Work Text:
Stiles leaves the only jeweler in Beacon Hills with a ring sizer (that’s more advertisement for the store than useful item) and a dream. He’s not sure when the thought had come to him that he should marry Derek, but it was like the thought had always been there, existing inside of him, at his very heart and center, just waiting to be discovered.
Of course he was always going to ask Derek to marry him. And Derek was always going to say yes. No fear of rejection, just marrow deep truth bringing him unshakable confidence in a beautiful future together full of love and abiding companionship.
Also he asked the Magic 8 Ball® his mom had given him when he was 6 if he should ask Derek to marry him and it told him “Signs point to yes.” That’s all the external validation Stiles needs to work up a marriage proposal. Operation Measure Derek’s Stupid Perfect Hands for His Ring Size so One Stiles Stilinski Can Lock It Down for Eternity is a go.
First attempt. Wait until Derek falls asleep and just casually measure his fingers in the dark. Just a little non-consensual finger measurement between bedmates.
Stiles spends the rest of his day projecting thoughts of normalcy and innocence as he puts away the groceries and gets started on the laundry. He tries to keep to his exact schedule and daily tasks, but Derek clocks him within the hour.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but stop it.” Derek says while chopping carrots in a threatening manner and glaring at Stiles over the side salad. Behind him, the grill is sputtering with fat and the flames are casting harsh shadows over Derek’s already foreboding face.
Stiles doesn’t lie, he never lies per se, but much like gravity acting on anything in the universe, he bends the truth to suit his existence. “Nothing is going on! Don’t get blood on the vegetables.”
Derek spends the rest of the night watching Stiles and not blinking which makes eating the steak and salad they put together for dinner awkward. Watching Derek try, and fail, to shove salad into his face without looking at the plate makes Stiles briefly reconsider proposing. The man is about to get vinaigrette up his nose and beef in his ears.
Stiles waits until Derek goes to sleep, cradled by the silk sheets Stiles forced him to buy, so he can oh so carefully lift up the left hand, the sizer carefully gripped between his other fingers, perfectly angled to slip on and —
Stiles is flung to the floor, lungs seizing as they try and fail to pump air. With white pinpricks marring his vision, and a new atlas of bruises along his back from his shoulders to his tailbone, Stiles knows he was thrown to the floor, but he’s not really sure how. A groggy Derek appears over the edge of their bed. “Get back up here and stop it.”
Stiles just kind of gurgles on the loft floor for a few dozen minutes before jerkily rising from the wreckage of his bones and slinking back to bed.
Stiles may be bruised and sleep deprived, and he may be forever traumatized by the sound of intense carrot chopping, but he’s not a failure.
Second attempt. Do a little light hand holding with Derek, and feel up his digits. Not the most accurate method, but Stiles is one more bad attempt away from just asking Derek to marry him without a ring.
A random lacrosse championship is streaming on the television, the snacks are on the coffee table and Stiles is within grabbing distance as Derek ignores everything going on around him and reads something heavy and Germanic. He slides into place, pressing his body against Derek’s side.
And then, success! Stiles wraps his right hand around Derek’s left. Now if only he can thread his fingers through the other man’s fingers and do a little palpitating he can somehow have Derek’s ring size —
“Are you breaking up with me?” Derek has gone stiff against Stiles, and he can’t even get Derek’s hand to unfold so they can hold hands. Stiles is just holding an unbending facsimile of a hand.
This is going even worse than the time Stiles nearly drowned Derek in a pool so he could make a desperate phone call that went unanswered. Stiles almost whines like a toddler in frustration. “What? No! I would never break up with you! If anything you’re gonna break up with me!”
Derek squeezes Stiles’s fingers until the joints creak. He’s fiercely frowning and puffed up indignantly. “I’m not breaking up with you. You’re not allowed to break up with me.”
Derek crushes Stiles’s hand to his chest, pinning him in place, and continues to read books with angry letters while the pre-recorded game winds down to dead air. Stiles watches it all with the concentration of someone afraid to make one wrong move. He’s dragged to bed, unable to say anything in his defense, and is trapped there while aggressively spooned. Not the worst way to end a Saturday night.
Failure might be trying to teach Stiles a lesson, but Stiles is not in a learning mood.
Third attempt. Get Derek out of the house, and out of his suspicions. Maybe they don’t need a ring. Maybe he can just have a conversation about what they both want from the future, and make a long-term plan towards that shared goal. Maybe he can convince Derek to put his hand in a bucket of plaster, for vague magic purposes. Maybe Stiles should develop a love of terrible DIY plaster crafting.
A little tired and a little desperate, Stiles calls his dad and asks him how he proposed to mom. His dad gets a little teary and nostalgic about a picnic and being chased under cover by some rain and there might have been kissing, but all Stiles hears after two hours of listening to slightly nostalgic reminiscences about bygone love is picnic.
Stiles can do a picnic!
Stiles doesn’t have a basket, so he uses a free tote bag he “forgot” to return to Lydia after a day of shopping together. He doesn’t have a blanket, so he grabs the tarp Derek keeps in the trunk of the Camaro to keep blood and miscellaneous ooze off his leather seats. For food, Stiles raids the prepared foods section at the local store. He’s got a bucket of potato salad and one of every type of cured meat they sell. For the libations, Stiles adds a bottle of mysterious booze from the 1700s. He’s not sure if it is any good to drink, but Stiles liberating it from Peter’s evil lair annoyed the undead werewolf, so it must be worth something.
All Stiles needs is his guest of honor.
“Hey babe —”
Derek squints. “Don’t call me babe.”
“Hey… dude?”
Derek inclines his head: he’ll allow it.
“I’ve got a surprise, and you need to come with me.”
“I don’t want to be kidnapped right now.”
“It’s not kidnapping! I just want to spend some time with you.”
Derek narrows his eyes. “We can spend some time together right now. The windows need cleaning.”
Stiles loves this man. He swears he does. “If you get in the Jeep right now and let me drive you to an undisclosed location, I promise to provide you with food and blow jobs once we get there.”
Derek pauses, considers, and nods decisively.
Five minutes later, Stiles is driving around, trying to remember where to exit for the scenic overlook next to a nature reserve that isn’t infested with supernatural entities. He took a right near the abandoned warehouse next to the train tracks when he should have taken a left, and he can’t take out his phone now to look up his destination. That would be defeat. And would ruin the surprise.
Derek watches him struggle with one eyebrow raised.
“I know exactly where I am,” Stiles says, slowing down with the intention of pulling over and looking at his phone. He’s not his dad; he can ask for directions.
He doesn’t see the late model black SUV until it speeds toward them, and even then it’s only a feeling of the world going wrong with a glimpse, and he slams his foot on the brakes. The brake pads squeal, burning, and the jeep judders to the side as Stiles wildly steers away from the thing coming at him, but he’s made a mistake in his calculations and they compensate. “Who are these people?” Stiles yelps.
The SUV broadsides him along the driver’s side, crumpling the metal so that when Stiles tries to get out, he can’t. He just has to watch as the people (dark colors, dark glasses, hats pulled low) pop out of the SUV and swarm the passenger side of the Jeep.
“Are you fucking kidding me? We’re going on a picnic!” Stiles bellows as the men in the cars try to pull Derek out of his seat. “No! No today!” He grabs at Derek’s pants, but can’t get hold.
They pull Derek out, his body a tight line of struggle as he pushes against them, but the wolf is momentarily overwhelmed.
The jeep, as if sensing the terrible reality of their predicament hasn’t stalled so Stiles kicks it back into gear and slams forward into the SUV in a screech of ripping metal.
The marauders have to jump out of the way or get crushed, and Derek is able to scurry away from the men who are now more concerned with surviving being between two vehicles.
The crash is loud, and hard, rattling Stiles to his bones.
He pushes the other car until the metal cracks and the tires burn. T jeep is grinding gears trying to handle the load, but Stiles keeps his foot on the gas. Metal collapses as Stiles shouts, and one of the men tries to open the driver’s side door but they can’t and Stiles slaps the guy away as he tries to claw at his neck.
His mother’s Jeep won’t survive this, but the old CJ still has some horsepower left to push the attacking SUV all the way to the abandoned warehouse they passed just a moment before. The SUV wobbles against the wall of the warehouse before plunging through and just continuing down through what must have been a rotting floor.
Stiles crawls his way across the passenger seat, abandoning his Jeep next to a faintly smoking building, and finds Derek handily disabling the people who attacked him.
“That’s it Derek! I’m not doing this any more!”
“What.”
Stiles pulls out the silly plastic ring sizer he’s been carrying around for 3 days, grabs Derek’s left hand and shoves it down on his ring finger. “We are getting married!” Stiles holds up Derek’s hand to his face. “And you wear a damn size 11 ring!”
“I was waiting for you to ask.”
“I wish you had told me! I wouldn’t have wasted that booze I stole from Peter.”
“What booze?”
Behind Stiles, a whoosh of heat hits them, and then an explosion. Stiles hits Derek on his way down and they lay together in a heap on the gravel, breathing the bitter stench of chemicals that should not be released into the atmosphere. “It might not have been booze.”
The Sheriff arrives sometime after the firetrucks do, and stands over Stiles where he is sitting — hands entwined — with Derek. In amid the roar of the flames, pops of shattering glass and collapsing beams can be heard.
The Sheriff huffs as part of the warehouse comes down. “Was it worth it?”
Stiles clutches Derek’s hands harder; the plastic of the makeshift ring bites into his flesh. “Yes”
“Are you proud of yourself?”
Stiles smiles as the burning warehouse collapses on the remains of the hunters people who tried to ruin his proposal.
“Hell yeah.”