Work Text:
“I’m leaving!”
Stiles looked up from the paperwork he had been filling, frowning as Phoenix descended from the stairs. “Woah, woah, woah. Where are you going?”
“Why does nobody in this house listen to me?” whined the girl, scowling over at him. Stiles could not lie, he was not particularly pleased with this new attitude that Phoenix had adopted ever since she had started puberty. Where was the clingy little girl who had loved him above everything else, and who was this werewolf devil hybrid who had found roots in his house? “I told you I was going on a date.”
“I thought you said you broke up with Luke?”
“I did,” agreed Phoenix, rolling her eyes. “I have a date with Jeremy.”
“Have I met Jeremy?”
“I don’t know,” she said, impatiently. “He only asked me out this morning and since I don’t want to sit around like a loser on Valentine’s Day, I said yes.” She gave Stiles a very pointed look when she said those words, but his mind had latched on another detail.
“Wait, today is Valentine’s Day? Since when is it Valentine’s Day?”
“Either since this morning or since the holiday was first instituted,” answered Phoenix, and really Stiles was also not a fan of her inheriting his sass and sarcasm and using it against him. It felt targeted.
The majority of his brain however was focused on the fact that, for the first time since he and Derek Hale had gotten together, Stiles had forgotten about Valentine’s Day.
They always celebrated Valentine’s Day.
As many might have guessed, neither Stiles nor Derek was a particularly romantic person. Well, Derek had done his best to be more romantic than he actually was, back at the beginning of their relationship, but they had gotten comfortable real fast.
Scott joked that they had gone from being married, to getting together, to the honeymoon phase, and then right back to married again, but he wasn’t that far off, considering the whole true mates thing.
But Valentine’s day became sort of their day. Every Valentine Day they would get together, just the two of them, and romance the shit out of each other to make up for the rest of the year, and it was an awesome tradition that they both loved and cherished, and that they had both somehow completely forgotten about.
Because if he hadn’t forgotten about it, Derek would have absolutely lorded it over Stiles’ head that he had, and he had had plenty of time to do it, this morning. But they had breakfast like normal, then Derek had driven the kids to school while Stiles got ready for work, and neither of them had even noticed the heart and generally red, pink and white decorations around town.
Damn it.
“Be careful and make good decisions,” he told Phoenix before she could start flashing her eyes at him and being mean-er than usual (seriously, Stiles was pretty sure he had not been this rude to his dad, when he had been going through puberty)(what was better, doing illegal magic and hanging out with werewolves secretly or being mean?), and rushed towards the kitchen. “Don’t forget your curfew, and if you miss it, I’ll send your dad-”
“Bye!”
Stiles rolled his eyes, glancing out of the kitchen window to memorise both the license plate and catch a glimpse of the guy Phee was driving off with, before focusing back on what had brought him there.
Derek was going to run late tonight because he had a revision session with his students, so Stiles should have maybe an hour and half or two before he returned home.
Certainly that was enough time to do something, right? Maybe make a special dinner specifically for Derek, or at least order something?
All they had was leftover from today’s lunch, and he somewhat did not feel like chicken curry and rice was a particularly romantic dinner.
Unfortunately, his search for ingredients did not take him far. He found a couple of unopened bottles of wine belonging to one Peter Hale that would definitely help the night progress, but nothing else.
There was half eaten cake that he was pretty sure belonged to Derek anyways, but they were almost out of everything else. They certainly did not have enough to create a new meal, which was why they had reheated today’s lunch and yesterday’s dinner for dinner.
He quickly scribbled two more items on the shopping list on the fridge, before glaring at the contents of the kitchen, trying to mentally induce spontaneous food replenishment with the force of his mind alone. What was the point of having a spark if it couldn’t manifest things for him instantly? Stiles wanted a refund.
“I could get something ordered it,” he then mused, picking up his phone again. He ignored the pack group chat notifications, instead typing in Derek’s favourite restaurant (his real favourite restaurant; he claimed that Boyd’s bakery was his favourite, but he was a lying liar who lied). He was pretty sure the place did deliveries, but if it didn’t, he might get someone in the pack to go and pick it up for him.
Though everyone else in the pack was most likely having their own nice Valentine’s Day event because they weren’t idiots who had completely forgotten about the holiday.
Still, he could-
“Tata!” shouted Alexis, louder than Stiles believed it was necessary. “Tata! Tata!”
“I heard you the first time!” he called back, even as he put down his phone and hurried upstairs.
Of all three of their children, Alexis was the most like Stiles. Just like her siblings, she looked a lot like Derek, but her attitude and general behaviour? Pure Stiles.
It was awesome but it also made him feel really bad about what his dad had gone through.
“What is it, Lexi?” he asked, pushing open the door to her bedroom.
Unsurprisingly, her brother was also in the room, sitting at the desk with her though his attention was fully focused on the book in his hands.
“Tata,” said Alexis, giving him a destroyed look, “Look. My project.”
“Shit, what happened?”
The coloured paper she had finished decorating this morning had huge water marks all over it, and all of the ink was ruined, making it virtually unreadable.
“I don’t know,” she said, wiping her eyes furiously. “I put it under the heater to dry this morning-”
Mystery solved. “Before or after you put your wet shirt on the heater?”
“Before,” said Elias, not looking up from his book.
Alexis made a sound of pure pain, smacking her head against the desk. “I’m screwed.”
“And it’s due tomorrow,” added Elias, very unhelpfully.
Stiles pushed the boy’s chair away with his foot, shooting him a slight glare. “In case I haven’t said it enough already, you need to spend less time with the Lahey-Hale-Whittemore clan,” he informed him, taking a chair for himself and sitting to face Alexis. “And don’t throw the towel, just yet. Maybe we can salvage it.”
Alexis looked at him hopefully. “Really? I can’t afford another F in history. Dad will die.”
Stiles shot her a suspicious look as he pulled the paper in front of himself. “We’re going to talk about this another as soon as we finished this, because I didn’t know that.”
“She also got an D in English,” offered Elias, ducking away from the pencil case his sister threw at his head without looking away from his book.
Damn werewolves.
“Elias, stop being a dick, Alexis, stop throwing shit at your brother and get us another carboard paper. We can arts and craft this thing.”
“You think?” she said, as she did as asked.
“Little girl, you have no idea how many of your aunts and uncles’ projects I salvaged in high school with nothing but scissors, glue and some glitter,” he informed her, nodding seriously. “It’s an art, and it’s an art I mastered. Now get me the glitter glue.”
+++
By the time Derek got home, Stiles had glitter all over his clothes and had not managed to do anything but come downstairs and wallow. The restaurant did not in fact do deliveries, and no one in the pack group chat other than Derek himself had replied.
“We forgot Valentine’s Day,” he said, as soon as the werewolf appeared in the doorway of the living room.
Derek paused there, his eyebrows doing a dance of confusion, surprise, shock and regret that would have been highly entertaining, any other day.
“Shit,” said Derek, after a few seconds. “That’s what those balloons were all about.”
“Yep,” said Stiles. “And you know what’s more annoying? The fact that it took me finding out Phee is on a date with some Jeremy guy to celebrate it for me to even remember.”
“Who the hell is Jeremy?” demanded Derek, attention immediately diverted.
It was kind of worrying how, the older their child became the more like Stiles' dad Derek became. It had gotten to the point where people who dated Phoenix parked the car very far away from the front door just like Derek himself used to do back at the beginning of their relationship, and Stiles wondered if he even realised it or not.
He was going to wait to tell him when it would inflict the maximum damage, however, because he loved Derek and being married meant that he got to annoy him and piss him off whenever he wanted.
“I don’t know and it’s not important,” he said, waving his hand. “He’s not a worry, I saw him from the kitchen window and he asked her out for the first time on Valentine’s Day. He’s basically a loser, our daughter is fine.”
Derek huffed, dropping on the couch beside him. “We forgot Valentine’s Day. I can’t believe it.”
“We are getting old,” said Stiles, moving so that he could curl around Derek. “Old boring people who don’t know how to have fun anymore, and it sucks. What’s next? Are we going to forget our birthdays? Christmas?”
“Calm down, don’t go putting us in a care house just yet,” said Derek, putting a hand on the back of Stiles’ neck. Stiles had been around werewolves for so long, at this point, that the touch actually gave him some comfort, making some of his anxiety dissipate.
“We are old,” he then continued, playing with the hairs at his nape. “And I’m glad we are. I thought our goal, from the beginning, was growing old together? Being with each other until the end?
“Sure, it’s not great that we forgot Valentine’s Day. We both love it. But honestly, it’s not as bad as you’re making it out to be either. Didn’t you bring me a bouquet of pretty flowers just two weeks ago because you felt like it?”
Stiles had brought him that bouquet of flowers because he had seen them driving home from work and they had reminded him of Derek.
“And you brought home that box of chocolate and that bottle of wine for me last month because you thought I could use some pampering,” he added, and Derek hummed in agreement.
“Exactly. We might be growing older and more comfortable in our love for one another, but that doesn’t change the fact that we are in love. That I still love you as much as I did when I married you.”
“And that I love you more,” said Stiles, tilting his head upwards to catch Derek’s eye.
Derek rolled his eyes. “Don’t start a fight you can’t win, Stilinski. You do not love me more than I love you.”
“Agree to disagree,” said Stiles, pressing a kiss on the tip of his nose. Derek chased him back when he made to pull away, pressing their lips together in another soft and chaste kiss.
“You know,” he said, as soon as their lips were free again. “I have a bottle of Peter’s wine still in the kitchen.”
“And we have five hours till Valentine’s Day is over,” said Derek, freeing him of his hold. “Maybe we can still salvage it.”
“We are the alpha pair of the Hale-Stilinski Pack,” said Stiles, rushing towards the kitchen. “There’s nothing we cannot do when we put our heads down and think.”
It only took him a couple of minutes to get a bucket of ice, two clean wine glasses and the wine itself, but by the time he had made it back to the living room, the atmosphere had changed.
Derek had pushed away the coffee table and the couch, creating a free space in the middle of the living room, freed himself of his suit jacket, and Careless Whisper was playing from his phone.
“Sappywolf,” said Stiles, eyes filled with affection as he dropped what he had brought on the table.
Derek just raised one of his eyebrows, as if to ask ‘Are you complaining?’
Well, Stiles wasn’t. He lifted his hand, and turned off the lights, instead manifesting a bunch of soft amber balls of lights all around them to light up the living room.
“Nice touch,” said Derek, before he offered his hand to Stiles. “Might I have this dance?”
“You may,” he said, letting Derek pull him until they were standing flush against each other.
He wouldn’t say that the swaying they were doing could actually be called dancing of any kind. But, as he felt the beating of Derek’s heart right under his ear and they moved around the living room, he couldn’t really find it in himself to complain.
And even when Alexis and Elias came downstairs, only now noticing Derek’s return, he couldn’t find it in himself to be upset.
Especially when Elias gave them both two homemade cards made with the remains of Alexis’ old history projects with a ‘Happy Valentine’s Day’ greeting written inside them, or when Alexis demanded that Derek danced with her too.
There were worse ways to celebrate Valentine’s Day.