Chapter Text
Derek and Stiles had moved in together in an apartment in Pasadena a few weeks before Stiles’ mythology course at Caltech had started.
There were a number of items on the list of things Derek Hale had never imagined himself doing, back when he was 16. Leaving Beacon Hills was in the list, as was actually killing uncle Peter.
Living with Stiles was nowhere on the list but, had Derek known the boy personally back then, it would have been.
Not that he had been forced to.
When Stiles had stated that he was going to move to Pasadena, no one had been particularly excited. Oh, everyone had been very happy for him for getting into CalTech, of course.
But living alone in Pasadena?
Stiles?
The man had been a trouble magnet since he was in diapers and, unfortunately for everyone who had decided to care about him, that hadn’t changed after puberty.
It had gotten to the point where the Sheriff, Deaton and Peter had gotten together to try and see if, perhaps, there was something in his blood that drew the evil supernatural creatures to him.
(they had found nothing, but Derek still wasn’t convinced)
Still, Stiles was technically an adult - and Derek used that word very loosely when it came to his pack - now. He was going to go off to college no matter what they said, and they could either help him as well as they could or watch him flail around until he managed to do it himself.
It had been when Stiles and the Sheriff had been arguing about Stiles’ accommodations prospects and how they were going to pay for them (Stiles wanted to get a job and a loan, the Sheriff wanted to cover at least his first two semesters for him), that Derek had proposed moving in with Stiles.
He hadn’t even really thought about it before the offer had left his mouth.
Derek recalled how quiet the room had gotten at his offer, the two Stilinski and the other members of his pack staring at him in vague degrees of surprise while he pretended that the tip of his ears weren’t turning scarlet under the attention and the slight embarrassment.
He hadn’t thought once of retracting his offer, however.
And while both Stilinskis had put up some token resistance, Derek had been vaguely surprised at how quickly they had agreed to the arrangement.
Even the betas had not appeared particularly worried or upset about their alpha moving away from Beacon Hills (though he did make an effort to go back once every two weeks at least, and they were welcome to come over whenever they wished).
There had been something that Derek was not 100% sure had been a shovel talk/giving his blessing/pep talk from the Sheriff the day they had moved in (and the man's knowledge of Derek's slight... crush, for lack of better terms, on his son was deeply upsetting), but other than that everyone had been happy for them and no one had tried to stop them.
Living with Stiles was nowhere near as chaotic or annoying as Derek had worried it would be. Stiles had his degree and his part time tutoring job, Derek had his own job in construction downtown, and they had so far managed over six months living together without any incident inside the apartment (outside it, a couple; after all, he wouldn’t have been Stiles Stilinski if at least one evil creature that wasn’t supposed to exist hadn’t attempted to kill him during the year).
And it wasn’t even as if they didn’t hang out, or as if they didn’t argue. They did both, a lot.
But there was never real anger when they argued about who's turn it was to do the laundry or wash the dishes, and all in all they had found a dynamic between the two of them that worked.
Considering Erica’s own bet that they’d end up taking each other out within the first two months of living together, he thought they were doing much better than anyone could have guessed they would have.
“Hey, Sourwolf,” called Stiles, as Derek walked inside the kitchen shirtless. “What time are you finishing today? Because we are out of tomato sauce, and you know that Isaac will absolutely come over before next week. And if he comes this weekend, he’s going to want your pasta and the secret pasta sauce you refuse to teach me, and if he doesn’t get it, he’s going to be super annoying and all ‘oh, you love Erica more than you love me’ - and how old is he anyway? If you loved any beta more than any other it’d be Boyd anyway, you’re bad at pretending you like them equally.
“I did tell you that Erica came over yesterday, right? I think I did. I left it on a note? Your lunch is on the kitchen table, call Erica if I hadn’t told you before, I have to go before I’m late-”
Derek threw him his Adderall bottle at him, watching with some amusement as Stiles flailed around trying to catch it. He cheered when he did, before pointing his index finger at Derek again. “Call Erica, tell me if you can get the tomato sauce, don’t forget your lunch, stop loving Boyd more than the others, love you, see you later, bye!”
“Love you too,” answered Derek, watching him rush out of the door with his keys, coffee and Adderall in his hands. He then grabbed the coffee Stiles had left for him on the coffee machine, and moved to the windows.
Stiles appeared downstairs exactly thirteen seconds later, and right on cue looked up to the window as soon as he unlocked the door of the car (not the jeep; his 'precious Roscoe' had managed to bring him to the last day of school, before giving up completely before graduation day).
He waved, a huge grin on his face, and Derek waved back, continuing to watch him and sip his coffee until Stiles got into the car and drove away.
Derek supposed that, through a stranger’s eyes, Stiles and his relationship might look like something it wasn’t.
“You know, Hale?” asked Hank, one of his fellow constructors, as they all moved outside for lunch. “You really are better than me.”
Derek raised an eyebrow in silent question, and Hank snorted.
“I’m just saying, if I had a boyfriend like your Stiles, I would literally never shut up about it,” he said, ignoring the pointed way Derek rolled his eyes at the statement. “I’m serious, you couldn’t pay me to not brag to everyone else about him, and make fun of all the other single bitches in town.”
“I told you,” said Derek, swallowing his bite. “Stiles’ not my boyfriend.”
“Did he leave a note today?” questioned Marvin, yet another one of the people who did not believe Derek’s arguments.
“Yup,” said Delilah, picking up a red post-it that Derek had kept away from his other trash. “‘Have a rawr-some day at work, Der-bear. Love you’. He calls you Der-bear?”
“I’m trying to get him to stop,” said Derek, snatching the note and glaring at the air in front of him. He doubted he’d actually get him to stop, considering he had been trying to stop Stiles from calling him ‘dude’ since the boy had been in sophomore year and it still hadn’t stuck with him.
The post it notes had become another part of Derek’s routine since they had moved to Pasadena, and at this point he was more surprise the days he opened his lunch and found nothing inside of it.
Usually, it meant that Stiles was mad at him for one reason or another, or that Derek had fucked up, so it was rare for him to show up at work without them.
“He literally signed it ‘love you’,” pointed out Marvin, one eyebrow raised.
Derek shook his head. “It’s a thing we have always done. I’ve told you, we’ve been friends for years, and we have been in some... bad situations before.”
Stiles himself had been the one to instate the ‘love you’ rule: saying 'I love you' to your fellow pack members whenever you were leaving or ending a call, after one too many near death experiences, and no one had fought him too hard on it.
“I’ve seen him the few times he has come to pick you up,” said Delilah, shaking her head. “He is smitten with you. That’s the face of someone in love.”
“Then Stiles is in love with everyone in our... friends circle,” said Derek, finishing his last bite. Oh, he would love it if Stiles truly had feelings for him, but Derek knew better. “You guys are ridiculous. There is nothing between Stiles and I, we are just friends.”
His phone started ringing then, and everyone gave him a look as Stiles’ picture appeared on his screen (a picture of him and Derek sitting together on the couch, Derek asleep while Stiles was making a face at his phone), with the contact name ‘S <3’ flashing on top of it.
“He put it, it was a joke,” he tried, but no one seemed inclined to listen to him or believe his words.
“Hey, babe,” came from Stiles as soon as Marvin answered the call for him, since Derek’s hands were oily. “You’re on your lunchbreak, right? Or am I disturbing, right now?”
The judging intensified, and Derek pointedly ignored it. “No, I’m on my break. You’re on speaker, by the way.”
Just in case he was about to say something supernatural or full moon related.
“Oh, good to know. I’m at the store right now, did you check for the sauce?”
“Yeah, we have enough for leftovers in case Isaac comes over. Why are you at the store?”
“Class got cancelled, lecturer didn’t show up. Do you know what else do we need? I know we are out of cheese, but I can’t remember anything else. Coffee, do we have coffee? I think we don’t have coffee."
“We have coffee, and why didn’t you take the shopping list with you? We make it exactly because you never remember anything.”
“Hey, when I left the apartment this morning, I did it with the confidence of someone who knew their Sourwolf was going to go shopping for the week before going home while I was at school! This is not my fault!”
“Then why even go?”
“I am trying to do something nice for you, and I’m feeling very attacked. See if you get a note in your lunch tomorrow, you mean Meanwolf.”
Derek rolled his eyes at the dramatic tone. “We have coffee, and we have milk. We have sauce, and we have two bags of pasta and one of rice.”
“So I’m here for nothing? Oh, lucky charms. Do we have lucky charms?”
“We are doing one cereal brand at a time because the Weetabix ones always go bad-”
“Der-ek,” came the whine from the other side. “Do you hate me? Be honest. Wait, don’t be honest, don’t tell me you hate me. But do you? Because this feel like hate. But don't tell me if you do. But do you? This feels like a crime. Like a hate crime. Are you biphobic?”
“No lucky charms.”
“Hater!”
“And if you buy them and hide them in the apartment, I will know.”
“Super hater! Do we have tuna?”
“I didn’t buy any after you did the casserole,” said Derek, finally wiping his hands. “And wait, I think I have a picture of yesterday’s list.”
“Why didn’t you lead with that?”
Derek did not bother replying to that, quickly opening his gallery. “It’s at a weird angle, I was trying to take a picture of the cabinet you bent when you were trying to prove you could fix it yourself.”
“I resent that tone of voice, Jasper Hale. Is the cabinet working or not?”
“It’s bent. It wasn’t bent when you took it apart.”
“But is it working or- oh, got the picture. Meat! And fries, and peas, ugh. I got to go back to the front, why didn’t you send me this earlier.”
“...”
“I got to go. Any preferences for dinner?”
“Steak?”
“And you want it so rare you can hear it moo in the fields, you got it.”
“Stiles.”
“Crazy how you never changed how you say my name since the day you learnt it,” snickered Stiles, clearly very pleased with himself. “Relax, dude. I know how you like your... meat. Now I really got to go, love you?”
“Love you too,” answered Derek, ending the call.
He checked his nails for a few moments in the silence that followed his conversation with Stiles.
“... Smitten, I tell you.”
“We. Are not. Together!”