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Normally cookie-baking time was Derek’s favorite. His mom always made a double batch of sugar cookie dough, and he and his big sister Laura and his little sister Cora would sit at their dining room table to cut them all out. Then they would arrange them carefully on the cookie sheets for Mom to put in the oven. And ever since he’d turned seven, Derek would help Mom make the icing so they could start decorating the cookies as soon as they were cool. And then he and Cora and Laura would cuddle on the gigantic teddy bear in the living room and eat their first cookies. It was always his favorite time.
But today it was different, because today Cora had brought a friend from school. A friend with buzzed-off brown hair and a Batman T-shirt and grass-stained jeans and one of his front teeth missing.
"Mom, Mom, it’s okay if Stiles bakes cookies with us, right?" Cora asked.
"Of course it’s okay," Mom said with a smile.
"I’m gonna make a Batman cookie!" Stiles shouted. "And then I’m gonna make a Robin cookie, and then—"
"You can’t make a Batman cookie." Derek frowned across the table. "We don’t have any Batman cookie cutters."
Stiles cocked his head to one side. “So?”
"So, you have to use a cookie cutter," Derek said.
"Do not.”
"Do so."
"Do not.”
"Do—"
Mom clapped her hands. “Quit fighting, or no one is making any cookies.”
Derek crossed his arms and scowled at Stiles. Stiles stuck out his tongue.
It only went downhill from there.
Stiles refused to use the cookie cutters. Or if he did, he mashed three cookies together to create some weird hybrid monster cookie thing. Only one of them looked like a bat. Another might have been a dog or a wolf or something, Derek couldn’t tell.
He wanted to tell Stiles he was doing it wrong, but if he started a fight, Mom would probably send him to his room and he wouldn’t get to help at all.
Not to mention Stiles talked the entire time. He talked about Batman. He talked about Robin. He talked about ghosts. He talked about werewolves. He talked about school and his teacher and how he and Cora were in the same reading group and how it was dumb that comic books didn’t count toward his reading goals for each week. Derek didn’t know it was possible for someone to talk for that long about nothing. It was driving him crazy.
But the worst happened when Derek went to help Mom make the icing. He was opening the bag of powdered sugar when Stiles scrambled up on a stool next to him and snatched at the bag. “I want to help!”
Derek yanked the bag away from Stiles’s sticky fingers. “No, you can’t help. I always make the icing.”
Stiles grabbed for it again. “But I want to! I can help!”
Derek jerked it back. “No! It’s my job!”
With a foof, the bag ripped and powdered sugar exploded all over both of them.
Derek blinked through the cloud of powdered sugar now on his face. Stiles was staring at him, brown eyes as wide and round as dinner plates, mouth open like he was going to scream at any moment and then Mom would come back and Derek would be grounded forever even though it was Stiles’s fault and—
Stiles laughed.
Which, what?
Stiles had his hands wrapped around his stomach, he was laughing so hard. “You look like an angry snowman!”
Derek couldn’t have said what came over him at that moment. He just grabbed a handful of powdered sugar and dropped it all on Stiles’s head.
Stiles didn’t even pause; he got his own fistful of powdered sugar and mashed it into Derek’s shirt.
Derek got more sugar to retaliate, when—
“Derek Samuel Hale!”
He jerked at the sound of his name, letting the sugar slip through his hands to the floor. Mom stood at the doorway to the kitchen, hands on her hips and looking furious.
She pointed to the hallway. “Bathroom. Both of you. Now.”
Stomach churning, Derek climbed down from the chair and went to the bathroom, powdered sugar dropping off him in small puffs with each step. Stiles trailed behind him, quiet for the first time since he’d gotten to the house.
Mom cleaned them both off in the bathroom and once they’d both changed—Stiles into some of Derek’s clothes, which were two sizes too big—she made them both sit in timeout for a whole thirty minutes.
Derek was so angry. He wasn’t going to get to make the icing and he wasn’t going to get to ice any cookies because Stiles couldn’t keep his hands to himself and—
"Are you mad at me?" Stiles asked in a quiet voice.
“Yes,” Derek snapped. “It’s my favorite thing, and you ruined it!”
Stiles scuffed his heels against the floor. “‘M sorry. I just wanted to help.”
Derek opened his mouth to say that he hadn’t, but Stiles wasn’t looking at him, he was looking at the floor and his lip was stuck out like he might cry and he still had a bit of sugar on his ear.
He wanted to still be angry, but it was hard with Stiles looking like that. Derek reached over and rubbed the sugar off. “It’s okay,” he said gruffly.
Stiles’s face lit up. “Really?”
Derek shrugged. “Yeah. Mom’ll probably save at least a couple of cookies for us.”
"Awesome," Stiles said, and kicked Derek’s chair leg in solidarity.
***
Sure enough, there were still a lot of cookies left to decorate, even after Derek and Stiles had been in timeout for thirty minutes. Stiles mixed three types of icing together in an effort to make black (he made brown) and Derek helped him ice the Batman logo onto his biggest cookie. It was a little lopsided, but it still looked okay. Stiles declared he couldn’t wait to take it home and show his parents.
Then, Stiles joined Derek and Laura and Cora on top of the
giant teddy bear while they watched a movie and ate their cookies. And even
though Stiles sat too close and talked throughout most of the movie and even
said the lines along with the characters, Derek found out he didn’t mind too
much.
In fact, he was kind of happy Stiles had come over today, after all.