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As soon as Derek and Stiles found out that they were, in fact, going to be adding a little Stilinski-Hale to the house in the near future, Derek began a process that most expectant mothers would call "nesting"
Stiles knew about nesting
He wasn't an idiot
He just didn't think that nesting would include spending a month building a wooden horse in their basement
"Do you want to tell me why my basement is full of crap?" he had asked the day he came home to find pounds of wood, paint, and hardware tools littering the previously semi-clean basement
It wasn't as if the basement hadn't been full of crap before, ofcourse, but it was an entirely different KIND of crap
"I'm building a rocking horse," Derek had explained, as if it were really that simple
There were probably a million things that Stiles could have said
Like "Wow I didn't know you could do that"
Or "Don't we have other priorities?"
Or "We're having a baby Derek, not a toddler, that can wait"
Or "Why don't you just buy one?"
Or even "Who the hell actually uses rocking horses anymore?"
But instead his response had been
"Do you need any help?"
Derek had smiled gently at him and shook his head
"No, it's fine, I want to do it alone,"
Stiles had thought not-so-fondly back to a time when he would have been offended by that and raised hell about Derek not thinking he was capable but now he just accepted it
He knew better
He understood the need to do some things alone and he wasn't going to ask why Derek felt the need to be alone in building a rocking horse
So he just smiled, gave his husband a kiss, and went upstairs to make sure the dogs hadn't gotten into the laundry room again (no, Derek, he HADN'T been kidding when he said they needed a lock on that door)
He didn't really think about it that much
In only a few weeks they were going to have a BABY
That's literally the most life-changing experience a person can go through
Now wasn't the time to waste precious brain cells wondering about the progress of the project in the basement that he wasn't even involved in
He had even sort of forgotten it in all honesty
The first week of preparations had been so hectic, stocking up on information, laying out plans, spending an UNGODLY amount of time with Lydia talking about the nursery and having the best "Oh my God we're having a baby" sex with Derek that he hadn't really noticed the chaos going on under his nose
He was much more concerned with getting an idea of how they were going to make their police work... well... work....
They weren't part of the sheriff's department exactly for several reasons but Stiles ran what could be watered down to a type of private detective agency
Although he ended up with small things like rescuing lost cats and checking out cheating spouses on most days (because life apparently WAS that cliche' and he really should have listened to Detective Roth's advice when she had told him about her short stint as a P.I. assistant) the cases he really went after were the ones the police department couldn't really help with
Namely the ones involving full moons and fangs
That's when Derek actually came into the picture
Not because Derek was the brawn to Stiles' brains or anything
Stiles could easily handle plenty of supernatural problems alone since his spark developed into actual magic and Derek had more than enough brains to handle detective work
It was just that Derek preferred not to get involved unless it was important, understandably so
Those cases rolled in on a semi-frequent basis and although Stiles was relieved to say that they were able to take care of most of them without serious bodily harm there were the stray few that ended up being more than the pair could handle and they had unfortunately had to call in for help from whoever else in the pack was available at the time
The more worrisome problem was that several cases per year ended up amounting to several days out of town- each
And Stiles was about 110% certain that he didn't want to drag his newborn baby out on a periless road trip with no babysitter and the chance that Daddy and Papa might not come back from it completely unscathed- or worse, drag part of it home with them
In fact, it was during one of his many discussions about this topic that the rocking horse phenomena reared it's ridiculous head again
"I don't see why you can't just redirect those cases to Brett," Scott said as he pulled another box into the house
"Because first of all, Brett is still kind of flighty on this entire thing, we BARELY weaseled him into joining our troop here with the 'supernatural detective league' to begin with, I don't want to send him on a death jaunt every single time the opportunity presents it's self," Stiles huffed back, wiping a stream of sweat from his forehead and groaning as he kicked the box in front of him
When he had asked his father to give him the baby stuff left over from Stiles' own childhood, he had expected a couple of boxes and maybe a peice of furniture
Apparently his mother had been a more sentimental woman than Stiles ever realized because as soon as he had asked his father started to smirk and laugh like it was an inside joke before giving Stiles the key to the attic and telling him to "have at it"
He, Scott, and Malia had been up in said attic for the better part of the afternoon complaining and trying to decide what was salvageable and what was too old, dust-ridden, or just plain ruined to have any hope for
And don't think for a minute that Stiles hadn't caught Malia sneaking a few of the good things for herself, she and her current beau may not be married or even considering children yet but ever since Scott and Kira had their first child last fall he had noticed with increasing surprise that baby fever had struck her
Hard
He had never really noticed Malia as a maternal person and she couldn't have seemed to care less when Kira was pregnant but the moment she saw Aurora she became the most attentive person in the McCall/Hale pack save for the blood relatives
It never failed when they met up that as soon as Scott and Kira arrived Malia had her hands on the baby like she was a hot ticket item at a Black Friday sale and scarcely let go until the parents were ready to leave
It was bizarre but Stiles was just immensely glad to have a babysitter other than his father eagerly waiting in the wings, Malia never really got to babysit Aurora on her own due to Melissa and Kira's parents constantly clamoring for the six-month-old's attention and Stiles could tell that it was actually starting to grate on her nerves
(To their credit, the first time a babysitting opportunity had presented it's self Stiles had legitimately thought Melissa and Noshiko were going to end up in some sort of Battle Of The Grandmothers with the evil eyes they were shooting eachother across the table, Melissa won by chance of having the day off and Stiles had actually stopped by later that night just to make sure she was still alive)
"Did you hear a word I just said?"
No, actually, Stiles had completely tuned out the last five minutes of this conversation, too busy thinking about the future and wondering if they would ever get their baby back should they give Malia the first babysitting opportunity to come around
"Sorry Scotty, distracted," he huffed, making grabby hands at Malia's water bottle and smirking when she handed it to him- even with the eyeroll
"I said we should probably get this stuff to the basement until the nursery is ready," Scott repeated
"Oh yeah absolutely, Lydia's coming over to 'help'- and by 'help' you know I mean 'kick everyone out and control the submissive worker bees who she deems competent'- decorate the nursery on Thursday and if she has a single peice of dust in her way she's going to have a fit," he sighed
"I actually need to drag Derek in to help me get the office completely cleared out so we can remodel it on the double, she's going to wring our necks if she finds out he still has the desktop hooked up in there,"
"Where IS Derek?" Malia frowned
"Oh um- ....you know.... I don't think he told me..."
Stiles glanced up to see the startled faces of the shapeshifters and narrowed his eyes
"What?"
"Do you realize.... that this is the first time since you two got married a year ago that you haven't known EXACTLY where he is?" Malia asked slowly
Actually, she was right
And that was a startling realization as it was...
"I'll call him when we get the crap moved, I'm sure he told me and I just forgot, my head's been really foggy lately," he shrugged, picking up the most lightweight box and heading to the basement door
"That doesn't sound good, are you sure you're going to be ok to pick up the baby next week?" Malia asked with concern as she grabbed another box and followed him
"It's normal, Kira and I were both completely lost for the entire last month of her pregnancy, I can't even remember eighty percent of what we did that month," Scott admitted sheepishly
"It's so much crap you've gotta deal with coming in all at once you know? You're bound to get strung out, and you guys had NINE. MONTHS. Derek and I have had two WEEKS, and frankly we're lucky we've had this long, if they weren't coming from Iowa to meet us we probably would've had to drop what we were doing and go right after we got the call, werewolf babies don't do well with temporary parental situations- understandably," Stiles shrugged as he unlocked and opened the basement door, flipping the light on and starting down the stairs
"Is it really THAT bad?" Scott frowned
"Oh hell yeah, if they weren't so far away... Derek said that in the future it's probably gonna have to be like that, so if we're going to keep our names on the adoption list we've gotta be at the ready sort of all the time, actually, that's another thing I wanted to talk to you about, when it comes to road trips-"
He paused
Malia paused
Scott paused
Everything came to a dead halt when he came to the bottom of the stairs and saw the utter DESTRUCTION of the once semi-clean basement
It was LITTERED with wood, paint, tools, and Stiles didn't even want to KNOW what that clump of stringy white stuff in the corner was
"DEREK!!!!"
~+~
"I didn't know you were going to need the basement,"
That was the pity poor excuse that Derek tried to pass off as an explanation
"We had this place semi-clean and it's a WRECK! Why the hell are you still working on that freaking horse?! Lydia's gonna be here in TWO DAYS and if the office isn't COMPLETELY ready to be overhauled for baby-fying she's going to strangle us both and then let Malia have our kid! Derek... babe... you know I appreciate literally ANY hobby you pick up but maybe wait until we AREN'T in a situation of extreme panic,"
Derek twitched, his eyes downcast and his lip being chewed relentlessly by his adorable bunny teeth
"I want it... to be done in time," he said quietly
"Der.... you know the kid's not even gonna be able to ride the thing for like three years right? At the earliest? You have plenty of time..."
He shook his head desperately, still refusing to look up at Stiles
"No I don't," he mumbled
Stiles sighed, he took a deep breath and he sighed again
Because the old him would have argued
He would have gotten frustrated
He would have let his mouth control him until he said something stupid
But that was something very peculiar about Stiles
He didn't do that anymore
After the incident a few years back when he and Scott very nearly lost their relationship, when the pack was destroyed and Beacon Hills was more or less almost a mass graveyard, he had learned a thing or two about keeping his tongue to himself when he was stressed
Derek had come back not too long after Lydia was sent to Eichen, seen the disarray, and taken it almost like a personal offense
"YOU need to learn how to communicate, and YOU need to learn how to listen to people- please, before you get yourselves KILLED!" he huffed, gesturing to Stiles in the former and Scott in the latter
Neither of them had wanted to actually accept that Derek was right but with nothing but ashes left to hold onto they realized that they had to do SOMETHING before they really did get themselves- or eachother- killed
Ever since then Stiles had tried to be a little more cautious with what he said and how he said it
And he had picked up on the lesson that Scott was struggling to learn to- to communicate clearly and listen fully before you jump to conclusions or judge baselessly
It wasn't easy for either of them and they had had a few tense "platonic lover's spats" along the way (as Lydia had called them) but Stiles readily admitted they had come out better for it
By the time he and Derek had started their relationship he wasn't too shabby at the "communicate and listen" thing and he knew for a fact that had saved their relationship a few times
Keeping his mouth shut or rephrasing something he was saying had more than once come to prevent a blowout argument at best, and possibly triggering some seriously bad things at worst
And becoming a parent meant he was going to have to put those skills into maximum overdrive so he might as well stretch them out now
"Derek... why do you feel like you have to have the horse finished before the baby gets here?" he asked, as gently as he could, and sat in front of his husband
"Because... because it's tradition,"
Already it sounded like Stiles not losing his cap was on the better end of the choice spectrum
"What's tradition?"
Derek fidgeted, biting his lip harder
"When a new baby comes in the house... my family.... we used to take the baby's first picture holding them on my great grandfather's rocking horse... he had.. made that thing, by hand, it took him a year, the paint and the ... the mane and he .. braided the tail himself, hell he even hand-cured the leather and made the little saddle and reins and... he wrote his daughter's name on the side of it- Anastasia, so we always called the horse Anastasia and we used to.. take the baby's first picture there... I just... I just wanted SOMETHING that was mine... I don't have anything else I can give this baby like you can, I don't have any of my childhood things or traditions that I can give... it's all gone... and my memories are too fuzzy to pick up on cute things we used to do when Cora was a baby... all I can remember is that horse and the photos... so... I just wanted one thing that was from my family,"
Communicating and listening, it seemed, was always the right choice
"Derek... we could always put off taking a picture until after you finish the horse," he suggested slowly, taking his hands and giving them a gentle squeeze
Derek shook his head, glancing up at him finally
"I don't want to do that... and I don't want to push anybody else to do that either, they deserve to get their pictures of the baby too... I just..."
Stiles squeezed and he felt some of the tension in Derek's shoulders drop
"I know," he said quietly
"Derek I get it, I do, do you really think you'll be able to finish this thing in a week?"
He gave a nod of certainty and licked his lips
"I just have to do the painting and the detailing mostly... I cut a few corners because I.. I don't know how to do the saddle and ... if I work all day in the afternoons I can have it ready by Sunday,"
"And we're picking the baby up Monday,"
He gave a quick nod
"And your great grandfather built the horse on his own?"
Derek shook his head slowly
"My great grandmother sewed a little cape blanket thing that went around the neck but I know you don't sew..."
"But.. I can paint, I mean come on Derek, throw me a bone here," he smiled, kicking him playfully in the shin
Derek smiled slightly and gave a slow nod of agreement
"Ok... ok, you can help me paint it,"
"Awesome!"
"But don't mess with the mane or the tail, you'll just ruin it," he smirked as an after thought
"Oh my God you absolute jerk!"
He chuckled and Stiles let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding at finally seeing Derek at peace and happy again
They had worked so long and so hard to get him to start smiling again and Stiles sure as hell wasn't about to let that go down the drain NOW
"Was there anything else your great grandparents did that we could do? That I could do on my own? I totally want to steal your legacy man,"
Derek shook his head, rubbing the back of his neck
"My grandmother built an elaborate dollhouse by hand, it had opening doors and working electricity and everything,"
Stiles' eye twitched and Derek stood up
"See, that's exactly why I didn't mention it,"
"I could... I cou- .... ok no you know what? No, I'm not even going to pretend for a SECOND I could do that because NO,"
Derek laughed louder and Stiles chased him up the stairs
~+~
On Sunday night Stiles invited the entire pack over to see the rocking horse and showed it off like it was the 8th wonder of the world
Derek had awkwardly stood in the kitchen accepting compliments and trying to milk as much information as he could out of Melissa on what to do during the first six months of having a child
Lydia surprised everyone by donating her old dollhouse- fully furnished- and making an only slightly sarcastic comment about how her children would probably spend so much time at the Stilinski-Hale house that they wouldn't even notice it wasn't their's
Monday morning they drove to Pasadena just the two of them
Monday afternoon they drove back from Pasadena with two extra passengers in the car
When they found out that they were actually picking up twins- something the foster mother claims to have told Stiles about and something that Stiles adamently denies EVER hearing about- they decided to let it be a surprise to everyone else
They were expecting a cute "Freinds" moment where Derek would walk in with the first baby, Gwen, and everyone would flock to him and ignore Stiles when he brought in Gwen's twin sister Fae
Instead they no more got the engine off in the car before they had two werewolf noses and a werecoyote nose pressed against the back windows screaming about having picked up two extra heartbeats instead of one
Stiles had complained about how werewolves can't have any fun and never letting Stiles enjoy surprises ever again but no one seemed to listen except for Derek, who had only patted him on the shoulder and laughed
Malia and Scott absconded with the children before Derek and Stiles could even get out of the car and they didn't hold their own children again for four hours
And, as anticipated, the first photos of Gwenivere Rhiannon-Lynn Stilinski-Hale and Fae Morgan Stilinski-Hale were taken with Derek and Stiles holding them on the rocking horse that they would keep in their family tree for the foreseeable future
(Even if Lydia did ban it from entering the nursery)