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“I would like to open with stating that it’s not my fault,” Stiles said the moment he walked into Derek’s apartment.
“Well, that’s as good as admitting you did something you shouldn’t have,” Derek countered, barely looking up from the pots on the cooker in front of him.
Stiles paused, still not used to seeing Derek cooking, even though it was a regular occurrence in the past year or so. It wasn’t at all unusual to find Derek making dinners when the pack came back from the colleges they’d all scattered to, few of them near Beacon Hills.
For breaks and holidays they all usually came back to town, and the first night -- initially to the dismay, now with grudging acceptance from their families -- was always spent in the Alpha’s Den. Which wasn’t the train depot anymore, nor the decrepit loft, nor the burnt shell of the Hale house.
No, Derek was living out in the Preserve, in a house only a little smaller than his old home was, one that he planned and helped build. It was a little closer to town, but still mostly in the woods, which the pack members of the ‘wolf persuasion appreciated on full moons. They all also had rooms there, some by themselves -- like Stiles -- others together, like Erica and Boyd who had taken Junior year to dance around each other in a way that told everyone around them that neither was oblivious to said dance.
The pack dinners weren’t brand new, but still enough of a novelty that it startled Stiles when he saw Derek actually cooking them. While the house had still been under construction, they did use to all meet there, but with no utilities, there had been only take-out for a while.
“What did you do?” Derek asked, pulling Stiles back from his internal trip down memory lane.
“I will need you to promise me that you won’t do anything rash,” Stiles blurted, backing away from Derek. “Like, maiming me, or throwing me against a wall, or threatening me with your general Alphaness.”
“Stiles,” Derek said the name in a tone clear enough that the shut up was unmistakable. “What. Did. You. Do?” He enunciated each word pointedly.
“See, I was just going around my business during finals, like practically moving to the library because who needs a bed when you’re not actually sleeping. And I bothered no one,” Stiles rambled, but paused to look offended when Derek scoffed. “Excuse me, I don’t bother people… or not people… or whatever, unless I’m the one being bothered first.”
“Okay, okay,” Derek said, sounding amused. “So, how did your not bothering anyone lead to something not being your fault?”
“Naturally, because I didn’t start anything, it’s absolutely not my doing that the siren happened to decide to set her sights on me, and I had to improvise,” Stiles said, backing up another step.
“How did you…?” Derek started, but Stiles jumped in immediately.
“Know she was a siren? Well, if the scales around her wrists were passable as cosplay, and her humming was just because she was a future American Idol contestant, the fact that after turning down a dinner invitation made her go literally green in the face was a bit of a giveaway,” Stiles explained.
“So you didn’t want to date a siren,” Derek said, his forehead scrunching into a frown. “That’s not a crime.”
“Yeah well, she thought it was, and apparently we’re missing some information on siren lore, because it’s really really rude for a single person to decline an offer of courtship,” Stiles backed up again, and leaned against the wall that was now right behind him -- not one of his best plans, backing himself up against it. “Those are Deaton’s words, by the way. Words I could’ve done with before running into the siren. Which brings me to: I do okay under pressure, but not when I’m neck deep in finals revisions.”
Derek didn’t ask again, only raised an eyebrow and waited.
“I might have said that I have a boyfriend,” Stiles spoke slowly, quietly, but his heart was racing. “And that he’s theBeaconHillsAlpha,” he finished in a rush, words blurring together.
He braced himself for whatever reaction would be coming his way from Derek, closed his eyes and clenched his fists as he tensed. It was no secret to Scott or Lydia -- or, rather horrifyingly, Stiles’ Dad -- that Stiles had a low key crush on Derek ever since the first encounter in the very woods where the new house stood. He sometimes wondered if Derek knew, but with college and regular absences from town, Stiles never got a chance to do anything about it.
“Oh, that’s fine,” he heard Derek say.
Stiles’ eyes flew open immediately, and the “What?” slipped past his lips a lot louder than what he said last.
“If she bothers you again,” Derek continued, “just let me know if I need to fly over to give her evidence.”
“You’d… you’d fake a relationship with me to keep away a siren?” Stiles asked, glad to have the wall behind him so he wouldn’t lose his balance.
“Fake,” Derek said, and he glanced at Stiles with a small smile. “Or not fake, if you’d want to.”
Stiles was still barely holding himself up -- his jaw dropped and his heart rabbiting in his chest -- when Erica and Boyd burst in through the front door what felt like both an eternity and a blink of an eye later.