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Stiles recognizes that he’s in love with Scott the moment they start looking at apartments together. There’s something in the way Scott looks up listings, in the care he takes in writing down their wants and their must-haves. It’s in the expression on his face when they see somewhere for the first time; the initial hope and then, inevitably, the slight tremor of dejection.
When Stiles realizes, he doesn’t understand how he never knew before. It’s a wave washing over him before he can paddle away, the smack of sand against his shins. It doesn’t hurt, but it chokes him up and shocks him.
He tries to remind himself it isn’t bad. It isn’t a problem. It’s just a thing that is. He loves Scott to the very center of his being.
They don’t have a lot of money. The best they can afford is a flea-infested shoebox with wonky plumbing and faulty electrics. But even those places are worse than Stiles imagined they’d be.
“Maybe it’s not that bad if we have to stay in the dorm for another year?” Stiles wonders out loud, as they leave yet another shithole that didn’t have a door to the bathroom, but did have a suspiciously disgusting brown stain on the single bedroom’s ceiling.
“The last time you talked to me about your roommate you went into Dexter-mode, Stiles. I’m talking full-on Kubrick stare while stabbing an apple.”
“That’s not – I was peeling an apple.”
“You whittled it into a grotesque skull and devoured it with loud, snapping crunches.”
“Jack stole my tablet and pawned it, Scott. My precious Luke, sold-off for a hundred bucks and a statue of a goblin playing keytar.”
Scott spreads his hands out, raises his eyebrows. That was his entire point.
Point taken.
It isn’t that Stiles doesn’t want to live with Scott. It’s the very opposite. The idea of getting to orbit Scott near-constantly again is one of those dangerous thoughts Stiles doesn’t allow himself to have. They both have a pack, both have other friends now. This isn’t the same as them being 15 and friendless save for each other. But. It is, though. In all the ways that count.
The eighth apartment they view is actually kind of nice and miraculously within their budget. It has windows! And furnishings that weren’t puked up in 1964. There are door handles on all the doors, and drawers that slide in and out. It’s still more single bedroom-and-a-slightly-larger-closet, but they could work with that. Stiles jokes about how he always wanted a bunk bed. It isn’t really a joke.
The apartment goes to a cute couple Scott knows from one of his psych classes, so Stiles only scowls at the girls for five minutes instead of fifty. They were lucky enough to be able to put the deposit down the moment they saw it, instead of waiting for funds to transfer. Sometimes, it’s those tiny things that have Stiles itching with anger, and he has to bring himself back and remind himself that he’s dealt with so much worse.
Stiles avows to be ready, next time. Scott slides a hand over his shoulder, kneads into the tense muscles there with a consoling hum, like he isn’t disappointed too. Stiles pretends to snap at Scott’s hand and accidentally licks his knuckles. He stops for a second, two, whole body freezing, but Scott just snickers and wrinkles his nose.
They go to a party together and Scott recounts their dismal failures with the same kind of ease he uses when calming fraught citizens whose lives he’s just saved, or assuring Liam, Mason, Corey and Hayden that they can be just as effective at protecting Beacon Hills as he ever was. Stiles thinks it’s because Scott means it, every tone, every word, that everyone falls into his thrall. Stiles interjects occasionally, to add hyperbole, to contradict, and Scott doesn’t miss a beat, weaving whatever he says into his narrative, while gazing at Stiles with a knowing, warm glint.
It’s how they’ve always communicated.Those layers of spoken and unsaid. Interleaving and ellipsis of information so they create a whole picture and hide one at the same time.
“I know somewhere,” Karl says, with a considering look. “I think it’d fit.” Stiles is about seventy percent sure Karl is a shapeshifter of many forms, but he’s a champion at beer pong and a committed vegetarian, so he’s only registered as a minor threat in Stiles’ list of People Who Harm. Honestly, his completely human math professor is higher.
They visit Karl’s somewhere three days later, and it’s practically a pocket dimension of joy.
“This is…” Scott begins, looking around with wonder in his eyes. Stiles loves this place for bringing that light to him alone.
There are potted plants on the kitchen window sill. There’s a kitchen window sill. The window itself looks out onto a shared yard that also has greenery; a veggie patch and two trees that look like they’d provide awesome shade. The provided furniture is clean – obviously secondhand, so Stiles wouldn’t feel like he’s defiling it – but not overly worn. The floors are wooden, the walls are neutral – there’s a sense of calm. It isn’t exactly spacious, but it uses space well. There’s storage, and working utilities, and Stiles is handing over the cash deposit and signing before the realtor who showed them in can utter a word.
He’ll get a job. Hell, he’ll get two if necessary.
They move in the next day. Scott can carry six boxes at once, but Stiles only lets him take four. He doesn’t actually know how they have that much stuff. Especially not with light-fingered thieves in their midst. Yet. Somehow, it takes ten hours to transfer everything they have to their new apartment.
They collapse onto the couch together, legs tangled. Stiles closes his eyes for a second and before he knows it, it’s dark and he can smell pizza. He scrunches up his face, rubs the side of his hand against his gritty eyes. There’s a crick in his neck and his tongue is bone-dry. But when he glances around and sees Scott sitting in the armchair looking out the kitchen window at the moon, a soft smile on his lips, a smear of tomato sauce on his chin, none of that matters.
“Hey, Scotty,” he murmurs, and yeah, he sounds sleep-roughened. He stumbles up to standing, pins and needles in his left foot.
“Hi,” Scott replies. “There’s pizza if you want it.”
“When have I not?”
“The pineapple incident of 2012.”
Sometimes, Stiles forgets the depth of their shared history. He doesn’t know how. Scott’s been his constant for as long as memories have had meaning. But there’s knowing this on the surface, as a fact. And knowing it in the fabric of who you are, as something more akin to faith.
The pizza is good, a sinful combination of soft and crunchy textures, fat and salt, and sustenance.
“Thanks,” Stiles says, mouth half-full. It’s more than a thank you for the food, and he trusts that Scott will understand.
“You’re welcome,” Scott replies, tender. He clearly does.
The next two weeks are agonizing bliss. They bump elbows by the bathroom basin. Take turns driving and riding each other to their college campus. They write up a roster of chores so they maintain the beauty of their little home away from home.
Stiles is talking to his dad one night when Scott’s having a study session with his other psych buddies, telling him about his day, recounting the effort he and Scott went to in meal-planning last Sunday. Perhaps it’s his tone. Or maybe he hasn’t stopped talking about Scott since dialing his dad’s number. Hopefully it’s simply that his dad knows him well and is an officer of the law, but Stiles is about to launch into another anecdote when, “So when are you gonna tell him you love him, son?”
And Stiles lies to his dad all the time, a fact he is resolutely not proud of, but is true. He can’t lie about this.
“I don’t think I will.”
“You don’t think?”
“Actually, I know I won’t.” He can hear his dad make the exact same expression he makes when people nearby are spouting bullshit; squinty eyes and open mouth. He falters. He fumbles. “It’s – so many expectations, dad. Scott has to live with them all the time. I can’t do that to him. Not me. Not again.”
“What if it’s something he wants?”
Stiles shrugs. It’s never occurred to him. “I guess he’d let me know?”
“Stiles, we’re talking about Scott. When has he ever asked for anything?”
It’s not the kind of comforting conversation Stiles wants with his dad. It’s the sort of heart-to-heart they’ve pretty much always had, where the truth is more like a razor than a blanket. It sets him thinking too much. Watching Scott near-constantly in a way that was casual before and is intense now.
Scott picks up on the tension, because he is perceptive as well as super-powered, but he seems to think Stiles is angry with him. Stiles can tell because he becomes quiet and accommodating occasionally, like he’s trying not to encroach. Stiles does everything he can to disabuse him of this notion, that Scott should be as large and loud as he wants, but he’s bad at expressing himself.
People think that because he can talk a lot, Stiles knows what to say. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of why Stiles talks.
“Do you need some space?” Scott asks him one night, when Stiles has been typing up a paper, and also surreptitiously watching Scott as he stretches and exercises. He’s – God, he’s fluid and exacting like this. So much the boy Stiles met in kindergarten, and the man he is in the middle of becoming. Stiles is wound up tight inside and purposefully loose outside because of it.
“No,” Stiles says, quickly, elongating the vowel sound.
“Do you find it hard, living with someone? I always thought it was because Jack’s an asshole, but is it because Noah was always working? You can’t handle someone always being in proximity?”
Scott deserves answers. Stiles promised himself a long time ago he wouldn’t make assumptions about what Scott thinks and feels without talking first. Old habits are hard to break, is all.
He gets up from the table and sits across from Scott on the floor, smooths his hand against the polished wood.
There are a thousand ways to express this and not one of them feels right.
“We’ve been through a lot together,” Stiles starts.
Scott nods, doesn’t interrupt. Stiles wishes he would, wishes he’d say something he could push back from. Stiles is lost, in the center of the sea, floating on the surface, and there isn’t even a wave to wash him back to shore.
“I love this place that we’ve built for ourselves. I love waking up knowing you’re nearby.” He takes a breath. “Nothing you’re sensing from me is dissatisfaction.”
“It is, though,” Scott contradicts. “Chemosignals, Stiles. I can sense your emotions.”
“What do you sense?” Stiles asks, because he’s curious, because he wonders how Scott could be interpreting frustration rather than fixation.
Scott huffs out a sigh. “There are moments you look at me and you smell agitated. Like there’s something you’re keeping back,” Scott says, frowning. “You look strained when we speak sometimes. I don’t know. Careful. In way you’ve literally never have been before. Your heart beats faster when we touch,” Scott says with a flail.
Stiles blinks. It’s been a long time since Scott has been this willfully short-sighted. “I want you to replay what you just said to me and put it in the context of you being an incredibly attractive person.”
It takes a couple of moments. Scott’s frown lightens and his eyes go wide.
“Oh? Oh.”
Scott stands up, orbits Stiles. He tucks his hands around his middle like he needs the protection. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I wanted to spare you the pain of awkward rejection,” Stiles says, honest because there’s nothing left to lose.
“Why would you reject me if you want me?” Scott counters.
“Obviously I meant the burden of you rejecting me.”
Stiles is not going to overreact, not this time. An issue he’s always had is blowing things out of proportion. But he thinks it’s possible he and Scott have been at perpendicular purposes. Intersecting at the same junction with entirely different points of view.
“Why would I reject you if I want you?” Scott asks, next, brushing his hand through Stiles’ hair and tilting his head up with his other hand, fingers gentle. “You know why I wanted to live here? You liked it so much. As soon as we stepped in the door, you started to seem content.”
“But that was because you were smiling. You looked happy, like you’d finally found a home,” Stiles explains. He holds onto Scott’s forearm, hoists himself up. His heart is thrumming insistently, his lungs going tight. He doesn’t take his hand away once he’s standing, needing that tether – to reality, to Scott.
Scott bites his lip and smiles. He’s breathing steadily, but slowly, like he used to when he was worried he’d have an asthma attack.
“You’re my home, Stiles,” Scott whispers, leaning in.
Stiles meets him in the middle and shares this sentiment with a deep kiss. He drags the hand that was on Scott’s forearm up to his shoulder, slides his free hand up his back, tugs him closer into the trunk of his body. He presses them tight until only cloth is separating them over an expanse of inches.
It’s everything.
He has no clue why he never fought for this, before. It’s like a secret bonus recording at the end of a track, thirty seconds of anticipatory filler and then something different, something new.
When they pull apart, Stiles can’t quite catch his breath. But not because of fear. Or pain. Or horror. For once, it’s a good thing. A good place to be. Scott gazes at him in mirror image, so beautiful Stiles aches.
Scott kisses him again and Stiles doesn’t understand how he never knew before. Scott’s in love with him too.