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Stiles stands on the doorstep of the Hale house, bouncing on the balls of his feet in an attempt to stay warm in the freezing night air, and tries to tell himself that this isn’t a bad idea.
And it isn’t.
It’s an absolutely horrible one.
However, there has never been a truly, ludicrously, god damn awful idea that Stiles Stilinski hasn’t stared right into the face of and then stubbornly decided he was going to kick the tires and take it out for a spin.
Especially when it comes to Derek Hale.
And so he doesn’t head back to the warmth and safety of the Jeep, currently parked in the Hale driveway. He doesn’t reach for his cell and call Scott for a rescue, or Lydia for advice.
He also doesn’t ring the doorbell like he’s been trying to psych himself up into doing for the last ten minutes.
Maybe one in the morning wasn’t the best time for this.
His toes have gone numb, furiously rubbing his mittened hands together stopped working a little while ago, and the white fog of his exhaled breaths is getting less fog-like and more icicle-adjacent by the second.
Who the hell thought that middle of the night love confessions at Christmas time were romantic? Stiles is about to lose a limb to frostbite and it is just now occurring to him that waking up an entire pack of werewolves on a holiday for something that isn’t a life-or-death emergency is the kind of dumbass shenanigan that his father always warned would eventually get him killed. Or worse.
The multi-colored strands of lights hanging from all the eaves look magical in the dark stillness of the hour. The moonlight glistens off the thin layer of snow coating the front yard and the tree branches of the surrounding Preserve. It’s all very beautiful, and very seasonally appropriate, and very fucking cold.
Stiles is in way over his head. For the dozenth time in as many seconds he whispers through jittery teeth the lame-ass pep talk that somehow first inspired him to drive over here.
“You got this, Bilinski,” he says, in his best, if rather hushed, approximation of a cross between Coach Finstock on a good day and Kyle Chandler on an okay one. “It’s been a long time coming, everybody knows it, and this is your moment.”
“My fist in your face has been a long time coming,” a voice grumbles at him, and Stiles whips his head up to find the front door open just enough that a sleepy-eyed Cora can glare out at him.
From what little he can see through the opening, she’s dressed in Hello Kitty pajamas, and the majority of her hair has come out of its ponytail in favor of hanging over her grumpy, half-awake features. Somehow she still looks like she could kill a man and said features would remain only half awake.
Stiles goes abruptly still. “You’re supposed to be asleep.”
“No shit. But someone decided to have an existential crisis about their love life on my front porch at ass o’clock in the morning.”
“I wasn’t-- But you’re--” Stiles sputters, and then flails, and then does both at the same time. So, a typical weekday for him. He finally settles on an incredulous, and way too loud: “You guys never wake up when I come over!”
This is true, and Cora spends enough time frowning over how to respond that Stiles feels vindicated in her acknowledgment of its truth.
It’s been over a year now since the Alpha Pack. A year and four months, to be precise, since he and Derek found themselves thrown together once again, this time in dramatic and unending late night research binges, hoping to track down Erica and Boyd before the worst could claim them.
Maybe it all would have petered out into nothing once they were found the Alpha Pack defeated. Maybe none of it meant even half of what Stiles made it mean inside of his own head. And maybe that should have been that, case solved, Stiles’ usefulness fulfilled and no longer necessary enough to warrant putting up with the rest of him.
But then.
Oh, but then. When Stiles was sullenly kicking around his bedroom after that first day back to school, where the betas had either avoided him or openly whispered and pointed in his direction even though he’d thought they might be something like bros now... Well. That was when Derek decided to rebuild the Hale house.
And, for some crazy reason (possibly head trauma?), he decided that Stiles’ presence was a necessary evil for the process.
Stiles still doesn’t understand how he lucked out, or what magical Beacon Hills nonsense convinced Derek that Stiles Stilinski should be his go to for all home improvement advice. But he refused to question it, less Derek suddenly come to his senses.
The result was that those late nights together continued on, and even graduated into long afternoons and occasionally entire weekends of arguing over blueprints and paint colors, navigating through power tools and Ikea instructions, quietly pretending to do homework when it was well past the time to leave but Derek wasn’t yet kicking him out.
Now that the house was built, Stiles worried he wouldn’t have a reason to spend so much time here. But when he started showing up anyway, false bravado pushing through his lack invitation, and Derek just allowed it to happen... he kept it up.
So, no, of course he wouldn’t expect the other wolves on the property to wake up at his arrival, because it happens too often for their heightened senses to register it as worth noting. The Jeep barreling up the driveway shouldn’t wake them because the Jeep never wakes them. The rumble of Stiles’ ancient engine is as normal in this part of Beacon Hills as the scampering of woodland creatures through the underbrush or the collective howl of the local pack.
“Just because Derek doesn’t see you as a threat, doesn’t mean the rest of us can tune you out so easily when you’re standing out here for half a fucking hour not shutting up.”
Stiles ignores all the parts of that sentence that scare him, and smirks instead. “You saying I’m dangerous?”
“Only to my moron of a brother.”
He’d argue that, but he’s torn between being offended that she thinks he’d ever hurt Derek, and confused over how on earth she thinks he could ever manage to.
“The moron would like you to go back to bed now,” Derek says from behind her.
Stiles muffles a laugh behind his scarf.
Cora scowls but does as she’s told, seemingly too tired to bother putting up her usual token resistance. There are, however, some rather creative hand gestures that she makes behind her back at them as she trudges back upstairs.
And then it’s just the two of them standing across the threshold of the newly rebuilt Hale house, staring at each other while the reflection of multicolored Christmas lights bounce off of their features.
“Hi,” Stiles says dumbly, more a breath of visible air than a word.
Derek frowns. “Your lips are blue.”
“Fashion statement.” He darts a tongue out to temperature-check said lips, and must hallucinate that Derek’s gaze tracks the movement. “Uh, how long exactly has the moron been listening to me talk to myself out here?”
Derek doesn’t deign to answer that; just heaves a sigh and opens the front door a little wider. He’s dressed in a loose-fitting V-neck and threadbare sweatpants, his feet bare, but of course he doesn’t even flinch at the rush of cold air that must hit him. “Get inside before you come down with hypothermia.”
“It’s not that bad,” Stiles tells him, the obvious lie punctuated by how quickly he hurries into the house. “I still have feeling in all the most important extremities.”
“I’m guessing that list doesn’t include your prefrontal cortex.”
“What is it about the middle of the night that brings out your sense of humor? I swear I should wake you up at one AM more often.”
Stiles toes off his boots, lest he track snow across Derek’s precious hard wood floors and pristine carpets, and he strips off his coat and scarf as he makes his way into the large living area. It’s easier to focus on the minutia of making himself at home here than on Derek’s solid presence following behind him, or the words rattling around in his head that he’s been trying to say out loud for weeks now.
The large tree in the middle of the space makes him pause.
He was there when the betas put it up a couple weeks ago, filling it with so many lights and ornaments that it nearly toppled over. But seeing it at night, glowing bright in the still silence of the hour, catches him off guard for some reason. For a split-second Stiles is transported back to being six years old and falling asleep in a Transformers sleeping bag beneath a much smaller tree, hoping to catch a glimpse of Santa.
He’s so busy staring, he doesn’t notice Derek pad right up to him until the man is barely half an inch away and taking hold of both of Stiles’ hands in his own.
Stiles startles, whipping his head around to stare instead at Derek as he tucks Stiles’ frozen fingers into his big warm palms and squeezes once, gently, before lifting them up so that he can breathe warm air across them.
Stiles’ own breath catches.
The thing is that Derek does it so casually. So familiarly. As if it means nothing more than when he cuffs Stiles upside the back of the head.
And maybe it doesn’t mean anything. There was, after all, that time Stiles held Derek up in a swimming pool for several hours, and ever since then they haven’t really paid much attention to physical boundaries with each other.
But it’s started to mean something to Stiles. It shouldn’t, he knows, but it does.
Every time Derek stands beside him so that their arms are pressed together from shoulder to elbow; every time he grabs Stiles by the scruff of the neck in order to physically course-correct him and navigate him in the right direction; every time Derek shoves himself between Stiles and the enemy, and then frantically pats Stiles down for injuries in the immediate aftermath…
It used to barely register. There was Stiles and there was Derek and the way their lives and bodies would intertwine was too natural and easy for Stiles to notice enough to dissect it.
Now, he definitely notices.
Now, that ease is less a reason to brush aside all their interactions, and more like a neon sign advertising just how different his relationship with Derek is from the one he shares with anyone else. Even the physical affection he shares with Scott, a comradery born of brotherhood since diapers, feels perfunctory and utilitarian by comparison.
“So, hey. Um. Merry Christmas,” Stiles manages. Because it’s all he can come up with in the dark, Derek’s lips an unintended butterfly kiss across his knuckles.
“Is that what you came over here to tell me? When any sane person would be asleep?”
Stiles can feel the reverberation of Derek’s voice in his fingertips, and he gulps. Maybe all the romantics were right about this stuff, because there is something in the air that feels especially potent right now. Even as his cheeks burn with the adjustment to the warmer temperature, and his numb toes pinch and pixelate with being brought back to life. Even as it occurs to him that the other wolves in the house are probably awake now and listening in.
All the same, he can’t quite bring himself to make the leap. Any remnants of his earlier pep talk are long forgotten.
“Yeah. That, and, uh. You know. Happy birthday,” Stiles says with a lame attempt at a smirk. It’s too brief and soft to even count as anything other than a hopeful, vulnerable quirk of his lips.
Derek lets their hands fall down, away from the heat of his focused breaths, but doesn’t let go. “So. You risked life and limb on icy roads just to recognize my birthday before anyone else? A text at the stroke of midnight wouldn’t do the job?”
“I’ve faced worse for less.”
“You say that like it’s a good thing.”
The banter is second nature. Even the late hour is. But there is a bated breath quality to this moment that makes it feel different.
Stiles can do this. He spent years declaring his supposed love for Lydia at every turn, why do the words only feel so terrifying and weighty when it’s Derek?
Best not answer that, or he’ll probably scare himself off even more.
“What’s going on, Stiles?” Derek asks, soft and serious. “I don’t think I’d have to be a werewolf to smell the fear on you.”
“I just,” Stiles starts, and stops, and chews his bottom lip. “It was important to me that you know how much people care about you.”
Derek cocks an eyebrow. “Who are you and what have you done with--”
“I mean it,” Stiles interrupts, determination rallying inside him right alongside his nerves.
“I can tell. You’re just not usually so... earnest.”
“If a guy can’t get a little sappy on Christmas, when can he?”
Derek smiles. It’s small and genuine and the best thing Stiles has possibly ever laid eyes on. “Okay. I suppose I can allow it then.”
“Good.” Stiles nods and pretends his hands aren’t shaking where they’re still held inside of Derek’s. “Also, I’m in love with you.”
The whole world stops.
Stiles holds the air inside his lungs, afraid to release it in case everything back up again at its signal. Because for this split second that seems to last an eternity, there’s just him and Derek and the lights on the tree and the frozen landscape outside. For the span of that single held breath right after he says the words he came all the way over here to say, there is still the possibility that this won’t hurt.
But then Stiles exhales. And Derek lets go of his hands. And the world goes back to spinning with a painful lurch.
“Sorry. Shit, sorry, I just... I thought you should know. I mean, if you didn’t already. You probably did. I’m not exactly subtle. Fuck, I’m sorry.” Stiles takes a step back and nearly trips over absolutely nothing. He needs to put his coat back on, and his scarf, and where did he put his boots again? He needs to leave and he needs to do it now.
He retreats another step, and then pinwheels his arms out as the backs of his knees hit the edge of the coffee table.
Derek is literally faster than gravity, though. Either because he’s a werewolf or because he’s so very familiar with Stiles’ relationship with the ground. He reaches out and grabs hold of Stiles with a hand on either one of Stiles’ biceps, and he reels Stiles in close, as though just steadying him weren’t enough. As though the safety of Derek’s proximity increases exponentially with every inch closer he keeps Stiles to his person.
It’s probably true. And in the recent past Stiles has thrilled at the idea; made a home inside the protective space of Derek’s personal bubble that he keeps getting thoughtlessly invited into.
Right now, he hates it, and he immediately starts to struggle away from the other man.
“Stiles, stop.”
Stiles does not stop. Has that phrase ever worked on him? Derek should really know better by now.
Stiles struggles against him, and Derek struggles to contain him, though only in so much as it’s a difficult to do so without breaking any of Stiles’ fragile human bones.
“You idiot,” Derek grunts, “I can’t say it back when you’re fighting me.”
Well, that’ll do it. Stiles stills in Derek’s grip and stares. “What?” he asks dumbly.
Derek huffs and straightens the both of them out, setting Stiles’ mangled shirt to right and running a hand through his own sleep-tousled and unfairly soft looking hair. “Why the hell did you think the middle of the night was the best time for this?”
Stiles scowls. “It was supposed to be romantic.”
Derek raises a contradictory eyebrow, the gesture doing all his own arguing for him, and Stiles punches him on one of his rock-hard pecs. “I had a plan, alright?”
“Was your plan to freeze to death first?” He takes hold of Stiles hands once more and brings them back up. This time, however, he kisses them. And though it’s been a few minutes now, his lips still feel like the best kind of heat against Stiles’ chilled skin.
Somewhat slack-jawed in his awe, Stiles makes an attempt at cocky. “No, but I’ve definitely started incorporating it into future iterations.”
Derek hums against his fingertips. ”Stiles...”
His name in the deep, low tone Derek uses is like nothing else, but he needs to hear more than that. “Come on, Big Guy, don’t leave me hanging.”
There is the slight tug at one side of Derek’s mouth that suggests a playful smirk about to bloom, but he mercifully cuts to the chase. “Of course I love you. I’m surprised that was ever in question.”
Frostbite would totally be worth it for this.
“Merry Christmas to me,” Stiles whispers.
And holy shit the Christmas miracles keep on coming, because Derek laughs at that, joyous and with his whole chest. Not that Stiles has never heard the sound before, but it is particularly breathtaking to witness now, all alone and just for him.
“There’s still a few hours left before Christmas morning officially starts,” Derek says. “Let’s get some sleep, alright?”
Stiles tries not to let his face fall. “Oh. Yeah, of course. Plus you probably want to spend it with your pack, right? I’ll just head home and come back when--”
“You idiot.” Derek gathers him in with both arms around Stiles’ back. The kind of bear hug that Stiles never wants to leave. “I meant here. Together. Consider it your Christmas present to me.”
The cold is long gone now and Stiles can tell by just how fast his cheeks heat with a blush. He still manages a bit of a smirk. “And what about a birthday present?”
“We can discuss that later.” Derek glances up at the ceiling meaningfully, to where the bedrooms are upstairs. Stiles is delighted all the way up until he realizes what Derek is really alluding to.
Oh God. The betas have totally been listening into this entire thing, haven’t they?
Erica is gonna give him so much shit for this.
But then Derek is leading him up the staircase and Stiles decides he’s willing to take the hit. Especially as Derek undresses him in the dark, pulls him into the safety of down blankets and strong arms, and becomes Stiles’ personal furnace from his place at Stiles’ back.
Even more so when Derek whispers the words again, softly against Stiles’ cheek like a secret, and then kisses him soundly.
Stiles falls asleep, warmer than he knew was capable on a night like this. In Derek’s comforting hold, in his bed, while the lights on the eaves outside dance across the frosted glass of the bedroom window, Stiles doesn’t think he’ll ever be cold again.