He just has cold feet.”
A thunk from the bedroom drew Derek’s attention away from her. An idea began forming in his head as Scott knocked on the door again, still trying to get Stiles to exit. The door grew warm, and Scott stepped back, frowning. A yelp sounded from behind the door, and Derek didn’t hesitate to throw his shoulder against it, forcing it open.
Stiles sat on the bed, looking miserable. The temperature in the room was several degrees higher than the hallway, and as Derek looked around for a source, the floor around Stiles’ feet caught his attention.
“What the hell?” Scott said, trying to step into the room, but Derek turned and pushed the broken door shut in his face.
Scott made an outraged sound, and Lydia tried to talk him down. “We’ll go down and entertain the guests,” Lydia said through the door. “Get him straightened out.”
“I’ll try,” Derek said, watching Stiles as he crossed the room slowly to sit next to him on the bed. He tried to avoid the small puddles surrounding the large block of ice encasing Stiles’ feet. “You really did get cold feet, I guess,” he said after the silence dragged on for too long.
“This isn’t funny,” Stiles muttered, holding his hands out over the block, flames coming from the palms and melting the ice, but as soon as Stiles stopped the heat, the block reformed even bigger than before. “I can’t make it go away, so the wedding is off. Unless you want to carry me through the ceremony.”
Rubbing at his face, Derek turned himself to face Stiles, who was still glaring at the ice. “Stiles, I would do anything to marry you, but I need to ask you something, and you have to be completely honest with me.”
“Of course,” Stiles said, meeting his eyes, looking almost offended that Derek would imply he’d be less than genuine with him.
“Do you want to marry me?” Derek asked, trying to keep the hitch out of his voice and failing. He bit into his lower lip when Stiles’ eyes widened.
“Of course, I do! I want that more than anything!” Stiles shouted.
Derek sighed, wanting to be relieved by Stiles’ words but knowing he had to keep pushing to get to the root of the issue. “You’ve called it off at the slightest inconvenience or disagreement. And today, you, literally, have cold feet. Deaton mentioned your subconscious is influencing your magic.” He ran his hands over his face again, pressing his fingers against his eyes to encourage the tears there not to fall. “I think your magic says you don’t want to marry me, so if that’s what you really want….” He swallowed hard. “I’ll go tell everyone to go home because the wedding is off.”
Stiles didn’t answer for a long time, and Derek took that for the answer he really hoped it wouldn’t be. He pushed himself off the bed, striding across the room to avoid falling apart in front of Stiles. Halfway to the door, something wrapped around his ankle, and he tripped, barely catching himself before his face smashed into the floor.
Looking over his shoulder, he saw Stiles staring at him with wide eyes from the floor, his hand wrapped around Derek’s ankle. “How?” Derek asked. He hadn’t heard Stiles getting off the bed, and he wasn’t sure how he would miss the sound of the ice block against the floor.
“I’m not sure,” Stiles said, tugging on Derek’s ankle once and looking surprised. He pulled several times until he tugged hard enough to drag Derek back a couple of inches.
“Let go,” Derek said, pushing himself to his knees, and Stiles slid with his ankle, the ice leaving a trail of water. “C’mon, Stiles. This is no time for jokes.”
“You think I’m joking?” Stiles asked. “You just broke up with me, and you think I decided it was a good time for shenanigans?” He tugged again. “I can’t let go!”
Derek shook his head, the words running through his head over and over before screeching to a halt. “You thought I broke up with you?”
“Didn’t you? You’re going to tell everyone the wedding’s off, right?”
Derek sighed and inched himself backward and tried to adjust himself so that he could sit up without jostling Stiles too much. Once he was up and leaning against the bed, Stiles managed to sit up next to him, hand still wrapped around his ankle. Sighing, Derek dropped his head back to the edge of the bed and stared up at the ceiling.
“Were you breaking up every time you called off the wedding? The music? The champagne? The flowers?” Derek asked.
“NO!” Stiles shouted. “I just…I just…I wanted to give you the opportunity to leave,” he muttered, voice barely audible even to Derek’s super hearing.
“Why did you want me to leave?”
Stiles sighed. “I didn’t want you to leave, but how could you not want to after what I said to you?” Stiles asked.
Derek turned his head to see Stiles with his face buried in his elbow resting across his knees. “When?”
Stiles sighed. “The night of the mushrooms.”
“Your family home with your family trapped inside was burned to the ground by your psychotic, mass-murdering girlfriend, the first of two you dated!”
Derek hadn’t forgotten the words, but he hadn’t held them against Stiles. He couldn’t without hating himself for the way he’d behaved under the influence of the Destroyer of Love Mushrooms. He thought he’d made that clear to Stiles, but clearly, he hadn’t made it clear enough.
“Stiles, your words weren’t wrong, and even if they had been, you didn’t mean it. Just like I didn’t mean to destroy Roscoe,” Derek told him. “I have never held what we did that night against you, and I hope that you haven’t secretly been plotting my death for what happened.”
“How can you not hate me? How can you still want to marry me? To look at me?” Stiles asked, dropping his arm and looking Derek in the face. Tears streamed down his cheeks, and Derek gave up the battle with his own.
“Stiles. I love you. There is nothing I can really add to that. I have loved you since that day in the preserve with Scott’s inhaler. I just didn’t know it then,” Derek explained, reaching out and laying his hand over Stiles’ hand on his ankle, squeezing gently. “I don’t know how to make it any clearer to you than that. I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, but if you don’t want to do that now or ever, I will respect your feelings.”
Stiles sniffled and nodded his head a few times. His hand twitched on Derek’s ankle before he turned it to intertwine his fingers with Derek’s. Derek stared into Stiles’ wet eyes, jumping when he felt cold against his pant leg. He glanced down and noticed that Stiles’ feet were free of their prison and surrounded by cold water that quickly soaked into both of their suits.
Smiling, Derek pulled Stiles over into his lap, not caring if they both got wetter. They weren’t getting married in those suits anyway, even if it meant that Lydia might kill them later. “So, your feet are no longer cold?” Stiles laughed and nodded against Derek’s shoulder. “You want to get married?” Another nod. “Today?”
“As soon as possible,” Stiles said, pulling back to look into Derek’s face with a smile.
“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” Lydia said, from the now open doorway, two garment bags in her hands. “You can thank me later for being prepared for wardrobe malfunctions.” She stepped into the room and draped the bags over the armchair in the corner of the room. She crossed to stand in front of them, hands on her hips and a soft smile on her face.
“What?” Derek asked, looking up at her.
“C’mon, let’s get this show on the road. The Wolf and the Spark deserve their happily ever after,” she responded, reaching out her hands to help them both off the ground to get changed for the ceremony.