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Late in the afternoon on Wednesday, Stiles pushes in through the unlocked front door of Derek’s formerly quiet apartment without knocking and calls, as he almost always seems to, “Honey, I’m home!”
The laughing words echo in the room to Derek’s sensitive ears. Derek looks up from his reading across the open expanse of the space, alert but not at all wary, the low level of listlessness that had been stealing over him gone in a blink.
He marks his place in his book, sets it aside, and gets up from the couch as Stiles stomps over to the table and drops his bags heavily on the floor beside it. There’s a flare of new scent in the air, not just the familiar smell of Stiles but a mixture of dry sweat, dirt, leather, and industrial cleaners, and Derek realizes one of the bags must contain Stiles’ lacrosse kit. It’s not an unpleasant smell, and a part of him is deeply satisfied by the idea that it will linger, leaving its mark in the room long after Stiles has left again.
“Oh, my god,” Stiles says, stretching his arms high over his head and cracking his neck. A handful of disturbed dust motes spin out around him like a nimbus in the light streaming through the bare, un-shaded window. “It was the longest practice ever today, and of course Greenberg knocked into the Gatorade cooler and spilled it all over the ground. I’m so freaking thirsty. The school water fountains always taste like pennies.” Making a face, he heads into the kitchen, and Derek trails after him without conscious thought; Stiles is there, unaware of his own vibrance as he changes the silent stillness of the apartment into something alive, so of course Derek follows him. “Please tell me your fridge isn’t empty.”
“It isn’t empty,” Derek says. He stops by the counter, out of Stiles’ way, since even without werewolf speed Stiles can somehow rifle through everything in the half-empty refrigerator faster than Derek can.
Stiles’ face lights in a bright smile, and he leans over to press a quick, firm kiss to Derek’s lips. “Awesome,” he says and pulls open the door to the refrigerator. Then he stops, makes an annoyed little sound, lets go of the door, and turns back around. He shakes his head and rolls his eyes like he’s been an idiot. “Nope. Not good enough. Where are my priorities?” He fists his hand in Derek’s t-shirt, right in the center of his chest like he’s not at all worried if he should, and gets his mouth back on Derek’s. Derek slides his arms around him and tries not to hold on too tightly, because one of the best things about Stiles is that he does almost everything in his life because he wants to.
If the first kiss was fond and perfunctory, the second is anything but. It’s warm, deep, and long, free and generous the way Stiles always is with his kisses - and pretty much everything else with Derek - not holding anything back, not asking for more than Derek can give but assuming quite happily that Derek wants to give a lot. It’s dizzying and hot, Stiles’ mobile lips communicating as much with a kiss as they can with words, and it makes something in Derek’s chest go weak with how used to having him he is growing and how much more he wants.
With Stiles pressing up against him and making such soft, hungry sounds into his mouth, Derek gets a little lost in the very presence of him and is about five seconds from spinning them to pin Stiles against the counter and make things a whole lot more serious when Stiles pulls away with a shuddering breath, flushed cheeks, and a wide grin and says, “Much better.”
Then, like he didn’t just make Derek almost forget they were even having a conversation at all, he goes back to the refrigerator and pulls out a bottle of sports drink Derek keeps stocked in there despite the fact that he doesn’t need it for himself. There’s not much else inside the fridge, but there are a bunch of neon-colored bottles just for Stiles. “Blue!” Stiles says with delight. “It’s my favorite flavor!”
Derek nods; he knows. He watches Stiles spin open the cap on the bottle and take a series of huge, thirsty gulps. The room suddenly feels warmer and brighter than it usually does, and it’s not just because he is watching Stiles’ throat work as he keeps swallowing. It’s way more than that.
“You’re the best,” Stiles finally gasps, breathless from downing the contents of the bottle without pausing. He re-caps the bottle and sets it on the counter. “Thanks.”
Derek nods again and is happy enough to accept a grateful, effusive, blue-flavored kiss before Stiles unwraps himself from around Derek and bounces back a step.
“Don’t distract me,” Stiles tells him, pointing his finger at Derek like he wasn’t the one whose hands were just trailing under the back of Derek’s t-shirt. There’s something about him that makes Derek feel like he’s a step or two behind sometimes. “I have a calc test tomorrow and have so much studying to do. You promised you wouldn’t distract me if I studied here instead of at home.”
“I’m just standing here,” Derek replies.
Stiles stabs his finger at him. “Exactly. You’re standing there. Being distracting.”
“Um - “ Derek begins, because he doesn’t know how standing still is distracting. He looks down at himself. Not even his clothes are distracting, just a plain black t-shirt and a pair of jeans.
“Go sit and let me work, or go stand in a corner if you haven’t gotten your daily requirement of lurking out of your system,” Stiles says, “but whatever you do I need to study.”
Derek stares at him for a second before letting out a sigh and saying, “I’m going to read.” Sometimes it’s best not to engage Stiles when he’s in this kind of mood, stressed and happy and wound up and teasing all at once. It’s almost too much work to keep up with him when all Derek really cares about is that he’s there.
“Great,” Stiles says with a nod and picks up his backpack.
Derek settles back on the leather couch, upright and at an angle where he can see Stiles at the table out of the corner of his eye but isn’t directly watching him; he knows he’d hear about it if he did. He focuses his eyes on his book but listens to Stiles pull out various supplies, humming as he sets them out on the otherwise empty table. Stiles twists his pencil through the sharpener he keeps in his bag before sticking it back in the outer pocket and zips it up again, leaving the smell of wood and graphite shavings behind. He tears a sheet of paper out of his notebook with a crackling rip, then he bounds over to adjust the dimmer switch to turn the light brighter and helps himself to another drink on the way back.
When Stiles collapses onto the chair with a thump, scooting it in against the table, Derek takes a deep, satisfied breath and returns his attention to the pages in front of him. He smiles a little. Even though nothing is really different now about him sitting on the couch reading than what he was doing fifteen minutes before, there’s still something more comfortable and warm about it, about sharing the space if not the activity, about getting lost in the words with Stiles there, too.
“Fuck,” Stiles mutters and pulls his bag up onto the table. He digs through it more roughly. “Fuck.”
“What’s wrong?” Derek asks, turning his head toward him.
Stiles sighs in frustration, letting go of his bag. “I forgot Jarvis. He must be at home.”
Derek raises an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yes, really,” Stiles says, raising his eyebrows pointedly back at him. “I forgot my calculator. It happens.”
“The ‘really’ was about you naming your calculator,” Derek tells him. He decides not to mention that he gets the reference, because the last time he showed his inner geek Stiles quizzed him for nearly an hour on his movie watching history and preferences and then made a list of all of the movies they had to watch together... which had been kind of nice, actually, and a good excuse to spend time together and a step in what had grown between them, but - That’s not the point right now.
Stiles sits back in the chair and crosses his arms over his chest. “I’ll have you know that Jarvis is a true friend and ally in the battle against failing grades.”
“It’s still a calculator.”
“Still a - “ Stiles flails an arm out in frustration. “That calculator is the only reason I made it through pre-calc. Where lesser models gave up under the stress of Ms. Raymond’s insane tests, Jarvis held on and made it through.”
“Why do you even have a calculator? There’s an app for everything, or so you tell me.”
“There is,” Stiles says, “but my teacher’s a stickler. She only lets us use old fashioned calculators. She says we’d be texting and cheating and stuff through class while pretending to work.”
“She has a point,” Derek is forced to admit. “But you could use your phone now. You aren’t in class.”
“No, but I need to know how to do it on the calculator I’m going to take tests on, not on some awesome app or web site.”
Derek nods, and Stiles digs through his bag one more time before pushing his hands through his hair, leaving it sticking up in an even more appealing way than before. “Yeah, it’s not here. I need to go home,” he says. “I can’t study without it.”
“Okay,” Derek says, because it’s not like he can argue, and he’ll be fine on his own. He’s used to it. He’s spent years alone or almost alone; one afternoon doesn’t matter one way or the other. If his apartment will go back to feeling too quiet after the intrusion, well, it’s not a big deal. He likes his apartment when it’s quiet. It’s large and doesn’t make him feel trapped when he can’t sleep. He can hear people coming. He has his book. He’ll be fine.
Stiles starts to shove his books back into his bag, and Derek watches the vulnerable curve of his neck, the distracted line of his mouth, and the sureness of his long fingers with an air of nostalgia, like heading out to a favorite view one last time at the end of a trip, knowing it won’t be available when you next want to see it.
“Yeah, so,” Stiles says, straightening up and slinging his bag over his shoulder. He scratches his shoulder and looks at Derek with a little confusion. “Didn’t you want to come home with me?” When Derek doesn’t answer, because that he was invited hadn’t even crossed his mind, Stiles continues a little faster and more nervously, “You don’t have to, that’s fine, I just thought - I mean, I thought we were going to hang out, but I totally get if you’d rather sit here in your own place or go do important alpha werewolfly things that you should probably tell me about first in case I have to save your ass again than have leftover lasagna and have to sit and talk to my dad when he gets home and - “
Derek doesn’t bother trying to interrupt him, because there aren’t many forces on Earth that can stop Stiles when he gets on a tear, not even a kiss sometimes; he just marks his place in his book, stands up, and walks over to pluck his jacket from the hook by the door.
“Oh!” Stiles’ smile is huge as he bends over to pick up his lacrosse bag, and his eyes are bright on Derek’s. He walks over and leans in for another kiss; they come so freely and easily to him, and Derek feels every one as the gift that it is. “Come on.”
Tucking his book in his pocket, Derek glances around his apartment before he shuts the door; the empty bottle of sports drink is on the counter, another half-full one is on the table, and the chair Stiles was sitting in is askew. It’s not that Derek keeps his apartment in a state of perfection, but he doesn’t have that much stuff. The apartment is mostly bare. It’s easy to see how things are out of place.
Derek’s mother used to say with an amused and yet despairing laugh, standing in the doorway and watching the children of their family make a mess of the kitchen in search of after-school snacks, that it wasn’t home if it didn’t look like they lived in it. And then she’d make them clean it up, because they might have been raised by (were-)wolves, but they still didn’t live in a cave.
He smiles a little to himself while he locks the door behind him. It will be nice to have to pick it all up when he gets back later, a physical reminder of how Stiles has stirred up his space and his life. If he hasn’t been here long enough today to make the couch smell like him, or much of the still air in this static apartment, at least it’s something. It’s a tangible mark on his life.
Stiles lets them into his house with a key that slips easily into the front lock. The light in the living room is on, run on a timer Derek can hear whirring behind the couch, and Stiles palms switches without looking, lights coming on around them as he dumps his bags by the stairs and walks toward the kitchen. He half-tosses his car keys onto a hook by the refrigerator and pulls open the door. He ducks his head, peering into the fully stocked shelves. The smells of garlic, swiss cheese, and some sort of leafy green waft out, overlaying the disinfectant, gun oil, and slight tinge of whiskey that was already filling Derek’s nose.
“Oh, good, he didn’t eat it all,” Stiles says triumphantly. “No take-out for us tonight. Get your taste buds ready for some home cooking.” He pushes some buttons on the oven and opens its door, pulling out the baking sheets inside before they get hot and setting them on the burners.
It’s all so simple for him, Derek thinks, hovering by the doorway and watching him clatter around the kitchen like he could do it in his sleep. He probably does, some mornings when he stumbles downstairs with his eyes barely open and his brain still foggy and navigates by muscle memory because things are where they’ve always been, the same drawers and shelves and even the same kitchen. Stiles just has this, lives here, has a place for his keys and a favorite mug and a door jamb in his dad’s closet with his height marked in increments since he was four.
It’s not without loss and fear for him, since there’s a hole where his mother should be, a hole in his life, in his heart, in the places in the house where the curtains are sun-bleached or there are too many pictures of Stiles when he was little and not enough from now and none of it gets changed because it would mean giving up something of her in the process... it’s not without loss, no, but even without his mother to Stiles home doesn’t mean ash and emptiness but safety and love.
Derek’s not jealous. He’s happy for him. It’s why he gets a smile from Stiles as he grabs his father’s forgotten sunglasses and walks out into the front hall to drop them on the table, because Stiles has never been without someone to smile at him. It’s why he gets Stiles at his side when things get ugly out there, because Stiles has always had his dad’s bravery to admire and mimic. It’s why he gets Stiles being pushy, smart, and funny, because Stiles has always had people who liked that about him.
No, Derek isn’t jealous at all. He’d never wish his own life on anyone, especially not someone he cares so much about.
“I bet Jarvis is on my desk,” Stiles says as Derek’s eyes drift over the photos in the hall, formal pictures of the family posed in a studio and candid ones of Stiles laughing with Scott, triumphant after a little league game, curled asleep on the couch -
Stiles stumbles over his own lacrosse bag, and Derek is instantly transported back to his father telling Laura to stop leaving her school bag at the foot of the stairs, since not everyone in the house had supernatural abilities to keep them from falling. It was a lesson she never quite learned before the stairs were charred and the family gone -
Derek snaps out a hand to stop him before Stiles connects with the railing, and Stiles blinks up with surprise before his mouth turns from a shocked o to a grateful smile.
“Thank you!” he says, pulling himself back upright with Derek’s help. “Werewolf reflexes: not just for things that go bump in the night anymore.”
“Given how much you trip, I’m pretty sure you go bump in the night,” Derek says and follows him up the stairs.
The center of each tread is worn from years of use, and Stiles takes them two at a time, using the railing for leverage like it’s second-nature. He glances back over his shoulder. “I can’t decide whether that’s veiled innuendo or not,’ he says amiably.
“It’s not,” Derek says, because he’s never gotten the hang of flirting if he actually means it, and he can feel his ears heating up just thinking about it.
“To be clear, it’s totally fine if it is,” Stiles tells him.
“It’s not,” Derek says again. But he catches the way Stiles’ face falls behind his smile, so he catches Stiles’ hand and takes a step up so that they’re level, leaning in slowly until Stiles’ back is against the wall next to a picture of a pre-teen version of him holding up a huge fish on a line.
“Are you sure?” Stiles’ eyes are growing wider by the second.
Derek raises his eyebrows just to hear Stiles’ heart stutter and says, “Yes.”
Stiles’ lips part on a shaky breath - and maybe the beginning of a smile, which is even better - right before Derek kisses them. He takes his time, doesn’t push anything, just kisses him slowly, gently, because he knows he’s welcome. And he is, oh, he is, since Stiles gets his hands on Derek’s arms and pulls him in, kissing him back like it’s the only thing worth doing in the world. In that moment, with Stiles buzzing with energy against him and opening his mouth to take the kiss deeper, Derek can totally agree with him.
He could do this all day, have Stiles’ surprisingly strong body up against him and kiss the words right out of him, but he knows he can’t. He’s used to having less than he wants, though, so he just enjoys what he can have.
“Right,” Stiles says, his voice a little high and his eyes vague when Derek is finished, his own heart pounding. “No innuendo. Just the direct approach. Which is okay, too. Definitely okay. Let’s do more of that.”
Derek nudges his nose off of Stiles’ and gestures up the rest of the stairs. “I’m not supposed to be distracting you.”
Stiles slumps against the wall for a second, all dejection, before pushing himself up straight. “Fine. But after I’ve done my calc, you’d better believe I’m coming back for what I’m owed, buddy.”
Derek can’t figure out why he owes Stiles kisses for anything, but it’s not like he’s going to argue with him, since he likes kissing him and he owes Stiles pretty much everything good in his life, anyway, so...
Stiles’ room always smells like a distilled and kind of stale version of him, sweat and skin and laundry detergent and spunk and old socks and pizza and teenage boy and a hint of the two of them together, but even if it’s not as good as burying his nose against Stiles’ throat it is still a comforting smell for Derek. It still makes his shoulders drop and the tension in his stomach release all at once. It still smells like somewhere safe, not quite like his old front hall but close enough that it doesn’t matter. It’s as close as he ever gets.
“Okay,” Stiles says, walking toward his desk. “Jarvis? Where are you?”
“It’s not going to answer you,” Derek tells him. It’s hard not to call him Tony, but he thinks he’ll save it for later.
Stiles rifles through the papers on top of his desk and then bends down to look under it. “Fuck,” he says under his breath. “I know I had it last night.”
“Did you take it to school?”
“No, not if it wasn’t in my bag.” Stiles drops to his knees to crawl under his desk, and Derek decides he probably shouldn’t stand there staring at his ass, not if he’s not supposed to be distracting.
So he glances around the room, doesn’t see anything obviously electronic that might answer to such an obvious name, and ultimately decides to sit down on Stiles’ barely made bed. The smells of Stiles and his laundry detergent surround him in a plume of scent from him disturbing the covers, and he shivers despite himself. He remembers when Stiles smelled foreign, a sharp-mouthed, sharp-eyed threat in a gawky teenage body, but now he’s comfort mixed with desire, someone to let in instead of someone to have to keep out. He’s still sharp-mouthed, but his eyes also go soft, his hands careful and kind. He’s life and light, bursts of laughter and breathtaking intuition, security, safety, someone who will always look out for him, so much that Derek lost in the fire and then lost the rest of when Peter killed Laura.
He holds the scent in his nose and lets himself have it, just for a second.
Muttering to himself, Stiles crawls along the wall, looking under his dresser, and Derek gives into the urge to lie down completely, his feet crossed and his head on Stiles’ pillow. He closes his eyes and breathes in deeply, thinks of crawling into his parents’ bed when he was small and scared of things like thunder, before he knew just exactly what was out there to be scared of. He thinks of late night movies with Laura, the two of them falling asleep on the couch. He thinks of his mother’s amazing chocolate chip cookies, the recipe for which died with her in the fire.
Stiles’ bed smells nothing like any of them, and it has an undertone that makes his blood want to race in a way his family obviously never did, but in some ways it feels the same.
“Found it!” Stiles says in triumph from underneath the bed. Derek cracks open an eyelid as Stiles sits up and holds up a scientific calculator and a battered transformer without a head. “And Starscream, too.”
“How long has that been under there?” Derek asks.
“A couple of years? It was wedged near the wall.” Stiles shrugs and tosses it toward his desk, because it’s nothing to him that he’s been somewhere long enough that he had the luxury not to clean for years, had a place where he could lose things and find them again, had things to lose at all.
It’s nice, really, to be in a place like that again, Derek thinks. Even if it’s just because Stiles is willing to let him be there. It’s still nice.
With a little grunt of effort, Stiles pushes up to sit on the bed beside him. The mattress rocks, and Derek’s leg ends up against Stiles. That’s nice, too. “Okay,” Stiles says, “I need to go throw in the lasagna to warm, then it’s study time.”
“Okay,” Derek says. He should probably go with him, but he doesn’t really feel like moving now that he’s comfortable.
Stiles looks down at him, shifts his weight, twists his mouth in worry, and asks, “You’re staying for dinner with me and Dad, right?”
Derek nods, though it’s not up to him, really. “If you want me to.”
“I do, but - “ Stiles watches for him for a long moment until Derek wonders if he should get up and offer to go, but then Stiles shrugs and drops whatever worry is bothering him. “Okay. If you’re good, I’m good. We’re all good. It’s a whole world of good.” He smiles softly, his eyes too warm for Derek to look at without feeling like he might catch on fire from wanting, from longing, from missing that kind of care and concern for too long. “I wasn’t thinking, though. I’ll probably be a while. Do you want to go watch TV or something?”
“I’m good. I’ve got my book.” Derek makes no move to sit up and get it from his pocket, though. It’s nice just lying there, listening to the tick of the grandfather clock in the living room, the slow drip of the bathroom sink’s faucet, the creaking of the heating oven, and the rhythm of Stiles’ heart. It’s probably weird that it’s nice, it’s probably not normal at all that he likes being at his boyfriend’s house with his dad coming home and nothing to do, but it’s been a long time since he’s been anything like normal.
Except right now, lying here surrounded by the sounds and smells of Stiles and his house, he kind of feels like he is.
“Okay.” Stiles’ hand comes to rest on his thigh, not quite high enough to get Derek’s heart racing, although he’d be lying if he said that he didn’t come alive with every touch. But he knows it’s not meant as a prelude to something more heated, just Stiles touching him because he wants to touch him, and that’s even more precious.
He rolls to his head to the side, curling his arm under the pillow. He can smell Stiles’ shampoo there, his soap, and a hint of his saliva. Soon there will be the scent of lasagna in the air and the amused tone of the sheriff’s voice when he talks to his son. There will be bantering over the kitchen table and dishes to do. There will be talk of curfews and appropriate behavior probably, too, since it’s a school night, and the glares will include them both.
Stiles shares all of this with him, all of this and more, like there’s so much to go around it can spill over to Derek, too. And it does.
Derek lets out a long, slow sigh and lets his eyes drift closed, because he has no reason not to.
Stiles laughs and nudges his leg with his knee. “Make yourself at home, jeez.”
Derek looks up at him, at his humor-filled, open face, gently hooks his fingers in Stiles’ collar, and tugs him down. He kisses those smiling lips, kisses them until they uncurl and press back with determination, with affection, with something even more real.
I am, Derek thinks.