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Derek watches as Stiles barrels through the doorway, tumbling into the room with his usual grace and finesse. At twenty-two, Stiles lacks the day-to-day hand eye coordination skills that toddlers have. It’s abysmal.
“It’s vampires this week! I’ve been waiting for this moment my whole life, let me tell ya, because I’d totally be Team Edward if it weren’t for my friends’, you know, furry little problem.” Stiles yells at Derek excitedly in lieu of an actual greeting.
“We’re not fighting the vampires.” Scott says patiently. “They’re here on holiday. We’re checking out a disturbance they said they saw around town.”
“What is this,” Stiles rolls his eyes impatiently, “England in the 1920’s? Who the hell is gonna summer in Beacon Hills?”
“It’s winter.” Derek feels obliged to point out.
“Totally not the point.” Stiles scowls. “Right, right, usual drill – let’s go Derek, we’re on Preserve patrol, we can take my Jeep-“
“Hey!” Scott protests.
“Were you really gonna suggest anything else?” Stiles asks, squinting at Scott. Scott flails for a bit before sighing and waving them out.
Derek smiles a little as he gets in Stiles’ Jeep, surreptitiously trailing his fingers over the little dent that it has from Stiles jumping in front of a zombie hyena for Derek – yeah, Derek’s still not sure about the hyena thing either – even though Derek is the one that has supernatural strength.
“What are you grinning about?” Stiles asks. “No, don’t tell me, you’re probably plotting my murder and it’s funny.”
“Even funnier.” Derek deadpans. “I’m thinking about selling your Jeep.”
Stiles makes an outraged noise, and Derek smirks.
.
“Clearly” Stiles says, stressing the word so hard Derek is worried for a second, “you can’t stop a country from competing in the Winter Olympics, but should you discourage a country without snow – “
“Stiles.” Derek sighs. “India competes whether you think it’s awkward or not.”
“But imagine,” Stiles cries out, sweeping his hand out dramatically, and that’s when his hand slams into a tree branch and something small and angry falls out of it.
“No, no.” Stiles says, sneezing, as Derek grabs him and tries to swat the fluttering thing out of the sky. “Ugh, it’s a pixie, don’t aggravate it – yeah, great, great, keep doing the thing I told you not to do – “ The pixie flies out of Derek’s reach and chatters rapidly, irritated, before slapping Derek upside the head and dumping glittery powder on him.
Derek stares at Stiles, covered in glitter, and then down at himself, also covered in glitter.
“We look like shitty, glittery extras from Magic Mike.” Stiles mutters morosely. Privately, Derek agrees because Stiles doing a lap dance is the stuff of his fantasies.
“What did it fucking do to us?” Derek asks, growling.
“To be perfectly honest,” Stiles says, scratching the back of his neck, “probably a truth spell.”
“Nope.” Derek says, and vaults out of the clearing, running away rather than dealing with that kind of shit.
.
“Uh.” Scott asks when Derek comes back, Stile-less. “Do we need to give you lessons about the buddy system, dude?”
“No, because I did actually go to school and have a normal life, you fuckwit.” Derek says, before clamping his mouth shut and groaning. Is profanity part of honesty? He's not sure.
Scott stares at him like he’s unsure of whether he should be offended or not.
“Pixies.” Derek says through gritted teeth. “Bullshit toddler fae doused us both in stripper paint.”
Erica walks through the door at that moment, and nearly chokes in how hard she doubles over in laughter. She waves her phone at him
“This is great.” She wheezes out. “I have Stiles on the phone and he’s cursing worse than a sailor and telling me my boobs look great but also like they could happily kill him all by themselves.” Derek is horrified.
“Don’t you care about the awful fucking bullcrap that comes out of her mouth? It’s scarring.” He blurts out to Boyd, no matter how hard he tries to stop himself. Boyd’s eyebrow goes up slowly and one corner of his mouth quirks up. Great. Now Boyd is laughing at him.
“Uncomfortable truth spell.” Lydia says briskly as she walks through the door. “Poorly done, because you startled a very young pixie. You better go talk to Stiles.”
“Why the fuck” Derek states calmly, “would I put myself in that kind of humiliating opportunity? Fuck.” he says, rolling his eyes at the drivel that’s coming out of his mouth.
“Clearly” Lydia says, eyeing him critically, “it can’t be any more humiliating than this. The spell will be broken if you say the most uncomfortable truth. I suggest you go to Stiles and you both pull your head out of your asses.”
“No fucking way.” Derek announces petulantly.
.
Thirty minutes later finds him at Stiles door after Scott, tired of having Derek and Stiles commenting on his girl problems, sends Derek to Stiles’ house with an alpha command and turns his phone off so Stiles can’t get to him.
“Jesus.” Scott keeps saying. “If we had a swear jar I could pay for my future kid’s education.”
“If you ever fucking get around to fucking Kira without falling all over your puppy-dog self.” Stiles chimes in from over the phone.
“Jesus.” Scott repeats. He’s pretty much an endlessly patient alpha. Derek thinks he pulls the patience out of his ass, honestly. He barely refrains from saying so, mostly only because he’s being shunted off to Stiles.
His full-blown, pathetic crush on Stiles is legitimately the one thing he would rather not talk about, even if the world is ending. In the grand scheme of things, having a temporary profanity-laced truth spell is probably not the worst thing that has happened to him, and maybe for someone stronger confessing an attraction is nothing – but Derek will admit in this case he’s a coward. He’s okay with Stiles’ friendship, isn’t willing to push for more. Rejection isn’t something he can get over easily, and overcoming years of isolation and loneliness is possibly the hardest thing he’s ever done. It doesn’t work as easily as he thought it would. This kind of love doesn’t fade away completely, not ever – and why would he want to saddle Stiles with that?
The door is yanked open before he can knock, and Stiles looks like he’s trying desperately to keep himself from talking. Derek’s energy is spent – he feels emotionally drained from all the worrying he did on the run over. Still, he opens his mouth, because Lydia is right, he can feel something egging him on to say the words to Stiles, and he thinks if he ignores it for too long it’ll kill him.
“Fuck!” Stiles blurts out, covering his mouth with his hands and saying something unintelligible into them.
“What?” Derek asks, momentarily thrown. “What did you say? I couldn’t hear you.” Then he does a double take, because he doesn’t feel the incessant need to curse, and a pressure he hadn’t even realized was there lifts itself from his mind.
“Nothing.” Stiles says, looking miserable. “Look, the curse is lifted.”
“Yeah.” Derek says, flashing a brief smile. “But what did you say to break it?”
He has an inkling. A very tiny inkling in the back of his head that’s growing louder every second, because he’s not dumb, he heard something very faintly –
“I said,” Stiles says, exhaling slowly, “that I love you.”
And Derek is kissing him before Stiles even finishes, his hands coming up to Stiles hips and pulling him close, as close as possible. Stiles’ hands fist in Derek’s shirt and he opens his fucking mouth up beautifully for Derek, moaning like a porn star. And that thought isn’t curse induced, but all Derek, and he’s happier than he’s ever been before.
.
Much later, when they’re lying in bed, sated, and Derek is trying to convince Stiles that having a swear jar isn’t a personal attack at Stiles’ tendency to say fuck or shit even though he’s lying and it totally is, Scott barges in on them.
“What were you motherfuckers saying about my fucking girlfriend? I’ll fucking kill you asshats-“ and then he stops, horrified.
“Just to be clear,” Stiles says, staring at his glittery best friend “is the shock because we’re naked in bed together or because you’ve been cursed by a manic pixie?”