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Stiles is pretty sure the sounds of the wailing baby in his arms can be heard clear across Beacon Hills by now. The infant he has cradled against him red in the face with the force of her crying. He’s lost on how to try and calm her. The lanky teen settles for pacing around the living room of the Hale house, bouncing the child lightly. It isn’t helping him, if anything it only makes the little girl’s agitation rise.
His eyes catch Derek, standing just in the archway, his arms loosely crossed about his chest. Stiles can catch the littlest trace of a smile quirking his stubble laced face.
“I have no idea what I’m doing,” Stiles whines, looking close to tears himself as he continues pacing. He really feels like smacking that cute, rare, goofy smile off of Derek’s face at this point.
Derek’s chuckle rumbles deep in his chest as he moves more into the room, opening his arms and holding them out to his mate.
Stiles eyes him and moves back a little. He’s never seen Derek with a child and it makes him eye the older man’s broad muscular frame then shake his head. “Nope, no way no how. Allison and Scott told me to babysit Victoria.”
Derek slowly arches an eyebrow and huffs.
“Stiles, do you not trust me to hold a baby?” Stiles winces at how insulted and annoyed the werewolf sounds.
“No,” He says instantly, and wonders if little white lies count as full on lies to werewolves. Derek glares at him and throws his hands up in the air.
“Okay, I get it, you can do it all on your own,” Stiles tries to apologize but Derek is already retreating back into the kitchen, growling under his breath.
Stiles hadn’t taken notice that Victoria’s cries were quieting down when Derek was near until they begin full force when he’s out of the room. He sinks down onto one of the plush couches and wonders why he’d ever volunteered to babysit so his best friend and girlfriend, no fiancée now, could go out on a date.
He sighs, thinking out he’s such a great friend, then tries going over his head at the checklist the two new parents had given him. Diaper, hungry, hot, cold, sick, it was still dumbfounding him as he goes through all of it and still can’t figure out the cause of the little red heads problem
Ooo000ooo000ooO
Stiles finds himself jerking awake with a particularly loud snore. He blinks bleary eyed, disoriented, and sits bolt upright on the couch.
He curses himself for falling asleep there on the couch. Then is horrified when he looks down at his arms, that are now empty, and remembers he’s supposed to be babysitting.
Babysitting a two week old baby who is now not where she was last time he remembered being conscious.
He quickly scrambles up, trips over his own feet and finds himself face first in the expensive rug groaning miserably. When he finally manages to pull himself up to a standing position again he glances around quickly to make sure nobody saw him do that, and then dashes to the staircase. Though this time he’s more careful about running, he’s Father’s scolding voice about “no running in the house” suddenly ringing clean in his head.
Upstairs the hall light is off, only a small lamp on a hall table to light his way on the second floor. He blinks and squints and stumbles as his eyes adjust to the dimness but continues on.
The teen looks into each room he passes and comes up empty. He’s debating going up to the third floor when he notices the soft light coming from the room at the end of the hall. It’s the room specified for Allison and Scott when they stay over. When the Hale place had been renovated, Derek made sure each member of the Pack had their own rooms to come to. It gave them somewhere to go if they ever needed it, a home away from home for them all.
Carefully Stiles peeks into the room and is a little floored at what he sees. Inside it looks like a generic guest bedroom. But Stiles can see the little addition that Derek has made without having told anyone. Baby furniture takes up the room now, all dark mahogany wood with soft pastel pink for bedding and accents.
And to the side, in front of the window, Derek is sitting in an expensive looking rocking chair, looking ridiculously adorable surrounded by pink.
“What are you doing?” Sties whispers when he notices how he has Victoria cradled to him, on the inside of his thick button up shirt that he hadn’t been wearing when Sties saw him last. Derek tilts his head in Stiles direction but the older man continues to watch the sleeping infant, his fingertips lightly drawing invisible patterns on her plump little cheek.
“Babies do best with skin to skin contact,” He starts off, glancing up at his mate then back down to Victoria. “Same goes for Pack. It’s the warmth and closeness we need the strong beating of a heart to calm us down and let us know we’re safe. Victoria was having separation anxiety from Scott and Allison so when you fell asleep I figured I’d give it a shot.”
“I’m pack too though,” Stiles mutters, his hands stuffed into his jeans pockets to give them something to do.
Derek hums and gives a small barely there smile. “She isn’t old enough to realize that just yet. She recognizes another wolf though…. You’re anxiety about not knowing how to help was just making her more scared.”
Sties pulls a face and tries to ignore the uncomfortable tugging in his chest. He jolts out of his sulking fit when Derek starts speaking again.
“My mom used to do this to us when we were upset or couldn’t sleep,” He says with a pained softness that makes Stiles want to hold onto his mate and never let go. “We would curl up on her lap and she would hold us close, and then she’d draw little nothings on our cheeks with her nail until we fell asleep.”
Stiles can see how Derek’s eyes get a little misty and how he swallows hard. Derek rarely speaks of his past, of his family, and when he does it’s always evident how much pain it brings him to remember the happier times. Sometimes they can tell it’s the same way for Peter too when Derek talks about it, but Peter walks away from the conversation and he never talks about them.
“You would make a great dad,” Stiles says quietly from the doorway. Derek looks up at him then, still looking sad and close to tears, and holds out a hand to him.
The brunette crosses the room and carefully curls up onto Derek’s lap, his face tucked firm against the crook of the Alpha’s neck and his hand coming to rest over Derek’s that’s resting on Victoria’s back. It’s a close squeeze on the glider chair but neither of them complains.
They stay like they, enjoying the comfortable silence as Victoria sleeps.
Stiles eyes begin to droop and the last thing he thinks is that maybe babysitting isn’t as hard as he first thought.
Derek holds them both close and debates telling Scott and Allison they could watch Victoria another day for them. But for now he dozes and grins, reminding himself to tell Stiles he’d make a good mom when he wakes up.