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Erica was watching Derek and Stiles again, eyes twinkling with amusement. Despite there being plenty of space in the kitchen for both of them, they seemed pretty determined to get into each other’s spaces, and then bicker about it. They were both making cupcakes for Boyd’s twenty-third birthday, despite the fact that Boyd didn’t even really like cupcakes that much, and there was so much in this picture that Erica had to stare at, such as Derek wearing an honest-to-god apron, and Stiles covered in powdered sugar.
She couldn’t really remember how this had started. Stiles had been in the kitchen, but this wasn’t really anything new. And then suddenly Derek was berating him for making a mess of his countertops, and from what she could gather from the sudden flurry of words, it seemed that Derek thought that Stiles wasn’t making the buttercream icing correctly. “You’re using way too much butter,” he said hotly.
“Don’t criticize my icing, caveman,” Stiles retorted angrily, poking Derek in the chest and leaving behind a white smear on the dark material.
“I’m not a caveman.”
“Well then, make yourself useful and start on the batter. It’ll take twice as long if I have to do this all by myself.”
And now Erica was leaning against the doorway, completely unnoticed by either of them as they moved around each other. They both complained profusely, but she saw the way that Derek purposely pressed against Stiles’ back to reach up and grab a whisk. She saw how Stiles tilted his head back just a little so that Derek’s mouth touched his ear just a little. It longer for Derek to pull away than it should’ve, with far more fumbling than was necessary for the whisk, especially as a werewolf.
And they kept bickering the entire time, even as both of their heartbeats fluttered madly for those seconds that they were touching. Erica shook her head in amusement. They had no idea.
Isaac had decided a long time ago that he hated when Erica was right about things. She got unbearably smug about it. But for once, she wasn’t saying anything about it. All she had done was quietly tell Isaac and Boyd to pay attention to Derek for a little while. “Close attention,” she instructed. Derek had been working with Stiles at the time. Scott may have been the alpha now, but Stiles had always responded better to Derek telling him what to do (and by better, he argued more, which pushed Derek to treat him the same way he treated the werewolves.) This particular instance, he was insisting Stiles focus more on speed than strength. “You’re the emissary,” he reminded him, circling Stiles like a predator. “You’re not as strong, but you’re just as useful as the rest of us, maybe more. Deaton taught you everything he knew, and now you have to put it into practice as much as you can.”
Stiles looked almost bored as he turned his head to watch Derek. Isaac would’ve thought he was sleepy even, had his eyes not been tracking Derek’s every move. “Deaton already told me all of this,” Stiles reminded Derek, hands in his pockets. “You repeating it every training session isn’t going to drill it into my head any better than it already is. Puny human, remember? They’re always going to come after me first.”
Derek looked more frustrated than threatening now. “That’s my point! You need to be faster than them, smarter. You need to be able to anticipate and counter any move made towards you in any scenario!”
“I know that,” Stiles said, and the corner of his mouth twitched as he lunged at Derek. It was unexpected, even to Isaac, who had been paying close attention to his heartbeat, as he was certain Derek was. Stiles grabbed Derek’s wrist and twisted so that they both landed on the ground, and Stiles flung his hand into the air. He was up and moving away from Derek, just fast enough to avoid being grabbed by the werewolf. When Derek went to run after him, he stopped. Stiles stood just a couple feet away, grinning widely. He had surrounded Derek with an impenetrable barrier of mountain ash.
Isaac burst out laughing at the look of surprise on Derek’s face, unable to stop even when he threw a venomous look in his direction. “You were saying?” Stiles said, standing just out of reach. Lydia and Allison were both cheering from the porch, and a flash of something like pride went through Derek’s face before it settled back to its usual grumpiness.
“That wasn’t bad,” Derek said. “Really. But let me out.”
Stiles was still grinning. “I don’t know, I think I want to enjoy this a little bit more,” he said. Isaac rolled his eyes. College hadn’t matured Stiles by much, but he really couldn’t blame him in this instance. Pulling one over on Derek was hard enough when he wasn’t expecting it. In training, it was nearly impossible.
“Stiles!” Derek was glaring now.
“Fine, sheesh.” Stiles bent down to break the line, and Isaac knew what was going to happen before it did.
Derek sprang forward, catching Stiles by the arms and shoving him back into the leaves. He hovered over Stiles triumphantly, smirking down at him, his face way too close. Stiles smirked right back, leaned up and planted a kiss on Derek’s lips, and used the moment of surprise to wrench his arms from Derek’s grip and roll back to his feet.
For once, Isaac didn’t think he had a problem with Erica being right about something.
Scott rolled his eyes as, yet again, Derek and Stiles argued over who got Stiles’ dad’s armchair. “It’s my house!” Stiles said loudly, shoving at Derek to get him to get out of it. “My house, my rules!”
“I’m bigger and stronger than you,” Derek replied, relaxing back into the leather. “You’d have to get a bulldozer to get me out of here.”
“Oh yeah?” Stiles reached down and snatched Derek’s box of M&Ms right out of his lap. Derek made an irritated noise, making grabby hands for them, but Stiles had already danced out of reach. “Fight me.”
Scott watched in amusement as Derek launched himself out of the chair towards Stiles. Stiles threw the box across the room and darted around Derek to land in the chair. By the time Derek had retrieved his M&Ms, Stiles had pulled a blanket over himself and was curled in a ball on the chair. He stuck his tongue out at Derek’s murderous expression.
Something in Derek’s eyes softened a little, and he unceremoniously picked Stiles up, blanket and all, and dumped him onto the floor. Stiles got right back up, threw the blanket over Derek’s head, and squeezed himself into the tiny space left between Derek’s body and the arm of the chair. It wasn’t an easy task, because Stiles had grown a lot since high school, and Derek had never been a small man, but a few moments later, he had his legs flung over Derek’s to hang off the side of the chair and Derek had an arm around Stiles so that he could arrange the blanket over both of them.
Scott couldn’t stifle his laughter when Derek handed Stiles an M&M, and had to go upstairs to the bathroom to get control over himself.
Somehow, Allison reflected, Derek and Stiles managed to have an ongoing argument even in the middle of battling a coven of vampires. Vampires, for Christ’s sake. She thought she had seen it all back in high school.
She was perched in a tree above the action, taking careful aim at the clearing below and shooting arrows directly into the vampires’ heads whenever she got the chance. It didn’t do much more than make them have to stop for a few seconds to pull the arrows out, but it was enough for the werewolves to gain the upper hand time and time again.
Stiles was moving around quickly from vampire to vampire, forcing handfuls of what he had said was powdered mistletoe down each one’s throat. “It incapacitates them long enough to get the silver embedded in their heart,” he had told them all right before ambushing the coven. “You guys just need to keep them still enough for me to do it.”
Derek was yelling at Stiles across the clearing, grappling with a vampire as he did so. “You fucking idiot, Stiles! Your arm is going to be completely torn up by the end of tonight! They’ll turn you!”
The vampire he had cackled hysterically, as though the idea of turning Stiles was hilarious, or maybe at the idea of being beaten. Allison thought that it really shouldn’t be so confident, especially when three of the five of them were already down for the count, just waiting for Stiles to run them through with silver.
“I’d have to drink some of their blood for that!” Stiles called furiously, grabbing one’s chin and wrenching its mouth open. He disregarded its glistening fangs in favor of sticking his hand right into its mouth and dropping the mistletoe. He forced its mouth shut and waited for it to take effect while it struggled against Boyd and Isaac. “And trust me, I prefer werewolves to vampires any day!” He finally made his way over to Derek, who had wrestled the last vampire to the ground and opened its jaw so wide that Allison was pretty sure he’d broken it. The moment the vampire fell still, Derek started following Stiles around, still berating his back as he started with the first vampire he had paralyzed.
Stiles shoved the silver so viciously into the second vampire’s heart that several loud cracks echoed in the air as its ribcage shattered. Allison shuddered at the sound, staring at Stiles in surprise. She hadn’t thought him capable of such damage. “Oh my god, Derek, can you shut up for five minutes while I kill these fuckers? You can go all protective dad on me when I’m finished!”
Derek looked hurt. “I’m not being a protective dad, I’m—”
Stiles held up a hand, stopping him even as he straddled the third vampire. “At the house,” he said shortly, and Allison was pretty sure she wasn’t imagining the sad tone of his voice. She jumped down from the tree and met Erica’s eyes from across the clearing. They exchanged resigned expressions.
Boyd was trying to nap on Derek’s couch when the front door slammed open. He cracked an eye open to see Stiles sauntering inside with a satisfied look on his face, and Derek following closely covered in what looked—and smelled—like horse shit. Boyd hid a grin in his arm, closing his eye again. They had evidently been training again.
“That is possibly the dirtiest trick you have ever used,” Derek was saying furiously. “Seriously, Stiles? You really had to push me into horse shit?”
“It worked, didn’t it?” Stiles sounded pleased. “I chose that tree for a reason Derek.”
“You used me as a human trampoline!”
“Which pushed you down into the shit,” Stiles said almost patiently. “Really though? You need a shower.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Boyd muttered into his arm. He didn’t have to open his eyes to know that Derek was glowering at him.
There was a sudden yelp and a gagging noise, and Boyd sat up lazily to see Stiles holding Derek’s shirt away from him between two fingers. Derek’s jeans hit him in the chest a second later, and suddenly Stiles looked and smelled just as bad as Derek did. “You motherfucker!” Stiles shouted. “What the hell, Derek, Boyd said it, not me!”
Derek didn’t respond. He just grabbed Stiles hand and threw his clothes back onto the porch. He then stripped Stiles of his own shirt, ignoring the human’s protests, and flung them out too. Stiles scrambled backward when Derek reached for the button of his jeans. Boyd looked away, suddenly feeling like he was intruding on something extremely private.
“You need a shower too,” Derek said unnecessarily, and Boyd only relaxed when he heard them going upstairs. If they didn’t fuck in the shower, he was going to hit something. This had been going on for far too long.
They didn’t have sex in the shower.
They did, however, have sex in Derek’s bed.
And when they woke up, they did it again.
The next time the pack met up at Derek’s house, Stiles and Derek were making dinner. They still bickered, still got unnecessarily close to each other, and Derek was as grumpy as ever. But every few minutes he stopped to bury his nose in Stiles’ hair to hide a smile, and Stiles pressed soft kisses to his shoulder, like the most natural thing in the world.