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It was shortly after the sun set on a Sunday evening when it happened again. To Isaac's dismay, Derek had an incredibly unpredictable working out schedule, which inconvenienced Isaac's plan to show everyone the hidden side of their Alpha.
He grabbed his phone to send a message to the "Fun Pack" chat, which actually also had the creepy moon emoticon in its title. That thing was probably the main reason they created a group without Derek. The last message was an image shared by Scott with the title "dank meme" which was the second reason the chat was created, Derek just lacked the appreciation for memes and they got sick explaining to him what a weredoge was and why it kept saying "very moon, such howl". However, he did like grumpy cat, Stiles then changed their group picture to the cat and it took Derek a whole week to figure out how to change it back. It was now the triskele symbol. Well, it was actually a photo of a computer screen that showed the google results for “triskele”, but nobody wanted to go through the painful procedure of showing Derek how to save an image on his phone and then upload it as the chat picture.
Anyway, Isaac was about to give the group its third reason to exist: "Pack meeting @ dereks. NOW.”
Unsurprisingly, Stiles was the first one who made it to Derek’s loft. Isaac recognized his Jeep easily enough, he would also be the only one who came alone. Isaac opened the door to let him in and was immediately greeted by the baseball bat.
“Fun. Pack.” How Stiles still believed that a baseball bat could help him against anything supernatural was beyond him. It was kind of terrifying that this guy was the smartest pack member.
“Seriously?”, Stiles looked at his phone to confirm that yep, the message was not sent into their actual pack chat. “You could have made the message sound a little less like an actual pack meeting, you know? Used some smileys or made a joke or just about anything to not make it look like the usual pack messages? I’d have time to finish an episode if I knew that this isn’t an actual pack meeting, it takes Scott and Allison at least 30 minutes just to separate themselves long enough to drive here.”
Which was the reason that Boyd and Erica weren’t there yet, even though both of their places was closer than Stiles’ home. There was no use in hurrying up, if a third of the pack will be late anyway.
“So what is this meeting about?”
“Wait for the others,” replied Isaac as he sat back down on the couch and grabbed his 3DS. He had finally managed to convince Derek to get it for him and he had still around 500 Pokémon to catch (up).
Finally, finally , after 45 minutes the last two of the pack made it to Derek’s place. How were these two even alive with their constant urge to make out at any given time?
“So now that we’re finally all here,” said Isaac through clenched teeth. With the time passing it was very likely that Derek would just stop any minute and he really didn’t want to tell the pack of his discovery without proof. Also, because Stiles spent the last 45 minutes narrating everything Isaac did and he didn’t even knew that you could suck so much at a Pokémon game.
“I won’t even try to explain. Just listen very, very closely.” He send an apologising shrug to Stiles and Allison and grinned to the confused werewolves.
“Derek is working out?” said Scott without even trying to listen very, very closely.
“Obviously, yeah. But listen ,” Isaac whispered the last part as if he was sharing his biggest secret with the pack. Well, he actually did share a big secret with them, just not his.
A few minutes of complete silence passed as the pack tried to do as instructed. Derek would be actually proud by how hard they tried, if he wouldn’t be the one they were currently spying on.
“I hear music,” whispered Erica, she tried to keep silent to stay focused on the sounds.
“Try to listen to the words.” Isaac’s grin grew to borderline shit-eating at this point.
Cause, baby, now we got bad blood
You know it used to be mad love
So take a look what you've done
'Cause, baby, now we got bad blood
“Is that Taylor Swift!?” exclaimed Erica, effectively startling Scott and Boyd who were still trying to figure out what they were listening to.
“Yep.”
Definitely a shit-eating grin.
The pack went upstairs to avoid Derek hearing what they would talk about. Or well, avoid him hearing them laugh.
“Taylor Swift? Really!?” This was the first time Stiles regretted his decision to not accept the bite from Peter. He would have loved to hear it with his own ears. That regret only lasted for a second though because no. Just no.
“And sometimes Disney,” provided Isaac helpfully, while watching Erica lying down on his bed, laughing.
“This is nearly as great as when Boyd discovered that Derek has mad baking skills,” said Erica with tears in her eyes. Isaac felt kind of insulted that Erica put his actual discovery on the same level of Boyd getting a birthday cake. It was true, though. The cake tasted amazing to a degree that everyone assumed Derek had paid someone to bake it.
“I’m not really sure how this is such a huge deal,” said Allison.
“Dude, we’re talking about Derek! The big bad Alpha wolf who listens to Disney and teen pop! We could tease him about it for the next five years!” Stiles hid the fact that he actually mostly found it incredibly endearing. Of course the guy with the angriest face would listen to Disney songs and bake his betas the sweetest cakes.
“We could make a bet about it,” replied Erica, way too excited about the prospect of embarrassing her Alpha. “Everyone picks a song and whoever embarrasses him the most wins.”
“How the hell do you measure embarrassment?” asked Stiles.
“Scent,” replied Boyd. And with this everyone was in agreement.
Isaac had a plan. Of course he had, the bet was measurement of assholeness and Isaac had a reputation to uphold. Derek had some choice payback coming his way and Isaac couldn’t wait for the moment he would say in his Alpha’s face “lol it was just a prank, bro. Calm down”.
Okay, maybe he wouldn’t say that. His plan also took some escape routes into consideration in case Derek would not “calm down”. Nobody could say he wasn’t prepared. The plan was rather straightforward, but it was one that guaranteed him success. Isaac was determined to embarrass Derek or die trying. (And die after succeeding, but it was worth it.)
He waited until the weekly pack meeting on Tuesday, Isaac sent a message to the rest of the pack to make sure that they wouldn't ruin his plans by making their own move. Derek was probably well aware that something was off by the way every member of the pack kept throwing glances towards Isaac, waiting for the moment it would start.
But the meeting ended without any incident. Which was not according to Isaac’s plan.
Isaac was waiting for Derek to use one single word, one that he never failed to use at any meetings. Well, until now apparently. Isaac had to interfer right now and if that meant throwing a former comrade into the danger zone, then so be it.
When Stiles got up to help clean off the couch table from the various snacks and cups the pack placed there, that was when Isaac struck. A single leg that was suddenly stretched out way further than before was honestly enough, Stiles wasn’t known for his dexterity so one limb being out of place startled him enough to go flying. Together with everything he had in his hands at that moment. Which was basically the whole content of the table. Oops.
While Isaac watched the snacks and the still partially filled cups flying he was very grateful that Derek didn’t have a carpet that could be ruined. Instead it was Derek who stood right there and got everything flying towards him. Oops.
There was a deafening silence for maybe 3 seconds. And then Isaac and Erica started laughing simultaneously and judging by the grin Stiles wore on his face he didn’t plan on apologizing, either. He was probably very close to making a joke about wet dogs.
God, that one would have played into his plan perfectly.
“Stiles,” Derek growled deeply. And there it was, the magic word Isaac had been waiting for. “You need to pay more attention to your surroundings if you want to survive,” Derek added and Isaac considered praying tonight because he couldn’t have gotten a better cue than this.
“Who'd' ya think you're kiddin'” With this all attention was on Isaac. He most definitely didn’t sing it, but if someone didn’t recognize the song from Hercules then they most definitely shouldn’t be in this contest anyway.
“He's the Earth and heaven to you
Try to keep it hidden
Honey, we can see right through you
Girl, ya can't conceal it
We know how ya feel and
Who you're thinking of”
Now that he actually said the lines out loud he noticed that it might have been a lot of a dick-move to state Derek’s feelings out loud, but it couldn’t really be taken as any kind of outing. His affection towards Stiles was so painfully obvious to everyone with eyes. (And Stiles’ affection towards Derek was embarrassingly obvious to everyone with a werewolf’s nose.) And it was a great plan, he would embarrass Derek with both his love for Stiles and his love for shitty music.
So waited for any kind of denial so that he could continue with “You swoon, you sigh why deny it, uh-oh”, but it stayed silent. And that was when Isaac noticed the quickened heartbeat and the smell of utter and pure embarrassment. And judging by the intensity there was no way someone else would win.
Except for the fact that it wasn’t Derek who seemed ashamed of what Isaac said, but it was Stiles whose face was completely red. Goddamnit.
The following silence earned itself a proud second place on the most awkward moments in Isaac’s life. Sorry, Derek, but even this won’t top the one time he accidentally called his first girlfriend “mom”. She wasn’t even older than him.
“Uhm, Derek? I think you’re supposed to say ‘No chance, no way I won't say it, no, no’ next.” Bless Allison for being an angel, Isaac would kiss her if Scott wouldn’t rip his throat out for it.
“Why should I?”
“Is Stiles the earth and heaven to you?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“WHAT,” the whole pack replied in unison and Isaac could swear he heard Peter falling down in his room. This is the most synchronous the pack has ever been, and Derek should really be proud of them. But first things first.
“What exactly do you mean by that!?” Stiles asked immediately and oh god, getting his Alpha laid was not Isaac’s plan at all.
“You’re part of the pack, so of course you’re important to me,” Derek replied as if it was the most normal thing ever and started cleaning up the mess without actually looking at Stiles. Which was a good thing because Stiles looked like a kicked puppy out in the rain. And it was Isaac’s fault that he got packzoned.
Now Scott would rip out his throat anyway and he didn’t even got to kiss Allison.
Boyd watched his fair share of Disney movies in his life, this is the fate you have as an older brother. Most of the movies belonged in the category “never again”, but there was one that he had always been fond of.
It was also a safe bet after the disaster of Isaac’s attempt.
He sent Derek a message and got a reply three hours later, which was pretty fast all things considered. His plan was set and the day of operation would be Thursday, which was the day of their weekly training. The pack used to train two times a week, but after them complaining several times about how their grades suffered from taking care of all of the supernatural even though it should be the adults’ job, Derek finally relented and reduced it to once a week. None of the pack actually used the extra time for any kind of studying.
Thursday’s training started out as usual. The pack met at Derek’s loft and spent only 5 minutes waiting for Scott and Allison (they told him that the training actually started half an hour ago so that they would at least be somewhat on time). Then it was up to Boyd to decide where the training would actually hold place, he didn’t inform the others of his plan, but with him taking charge everyone was well aware that he would take his chance today.
Boyd chose the woods to set the mood right. He spent the whole way there mentally preparing himself for the next few minutes, hoping that it would be at least a little bit embarrassing for Derek to overshadow Boyd’s own embarrassment. His heartbeat was already skyrocketing before anything actually started.
When they made it to their usual place, plenty far away from the nearest building and street, he took another to brace himself and to watch the others. Stiles sat down on his usual log and pulled out a book to read, not that he actually planned on reading it right now, but more to pull his own attention away from Derek. Who sat down right next to him, now that he didn’t need to instruct them. Allison sat down to Stiles’ left. The other three werewolves stood there waiting for Boyd’s instruction. Next to their unusually huge grin, only the even huger distance between Scott and Isaac was even more out of place. Yeah, he wasn’t forgiven, yet.
With a deep breath Boyd pulled off his shirt to make it more authentic. Erica’s glimpse of interest wasn’t lost on him, but this was not the right time.
“Let's get down to business
To defeat the Huns.
Did they send me daughters
When I asked for sons?” Boyd may have sung it a little bit to remember the lyrics easier.
He was about to continue, luckily his song didn’t require any kind of input by Derek, so he was startled when he got that input anyway.
“What the fuck, Boyd!?”
Derek sounded more pissed off than embarrassed, Boyd’s self-preservation skills didn’t even kick in, instead he was wondering if anger counted at least a bit towards their bet. It was still better than the lack of reaction in Isaac’s attempt.
“Are you aware that Erica could beat you up easily?” Huh? “Or that Allison could hunt all of you down without even breaking out in sweat?”
“What are you talking about?” Boyd’s question seemed to upset Derek even further and Boyd was really close to just present his throat and hope for the best.
“You just said, that daughters are weaker than sons. Have you forgotten that both of my last Alphas were women? One of them my mother, who was one of the most influential Alphas in the Pacific coast?”
Boyd currently regretted all of his life decisions.
“I- this is not…” How was he even supposed to explain to his Alpha that he was trying to tease him about his taste in Disney music, by using a song from the one Disney movie he always adored because of the badass girl who saves all of China? Without actually explaining why he did that. His shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to imply that.”
“I’m not the one you should be apologising to,” Derek replied, still visibly angry but at least not threatening anymore. He turned around and went deeper into the woods, probably to work off some steam.
“Did Derek just go into a feminist rant because of a Disney song?” Isaac was the first one to speak, clearly amused by Boyd’s misery of failing just as hard as he did.
“Yep. And I’m totally wet right now” Wow, Erica, too much information.
Stiles nodded. Too much information.
“So, does that mean we don’t have any training today? We should totally make a Disney marathon just to celebrate.” Boyd was so glad that he had friends like Scott who always thought they knew what he needed right now, but missed the goal so far that even General Li Shang wouldn’t be able to teach him how to shoot and hit.
Boyd was about to make an excuse, but Erica already grabbed him.
“Sorry, guys. Boyd and I have plans for this evening,” Erica had a predatory grin on her face, “well, I have plans and Boyd will be the witness.”
“Get him!” shouted Allison towards them as they made their way back to the loft. And Boyd wasn’t sure if she was talking about him or Derek.
Spending some time alone with Boyd was really nice, Erica thought. Or it would be nice if they were actually alone.
“You really didn’t need to come with us,” Erica repeats again.
“Oh, of course, sure. I’ll let you and Boyd do your thing on your own, so you two can cheat in peace,” Isaac answers. Again.
“Come on, there’s nothing on stake, why should I cheat? Besides the fact that we can all tell if someone lies.”
“Still don’t trust you. I also kind of live there and there’s no way I’ll sit through a Disney marathon with Scott and Allison.”
“Okay, but what is Stiles doing here?” Erica spoke up so that the only human wouldn’t have any problems hearing them from the kitchen.
“Do you really think I’m going to miss out on this?” He shouted back. At least one of them needed an actual reason to stay in the loft if Derek asks. (Not that he ever minded them, the pack probably uses his loft more often than he did.)
Erica was ready to retort something, but Boyd shushed her and pointed at the door. The three Betas strained their ears to hear Derek walking up the stairs to the loft. Stiles left the kitchen, confused about the sudden silence. So there it goes, good thing that Erica didn’t have a plan she could be worried about.
She stood up and stalked towards the door in the same moment as Derek entered the loft. Erica didn’t need to turn around to know that at least two out of three were filming the scene.
“Nice to meet you, where you been?” Erica starts in her best Taylor Swift impression and immediately continues before Derek could actually try answer her that question. Didn’t he learn anything during this week?
“I could show you incredible things” She grabs his hands and practically pulls him towards the stairs. Derek starts getting confused again, he went on a run because his Betas are acting weird and how he’s back to this. But he doesn’t stop Erica from dragging him towards the stairs.
“Magic, madness, heaven, sin” While singing that she points at Stiles, Isaac, Boyd and then at Derek. In that order. Isaac looked like he wanted to start an argument but honestly, what was it with the guys trying to interrupt her?
“Saw you there and I thought
"Oh, my God, look at that face!"”
After dragging him through the whole room, Erica made a step towards Derek to touch his face. Derek made a step back. Rude .
“You look like my next mistake
Love's a game, wanna play?”
And with that Erica stalked away to go up the stairs and continue singing from a more elevated position, but it was now time for Derek to grab her.
“Since when is love a game to you?”
Erica was too startled by the question to reply anything but, “New money, suit and tie”. So it was up to Derek to interpret it in whatever weird way he managed to do it during this week.
It took him a moment, but then he asked carefully, “Is this about money?” he threw a careful glance towards Boyd and then back to Erica. “You really shouldn’t break up with Boyd just because he can’t take you out on fancy dates.”
Why did she let him think on his own?
“Or is it about the remark he made earlier today? Are you trying to take revenge?”
“What? No!” And before he could get any worse conclusions Erica continued with, “Yeah, it’s totally because of the lack of fancy dates.”
The look of disappointment that Derek gave her made her feel worse than that one time she lied to her favourite plush animal when she was five.
“Erica,” he started, but seemed to struggle with the words. Erica really wished she could be somewhere else right now.
“If it’s only about the money then you could have talked to me.”
While it sounded really tempting to Erica right now, Derek’s awkward parenting voice made the situation only worse.
“Wow, thanks, Derek!” she didn’t sound thankful at all, “Boyd and I will now talk about this and our relationship!” Erica grabbed Boyd’s hand (there was a lot of hand-grabbing today) and pulled him towards the exit. “Bye!”
Erica closed the door but waited a bit to hear what they would happen next.
“So, uh. Anyone want some dinner?” Stiles was the one who broke the silence and Derek’s “Sure, let me set the table.” was filled with so much fondness that it nearly made her gag.
Isaac wasn’t as considerate when making gagging noises.
Allison chose the worst moment possible for her turn in the bet.
The pack and her father were in the loft. The whole building was surrounded by a protective shield that warded off the creature that tried to kill them and nearly succeeded with Derek. He was sitting on the sofa, shirtless and with his wounds nearly fully healed. All werewolves were involved in the fight but none of them took as much damage as he did, the amount of blood loss he suffered through was terrifying.
Right now Allison’s father tried to form a plan against their gnome-like enemy together with the pack. The plan was fairly simple, the werewolves would lure it further away from the building and her dad would shoot it from a safe distance. It wasn’t even an issue to find willing werewolves for this task, Scott and Isaac were immediately set on playing the decoy to impress Chris and by extension Allison.
No, the issue was keeping Derek away from it.
“Derek, you’re hurt. Let Scott and Isaac deal with that thing. You know, the ones who aren’t wounded,” the fact that Chris still tried to convince Derek was truly admirable and he should be a role model for all of them. Except that Derek didn’t really listen to reason. After all he’s the Alpha.
“It’s healed, I can fight.”
“Even if it would be fully healed,” and Chris honestly doubted it based on how much damage was done, “You still lost too much blood to be fight effectively.”
“I won’t let the pack fight without their Alpha.”
And really, Allison should just leave her dad dealing with this. Anyone would be better at dealing with it than she right now. But she had a plan formed in her head and before reason took over she started singing.
Full on singing.
“You want to go outside
Oh
Why, Derek?
Look at you, as fragile as a flower
Still a little sapling, just a sprout”
Allison really hoped that Derek would refrain from murdering her in front of her father.
“You know why we stay up in this tower,” she knew she needed to leave Derek to say his part. He even seemed very willing to say something, but she really didn’t dare to take a break and let him speak up.
“That's right, to keep you safe and sound, Der”
By now the whole pack caught on what was going on, Derek should actually be embarrassed just for how long it took them, and were anticipating any kind of reaction from Derek. Allison only hoped it would be a reaction of the non-violent kind.
“Guess I always knew this day was coming
Knew that soon you'd want to leave the nest
Soon, but not yet“
Allison got closer to Derek for the next part, shushing him from the other side of the room would be kind of weird.
“Shh, trust me, pet,” and with that she went back to the other side of the room. She sincerely hoped he wouldn’t take this as a dog comparison on top of the other insults.
“Father knows best,” Allison points at her father who looks extremely out of place in this setting. Don’t worry dad, you’re not the only one who feels that way.
“Father knows best
Listen to my father
It's a scary world out there
Father knows best
One way or another
Something will go wrong, I swear”
It was kind of fascinating that this was the point that finally set off Derek and made him interrupt Allison.
“And this is exactly why I’m going with them!”
“Boyd will go with them,” Stiles interjection sounded so final that neither Boyd nor Derek dared to object. “Derek, if you go out there and fight, the rest of the pack will be too concerned about your safety to concentrate on the gnome-creature. Let your pack deal with it.”
Derek looked like he wanted to talk back to Stiles, but his shoulders slumped in defeat.
“Okay, you go and take care of that thing.”
With their Alpha’s go-ahead Scott, Isaac and Boyd made their way downstairs and Chris followed the teenagers. Allison was about to follow her father when Derek spoke up.
“Wait Allison,” Derek’s voice didn’t betray how he felt but after her short interlude Allison didn’t doubt that the following conversation wouldn’t be a nice one.
“So what did you mean with me being as fragile as a flower?”
And with that Allison noticed that her plan of hiding behind her father wasn’t possible if her father was outside fighting some kind of gnome. That had been truly a horrible timing for the bet.
Scott was partially pressured into taking his turn as soon as possible. Allison was teased relentlessly about her attempt and she really wanted someone else to take the spotlight (even though Erica totally high-fived her for her use of the situation).
The problem was, that Scott didn’t knew which song to choose. He never listened to Taylor Swift or any other similar artists, and he wasn’t a huge fan of Disney. Allison’s shocked gasp about this revelation was still stuck in his head and Stiles' outraged “You’re not allowed to use their songs if you don’t feel them!” made it final that he was banned from using Disney songs. The only possibility left for Scott was to go through Taylor Swift’s songs and just trying to find something he could use.
After looking at the titles he decided to just skip every song related to love, just for his own peace of mind.
From the remaining YouTube videos he made a playlist in hope that a sudden inspiration would struck him. After the third playthrough he decided to remove the song “I Knew You Were Trouble”. Admittedly, there weren’t a lot of songs left he could use. For a moment he considered using a different artist, but even though the song “Die Young” by Ke$ha would probably stay stuck in his head for the next 3 weeks, it wasn’t the most fitting one.
So he spent the whole day listening to the few songs on the playlist up and down until he couldn’t bear listening to her voice ever again. How did Derek survive this on a regular basis?
Scott stopped thinking about the bet, maybe if he would ignore the issue it would disappear by itself. On Thursday the glares that Allison gave him got harder to ignore, but it wasn’t his fault that the rest of the pack all took their chance within a five day window and Allison, as the last one, had to endure their teasing until Scott finally took his turn.
He once asked if Stiles already knew what to do.
“Yeah, of course. I had a plan since Erica made Derek her and Boyd’s sugar daddy,” Stiles totally ignored Scott’s cringe.
“And why didn’t you do anything, yet?”
“Because you save the best part for the end!”
And Scott failed miserably at convincing him otherwise.
Scott went to Derek’s loft for the weekly training session. At least now that Allison avoids him he can be on time for the first time in ever. Except that there was nobody there besides Allison, and Isaac and Derek who lived there anyway.
“They gave us a wrong time because we’re always late! Can you believe this?” Allison approached him right away, obviously outraged.
“Yeah, and it took you over three months to notice,” retorted Isaac from the couch, clearly not for the first time today.
Isaac looked up from his 3DS and looked at Scott expectantly, but Scott shook his head. No plan for today either. He had to shake his head two more times when Stiles and then Boyd and Erica appeared at the loft. Stiles was the only one who seemed actually upset for having to wait any longer to finally set his plan into motion.
Training itself went down without any special occurrences, the only difference was how closely Derek watched all of them, probably still trying to figure out what was going on for the past week. They were all so caught up in training and avoiding Derek’s judging look that no one noticed the sky getting darker until a heavy downpour started seemingly out of nowhere.
Derek actually took a moment to consider if he should continue the training or call it a day. Not that the Betas cared much about it, they already made their way back. Allison was the only one with an umbrella and she was currently sharing it with Stiles, as he was the only other human and the werewolves should be able to deal with a little bit of rain. Erica’s makeup didn’t agree with this statement.
Finally back at the loft the pack just stood there for a moment like wet dogs. Scott immediately removed that comparison from his train of thought, but judging by Stiles’ snicker he came to the same conclusion.
“You guys probably don’t even need any towels, you could just shake it off,” said Stiles.
In this moment Scott was very glad that he listened to the same five songs for so long that he reacted to the sentence in a different way than the rest of them. This had to be fate.
“Yeah, he’s right!” And even Stiles looked confused his way.
“You should just Shake it off, I shake it off,” he started awkwardly.
“I, I, I shake it off, I shake it off,” Scott continued even more awkwardly.
“I, I, I shake it off, I shake it off,” Even the pack that knew about the bet didn’t seem to figure out what Scott was doing.
“I, I, I shake it off, I shake it off.” Okay, he really needed to remember the rest of the song.
“Uh… Hey, hey, hey! You think that you’ve been going down and around with all the liars and the dirty, dirty cheats of the world? You could’ve- should’ve gone down to these. Sick. Beats,” The pack actually tried to concentrate if they would hear anything, while Scott waited for three beats that happen in the song.
“My ex-man brought his new girlfriend- I mean. My ex-girlfriend brought her new- Nevermind. She’s like Oh-My-God, but I just wanna shake it. To the fella over there,” Scott pointed at first at Derek but then realised how the sentence continued and pointed at Stiles instead, “with the hella good hair. Would you come up over, baby? Would you shake, shake, shake…”
Slowly, the pack finally realised what was going on and before Scott could continue, and Scott was very thankful for that, Stiles interrupted him:
“I’m actually not wet. And the amount of mistakes you put in the lyrics aren’t getting me hard either,” well maybe not that thankful.
“Would anyone explain to me why Scott just started talking in song-lyrics and nobody thinks it’s weird?”
The grins that the pack sprouted as a result of Scott’s failure were frozen. Nobody actually decided on what should happen if Derek figures out what they’re doing. And more importantly: Who should take the fall for coming up with this plan. Not that the plan had worked, anyway.
“Of course, yeah! I’ll explain everything,” said Stiles with more confidence than anyone should have in this position. But he did say that he needed to be last for his plan to work, so maybe it would work out. The other Betas weren’t as optimistic and were wondering who would get picked as the black sheep of the pack.
Stiles took a deep breath.
Until now everything went pretty much how he expected. Better even, he didn’t need to force an explanation on Derek, he asked for one by himself. This didn’t do much to calm his nerves, though. At least Derek didn’t look upset about Scott’s “Shake It Off” performance, the following act would have been a lot harder after Allison’s song.
The slightly panicked look from the rest of the pack told him, that they didn’t have as much faith in him as he deserved. Stiles didn’t get why they got so scared anyway, Derek got rid of his violent behaviour towards the pack long ago and is now mostly all bark and no bite. (And in this moment Stiles really regretted that he didn’t pick a song from “Lady and the Tramp” or “101 Dalmatians”.)
Even right now Derek looked mostly impatient and maybe concerned about the sanity of his pack. Stiles was still nervous, though.
It had been easier with Lydia. With Lydia his whole focus was on getting her to notice him and to make her like him back. But according to the Betas, he and Derek skipped that step long ago. They didn’t actually state it, but all of them gave him “subtle” hints on how Derek reacts differently to him than to the rest of the pack.
And either Derek likes him back or he needs to teach his Betas to pay more attention.
Since Isaac’s attempt to ridicule Derek, the whole pack tried to privately reassure him that Derek does in fact like him in some way. Stiles’ crush on Derek was honestly the worst kept secret in this pack.
Stiles clung to their words as he faced Derek.
His heartbeat was completely stable when he said that you are important. It wasn’t a lie.
He always sits close to you.
You two are so domestic with each other, it’s actually disgusting.
He ignored everything my dad said, but as soon as you chimed in he was willing to follow your decision.
Derek noticed Stiles previous nervousness so when Stiles heartbeat calmed down, he too relaxed.
Dude, you two keep each other safe. I don’t even know why you question his feelings.
Stiles took a step and a deep breath.
“So you know Derek, you and I, We're no strangers to love ” Stiles heard a snort from Erica, Derek on the other hand looked completely serious.
“You know the rules and so do I
A full commitment's what I'm thinking of
You wouldn't get this from any other guy“
Another step and they were practically touching each other.
“I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling
Gotta make you understand“
Stiles swore this will be the only time he would manage to keep a straight face during this song, but Derek’s whole body language told him, that he didn’t recognize this song as the joke it was mostly known for. He was listening to what Stiles was telling him.
“Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you”
Usually, Stiles hated it when Derek looked as vulnerable as he did right now. There wasn’t a single instance in their shared life when Derek willingly showed all of himself. It was a nice change to see this openness because for once Derek wasn’t afraid of the consequences or a rejection.
Derek’s mouth was slightly open, as if he tried to say anything in return. But when Stiles leaned forward, they both agreed that words should be left to Stiles. And when his lips reached their goal, he could hear the reaction of the pack, but he didn’t listen to any of this.
Because all he ever wanted was right in front of him.
“So, Derek?”
Stiles and Derek lied on Derek’s bed, who had taken a short shower and changed clothes.
“Hm?”
“What Disney song do you like the most?”
“I don’t know any,” he answered as a matter of fact, voice soft from content and with arms around Stiles.
“What do you mean, you don’t know any? You listen to them while working out,” Stiles rubbed his cheek against Derek’s, who had his head buried in Stiles’ neck, “And don’t ask me how I know this.”
“Cora made the playlist, I don’t know any of the songs.”