Work Text:
No one really knows where the Dalmatian came from. It just showed up one day, wandered right in through the open truck bay doors and curled up right in front of the lockers to take a nap. Of course all of the men and women of station house 603 were instantly enamored with him, Erica and Isaac in particular cooing over the preening dog like his sudden arrival had made their lives complete.
And as brokenhearted as everyone was when Derek insisted that they had to see if they could find the dog’s owner, that feeling quickly gave way to outbursts of joy more reminiscent of five year olds getting a new puppy instead of firefighters used to putting their lives on the line after Derek took the dog to the shelter and had it confirmed that it didn’t have an ID chip, and that if they didn’t have any inquiries within two weeks then the station could look forward to having the only appropriate mascot for a firehouse.
“He’s sooooooo cute!” Erica proclaimed, as the newest member of their team turned around, and then turned around again on his new dog bed. It was only one of a multitude of toys and treats and dog furniture that the crew had purchased while waiting for the ok to make him their own. “What a little cutie!”
“We really need to give him a proper name that isn’t some derivative of ‘cute’,” said Vernon dryly.
“Naming him before we got him would have been bad luck,” argued Scott, filling up a KONG with peanut butter in anticipation of trying to win all of the dog’s affection for himself.
“And buying all this stuff wasn’t?” Derek asked with a raised eyebrow as he scritched behind ‘not cutie’s’ ears, earning a rapidly wagging tail and a tongue bath in return. “I still can’t believe that no one came looking for this guy. He’s a purebred, and they’re usually pretty pricy.”
“It’s because it was meant to be,” said Isaac with conviction, as he took out his phone to take a picture of their captain covered in doggy slobber and trying to pretend that it bothered him.
*****
Derek was having trouble sleeping, which was no good when the whole purpose of having a bunk at the station was to stay well rested for an emergency whenever you were on shift. He decided to go down to the truck bay for awhile; ever since he had been a kid and he saw a half dozen of those marvelous vehicles help save family home, just being around them had always had a calming effect.
He slid down the pole, as that was another thing that was hard to grow out of, and started off toward what he always considered his favorite truck, having staked it out by peppering the dash with stickers given to him by his nieces and nephews, ghouls and goblins from Troy, race cars from Carl, and puppies and kittens from Anna and Emma, when he thought he saw something move out of the corner of his eye.
He turned, expecting to see the newest canine member of their family.
What he was not expecting to see was a beautiful naked young man, his body speckled with freckles and moles, standing right in front of him.
“Umm…Hi?” The young man said before bolting around the corner and out of sight. After taking a moment to come back to his senses Derek gave chase, but the man was nowhere to be found. Instead the Dalmatian was curled up on the floor whimpering. Derek sat down beside him and stroked his head.
“What was that all about boy?”
*****
A few days later Derek had all but put the incident out of his mind for the most part, having written it off as him being closer to sleep then he had actually realized at the time. After all, gorgeous, completely lickable nude men did not just show up out of nowhere and disappear the same way unless some sort of dreaming was involved.
The fact that the next two nights he had what he knew for sure to be dreams involving his hallucinated clothing adverse fantasy man doing some very interesting and athletic maneuvers involving the firepole.
And then a firehose. These were not subtle dreams.
Though Derek would probably have categorized them as his favorite dreams ever if not for the fact that having them while sleeping at the station house involved waking up in an…exited state while still in the station house, with Scott and Isaac acting and laughing like twelve year olds, Vernon pointedly looking stoically away, and Erica coming in from where she bunked to try and take pictures and give her critique on his manhood. It was an overall flattering critique, but that didn’t mean that Derek was interested in hearing it from her.
“What did I do to get stuck with a group where you’re the most professional one out of the lot of them?” grumbled Derek as he let ‘Cutie’ get comfortable on his lap. (Erica could be very persuasive, in that she said she would boycott taking her turns for cooking dinner because it was confirming to gender norms if Derek didn’t acquiesce to her about the name. Forget about that fact that everyone had to take turns cooking and she just happened to make the best pasta sauces. Derek just didn’t want to even chance Scott picking up an extra turn making dinner. The kid was nice, and brave as hell, but the odds of getting food poisoning when he made anything other than pancakes was just too high) He stroked Cutie’s flank, earning a happy tail wag and a lick at his free hand resting by Cutie’s head for his efforts.
“We’re all plenty professional,” said Isaac as he and Vernon walked in from a quicky ice cream run, “We got badges and everything.”
“Though you do realize that Cutie’s gonna come pretty close to that with our latest present,” Vernon said holding out a small bag with the words ‘Lee’s Engraving’ written on it with one hand, and a sturdy leather dog collar in the other. He knelt down to slip the collar around Cutie’s neck as Derek opened up the bag to find two brass colored metal discs. One with the name Cutie engraved on it, the other with their station emblem and ‘Engine 603’ on it.
“When did you guys get these done? You weren’t gone for longer than half an hour,” Derek asked attaching the tags on to the collar while Cutie licked at his fingers.
“Why does Derek get all the Cutie kisses?” Isaac groused, walking away to put away the ice cream as Vernon sighed.
“We actually had them commissioned as soon as we knew you were going to cave to Erica on the name.”
Derek was about to start arguing about how he didn’t cave when the alarm went off. Cutie jumped off and got himself out of the way of everyone and the lockers, something they hadn’t even had to train him for. It was just something he did instinctively, another sign that he was meant to be with them.
It was always a rush, adrenaline pumping as they all threw on their gear and climbed up into the trucks, the bay doors opening and them peeling off into the night, sirens blazing.
It was time to get to work.
*****
It wasn’t a bad one considering. House fire, but nothing more than some very minor smoke inhalation for the family, house left structurally intact for the most part, and even the goldfish got out perfectly alright.
But still, there were only two ways to go after a call; either you remained amped up for hours or you crashed, and until one of those things happened you never knew which way it was going to go.
Tonight it ended up that everyone but Derek succumbed to the crash. So there he was once again, wandering around downstairs trying to settle his mind, and trying to remember whether his Uncle Peter’s birthday was last week or next week and whether he should bother to try and get in touch with his mom while she was on her second honeymoon in Europe or just send a card tomorrow to split the difference.
He decided that a game of catch with Cutie was in order to help him both mellow out and forget the fact that he had seen his mother looking at brochures for nude beaches.
But Cutie wasn’t in his dog bed, or in his lounging spot on Derek’s truck, or any of his usual go to places. Derek was trying not to panic that the Dalmatian had somehow gotten out and run away when he heard a sound from the downstairs kitchenette.
“So that’s where you are,” Derek said softly with relief. Sure the door was supposed to be closed at night, but maybe someone forgot. Or hell, maybe Cutie had opened it himself. He was a smart dog if there ever was one, and he had seen the videos on youtube. His cute obsessed crew had seen to that.
He walked over and opened the door to the kitchenette, expecting to see a friendly, purebred spotted dog.
Instead he found a naked, spotted, just as attractive as Derek remembered him from what he thought had been his dreams, man. Who was currently drinking one of Erica’s coconut juices that she had just accused Scott of stealing earlier that day.
Who was wearing a sturdy leather collar, with two brass colored metal discs attached, that caught what little light was in the room as they shifted slightly when the man swallowed his mouthful of juice.
“Hi again?”
*****
Derek stared dumbly as his fantasy come to life set down the can of juice and sighed, running his hand through his hair. Derek got distracted by how soft if looked, and how the moles on the man’s face and body seemed to correlate suspiciously well to the spots on a more familiar canine form.
“You…are you…you can’t be…” Derek began, unable to even make a complete sentence, because while the evidence in front of him was saying one thing, and all common sense and reason was saying another. The man held up his hand.
“Ok, I’m gonna stop you right there as I can already see the wheels in your head turning. Good on you for making the intuitive leap that defies all logic, thank you for not getting your ax though you look very manly holding it, and so on and so on. Yes, I’m your station dog Cutie, real nice job caving to Erica on that one by the way, though people usually call me Stiles when I’m not running around on all fours.”
“How…why…?” Derek still couldn’t bring himself to actually articulate the absurdity of what he was asking. And that name, that weird name, where had he heard it before?
“Why am I a dog a good chunk of the time? Excellent question. The long and the short of it is that your nieces Anna and Emma, while being two very engaging, and more importantly, too smart for their own good little seven year olds, were trying to figure out what their favorite Uncle Derek would like more, a puppy for work or a boyfriend. Because every fireman is supposed to have a Dalmatian puppy, of course, but their uncle should have someone to kiss like on TV, and they remembered that you had explained to them that some boys like other boys. Apparently they’ve been kinda bragging about it to their little friends, because being a gay fireman makes you cool? The younger generation is kind of inspiring. But anyway, the important part is that they came to the conclusion that that you deserved both before deciding to root through my bag, where they were not supposed to go I might add, your sister really needs to give them a talk about boundaries, and started messing around with my grimore when I was in the bathroom. And one quickly cast spell later…” Stiles gestured to himself, still apparently unconcerned with neither his nudity nor the fact that said nudity paired with the dog collar was a visual that was making Derek’s pants feel particularly restricting.
“I know, I know, as I’m the one who is actually a proper witch in training, and yeah, magic is real but I guess you figured that out already, I should have been more careful, but man it was just a rough day already, you know? And it’s actually really impressive that they managed to cast and partially adapt the spell as I had only taught them a little bit of Latin for fun once they finished their other work-”
Finally Derek found his voice, and remembered where he had heard the name before. “You’re the tutor Laura hired because the twins were getting bored in school.”
“They are two very precocious scamps. Precocious scamps who probably should have witchcraft properly folded into their curriculum for everyone’s own good, because seriously, the worst thing I managed at their age was accidently turning my dad’s hair neon pink, not canine variations on the Frog Prince.”
“You’re the tutor that Laura had been making noise about setting me up with,” Derek said, his feet moving of their own volition, taking him closer to Stiles. Laura had not so much been just making noise as singing the praises of the twins’ tutor, how well he connected with them, how smart he was, how ‘cute and single he was, Derek, I really think you two should meet…’
“Yeah, well, that may have been how the girls really first got the idea that you could use a boyfriend as much as a dog,” Stiles said, blushing for the first time.
“And you came here,” Derek said, reaching out to touch Stiles’ face, like he had so many times before, but not like this, so not like this…
“Laura had told me all about you, and shown me your picture, so before the girls put the whammy on me I was already…inclined, eagerly inclined, meet you, just trying to psych myself up, and once the spell took effect the urge to go to you just kind of took over. When I was a dog I was kind of aware, but not really, sort of buried beneath the doggie instincts…but I still knew who you were and who I really was and…it was still you that I wanted to be around.”
“What about all the cuddles you let rest of them give you?” Derek asked, pulling Stiles in close against him with the hand that was not currently occupied tracing his moles.
“I’ve always been a bit of a cuddle slut. But I saved my kisses for you,” Stiles said with a soft press of the lips to punctuate his point.
”And this spell…it’s not making you…?” Derek asked with apprehension, not wanting to be told that what Stiles seemed to be telling him was really only just the result of his well intentioned but unworldly nieces.
“I was going to screw up my courage and call you that night. I was half in love with you after Laura showed me the pictures of you playing with the girls. Right now this is all me,” Stiles said with a small chuckle. “I was so afraid that you wouldn’t understand… for those not in the know magic can kind of freak people out. That’s why I ran away the first time you saw me, even though it delayed breaking the spell.”
“And what do we do to break the spell? Because as much as everyone loves Cutie, I think I’d rather you be like this,” Derek asked, his vague memories of fairytales making him very optimistic about the answer.
“Let’s just say we should all be happy that your innocent young nieces didn’t understand all of the finer points of the spell,” Stiles said with a wide grin that Derek could very easily get used to, as he snaked his hand in between their bodies and shoved it down Derek’s pants. “Yes?”
“Yes.”
*****
Derek woke up on the floor of the kitchenette to the sound of the simulated camera shutter on Erica’s phone, Scott and Isaac wailing about not being able to unsee things, nothing from Vernon because he knew when to stay away, and the soft in and out of Stiles breathing from within the circle of his arms.
He tightened his grip and lifted his head slightly to talk softly to his crew. “We’re going to have to find a new dog mascot, ok? We’ll go to the shelter tomorrow.” He looked down at Stiles. “I have plans for the rest of today.”