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“Come on, Daddy-o, you can’t stay in there.”
Derek frowned as he silently made his way down the hall of the Stilinski home. He could hear Stiles talking to someone in the bathroom, but his werewolf senses told him that they were the only two people in the house. It wasn’t a phone call either, because Derek could always hear the person on the other end. Stiles must just be talking to himself, he thought, and rolled his eyes instead of giving in to the the temptation to grin fondly. He didn’t do fond, especially when uncoordinated, annoying teenagers were concerned.
Who happened to have the softest-looking skin and the biggest brown eyes Derek had ever seen, his brain whispered, because it hated him.
He leaned against the frame of the open bathroom door and looked in. Stiles had his back to Derek, and was crouching over the bathtub.
“Hey little dude,” Stiles said, and of course he was completely unaware that Derek was there. “Come on, I don’t want to sentence you to death by shower. Plus, that drain? Is really gross. You so don’t want to end up down there.”
Derek’s eyebrows were raised with curiosity as Stiles leaned further over and reached down into the tub. He was holding something cupped between both hands when he stood up and turned around.
“Holy Jesus fuck!” Stiles yelped, his eyes wide with surprise and his heart thumping triple time in Derek’s ears, and this, this was Derek’s favorite part. He never got tired of making Stiles jump, even though it was way too easy. “Don’t do that, you crazy stalker wolf!”
Derek couldn’t stop himself from grinning back at Stiles, who looked less scared now and more flustered. “Who were you talking to?”
“Huh? Oh.” He held up his cupped hands. “Mr Long Legs here. Although, you probably made me squash him.” Stiles opened his hands to reveal…a spider.
Derek took an instinctive step backwards before he realised what he was doing, but by then it was too late. Stiles was staring at him with incredulous delight on his face. “Wait, wait. Are you…are you scared of spiders? Oh my God. That is the most amazing thing that’s ever happened.”
Stiles moved closer, waving the very much alive spider at him. Derek inched backwards again and growled, “Stop it.”
Stiles was laughing almost uncontrollably, his face red. He looked like he was having trouble breathing. “Derek Hale, badass alpha werewolf and all-round tough guy, scared of itty bitty spiders?” Stiles managed between gasps, because not even lack of oxygen could shut him up, apparently. “Dude, you’re a fairy tale monster. Everything is scared of you.”
“I’m not a monster,” Derek muttered, feeling strangely insulted. “And no, I don’t like spiders. You try living in a condemned building and waking up with them crawling on you.”
Stiles sobered so quickly that it was almost comical. “Oh. Yeah, that…that would probably do it. Sorry, man.” He actually looked a bit guilty, and then shook the spider off his hand and onto an obliging cobweb in one corner of the room. “Hey, is that why you stay here sometimes? I mean, that totally makes sense why you’d rather sleep on my floor than in that creepy house. Sort of.”
Derek was eyeing the spider suspiciously in case it decided to make a break for the bathtub again, and didn’t realise that Stiles had gotten closer until he felt a finger poke him in the stomach. He grunted and glared at Stiles, who smiled back softly. And when the hell had Derek lost the power to intimidate him? They were definitely spending too much time together – it had become almost a compulsion for Derek. Also, that smile was making his insides squirm uncomfortably. His brain told him – and kept telling him – that he needed to stay away because they were getting way too familiar with each other, but the wolf in him kept overpowering his human reason and continued to stomp on every attempt to avoid Stiles. It…wanted Stiles, which in Derek’s admittedly lacking experience was new. He’d slept with people since Kate, but he’d learnt his lesson and never again mistaken sexual attraction with love or anything resembling it. Maybe because he just hadn’t felt anything like that since before his family…he just hadn’t felt. Until now. And because the universe hated him, he was having these feelings about a sixteen year old boy.
“It’s ok, you know,” Stiles said in a low voice, still smiling. “I’ll protect you from them. And I won’t tell anyone what your Kryptonite is.”
“My hero,” Derek said dryly, although he knew it wouldn’t be spiders that were his undoing.
Stiles beamed back at him, and then poked him again. His fingers were very pointy. “Don’t mention it. And anyway, it’s cute that you’re scared of spiders.”
“Cute?” Derek said, letting his voice darken to a growl, because he just couldn’t help himself.
Stiles went pink, his eyes doing that deer-in-the-headlights thing. “I, um, didn’t mean cute. I meant…manly? It’s a very masculine thing to be scared of? I don’t think you’re cute, not at all. Not that you’re not good looking, because even blind people would think that you’re hot…oh god. I didn’t mean to say that I think you’re hot, it’s just that you are. Hot. Ok, I’m so totally fine with you killing me now.” Stiles was blushing furiously and had screwed his eyes shut as if waiting for the guillotine.
And there went the last of Derek’s willpower. He took a step closer, watching as the flush travelled down Stiles’s normally pale neck and disappeared into the collar of his shirt. Derek reached up and slid his fingers along Stiles’s throat as if trying to catch it, predicting the exact moment when Stiles’s eyes would fly open.
“Derek?” Stiles said, his voice barely audible. “Do you want to know why I sleep on your floor?” Derek said, mesmerized by the feel of Stiles’s skin as his hand moved up to cup his jaw.
“Y-yes?” Stiles stuttered.
“I don’t know.”
Stiles looked confused. “Huh? What do you mean, you don’t know? How can you not know?”
“I don’t know why every night I’m not here, I think about being here,” Derek continued, watching every minute change in Stiles’s expression. “I don’t know why I could pick your scent out of a crowd of a thousand people every single time, without even thinking about it.”
“Hey,” Stiles said, looking slightly offended, “I don’t smell that bad. And I was just about to have a shower before you interrupted me by being a giant stalker.”
Derek sighed. “You’re completely missing the point.”
“Oh, I got the point all right, wolfy. You are totally stalking me because you can’t resist me. I am pretty irresistable, you know.” Stiles was smirking with exaggerated hubris, but Derek knew that his heart rate was faster than usual, that this was his way of covering up his nervousness. That Stiles didn’t believe his own words.
“Yeah, you are,” Derek said, throwing reason to the wind, because he suddenly couldn’t bear Stiles not knowing exactly what he did to Derek, what he was to Derek. He was rewarded with an open-mouthed stare, and Derek used this opportunity to trace his thumb along Stiles’s lower lip. “I’m not good at this. I…it’s never been this way before.”
“Er, you mean ‘cause I’m a dude?” Stiles said vaguely.
“No, that’s not what I meant.” He sighed and dropped his hand. Stiles swayed slightly towards him, mouth still open. “It’s hard to explain. I’ve had…relationships before, but it was always the human part of me that initiated them – they were never something my wolf side wanted. Sometimes even hated…” Derek didn’t want to think about his teenage self ignoring his instincts, and what that had led to. He didn’t want to compare anything in his past with this. Even after…everything, it’d taken him too long to rely on his senses rather than his emotions and hormones.
Stiles laughed weakly. “Are you trying to tell me that while your wolf wants to grind my bones to make its bread, your human side is all ‘yeah sure I’d hit that’?”
Derek took a moment to marvel at Stiles’s complete obliviousness. Maybe it was a good thing – he could stop this right now, step back and let them both continue on with the strange, almost-friendship they had going. He needed all the friends he could get, and it wasn’t like there was anybody else lining up for that part – and even if there was, Derek didn’t trust anybody. Except Stiles. And there it was, the reason he felt safe in the Stilinski home, could fall asleep without one eye open. He felt like he’d been coiled tight for a decade, but here he felt loose, at ease. Well, as easy as he could be when he was hiding out in a sixteen year old’s bedroom in the sheriff’s house. And weren’t they two fantastic reasons to stop this, right now? Sixteen. The sheriff’s kid. It wouldn’t end well for anyone.
The forced humor on Stiles’s face fell away, and he looked so incredibly vulnerable in the afternoon light pouring in the window. “Uh, or none of the above. Can we please forget I just said that? Maybe the last five minutes? Is there like an amnesia wolfsbane? One that would work on both of us? Because that would be awesome.” His shoulders sagged, and he was chewing his lip ragged while staring determinedly at the pocket on Derek’s t-shirt. “Look, you…I don’t want this to fuck up this friends thing we have going man, please don’t tell me I’ve fucked it up? Because I don’t think I could deal with that. You’ve been there for me, even more than Scott lately. Ok, so I don’t have a giant crush on Scott because that would be like incest, and oh my god I just said the word ‘crush’, didn’t I? Seriously, kill me now.”
“There’s nothing wrong with having a crush, Stiles.” Oh, but there was, Derek thought, as he leaned forward and covered Stiles’s mouth with his own.
He’d never been very virtuous, anyway.