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Stiles never thought he would be in love with a physical library.
It wasn’t like he was a librarian or anything, but this library was the creme de la creme of libraries, as far as baby libraries went. After college, he had moved into an apartment with Isaac, since Scott’s roommate application came with Allison and he really did not feel like being sexiled from his own damn apartment every other day. With the new apartment, came a study. Stiles had drooled over turning the room into a study, and Isaac didn’t really mind, so long as he could have some space for his books. Stiles, of course, took that to mean that he wanted to build a library inside the room, so Stiles obliged. A month after they moved in, all of the boxes were unpacked and Stiles was making daily trips to his father’s house to unearth dusty boxes from the attic. On the third day of raiding the old attic, Stiles bumped the apartment door open with his hip, only to find Derek standing in the main room.
Now, before the pack went to school and got degrees and tried to pretend to be functional adults, Stiles would have rolled his eyes and begrudgingly asked Derek what he needed and then promptly kicked him out. However, Derek had kept in contact and all those rough edges had been smoothed down. Time helped a lot, but a lot of what helped was having people who cared about him again. After his rough patch where Isaac had called him once in tears, saying he thought Derek was going to kill himself at the rate he was going, Derek had really grown into his position. He wasn’t an all-ruling alpha, but rather more like an older brother to the pack, only using his “alpha voice" when the betas got into fights.
Derek was giving Stiles an expectant look, making Stiles realize his mind just went off on a tangent. Oops.
"Derek! Beer is in the fridge, but I will make dinner if you help me carrying these boxes in." Stiles beamed at him hopefully.
Derek shook his head and tried to hide his smile by turning into his shoulder. He gracefully took the box out of Stiles’ hands and quickly carried in the other boxes waiting outside.
While he moved them into the spare room, Stiles pulled out the food that he needed for dinner.
"Isaac got suckered into a scary movie marathon with Cora at my place, so he said not to wait up for dinner. He also said something about rescuing him, but Cora quickly squashed that, so you can choose whether or not you want to face her wrath." Derek said good-naturedly.
Stiles chuckled and decided he liked all of his limbs where they were. Derek was entirely too distracting for the chef, as he started wrinkling his nose, and didn’t really stop. Stiles set down his knife with a huff and looked at the man sitting across the island.
"What are you doing?" Derek’s eyebrows knitted closer together in pouty frustration.
"Nose is itchy. All those boxes were too damn dusty. What the hell is even in those boxes?"
Stiles went back to chopping up the vegetables to throw in the soup stock he was boiling over the stove. He shrugged with a simple “stuff" before dumping some ramen noodles into the stock and water mixture, pouring in some packets of terrible-for-you flavoring. The vegetables were quickly sautéed and adding as well.
The two ate the soup in companionable silence until Derek asked about the boxes again. Stiles sighed and hurriedly polished off his soup. He led Derek into the spare room, having him push the boxes aside and revealed an in-progress library. Derek looked around at the half-filled shelves, shelves with papers marking them off for Isaac, and a desk with runes carved into it that sat in the middle of the room.
"Is this library all…" Derek asked quietly. Stiles shook his head.
"No, there are normal books in here, but I started accumulating books with reputable information in high school and … I guess I just never really stopped. When I travelled through Europe that one summer, I met one bookkeeper who was a druid and he keeps sending me books that he finds throughout his travels."
Derek looked at the boy he had cared for since he had seen him defend the alpha in front of his pack, back when they were in high school. He looked sheepish, but Derek couldn’t figure out what could have caused it.
"Why would you keep this secret, Stiles?" Stiles shrugged and muttered some bullshit about it not being very important.
"Anything you care about so obviously, is important Stiles." Derek walked back out the door and pulled the boxes into the room. He started unloading them and stacking them on shelves with a muted frustration.
"Why do you care so much about this Derek?" Stiles asked quietly after Derek had unloaded a whole box. He was being used for labor, obviously. Yep, that’s why Stiles kept Derek around.
Derek sighed as he set the next box down. “We’ve already gone over this Stiles."
Stiles shook his head quickly, “No, I don’t think we have. Because when you said we should really be just friends, that usually does not mean you care so deeply about the books I read."
"I care because you’re it for me Stiles. You’re the best I’m could ever get and you know what? I’m not good enough. Deny it all you like, but I am well aware of all my shortcomings. Now. I have books to help you unload because I know you will sit down and try to read each one of these instead of just dusting them off and putting them on the shelves."
Stiles threw up his hands, “Not this again! Derek, when I denied my feelings for you in high school, it was because I didn’t want you stuck to me. You have a lot of options out there. While your face is, let’s face it, completely unfair in it’s perfection, your personality is pretty damn awesome as well. So yeah, you can do better than…" Stile grimaced and motioned to himself.
Derek growled a bit and angrily stacked books while he tried to respond to Stiles calmly. He went to a leadership conference a year back and one of the biggest tips they had was to not respond to others when frustrated. Actually, Stiles doesn’t really know much of what he learned, since when Derek was debriefing the pack on his findings, Stiles was imagining little wolf Derek sitting in a conference and pouting in a back corner when they said growling was not a proper mode of communication.
Stiles sighed and looked at the ground, mentally steeling himself for where he was about to take this.
"When you graduate, they send out a form to make sure your correct legal name is on your diploma. Most people just fill out their full legal name, but one of my friends was getting married a month after graduation and they allowed her to put her new name on her diploma, since it’s kind of a pain to change it afterwards. And you know Derek? I didn’t want to just have to fill out Stiles Genim Stilinski."
Derek gave him a sour look, “What other name could you have possible wanted to give them? Batman isn’t a valid legal name."
"Stiles Genim Hale." Stiles bit out. Derek was kissing him so suddenly, Stiles had no clue what was happening.
He blinked when Derek pulled away, giving his brain a second to catch up. When it finally did, he wound his hands into Derek’s collar and hair, pulling the man back to him.
"Nu-uh get back here."
Derek grinned, “There are definitely… ways to be a Hale."
Stiles was relishing the expanse of muscles through Derek’s shoulders and back, “Mmm, but changing my name on my diploma is such a pain in my ass."
Derek pulled him into another kiss, assuring Stiles that this is all he wanted in his life ever. Derek looked Stiles in the eyes, muttering, “So long as I’m in the only other pain in your ass."
Stiles laughed really hard, and blushed just the same at that comment. He pulled himself away from the werewolf to hand him more books. Derek huffed a bit, but took the books and started shelving them.
Stiles really liked his library.