Work Text:
Derek hadn’t really expected to wake up as a giant inanimate seven-foot-tall teddy bear today. But, then again, it was Monday.
It takes him a long time to realize that he is, in fact, a teddy bear. But in his defense…ah, screw it. There is no point in trying to defend anything, because he is a teddy bear. A giant, inanimate, seven-foot-tall teddy bear staring at himself in a sea of mirrors at the end of the aisle. Derek is mostly guessing that he’s the teddy bear in the mirror, actually, since the (giant, inanimate, seven-foot-tall) bear is the only thing matching his line of sight…and is the only thing in the mirror, too, since it is so big and fluffy that it obstructs everything else from view. Not that Derek can feel anything around him; either he’s surrounded by more giant teddy bears, or his new teddy bear existence only includes one out of five senses.
No, make that two out of five senses. He can definitely hear the same ten Christmas songs blaring through the store over and over again. Derek would roll his eyes, but they seem to be sewn in place. He looks back at the mirror and tries to blink.
The teddy bear doesn’t move.
He tries to wiggle his arm.
The teddy bear still doesn’t move.
He frowns. Oh, the teddy bear’s stitched-on mouth already kind of looks like a frown. That works. Derek sighs, and then his entire world pitches forward and the floor rushes up to meet him.
Falling face-first onto a hard floor, Derek learns, feels very weird when your skull is made up of fuzzy cloth and cotton stuffing. His forehead smooshes in, then expands back out, then settles into a flat sort of…flatness. Belatedly, Derek wonders if teddy bears can get brain damage.
“Whoa! Giant inanimate seven-foot-tall teddy bears!”
“Why’d you say inanimate? …Were you expecting giant seven-foot-tall animate teddy bears?”
The voices grow louder as footsteps approach. Derek can’t actually see the speakers, since he can’t lift his face from its flattened state against the floor, but he knows those voices. Mason! he tries to yell, but nothing happens. Liam! Technically, his lungs are stuffed with cotton. Is he even breathing right now?
The footsteps stop several feet away from him. “…Oh,” Mason says, sounding more than a little disappointed. “These are regular-sized teddy bears.”
“Hey, three-foot-tall teddy bears are still pretty big,” Liam says.
“Yeah, but I was promised seven-foot tall teddy bears.” Mason’s voice gets a little closer, his steps get a little louder, and – “Ha! There’s still one left!”
Arms wrap around him, and Derek barely has time to panic about his ribs squooshing inward before he finds himself lifted into the air and staring at an extremely unimpressed Liam Dunbar.
Or, well, staring at the shelf of toy reindeer above Liam Dunbar’s extremely unimpressed head, because Liam is much shorter than seven feet and Derek can’t move his eyes. “Cool,” Liam says boredly. “Can we go now?”
“Look at this guy!” For two terrifying seconds, Derek’s head whips around helplessly as Mason shakes him. When he finally settles, his head ends up tilting down to stare Liam in the nose. “His eyebrows are so intense!”
Liam makes a face. “I feel like he’s glaring at me.”
Yes, Derek shouts. Yes, I am.
“I’m buying him,” Mason says.
“What? Why?”
“Everything in this store is buy one, get one free. And he’s cheaper than that giant Hershey’s Kiss we’re getting.”
Derek allows himself a moment of indignation. He costs less than a piece of chocolate?
“He is?” Liam asks.
Mason shrugs. Derek shrugs along with him. “He’s on clearance.”
He’s on clearance??
“And clearance counts for their buy-one-get-one sale, too,” Mason finishes. “I checked. So let’s get the giant Kiss and the giant teddy bear and go.”
“Giant Hug,” Liam corrects. He holds up the box with the giant Hershey’s – oh, it really does say Hug on the paper. Derek hadn’t known that they made giant Hugs. That’s a lot of white chocolate to eat.
Actually, that sounds delicious. Derek loves white chocolate. He can feel his mouth watering, except that he can’t at all, because his mouth is made of cotton balls and a few stitches of thread.
“Right,” Mason says. Derek’s view shifts to the broader expanse of the store, and the cashier bobs closer as Mason half-carries, half-drags Derek along. He really misses having neck muscles to keep his head from flopping around. He’d be nauseous if he actually had a stomach. “A giant Kiss would be bad to give to Scott right now, ‘cause, you know.”
Scott?
“It’d probably just make him sadder,” Liam says.
What? What happened to Scott?
“You think he’ll come back soon?” Mason asks.
Scott hasn’t – Derek’s head lolls towards Liam in time to watch his face contort into a scowl. “I don’t know,” Liam says, and Derek’s memories abruptly flood back into his mind. Oh. They had been arguing. Derek can’t remember why, but there had been yelling, and Scott had shut down, and Derek had – Derek—
Liam’s hand clenches into a fist. “I can’t believe Derek left.”
Mason darts from the bathroom to Scott and Derek’s guest bedroom and huddles on the floor next to Liam. “This is bad,” he says in a loud whisper.
“You think?” Liam whispers back. “Now shush. I’m trying to listen.”
“Eavesdropping is wrong!” Mason hisses fiercely as Liam presses his ear to the crack between the door and the wall. “…So what are they saying?”
“I thought you just said eavesdropping is wrong.”
“Yeah, but I still wanna know,” Mason says, shrugging. “So? What’s the verdict?”
“The verdict is, we’re screwed.”
Mason frowns. “You’re being a little melodramatic-”
“If you would just tell me what’s wrong-” Derek’s voice abruptly cuts through the house, lowering back to an indecipherable buzz as Scott shushes him.
Liam edges away from the door, leaving it just barely ajar. A strip of light from the hallway falls through the dark room and across Mason’s foot, and he quickly tugs it out of sight. “Yeah, okay. We’re screwed. Why didn’t we leave when everyone else did? Why’d we offer to help clean up?”
“Because we’re stupid, and helping is always a bad idea,” Liam says grumpily. “Okay, here’s the plan. We can definitely fit through that window there. All we have to do is unlock it, take out the screen, and jump.”
Mason stares at him. “We’re on the second floor.”
“I’d catch you.”
“No. You’re being ridiculous,” Mason says. “It’s a straight shot from the stairs to the front door. We can just be really quiet-”
“And walk right by them?” Liam hisses. He points at the door, and the unintelligible argument echoing from the kitchen. Or, well, the argument is unintelligible for Mason. Liam can probably hear all of it, judging by the unnerved panic on his face. “You really wanna get in the middle of that right now?”
“Okay,” Mason says. “So we…we could wait it out.”
Glass shatters below them. “Dammit, Scott,” Derek growls. “Just tell me what-”
“You’re not even listening!” Scott shouts.
Every muscle in Mason’s body freezes. Scott doesn’t shout. Scott never shouts, Scott doesn’t lose his cool, and he never sounds so angry – “Window,” Mason says. Liam is already sliding it open and flinging the screen away. “We need to go.”
He leaps out the window after Liam, accidentally kicks him in the face as they land in a tangled heap, then sprints for the car out front before Scott or Derek can hear them. “Aw, crap!” Liam yells, because he never really got the hang of being fast and discreet at the same time. “I forgot my jacket!”
“You’re a werewolf; you won’t freeze without it!” Mason hurriedly unlocks the car and flings himself into the driver’s seat, barely waiting for Liam to shut the door before he peels out of the neighborhood. “Well, that went well.”
Liam sinks into his seat with a sigh. “What the hell even happened?” he says. “Everything was fine at dinner.”
“Really?” Mason says, snorting. “If that’s what you call fine, I mean…”
“What?”
Mason blinks at Liam. “Seriously?” he says. “Scott wouldn’t stop talking to you and Kira and everyone but Derek the whole time. Derek barely talked at all.”
“But they’re always like that,” Liam says slowly. “I mean, they…” His face falls. “Oh, shit, they barely even looked at each other all night. What the hell?”
“It happens, I guess,” Mason says, shrugging uncomfortably. “I mean, we’ve all heard how much they used to fight when they first met.”
“Yeah, when we were still teenagers,” Liam says. “They haven’t been like that for years – I mean, they live together now!”
Mason drives down the main road, dark and empty with only the occasional streetlight casting pools of light across the gravel. “Couples fight sometimes, you know,” he says quietly. “It’s normal and, like, healthy or whatever.”
“Yeah, I know,” Liam says. He slumps. “I’ve just never seen Scott like that before. It’s…” He shrugs.
Mason squeezes his shoulder. “I know.”
“I’m gonna punch Derek in his fucking face.”
“Probably not the best idea.”
“I’m sorry, Scott. I’m sorry that I yelled, and that I broke that glass, but sometimes I just – no, no, no. Not gonna say that.” Derek shakes his head, muttering to himself as he paces the store’s empty aisles. He’d gotten a few weird looks, walking in with dried leaves clinging to his jacket and his hands smeared with dirt from his run through the Preserve, but that isn’t important. What’s important is that this is the first and only store still open on Christmas Eve, and Derek needs to figure out how to talk to Scott.
“Okay, so I’m gonna walk back in – wait, maybe I should knock – no, no, I live there, I can just walk in. I’m gonna walk in, and I’m gonna say ‘I’m sorry,’ and I’m gonna give Scott his gift, and then I’m going to just stop talking.” Derek nods to himself. “Yeah, just stop talking and listen to whatever Scott needs to say. …And if he doesn’t say anything, that’s fine, too, because what’s important is that I’m listening.”
He turns down another aisle, frowning at the last-minute Christmas toys lining the shelves. It’s pretty much a cop-out, buying Scott a gift in lieu of a proper apology, but…Derek never knows what to say. He can never figure out the right words, ends up spinning excuses instead, and “I’m sorry” never feels like enough. It isn’t. Chocolate hearts and strings for Scott’s guitar and daisies picked from the Preserve’s stream are never enough, either, but Scott accepts them anyway. He accepts them with a close-mouthed smile, listens attentively to Derek’s stumbling attempts to make amends, as if Derek trying and coming up so woefully short is enough for him.
It isn’t. It never is, and Derek doesn’t understand why Scott forgives him so easily every time.
The Birthday Song trills down the hall, tinny and mechanical and making Derek jump in surprise. He glances at a miniature grandfather clock next to a stack of mirrors and frowns when he sees its hands pointed at exactly midnight. That can’t be right. There is no way he was in the store that long, and besides, no store stays open until midnight. Not even on the night before Christmas.
“’Twas the night before Christmas,” Derek intones, poking the clock while the Birthday Song trills on. The hands don’t move. It must be broken. He frowns, then opens the tiny door and tugs out the stupid singing birthday candle jammed inside. The clock’s pendulum swings free, and Derek tries to ignore how ominously the ticking echoes through the too-quiet store. He starts to look for the singing candle’s off-switch, but it abruptly dies in his hand. “Happy birthday to me, I guess,” he mutters. “Does this mean I get to make a wish?”
Derek never really believed in birthday wishes – or in wishing at all, really. There are no shortcuts in life, and the struggle before finally getting something right is its own reward. Derek snorts. Maybe that’s why Scott still stays with him. “I wish I could-” he begins, then slumps against the shelf. “I wish I could be a better listener. I wish I could be someone Scott could actually talk to.”
He drops the candle onto the shelf, then notices a giant teddy bear in the mirror’s reflection. He’d gotten Scott a giant plush like that, when the carnival was in town on Scott’s birthday. Scott had been so happy, hadn’t let go of the lion or Derek’s hand all day. Scott would like a giant teddy bear, Derek thinks. He turns to pick up the bear, but finds that he can’t move at all.
He blinks at the bear’s reflection in the mirror, suddenly realizing that he can’t see himself anywhere near it. The bear doesn’t move.
“Got your jacket back?” Mason asks, following Liam down the street.
“Yeah.” Liam glances at the closed shops around them, then sighs. “Derek’s gone.”
“What?”
“Scott didn’t say anything, but he wasn’t there when I got there,” Liam says. “And his car’s gone. Jacket, too.”
“Oh,” Mason says. “Um, well, he’s usually back in a day or two, right? They just need some time to cool off.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Liam says. He sighs. “It just kinda sucks to see it happen to your friends, you know? Scott’s – he didn’t look good when I saw him.”
Mason nods, then pauses in front of a store with a hand-painted sign its window cheerily declaring itself Open. He hadn’t realized any stores in Old Downtown were open on Christmas morning. “Hey, you know what we should do,” he says. “We should go get him a bunch of chocolate.”
Liam blinks at the store’s wide-open door, then at the other shops firmly locked shut. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Mason says, nodding firmly. “Chocolate cheers everyone up. …Or you just end up stress-eating it, but either way, y’know, it’s comforting.”
“You’re right,” Liam says, following Mason into the store. He elbows him with a grin. “You always have the best ideas for cheering people up.”
“I try,” Mason says, glancing around the store while Liam dithers between a giant Hershey’s Kiss or a giant Hershey’s Hug. His eyes widen as he sees a sign hanging above a nearby aisle, and he grabs Liam’s sleeve excitedly. “Whoa! Giant inanimate seven-foot-tall teddy bears!”
“Hello?”
“Hey, Cora, it’s-”
“Scott.” Cora sighs, staticky and a little tired on the other end of the phone. “He hasn’t come back yet. I’ll let you know as soon as he does, okay?”
“Right.” Scott slumps against the kitchen counter, rubbing the back of his neck. “Right, yeah. Sorry I keep bothering you on-”
“Hey, don’t worry about it.” She doesn’t sound annoyed, at least, and Scott knows that Cora has never been one to feign cheer. “This phone call got me out of another round of Pictionary with the Boyds.”
He laughs a little. “Pictionary’s pretty fun, though.”
“Maybe the first three rounds. And I’m stuck on Erica’s team, and she can’t draw for sh – shoots.” Cora hastily censors herself, belatedly remembering her nieces- and nephews-in-law, and Scott snorts. “I’m sure he’ll be back soon, Scott,” she says, voice quieter.
He sighs. “Yeah.”
The line is silent for a moment, then, “He took his jacket,” Cora says. “Dropped off his car and his phone, like always, but he was still wearing his jacket when he left. You know he’ll be back soon if he took that with him.”
The first time had been an accident, Derek grabbing the nearest jacket from the coatrack as he stormed off after a fight – their first big fight. Scott had been so sure that it was the end, that Derek would leave him, and his heart had sunk into his stomach when Derek returned the next day with the denim jacket folded neatly in his arms. But instead, Derek had clutched it a little tighter and asked, “Is it okay if I hang on to this a little longer?”
Derek grabs it on purpose whenever he storms off now. Or, well, Scott is pretty sure that he means to. He hopes so. It’s…comforting, somehow, Derek taking Scott’s old high school jacket with him when he leaves. The denim is worn thin after years of wear, and the flag patch has begun to fray at the corners, and it never really fits right on Derek’s frame, but…but if Derek takes that jacket when he leaves, the one that Scott has had for so long that he can never completely wash away his scent, then Scott knows that Derek isn’t leaving for good. (He knows that Derek isn’t leaving him.) This time shouldn’t be any different, except…
Except they’ve never fought during the holidays. They’ve never let their arguments bleed over so much that their friends all but fled the house after dinner. And they’ve never…Scott has never driven Derek away on the night before Derek’s birthday. “Yeah, you’re right,” he tells Cora reluctantly, even though his stomach twists into knots as he thinks of the cupcake batter in the fridge and unlit candles in the drawer.
“He always used to turn into a giant brat this time of year,” Cora says. “When I was eight, he hid out in the woods from Christmas Eve all the way ‘till Boxing Day. Something about winter full moons makes him so stubborn.”
Scott shrugs. “I guess, yeah.”
Staticky breath crackles through the phone. “He really loves you, Scott,” Cora says. “You know that, right?”
Knocks echo through the door, and Scott jolts upright before he realizes that it’s Liam and Mason. For a moment, he’d thought…he could’ve sworn that he sensed…but he’s clearly just wishing for things that haven’t really happened. “Liam’s at the door, I gotta go,” he says. “Tell Boyd and Erica and the family that I say Merry Christmas, okay?”
“Will do,” Cora says. She pauses, as if to say something else, then settles on, “Merry Christmas, Scott.”
He doesn’t really know what he expected to see when he opened the door, but it definitely wasn’t Mason almost entirely hidden behind a giant teddy bear. “Oh my.”
“Merry Christmas!” Liam and Mason chorus, determinedly cheerful grins plastered onto their faces. (Or plastered onto Liam’s, anyway, since Scott can only see Mason’s right ear and half of his eye behind the bear.)
Scott blinks at the giant teddy bear in Mason’s arms, then at the giant Hershey’s Kiss in Liam’s outstretched hands. “We all exchanged gifts yesterday, though,” he says, then winces at the disaster of last night’s dinner. “Listen, I’m really sorry about yesterday-”
“Right!” Mason says loudly, barreling over Scott’s words. “But we were in the neighborhood, and happened to pass by a store that was open-”
“On Christmas?”
“-and we saw these and just knew you’d love them!” Mason finishes. He wiggles the giant teddy bear. “C’mon, you know you love this little guy’s eyebrows.”
“‘Little?’” Liam repeats.
Scott laughs. “Thank you, guys. This is great.” He takes the chocolate from Liam, then awkwardly picks up as much of the giant teddy bear as he can. “Would you like to come in?”
Liam peers into the house without a trace of subtlety. “Actually, we have to get going,” Mason says, elbowing Liam. “Bye! Merry Christmas!”
Scott waves them off – or, well, tries to wave as much as he can with a giant teddy bear in his arms – as they pile into Liam’s car and drive away. He’s actually a little disappointed that he didn’t get to see them pull the bear out of the car. That probably would’ve been hilarious.
He goes back inside, sits the giant teddy bear on the living room couch, and peers at the giant Hershey’s Kiss. Oh, actually, the wrapper says, Hug. “I didn’t know they made Hugs this big. That’s a lot of white chocolate.” His stomach abruptly sinks. “Derek loves white chocolate. He’d love this.” A tiny smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Giant weirdo.”
The bear tips over and lands face-first onto the floor. Scott frowns, props him upright again, then watches as the bear falls right back over. “You’re kind of top-heavy, aren’t you?” He picks up the bear and moves him to the loveseat by the fireplace, the one that Derek loves to sink into with a book and a mug of tea that he inevitably forgets about until it’s over-steeped and cold. The bear fits in the seat perfectly, slumping to one side the same way that Derek tended to, and Scott finds himself reaching to check his phone again.
Then the bear flops face-first onto the floor.
Scott shoves his phone back into his pocket. He picks up the bear, staring into its stitched eyes. “What am I going to do with you?”
It turns out that being a giant inanimate teddy bear is very, very boring.
Well, it isn’t so bad at first. Scott picks him up gently, instead of squeezing in his (nonexistent?) ribs the way Mason had. It’s nice having Scott’s bare arms wrapped around him, warm from being indoors all morning, with his head carefully tucked over Scott’s shoulder instead of flopping every which way. He travels with Scott from the living room to the study to the dining room, then up the stairs to the guest bedroom. Every time Scott tries to sit him down, he ends up falling face-first onto the floor, until Scott finally gives up and leaves him sprawled on the guest bed.
Derek is about to resign himself to a long day of staring at the off-white ceiling when Scott returns, bringing him into their bedroom and setting him down on the desk. “There,” Scott says, nudging something around him that stops him from falling over. Derek misses being able to move his head to look around. He also misses having properly shaped eyes with peripheral vision. “Now you have some company.” Scott steps back, far enough that Derek can finally see all of him at once. His mouth quirks. “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my.”
Oh. Scott must have stuck him between the giant plush lion and tiger that they’d gotten each other at the carnival. He looks…not good, now that Derek can actually see him. He’s wearing the same clothes from last night, for one, and for another, his stance is…off. Stiffer, limbs tucked closer to his body as if he’s trying not to take up too much space. He takes out his phone, stares at the screen for several moments, then sighs and drops it on the bed.
Then he leaves.
The clock is hanging on the wall behind Derek, so he can’t lift his head to check the time. It’s digital, too, so he can’t listen for the ticking of the second hand, and Scott’s phone is too far away to read the time before the screen goes dark. The curtains are still drawn, so Derek can’t even look out the window into the backyard. Not that he’d be able to see much from this angle, he thinks ruefully. He’s sitting so far back that he’d only see the sky – it had been clear out when Mason and Liam brought him over, so there wouldn’t even be clouds to watch.
So. It turns out that being a giant inanimate teddy bear is very, very boring.
Hey, he says to the giant plush on his right – or, well, he thinks very hard in that general direction. He can’t tell if he’s thinking at Le Tigre or Blue Steel, but he hopes that it’s Le Tigre. That’s the one Scott gave him after setting an all-time record at the ring toss booth. Don’t suppose you can hear me?
Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t get a response. Derek slumps down with a sigh. Okay, he doesn’t actually move at all, but he likes to imagine that he did. He doesn’t really want to think about the technicalities of being completely inanimate while still seeing and hearing and—
Smelling. Oh. He can smell the faint scent of cinnamon wafting from the kitchen – no, not entirely cinnamon, not quite. Some sort of spice, overlaid with another scent that is too subtle for Derek to place. It mixes with another scent, cream cheese and sugar, and a muted sort of vanilla, as if it had been baked – oh.
Scott walks into the bedroom with two cupcakes on a small plate. One cupcake – vanilla, Derek can smell it so much more clearly now – has a blue candle in the shape of a “2” stuck through the frosting, with a green “9” pushed through the other. Derek squints at the second cupcake, trying to make sense of its brownish-orange color, and then he looks back at the green candle sitting atop it and understands.
It’s a carrot cupcake. His favorite cupcake flavor, actually, except he always tells everyone that he likes vanilla the most. A silly hang-over from when he was an awkward pre-teen with too-big front teeth. Laura had never passed up an opportunity to laugh and call him a rabbit every time he ate carrot cupcakes (and carrot cake, and just carrots in general. He still can’t eat baby carrots without feeling self-conscious). Then, after…everything, it hurt too much to realize that he’d never hear her tease him again. He hadn’t told Scott until a year or two ago, around the same time that Scott had abruptly burst into tears over Derek’s first attempt to make mole from Melissa’s late mother’s recipe.
“Burst into tears” is the wrong description, Derek thinks as he watches Scott set the cupcakes on the end table next to Derek’s side of the bed. Scott never bursts into tears, not like some explosive gesture or wailing cry. He just…gets quiet, and then tears stream down his face even as he continues to behave as if nothing was wrong. The first time it happened, Derek had kept talking to him for an entire minute before he realized that Scott was keeping his face tilted just slightly down and away at the perfect angle to hide his tears. He can see Scott doing the exact same thing now, turning just slightly away from the cupcakes with the barest of hitches in his breath. “Happy Birthday,” Scott says, voice steady as tears slip down his cheeks and stain his shirt. “I’m sorry I-”
His phone trills, and Scott reads the text message eagerly before wilting in disappointment. He slowly taps out a reply, wiping angrily at his face, then shoves the phone under his pillow and out of sight.
Then he reaches back under the pillow and shoves the phone into his pocket. He stares blankly at Derek – no, at the carnival plushes on either side of Derek. “Please don’t leave.”
I’m right here, Derek tries to shout. He tries to fling himself off the desk, wrap his arms around Scott, anything to get closer to him. But his mouth is filled with cotton and stitched firmly shut, and he can’t move at all. Scott, I’m right here.
After having an incredibly embarrassing meltdown over cupcakes, of all things, Scott goes back downstairs and finishes cleaning up the kitchen. Mixing bowls and baking pans need to be cleaned, and the drying rack needs to be emptied, and the dishes from last night need to be put away. He sets a wine glass on the counter, opens the cabinet to put it away – then accidentally bumps it and sends it crashing to the floor.
He stares down at the shattered mess for a long moment, then sighs. “Screw it,” he mutters, and walks around the shards to the fridge. “Not like anyone’s around to step on it.”
He grabs the bowl filled with an entire batch of chocolate chip cookie dough, takes a spoon from the drying rack, and heads back upstairs. “I’m going to eat this entire thing,” he tells the giant teddy bear staring at him from the desk, “since I forgot to eat breakfast and lunch, because I’m a moron, and now I’m starving and there’s just a bunch of leftovers from last night in the fridge.” He shoves a spoonful of cookie dough into his mouth, then adds, “Don’t tell Derek, but I actually kind of hate meatloaf. He makes it all the time, so I just tell him I like it, but I don’t. It’s meat shaped into a loaf. Why.”
He eats another bite of cookie dough. He should’ve gotten some milk. “That’s another thing,” he says. “I hate skim milk. I know it’s the healthier option, but we’re freaking werewolves! Whenever I’m at Kira and Malia’s, I drink all of their milk. I miss whole milk so much.”
He drops back onto the bed, balancing the bowl of cookie dough on his stomach. “I know I always bug Derek about getting crumbs all over the place when he eats in bed, but this is pretty fun. He has a point.” He points his spoon at the bear. “Don’t tell Derek that, though. I’m still mad at him. I love him, but I’m still mad at him. That’s fair, right?”
The bear stares at him.
Scott sighs. “You’re right. But, you know, he’s the one who always storms out in the middle of these things. You know, I went looking for him once, because he was gone for three days and I was worried, right? What if something happened to him? But when I found him, he was pissed I went after him! Just went on and on about how he just wanted to be alone for a while, needed his own space to figure things out, and-” He lets out a frustrated breath. “And that’s fair, I know, I get that, that’s why I leave him alone when this happens. But…I just…
“Why do I always have to be the one waiting for him to come back?” He shoves another spoonful into his mouth, picking up the glob that falls on the comforter. “He always gets to go and throw a hissy fit or whatever it is he does, and then he just gets to come back whenever he decides he’s okay again. You know what I’m saying?” he asks the bear. “What if I don’t want him to come back? What if he’s ready to talk, but I’m not? How come that never happens? How come he’s never the one that has to wait?”
He eats another glob of cookie dough, swallowing thickly. “Because he’s always mad at me longer than I’m mad at him,” he realizes. “I’m the one who keeps screwing up.” He looks over at the bear. “How come I keep screwing up?” he asks.
The bear stares at him.
Scott sighs. “Yeah,” he says. “You’re right.”
Scott stares at the ceiling for a long time. At least an hour, Derek guesses from watching the rise and fall of Scott’s chest and his hand mechanically trailing down the hem of his shirt, over and over. Eventually, Scott sits up with a long sigh and glances at Derek – no, at the clock just above Derek’s head. He takes the near-empty bowl of cookie dough and moves to the door, then hesitates. He looks back at the clock above Derek’s head – no, at Derek himself – then sighs and tucks Derek under his arm.
“I just need someone to talk to,” Scott mutters as he carries Derek down the stairs. (Well, Derek’s stubby feet drag along the floor the entire time, but Derek doesn’t care.) He stops in front of the kitchen, then sets Derek in a chair. “Don’t fall over.”
For once, he doesn’t. Scott pushes the chair in until Derek’s stump arms are propped onto the island counter, effectively wedging him in place. He chuckles. “You’re kind of adorable, even though you kind of look angry all the time. I think it’s the eyebrows.”
He keeps up a one-sided conversation with Derek as he cleans up the kitchen, jumping between topics so rapidly that Derek’s head spins trying to keep up. He’s pretty sure that most of it is mulled over in Scott’s mind rather than out of his mouth. “Sorry,” Scott says, shaking his head as he sweeps up something that clinks against the tiled floor. “I know it doesn’t make any sense.”
They move on to the living room, Derek sprawled out on the couch while Scott…well, Derek can’t actually see anything but the ceiling, but it sounds like Scott is cleaning spilled eggnog from the coffee table. The whirr off the vacuum drowns out Scott’s words, but Derek catches snippets of melodies when Scott moves around the couch, Adele and Taylor Swift and what he thinks might be Fall Out Boy. “I know, I know,” he tells Derek as he puts away the vacuum. “I really can’t sing.”
Scott loves to sing along with the radio, making up words for the parts he doesn’t know and laughing when Derek corrects him. It’s why Derek always insists on driving when they take long trips – Scott always stays up with him and sings along with the radio, or picks his own songs to belt out if they travel too far to find a station amidst the static.
Derek usually lapses into silence when Scott is the one driving – Scott never seems to mind it, says that he likes it, even. But when Scott is the one in the passenger seat, he always seems to know what to say to break through the radio static. His voice isn’t perfect, of course, but Derek loves listening to him sing. “It’s fun, though, you know?” Scott continues, not quite looking at Derek as he tidies up the study. “Better than radio silence when you’re on your own.
“No offense,” he adds, picking Derek up and carrying him through the now-darkened house. “You’re nice company and all, but you’re also an inanimate teddy bear.”
Scott sets Derek back down on the desk in their bedroom. He starts to take off his shirt, then glances over his shoulder at Derek. “Don’t look.”
Derek looks.
(In his defense, he doesn’t actually have eyelids to close right now. He’s glad, though, because the dolls with those eyes that shut whenever they lay down always creeped Derek out. At least he’s cuddly and – hopefully – cute as a giant seven-foot-tall teddy bear. A giant seven-foot-tall bear with blinking eyes would just be horrifying.)
Scott leaves his dirty clothes in a pile on the floor instead of moving them six feet away into the laundry hamper. “I know,” he tells Derek. “That would bug the crap out of Derek, but you know what? He’s not here right now, so, deal with it.” He rolls his eyes. “Of course you can deal with it. You’re a teddy bear. I’m talking to a teddy bear. I’ve been talking to a teddy bear all day.”
He shakes his head and climbs into bed. “Well. Goodnight.” The lights flick off, and then Derek can’t see anything at all.
It turns out that giant inanimate teddy bears don’t actually sleep.
Or maybe they can, and Derek is just too restless to settle down. Either way, his eyes have long adjusted to the darkness when Scott jerks awake. He turns automatically to Derek’s side of the bed, already reaching out before his eyes catch up with his muscle memory. Derek’s nonexistent heart sinks as he watches Scott slump, then slide out of bed and disappear into the bathroom.
When he reappears, he marches determinedly towards the desk, not quite looking at Derek as he picks him up and carries him to the bed. “Don’t laugh,” he grumbles as he tucks Derek under the covers. He throws an arm around Derek and tucks his head under Derek’s nonexistent chin. “I just miss…I miss him.”
I miss you, too, Derek wants to say. It’s a little ridiculous, because Scott is right there, but…it’s not the same. Scott isn’t the same, and it hurts to see how much of himself Scott hides when he’s around.
Scott sighs. “Sorry I’ve been talking so much.”
But you haven’t been, Derek says.
“It’s just easier to talk about that stuff when you know no one’s really listening.”
…Oh.
“Blue Steel and Le Tigre have been putting up with my whining for months,” Scott says, shrugging carelessly. “Better you guys than someone real, though, right? It’s just dumb stuff, you know; don’t need to waste anyone’s time with that.”
Hey, Derek tries to say. He tries to pet Scott’s back, too, but only succeeds in accomplishing a whole bunch of nothing. It’s not dumb. I tell you my dumb stuff and you never say it’s dumb, don’t you?
“And you know the worst part? Derek tells me all of his stuff, like the laundry and the milk, and it’s not a big deal. We deal with it, and it’s done, and it makes everything easier. But me, I just…I just don’t talk about any of it, because I’m stupid.” He shakes his head. “I get mad, too, you know? Sometimes I want to break things, too. But I can’t…I can’t let anyone see me like that. I can’t – I can’t lose control. I can’t.”
He sighs. “I just never want to put my feelings before someone else’s, to the point that I end up hurting them. I’m a werewolf. I’m a True Alpha.” Scott rolls his eyes, voice mocking. “I can deal with my dumb stuff just fine on my own.”
“But you shouldn’t have to,” Derek says, and then realizes that he actually managed to speak out loud.
Scott freezes. He stares up at Derek with wide eyes, and for a terrifying moment, Derek thinks, Oh, god, now I’m a giant seven-foot-tall animate teddy bear. Then Scott croaks out, “Derek?”
Derek blinks. Oh, he has eyelids again. “I have eyelids again,” he hears himself say, then winces. Great. He finally has his body back, and his first words to love of his life were, I have eyelids again.
Scott doesn’t seem to care, though, eyes and hands darting all over Derek’s body as if he can’t quite believe what just happened. His hands finally settle around Derek’s face. “You were the teddy bear,” he says slowly.
Derek nods. “Giant seven-foot-tall inanimate teddy bear,” he says. Then, because he can’t think of anything else, “Liam’s car smells like Cajun fries.”
“Yeah, he always forgets to clean it,” Scott says, nodding absently. Horror dawns on his face. “Oh my god. You were the teddy bear.”
“Uh.” Derek blinks again. Man, he missed being able to blink. “Yes?”
“I’ve been talking to you all day.”
Derek nods, brightening. “Yeah, actually-”
“I didn’t mean it,” Scott says immediately. “I mean, I’m sorry, and I didn’t mean all those things I said, I was just angry, I didn’t – I’m sorry.” His shoulders hunch, and he stares miserably up at Derek. “I didn’t mean for you to hear it – no, I shouldn’t have said it at all, I-”
“Hey.” Derek wraps an arm around Scott, letting out a relieved breath when Scott doesn’t push him away. “I’m glad you told me all that, even though you didn’t really mean to. Because you meant it-”
“I didn’t.”
“-and it was important for me to hear,” Derek finishes. “I’m…I can’t always tell what you’re trying to say, and a lot of the time I get it wrong and make things worse.”
The tension in Scott’s shoulders relaxes a little. “That’s not your fault, though.”
“Oh, it’s definitely my fault,” Derek says, nodding. “And you always forgive me anyway, even though I’m the one who messed up.”
“So…” Scott stares at him, brow furrowed. “You’re saying you don’t want me to forgive you?”
He laughs a little. “I want you to know it’s okay to get mad at me.”
Scott rolls his eyes. “I know.”
“And it’s okay to tell me that you’re mad at me.”
“I kn-” Scott stops mid-eye roll. “I know,” he says, quieter. “I just…”
He trails off into an uncomfortable silence. Derek winds their hands together. “I know.”
“I’m sorry I ruined your birthday.”
Derek laughs. “Yeah, because it’s definitely your fault that I went to a weird store in the middle of the night and touched a singing candle that somehow turned me into a giant inanimate seven-foot-tall teddy bear.”
Scott stares at him. “…What?”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Derek mutters. “But that’s not important. The point is-”
“It’s kind of important if there’s a weird store in town that turns people into giant teddy bears.”
“…Yeah, probably,” Derek says. “Can we worry about that in the morning?”
Scott glances past him, and the corner of his mouth quirks. “Technically, it is morning.”
Derek twists around to look at the clock, and sighs when he sees it cheerfully displaying a few minutes after midnight. “Of course it is.” Scott looks confused, so he adds, “There might have been…birthday wishing…involved.” He frowns. “Actually, it kind of came true. See, this is why I don’t do wishes.”
Scott’s eyebrow quirks. “You wished you could be a giant seven-foot-tall inanimate teddy bear?”
“No.” He stares down at their hands. “No, I wished I could be a better listener. Someone you could actually talk to.”
Scott stares at him, then buries his face in Derek’s chest. “Derek,” he says, but it comes out closer to a honking sort of sob. “I’m so sorry. If I just…”
“Hey.” Derek pets his back. “I wished I could be a better listener, too, remember? It’s my own fault I had to have my mouth literally sewn shut for that to happen.”
“But-”
“Shh. I know I’m supposed to be listening to you, but if you’re going to blame yourself for everything, then I’m just going to keep talking right over you.”
“But-” Scott tries again, then sighs. “I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted.” Derek kisses the top of his head. “I’m sorry, too.”
“For what?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Where do I even start?” he says. “For storming off in the middle of the night, yelling at you, breaking a glass and making a mess in the kitchen that I didn’t help you clean up at all-”
“But you got turned into a teddy bear,” Scott says.
“Yeah, after I stormed off in the middle of the night, and yelled at you, and broke a glass and-”
“Okay, okay,” Scott says, nodding. “Apology accepted.” His hand traces the hem of Derek’s jacket, and he asks, “Are you still mad at me?”
“No,” Derek says immediately. He laughs. “Scott, I got turned into a teddy yesterday at midnight. I only went to the store because I was trying to find an apology present for you.”
Scott smiles a little. “You don’t have to do that, you know,” he says. “I know you mean it when you say you’re sorry.”
“I never know what to say,” Derek says. “It never feels like enough.” He watches Scott trace the hem of his jacket. “You’re still mad at me.”
“No-” Scott says automatically. His hand drops, and he finally meets Derek’s gaze. “A little bit.”
He nods. “Do you want me to go? I promise I won’t get myself turned into a teddy bear or anything.”
Scott doesn’t laugh. “Can you-” he begins, then stops. His hand curls over the flag sewn into Derek’s sleeve. “Is it okay if you stay?”
“Yeah. I’m not going anywhere.” He pulls Scott in close, tucking his chin over Scott’s head. “I’ll always be here for you, Scott.”
Scott finally relaxes, arms wrapping easily around Derek. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“-sure you don’t want me to come over? Okay. Call me any time, okay? I’ll let you know if Derek knows anything. Take care, Kira.” Scott hangs up the phone, frowning at it a little before tucking it away in his pocket. He grabs a cookie from the plate and pours the last of the 2% milk – then sighs when the carton empties after only filling the bottom centimeter of the glass. “You gotta stop doing that,” he mutters.
“Derek,” he calls as he climbs the stairs to their bedroom, “If there’s only, like, an inch of milk left in the carton – oh no.”
The cookie drops to the ground, spraying crumbs all over the floor to get hopelessly lost in the carpet. Scott barely notices, though, as he stares at the giant seven-foot-tall inanimate teddy bear with all-too-familiar eyebrows staring at him from the center of the bed. “Oh no.”
He darts forward, picking Derek up to…more properly panic at him, for all the good that accomplishes. “Okay. Um. Okay. I saw you this morning, so…maybe it’s from noon to noon this time?” He glances at the clock, cheerfully displaying 4:20 in the afternoon. “…Four twenty? Why four twenty?” He holds the bear up to eye level. “…Did you eat a weird brownie?”
“Why would I eat a weird brownie?”
Scott spins around to see Derek standing in the doorway, eyebrows quirked in amusement. “Found that at the store,” he says, lifting the bear’s paw to show Scott the tag. “A regular, normal store that we’ve seen at the mall hundreds of times. Part of their Valentine’s Day sale, I guess. Don’t really get why,” he adds, shrugging. “The eyebrows make him look kind of angry all the time.”
Scott collapses onto the bed. “That wasn’t funny,” he says, even as he ducks behind the teddy bear’s head to hide his grin. “For a minute there, I really thought you turned into a bear again!”
“I’m sorry.” Derek sits next to him, smiling when Scott immediately leans into him. “He’s pretty cute, though, right?”
“Yes, Derek, you were a very cute teddy bear,” Scott says. “I like you better like this, though, with opposable thumbs and, like, bones and stuff.”
“I knew it,” Derek says mournfully. “You only want me for my skeleton.”
“Exactly.”
Derek laughs, then kisses Scott. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”
“It’s not Valentine’s Day.”
“Happy Friday the 13th,” Derek amends. “Just felt like getting a head start this year.” Scott leans in for another kiss, but Derek pulls away. “And that includes putting away all the groceries I just got.”
Scott follows him down the stairs, setting the teddy bear at the counter while they bring the grocery bags into the kitchen. “What’re you making tomorrow?”
“Definitely not meatloaf,” Derek says. He flashes Scott a grin. “You know, I only kept making it because you always said you liked it. I can’t stand meatloaf.”
Scott laughs. “So what are you making?” he asks, reaching for the nearest bag.
Derek snatches it away. “It’s a surprise.”
“Okay,” Scott says, grinning down at the teddy bear. “Oh, hey, did Malia mention anything to you today?”
Derek resurfaces from the depths of the fridge, brows scrunched in confusion. “Huh?”
“At lunch,” Scott clarifies. “You guys went for lunch today, right?”
“Oh,” Derek says. “No, we haven’t talked since she cancelled last night. Why?”
“Oh.” Scott starts folding the nearest grocery bag. “I don’t know, I just…got a kind of weird call from Kira. She sounded kind of upset, actually, and-”
They freeze, then turn to the teddy bear. “Has Lydia heard from her?” Derek asks, diving for his phone while Scott picks up the teddy bear to…more properly panic at it, for all the good that accomplishes. “Wait, actually, sometimes she talks to Boyd about-”
Scott’s phone rings. “Hey K-” Scott begins, then pauses when he finally notices the caller’s name. “…Allison?”
“Hi, Scott!” Allison says cheerfully. “Weird favor to ask. Do you think you could come pick me up in Derek’s car?”
“Yeah, sure,” Scott says automatically, then, “Wait, why Derek’s car?”
“Well, I’m not sure if yours is big enough to fit both of us and a giant seven-foot-tall inanimate Rudolph. But Derek’s car definitely is.”
Scott slowly turns towards Derek, switching the call to speakerphone. “A giant seven-foot-tall inanimate Rudolph?” he repeats, and Derek’s eyes widen.
“Yeah, you know, the reindeer,” Allison says. “I know, it’s weird. I’d just walk back from Old Downtown, but this guy is kind of big and it looks like it’s going to rain soon.”
“Old Downtown?” Derek says.
“Yeah – oh, hi, Derek! Yeah, it was this weird little store; I’d never seen it there before. It was kind of creepy, actually, there was, like, a broken mirror on clearance. I guess that makes sense with Friday the 13th or something. It was right next to where I found the deer, actually. Weird.”
“Weird,” Derek agrees, staring at Scott.
“But it was free with a giant Hershey’s Hug, and I thought…I think Kira and Malia had a…well, things were kind of weird when I saw them yesterday. So I thought I’d bring over a…giant seven-foot-tall inanimate reindeer.” Allison pauses. “That’s pretty weird, isn’t it?”
“No, I think that’s a great idea,” Scott says, while Derek grabs his keys and jacket. “I mean, giant Hershey’s Hug – I didn’t even know they made those.”
“I know, right?”
Scott follows Derek into the car. “Right. We’ll be there in ten.” He hangs up, then stares at Derek. “So, Malia turned into a deer.”
“Giant inanimate seven-foot-tall reindeer,” Derek says, nodding. He snorts. “With a very shiny nose.”
“This isn’t funny!”
“It’s a little funny.”
“Okay, it’s a little funny,” Scott admits. He sighs. “The store’s not even going to be there when we get there, huh. Just like last time.”
“Probably,” Derek says, nodding. “But at least no one really gets hurt when this happens?”
Scott stares at him. “You got turned into a teddy bear.”
“A very cute teddy bear,” Derek says. Scott sighs.
Allison grins when Derek parks on the curb – or, more accurately, double-parks in the middle of the road, because no one ever goes to Old Downtown. “See, I’m not the only weird one,” she says as she climbs into the backseat. “You got a giant seven-foot-tall inanimate plush, too!”
Scott glances at the teddy bear in his arms, then at Derek. “Yeah,” he says. “Actually, it’s a funny story…”