Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/371238.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Teen_Wolf_(TV)
  Relationship:
      Derek_Hale/Stiles_Stilinski
  Character:
      Derek_Hale, Stiles_Stilinski, Baby_-_Character
  Additional Tags:
      Babies, Babysitting, Children, Werewolves, Abandonment, Family, Families
      of_Choice, Kid_Fic, Humor, Comedy, Romance, Diapers, Marriage_Proposal,
      Foundling, Cute, Sweet, Adorable, Ridiculous, Parenthood, What-If,
      Tropes, Supernatural_Elements, Love, Werebabies, Cubs, Slash, Courtship,
      Oblivious, Awkward_Co-Parenting, Nipples_Are_Funny, Scent-Marking_is
      Disconcerting_Yet_Hot, Possessive_Behavior, Stalker-Suitors, Mystery,
      Revelations, Pop_Culture, Sexual_Content, Loss_of_Virginity, Dubious
      Consent, Slow_Build
  Series:
      Part 1 of Assumptions
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-03-29 Updated: 2012-06-15 Chapters: 7/8 Words: 32476
****** Reasonable to Assume ******
by Saucery
Summary
     "You're a werewolf! He's a werebaby! How can you not know what to do
     with him?"
Notes
     You want the werebaby? You can't handle the werebaby. /Jack Nicholson
See the end of the work for more notes
***** Chapter 1 *****
===============================================================================
 
It's kind of weird, having the house all to himself. Dad's away attending that
compulsory four-week anti-terrorism seminar in Los Angeles, which is bizarre,
since what are the odds of terrorists attacking Beacon Hills? An anti-werewolf
training camp would be way more useful. Not that Stiles is particularly anti-
werewolf. These days.
Anyway, it's weird, and maybe a little lonely - not that Stiles will ever admit
it, especially not to Dad, who might decide to dole out one of his irresistible
but nonetheless emasculating hugs. Stiles makes up for it by spending his
summer holidays pretty much hanging out at Scott's and playing video games, or
hanging out at Danny's and playing video games, or hanging out in the forest
and playing… tag. If that's what you can call it, given that Jackson's the
Omega and is therefore always 'it'. It's sort of pathetic to watch, but mostly,
it's hilarious. Deeply, deeply hilarious. Stiles still isn't sure how the whole
ranking thing works out, but somehow, both Scott and Lydia are Betas, and
Jackson's at the bottom of the pecking order. Stiles can't get enough of it.
Derek's still… Derek, except that he's even broodier and pissier than before.
He can be pseudo-gentle, though, especially when it comes to his pack; he only
brutalizes them about two-thirds of the time, and the rest of the time, he just
sits back and watches them with an almost-fond expression on his face. Maybe.
Or possibly, Stiles is hallucinating. The forest probably has psychotropic
qualities. It'd explain a lot. Especially about Scott, unless those are just
Allison's pheromones he's high on.
So, all in all, it's a weird but not-too-bad summer, until his phone vibrates
at 7 a.m. one morning. In the morning, what the fuck is up with that?
Stiles feels the phone vibrating under his back - he's gotta stop sleeping with
the thing - and scrambles for it sleepily, fumbling with its skin-warmed
surface until he finds the right button.
"…'llo?" he croaks.
"Stiles," says Derek, which isn't unusual, except that what he says next
totally is. "Bring diapers."
"Huh?"
But Derek's hung up, and Stiles is left staring at the phone, wondering if the
forest really is psychotropic, after all.
 
===============================================================================
 
Stiles brings diapers.
He also buys baby powder from the local drugstore, not to mention Johnson's
baby shampoo, moisturizer, milk powder and a rubber duck. Just 'cause. There's
also a couple milk bottles from the time Aunt Judy stayed over with her twins,
which he shoves into a plastic bag with vague ideas about boiling them as soon
as he gets to the Hale house. Sanitization, he remembers, is important. And if
he's also printed out all 204 pages of an ebook called How to Take Care of Your
Baby by Imogen Marsters on Dad's laser printer, well, that doesn't make him any
less of a man.
At first, he'd wondered if Derek had suddenly aged and required continence
diapers, but when he'd called Derek back to explain his brilliant theory, Derek
had just growled, and yeah, that was a baby crying in the background.
A baby.
Derek had a baby.
Derek. Had. A baby.
Once Stiles's brain had stopped frying in its own juices (it didn't take too
long; by now, he was used to insanity), he'd promptly changed into his jeans,
brushed his teeth and composed a mental list of Things That Babies Absolutely
Must Have. Then he'd looked up the Marsters ebook, printed it, and rushed off
with his wallet and a sizeable portion of his allowance. The lady in the
drugstore had sniffed at him like he was crazy - or like he'd gotten a girl
pregnant and was secretly buying supplies for her baby.
Stiles is pretty sure he hasn't gotten Derek pregnant. Given that Derek hasn't
come within two feet of him since becoming an Alpha (it's been a strange
experience, not getting thrown against random surfaces), not that they'd ever
gotten beyond the occasional awkward moment of is-it-eye-fucking-or-isn't-it,
anyway. Also, why is he even thinking of baby-making and Derek in the same
sentence? Freaky.
He has no idea where the baby came from - but when he gets to Derek's place, he
sure as hell is gonna find out.
 
===============================================================================
 
Stiles almost breaks his back, getting all the bags full of baby-things in the
door, but he can't even notice the agony his muscles are in, because he can
hear the baby crying. Wailing, even. An ear-piercing, head-splitting wail.
Jesus, it's more like a car alarm than a sound that can even be produced by a
biological being. It's a good thing Derek lives out in the woods, or the
arrival of the baby would attract the attention of every single neighbor within
hearing distance.
He leaves the bags by the entrance and heads into the newly-renovated living
room, just in time to see Derek freaking out.
Well, okay, it's Derek, so the only way to tell he's freaking out is by
noticing that his eyebrows are a little higher on his face and he looks less
like a wanted felon out to kill someone than he does a cornered beast out to
kill someone. Derek is also standing at the opposite end of the room from the
source of all the noise, as if just standing far away from the baby will make
it go away.
"What are you doing?" Stiles hurries over to the basket - it's seriously a
basket, Moses-style - that's sitting on the coffee table. "Have you even fed
this kid?"
"I had nothing to feed it," says Derek, and, yeah, unless you count the
mountains of red meat in his fridge or the bits of desiccated rabbit in the
garden… uh.
Wow.
The baby… the baby is furry. Really furry. And Stiles has seen a few hairy
babies, mostly because the guys on Mom's side of the family are hirsute and
their little tykes are, too - but this isn't hairy, it's furry. Smooth, shiny,
soft and furry. It's a naked boy-baby, and his fists are clenched tight, and
his tiny mouth's wide open as he cries, affording Stiles a clear view of bumpy
gums. Very sharp bumpy gums. The sort that'll grow into fangs, not teeth.
It's just - it's a mini-werewolf, and it shouldn't be cute, except that it
somehow is, because it's still helpless and small and the way its face is
flushed red with distress just… makes Stiles want to chase all the bad things
away.
Christ. Possibly he could've been more emotionally prepared for this. He hadn't
realized that a werewolf baby was basically a cross between a puppy and a baby
and therefore doubled the cuteness factor, but, damn. This isn't just a baby,
it's a weapon of mass destruction. No one, not even Peter Hale, could survive
this level of cuteness. It's making pink clouds of… of pinkness explode inside
his brain.
"So," says Stiles, when he gathers what's left of his wits, "he yours?"
"What?" Derek barks the question.
"Uh, you know, is there some she-wolf you mated with out in the woods? Did she
just drop him off? For the weekend, or whatever?"
"He is not mine," Derek growls, and the baby wails louder.
"Don't make that sound! It scares him!"
"Too bad. It's the first sound he heard me make."
"And now, he won't let you near him without crying." Then, Stiles realizes
something. "You growled at a baby?"
Derek looks uncomfortable, and it's so wrong seeing that expression on an
Alpha's face that Stiles goggles. "I… was not growling at him."
"Then who were you growling at?"
Derek rolls his shoulders - his very, very huge shoulders, that seem to have
gotten even huger since he became the Alpha. "I don't know. I woke to an
unfamiliar scent near the house, and ran out to check who it was. It smelled
like a female werewolf - a female unknown to me." He's glaring at Stiles,
again. Why is he glaring at Stiles? Isn't it a perfectly reasonable assumption
to make, that a dude with a surprise baby might actually have fathered said
baby? On someone?
"Right," says Stiles. "So - you were chasing an intruder. Growling while
chasing an intruder. And then what?"
"I found this on the doorstep." Derek's voice sharpens when he says 'this',
like it's an accusation. "I couldn't keep chasing whoever it was."
"Why not? …Oh, wait, don't answer that. You couldn't leave a baby alone in an
abandoned house in the middle of a forest with potential predators in it. Fine.
So the kid heard you growling, the first time he met you, and now he thinks
you're a bad man." Stiles can't help the smile pulling at the corners of his
mouth. "How's that feel? Being villanized by an infant?"
"Shut up," says Derek, somehow managing not to growl - even though he wants to,
it's totally obvious from his eyebrows. "And do something."
"Do something?" Stiles is out-and-out grinning. "About what?"
"About that."
The baby's still crying. A lot lower, now that Derek isn't being the Big Bad
Wolf, and Stiles is drawn to the kid's side like a magnet.
"Hey, little guy," he says, softly, and meets the baby's eyes. They blink at
him, iridescent-green and wet, the baby temporarily distracted from his crying
by the sight of a new face. "The mean wolf spooked you, didn't he? Don't worry.
I won't let him hurt you."
"What are you saying?" Derek hisses. "I would never hurt a - "
"Be quiet, Derek," says Stiles, sweetly, still smiling down at the kid. "You're
hungry, aren't you? There's some milk on the way."
"Milk," mutters Derek, off to the side. "I forgot to ask you to buy milk."
"I bought it, anyway." Still out of the corner of his mouth, he tells Derek:
"Go get the bags by the door, would you? Take the powder out, mix it with water
and boil it on the stove. Boil one of the bottles, too. Separately. Then put
the milk in the bottle and bring it here, okay? We'll have to wait for it to
cool before he can drink from it."
Derek just stands there. What, does he think he's too Alpha to boil a baby's
milk? Tough luck.
"Do you want him to starve to death, or what?"
Derek goes.
Stiles hears the rustling of plastic bags in the corridor, and he reaches down
to touch the baby, fingers resting on his cheek, and, wow, that fur's the most
velvety, most unbelievably irresistible thing ever. He looks back into the
baby's eyes - as if asking for permission - and reaches under that tiny body to
lift it up. The baby stops sniffling entirely, startled into silence.
"Whoa, hey, you're light. Lighter than a feather, almost. A really furry
feather. Fluffy feather. God, you're fluffy. And naked. Very naked. That
embarrass you? Or does the fur make up for it?"
The baby just looks at him.
"How old are you? You can't be more than, what, three months old? Four?
Practically newborn. Damn, you're cute. Scary-cute. Cute-scary. I don't even
know. You have a name?"
The baby's feet kick slightly.
"Lemme guess. It ain't Jarvis. Because, you and a giant suit of sentient armor?
Not much in common. Except for the sentience. And, you know, the ability to
level entire cities. One, with firepower; the other, with cute. You're
cuuuuuuuute," he says, and hugs the baby to him.
He hopes he's holding it correctly; Aunt Judy seemed to think he had a talent
for it, at least, which is a comfort. With one palm cradling the baby's head
and the other under his velvet-furred bottom, he holds the baby close, and
whispers to him.
"Cutest thing ever, that's what you are. Oh, yeah. Do that cooing thing. You
like it when I hug you? You like being hugged? 'Course you do. It's the
Stilinski hug, man, it's the best hug in the world. We, like, have the hugging
gene. We're hugging mutants. Rawr. Rawwwrrrr, see? It's not scary. Not when a
hug-wolf does it. Way better than a sour-wolf, right?"
"What are you saying to him?"
Oops. Derek's back, and he's holding a milk bottle like it's a club. Isn't
Derek ever going to stop with the caveman routine?
"Um, just. You know. Propaganda? Perfectly harmless propaganda? That favors
Stilinskis over Hales? What?"
Derek stares at him like he's insane. Hey, Stiles isn't the one that can't even
cope with a baby.
Stiles sighs, sits down on the couch, and settles the baby on his lap. "Gimme
that bottle."
Derek gives him the bottle. And immediately steps back, like there's a defense
perimeter around the baby that he can't breach, probably because it's lined
with mines.
It's Stiles's turn to stare. "Are you frightened of the baby?"
"No," says Derek, too quickly. "I just - don't know what to do with him."
"You're a werewolf! He's a werebaby! How can you not know what to do with him?"
"I was the youngest in my family," says Derek, defensively. "I have no
experience with cubs."
"Cu - cubs. Uh-huh. Which, all right, he is a cub, but, seriously?" Stiles
isn't going to snicker. He isn't. "So what you're telling me is that you can't
handle a baby because you used to be the baby. Of your family."
Derek's brows lower.
"Don't growl! I can see your eyes doing that Red October thing, but it isn't
the best idea right now, okay? The kid's just stopped crying."
Derek pauses, like someone literally pressed the pause-button, and nods. His
eyes clear.
Stiles wonders just how painful those high-pitched cries must be for fully-
grown, highly sensitive werewolf ears. Derek doesn't usually cooperate like
this. With anything Stiles suggests, let alone - well, anything.
Or maybe Derek's just desperate. The thought's honestly funny - that Derek
Hale, Alpha of Beacon Hills, overly muscular ex-convict and badass, parricidal
mofo, is desperate for a babysitter.
Stiles laughs.
Derek clenches his jaw.
"Look, I'm sorry, just - heh. Can you blame me? Also, have you told Scott?
About our li'l guest?"
"I sent him a message soon after I sent you one."
"And?"
"He didn't show up. He must've thought it was a joke."
Stiles… blinks. "He still thinks you're capable of a sense of humor?"
Derek scowls.
"Hey, chill. I hate to say this about my best friend, but… he isn't the
brightest wolf in the pack." That word, 'pack', reminds him of a question
that's been niggling at him. "Why'd you even ask me, first? Why not Lydia?" No
one in their right minds would ask Jackson, but Lydia had to be the likeliest
candidate, didn't she?
Derek's scowl deepens. "Why would I ask her?"
"Uh. Because she's… one of your Betas? And, yeah, she's a single child, but
she's a girl, so that's gotta give her some innate talent for soothing babies."
"You share Scott's lack of understanding about your pack."
"My - my pack?"
But Derek goes rigid, from head to toe, like he's said something he shouldn't
have. The scowl's replaced by that cornered look.
Stiles gapes, fascinated. The baby gurgles in his lap. "Um," says Stiles. "That
- I didn't know that. That you thought - that."
"Forget about it. Feed the baby."
Forget about it? Derek, the Alpha, thinks Stiles is a member of his pack, and
Stiles is supposed to forget about it? "The bottle's not cool enough."
Derek narrows his eyes.
Stiles narrows his right back.
Finally, astonishingly, Derek looks away. It's a surrender of such epic
proportions - for a werewolf - that Stiles can barely process it. "It isn't a
big deal," Derek says. "You must remember how I told you and Scott that my
family once consisted of both humans and werewolves."
"Yeah. Yeah, you did, come to think of it."
"That's all it is."
"That's - " But that's not all it is. Stiles doesn't know how, but he can feel
it, in the way Derek's shoulders are tense, in the way the silence that falls
between them is tense.
Usually, Stiles would just badger Derek into telling him what was up, but
Derek's weirdly edgy, like he might jump out of a window, or something. It's
downright bizarre.
So Stiles files this away in his mind, in the file titled, 'Things To Talk
About With Derek Hale in the Unlikely Event That He is Sane, Drugged Into
Complacency or is Otherwise Restrained and is Unable to Maul Me'. His Derek-
files tend to have long names. Derek's that kind of guy. "Fine," says Stiles,
like he means it, and Derek can always tell when he's lying, but Derek - again,
astonishingly - doesn't comment on it.
"Is the milk cool enough, yet?"
Wow, what a smooth subject change. Not. "Yep, I think it is."
Stiles uncaps the bottle, and the smell of milk intensifies. The baby must be
able to smell it, too - better than Stiles can - because his furry hands make
vague grabbing motions, eyes fixed on the bottle like heat-seeking missiles on
a soon-to-be-blasted-into-smithereens target. His irises even glow green.
"Would you look at that. Just like Daddy."
"I'm not his father - "
"Didn't say you were." Stiles quirks a grin at Derek, and plugs the rubber
nipple into the baby's mouth. The kid does this full-body freeze, toes pointing
straight out, before he starts sucking frantically.
It's the most adorable thing Stiles has ever seen. His heart literally thumps
in his chest. And maybe the baby hears it, because he snuggles closer, and
gazes up at Stiles with a pleased, deeply satisfied face. His mouth keeps on
sucking, though, like it's on autopilot.
"Hey, kiddo. You were hungry, huh? You've been a sweetheart, really, even
though Derek's, like, the worst host."
"Stiles."
"Stop trying to defend yourself to an infant, dude. It's pathetic."
"Stop trying to make me look bad in front of one. That's pathetic, too."
Stiles sticks out his tongue. At Derek, but the kid probably finds it amusing,
because he makes this fart-noise around his bottle.
"At least you can laugh. Sourwolf, here? Wouldn't know comedy if the entire
cast of Monty Python took up residence inside his head."
"I don't own a television."
"See? Clearly, a deficient being. With many deficiencies."
"Stiles."
"What?" Stiles glances up at Derek - and he totally expects Derek to be
glowering, except… he's not. He's got that look on his face - that look he gets
when he watches Lydia and Scott and Jackson playing wolf-tag in the woods.
It's… Stiles doesn't know what that look is. But Derek's giving it to him, has
it because of him, and that's -
Stiles doesn't know what that means, either. Except that it makes his throat go
dry.
"You're good with cubs," Derek says, out of the blue, and Stiles starts. The
baby's fist comes up to clutch Stiles's shirt, as if to keep him still.
"Uh. You could write me a letter of recommendation? If I ever decide to become
a professional au pair?"
Derek snorts. "It would suit you."
"I was joking. I - ohmygod, you just made a joke, too. You made a joke. You
made a joke. Where is my camera. Where is any camera. This moment needs to be
recorded for posterity. It needs to be recorded for your cubs, man."
"My cubs," says Derek, and stills. All over.
"Um. Yeah? You need some, right? Eventually? To build your pack?"
"Scott and Jackson both have mates. They can produce cubs."
"What about you? Doesn't the Alpha have to produce any cubs? Although, what is
up with that word? 'Produce,' like it's a factory line, or - "
"Will you look after them?"
"What?"
"My cubs," Derek repeats, patiently, and his eyes are strangely intent. They're
red, again, but it isn't the angry red. It's… something else. Something that
goes along with that other expression Derek had been wearing. "Will you look
after them, the way you're looking after this cub?"
…What.
What even -
"Well, yeah," says Stiles, even though he gets the feeling that he isn't,
actually, answering the question. And he has no idea why. "I mean, I - if I'm
still in Beacon Hills when that happens, sure. Why not?"
"Why not," echoes Derek, and his eyes are seriously starting to bore holes into
Stiles's skull.
This time, it's Stiles that has to look away. At the baby, because the baby's
safe, because the baby's tiny, because the baby needs him now, and not X number
of years in the future, to fulfill some ludicrous promise about potential
offspring. What?
He isn't thinking about it. He isn't.
"Yo, Jar," he says to the baby, instead, tilting the rapidly-emptying bottle.
"When you're done feeding, we'll give you a little bath, and then we'll put you
in diapers, how's that sound? It sounds awesome, I know, because who wants to
poop all over themselves? Not a sophisticated dude like you, I bet. Ain't that
right? You know it's right. Mm-hm. Drink that milk."
Derek is… still looking at him. Stiles can sense it. "What is 'Jar'?"
"His name," says Stiles, not returning Derek's creepy stalker-scrutiny. "I
can't keep calling him 'little guy' and 'mini-wolf' and 'tiny tot', can I? That
sort of thing'll give him a complex. For life. Possibly a size complex. Which
is the cruelest thing you can do to a guy, you know that."
"Jar." Derek tries it out. "What does it stand for?"
"Jarvis."
"Jarvis." And Derek's back to sounding like Stiles is insane. It's enough of a
relief that Stiles manages to return his gaze. Derek looks - there is no other
word for it - incredulous. His eyebrows don't even seem to know what to do.
Stiles beams at him. "Isn't it the coolest name in history? It's the name of
Iron Man's armor! Smartest piece of military technology in the fictional
future. According to the House of M, anyway."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"It's a comic book, Derek. Ever read those? They're like books, except with
comics in them?"
"You named a cub… after a comic book."
"After a character in a comic book. An artificially intelligent character with,
like, a nuclear arsenal up its sleeve. Its very shiny, metallic sleeve. Uh.
What's wrong?"
But Derek's busy acting like Peter Hale had acted when both Scott's username
and password had turned out to be 'Allison'.
How unfair is it that this is when Stiles finally gets the family resemblance?
"Dude, you're a mythology nerd. A mythology nerd. You don't have the right to
look down on a geek, okay? Because, geeks? Trump nerds. Any day."
"My thorough knowledge of Celtic mythology is a must - "
"Yeah. That explains why, along with the wolfsbane stuff, you also have stuff
on love potions. And fertility potions."
"You - who showed you my library?"
"It may have been Jackson," says Stiles, which is totally a lie, it was Scott,
but maybe this can get Jackson kicked around some more.
Sadly, Derek sees - or smells - through his lie. Like always. "I will kill
Scott," he says, with absolute, menacing certainty, and Stiles gulps. Jar
actually flinches a little, in his lap. And stops sucking.
"You've scared him again!"
"You goaded me into scaring him."
"That doesn't even make any sense. Either calm the hell down, or leave the
room. Jar has to feed."
They glare at each other.
Jar burps. And resumes sucking.
They keep glaring at each other.
"You do realize," Derek grits out, "that I'm the Alpha."
"And that you could break my scrawny little neck like a twig? Yeah. Now, could
you please leave the room if death threats are the only things you can produce
in the presence of infants?"
"I wasn't - " Derek blinks, and his eyes are back to a shocked, human blue. "I
wasn't threatening you."
"You sure weren't. 'Cause who else will take care of the cubs? Cub," he quickly
corrects, when Derek's eyes widen. "This cub. This cub, specifically. Jarvis,
named after the best automail ever, and that includes Fullmetal Alchemist.
Damn, I've gotta catch up on my summer anime. What? What're you gawking at?"
"I," says Derek. "That. Is there. What should I do with the other bottles."
"Boil them, too. Oh, and draw a bath. He's gonna need one."
"Good," says Derek, still looking like he's been hit over the head. "That's -
good."
Stiles watches him go. And wonders what the hell gets into Derek, sometimes.
"We'll try to find your Mommy and Daddy," says Stiles to Jar, in a confidential
tone, "but if you do stay here, be warned - stepdaddy is one weird son of a -
b-word that I cannot use in front of a baby. Yeah."
Jar stretches contentedly. And keeps on feeding.
 
===============================================================================
 
***** Chapter 2 *****
Chapter Notes
     Elenora drew Jarvis_the_werebaby! Go and tell her how awesome she is!
     And if anyone else wants to draw anything, please, go ahead. :D
===============================================================================
 
Chapter five of Imogen Marsters' How to Take Care of Your Baby is about
bonding. Bonding by touch; bonding by voice; bonding by feeding. The problem is
that it focuses on how important it is for the mother to bond with her baby,
and Stiles… isn't Jar's mom. Jar's real mom is currently AWOL in places
unknown, and the only reason Stiles is even here is because Derek seems to be
laboring (no pun intended) under the delusion that Stiles is somehow a part of
his pack, rather than just the token attention-deficit hanger-on of said pack.
Still. Bonding. Is important. Very, very important. And just in case they don't
find Jar's mother anytime soon, Jar's going to need a psychologically healthy,
structured environment that sensitizes him to touch and to other people's
emotions.
That's, uh. That's what the book says.
So Stiles cuddles the werebaby, and feeds the werebaby, and talks to the
werebaby (which is the easiest of all, since, well, Stiles). He also changes
diapers and makes splashy noises in the bath and teaches the kid how to giggle
- because, seriously, if Jar grows up to be the broody type? Like Derek?
That'll be just plain depressing.
Thankfully, Jar exhibits a stellar sense of humor for a however-month-old, and
even though his laughs continue to resemble fart-noises, they're cute. Possibly
that is why they are cute. Stiles can't get enough of them, and will do
anything to earn them - even if it means having to roll around on the rugs in
Derek's living room and make silly faces.
Stiles is fond of silly faces, so that's okay. Arguably, Stiles's default face
is a silly face, so that's even better.
He's getting good at this stuff. He's sure he is.
Derek, though, just sort of looms pointlessly and runs errands that don't
involve direct tactile contact with the baby, which is ridiculous and bad for
Jarvis, so Stiles literally has to sit Derek down one day (three days after
Jar's arrival, actually) and have an Awkward Co-Parenting Talk.
"So," he says, as Derek... shuffles. And obviously tries not to notice the fact
that Jar is, for all intents and purposes, mouthing at Stiles's nipple. Through
his T-shirt.
Yeah. Awkward co-parenting. Is awkward. Stiles shifts the baby to his other
knee, and reaches for the dummy he'd gotten Scott to buy on his last visit to
Walmart, since Stiles was too busy juggling a newborn werewolf and an Alpha
with intimacy issues to spare the time for another shopping trip.
Jar is, thankfully, distracted by the dummy, and leaves Stiles's nipple alone.
There's still a damp patch over it, though. Stiles… doesn't twitch.
"Uh," he says, when he realizes that Derek has finally lost all semblance of
propriety and is openly staring at Stiles's chest. Stiles clears his throat.
"Up here, please?"
Derek's eyes snap up to meet his. Derek is - not blushing, no, since an Alpha
werewolf wouldn't do something so absurd, but - there's definitely an air of
embarrassment, there.
"Aaaaand we're just going to pretend none of that ever happened. Also, what the
hell are you doing, not touching the kid? Like, not ever touching the kid?"
"He's frightened of me."
"Maybe he's frightened of you because you never touch him? Ever thought of
that?"
"I - "
"Excuses, excuses. Look, both paren - uh, not that we're - but you're - you're
one of his caretakers, all right? Both caretakers have to touch the baby. It's
in the book." Stiles jerks his chin at the stapled printout that's lying on the
coffee table, conveniently flipped open to page 78, titled, 'The Importance of
Touch'.
Derek barely gives it a glance. "I've got other things to do. I must locate
Jarvis's pack - "
"And give him back to them as some kind of emotionally damaged, neglected
werebaby? Yeah, I'm sure that'll go down real well in terms of inter-pack
politics. Which I've also been reading up on, by the way. From your library."
Derek… looks at him. Just looks at him, without wolfing out or going Sauron-
eyed, which is a pretty recent development, but also pretty awesome, since it
means that Stiles can actually talk to him like a person and not be afraid of,
like, getting his throat ripped out.
"Not to mention that it's only about three weeks until Dad gets back, and
another two before school starts, and - who's gonna look after the baby, then?
It can't be Lydia, 'cause she'll be at school, too, and it sure as hell can't
be Jackson. Or Scott. Those two could kill a potted plant between them, one
from sheer malice and the other from an inability to understand basic
photosynthesis."
Derek doesn't deny that his pack consists of nothing but schoolgirls, bullies
and idiots. "Hm."
"It has to be you, okay? You're going to be the one looking after the baby.
Even if I rush back here after school everyday, you're going to be in charge
the rest of the time. Which means you need to know this stuff."
"I've been watching you. I know what to do."
"Yes, Creeper-Man, you've been watching me. And no, you don't know what to do.
Observation is useless for stuff like this, all right? The only reason I can
even pick Jar up without dropping him on his head is because Aunt Judy came to
stay with us when she was sick, and I had to look after her twins. Twins,
Derek. Imagine that."
Derek looks - well, intimidated isn't the word, but it's a near thing. He's
probably having visions of the Apocalypse. Babypocalypse.
"Touch him."
Derek doesn't move.
"Touch him. Or, if you can't, Mr. Scaredy-Pants - "
"I am not scared - "
"Says the guy that can't touch a baby?"
"He'll cry."
"And shatter your sensitive werewolf eardrums? Too bad. Get ear-muffs, or
something. Touch him."
Okay, now Derek looks intimidated.
Stiles sighs. And grabs Derek's hand.
Derek freezes. Like he's trying not to flip out and bite Stiles's head off,
because, yeah, intimacy issues. Derek's fine with manhandling other people, but
he doesn't like it when other people touch him. Maybe his own mom didn't do the
whole bonding thing, but Derek is sure gonna get a crash course in it, now.
"Touch me, then."
But Derek sort of just… sits there, staring at Stiles's fingers.
God, he's useless.
Stiles moves closer, hitching Jar so that he's settled between them, head on
Stiles's lap and feet on Derek's. Jar wiggles. "Feel that? That's a baby. A
wiggly baby. Feel his feet? Those're his feet, kicking at you. Like the Karate
Kid. Something tells me he's going to be great at martial arts."
"He is… small."
"Yeah, genius, he's small. He's a cub. And this," Stiles says, taking Derek's
hand and bringing it up to Jarvis's face, his soft-furred, tender face, "is
Jarvis. Say hello, Jarvis."
Jar… meeps. Or makes a sound a lot like a meep.
Stiles is pretty sure his heart is actually melting right out of his body. His
chest cavity feels like the insides of a caramel pudding - a pudding that's
been microwaved for that perfect, extra fifteen seconds, until its center is
all melty and warm and… and melty. Jesus.
"You smell - " But then, Derek cuts himself off.
Stiles turns to look at him, and, hey, this is the closest he's been to Derek
since he became the Alpha and stopped throwing Stiles around like his very own
rag-doll. Stiles still isn't sure why Derek stopped doing that, but he's not
complaining. "Me? Shouldn't you be paying attention to the baby?"
"I am. You - you smell of the cub."
"Yeah, well, of course I smell of the cub, I do almost nothing all day but
touch the cub - "
"You smell of another wolf's cub."
Stiles… stares. He - he stares, because - "What?"
"I don't like it." And, whoa, Derek's eyes are red again, but at least he as
the presence of mind to look away from Jarvis while he's going all Evil
Android. Cylon. Whatever.
But, seriously, what the hell? "Is this a pack thing? A… people-in-your-pack-
shouldn't-smell-like-another-pack thing?"
"Yes," says Derek, but to Stiles, it sounds a lot like, No. A big, giant NO,
even, painted in blazing colors on a massive billboard next to an empty highway
in the middle of nowhere.
"Right," says Stiles, and adds this to the 'Things To Talk About With Derek
Hale' file. He doesn't, in fact, have the time or patience to deal with Derek's
issues. Not when Jar's right here, on the brink of being parentally neglected
and scarred for life. "So, back to the baby. Who's way more important than your
gourmet sense of smell, okay?"
Derek tightens his jaw.
"Uh-huh. Listen up, man. Wolf. Wolf-man. This kid? Is your responsibility. He
was left at your door."
"I didn't ask for him."
Stiles wants to take Derek by the collar and shake him, but that will get him
killed, so he doesn't do it. What he does do is grab Derek's hand tighter, and
move it down to Jar's chest, so that Derek can feel that tiny heart beating.
"You didn't ask for Scott, either, when Peter turned him. Does that mean Scott
isn't your responsibility?"
Derek stills.
"Does it?"
"You - " Derek shakes his head, grits his teeth, and probably chants a thousand
Buddhist prayers or whatever he does to make his really quite bad case of red-
eye go away. And then, suddenly, he's everywhere, arm around Stiles and the
cub, and Stiles is kind of… stuck there, in a werewolf sandwich, with a
werewolf at his back and a werebaby on his lap.
Derek is breathing on his neck. Or maybe breathing in; there's clearly some
inhaling going on, there.
"You're right," says Derek, and, wow, statement of the century. What Stiles
would give to record that and replay it at every possible opportunity. Or
impossible opportunity. Or just, like, all the time. It should be the
soundtrack of Stiles's life.
"Good," says Stiles, trying not to notice that grown werewolves are, like,
seriously hot. In - in terms of temperature. Just temperature. Stiles's back is
going to start sweating. "Ah. G-good?"
"Mm."
"Maybe you could… let go, now? Of me, not the baby. 'Cause you still need to
hold the baby."
"I've found a solution."
"To what? Your issues with personal space? 'Cause I'm thinking, no. You
haven't."
"If the cub carries my scent, then you will carry my scent."
Uh. What? "So you're saying that you'll hold the baby?"
"I'll hold the baby."
"Dude, this reverse-engineering stuff rocks. Okay, so I'm - going to move out
from under your arm, here - "
Derek's arm tightens.
"I. I thought you were letting me go?"
"I am."
"No, you're not. You're really, really not. At all. Letting me go."
"I will."
"When?"
"When the scenting is complete."
Stiles wonders how his life got to this point. He honestly wonders. "Okay," he
says, carefully, like you would in the presence of a crazy person who is either
balanced on the edge of a roof or is within easy reach of several sharp
objects. Which, in Derek's case, is totally true; his fangs and his claws
aren't out, yet, but if Stiles makes a move, they will be. Stiles can feel it.
"All right."
They sit there.
All three of them.
Jarvis appears to have fallen asleep.
There's a low, perpetual rumble coming from Derek's chest, something that
Stiles would classify as a purr, if it wouldn't get him, like, summarily
beheaded.
Derek's mouth is buried in his neck.
Stiles is - Stiles is -
Stiles's higher-order brain functions will come back online, any minute now.
Any - any minute. Now.
Now?
Now, please.
Finally, however many eons later, the door swings open - and in tumbles Scott,
carrying a shitload of bags, followed by Jackson, who manages to be at least
twenty percent more coordinated.
"Hi," says Stiles, pretending there isn't a sub-sonic non-purr coming from the
Alpha that's currently wrapped around him like the world's most muscular
Snuggie blanket.
"Uh. Hi." Scott's gaping at them. Scott's gaping at them, like a cartoonish
illustration of the Eureka moment, and Stiles is absolutely, painfully certain
that he does not want to know what that moment is about. Or what epiphany Scott
thinks he's having.
"Did you get the diapers?"
"Yes, we got the diapers," mimics Jackson, and there's this mean little twist
to the edge of his mouth. Bastard. He thinks this is funny. "And the canned
milk. And the baby-clothes. And the mittens. And the washtub. And the cream.
And the wipes. Anything else, Mommy?"
Stiles glares.
"Ooh, that's scary. Not. Derek?"
"Mm," says Derek, apparently still stuck in pre-verbal caveman mode. His
brimstone-and-gravel voice reverberates right along the skin of Stiles's
throat, and Stiles… does not shiver. He doesn't.
"Are we having pizza tonight, or what? 'Cause Scott could go and pick some up."
"Hey," says Scott, snapping to indignant life. "Why do I have to pick it up?
You're the Omega!"
"I'm pulling more than my fair share of weight, okay? Which is way more than -
"
"Quiet," says Stiles, making his tone hard, the way he has to, whenever Jar's
sleeping and everyone else in the pack is being a noisy moron. "You're both
getting the pizza."
"I wasn't asking you," says Jackson, mutinously. "I was asking Derek. Derek?"
"Mm," says Derek.
Stiles raises his eyebrows. "I rest my case."
"You - what have you done to him?" Jackson's starting to look suspicious.
"He's… he's in some sort of trance - wait. He isn't high, is he?"
The thought of Derek being high - on anything - is so ridiculous that Stiles
almost laughs. But that'd wake Jar up, so all Stiles does is shrug. As much as
he can, given the fact that Derek's arm weighs, like, a metric kiloton and is
getting heavier by the minute. Stiles is going to have to schedule some alone-
time with Dad's massage chair, just to work all the knots out of his shoulders.
"Nah," says Scott, relatively unconcerned. "He's just scent-marking. You know,
like I do with Allison."
With - with Allison?
Scott. Does this. With Allison.
And Derek's -
Derek's -
With -
"I think you broke his brain," Jackson snickers, eyes gleaming. "So this is
what I have to do, too?"
"Once you get a mate, sure."
"Dude, I totally have a mate. Lydia, remember?"
"Uh, didn't you dump Lydia? Also, doesn't she try to claw your eyes out
whenever we're playing tag?"
"It isn't tag," Jackson mutters. "It's - "
And then the door closes behind them, because they've ostensibly gone back out
to get some pizza, and Lydia'll be joining them whenever she's back from her
girl-date with Allison, because even if Lydia pretends to go on diets all the
time, everybody knows that no one loves junk food more than she does. Not even
Stiles.
Stiles - Stiles is going to think about the pack's dietary habits.
He's going to think about anything, anything at all, other than what -
What -
What.
Derek.
Derek.
Just. What.
"Mmrrr?" says Jarvis, drowsily, his fist closing tight around Stiles's finger,
his sleeping face scrunching up in confusion.
"Oh, believe me, man," says Stiles, softly. "I know."
***** Chapter 3 *****
Stiles doesn't often get to hang out with Lydia - just with Lydia - mostly
because Jackson follows her everywhere and is pathetically obvious with his
I'm-the-man-no-really routine, in which Jackson pretends desperately to be
anything other than an Omega with no standing whatsoever, and Lydia relishes
every moment of reminding him of it.
It's like watching torture. Truly, deeply sadistic torture. Psychological
torture. If there's a repressive regime out there with a vacancy in the Torture
and Interrogation Department, Lydia should definitely apply.
But today, Jackson's with his parents, doing… whatever the Whittemores do
during family reunions, which is apparently what the Whittemores are having,
this evening, with relatives who're visiting from out-of-state. Jackson only
shrugs and scowls before heading out, like everyone doesn't know he's having a
nervous breakdown. Jackson hates family reunions. Which makes Stiles wonder why
he wanted to join a pack, of all things, unless, of course, that's why he
wanted to join a pack.
It isn't even about the adoption. Or, well, it's not all about the adoption,
Stiles doesn't think. It's about the Whittemores, and their we're-so-perfect
vibe, and the fact no one, not even Jackson, Mr. Awesome McShmawesome, can ever
measure up.
There are times when Stiles realizes how grateful he is for his dad. His dad
only ever expects him to, like, be himself. And try not to blow up the house
whenever he cooks. Or blow up the car whenever he drives. Or blow up the lab
when he's at school, trying to get Scott interested in Chemistry by proving
that, yes, under certain circumstances, covalent bonds can make things explode.
Or, in Scott-speak, go BOOM.
He does it all for science. Science, and the edification of Scott's mind.
"So, tell me," says Lydia, now that Derek is grudgingly doing his share of
baby-duty and Stiles is pretty much just stuck in the kitchen, boiling bottles.
If Derek hadn't blown most of his savings on renovating the house (and,
unnecessarily, the stables - what'll they do with stables? Grow horses for
lunch and then eat them?), the pack could totally have afforded an automatic
sterilizer. Stiles has kind of been having indecent fantasies about it, ever
since he saw it on Walmart's online catalogue.
"What?" Stiles turns his thoughts away from visions of pristine, shiny bottles
emerging from a steamy cavern of automated bliss. "Um, sorry. What'd you say?"
"Tell me," says Lydia, shamelessly double-dipping her nachos in everyone's sour
cream. Turning into a werewolf has obviously sabotaged her scruples, too. "Why
aren't you living here?"
"Uh, I sort of am? In case you hadn't noticed. I'm spending the nights here.
Since Derek will probably pull a Godzilla if he has to change diapers at 2 AM.
Although he'll have to do it when my dad comes back, anyway…"
"No, dumbass." Lydia rolls her eyes. "I meant, why don't you have multiple
changes of clothes, here? Like, at least five changes of clothes?"
"What's the big deal? I have two shirts; that's enough. I just wash one while
I'm wearing the other one."
"Well, you smell."
"I - I what?" Stiles sticks his nose into his armpit. "I do not."
"Yes, you do. You keep swapping the same two shirts; you smell of nothing but
cub and milk. Basically, you smell like werewolf boner."
"Were - "
"Or something that'll give a werewolf a boner."
"I - "
"What? Don't tell me you're surprised. Derek keeps grabbing you and scenting
you. It's ridiculous."
It is ridiculous, but Stiles is doing his level best not to think about it.
Because Derek's - Derek's clearly touch-deprived, or something. Like a lab
monkey. Or a prison inmate. (Huh. He was a prison inmate. For a while.) That,
or Jarvis's appearance has pulled some weird evolutionary bullshit on him and
Derek's just… wolfing out. A lot. A-lot-a-lot.
Stiles… Stiles isn't thinking about it.
"Am I giving you a boner?" he asks, instead.
"I'm a girl, you moron. But still…" She looks uncomfortable. "It makes me want
to get pregnant."
"What? That's - that's really specific, isn't it?"
"Something about biorhythms and menstrual cycles. I read about it, once, but I
didn't think it'd happen to me."
Stiles is trying to pick his jaw back up from the floor. 'Trying' being the
operative word. "I, uh. You should know that I'm not, actually, ovulating."
Lydia levels a glare at him.
"No, seriously. Just because I'm handling a baby, doesn't mean - doesn't mean
I'm a chick, all right?"
"You're an idiot," Lydia says. "It's not about that."
"What is it about?"
"Change. Your. Clothes. Or get an industrial-power laundry detergent, I don't
care, just - " Lydia waves her hand at him, like his very existence is an
offense against nature. Which, given what Lydia's just told him, Stiles might
even believe is true. " - get rid of that scent."
Time for revenge. Timely revenge. For revenge is always timely. "Maybe
Jackson'll be happy to hear that you want to get pregnant."
"Tell Jackson," Lydia hisses, eyes glowing, "and I will end you."
Whoa. Lydia's become even more dominant since she was Turned. Stiles pities
Jackson, for a second; if the poor bastard ever does get back together with
her, she'll have a strap-on waiting for him. A really, really huge strap-on.
With pearls on it.
And Stiles… does not need that image.
At all.
"I. Will. End. You," Lydia repeats, slowly, word-for-word. "Did you or did you
not get that?"
"Look," Stiles sighs. "That I, Robot thing you have going on with your eyes?
Doesn't scare me. Not after Derek, okay? Not after Peter Hale."
Lydia considers him. Narrowly. "I could still hurt you."
"No, you could not," snarls another voice, and Lydia - doesn't jump, exactly,
but there's an abortive twitch to her shoulders that means she sure as hell
wants to.
"Whoops," she smirks, like she isn't busy hyperventilating. Stiles isn't a
werewolf, but even he can hear her heart beating from across the room. "Daddy
doesn't like it when I threaten Mommy."
Wha -
Mo -
Stiles isn't actually going to be able to finish his sentences. He can't finish
his thoughts.
"Get out," rumbles Derek, all low and feral, and Lydia - gets out.
Damn it. That leaves the nachos and the tub of sour cream out on the counter,
for Stiles to tidy up. Again. There's powdery nacho-stuff everywhere. Lydia -
or, well, Werelydia - is a messy eater. When she's with the pack, it's like she
doesn't care about how she looks, or how she acts; Little Miss Prom Queen is
nowhere to be found. Which is great, insofar as self-expression and self-
confidence is concerned, but less great insofar as… as living with other people
is concerned.
"Gee, I dunno, big guy, but maybe you could let her clean up before exiling her
to the lands of darkness and damnation?"
"She was threatening you."
"She was kidding around. You know that."
"It was unacceptable."
"Un - who are you, Dick Cheney? You don't get to tell me what I oughta find
'acceptable', got it? Also, what're you doing here? Where's Jar?"
"He's with Scott."
"Scott's back, huh?"
"Yes."
"Oh."
They stare at each other.
They're - they're alone. In the kitchen. And Stiles has just had a disturbing
and disturbingly justifiable conversation about werewolf boners.
Stiles can't, unfortunately, sink into the ground. He wishes he could.
"So…" Stiles reaches behind himself to turn off the stove, because the idea is
to boil the bottles, not melt them. "I'll just - go join Scott? Or," he says,
when Derek crowds him against the stove, "I could just. Stay here. Where you're
pinning me. To a. Um."
Derek inhales. And gets a blissed-out look on his face.
Fuck. Jackson was right. Derek gets high. Derek gets high on Stiles.
Or on how Stiles smells. Cub-and-milk. Eau de Mate.
He's going to have to give Lydia flowers. Or a dead cat. Or whatever counts as
an appreciation gift among werewolves. Because, her advice? Was gold. Stiles is
totally going to follow it. Stiles is going to change shirts one million times.
It'll be like those Broadway musicals, with a gazillion costume changes, and
Stiles will skip on and off the stage like the world's least pigtailed Heidi.
Jesus. What is wrong with his brain?
Possibly he's freaking out. Possibly he's panicking, because Derek isn't just
crowding him, anymore; Derek is touchinghim.
Derek is touching his waist, pushing Stiles inexorably backward, until his hip
nudges the platform right next to the stove, and it's a damn good thing he
turned it off, because -
Because Derek's -
Derek's mouthing his neck.
Again.
This is seriously becoming a theme. A bizarre, upsetting theme.
Stiles is… Stiles is upset. He's -
He's gasping, and he's upset.
He's very, very upset.
Derek growls, and presses closer, and Stiles can feel Derek's butter-soft
leather jacket under his palms (when did they even come up to rest on Derek's
shoulders?) and Derek's sandpaper-rough stubble against his throat, and it's -
It's so, so upsetting -
It's wet -
Oh, god, that's Derek's tongue -
Stiles shudders, and there's this sound that comes out of him that he doesn't
know how to classify, except that it makes Derek's grip on his waist tighten
until Stiles can feel himself bruise.
This - this isn't just scent-marking, this is -
Stiles has to stop it -
He has to -
He has to get his hard-on to go back down, damn it -
Derek's thumb sweeps up, under Stiles's T-shirt, and the first callused brush
of it against Stiles's skin makes him moan.
Wait, no, he didn't mean to - didn't -
"Stop!" Stiles shoves him away, and Derek's eyes gleam red, for a moment,
before he controls himself. His fingers have real goddamn claws on them - like
he can snatch Stiles up with them, and - and carry him away, or something.
Shit.
"It's just - it's just my scent," Stiles babbles, as Derek smolders at him.
"It's - you don't mean to, it's some kind of involuntary Wolverine thing, like
from the X-Men, I get that, and you don't - you need to get a mate, you need to
- "
"Stiles." Derek's moving back in. This time, his hand cups the back of Stiles's
head and yanks it back, claws catching on Stiles's hair, until Stiles can feel
the strain in his tendons and his throat is utterly, dangerously bare. With
Derek's fangs this close to it.
Stiles just hangs there, suspended in Derek's grasp, breath sawing in and out
of him and heart hammering like a drill in a goddamn construction site.
"It is your scent." And Derek's leaning close, mouthing at his throat, again.
"It's your scent."
Okay. That's - okay, that's -
Holy shit, it's -
It's not okay -
"You don't mean it," Stiles says, eyes squeezed shut, because he can't look at
Derek's face, right now, doesn't know what he wants to see on it. "You don't -
"
"Who are you," Derek asks, against his skin, "Dick Cheney?"
That -
"You don't get to tell me," Derek says, the bastard, "what I ought to - "
"Fine." Stiles is not laughing. Hysterically. Or giggling. He's not. He might
be wheezing, but - "Fine. You… you win, you - "
"Yes," says Derek, patient and implacable. "I win."
And then, Derek's kissing him. He's -
He's biting Stiles's mouth, but he's doing it gently, like a starving man at a
feast that's still trying to be polite -
It makes Stiles strain upward, against the pull of Derek's hand, which slips
down and around his nape, and, fuck, those are his claws, his actual freaking
claws brushing the sides of Stiles's neck.
Stiles quivers, mind blown, lips raw because Derek keeps turning aside and
rubbing his stubble against them, rubbing his face against Stiles, like he's
trying to mark him, trying to leave his scent all over him, and Stiles -
Stiles flashes on this image of the two of them together, of Stiles naked and
spread out and Derek looming over him, huge and broad-shouldered in a dark-lit
room, holding him down and moving on him, against him, heavy and radiating
heat, rutting in slow, hard circles that make Stiles sweat, that make Stiles
keen -
Because Derek would be marking him, and Derek would take his time -
Stiles jerks, eyes flying open, and Derek's licking back into his mouth,
lapping at him and into him in a way that makes him quake -
"I - " Stiles isn't ready for all that, isn't - "D-Derek, please - "
Derek pauses.
For a second, Stiles thinks it's an impending-storm pause, an I'm-going-to-
fuck-you-senseless-anyway pause, but then Derek draws back, panting, and his
eyes are -
His eyes aren't human, at all.
"You're frightened," says Derek, and Stiles wants to nod frantically, wants to
get the hell out of here and jack off like any other sixteen-year-old with a
stupid dick, but what he ends up saying is -
"No," and, Jesus, he's scoffing. Why is he scoffing? "Hell, no. I just - "
"Stiles. I can smell it."
"Right." Stiles nods. "Right, so we can - maybe, um, take this slow? Not that
I'm scared, why would I be scared? This is perfectly normal, just a teenager
necking with an overgrown werewolf that could literally tear a house down with
his claws, nothing scary about that, is there? Or, you know, the fact that
there's a baby and suddenly, according to Lydia, I'm some sort of teen mom -
I'm Bristol Palin - "
Derek drops his head onto Stiles's shoulder. "I'm sorry."
"You - " Derek's sorry. Derek's - oh, crap, Derek's… Derek. Derek's the guy who
got cradle-snatched by Kate Argent when he was, like, fifteen. Derek thinks -
"No," says Stiles, quickly. "No. You - you've got nothing to be sorry about."
Derek snorts. Or maybe grunts. Grunt-snorts?
"You've gotta believe me. We'll… we'll do this properly, all right?"
"Properly," Derek echoes, like he doesn't know the word.
Maybe he doesn't. "Yeah. You know. Dates? The occasional movie night? Dinner?
That doesn't involve fresh rabbits?"
"That's… dating."
"Yeah, Einstein, that's dating. That's how people do this stuff. They talk. Get
to know each other. And if there's a baby involved - which, in this case, there
is - they bond over said baby. And I realize that you want something a hell of
a lot more than that - not just dating, but a - a pack-partner or life-partner,
or something - "
"A mate."
"That. That's what you - and that's fine, it's just - you don't get there
without touching the other bases, first." Great. Why'd he bring up 'bases'? Let
alone, uh, touching them?
"Bases," says Derek, sounding amused, like he's caught on to Stiles's totally-
not-Freudian slip.
Stiles sticks out his tongue - even though Derek can't see it, from this angle.
"Bases. Now, uh, maybe I should go check on Jar? Because he's with Scott, and -
as much as I hate to say this - Scott might seriously lower Jar's IQ. For life.
If we leave him alone with Scott long enough, the only word Jar will ever learn
is 'Allison'."
Derek steps back. His hands linger on Stiles, and Stiles tries to ignore the
fact that he's turned on and a little shaky, physically and emotionally. He's
going to process all of this later, when he's alone, or when he's with Jar,
because Jar's like a simplifying factor, or a - a third atom in a three-atom,
two-electron bond, and, man, once semester starts, Stiles is going to ace that
Chem test. If he can concentrate long enough to finish it.
Stiles calms himself down. And smiles at Derek. Derek, who isn't wolfing out,
anymore, and just seems… sad. Wistful? Something.
He really shouldn't have that look on his face - whatever that look is - so
Stiles gathers his courage and rises up on his toes, and kisses Derek, once, on
the nose.
On the nose, and Derek's eyes widen -
And Stiles steps back, snickering. "Man, you're - I wish I could take a
picture. You look like you've been - "
"Stiles," Derek says, voice rolling like the quietest thunder, and Stiles -
Stiles probably shouldn't mess around with an Alpha.
Probably.
"Um. I didn't - "
But Derek just grabs him, or - or pounces, and then he's kissing Stiles, hard,
before letting him go.
Stiles sways. On his feet. And hangs on to the counter.
"Okay," he says. "Okay, I - I get what you're saying, or what you're not
saying, and, and I'm going to go. Yeah? That good with you?"
Derek's eyes glint. But he doesn't say 'no,' or, 'get back here so I can maul
you some more,' so Stiles sidles along the kitchen platform, backs out of the
door, and escapes.
And hopes - in vain - that Scott won't be able to take one whiff of him and
tell, down to the very last detail, exactly what happened, here.
Hell, even if Stiles didn't before, he sure smells like werewolf boner, now.
***** Chapter 4 *****
Chapter Notes
     There is now more fanart, this time by cranialabsconder! Thank you
     very much, darling! It's beautiful!
===============================================================================

So, it's getting to be a thing. Maybe it already is a thing, and Stiles's brain
is just too busy stumbling over itself to catch up, but - the thing. Is a
scenting thing. An almost-dating thing. A co-parenting-blossoming-into-an-only-
marginally-creepy-romance thing. If Jarvis were twins, this would totally be
The Parent Trap. A gay, supernatural, occasionally bloody Parent Trap. With
wolves.
As it is, Stiles just… comes over every day and hangs out, and - okay, it's not
'hanging out', anymore. It's something else. Something that makes being at
home, where he lives with his dad, feel like a day-trip to pick up T-shirts and
underwear. (And stain remover, because the the stuff Dad uses for his uniforms
works wonders on poop stains. Even werepoop stains. Not that werepoop's any
different, Stiles doesn't think, but you never know. At least Jar isn't eating
solids, yet.)
Anyway. The thing. Probably isn't healthy. No, scratch that; it definitely
isn't healthy. Not just because of the whole age difference aspect, or the
werewolf aspect, or the Derek's-only-other-romantic-experience-was-with-a-
psychotic-mass-murderer aspect. What's really messed up, far as Stiles can
tell, is how it's changing what he feels about family.
Family's always been important to him. Even before Mom died, of course, but
after she died, it was everything. It was just him and Dad, knit tighter than
ever, like scar-tissue over a bullet wound.
But now, even though he misses his dad and wants him to come back, he's also
worried about what'll happen when Dad does come back. Like, it won't be a
problem during the day, or whenever his dad's on night-shift, but Stiles won't
be able to go over to Derek's anytime he wants, won't be able to hold Jarvis
anytime he wants, won't be able to skip out on family dinners at home just
because, suddenly, Dad isn't his only family.
Dad… isn't his only family.
That's - that's huge. It's weird, and terrifying, and huge, but it's also
right, when he's watching Jar sleep while Scott and Jackson try to beat the
shit out of each other quietly, and Derek's sort of… lurking at his shoulder,
like he always does, but close, close and warm, and he's watching Jar, too.
It's -
It's too much to give up on. Too much, and he isn't sure when the hell this
happened, or how, but his family's a lot bigger, now.
His family - his family is pack.
===============================================================================

It's Drugstore Day. That's what Lydia calls it, because it's the day they run
out of diapers or baby oil or something else, and someone's gotta go down to
the drugstore. It happens every so often; usually once in three to four days.
And usually, it's one of the others that goes shopping, but this time, it's
Stiles.
Mostly because he has to get out of the house. Seriously. Being indoors for
that long is driving him nuts. Also, Derek's all up in his space all the time,
popping up around corners like a bizarrely sexy Jack in the Box, pressing him
against walls and random surfaces and just - smelling him. A lot. It's awkward,
and embarrassing, not least because Scott gets this understanding look on his
face. (Scott should never have that look on his face. It's downright unnatural;
the universe should always be incomprehensible to him.) The fact that Stiles
keeps getting hard whenever Derek sniffs him is also freaky, because everyone
can smell it on him, and even though nobody else seems to have a problem with
it - weirdass werewolves and their total lack of boundaries - Stiles isn't okay
with it, all right? He just - he isn't.
He's gone from being persona non grata at high school to being Derek's personal
Britney Spears, or something, and he can't - he can't cope. To go from being
one of the most undesirable people in Beacon Hills to one of the most
desirable, almost overnight, is a scenario so unlikely that it belongs in a
comic book, and a part of Stiles still can't square it with himself, can't make
it real. It's like, tomorrow he'll wake up and no one will know who he is,
again, except for Scott, who doesn't know anything, and Dad, who's all he's
got. Derek will still be a scary ex-con who's too hot to just be scary, and
Jackson will still be a complete tool, and Danny will never say hi to him from
across the cafeteria, and Lydia will still hold amoeba and some species of
plankton in higher regard than she'll ever hold Stiles.
Instead, Derek - he of the Playgirl physique - wants Stiles to be his mate, the
co-leader of his pack, and it's so out of this world that Stiles actually
catches himself wondering if he's hallucinating, sometimes. Dreaming it all up.
This whole Immortal Beloved business keeps making him want to look in the
mirror and check if he hasn't suddenly turned into that droopy-eyed girl from
Twilight.
The only thing that does make it real, strangely enough, is Jar - because no
way would Stiles ever hallucinate about poop. Werepoop. Or spending ages
scrubbing it off his own shirts.
So he volunteers for Drugstore Day, and gets the hell out of the house,
avoiding Derek's sullen, mopey eyes. Jesus. It's like Derek's pining for him,
which is ridiculous, since they see each other every day. Every hour, even. If
this keeps up, Stiles is going to have to consult one of those teen-magazine
agony aunts Lydia keeps quoting over breakfast. Maybe one of them will even
answer his questions. 'Clingy wereboyfriend? Here's how you deal!'
How Stiles deals is by escaping in search of diapers. Perfectly valid excu -
reason. Perfectly valid reason for leaving the house.
Stiles tries to draw it out, a bit, wandering up and down the aisles, picking
cans up and putting them down, reading the labels on the baby-food. (Which Jar
isn't old enough for, yet, but he soon will be. Might as well do some
research.)
He's basically just standing there, with a can of pulpy mango in his hand, when
he hears someone say:
"Well, well. Don't you smell pretty."
Stiles whips around. And drops the can, because, damn it, he has a sixth sense
for this sort of stuff, by now. And that tiny detail about 'smell'? Definitely
werewolf mojo.
"There's no need to be afraid."
The hell there isn't. This guy's like Peter Hale, or he's giving off the same
sort of vibe, and for all that he looks like a normal-seeming, broad-shouldered
lumberjack type in a Red Sox sweatshirt, there's this keen, feral intelligence
in his eyes that is fucking terrifying. If you know what to look for. Which
Stiles does. From experience.
"Someone's been very thorough in marking you." The werewolf tilts his head.
"Possessive, is he?"
What. What - "It's good manners to introduce yourself," Stiles says, because
damn if he's going to pretend he has no clue what's going on, "before you go
asking people about their love lives." Not that Stiles has the sort of love
life this dude's implying, mostly because he's cock-blocking himself for
reasons of sanity and world peace, but - maybe that's why Derek's been scenting
him so much. To make up for it.
"Of course. How remiss of me." The man offers his hand. "Max. Max Werner."
Stiles doesn't shake that hand. Eventually, it's lowered. "I bet you're a
Maximilian, too."
"How could you tell?"
"Because you're dressed like a small-town hick, but you talk like an Oxford
professor? That might've given it away."
"Hm. And you are?"
Lie, lie - no, wait, lies won't work - this guy will smell them - "Stiles. As
in, Stilinski. I live down the road."
"If by 'down the road,' you mean, 'all the way in the forest'. I can smell moss
and sunlight on you. Clever, how you didn't technically lie, but, well. You'll
have to do better than that."
"Listen, Mr. Twenty Questions - "
"Max."
"Max. What do you want from me?"
Max shrugs. "Just curious, that's all. You smell like a cub, but you seem
rather young to have had one, so - "
"Don't judge," says Stiles, his mouth on auto-pilot, because, fuck. This is
about Jarvis. Max is either from Jar's pack, or from one of their rival packs,
but whoever he is, he doesn't mean Jar well. Stiles can feel it. "Age is just a
number."
"So they say. And so your… mate, whoever he is, seems to believe."
"Damn straight. Or, heh, not."
"You're a spunky little thing, aren't you? Not intimidated at all?"
Stiles hasn't, for one second, looked away from Max's eyes. He knows his were-
lore; to look away is to submit. "No."
"You're either a fool, or a very, very desirable mate."
"It's possible to be both."
"Is it? Yes. Yes, I suppose it is. Are you a fool?"
"Sometimes. Are you a jackass?"
"Always. Or so I'm told. At any rate, this cub - "
"His name's Jar," Stiles snaps. "For Jarvis. I named him. He's ours. He's ours,
you hear that?"
"Really? He didn't get dropped off by a kindly stork? Burst out of a very
felicitous cabbage?"
"He. Is. Ours." There. That's the truth. No lie in it. Not a hint of one, and
Max's eyes narrow.
"So I see," he murmurs. "Certainly, you do smell as you should, all cub-scent
and mate-scent, which would mean that the cub is yours, but - I'm looking for a
child, you see."
"Ever thought about having one?"
"Are you offering?"
What?
"Ah. It appears that I've alarmed you."
Alarmed - "Um, you just as much said you smelled my mate on me." He doesn't
stumble over 'mate', when he says it, because he can't afford to. "Aren't you,
like, supposed to back off? As a werewolf courtesy, or something?"
"If you believe," Max says, slowly, "that having been claimed as a mate makes
one less alluring, not more, then you are sorely mistaken."
Stiles's heart is pounding. What the ever-loving fuck? "And you're sorely out
of chances, pal. Either tell me what the hell it is you're after, or I go
walkin'."
"It's a cub," says Max, "born of my pack, and sadly… misplaced. I'm searching
for it."
"Huh." Stiles raises an eyebrow. "And why should I care? If you can't even keep
a cub in line, then you can't be much of an Alpha."
Max freezes. "You know that I'm an Alpha."
"Yeah, I know that you're an Alpha. Jackass," he adds, after a moment, because
it feels right.
"You're human. You shouldn't be able to smell my rank."
"I have a brain. I should be able to work it out."
"How?"
"Just - " Stiles gestures at him. "Everything. The way you stand. The fact that
you dared to come up to me, a member of another pack, and demand answers, like
you're some sort of feudal warlord. Well, I'm sorry, Genghis Khan, but I don't
submit to the likes of you."
Max hisses. "Prettier and prettier."
"Goner and goner. I'm gone, man. You keep talking like that, and I'm - "
"I apologize. I underestimated you."
Apo - apologize? "You need to speak to - " Derek, he doesn't say, because it
doesn't seem right to dirty Derek's name by saying it in front of this jerk. "
- my mate," he says, determinedly not stuttering over the word. "Dude could
learn a thing or two about apologizing."
"He doesn't seem to be keeping you happy."
"I'm plenty happy, all right? I'm brimming with champagne-colored joy. Just not
when creeps like you are around, you get that?"
"I do, indeed. So, if this cub is yours," Max says, changing the subject with
disorienting speed, "then I'm sure you don't mind my paying a visit."
Stiles's mind judders to a halt. "What?"
"After all, it's custom. A… what did you call it? Courtesy. For an Alpha on
another Alpha's territory to announce his presence. Personally."
"You've announced it to me. In fact, you've announced it with a freaking
loudspeaker - "
"You, child, are not the Alpha. A clever boy, and the mate of the Alpha,
perhaps, but - "
"What, we meet in a drugstore aisle and suddenly you're all, 'take me to your
leader'? Screw that."
"Then you do have something to hide."
Stiles raises his chin. Doesn't look away. And thinks - thinks frantically -
about how this Alpha could summon his pack, easy as pie, and he's an older
Alpha, with a presumably bigger following. If it came to an all-out battle,
Derek's amateur rock band - Derek and the Misfits - wouldn't stand a chance.
Jackson hasn't even learned how to hunt, properly, yet. "We don't. You are
cordially invited to the Hale residence."
"Ah, the Hales," says Max, like he doesn't fucking know what the pack of Beacon
Hills is called. Stiles has read up on this stuff (and grilled Derek about it);
he knows that each pack is painfully aware of every other pack's location and
territory. It's part of the deal, being a werewolf and giving a shit about
things like that, about where one pack's hunting-ground ends and another pack's
begins. "Tragedy, what happened to them."
"Not all of them."
"The Alpha is a Hale, I take it?"
"You don't." A middle-aged lady edges past them, giving them the odd squint of
hey-look-two-guys-standing-awfully-close, but they ignore her. "You won't be
taking anything, buddy."
Max… relaxes. "Of course not. If it truly is your cub, then I cannot remove it
from your pack by any means; I would be breaking the Law, and every other pack
in the country would be after me. Not to mention the council."
"Life's so difficult for a professional jackass."
Max laughs. "Ha. Yes." His eyes are startled and pleased, like a man that set
out seeking an answer, but found something better. "I'll see you later,
Spitfire."
"My name is Stiles - "
But the guy only turns and starts walking, and when Stiles calls after him, he
doesn't even glance back.
"Hey, don't you need an address?"
"I've caught the scent," Max waves his hand, not turning around. "I'll get
there."
Get - get there.
When? Like, now?
"Shit," mutters Stiles, and races out of the shop. Max has just stepped out, so
he's probably still around, watching Stiles fumble stupidly with his car-keys
before jamming them into his Jeep and taking off. If Max is planning on heading
over to the Hale house immediately, then Stiles has gotta beat him there.
Fucking hell. Forget diapers; he's gonna have to send Scott out for bandages.
When Derek hears about this -
Stiles grits his teeth.
Derek will hear about this.
===============================================================================

"Where's Jar?" he says, banging open the door. He's panting, and he's sweating,
like he's here to tell everyone that the sky is falling down, which, hey, it
is. Shit. Shit, fuck and damn - "Where is he?"
Lydia, Scott and Jackson are frozen on the couch, eyes glowing. It's like being
in a horror movie, surrounded by wild, phosphorus-eyed dogs.
"What happened? Did he - "
But Stiles barely makes it halfway across the room before Derek materializes
out of nowhere and pins him to the wall.
"Who." Derek's eyes are glowing, too.
"Is Jar - "
"Who."
"Shut the hell up, man, where's Jar - "
"He's in the nursery," says Scott, from behind them, sounding growlier than
usual. "What happened?"
"I can smell it on you," Derek grinds out, glowering like a homicidal maniac.
"The scent of another Alpha. Who."
"So he hasn't come by, then."
"Someone's here for Jar," Lydia hazards. "Right?" Her face is pale. Jackson's
fangs are actually out -
"Right. Which is why," Stiles plucks Derek's hands off of him, which isn't
easy, given, you know, claws, "I need to see Jar. Now."
Derek lets him go. Somehow. He looks like he wants to snap Stiles up in his
jaws and drag him to some distant cliff and feast on his bones, which isn't
exactly conducive to Stiles's overall sanity, at the moment, but Stiles just
pushes past him and into the nursery.
The nursery wasn't always a nursery - not until Jar arrived, anyhow. But these
days, it's full of baby stuff, a cot and a mobile and a changing table, and
Stiles can hear Jar, making soft, questioning noises, and his heart seizes like
it's been shot.
"Fuck," says Stiles, forgetting his own rule about not swearing in front of the
baby, and his knees go weak. He hangs onto the edge of Jar's cot. Stares down
at him. "Fuck. Just - "
"Stay out," Derek barks, apropos of nothing, and Stiles hears footsteps shuffle
back out - Scott and Lydia and Jackson, probably.
Stiles is literally, physically sick. He wants to pick Jar up and curl over
him. Disappear with him. Something -
"Pick him up," Derek says, echoing what Stiles is thinking, and his voice is -
it shouldn't be possible for it to be comforting and batshit crazy, but
somehow, it is. "Touch him. He's still here. He's real."
Real. Jar is -
Jar, who makes everything else real -
Stiles picks him up. Just - holds him, and feels a strange, tightening twist in
himself, like a wire in his blood.
Derek rumbles quietly.
"I can't give him up," says Stiles, and knows that it's stupid, impractical,
stupid - but Jar's gazing up at him, all wide, leaf-green eyes and almost-
smile, and he's so soft, and he fills Stiles's arms like nothing and no one
else ever has, or will. Stiles knows that, now, suddenly and absolutely, and
it's the sort of truth he hadn't thought he was old enough to recognize, the
truth he still sees, sometimes, in his own father's eyes.
"Then don't," Derek says, which makes no sense at all, until Derek comes up
behind Stiles and holds him, too. "We won't give him up."
Jar gurgles. And wriggles like he might, possibly, be peeing in his diapers.
He's got that scrunchy-nosed, confused, why-am-I-suddenly-wet-down-there
expression.
"We might have to," says Stiles, softly. "The Alpha, he - he's from Jar's
pack."
Derek goes still.
"I know the Law. We can't keep another pack's cub. Not without their consent."
"You don't think he'll consent."
"I think he wants to hurt Jar."
Derek actually lets go of Stiles, for a second, but Stiles knows that it's
probably because he's trying to calm down and get his claws to go back in.
Also, Derek hasn't growled in front of Jar. Ever since - ever since that first
day.
"I. I don't know how, but I just knew it. He was - he felt like Peter."
Derek breathes. Like he's trying not to tear down the walls.
"But he wasn't Jar's dad. Not just - not just because of the hurting thing, but
- he could smell a cub on me, but he wasn't sure whose it was. That's why he
kept asking me all those questions, about who I was, and where Jar came from,
and whether I - anyway. He - he hasn't scented Jar, before."
"Which means," Derek says, sounding exaggeratedly, dangerously sane, "that the
mother ran away from the pack before giving birth."
"Why would she do that?"
"If the birth was somehow forbidden. If she mated with someone forbidden to
have it."
"Then, what? That gives the Alpha the right to - " Stiles can't bring himself
to say it " - abort the baby? Just like that?"
"An Alpha," says Derek, "may do anything with his pack. It is the Law."
"Screw the Law - "
"We won't hand Jar over."
Stiles gasps -
"We won't."
"Don't - don't promise me something like that. Something can't even be done - "
"Stiles - "
"This guy's a big shot, all right? It was - it was obvious, and he was wearing
a freaking Red Sox sweatshirt, which means he's come all the way from Boston.
From across the goddamn country. He isn't going to let this go easily."
"We won't, either."
"We'll have to." Stiles puts Jar down in his cot, because he has to turn around
and look into Derek's eyes. "Derek. Listen to me. Our pack is… our pack is new.
This Alpha's pack - his name is Max, by the way, Max Werner - is not. They
could kick our asses. Easily. They could kill us all and take Jar by force."
"The Werners," says Derek, in the exact same tone Max had said, 'the Hales'.
"They're a pack of forty strong."
"Fo - forty? How is that even - do they breed like rabbits?"
"They've just been around a long time. Since the revolution. They're the third-
largest pack in the United States."
"Crap."
"And they're… traditionalists."
"Tra - what, with the baby-killing? That's traditional?"
"Traditionally, as per the Law, Werner's doing a better job of running his pack
than I am, running mine. I… let my Betas mate as they please, with whomever
they please. I place no restrictions on offspring."
"Neither do they. I mean, otherwise, how'd they get to be forty?"
"Without restrictions, they'd be in the hundreds."
Stiles boggles.
"Think about it. How many generations have passed since the revolution? A
normal family would number in the hundreds - extended cousins, nephews, nieces,
children by marriages. It's because only the Alpha - and those the Alpha
permits - are allowed to breed that the Werners are even as small a pack as
they are."
"Small? That's - we can't fight them!"
"No," says Derek. "We can't."
Stiles feels his face crumple.
"Stiles." And Derek's arms are back around him. Tight, almost tighter than can
be borne, but Stiles can't bear this, anyway -
"You're saying we have to - to that murdering bastard - I won't. I can't - "
"We won't."
"You - " Stiles laughs, but it comes out cracked, jagged, like something that
cuts. "You don't make any sense."
"You said he didn't know for sure. He hasn't smelled Jar, before. He can't
prove the baby belongs to his pack, not unless he finds the mother and gets her
to testify, and that - "
"That means he can't take Jar away," says Stiles, dumbly, wonderingly. "As per
the Law - he can't. Unless we give him reason to believe Jar isn't ours, he - "
Stiles shakes. He's so relieved, he can barely hold himself up, but Derek's
doing it for him, so that's okay. "He - he can't - "
"He can't," Derek repeats, calmly, and rests his chin on Stiles's head. That
height difference usually pisses Stiles off, because it reminds him of how
inadequate he is, but right now, Stiles just presses his face against Derek's
neck and closes his eyes.
"We've gotta make him believe we've always had Jar."
"We will."
"You can't lose your temper."
Derek doesn't answer.
"You can't. Derek, this dude's so Alpha he doesn't even have to wolf out to
completely fucking intimidate a person - "
"You weren't intimidated," Derek reminds him.
"Yeah, but I'm insane. Must be the company."
"Your father would call me a bad influence."
Stiles snorts. "You - stop avoiding the topic by pretending that you have a
sense of humor. You don't, by the way."
"I do."
"You don't. Be honest. You're thinking of ripping Werner's intestines out of
his body, aren't you?"
Derek… doesn't say anything.
"He's the Alpha. Of a forty-member pack. And unless we want civil blood making
civil hands unclean, we've gotta keep our shit together, all right? We're not
going to be very convincing as Jar's real family if we're wigging out like
kidnappers with something to hide."
"Jar's true pack wouldn't need to be defensive," Derek agrees, "because Jar
would be theirs. By the Law."
"Jar is ours. By the Law."
"As long as Werner doesn't know better."
"He won't. Because you," Stiles pulls back and jabs Derek in the chest, "will
keep your cool. We all will. Lydia won't be a bitch. Jackson won't be a bitch.
Scott won't be an idiot - "
"Don't ask for the impossible."
"Yeah, well," says Stiles, and rests his head on Derek's shoulder. "You might
have a point."
"Mm."
A couple minutes pass. "Are you zoning out, again?"
"Mm."
Stiles looks down at Jar. And reaches out a hand, into the cot, that Jar
immediately grabs onto.
"Won't let you go, kiddo," Stiles whispers, and curls his fingers around that
little fist. "Won't let you go."
***** Chapter 5 *****
===============================================================================

Well, shit. It's countdown to Doomsday, now. Or Loomsday, because, uh, looming.
That's what werewolves do. And what Max Werner does, apparently. To perfection.
Because Max isn't showing up. The dude's just lurking, or maybe enjoying extra-
rare steak at the local diner, or something. Everyone's waiting for him, but
Max can't even be bothered sending a postcard. It's stretching the suspense to
breaking-point, magnifying his importance - which, heh, is probably what the
bastard wants.
It's been two days since Stiles met him, and there hasn't been any sign of Max,
at all.
A pall falls over the Hale house. No one wants to leave it, not for a second,
in case Max drops by and steals Jarvis away. The whole place feels like the
last bunker on the front line of a war that absolutely has to be won; nobody
wants to abandon it, not at any cost. Scott and Jackson are technically
supposed to go home, every night, but have come up with a crazy story about an
impromptu lacrosse camp that Danny (without knowing the true reason and, he
says, not wanting to know - he thinks Scott and Jackson might be dating) has
offered to vouch for. Lydia drops in whenever she can, and stays as long as she
possibly can; her parents think she's out partying it up.
Instead of partying, they're all just huddled in the living room, watching
Gilligan's Island reruns as the late-night programming kicks in.
"Maybe he's forgotten?" Scott asks, hopefully.
Lydia snorts. "Sure he has, dumbass. After coming all the way from Boston and
stalking Stiles, I'm sure he's just forgotten his resolution to kill us all and
eat our heads."
"He never said he wanted to do that," Scott protests.
"Yeah, but when we don't hand Jar over? Which we won't, obviously. He will eat
our heads."
Scott's eyes go wide.
"Don't frighten the puppy," says Stiles, distractedly, trying to convince
himself that Derek's keeping watch on Jar, and he can afford to spend some time
with the rest of the pack. "Max is a werewolf, not a preying mantis. There
won't be any head-eating, all right?"
"Yeah, but there'll be everything-else-eating." Lydia scowls. "Why's Werner
keeping quiet?"
"He's trying to take us by surprise," Jackson mutters. "It's psychological
warfare. It's the Tet Offensive."
"Of course you're a military fanboy," Lydia sneers, and Jackson flushes.
"Closet nerd."
"Closet slob."
"Now, now, kids." Stiles sighs. "Jackson's right. Max is the sort that enjoys
playing with his food."
"So he is going to eat us?" Scott puts in.
"Damn," says Jackson. "Maybe I should draw up a menu."
Scott looks ill.
"A menu's a good idea, actually." Lydia wraps her arms around her knees. "What
does he need, a written invitation?"
"If this keeps on," Stiles drops his head back against the couch, "I'm just
going to run outside and strip naked and paint myself in goat's blood." When
everyone stares at him, Stiles huffs. "Don't werewolves like goat's blood?"
There's a silence. A very, very long silence.
Eventually, Jackson says, "I'm hungry," fucking uncomfortably, like Stiles just
inappropriately propositioned him, and stumbles toward the kitchen.
"What?" Stiles blinks after him. "What'd I say?"
"Uh, Stiles," says Lydia, slowly. "Maybe you shouldn't present yourself as a
nice sauce-covered entrée when you're surrounded by a bunch of antsy teen
werewolves in an enclosed space? Just an idea."
"Oh, come on. It's not like any of you would eat me."
"Why's everyone talking about eating?" Scott yelps.
"That," says Lydia, "is because there're only two things that help relieve
stress - sex and food - and I sure as hell am not sleeping with any of you."
"So you're going to eat me," Stiles deadpans. "Will you rip me into tasty
little shreds, first?"
Lydia shrugs. "No. Because then, Derek will rip me into tasty little shreds."
Scott, having given up on making his pack-mates talk like sane people, joins in
on the banter. "Don't forget Jar. When he grows up, he'll come back to avenge
his mom."
"I'm not his mom," Stiles says, because he isn't. Not really.
"No, you totally are," Lydia grins, an unholy light in her eyes. "Jar will
definitely track me down to exact bloody vengeance."
"Hey! Jar's a peace-loving kid!"
"He's a werewolf, Stiles. He was practically born to have vendettas. And if
anyone hurts you? You'll be his first vendetta. He'll come back to avenge you,
like - like Anakin Skywalker."
"Does that make me Shmi?" Stiles asks, dryly. "Also, since when are you a Star
Wars geek?"
"I am not a geek," Lydia says, flushing in the exact same way Jackson had
flushed, when she'd accused him of being a nerd. When're they going to get over
themselves and admit how right they are for each other?
"No, you totally are," he mimics her.
Lydia sputters.
"Wait, wait." Scott looks excited. "Does that mean Derek's Qui-Gon Jinn?"
Lydia kicks him in the shin.
Which, somehow, establishes an unspoken truce. They go back to watching
Gilligan's Island. At some point, Jackson returns with what may or may not be a
bloodstain on his T-shirt. Stiles does not want to know what he snacked on. And
whether or not there's a small skeleton picked clean in the backyard.
Stiles feels twitchy and strange, not being within 0.00001 millimeters of Jar,
but Derek had as much told him to get a change of scenery before Derek hung him
upside-down from the big tree outside their house. Personally, Stiles just
thinks Derek wants Jar all to himself, probably to impart wolf-y, vengeance-
y knowledge on a helpless newborn. Forget Qui-Gon Jinn, Derek's clearly a Sith
Lord. He wants Jar to join him on the Dark Side. The Dark Side of we-will-kill-
any-and-all-who-lay-a-hand-on-Stiles-Stilinski.
It's… kind of sweet, when Stiles thinks about it.
More creepy than sweet, though.
On the TV, Gilligan proves, once again, that being a diminutive, bumbling idiot
doesn't mean he can't get the job done.
"Oh my god," says Stiles, after the nth episode, because there's only so much
of this the human mind can take before, like, breaking. "I'm Gilligan, aren't
I? I'm Gilligan."
There's another silence.
And then, Scott pipes up: "Does that mean Derek's the Skipper?"
This time, both Lydia and Jackson aim kicks at him.
Stiles laughs - a bit hysterically - and throws an arm around Scott to reel him
in. They won't dare hit Scott if he's under Stiles's direct protection, which,
Stiles knows, is because of pack dynamics, but Stiles is not thinking about
that, because if he thinks about how he apparently outranks everyone (including
Derek, because, let's face it, he owns Derek), then his hysterical laughter
will never end.
Derek wanders in past midnight, Jar slung over his shoulder like the world's
tiniest and cutest sack of potatoes, and looks at everyone with that almost-
fond, I-really-do-have-a-bleeding-heart-under-my-serial-killer-face expression.
One day, Stiles is going to be able to see that expression without hearing
Behind Blue Eyes inside his own head.
But not today.
"Your turn," Derek says, and Stiles lets go of Scott and stands up, stretching
his arms. Lydia and Jackson have fallen asleep, leaning on each other like
puppies. Okay, so maybe they do deserve Derek's… expression.
"Mmm, gimme," Stiles yawns, and reaches for Jar - but Derek's pulling him
close, already, kissing his mouth, his throat, before handing Jar over.
Oh.
"Um," Stiles says, breath coming faster, and it's a good thing that Scott's
very determinedly looking away, because Stiles isn't sure he wants anyone to
see what he looks like, now. "Er."
"Take Jar inside," says Derek, quietly. "I'll keep watch."
Watch. Right.
Is it weird to be turned on while holding a baby? It's weird, isn't it? Weird
and wrong. And Derek's watching him, eyes dark and knowing and patient, and
it's -
It's just not fair.
"Okie-dokie, Skipper!" says Stiles, cheerily, to Derek's blank, uncomprehending
stare, and hitches Jar higher over his own shoulder on his way inside.
Heh. If that isn't a bucket of cold water, Stiles doesn't know what is.
Quoting Gilligan. Excellent solution for when he needs some vengeance of his
own.

===============================================================================

There're only five days until Dad gets back from his manly boot-camp of
awesome. (Well, Dad thinks it's awesome; Stiles just thinks it's convenient.
Very, very convenient.) Still, if Max does't turn up before then, it'll be next
to impossible to keep this shit hidden from Dad, because Stiles is absolutely
going to skip home tutoring and summer lacrosse practice and every single
family dinner in favor of hanging around Derek's house and wondering whether he
can pick up some tricks from Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. Not that Stiles is
'home alone', not with Scott and Lydia and Jackson and Derek prowling the place
like Alcatraz's twitchiest guard-dogs hopped up on cocaine, but maybe snow
shovels and random traps featuring roller-skates and toy cars might actually be
enough to dissuade Max Werner.
Yeah, no.
(Hey, none of his thought processes are his fault. He's kind of hopped up, too.
On stress and late-night television.)
So, he's sort of going to pieces. Slightly. The thought of losing Jar's driving
him nuts. There are times when Derek just pins him against walls until he stops
hyperventilating (and starts panting, instead - yeah, great idea, Derek), but
mostly, Stiles is handling it. He's doing fine. He's -
He's calling his dad.
For non-specific advice.
It's not like Stiles can outright say that he's gay-married a werewolf and has
become a pack mom and is in the midst of a desperate bid to protect his
werebaby from a sociopathic baby-murdering Alpha, but maybe he can… ask for
general guidance. About life. And shit.
Or maybe he just needs to hear his father's voice.
"'llo?" Dad sounds drowsy and scratchy, and, fuck, Stiles belatedly realizes
that it's one in the morning. Nice. Now, his dad's going to think he's robbed a
bank and is rotting in the Beacon Hills police station and needs bail, or
something.
"Uh. Dad? Hi."
"Stiles?" Dad wakes up a little more. "You okay?"
"Yeah. Um. Sorry, I just. I couldn't sleep, and I - didn't notice it was so
late. I'll hang up, we'll talk later, and - "
"Stiles."
Stiles closes his eyes. Swallows. And tries not to grip his phone so hard it
breaks.
"Talk to me."
"I…" How can he explain that he's awake, at this time? Awake and freaking out,
as opposed to awake and playing on the Xbox, or whatever? "I was. I had another
dream. Nightmare. About mom." Okay, fuck, he's sick, sick and insane to use his
mom as an excuse, even though the terrifying, smothering anxiety he feels
nowadays is exactly what he'd felt before mom had died.
"It's been a long time," Dad says, "since you had those dreams."
Not that long. Stiles has mostly learned not to talk about them, or - or think
about them, but now, he has to, so, yeah. And now, he's stuck remembering those
dreams, the blood-dark bruises on his mom's moonstone-pale body, and -
"Son. It's all right."
"No, it's not. It never was, and it - it still isn't. It'll never be - "
Dad's silent. Breathing. They're tight breaths, though, rasping breaths, like
he's been hit.
Fuck. He hadn't meant to hurt Dad, he'd - "I'm sorry," Stiles blurts, around
his own nausea. His stomach feels like it's filled with rocks.
"Don't be," Dad says, finally, gently. "You're right. It'll never be okay. But
it has to be, for us, because she'd want it that way."
"How did you - " Stiles's throat clicks. "S-sorry - "
"Stiles. Ask what you have to," Dad says. "Please."
Please. Okay. He can do this. "How'd you… protect Mom, from what - what you
couldn't protect her from?" Wait, that doesn't even make any sense. "I mean,
when she. When they brought her in, after the, the crash, and. And she wouldn't
wake up. Night after night. Week after week. And we - " thought she'd die at
any moment " - couldn't do anything. We could just wait, and watch her, and
wait, and we couldn't - we couldn't protect her from any of that, but I was
just a kid, and you were. How did you." Cope? How did Dad fucking cope?
But Stiles's words have dried up, and the space inside his head is this blank,
lurching thing, and the thought that he could lose Jar that way - waiting and
waiting only to lose him - he can't fucking deal with that, doesn't even -
doesn't even know what he'll do, if he'll just go apeshit and kill everybody,
or -
- or himself.
If something happens to Jar, he - he doesn't know if he can go on living. It's
stupid and exaggerated, given that he's only known Jar for a couple weeks, but
it's -
It's what it is.
And Dad hears what it is, in his voice, because Dad's been there.
Maybe Dad's always been there. Maybe he's there, right now, and he'll always be
there, in that white-hot, blinding emptiness inside himself, that knife-carved
hollow that can never, ever be filled.
"Stiles." The way Dad says his name is - Stiles doesn't know what it is, but
it's something like it had been, that first day they'd spent without mom, that
first day Stiles had wandered down to breakfast and realized that he'd never
see Mom there, again. Never see her flipping pancakes. Never see her with that
smudge of maple syrup at the corner of her mouth that Dad would desperately
pretend he didn't want to kiss away, not in front of Stiles, anyway, although
Stiles had caught them at it, once, and it had been sort of gross.
Stiles can't stay standing, anymore. His knees give out and he sinks onto the
couch, still holding the phone, still trying not to throw up.
"I didn't," Dad says.
"Wh-what?"
"I didn't protect her. I couldn't. And I couldn't cope with it. Obviously." A
wry note enters Dad's voice. "She'd kill me for the drinking, you know."
"That's what I keep telling you."
"Yeah. You - you sound like her. When you do."
Stiles's heart twists.
"Son…" Dad doesn't seem to know what to say, for a second, but then he
continues. "No one can protect anybody. From death. Not for long. You'll manage
it today, you'll manage it tomorrow, but one day - one day, you won't. And
that's okay."
"Dad - "
"That's natural. You've got to do your best, and you will do your best, because
you have to, because when you love somebody, you can't do anything less.
Sometimes, it's not enough. Sometimes, it is. You've just got to forgive
yourself for that. It's okay."
Stiles - doesn't sob. Or punch something. Or feel relief. Or despair. Or -
anything. He doesn't know what to feel, so he just sits there, staring at his
own fingers picking at the upholstery on the couch. A thread's coming loose,
because Derek's too fucking cheap to buy first-hand.
"But there's always someone else. Someone else you need to do right by, someone
else you need to protect, and you - you keep going. For them."
"Like you did," Stiles hears himself say, as if from a distance. "For me."
"For you." And Dad's so - so certain. So sure. Like Stiles was worth hanging
around for, worth working for, worth pretending to be all right for. Their
functional little family. (Pack.) But Max - Max wants to take that away from
Stiles, that reason, and, yeah, Stiles would still stick around for Derek, but
it wouldn't… it wouldn't be the same thing.
Would it?
Oh, fuck, it would. It would, because just the thought of losing Derek, too,
makes Stiles grey out. Like, literally grey out - his vision blurs for a
moment.
"If, um. If it had been me - "
"What?"
"If it had been m-me," Stiles stumbles over the question, "and not Mom. That
had - and if it'd been just you and Mom - "
"Stiles, we've talked about this." Stern. Forbidding. Like Stiles is still a
pathetic nine-year-old kid that thinks he can just swap his life out for his
mom's. "She'd have wanted you to live."
"I know. I know, just - if it had been. Me. Would it have been the same, for
you? Would you still - " want to carry on?
"Yes. Yes, it would've been. Stiles, what are you even - how could you even -
you know we love you, that your mom still loves you - I don't love either of
you more."
"Dad…"
"You know that. Tell me you know that."
"I do." Stiles does. That's the thing. He does, because he knows that if Max
hurts Derek, it'll fuck Stiles up just as bad. He just - he wanted to pretend,
for a while, that there was an out, that there was a better option, a worse
option, something. And, yeah, that makes him a jackass, but mostly, it makes
him wretched, that he's gonna lose, either way. That he's going to lose
himself. That life is, apparently, about losing yourself, way before it's your
turn to even die. "Believe me, I do."
"Good. That's… good."
They're silent, for some time, and Stiles reflects on the fact that his dad's
advice is basically just to hang in there and keep loving the people he's
loving, because there's nothing else he can do, in either case.
It's kind of a hopeless thought. But it's also reassuring. In a weird sort of
way.
Because he doesn't have to stress himself out, anymore. He just has to love. He
can do that. He's been doing that. He's great at doing that. Brilliant, even.
His hugs are the best. His tickles are the best; Jar should know. His silly
faces are the best. His evasive maneuvers (when Lydia's having her period) are
the best. His duty rosters are the best. His painstaking collection of
wolfsbane antidotes is the best. His diaper-changing skills are the best. His
milk bottles are the best. His microwaved meals are the best - no matter what
Derek says. (With his eyebrows.)
He's just - he's good at this stuff. This loving stuff. This, he can do. And,
okay, it's all he can do, but at least he knows he can do it, now. That he can
do it, that he has to do it, and that it's the only thing that matters, in the
end.
So.
Screw Max Werner. This is the one thing he can't take away.
"I'm - I'm okay, now," Stiles says, even though he's not, quite, but he will
be. "Thanks."
"Promise you'll call me. If - if you're feeling low. Or even if you aren't,"
Dad adds, hurriedly. "Just. Call me. Anytime."
"Uh, I have been calling you? Like, everyday?"
"More than everyday."
"Twice a day? Um, you do know that I'm not actually a four-year-old, right?"
"You eat like one."
"Hey! My fascination with Twinkies is a universal and universally accepted part
of the human condition."
"More like medical condition."
"Your sense of humor sucks, did anyone tell you that?"
"What are you saying, ye who has inherited the Stilinski humor?"
"First of all, you just said 'ye', which, like, disqualifies you from
everything, okay, and secondly, it's not your sense of humor I've inherited.
Admit it."
"Fine. But you can't deny, my jokes are the illest."
"Ill - " Stiles gapes. "Did you seriously just - illest? Where did you even
pick that up?"
"There's a. Um. A rapper. On the force."
"A rapper?"
"I'm rooming with him."
"You're - "
"He's twenty-five years old," says Dad, defensively, like that even makes a
difference or is remotely relevant. "He's a cop from Fresno. A deputy."
"You're rooming. With a twenty-five-year-old rapper. From Fresno."
"He, uh." Dad's sounding more and more embarrassed. "He's on YouTube?"
"You know what YouTube is?"
"He was showing me! With the kittens."
"The kittens."
"Look, you should just hang up."
"No, really. Tell me about the kittens. That your rapper buddy shows you dirty
videos of."
"Dirty - how could you! They're kittens!"
"Uh-huh. So 'kitten' isn't code for 'scantily-clad extra in a Snoop Dogg music
video'?"
"I have no idea what you just said."
"The hell you don't. Mr. Illest."
"Are you ragging on me about my friends being a bad influence? You do know
you're a teenager, right?"
"I'm just worried he's going to take you out and get you drunk and get you out
of your pan - "
"Stop right there. Stop. Right. There."
" - ties. Whoops, I said it."
He can hear Dad grinding his teeth. "For the record, those were actual kittens.
With fur."
"Oh, eww, he's into that?"
"Stiles!" And now, Dad's scandalized. This is hilarious. "They were kittens.
Funny kittens. Laughing kittens."
"Kittens don't actually laugh."
"Kittens that make people laugh."
Lolcats. His dad's rapping roommate is introducing him to lolcats. God help
him; his dad's going to come back as the deranged lovechild of Justin Bieber
and Kanye West. "Whatever. I'm not convinced. You sure they weren't videos of
young, lissome girls in catsuits? These rapper types are notorious. For
frequenting. Certain. Uh. Establishments."
"He's not like that."
"Ooh, defending the boyfriend?"
"Stiles. You're being ridiculous."
"Am I, now? Hmm. Hmm. Yeah, I guess I am. I mean, he's half your age, right?
Not a boyfriend, then. More like a boy-toy."
"I'm hanging up."
"Nope, you're not," says Stiles, cheerily. "You're telling me more. About your
rapping boy-toy roommate from Fresno. With the furry fetish."
Dad makes this choked noise that's half-frustration, half-amusement. For
definitions of 'amusement' that include 'all I want from life is to strangle my
own son with my bare hands'. "Just - he's not like how you're making him out to
be. He's on YouTube."
"Yep, since only the classiest and most elite performers are on YouTube."
"Look him up. His stage name's Musashi."
"Mu - the guy's Japanese?"
"No. He just likes samurai."
Stiles's head spins. It's like he's on crack. Maybe he is on crack. Holy shit.
"Dad, I think this may be the single freakiest conversation I've ever had with
you, and that includes that one time you tried to warn me about the bad touch.
Using hand-puppets. Of Sesame Street characters."
"Not my best moment," Dad mutters, eventually, after a blooperish snort that
Stiles suspects is a stifled giggle. Yeah, his dad giggles. It's embarrassing.
For anyone, but especially for a sheriff. Or a sheriff's son.
"Is he ripped?" Stiles asks, for some reason.
"Huh?"
"Your roommate. Is he ripped?"
"What does that have to do with - is this another Danny conversation?"
"No, Dad, this isn't another Danny conversation." Although, it could be. In
reverse. His dad hasn't talked this much about someone since that nice, if
rather pasty-faced secretary of one of the high-profile criminals Dad had
brought in. Predictably, that hadn't ended well. Crime scenes don't make for
the most romantic backdrops, and she'd ended up thinking Dad was sort of a
freak. Which, uh. She might've had a point. The Stilinskis are the undisputed
champions of the freak gene. They might even be the only reason it's survived
Darwinian evolution.
"I think he's too old for you, son."
"But not too young for you?"
"Stiles. Focus. I know you said you also like boys - "
"Not a Danny conversation, Dad - "
" - but men are off-limits. I thought we agreed."
Er. Does Derek count as a man? Possibly. Except, he's a werewolf. Not a man.
So, technically, Stiles hasn't broken his promise to stay away from older dudes
until he, himself, is an older dude. "Yeah," Stiles says, trying for innocent
and probably only achieving hit-over-the-head-with-a-crowbar. "Totally."
"And he is ripped."
"Dad!"
"You asked!"
"You noticed?"
"There's a gym, all right? Next to the hotel lobby, and it's. I work out.
Sometimes. With him."
"With the ripped boy-toy samurai rapper from Fresno. Who bonds with you over
lolcats. I gotta meet this guy."
"No, you don't. In fact, please don't."
"I'm not the one who'll scare him off!"
"Like I am! Wait, I'm not even - why would I want to - I'm not invested in not
scaring him off."
Yeah, right. "Oh, crap. If you room with him, does that mean he's there, now?
Has he heard every word you've said?" There goes another potential conquest of
Dad's, discovering the freak gene way too early in the dating game. Not that
Dad's dating this guy. Right? They're just sharing a room. A room in which they
laugh at lolcats. And definitely don't check each other out. Or notice whether
or not the other guy's ripped. Shit.
"Um, no, he's - he's out, right now."
Out? This late? "Doing what?"
"Homework."
"Homework?"
"In the computer lab, downstairs. We have to make these presentations - it's
pointless, really, bureaucratic nonsense about communicating with other law-
keeping agencies using pie-charts, or something - so much clearer than just
talking, right? It's useless. Anyway - we have to make these presentations, and
it's his turn, tomorrow, and he's at the lab. With two other cops who're also
presenting."
Damn. Rivals. "Could these cops, under any circumstance or system of
classification, be defined as 'kittens'?"
"Stiles," his dad huffs. "Goodnight."
The next time Stiles calls, he's gonna get Musashi on the line, too. But, for
now… "G'night, Dad."
"I love you."
"Love you."
"Bye."
They hang up.
Stiles debates about whether or not to go surfing for Dad's not-boyfriend on
YouTube, but, eh. He'll do it tomorrow. He's tired, now that most of the
tension's bled out of him, and he needs to sleep. Not that he isn't still
wired, but it's a quiet hum of nerves, instead of the shrieking cacophony of
crazy he'd been carrying around, before. Yeah, his dad's awesome. And odd. But
awesome.
He sticks his head out the front door to ask Jackson if he wants some hot
chocolate, or something - it's Jackson's turn on night watch - but Jackson just
makes his typical, ungrateful bitch-face and shrugs, sprawling like some kind
of James Bond heroine on the porch.
Dickwad.
He must've heard most of what Stiles and his dad talked about - there's no such
thing as privacy in a house filled with werewolves - but he isn't acting any
different, which, dickwad. Emotionally constipated dickwad. Or maybe Jackson's
being considerate. In his Jackson-y way. Stiles doesn't even know.
The bedroom, when he gets to it - and it's his bedroom, okay, there's no
denying it - is dark. Almost too dark for him to notice that Derek's on his
bed, with Jar, but then, there's no way he couldn't notice that, not with
Derek's gleaming, phosphorous eyes fixed on him, and the faint moonlight from
the dusty window making Jar's fur looks like the softest, most silvery velvet
in the world.
Stiles just stands there, slowly coming to terms with the fact that, for all
intents and purposes, that's his husband and his baby. His husband. And his
baby.
And they're both furry. Heck, maybe Musashi isn't the only one with a thing for
furries; Stiles shouldn't be pointing fingers.
He gives up and climbs into bed.
"What're you doing here?" he asks, because while one of them does tend to sleep
with Jar, every night, they've never done it together, in either of their
rooms. If it was just him and Derek on a mattress, Stiles would start flipping
out about potential sex-stuff, but Jar's between them like the most adorable
buffer zone ever - seriously, Jar's like Poland - so Stiles can relax.
"You aren't sleeping."
"Um, duh, I'm awake? Ergo, I am not sleeping." Stiles reaches out to pet Jar's
hair; Jar snuffles, but doesn't stir. Good kid. His sleeping hours have become
more stable, lately.
"No. You haven't been sleeping. You're… worried."
"Hah. Don't pretend that you've been sleeping, either. None of us are. Scott
looks like a panda, for god's sake. A very dumb panda. Then again, pandas are
sort of dumb - "
"Take your shirt off."
"What?" Where the hell did that come from? Also, baby. Buffer-baby. Baby that
is a buffer. Right? Oh, shit. "Is this a sex thing?"
"It isn't a sex thing," says Derek, tolerantly. "Take your shirt off. I need to
scent-mark you. So does Jar."
"Jar needs to mark me, now?"
"He's your cub," Derek says, like that explains anything.
Which - okay. It does. Even Imogen Marsters' book on human babies has a sub-
chapter on 'The Safety of Scent,' which means werebabies must need it even
more.
So Stiles takes his shirt off, trying not to panic about a non-sexual thing
that is not sexual, it's not like he's stripping in front of his boyfriend-
husband-mate, or anything. Ha, ha. Ha.
Fuck.
The air isn't cold, but it's just cool enough to make his nipples pebble, and
Stiles has to fight the completely surreal and wacky urge to cross his arms
over his chest like some Victorian nun. Or, or swoon like a Victorian nun, when
Derek briefly sits up to drag his own shirt off.
Stiles is… not staring. He's not. This isn't staring; his eyes just happen to
land on a random patch of moonlight that happens to be on Derek's chest.
Pectoral. Pec. Oh, god, it's flexing. It's flexing like a living thing.
Probably because Derek's flinging the shirt aside like a nudist caveman that's
all too happy to see it go, and muscles just happen to work that way, you move
your arm and your pec flexes like something out of cheap porn, nothing special
about it, certainly nothing that warrants staring, which Stiles is not doing,
because this is totally an accident. An eye-accident. His eyeballs have
accidentally rolled to a stop at the wrong place. Happens all the time. Just
ask those conveyor belts at airports. They stop all the goddamn time.
Not that conveyor belts could reply, even if someone asked them. Because they
don't have mouths. Stubbled mouths. Or nipples. Conveyor belts with nipples
would be bizarre. Like, Frankenstein-level bizarre. Nipples-on-Batman's-kevlar-
suit bizarre. Actually, that kevlar suit had looked like it was made from a
conveyor belt. Wow. Everything comes back to conveyor belts. It's like six
degrees of separation. But with nipples.
Great. Now Derek's nipples are hardening, too.
Stiles realizes that he's just kneeling there, with his jaw hanging open and
what feels suspiciously like a bit of drool edging its way past the corner of
his lips, so he snaps his mouth shut and swallows back what suddenly seems like
way too much spit. Stupid salivary glands. Going into overdrive for no reason.
Derek lies back down next to Jar, raising an eyebrow. His nipples are still
hard. And what's fucked up about this situation is that Stiles doesn't even
know what's getting to him more - the eyebrow or the nipples. God, he's got it
so bad. It's ludicrous.
Maybe lying down will allow Stiles to study the ceiling like it holds the
secrets of the universe, or something, and that might be a good distraction.
From Derek's pecs. Also, Stiles does have to sleep, and the whole sleeping
thing requires him to be lying down. He isn't, unfortunately, a Borg. He can't
just sleep while standing up and hooked to a charging station. Then again, half
the world wishes it had Seven of Nine's problems. Boobs. Problems.
So that's what Stiles does - he lies down, on Jar's other side, and starts his
devoted perusal of the ceiling. It has pretty shadows on it. Spiky, but pretty.
They kind of resemble the Klingon script. Which, uh, means that Stiles is
really nervous, because he only starts making Trekkie references this
frequently when he's stressed out. It's great how he knows himself well enough
to recognize that. He might not even need a shrink. Much.
But then, Derek's hand sort of… drifts across the space between them, like a
warm, heavy, huge spider, and Stiles's heart thuds in his chest.
"You're sure this isn't a sex thing?" Stiles squeaks, because apparently,
someone swapped his vocal chords out with Minnie Mouse's when he wasn't
looking. Which he wasn't. Because he was looking at Derek's chest. Which he
wasn't. Because he wasn't staring. At Derek. Whose abs are rising and falling
as he breathes, and, wait, what happened to the ceiling? Stiles was supposed to
be giving it his undivided attention. Ceilings are needy. They have to be
nurtured.
"Stiles," says Derek, and it's so wrong that he should have that look on his
face, that starving-dog-that's-denying-itself-a-meal look, when Stiles is
basically just a string-and-bone puppet of nerviness and doesn't have pectorals
like a Greek god. Stiles isn't deserving of mind-bending lust, or - or longing.
He isn't deserving of that, at all. "It isn't a sex thing."
"Nuh - nice to know. Your hand is suddenly on my naked skin ohgodwhat and it
isn't a sex thing, also you look like I'm a plate of honey-glazed barbecue ribs
and you're a hungry cowboy that's been wandering the wastes while attractively
unshaven and unfed, and, uh, you seem like you're going to eat me. Is that it,
then? Not a sex thing, but a food thing? Am I food? 'Cause Lydia was talking
about that earlier, and Jackson had this weird moment, and - "
"Stiles." Derek's thumb is on Stiles's throat. Stroking. Back and forth. Back
and forth. "Be quiet. You'll wake Jar up."
"Dude, Jar loves it when I babble. He finds it soothing."
Derek doesn't answer in actual words; his voice is a low, gravelly hum. Huh.
Maybe it isn't just Jar that finds it soothing.
And Stiles might even find the throat-stroking soothing, if his body wasn't
busy growing a boner like its very own bonsai tree. He shifts restlessly,
willing it to go away. "Not a sex thing," Stiles mutters to himself, and
Derek's palm slips down to his chest. Crap.
"You smell like a sex thing," Derek says, after a while, which, while it may be
factually accurate, is the least helpful observation ever made, by anyone.
Ever.
"Look, just - ignore that, okay? I'm like a bottle of perfume, man, I have no
control over the bouquet of teenage hormones and sweat that I'm, I'm exuding,
all right?"
"All right," Derek agrees, and, because he's a psycho, doesn't even change
expression when his fingers skate over Stiles's nipple.
Stiles jerks. "What. What even - yeah, right, this isn't a sex thing - "
"I have to touch you. That's the point."
"Yeah, but do you have to touch all the fiddly bits? All the - f-f- "
Derek's thumb is now doing to Stiles's nipple what it had done to his throat -
just rubbing it, back and forth, lightly, so lightly that Stiles can almost
tell himself that it isn't there, at all, except that it is there, it's so very
there, sparking little shocks all along Stiles skin.
"F-fuck. Derek, stop. Stop, I refuse to have a boner in front of the baby."
"You already do. Have one."
"It'll go away. If you stop molesting me. Jesus, you - do you even understand
the concept of something not being a sex thing?" Stiles's nipple feels
unnaturally stiff, sensitive and electric and teased to a humiliating peak, and
it doesn't help that Derek looks like he wants to bite it.
But, miraculously, Derek listens to him.
"Mm," Derek says, and shifts his hand to Stiles's waist.
Stiles is not in the least disappointed.
Even though his boner is. Goddamn mindless boner. This is why the citizens of
Boner City don't deserve the right to vote. They have no brains, whatsoever.
They'd elect a cock-ring as president, if given the choice. Or maybe they'd
elect Derek Hale. Derek Hale in a cock-ring. Derek Hale putting a cock-ring on
Stiles. Fuck.
"You might want to try not thinking sex thoughts," Derek says, dryly, and
Stiles rolls his eyes.
"I don't see you not thinking them, Mr. Bad Toucherson."
"I'm not playing with your nipple, anymore."
"Don't - don't just say that! What is wrong with you?"
Derek frowns, slightly. "But it's the truth."
"It's - fine, okay, no sex-thoughts. I'mma think baby-thoughts. Safe, practical
baby-thoughts. Boner-killing thoughts. Oh, hell, I've scarred Jar for life.
He's never going to have a normal sex drive."
"I don't think he'll remember any of this."
Fuck Derek and the deadpan horse he rode in on. Except that there is no horse.
And there is no fucking. Which Stiles is not disappointed about, damn it,
because he's still not ready for the whole enchilada. Not that he's ever
thought of Derek's dick as an enchilada. A very long, very thick enchilada -
stop. Stop. "Yes, he will. In his subconscious mind. It'll be a repressed
memory that some creepy therapist will one day dig up from his hypnotized
brain, or something, and then tell him that his mommy issues with his male mom
are why he can't get a girlfriend."
"Move closer."
"Oh, hell to the no. You'll ravish me!"
"Move. Closer." Derek's eyes are glowing like embers, just red enough to be
warning. "Closer to Jar. Closer to me."
Well, damn. Stiles slides across to Jar and curls around him. He gathers Jar up
against himself, marveling at how small-but-alive Jar is, all silky fur and
baby-skin, his miniature heart beating away against Stiles's own. Jar's toes
keep curling and uncurling, like maybe Jar's running in an imaginary forest,
somewhere, in his dreams. It's unbearably cute. Stiles cups his hands under
them, under Jar's tiny, twitching feet, and feels -
He feels -
Necessary.
Full.
Here.
Safe.
Derek was right. Imogen Marsters was right. This whole skin-to-skin thing is a
big deal. All that talk about completeness and belonging, all those theoretical
words, but they're real. They're important. Jar feels like a part of him, now.
An extension of his body, his heart, his life. And so is Derek, a massive wall
of muscled heat and feral protectiveness, between them and the window, between
them and the world, and it's - it's good, so good, so right, so good.
Stiles's eyes are drifting shut.
His erection has faded away, which is great, because this isn't a sex thing -
Derek said so, even if he didn't seem to believe it, himself. Hypocrite.
Derek isn't just resting a hand on Stile's waist, now; he's got an arm thrown
over Stiles's back, with Jar nestled between them, sharing their breaths.
Everything will be okay. Jar belongs here; he so obviously belongs here that
there's just no way he could go anywhere. Stiles can't imagine him going
anywhere.
Derek's purring again, that subsonic growl of soul-deep satisfaction, and it
shouldn't make Stiles even drowsier, but it does.
Everything's so close, so warm, so steady, and it's…
It's been too long since Stiles slept properly, and he…
He's falling asleep, he's…
He's asleep.

===============================================================================

The next morning's one of the most beautiful mornings Stiles has seen all
summer, crystal-blue skies and fresh breezes from the kitchen window, and
Stiles can even enjoy it all, because yesterday, he had a) a cathartic talk
with his dad, and b) a cathartic cuddle with Derek.
He's more relaxed than he's been in days, so naturally, that's when Max Werner
decides to show up.
It's Jackon's warning howl that alerts him, first, and nearly makes him drop
the carton of powdered milk he's been trying to open.
Then, there's the bang of three pairs of feet simultaneously hitting the floor,
because Derek and Lydia and Scott have just… leaped down the staircase without
bothering to use the actual stairs.
"Stay here," snarls Derek, fangs already out, and Stiles hurries out to stop
him.
"No," Stiles says, and he's strangely calm, all of a sudden, like something
inside him has settled into a solid, unshakeable certainty. He isn't going to
lose Jar. He just isn't. There isn't even anything to be worried about. "No,
Derek. Remember what we talked about? No killing. No frothing at the mouth. I'm
going to get the door, because he knows me, and even if he wants to murder us
all, he'll… probably leave me for last? I think."
But before Stiles can convince Derek to stick to their original plan, thanks
very much, Jackson's opening the door, looking like death warmed up, and it's
not just because he's been outside all night, on watch duty, but because he's
scared.
Jackson is so clearly, transparently scared that Stiles doesn't have to be a
werewolf to smell it on him.
The reason for Jackson's fear - and Lydia's convulsive growling - follows
Jackson inside.
"Why, hello, Spitfire," Max smiles, when he catches sight of Stiles. "It's
wonderful to see you again."
***** Chapter 6 *****
===============================================================================

Stiles isn't sure how they make it to the living room without bloodshed,
because Derek's vibrating like a death god on speed, but Stiles keeps a hand on
Derek's arm and a smile pasted on his face. Okay, so maybe it's more like a
rictus than a smile, but, whatever. Stiles is totally being a normal co-parent
welcoming a non-hostile guest into his home. And if he feels like a society
wife that just happens to be married to Frankenstein, then, well. So be it.
Max seems to find all of it hilarious, especially when Scott grows wolf-ears
and flattens them back against his head, which, fuck, Scott's an idiot. An
obvious idiot. In fact, they're all being so obvious that Stiles is pretty sure
he's gonna have to put on a hula skirt and start dancing in order to distract
Max from all the obviousness.
"You must've had a lot to do," Stiles says, wondering if putting actual curlers
in his hair will even make a difference, at this point. He might as well be
wearing a blood-stained apron with I LOVE MY WEREMOM on it. "In Beacon Hills."
"Oh?" Max settles on the old armchair, somehow managing to transform its ratty
hulk into a kind of decrepit-but-imposing medieval throne. Regal bastard. And
he's wearing a suit, this time. What werewolf wears a suit? "What makes you say
that?"
"Uh, it took you almost a week to show up?" Stiles pulls Derek down to sit
beside him on the couch. "Just saying."
"Why would you have been waiting for me? Were you that eager to see me,
Spitfire?"
Derek hackles go up.
Max cocks a mocking eyebrow. "Or were you busy hiding something you didn't want
me to discover?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about. None of us have any idea what you're
talking about. Do we, guys?"
Jackson looks like he's going to piss himself. Lydia's growling like a wolf-
goddess on PMS. Scott's all but got his tail between his legs. Derek's
literally sharpening his claws. Against each other.
"Okay! Yes. Clearly, there is nothing going on here. Coffee?"
Max's lips quirk. "You're all very charming. Very… innocent."
Stiles winces.
"And, yes, I'd love some coffee."
"How fortuitous! We happen to have some coffee. Lydia can't live without her
coffee. Which is why Lydia's going to go and make some. For all of us. Jackson
and Scott will be her coffee-making assistants. Because she's incapable of
handling any kitchen implements that aren't meat cleavers."
Both Lydia and Jackson stare at him. Scott mouths 'Fortuitous?' - which, all
right, that might've been overkill. Crap. He's got to stop thinking of words
with 'kill' in them.
"Well?" Stiles shoos them, when they just stand there, dithering, like they've
been commanded to desert a strategic hilltop in the middle of a war, or
something. "Go!"
They go.
Thank god. Stiles isn't going to maintain his mate-cred if no one listens to
him.
Stiles turns to Max. He also moves his grip to Derek's knee, in a way that
hopefully seems sweet and couple-y instead of paranoid and controlling. Not
that Stiles had ever thought he'd ended up acting as Derek's leash, but, damn.
If Derek doesn't calm the heck down, someone will be dead by the end of the
day.
Max sits back on his throne. And steeples his fingers under his chin.
Seriously. He steeples his fingers. Who does he think he is, Lex Luthor? That's
a super-villain complex if Stiles has ever seen one - and he has. Peter Hale,
anybody?
Derek finally unclenches his jaw and retracts his fangs long enough to say:
"You accosted my mate."
"Oh, I didn't accost him. You make it sound so filthy."
"You encroached on my territory, trespasser, and you accosted my mate."
"Is there a reason we're suddenly talking all medieval-like?" Stiles
interrupts, before Derek starts italicizing every word. That generally isn't a
good sign. "No? Because I'm not a damsel in distress. And you, darling," Stiles
says to Derek, smiling so widely that his face hurts, "aren't my knight in
furry armor. Okay? Okay. So, if we could return to being diplomatic and non-
threatening…"
"If you touch him," Derek tells Max, "I will kill you."
Stiles buries his head in his hands. There's no point in holding onto Derek's
knee, anymore; Derek is obviously out to fuck things up. You can't stop a tank
when it's on a rampage, and Derek's a tank in a china shop. A miniature china
shop. Made of glass.
"Noted." Max seems amused. "Nevertheless, you are aware that if your mate
should, himself, elect to be touched by another, there is nothing you can do
about it?"
Where the hell is this conversation going? Isn't it supposed to be about Jar?
"Um," says Stiles, "I'm not exactly running for office, and I haven't 'elected'
to do anything. With anyone. Except Derek." God, he's blushing. He knows he is.
It doesn't help that he hasn't gotten past the primaries, either, if they're
using political metaphors for Stiles's pathetic, mostly self-imposed virginity.
But, again, Derek ignores him. As if Stiles isn't feeling like enough of a
Victorian bride. Jesus Christ, was this how women were treated, pre-suffrage?
Stiles is so gonna partner up with Allison for her feminism project. Hell,
he'll even burn his non-existent bra. "There is much I can do and will do,
trespasser."
"My name is Max. Max Werner. Did I say it was a pleasure to meet you, too? I
didn't? How rude of me. I'm thrilled, really. It's such a joy to see how
utterly undeserving you are of your mate."
Derek's eyes go red.
"Stop it," Stiles says, because he's had enough of this. He isn't some sort of
- whatever these guys are treating him like. A shank of meat caught in a tug of
war between two sharks. It's just - it's demeaning, and humiliating, and it
makes him want to stab someone in a way that isn't even subconsciously phallic
or remotely about reasserting his masculinity by penetrating another person.
Right. Sometimes, Stiles wishes his favorite school subject wasn't Psychology.
"Just. Stop. We all know what you're here for, Max, and it isn't this." Me.
"Isn't me."
"Isn't it?" Max asks.
What.
"No, no, carry on. Your den mother instincts are extraordinary, but have failed
you in this regard, I'm afraid. Mr. Hale, why don't you enlighten your mate as
to my intentions?"
Derek's fangs are making a reappearance.
"Then again, if you choose not to inform him, I can hardly be blamed for taking
matters into my own hands. It is, after all, the Law."
And, yeah, Derek's fangs are out. Completely. They seem shinier than ever
before.
"Derek," says Stiles, carefully. "Um. Maybe you could stop wigging out and say
something? To the person who's the subject of this entire conversation, even
though he never expected to be? That's me, by the way." Derek still isn't
talking. "Hello?"
"You didn't tell me he wanted you," Derek grits out, at last. How he manages to
talk through his fangs without, like, lisping or slicing his tongue open is a
phenomenon Stiles has yet to grasp.
"Uh. That's because he. Doesn't?"
"Oh, child, I do," Max smiles.
"Maybe you shouldn't call me 'child', then, you creepy pedo-wolf," Stiles
snaps. "And what the hell? Since when?"
"I thought I made my intentions perfectly clear, when we last met."
"I thought you were just trying to freak me out. Like. Throw me off my game."
Stiles shifts until he's facing Derek. "Look, he doesn't want me. That's just -
"
"He wants you," Derek cuts him off. "I can smell it on him."
Oh.
Oh, fuck.
What is Stiles, werewolf catnip? Werenip? What?
Holy shit, does this mean even Uncle Peter was diggin' on him? With the - the
wrist-touching and the -
Fuck. Fuck.
"Fine," Stiles says, fighting off a bout of intense, incredulous dizziness. And
nausea. Can't forget the nausea. "Fine, so creep-daddy here is creepin' on me.
Great. I still fail to see how any of this is relevant. Because I'm obviously
not going to say yes."
"But you are," Max says, resting his chin on his steepled fingers. "Isn't he,
Mr. Hale?"
"I have no clue what you're saying," Stiles says, "and also, no. Tell him,
Derek."
But Derek's frozen. Breathing tightly, like someone's got a hand wrapped around
his throat and is squeezing.
For the first time since this crazy tea-party (without the tea) began, Stiles
feels a frisson of pure terror run through him. "Derek. What's he saying?
Please tell me what he's saying."
"He isn't saying anything," Derek lies. Like, flat-out lies to him. "Werner, we
decline your offer. Get the hell out of here."
"You're willing to forfeit everything, then? A poor choice, as an Alpha. Not
very utilitarian."
"Not all of us see a pack as a matter of utility," Derek spits. "You're the
failure as an Alpha. If you think you can make a pack like this - by murdering,
by stealing - "
"My pack," Max says, in a hushed, menacing voice, "is one of the most powerful
on the American continent. As well you know."
"It's one of the most backward packs, and its own adherence to the Law will
kill it."
"The Law is ancient."
"The Law is insane."
"Say that to the council, and they'll have your head."
"You're one of the council members, aren't you? Too late."
What - what even - "He's on the council?" Stiles squawks, because that's about
the only thing he can make sense of, out of everything that was just said.
"Only as an adjunct," Max clarifies, like that's any less alarming. "And I
certainly wouldn't bring my position to bear on this issue; that would be
inappropriate and a violation of the Law."
"Ina - you make a move on me in front of my mate, and that isn't
inappropriate?"
"I'm within my rights to request that you consider me as a mate, instead."
Stiles mimes tapping his cheek thoughtfully. "Yeah, no," he says. "Wait, let me
think about it - still no. Sorry."
"Even if it costs you the life of your cub?"
Stiles's heart… stops beating. For a second.
"Get. Out," Derek rumbles, and his shoulders are all bunched up like he's about
to pounce, and Stiles -
Stiles reaches out for him, blindly, and grabs his hand.
Derek stills.
It takes Stiles a moment to realize that he's cut his palm slightly on the
claws that Derek hadn't managed to withdraw in time, and that he's bleeding,
and that Max Werner's eyes are a dark, roiling, starving grey.
Everything makes sense.
Everything.
"You're an idiot," Stiles hears himself say to Derek, as if from a distance.
"The hell did you try to lie to me, for?"
"I didn't - "
"Yes, you did. Now shut up."
Derek… stares at him. And shuts up.
Good. Miraculous, but good. "Mr. Werner," Stiles starts -
"Max. Please." The bastard looks so interested. Like Stiles is the liveliest
sideshow in the only circus he's ever seen.
"Max. The answer is no."
"I'd thought you were the type to sacrifice yourself for your cub," Max says.
"Unless, of course, that young pup I hear stirring upstairs isn't your cub, at
all?"
"Oh, he's mine. Mine and Derek's. Our pack's."
"And yet you wouldn't risk yourself to save him?"
"'Course I would," Stiles says, "in a heartbeat. If I could actually keep Jar
safe by letting you tap my ass - "
"You know what I'm asking for is much more than that."
" - or marry me, and then tap my ass - I would totally do that. But he's not in
danger, is he?"
Derek's hand tightens on his. "Stiles - "
"I thought I told you to shut up, dear," says Stiles, placidly. "My point is,
Jar isn't even in danger. Why the hell should I prostitute myself?"
"There's no need to be crass," Max remarks, mildly, but his eyes are sharp.
They aren't just grey, anymore; they're silver. Which means Stiles is going
about this the right way. Score. "I'd never ask you to debase yourself."
"Sure. Inviting yourself to my home and then treating me like a trophy, that's
not debasing. What makes you think Derek treats me bad? At least he doesn't
threaten my cub to test me."
Max's eyes are full-on glowing, now. "You're a clever little thing. Aren't
you?"
"Case in point: I figured out that you're a douche. Which doesn't take much
figuring out, honestly. I got that the moment I met you."
"Flattering."
"Yeah, it is, isn't it?"
Derek's almost pulverizing his hand, by now. "Stiles -"
"Be quiet, love-muffin."
Max's lips twitch.
"I apologize for my mate," Stiles says. "He's gorgeous, as you can see - "
"You're lovelier."
"Uh, no. I'm not. But his abs are pretty much all he's good for. Sorry to say."
Derek's gnashing his fangs. That's gotta be uncomfortable.
"I'm so sorry that you had to play chess with him." Stiles has never been this
earnest in his life. "Really, I am. You must've been bored."
"Terribly." Max's eyes are still glowing, but in a warmer, weirder way that…
Stiles is not going to think about, because that way lies Pedo-Wolf Land.
"Until now."
"Right. So. I'm in the game. And, you know, checkmate. And all that."
"Stiles," Derek hisses, "what - "
"Derek. Apple of my eye. Fire of my loins."
Max snorts.
"Would you please tell your Betas and your Omega to stop hovering in the
hallway just outside this room? I think we all know they aren't making any
coffee."
"Um," says Scott, from behind the door, "but you're not a werewolf. You can't
hear us." And then, he yips, in a way that probably means Lydia's just smacked
him upside his head.
"Yeah, but I know you. Can you guys get Jar washed? It's his bath-time."
"Yes, Mommy," drawls Lydia, and there's the shuffle of feet trudging up the
stairs. Reluctantly.
Max is looking at Stiles with raised eyebrows.
"What? Delegation. Works wonders. Derek's brilliant with diapers, by the way.
Which is another reason he's an excellent mate. Other than his gorgeousness.
And his abs."
"And his absolute inability to out-think you."
Stiles nods cheerfully. "That helps."
"I think it's time you explained things to me," Derek growls, and aww, is ickle
poopsie-kins feeling emasculated? Belittled? Well, turnabout's foreplay.
Fair play. Uh. Damn it, Stiles hates it when his thoughts get in on the
Freudian slips. "See, Max is a douche, right? Also, he's a member of the
council. Adjunct, or whatever. But still. Also, his pack's a big fucking deal.
Also, he's a control freak. Also, he's ambitious. Also, he's a lupine
fundamentalist."
"Delightful phrasing," Max observes.
"It wasn't a compliment, jackass. You're a rightwing nutcase, is what I'm
saying. So, Derek. Because Max is trying to play all those roles, he's got
limits. A whole lotta limits. More limits on his behavior than we do, because
we're just a random mongrel pack with nothing on the line, no reputation to
lose, no respect, nothing."
"Thanks," Derek mutters, dryly. His fangs are mostly gone, praise de lawd.
Possibly, Stiles's absence of a fear-scent has lowered the threat-level in
Derek's lizard brain. Stiles resolves to smell even more like a pastoral
landscape in the future. Maybe by wearing a crown of daffodils. (Hey, it's not
that girly. And Jar will love it.)
"Oh, Daddy, I'm sure you'll build the best pack. As long as I'm around to help
you do it."
"Of that," Max says, "I have no doubt."
"See? The psycho-pedo terrorist approves of me. I feel so validated."
"I'd hardly call myself a terrorist."
"Uh. When you enter people's houses and try to terrify them into cooperating
with you? That's terrorism, buddy. Not that you're my buddy. Because you're
not. At all. I noticed how you didn't discount the 'psycho' and 'pedo' labels."
Max just looks at him. Appreciatively.
Stiles gulps. And pats Derek's hand until Derek stops grrr-ing. "You sound like
a lawnmower, sweetie. A very, very tiny lawnmower. Stop it."
Derek… stops it. And squeezes Stiles's hand back.
"Right. So basically, Max can't risk his standing, because he doesn't just want
to be an adjunct council member. Do you, Max?"
"Very astute."
"Yep, astute. That's me. I figure, what's a rightwing douchewolf with ambitions
gotta do to get elected into the council? He's got to keep a clean record,
that's what. Observe every… whatchamacallit, nuance of the Law. Observe it down
to the bloody letter. And it's bloody. Very bloody. How many of your pack
members have you killed, by the way? To keep the Law?"
"A few," Max says, easily. "Loose ends, I like to call them."
Stiles does not shudder, thinking of Jar as one of those loose ends, of Jar's
mom as a 'loose end'. If the werewolves ever set up their own version of the Ku
Klux Klan, Stiles won't be surprised to see guys like Max leading the charge.
It makes him ill. "Uh-huh. I've read the Book of the Law, by the way, and it's
such trigger-happy bullshit, why would you even want to get involved in that?"
"There is safety in numbers."
"Not if you kill all your numbers, man. Basic arithmetic. Ever do Math in
school?"
Max studies him. "You ought to apply to the council. An approach like yours
might… change things. For the better."
"Yeah, like you think my approach is better."
"I might. I simply do what I must, in order to accumulate power for my pack
under the current system. Alas, the current system involves joining the
council, and following the Law. Therefore, that is what I do. If the council
changed, however…" Max shrugs. "My conduct would change accordingly."
"So what you're telling me is that you're a soulless opportunist," Stiles says.
"Oh my god, you're Mitt Romney." Stiles's brain tries to catch up with that
horrifying revelation. "Mitt Romney wants me. Eww."
"If I did adopt your ideas," Max says, out of nowhere, "and presented them to
the council… would that make me a worthier mate? In your eyes?"
Stiles gapes.
"Not that I would; that would be foolish, and would undo years of work,
besides."
"Oh, g-good. Because that's - "
"Unless, of course, I killed most of the current council members and took over.
I could then apply your philosophy with ease."
"My philosophy doesn't involve killing people, okay, what are you even - are
you serious? Say you're not serious. Please. I'm not going to be the face that
launched a thousand ships. How did this even - am I on drugs? Derek, did I take
something this morning that I wasn't aware of? Did Lydia spike the milk,
again?"
"No," says Derek, after an extended pause. He's got a funny look on his face -
if by 'funny' you mean 'split between an expression of blank incredulity and
dawning horror'.
And, yeah, Stiles is starting to get that Max Werner might be into him. Like,
hardcore into him. A lot into him. For more than just his ass. "Ha. Ha ha.
Which means this is real. Max, I'mma tell you straight up that if you kill
someone that isn't immediately, physically trying to kill you first and has his
or her fangs, like, two centimeters away from your throat, I would not approve
and I would definitely not think you made a better mate."
"This is the world of werewolves. Kill or be killed. It's impossible not to
take preventative measures."
"Nah, y'see, in human history? 'Preventative measures' tend to lead to nuclear
holocausts. So, no. Just. No."
"Your pacifism will be short-lived." Max looks concerned. "Or you will."
"Gee, thanks for that vote of confidence. I'll take my chances. But getting
back to the topic, if you don't mind - you can't threaten to take Jar away, and
you can't threaten me by threatening him, because he's not your cub, anyway.
The Law won't let you take him away. So what the hell're you trying to threaten
me with? You can't prove Jar wasn't born here."
"Until I find his mother. She fled my pack, but I will find her. And when I do,
her scent will be a match with the cub's, and will prove my case."
"Uh. No, it won't. 'Cause, see, you just gave yourself away. Derek, he just
gave himself away. C'mon, He-man, you can work it out. What didn't Max
mention?"
"The father," Derek says, slowly, eyes widening.
"Exactly. It's all, mother this, mother that. No father. So I'm thinkin', given
how Max is a fundamentalist? Who kills members of his own pack? And did
something drastic enough to make the mother run away?" Stiles swallows, and
refuses to stumble over his words. He has to get this right. He has to. "Max
must've killed the f-father, already."
Max is silent. His eyes are quarter-moons of poisonous silver, lazy and
serpentine and dangerously narrow.
"Didn't you? 'Cause you had to. 'Cause you're the boss. Your Omega - she'd have
to be an Omega, wouldn't she? Or you wouldn't be so insulted by her
disobedience. Your Omega had a boyfriend you didn't approve of - maybe someone
high enough in rank to endanger your position if he had a cub before you did -
so you killed him. It's the Law. You're allowed to. Hell, you're supposed to.
And you're an adjunct council member who's gotta maintain his street cred, so
you killed the poor bastard. And then, when the mom ran away, you tried to kill
her. Only, she gave birth to the baby, first. The baby, I didn't say it was
Jar, I mean, obviously, 'cause Jar's ours." Stiles isn't even lying when he
calls Jar theirs; he just is. "Right, Derek?"
"That's right." Derek is smiling. With teeth. A lot of teeth. Not fangs,
because he's not flipping out anymore, but in a way, this is scarier than the
fangs.
"And 'cause it fucks up your precious pack hierarchy, or whatever," Stiles
continues, "you want to find this baby and kill it, too. But, say,
theoretically, this baby was somewhere else. With someone else. With another
pack. How could you prove that the kid's father was from your pack, too? Maybe
a wolf from this new pack was the father, and he wandered off. Wolves go rogue
all the time. You don't have a matched set of scents, Max. You can't prove a
thing. In fact, trying to prove it will only make you come off as weak, and you
don't want that, do you? Not if you wanna join the council, permanent-like."
"We're doing you a favor," says Derek, pityingly, which, heh. Derek is catching
on. And Max is bristling. Not visibly, but he is; Stiles can feel it. "We could
go to the council, first. Complain about being harassed by you. You tried to
steal my cub and blackmail my mate, all without any proof. I wonder what
they'll say about that?"
"Without any proof," Stiles picks up, gleefully, "they'll kick you out. Whoops!
There goes your prestige. Your pack. What Alpha won't challenge you for it? And
you'll never make it as a primary member of the council. So much for that pipe-
dream."
Max just breathes. His claws come out, retract, and come out again. Stiles has
the distinct impression of a silver tiger, considering whether or not to make
its kill. Max doesn't seem much like a wolf; he resembles something even
deadlier.
"Uh. B-but, you know, we don't mind. We understand that you're… concerned for
your pack, that's understandable, so we're not going to, um. Spill anything. To
anyone. You can just go on home and announce to everyone you killed the kid -
who's gonna know? It's not like anyone will doubt that you didn't do it."
"That," says Max, after, like, centuries of silence, "may or may not be a
compliment."
"Yeah, well. The moral of the story is, never try to pull one over on a
Stilinski. My dad's a cop, all right? He raised me to think like one, and lemme
tell ya, we can smell a con a mile off, and we're not even werewolves."
"Indeed. If only you weren't present," Max says, sounding the opposite of
resentful - he sounds downright fond - and, okay, also more-than-slightly
pissed off, "I would've convinced the more credulous Mr. Hale to give the cub
up. Or give you up, at the risk of losing the lives of his entire pack. Either
way, I would've profited; preferably, by obtaining you."
"Never," Derek grinds out, and his voice is like the edge of an axe. Stiles is
frankly surprised Max hasn't cut himself on it - or beheaded himself. Jesus.
"Good thing I was here, then," Stiles says, dismissively, like he isn't having
inappropriate thoughts about Derek and Derek's possessiveness and is
approximately 0.5 seconds away from sprouting a boner.
And maybe the way Stiles smells makes Max a little mentally unstable, because
Max says: "Will you not be my mate?"
"Huh?"
Max tilts his head. "My. Mate," he enunciates. "You would be an asset to my
pack. I do not mention this as an idle offer. It is a proposal."
Derek snarls -
- and Stiles waves him silent. "Look, Max. I really… appreciate it. Only, no, I
don't, it's not like you can't tell when I'm lying, right? So I'm turning you
down. I already have a pack. And a mate. And a cub."
"Your cub would benefit from the safety of a more powerful pack."
"The safety of a pack that kills its own cubs? Wow."
"Not any cub," Max says. "Not yours. Not mine."
"Leave," says Derek, and this time, Stiles doesn't try to stop him. Or disagree
with him.
"What he said," Stiles says. "I… I don't know why you're even - there's nothing
that amazing about me, anyway - "
"What on earth have you been saying to him?" Max asks Derek, fucking
indignantly, and Derek bristles.
"It's not Derek's fault that I don't think I'm the shiniest pearl in the oyster
of the universe. Chill. That's just a fact. Also, you need to go. I have to
feed Jar in about thirty minutes." There're splashing and cooing noises echoing
down the stairs, which means Jar's enjoying his bath, tiny paw-hands splashing
in the water. Stiles feels a tug, in his heart, where a Jar-shaped hook has
permanently lodged itself.
Max surveys him, like he's some sort of - Stiles doesn't want to know, but it
makes Derek stand and move in front of Stiles. No, prowl in front of Stiles.
"Leave," Derek repeats, quietly.
Max sighs. And gets up. "Very well," he says. "I'm not accustomed to conceding
defeat, but in this case, I must count myself happily outwitted." He sketches a
short bow toward Stiles, and continues, "I will return. Every now and then. And
make my proposal, repeatedly, until you see the wisdom of choosing my pack."
"Um, no offense, but you just said I outwitted you, which means my wits are
better than yours. So my wisdom's better than yours, and my choices are -
fuck!" Suddenly, Max has grabbed his wrist - like a striking snake - and how
the hell he even got around Derek, Stiles doesn't know, but he's there, and
Derek's muscles are coiling for an attack, and it's only Stiles's other hand
coming up to haul Derek back that prevents an epic werewolf blood-match to the
death.
Derek's so tense, he's like a wall of rock. He's staring at Stiles's wrist,
currently wrapped in Max's grip, and, shit, that's his serial killer face,
right there.
"Calm down," says Stiles. Lightly. Not letting any of his massive internal
freakout into his voice, because that will tip Derek over the edge, and, no.
The fact that Scott, Lydia and Jackson seem to have magically appeared at the
foot of the stairs isn't a coincidence, either. Crap. Stiles hadn't even heard
them come downstairs, and now, they're looking at Max with their gleaming,
phosphorous-bright eyes. They don't even seem human.
"Are you trying to start a pack war?" Stiles whispers - not that he knows why
he's whispering, since in a room full of werewolves, everyone can hear a pin
drop.
"Maybe I should," Max murmurs, as Stiles stares at him. "If I were to destroy
your pack, I could claim you, couldn't I?"
"Uh, you'll die before you make it to the door." Stiles's pulse is beating so
loudly, he can hardly hear himself speak.
Max's thumb slides over his palm - right over the shallow cuts Derek's claws
left in him, and Stiles flinches. "Maybe I won't."
"Tell me," Derek says to Stiles, and Stiles knows what he means; that all
Stiles has to do is say the word, and Derek will do his level best to rip Max's
arm right off.
Stiles… doesn't say anything. He only lifts his chin, and refuses to look away
from Max's eyes. Max is a psycho pervert, but he ain't stupid; he can smell the
truth on Stiles, the truth of how much Stiles doesn't want this, and how
thoroughly Stiles will murder him if he so much as touches a hair on anyone in
Stiles's pack.
Max's mouth parts, eyes going blank and hungry, and, fuck, okay, maybe he is
stupid. Maybe they're all going to die. Maybe Max will go Two-Face on them and
kill them all, or get killed and invite the vengeance of his pack on them, or
maybe he'll just let it go, this time, but will return in two weeks with his
huge Boston wereposse and tear down the Hale house. It's not like one Alpha and
a couple teenagers and a baby could stand a chance against a pack that's been
ruling the Eastern seaboard since the fucking Civil War.
Stiles's eyes are drying in their sockets; he's going to have to blink, soon.
Man, no one ever wrote about this in the great book of Staring Contests For
Dummies.
There's also the fact that Stiles can only keep Derek back for so long; Derek's
got this hair-trigger, Dirty Harry thing going on that means they're only a
split second from a showdown.
But Stiles doesn't look away. Not even when Max lifts Stiles's bleeding hand to
his lips and kisses it, tastes it - hot, sickening flicker of tongue - and lets
it go.
This… isn't the best time for Stiles's knees to turn into blobs of relieved
jelly, so it's convenient how Derek's hands close around his hips and keep him
from crumpling to the floor like some delicate… damsel. That Stiles had claimed
he wasn't. And he isn't. He isn't.
"Uh," Stiles croaks. His hand feels kind of wet. And gross. And wet. Ugh,
werewolf spit. It's like dog-drool in the way it's thicker and more slobbery
than the human variety, but Derek's doesn't feel yucky like Max's does, for
some reason. Maybe because it turns Stiles on, instead.
"I have your answer," says Max, and, hey. Is 'uh' an answer? "Out of
consideration for you, I will not destroy your pack; if I do, I will never have
you."
"You'll never have him," Derek says, apparently in the middle of the first ever
incidence of one-man subzero nuclear fusion, because his voice is freezing. It
raises the hairs on the back of Stiles's neck.
"So you say." Max grins, carelessly and with a hint of fang, like he hadn't
just gone Phantom of the Opera on them a moment ago. "Well! This has been an
unexpected failure in one sense, and an unqualified success in another. I've
made a most valuable discovery. Spitfire, I'll make sure to drop by every now
and then; doubtless, as you mature, you will recognize me as a more fitting
partner."
"Um, I don't think so," says Stiles, moving to wipe his hand discreetly on his
pants, before realizing that it might be too rude. Is it rude to wipe weredrool
off of yourself in front of the werewolf who non-consensually forced his drool
onto you?
But Max just hums, like he's indulging Stiles's quaint delusions. He looks at
Stiles, for another couple minutes, as if memorizing his features - which is
the single creepiest experience of Stiles's life, bar none, because it's like
being reduced to a series of flashing numbers in the Terminator's visor. With a
giant crosshair on Stiles's face.
And then, Max just… turns his back on them, like Derek isn't ready to skin him
alive, and walks out.
"Shouldn't we be showing him out?" Stiles asks, at last. "As a, uh. As a
guest?"
No one moves.
The front door opens and closes.
"Right," says Stiles. His intestines feel like they're in his throat. "Right,
so I'd better get Jar's milk started - "
"No," Derek says.
"But I - "
"No. Let them," and then Derek's dragging him up the stairs, Stiles practically
falling over the steps in an effort to keep up, and Scott and Lydia and Jackson
are still in glowy-eyed Cylon mode, staring up at them.
"I - I don't think they're up for that, right now. Jar will be terrified - "
"No."
"But - "
"No."
"Is that the only word you're - ow!" Stiles yelps, because Derek's just dragged
him into his bedroom and slammed the door, and then slammed Stiles against it,
and Stiles's fingers are in Derek's mouth, skimming across fangs and tongue,
cuts stinging anew. "What - "
Derek groans, shuddering from head to toe like he's been electrocuted, and
Stiles can't make any sense of what's happening beyond the fact that Derek's
tugging off his pants, claws catching on and possibly ripping the belt, and
Stiles's brain barely has the time to scream, 'NAKED! NAKED!' before those
claws are scraping Stiles's thighs, and Stiles is abruptly, devastatingly hard.
His skull is still reverberating with the impact of hitting the door, but it
doesn't seem to make a damned bit of difference to Stiles's dick, or to
Stiles's mouth, which falls open to let out the most shockingly obscene sound
Stiles has ever heard.
Derek bites him. He just - he bites, and even though it isn't deep enough to
permanently mangle Stiles's hand, it still fucking hurts, and Stiles lets out a
ragged mewl and tries to pull his hand away, which - yeah. Doesn't work. Derek
follows it, with his teeth, and laps and laps and laps at the bite until Stiles
isn't sure whether the stuff dripping down to his wrist is blood or saliva, and
he's still hard, hard and leaking, and he feels messy and scared and turned on
and fucked up, but his hips won't stop twitching and Derek won't let go.
"Sor," Derek is slurring against his palm. "Sorr - " But he isn't stopping,
tearing his own jeans open and pressing Stiles back, and this wasn't the way
Stiles had imagined their first time going, but all his blown mind can process
is that there's a dick against his, holy crap, someone else's dick, Derek's
dick.
Everything's rough and weird and fast, horrifyingly fast, like a speed-train
going off the rails or a car swerving into the wrong lane. Derek's fucking him.
And, sure, it's not - not inside him, but it's still - there's no other word
for it, Derek is fucking him, rubbing them together, pre-come slicking their
cocks but not enough for it for it to not burn, to not ache, the friction a
sandpaper-sharp heat that's sore and near-painful and maddening, flushing his
skin and making him break out into a full-body sweat, T-shirt clinging to his
chest. Derek thrusts, and the spark zaps right through Stiles, catching like
wildfire, a photo-flash of blinding white, and it's -
It's like being struck by a flint -
Stiles is shaking and coming all over himself -
All over Derek's dick -
But it's not over, yet. The smell of Stiles's come hits his nose after it
drives Derek absolutely fucking crazy, because Derek's biting him again and it
hurts even worse, Derek's fangs savaging old wounds and opening new ones until
it all just feels strangely numb, like the nerve-endings in his hand have
fizzled out. His cock is sticky and over-sensitive, a twinge of too-keen
sensation that makes Stiles shrink back, or try to, but Derek's rocking against
him with enough force to bruise Stiles's shoulders against the door and rattle
the fucking hinges, and there's no way the rest of the pack can't hear them,
but all Stiles can do is whine and grit his teeth and ride it out -
He's almost hard again by the time Derek comes. Almost, but not quite, which is
a relief, all things considered. His sweat is too cold, now, trickling down his
back, making him itchy. His dick is also pretty itchy, under all that flaking
come, and even though Derek isn't cannibalizing his fingers, anymore, Stiles's
hand is -
Stiles's hand is going to need some serious stitches. Goddamn. At least it
isn't his dominant hand, which is something to be glad about. School isn't that
far off, and he needs to write with that hand. Homework. Is important. Tests.
Are also important.
…oh. God.
He's just had sex.
He's just had sex with Derek, and it was -
It was way too high on fear-factor, which wasn't how he'd envisioned losing his
virginity, and he'd have liked to get away with all his extremities intact and
non-bloody, thank you very much, but it was still - it was real. It was Derek,
and it was -
Derek being real, with him. No holding back, no non-sexual cuddles, no vaguely
naughty touching, no stopping at second base.
They've - they've gone all the way. Finally. There isn't a trace of Max's scent
on him, anymore, and Stiles knows that by the simple expediency of the fact
that a) Derek's stopped, and b) Stiles no longer feels gross. There's just -
there's nothing of Max left on him. And that's… good. Very good. Not that
Stiles can explain why it's good without sounding deranged, like Angelina Jolie
trying to convince people why wearing a locket with her boyfriend's blood in a
vial is a good idea. Just. It just is.
Jesus. Stiles had never expected to be one-half of the Brangelina of Beacon
Hills.
Turns out, Derek's heavy, post-orgasm. So heavy that they both sort of… slide
down the door, until Stiles is just sitting there with Derek slumped between
his legs, panting.
Derek's trembling. Which is -
"Hey," Stiles says, softly, jostling Derek with a forearm, because he still
can't use his hand. "You, uh. You okay?"
Derek chokes. And buries his nose in Stiles's neck. And doesn't stop trembling.
Okay. Okay, so this is - officially a nervous breakdown, right?
Stiles brings both his arms up, slowly, so as to not surprise Derek - and hugs
him, or almost-hugs him, because, again, the hand. Keeping it out of the way.
He does manage to pat Derek's back with his other hand, though.
It's awkward and bizarre, to be sitting there with his dick hanging out of his
pants and Derek leaning on him like he's the last wall in the world, but he
makes something warm out of it, anyway, curling himself around Derek as much as
he can, bringing his legs up on either side of Derek and just… cradling him.
He's also talking, and it takes him a while to realize that he's mumbling about
getting washed up, about feeding Jar, about… things he isn't paying attention
to. He's on verbal autopilot, the words blending together in a low-voiced,
continuous blur.
After a while, Stiles shuts up. He's been talking for so long, his throat is
dry. He needs a drink of water. Even better, a drink of alcohol. He needs
bandages, fuck, his hand is pulsing. He needs painkillers. He needs Jar.
He needs Derek to be all right with this.
Derek does speak, eventually. Right into Stiles's neck, muffled and broken and
wrecked, and he says: "Sorry."
Just that. "You said that already," Stiles points out. "Look, it's - "
"Sorry," Derek says, again. "I - I didn't. I should've - "
"Yeah, yeah, rival Alpha poaching on your turf sent you into a tailspin. Of
sex. A sexspin. I get it, relax. It's not - you're not normally like this, and
you - "
"No. Stiles, I - " And Derek pitches sideways, over Stiles's shoulder, like
someone's just punched him. "I… you don't. I wasn't - "
"You do realize he planned this, don't you?"
"What?"
Stiles has only just figured it out. "It's part of his long-term plan to
convince me to give up on you and marry him, like we're the cast of the Bold
and the Beautiful, and he's the evil lady. He deliberately marks me in front of
you, drives you nuts - because any mate would go nuts - and waits for the
fallout. Listen. It's fine."
"It's not - "
"It is, dumbass, shut the hell up. I - " love you, Stiles doesn't say, not
because he doesn't want to or because he doesn't mean it, but because it won't
be well-received, not when Derek's drowning in self-loathing. Later. Stiles
will say it later, when he and Derek have done this properly, have spent an
hour making out before sucking each other off, or something.
Damn, now he is getting hard. Thinking 'ABORT ABORT' at his penis won't help,
though, so he just ignores it.
"I do get it, you know. It's part of the whole werewolf thing. I remember Scott
crying like a two-year-old girl that time he was too rough with Allison because
Jackson was being a flirty jerk, and it's - it's who you guys are. That doesn't
make it okay, and that doesn't mean you should let it happen more than once -
now that you know what sets you off, you'd better not let it set you off again.
Got it?"
"G…ot it," says Derek, dazedly. He's sitting up, now, not just leaning into
Stiles, and he looks so pole-axed he might as well be concussed.
"Yeah. So. That won't happen again. It'll be awesome, when we do it how we want
to, and not how some manipulative asshole from Boston wants us to. Okay?"
"I. That still isn't - "
"Okay?"
"Okay," Derek agrees, quickly, and, wow. Stiles needs to use his command-voice
more often. Except that it usually takes Apocalypse Now scenarios to even get
him to the point where he can use that voice, so, yeah. Not the coolest
superpower ever.
"Now let me up; I need stitches, and Scott's the only one that actually knows
how to do 'em, so we'd better send him down to Dr. Deaton's to borrow needles
and thread and disinfectant, or whatever. I'm not gonna turn into a werewolf,
am I? I mean, I've read the lore, so I know there has to be a degree of intent
in the bite, but - "
"No," Derek says, fervently. "Of course not. I'd never - unless you wanted to -
"
"Great! Because I don't want to. Which I have previously established, in
detail, and you respected my wishes even while in the midst of a ragequit, so
that bodes well for the future of our relationship. You still haven't let me
up, by the way. Just pointing that out."
Derek… blinks. And stands up. He also tries to help Stiles up, but Stiles
doesn't let him, because it's not like getting his hand chewed on has robbed
him of the rest of his limbs or turned him into a grandpa that can't even walk.
He does let Derek help him do up his pants, though, because he can't do that
one-handed. It's very, er. Difficult. Considering that there's a semi-boner in
the way. Derek doesn't mention it, for which Stiles is grateful, because
Stiles's dick is intellectually challenged and doesn't realize that another
round of sex while tetanus may be setting in on his still-smarting hand is… a
bad idea. A very bad idea. Even though Stiles's boner goes from semi to full at
the slightest brush of Derek's knuckles, and it's all Stiles can do not to ask
Derek to keep doing that until Stiles shoots his load. On Derek's leather
jacket. God, that mental image, it's -
It's something he'll save for another time. A time after he buys a leather-
friendly stain-remover on Ebay. He is not ruining that jacket; it'll be
tantamount to desecrating a holy relic. Which is part of the appeal, yeah, but
still.
Stiles knows that what's happened in here will be obvious to everyone, what
with the way Stiles is a rose that wouldn't smell as sweet if it wasn't
drenched in sex-scent and blood-scent, but as long as Jackson doesn't have
another one of his pseudo-incestuous, oh-god-I-just-had-naked-thoughts-about-
my-mom moments, it'll be fine.
On a scale of zero to ten, Stiles is still going to be embarrassed at a value
of around eleventy-million, but, hey. Werewolves. What you gonna do? But
there're plus points, too. For one thing, Lydia will stop ragging on him about
'consummating' the 'marriage', and Scott will stop regaling him with non-
explicit tales of his mystical unions with Allison, which he probably thinks
are subtle and cleverly-worded propaganda campaigns in favor of werewolf-
boning, but… no. They aren't. Subtle. Or clever. Stiles genuinely can't survive
another account of how the freckles on Allison's back apparently form some
astronomical constellation that doesn't even exist, but that Scott insists on
naming, anyway. With a new name. Every time. 'Unicorn of Stars' was the last
fucking straw; Stiles will have an aneurysm if he has to hear the next name on
that list. At least Stiles is never going to reach those depths (heights?) of
idiocy, no matter how fantastic the sex with Derek gets.
But Derek's just - hovering, helplessly, and staring at Stiles's injured hand
like it's the site of the biggest tragedy on the planet, like it's where the
Titanic went down and Amelia Earhart disappeared and Bambi's mother was killed,
so Stiles doesn't have any choice, really.
He backs Derek up against the door, and kisses him, thoroughly, making it a
little dirty and a lot soft, like a pornographic shock blanket. When he pulls
away, breathing harshly, Derek's looking pole-axed, again. Pole-axed and
drugged, his eyes drowsy and ember-red, his lips swollen.
It's a good look on him.
Even if it leaves stubble-burn on Stiles's chin. What even - Stiles is totally
getting Derek an electric shaver for his birthday.
"C'mon," he says, and nudges Derek aside so he can open the door. "Let's go
humiliate ourselves in front of our pack, get stitched up and cuddle Jar. In
that order."
And that's exactly what they do. In that order.
***** Chapter 7 *****
===============================================================================

"Uh, no," says Jackson, backing away from Jar like Jar's armed to the teeth
with wolfsbane grenades, or something. Which, heh, Jar in a baby-sized G.I. Joe
uniform is a thing that needs to happen, preferably with Stiles taking photos
(with captions) and videos (with voiceovers), and even if it means Stiles
turning into one of those kooky parents that have pictures of their babies in
kitty outfits and panda outfits and fairy outfits, well, so be it. Jar's too
damn cute.
Even if he is kind of growling, now. Adorable mini-growls that aren't really
very convincing, given that Jar keeps forgetting to be pissed off at Jackson
and starts smiling at Stiles, instead. With dimples. Jesus Christ.
Jar's such a sweet kid; he can never hang onto his temper for long. Mostly,
he's just quiet, quiet and observant, green eyes wide and calm and tracking
every little thing, and that's - okay, that's a lot like Derek's tendency to
just watch, and maybe it's a general werewolf trait, but… no. It's not just a
general werewolf trait. It's who Jar is. It's his default state, except when
Stiles is playing with him (which is when the fart-laughs and the dimples
happen) or when someone's bothering him (which is when the mini-growls happen).
Stiles thinks the growls are cute, too, because Jar never tries to bite anyone
or do anything mean. He just… warns people off. Not that those soft, purr-
y growls sound much like warnings; to Stiles, they sound more like invitations
to snuggle.
Too bad Jackson seems to be taking them as ultimatums.
"He isn't gonna kill you, you know," Stiles points out.
"He hates me."
"That might have to do with the fact that you tried shoving a spoon down his
throat."
"He wasn't eating!"
"Because you don't know how to feed him!" Stiles snaps, then sighs, not wanting
to freak Jar out. Jar doesn't respond well to Stiles being in stress, which is
why he'd been weird the last couple days, with the Guillotine of Max hanging
over them. With Max gone, he's started to settle, again. And he's finally
taking solids, so… They can't afford to get this wrong. "Just. Siddown. And
take him."
"No."
"Sit. Down. Or would you like to explain to Derek why you're the only one not
pulling his weight, around here?"
"Hey, I pull my weight plenty! I - "
"With Jar. Do you want to tell Derek why you're bailin' on baby-duty?"
Jackson shuts up. He looks mutinous, but he shuts up, and inches toward Jar
like Jar's gonna pull AK-47s out from under his cot. It's sort of amusing, in
the way it reminds Stiles of Derek's complete inability to deal with a baby -
until he figured out it could get him sex with Stiles.
Well, clearly, that isn't happening with Jackson, but… maybe there's another
bribe that'll work. "You'll have cubs, one day," Stiles says, idly. "With
Lydia, maybe."
Jackson's eyes narrow. "If you're trying to manipulate me - "
"Just saying. 'Cause, you know, that book about female werewolves and fertility
rituals that you keep pretending you don't wanna read every time you catch me
reading it?"
"I don't want - "
"Yeah, see, that book says females are really goddamn choosy about picking a
mate. Male werewolves have been known to fight to the death over a female, if
she doesn't bother picking one of 'em, and even after a guy survives, there's
no guarantee she'll give him the time of day. Especially if she doesn't think
he'll sire good cubs. Or raise good cubs."
Jackson… seethes. "You're - "
"I'm not implying anything about your utter uselessness with cubs. I'm just
saying. Getting laid? Forget about it. Not happening."
Jackson grinds his jaw. "Gimme the fu - "
"Language!"
" - the funny baby. Ha ha. He's so funny. Ain't you funny, you little as - "
"Watch it."
" - tonishing bundle of joy. C'mere and let Uncle Jackson cuddle you.
Sweetheart."
"It's more persuasive when you're not growling," Stiles adds. "Or fanging. He's
gonna think you wanna eat him."
"Maybe I… won't," Jackson autocorrects himself, after seeing whatever
expression must've been on Stiles's face. "Damn, Stilinski, you're - what
happened to you? Seriously?"
"Jar happened to me. Now sit down and take the baby."
Jackson sits down and takes the baby - and nearly gets scratched by Jar's ickle
pseudo-claws, but Jar calms down when Stiles strokes his head and tells him
that Jackson isn't actually the worst person in the world; he just acts like
it. Jackson frowns at him for that; Stiles just grins.
"So," says Jackson, eventually, after Jar's only dribbled peach-pulp onto his
fingers thrice. Jackson's been making disgusted faces, but luckily, Jar seems
to find them hilarious. He keeps grinning toothlessly around his spoon. "You.
And Derek."
Stiles very carefully doesn't blush. Okay, he does blush; it's not like he can
help it. But he tries not to blush too much.
Jackson looks vaguely horrified.
"What?"
"Nothing. Just - nothing. I don't need to know. What're you… your dad's coming
back. Isn't he?"
"The day after tomorrow. Yeah."
"What're you going to tell him?"
Stiles hasn't even talked about this with Derek; they've been avoiding it, or
Derek's been avoiding it, and Stiles has been… letting him. Avoid it. Maybe
Derek has some bizarre idea that Stiles will suddenly turn his back on them
when his dad returns, or maybe it's the opposite, and he thinks there's nothing
to be worried about, so he can't be bothered bringing it up. The sum total is:
Stiles has no clue what Derek's thinking. And, yeah, the not-knowing is pretty
unhealthy, but Stiles has no idea what he's going to say to his dad, anyway,
other than the fact that he and Scott have joined some sort of commune in the
woods that is in no way related to the ex-convict that also happens to be
living there.
"You have no idea, do you?"
"Oh, shut up, Mr. My Parents Have No Idea I'm a Werewolf."
"Screw you, I'm not a father. That's a whole different level of secrecy, man.
I'd tell them if I had a baby."
"Like hell you would."
"Stop changing the subject."
"Stop acting like you care, it's freaking me out."
Jackson rolls his eyes. "Fine. Have a mental breakdown when your dad gets back,
then."
"I won't - "
"And just so you know, if you mess this up for us, I will kill you. Even if
Derek kills me right after."
"Mess what up?"
"Your. Dad," says Jackson, slowly, like Stiles is a moron, "is the sheriff. If
he decides to arrest all of us or sell us out to the Argents - "
"He won't do that!"
"How can you be sure?"
"Because he's my dad, dumbass."
Jackson studies him warily, then shrugs. "Your funeral," he says, and dumps Jar
back into Stiles's lap before heading out to wash his peach-flavored hands.
Jar, picking up on Stiles's anxiety, clenches his tiny fist in Stiles's T-
shirt.
"Yo, buddy," says Stiles. "Don't worry. It'll be all right."
He hopes it will.
===============================================================================

One day to go. Stiles isn't having a mental breakdown. He isn't. He's just…
playing with Jar. A lot. Maybe more than a lot. Maybe all the time, until Jar
gets tired and tetchy and makes quiet, mewling noises that make Stiles ache. He
knows that his dad (hopefully) won't forbid him from visiting the Hale house
ever again, but… Stiles just finds himself incapable of letting anyone else
watch Jar. It's a shitty thing to do, because they have as much of a right to
Jar as Stiles does, it's just -
It's lonely. He's still here, but it's lonely. And Derek's been treating him
like he's made of glass, after the whole chewing-on-Stiles's-hand business and
the disconcertingly-violent-first-time business, although apparently werewolf
saliva has healing qualities, because the bandages came off the very next
morning. Derek keeps staring at him, though, like he's a puppet of papier-mâché
that's been left out in the rain. Like he's going to melt away. Like he's
fragile. It's getting to be annoying.
At last, with less than twenty-four hours left and Derek still not showing any
sign of pulling his head out of his ass, Stiles decides he's got to do it for
him.
He puts Jar to bed - later than usual, because Stiles can't bear to be parted
from him - and corners Derek. It's not very difficult to corner him, since
Derek's been looming diffidently all along. How is it even possible to loom
diffidently?
"Look, if we aren't going to make out anymore - "
"What?" Derek isn't quite eyeing the door like he wants to escape, but it's a
near thing.
"Are you breaking up with me?"
"What?" Derek's tone sharpens. "No. No, that's not - "
"You'd rather cut off your own arms than break up with me, am I right? Because
you are given to romantic gestures that bloody. Dude, you're like someone out
of Shakespeare. Pining from a distance, waiting outside windows, writing
sonnets in your blood - "
"I haven't written sonnets in my blood."
"Or anyone else's, I hope. But you would if you could, right? Also, you haven't
denied stalking me or spying on me from my window."
Derek gets what Stiles likes to call his 'NO COMMENT' face. Thank god Derek
never went into politics; he couldn't be more obvious.
"See, I know you don't wanna break up. Neither do I. So will you please stop
acting like I'm made of Lego, or something? I'm not going to fall to pieces the
moment you touch me."
"You - " Derek takes a deep breath. "I… hurt you."
"Yep. You did. And you won't do it again."
"You should be frightened."
"I should - can't you tell from smelling me that I'm not frightened? I just had
sex for the first time a few days ago, all right? I'm more horny than anything
else. I mean, now that my dick can remember being in contact with another
person… Hoo, boy. I've been jerking off like crazy."
"I can tell."
Stiles gulps. "Can you? 'Course you can. Jesus, you - is that also why you've
been staying away from me? Are you, like, zero-point-nine seconds away from
jumping me all the time?"
"Yes," says Derek. "And yes."
Whoa. Okay. Good. That's… good. Great. Fantastic. Stiles is getting hard,
already. He's been getting hard, with alarming regularity, and it's only Jar
the Anti-Boner (like the Anti-Christ, but way cuter) that's been keeping him
from humping random objects. Derek-shaped objects. Derek. "Um…"
"You should go home."
"What?" Stiles asks, because, uh, he is home.
"Your dad'll be back tomorrow morning."
Oh. Derek meant - shit, since when has the Hale house started feeling more like
home? Sure, it'd been feeling as much like a home, for some time, but not more
like a home. Until now. God, this is so fucked up. His dad's gonna flip. "Yeah,
but that's tomorrow. I - "
"You'll have to prepare for his return. It'll be very obvious to him, right
now, that you haven't been living there."
"If by that you mean the fact that my bed clearly hasn't been slept in and that
the fridge is completely freaking empty and that the trash can in the kitchen
is probably growing fungus at a rate comparable to the daily growth of the
Amazonian rainforest, then… you'd be right. Crap."
"Go. Fix things. It's better not to spook him."
"Spook him? His son's dating a werewolf! And has a werebaby!"
"At least you didn't give birth to it," Derek says, which, fuck. Stiles chokes
on a hysterical giggle.
"Just - don't. Don't try to have a sense of humor. Please. You're worse than my
dad."
Derek raises his eyebrows.
"Are you trying to get me to lose my boner? By reminding me of my father?"
"Yes," says Derek, again. "And yes."
"We could screw around one more time. I could sneak back just before sunrise.
We - "
"No." Derek makes these weird, clutching motions with his hands, claws sliding
out and retracting, and the whole Wolverine-about-to-go-berserk thing shouldn't
be so hot, except that it totally is. "I… couldn't let you go, so easily. Once
I - once I started. Touching you."
Full-stops shouldn't be hot, either. But they are. Especially when they're
breaking up Derek's sentences, like Derek's biting out each word against an
onslaught of want. "You're not really making my boner go away, you know."
"Stiles."
"Yeah?"
"Go."
And wow, that was a growl. A proper growl, menacing and reverberating, and…
yeah. Not exactly erection-killing. Which goes to show how messed up Stiles has
gotten, that a sound that'd make most people piss themselves just makes his
dick twitch.
Derek's nostrils flare.
"Fuck. Is that - when will we have sex, next? Just so I can check with my non-
existent agent and clear my non-existent schedule?"
"You… you must spend at least a week with your father."
"Uh-huh. I figured. It'll be next Saturday before I can see - " Stiles's throat
closes up " - Jar. And you. And the… the pack."
"I'll drop by to see you. Most nights."
"What, you'll crawl in my window? Just like old times?"
"Only while your dad's on night-shift."
"And we'll - in my bed? In my…" Stiles trails off at the glint of primal red in
Derek's eyes. "How much of this is a marking thing? A… a staking-out-your-
territory thing?"
"All of it," Derek says.
"Right, you just want to - rub yourself all over my sheets and make me come all
over them, too?"
Derek's growl hadn't gone away, completely, but it's back in force, now. Hungry
and guttural and thick.
"Note to self: Do not dirty-talk when the wereboyfriend is about to sexplode."
Then, realizing what he's just said, Stiles hastens to correct himself. "By
which I mean, dirty-talk all the damn time."
"Stiles. Go, or I won't let you go."
"That a threat, or a promise?"
"Stiles." Derek takes a step closer - and then a larger step back. Damn him and
his self-control. If Derek wasn't acting like some sort of robot soldier in the
middle of a tragic and possibly fatal positronic breakdown - seriously, his
fingers are twitching - Stiles would absolutely call him a soulless bastard. Or
maybe just a ball-less bastard.
"All right, all right, Lord of Chastity and Patience. Can't believe you were
the one so desperate to get in my pants, before."
"What makes you think I'm not desperate?"
"Because you… say you'll wait another day or so before stalking me all the way
to my bedroom and climbing in my window and attempting to shatter the Guinness
World Record for the most swiftly-broken bed as a result of sexual coitus?"
Derek just looks at him.
"Okay, so maybe that isn't the model of self-restraint. I'll, um. Leave. Now.
Call me if anything happens? Or just - just to let me wish Jar goodnight?
Tomorrow?" His throat's closing up again; he clears it. "And the day after.
Every day. I… I have to know how he's doing, got that? I have to hear him."
"Done."
"Who'll take care of Jar, the nights you're visiting me?"
"One of the others."
"Basically, you'll get someone else to babysit so you can make a booty-call?
While they know you're making a booty-call?"
Derek hitches a shoulder, as if to say, If it works.
"You're pathologically incapable of embarrassment, aren't you?"
But Derek's unconcerned. Like the shameless animal he is. "They already know
we're mating."
"They - " Stiles thinks back to Jackson's horrified, oh-noez-my-parents-are-
having-sex expression. "Yeah, they do, but - "
"They can sense it. That we're in heat for each other."
"Fine, just - stop. Right there. I don't want to know how much everyone else
knows about my sex life. Not that it's even much of a sex life, since I've only
had sex once."
"You'll be having it again. Soon."
"Oh, will I?"
"Yes." Derek's voice is a cliff - all plummet and depth and inevitability. It
makes Stiles's skin blush.
"Not helping with the boner situation here, Derek."
"Think about Werner."
"Ew, no."
"I'll put up a wolfsbane perimeter. In case Werner comes back."
"He won't. Not anytime soon."
Derek frowns. "How do you know that?"
"Not because I share some sort of psychic life-bond going with him, all right?
Christ. It's simple logic. He needs to consolidate his pack, needs to get
things back in order after killing three members of it. Or having everyone
believe he's killed three members of it - the mother, the father and the baby.
'Course, we know be's only killed one - the Beta father - but even that's more
than enough to cause fighting in the ranks. I bet there are people trying to
fill that role, maybe even a couple Omegas trying to fight their way up. Max
won't be back until he's made sure his pack isn't, like, imploding."
"It'll take at least a few months."
"Maybe even a year. It is a huge pack. Still, the wolfsbane perimeter's a good
idea, if it doesn't keep our own guys out. Er, guys and girl. Weregirl."
"I'll give them amulets to make their way through."
"What, like the ones I saw up in the library?"
"Like those. They're a Hale specialty. Have been, for generations."
"Cool. My hard-on's mostly gone, now, by the way. Well done."
"Thanks." Derek manages to sound dry, amused, cheesed off and disappointed.
"Aw, look at you! With a full spectrum of emotions, and everything! I'm so
proud. Maybe Jar will even grow up to be well-adjusted, with an example like
yours to follow."
"I can smell your sarcasm."
"What, you can't hear it? Get those furry ears checked, compadre. Okay, I'm
off." Stiles pushes off the wall and into Derek's space, aiming for a more-or-
less chaste goodbye kiss, but the next thing he knows, he's back against the
wall with Derek's hands on either side of him, and… that isn't a chaste kiss,
at all.
It's stubble and heat and a slow, exquisite burn, and Stiles can literally feel
his toes curling in their sneakers like bits of flash-paper that've been set
alight. Derek's fangs are nowhere to be found, and it's - it's a human kiss, a
dark, aching, careful kiss, that for some reason only makes Stiles itch with a
hot, useless dissatisfaction -
What does it say about him that he wants those fangs pressing against his
swollen lips, threatening to slice them open? God, he's become a lunatic - a
kinky lunatic - a kamikaze kisser - a suicidal snogger - and he isn't even
British - or Japanese -
His brain is hyphenating -
There's a tearing noise in the background that it takes Stiles a few minutes to
realize is the noise of Derek's claws ripping into the wallpaper -
And Stiles obviously has the self-preservation instincts of a lemming, because
he tries to turn his head aside and kiss the claws, instead -
Derek snaps his claws back in - fuck, that must hurt -
"No." Derek's panting, eyes wild and red. "No, you - you can't make me - don't
- "
"Do it," says Stiles, not that he has any idea what he's saying, either, but -
"Do it. I - I can go back tomorrow morning. I'll heal by then. I'll - "
"No. I… I can't control myself. Not yet."
"Well, practice makes perfect, doesn't it?" Stiles's mouth is honestly bee-
stung, it's so sore, but all he wants is for it to be more sore, for Derek to
kiss him and kiss him until he can't remember who he is, anymore. "I just - not
that I like to think of Scott and Allison having sexytiemz, but Scott's managed
it, right? With practice?"
"We don't have time for practice. Not today."
"Not even uncontrolled humping?" And, yeah, he's begging and it's undignified,
but screw dignity, anyway. It sure as hell isn't going to get him screwed.
"Without claws or fangs? Or assorted bloodplay accessories?"
"I want to mark you."
"Derek - "
"I want to bury myself beneath your skin. Deep enough to always carry your
scent. I want to bite you and mark you until you carry mine - "
"Oh, fuck - "
" - until there's nothing left of you, at all."
"That - " Stiles blinks rapidly against the haze of lust currently clouding his
vision. His heart is jackhammering so loud, he can't hear himself think. "That
sounds like you want to murder me."
Derek snarls.
And Stiles isn't even sure if it's because Derek can't stand the thought of
Stiles getting hurt, or because he wants to do it, himself -
Stiles is this close to coming in his pants -
Which is why Derek, the fucking tease, pulls away and almost staggers back.
Whatever carefulness he'd been trying to save up for Stiles has clearly run
out, or maybe it's just been pitched out the nearest airlock, because Derek
definitely seems capable of pitching things out of airlocks, at the moment.
Hell, if given the chance, he might pitch himself out an airlock. He looks
crazed and fanatical and near-violent, like he's about to take up arms and join
the Alaskan secessionist movement. It's a horrible look on Alaskan
secessionists, but it's an insanely attractive look on him. As in, insane and
attractive.
Stiles's dick thinks it's attractive. Then again, Stiles's dick had also
thought it was a great idea for him to throw himself onto the meat-mincers that
are Derek's claws, so. He isn't thinking rationally.
Okay. Damn. Okay. On the plus side, he's got an erection again. On the minus
side, he's got an erection again.
Great.
Derek's hard, too, tenting his jeans, and the fact that Stiles wants to fall to
his knees and take the zipper down with his teeth and go to town on that thing,
all spit and slobber and lapping tongue, is… beside the point.
It really is.
Even though that's one heck of a point -
"You ever look up 'counter-productive' in the dictionary?" Stiles rasps, after
several seconds of mutual, agonized eye-fucking. "No? You don't have to.
Because, this? Was the very definition of counter-productive. Not only did
neither of us get laid, but I'm gonna go back with the worst case of blue balls
in history - seriously, they're so blue they're verging on purple - and you're
gonna terrorize the rest of the pack with your giant boner. Congratulations."
Derek huffs, more like a dog than a wolf, and runs a hand through his hair.
He's calming down, eyes returning to normal and jaw losing that edge of
stubble-fur that's way more bristly than plain old stubble. He's looking shell-
shocked in a rueful kind of way, but he's Derek, so he still thinks he has the
right to give Stiles orders after that monumental fuck-up of a kiss. Not that
it was a 'fuck'-up, since there was no fucking. "Go home."
"Uh, I was? Before you pinned me to the nearest vertical surface and fucked my
mouth?"
Derek's gaze automatically drops to his lips.
Stiles almost involuntarily licks them. Almost.
Derek scowls. "Stop that."
"Stop what?"
"Never mind." It seems like Derek's ignoring their close encounter of the sexy
kind. That Derek started. Meanie. "Good luck with your dad."
"Can we not talk about him while we're hard? All right? Just a humble request
from your indentured mate."
"Go. Home."
"Going!"
Derek grunts… and walks away. Just -
Damn him. Damn. Him. "Make sure Jar starts on the compote, tomorrow!" he calls
after Derek. His voice is kind of trembly; he pretends it isn't. "And tell me
how it goes!"
But Derek, the jerk, only raises his hand in farewell, without looking back.
Maybe he thinks looking at Stiles right now will result in a bout of vicious
sodomy in the hallway. Not that Stiles would mind, but -
Priorities. He has them.
His penis also has priorities, but they're stupid, so Stiles ignores them.
He makes it out to his car before he realizes that he and Derek still haven't
talked about how Stiles is going to deal with his dad, or what he's going to
say.
Whatever. Stiles won't break everything to him in one go; he'll take his time,
saying only the most important things first, and giving his dad time to digest
each bit of shocking news, over the following weeks and months. He won't tell
Dad that he's dating Derek and raising Derek's baby at the same time, for
example. He doesn't want to give his dad an aneurysm.
And anyhow, Stiles sincerely doubts that his dad's going to force a soap opera
situation where Stiles and Derek have to run away to join the circus - or start
a circus, with Lydia as a lion-tamer and Allison as a knife-thrower-slash-
archer and Scott as her 'target' and Jackson as a perpetually sullen clown,
with Jar growing up passing out popcorn in the stands and charming everyone
with his very convincing fur costume. Especially on full moons.
Yeah, no. God, he's got to chill out. His mind's acting like it's high, and he
isn't even smoking pot.
"Hey, sweetheart," he says to his Jeep, sweeping the stray leaves from her hood
and climbing in. The night breeze rustles the trees overhead and sends a few
more leaves drifting downward, but the wiper will take care of those. He turns
the key and the engine rumbles to life, growling like it's a werewolf, as well.
A werecar. A werejeep. "Attagirl. How you doin'? You getting lonely, out here?
I promise I wasn't cheating on you."
The engine chuffs.
"Not with a car!" Stiles exclaims, defensively. "I swear, mine hands have never
touched another automobile. You're the only car for me, Delilah." And maybe
he's lame for naming his car, but who cares? No one knows about it, except for
Dad, who overheard Stiles whispering sweet nothings to her, once. They both act
like it never happened; Dad treats the incident with the same sort of
circumspection as he'd treat it if he'd caught Stiles making out with a girl.
Which, huh. Is the truth. Sort of. "Although, if you ever want a threeway with
Derek, just lemme know. Polyamory is in, these days. And I know Derek likes
you."
The wipers glide across the windshield, almost as if Delilah's preening, and
Stiles grins.
"That's the spirit. I won't even let Derek rip your upholstery, I swear. If he
does, I'll rip him a new one. You know I love you best."
He does. Especially since Derek's taken up the cock-blocking hobby at the exact
same time Stiles has dropped it. Bastard. Maybe Stiles will take up knitting
next, or something. By deductive reasoning, it'll force Derek to take up
knitting, too. Bastard. May the Curse of Yarn be forever upon him.
Now, though, all Stiles has to worry about is: a) cleaning the house and
simultaneously messing it up in a way that resembles an actual dwelling, with
an actual person, like, dwelling in it; b) clearing out the trash cans so that
the place looks a little less like some sort of bizarre biotech experiment or a
plague outbreak waiting to happen; c) rearranging his wardrobe to hide the fact
that key T-shirts are missing (including the one with Spiderman on the front,
arguably his favorite); d) smirk and grill his dad about his not-boyfriend from
Fresno; e) figuring out a way to compulsively check his phone for news of Jar
without looking like he's a hitman waiting for a go-ahead; f) gradually
revealing to his father that he's married to a supernatural creature, sexually
active with said supernatural creature and also raising said supernatural
creature's adoptive baby; and g) preventing his dad from loading his shotgun
and going after Derek.
No pressure.
End Notes
     The title is from the following quote:
     "All the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to
     assume in practically every human being, and certainly in almost
     every newborn baby, that there is an active will..." - Abraham
     Maslow.
     The amazing swing_set13 has written a_sequel about a grown-up Jar
     that is amazing and perfect and all sorts of beautiful! Please read
     it!
     Like my writing? Check out my_blog!
  Works inspired by this one
      Reasonable_to_Assume by elenorasweet
Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed
their work!