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Sometimes, in the very early morning, Derek wakes up and just lays in the bed, listening as the world begins the day. He doesn’t move, doesn’t even open his eyes, doesn’t give Stiles any indication that he’s awake, but he is. Those are the mornings that he likes best, when he wakes up a little early, a little before Stiles, and gets to enjoy waking up next to his husband for a little while.
And then when Stiles wakes up he’ll slip quietly out of Derek’s arms and out of bed, no longer careful not to wake him after so many years of this routine. Stiles still doesn’t know that Derek always wakes up at least for a couple minutes when he gets out of bed, even on the days when Derek doesn’t wake up first. He likes to listen as Stiles moves about their room, showering and getting ready for the day. Derek will even peek just a little while Stiles is dressing, because he can never resist.
Then Stiles will leave the room and knock on each of the kids’ doors, checking to make sure they’re up and getting ready for school, as he heads downstairs to make breakfast. Derek loves the mornings for just that reason, listening to the sounds his family makes as they begin their day, filling the house with noise, not even worrying that they might wake him. It’s not what he expected all those years ago, back when he had just become the alpha and was tearing himself apart with anger and guilt and self-hatred.
“Annie!” Margot, the oldest of their three children, yells from the bathroom she shares with her youngest sibling. Derek can hear little Annie, who at 14 isn’t quite so little anymore, giggling from her room and he thinks he should maybe do something, but decides against it. He’s still pretending to be asleep and besides, the mornings are Stiles’ domain.
And right on cue Stiles’ voice calls up the stairs. “Annette Stilinski-Hale, if you took your sister’s hairbrush again the only lunch you’ll be getting will be a veggie wrap with a side of vegetables!”
“Daddy!” Annie cries, completely scandalized. Derek doesn’t blame her, she’s the only one of the kids who inherited his dislike of vegetables, the other two like the rabbit food as much as their father. Stiles blames it on the fact that Annie is also the only one to have inherited his lycanthropy.
Stiles doesn’t even bother to respond to Annie, but it’s not necessary because a moment later Margot lets out a victory cry, letting the entire house know that she’s managed to find her hairbrush, which was another daily morning ritual.
There’s a scratching sound on his bedroom door and he lets out a small groan, knowing that it’s only a matter of time before the Cat manages to get in. He doesn’t even understand how Margot managed to convince them to allow her a cat, let alone why it decided that Derek was its favorite. It’s Margot’s cat but it spends most of its time following Derek around, looking pathetic until he pets it. Derek can’t even remember the strange name that Margot gave it, its name is Cat at this point because that’s what Derek calls it and so that’s what it responds to.
Sure enough not a minute later he can hear Christopher, never Chris because of Chris Argent, walking down the hall and stopping in front of his door. “Cat, one of these days Dad is going to make good on his threat to leave you in the middle of the woods,” he says, but he still opens the door for the damn cat, not even bothering to close it afterwards. Christopher continues on then, stomping down the stairs like a herd of elephants and Derek hears Stiles scold him for it, just as he does every morning.
The cat’s jumped on the bed and is curled up on Derek’s chest so he absently raises a hand to pet it, keeping his eyes stubbornly closed. At least until Annie comes barging into the room.
“Dad!” she shrieks, jumping up onto the bed like she’s still a hyperactive toddler. “Dad are we going to go driving today?”
Derek groans and finally gives in, opening his eyes. Annie’s sprawled on Stiles’ side of the bed, looking up at him with the big eyes that he can never say no to. “You’re not old enough to drive yet, your birthday’s not for a few more months.”
“But Dad,” she whines and he just frowns at her while Margot laughs from the doorway. The cat doesn’t even glance at her, too blissed out in Derek’s presence, and Margot shoots it a betrayed look. The cat doesn’t notice.
“He’s never going to give in, I nearly had to get Daddy to teach me to drive before he agreed to teach me.”
Annie scrunches up her face in an adorable pout so Derek reaches out to tweak her nose before shifting the cat off his chest and sitting up. “No buts, Annie,” he says and Margot grins at him.
“If any of you lazy butts want breakfast you better get down here before your brother eats it all,” Stiles calls up the stairs and Annie jumps off the bed in a hurry, rushing out of the room past her older sister. “And make sure your Dad is actually up now!”
Derek raises an eyebrow at Margot, whose grin gets impossibly wider, but he gets up. He wanders over to her and presses a kiss to her forehead before shooing her out the room and down to breakfast. He hunts down the slippers that Christopher got him for his last birthday before heading down himself, his pajama pants and t-shirt might be fine but the floors in the kitchen were freezing in the morning and Derek hated having cold feet.
“Good morning,” Stiles says when he sees Derek in the doorway to the kitchen, watching his family eat breakfast. “There’s coffee in the pot,” he says, just as he does every morning. Derek loves it, loves the routine and the domesticity of it more than he ever thought he would as a young man. He’s been with Stiles for 23 years and he still never tires of this routine.
“Good morning,” Derek returns, ruffling Christopher’s hair on his way to get coffee and kissing Stiles in passing.
All of this is routine now, something that happens almost every day and he still can’t quite believe it some days. There are days that he wakes up and expects to be living in some burnt out shell of a house, alone and still wreathed in anger and guilt. All it takes to jolt him out of it though is to feel Stiles in the bed next to him or to hear the sounds of his three children as they sleep.
“Alright gang, what’s the schedule today?” Stiles asks, as if he hadn’t known last week exactly what all of them would be doing today. “Margot you’ve got your physics test, right? Feeling confident?”
Margot grins back, supremely confident, but then Derek’s supposes she would be because she’s inherited Stiles’ brains. “It’s not fair, she hardly even opened that book,” Christopher complains, shooting his older sister a dirty look and Margot just looks smug. Derek hides his smile behind his coffee and lets Stiles sort it out.
“And I’m sure you spent about two minutes doing your math homework young man, don’t think I don’t know about your extra lacrosse practice after school.”
“It was more like five,” Christopher returns and sometimes Derek thinks that Christopher is more a clone of Stiles than Stiles’ son and this is one of those times. “Besides, algebra is easy.”
Stiles raises an eyebrow in response but lets it go, more interested in the amount of sugar that Annie is trying to sneak onto her grapefruit. Derek doesn’t blame her, grapefruit is nasty without sugar to temper the sourness.
“Annie-girl if you add any more sugar to that grapefruit you’re going to give yourself a cavity. Scrape some of it off now, please.” Even after so many years of being parents, Derek still loved it when Stiles got all paternal, just something in the way he spoke.
“But Dad doesn’t like grapefruit either!” she argues and that just earns her a look.
“Don’t drag me into this,” Derek interjects, knowing if he doesn’t say anything it will end up with Stiles lecturing him about his eating habits because no matter how many times he explains that werewolves don’t get heart disease Stiles won’t stop trying to get him to eat healthy. “I’m going to go shower, have a good day at school, love you.”
All three of them chorus back “I love you” and he smiles, brushing a hand over Stiles’ shoulder on his way past his husband. As he climbs the stairs he can hear the kids scramble to finish their breakfasts and then gather their backpacks while Stiles asks them for the umpteenth time why they didn’t pack them the night before.
All routine, common things that happen almost every morning, but never fail to make him feel warm if he thinks about them for any length of time. He showers quickly, wanting to be able to say goodbye to Stiles before he heads to work, but he needn’t have worried.
Stiles is waiting for him in their bedroom when he emerges from the bathroom, towel wrapped around his hips. “Aren’t you supposed to be getting ready for work?” Derek asks, getting dressed for the day. “I thought that you were starting that reading group this week?”
“The library can last a half an hour without me, it’s fine. The reading group isn’t til Friday, we’ve got plenty of time,” he brushes it aside, watching as Derek drags a brush through his drying hair. “I think you’ve got a few more gray hairs today,” he teases, knowing it’ll irk Derek.
It does, but only a very little because he knows just how much Stiles likes his hair, especially now that it’s more salt and pepper than thick black. “It’s all Margot’s fault,” he grouses and Stiles laughs because he knows exactly what Derek’s talking about.
Their little girl, their first baby, has been accepted to a college halfway across the country and has her heart set on going there. Stiles’ dad encourages it, he thinks it’s funny how much Margot is like Stiles, claims that it’s the perfect payback for all the problems Stiles caused him when he was a kid. Stiles is unamused by the idea but Derek can’t help but agree with his father in law, even if it means he has to deal with a Stiles clone for a daughter.
“Yeah, our little baby’s growing up,” he sighs and stands so that he can wrap his arms around Derek’s middle from behind and rest his head on Derek’s shoulder. “Couldn’t they have just stayed small forever?”
Derek places his hands over Stiles’ and tilts his head so that it rests on Stiles’. “Do you remember the time Christopher decided he was Superman and tried to jump off of every high surface he could get to? Which, by the way, I blame you entirely for putting that idea into his head. Do you want to go back to that?”
Stiles laughs again and pulls back, releasing Derek so that he can finish dressing. “No, no, I don’t miss that week.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“Whatever, Sourwolf,” he teases, using the old nickname, before reaching down and pressing a kiss to Derek’s lips, a routine goodbye. “I’ve got to get to work. Don’t forget to clean the kitchen before you head to work!” he calls over his shoulder as he heads out.
“Love you!” he calls out and Stiles returns the sentiment, a casual goodbye as if they’ve been saying the words to each other for years.
But the truth is they have been. Derek’s told Stiles that he loves him so many times that Derek can’t even begin to count how many. It scares him just a little to think about it, that this expression of love can become routine, commonplace, when for so many years he never thought he’d be able to feel love again, let alone so casually claim it. The thought should bother him, but he can’t bring himself to feel upset by the idea, because this routine is part of what it means to have a family.