Teen Wolf- "Magically Delicious"
Title: Magically Delicious
Universe: Teen Wolf
Theme/Topic: Stiles and Derek's first Christmas together, in which Derek does not even realize that it is Christmas.
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: DerekxStiles with some Scott being a genius potato.
Spoilers/Warnings: Through S2
Word Count: 5,575
Summary: Companion Piece to “Kid Tested, Father Approved”- The one where Scott is Stiles’s lucky charm.
Dedication: for juin’s holiday fic request! Happy Christmas, bb, and thanks for the card and the candy! <3 I only got two requests this year so I procrastinated like crazy writing them. LOL MAYBE I AM STILL ON TIME? IDEK.
A/N: I am not actually sure if this fits the prompt except by definition, but whatever, this is how I roll. LOL. Also, Does this make it a cereal series? In either case, I thought I’d challenge myself and work outside the Sheriff’s perspective for a bit. Scott is surprisingly difficult? Worth a shot. SORRY ALL.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement intended.
Scott knows Stiles wasn’t expecting Derek to make a big deal over their first Christmas or anything, but he’s pretty sure Stiles did kind of hope that Derek would at least be conscious for it. Some of it.
“And this was a present?” Scott repeats, looking down at Derek, who is laid out on the Stilinskis’ living room couch, unconscious to the world. If Scott couldn’t already hear his heartbeat - slow, but steady - he might think Derek is dead.
“Obviously not, dude! I think that was maybe sarcasm. Sneaky witch sarcasm,” Stiles responds while flailing rapidly at him in a generally distressed manner. Scott is thankful for werewolf reflexes not for the first time, because for years and years before, he’d been smacked by those very same flaily hands way more often than he likes to remember. This time he dodges because he can.
Scott frowns some more at Derek. “Did Derek piss off a witch?”
Stiles rolls his eyes at him and gestures at Derek, who is still unconscious and still in uniform, which means if they’d been in public while he’d been dressed for work he couldn’t have been that offensive. Beacon Hills is a small town. As far as Scott knows, no one has said anything to anyone else within his really wide hearing range about upstanding Deputy Hale doing something untoward to any townsfolk - witchy or otherwise - today.
Stiles doesn’t know that though. Scott should probably say something. It’s just it’s sometimes hard to get a word in edgewise with Stiles, and Scott has gotten kind of conditioned into standing by and waiting out the worst of his friend’s verbal freakout barrages at this point in their relationship. “Obviously, dude,” Stiles drawls, and blinks rapidly a few times, “she must have cursed him or something.”
Then Stiles groans to himself and runs his hands through his hair, which has grown out slightly over the last few months for reasons Scott probably doesn’t want to know too much about, because it seems like everything Stiles does these days is tied up with Derek somehow, and that is just a whole lot of TMI about his best friend’s life and why Derek would want Stiles to have longer hair in the first place. Scott is pretty sure he gets enough TMI in his life as is and shouldn’t go around imagining it himself, especially with how Stiles goes on and on about Derek like, 90% of the time now.
Scott sure hopes the way Stiles talks about Derek isn’t like how he is when he talks about Allison, because that would mean a whole bunch of people must want to brain him on a sidewalk or something. Except who wouldn’t want to hear about Allison? She’s pretty and smart and smells nice. Derek is Derek. He’s kind of mean and he smells like wet dog and soggy leaves most of the time.
Stiles makes a few more vague, unhelpful gestures with his hands as Scott thinks these things, one wave towards unconscious Derek, and one towards the outside world at large. “I don’t even know why she would curse him. I mean, it was Edith, you know Edith.”
Scott furrows his brows and thinks he doesn’t know Edith, because he doesn’t actually know everyone Stiles knows despite Beacon Hills being a small town and the two of them being joined at the hip sometimes. “Uh…”
“The apple lady,” Stiles repeats, with a roll of his eyes. “The one that drives up from Fresno every two weeks for the Artisan Market.”
Scott blinks. “We have an Artisan Market?”
“Oh my god, it’s like we don’t even live on the same planet,” Stiles groans.
Scott thinks about that. “Oh you mean the farmer’s market?”
“Not the same thing at all,” Stiles corrects him, though he seems to be losing some of his nervous energy now. Now he just looks tired, and smells kind of worried.
Scott knows Stiles goes to the market every weekend to buy organic stuff for his dad and his dad’s heart and increasingly, the picky werewolf he is dating. Scott is pretty sure it’s just a Derek thing, the picky eating, because all the other werewolves he knows are perfectly fine with eating whatever gets put in front of their faces, pesticides, preservatives, chemicals and all. What’s the point of werewolf healing if you can’t eat all the horrible things you want?
Meanwhile, Stiles starts to go into a litany regarding how many years he’s known Edith and how he likes her caramel apples during the holidays and dried apples in the spring and etc. etc. etc., until Scott’s head starts to hurt. So he eventually interrupts and asks, “What happened?”
Stiles takes a deep breath, like he knows he has to focus, even though his fingers are twitchy and he keeps shifting his weight from foot to foot. Scott wonders if he remembered to take his medication today. “Okay, so we were shopping yesterday afternoon, right? And I was using Captain Muscles here to help haul stuff, because I need so much more produce now that he’s basically here all the time freeloading...” Stiles makes a rolling motion with one arm while starting to pace a little, though the living room is kind of small, so it’s more like turning in a little circle every few seconds. “Anyway, I took him to Edith’s booth and we caught up and she asked me what the number one thing on my Christmas list is this year like she does every year and I usually say a triple-chocolate caramel apple right? So I said that. But then she laughed and said I was lying, which is not part of the script that we have carefully honed since I was ten.”
Scott thinks it’s probably because Stiles was too busy staring at Derek in uniform - which is weird considering Stiles’s dad is always in the same uniform, but whatever - to be sincere in his flattery of the apple lady’s tasty-sounding wares. “So she realized you didn’t want a triple-chocolate caramel apple more than you want Derek for Christmas?” Scott asks with a wince because gross.
Stiles flushes slightly. “Apparently I’m an easy read?”
Scott snorts. “Uh, yeah.” Though he supposes he can’t say anything about that and not be a kettle. Or a pot. Or whatever.
“Shut up. Anyway, Derek was completely civil to her. He might have even been friendly. You know, for Derek. So I have no idea how he offended her. Or that she was apparently a witch, holy god.”
Scott thinks Derek’s attempts at being friendly are kind of awkward and horrible at best. It’s not a far stretch of his imagination to think that Derek might have offended her with it somehow.
Scott doesn’t say so though, because it probably won’t help at this point, and it’s not like Stiles doesn’t know his new boyfriend is offensive most of the time already. “Then what?” he asks instead, and sometimes people think he’s dumb because he repeats himself a lot like that, and asks questions that are already kind of implicit to the situation, except that they have to understand Stiles is his best friend and Stiles is notoriously easy to derail, so being repetitive and transparent is usually a more helpful thing than not in Scott’s life.
“Then she gave us a free triple-chocolate caramel apple anyway, like she does every year, and told Derek he was adorable with his grumpy face and his funny eyebrows. He probably didn’t like that, but hey, he just took the apple and said thank you, so I feel like he’s really coming along in the plays-well-with-others category.” Pause. Frown. “Except now he’s in a coma.”
“Except now he’s in a coma,” Scott agrees, glancing at Derek again, who, under other circumstances, would look hilarious sacked out on the Sheriff’s couch with a trace of caramel dotting the corner of his lip.
“Oh god, maybe I offended her, with my insincere desire for her stupid apple,” Stiles frets. “But it’s not like I didn’t want a caramel apple. There are just…things, other things, that are a little higher on the priority list.”
Scott tries not to think about those things. “When did he get…comatose?” Scott pushes instead.
Stiles sighs. “Like, two and a half hours ago? We came back from dinner, I was picking a movie, and he was in the kitchen making popcorn. The last thing he asked me was if I finished my homework for break yet.”
“That is so weird,” Scott interrupts, because he can’t help it.
Stiles doesn’t miss a beat. “I know, right? It’s winter vacation, who talks about homework on Christmas Eve?”
Scott doesn’t say he means it’s weird that Stiles has an older boyfriend who is an adult and who worries about the state of his homework. In the background, Stiles rambles on.
“…but I kind of think my dad has brainwashed him or something, because he’s startlingly obsessed with making sure he doesn’t piss Dad off, you know, despite everything.” Stiles scowls. “I tell myself that’s why we probably why we haven’t gotten past second base yet.”
Which makes sense, because Scott doesn’t know anyone who has actually run home that still uses the whole baseball analogy thing when they’re talking about sex afterwards. He’s still kind of surprised that Derek and Stiles have managed to hold back this long though. “Wait, haven’t you been dating since October?”
Stiles makes another really obvious gesture at him that translates to something along the lines of ‘I know right?’ except it probably involves a lot more words in Stiles’s head.
“Weird,” Scott grunts in brotherly solidarity, even though he doesn’t really want to think about Derek or Stiles rounding any bases anymore.
“I know right, he practically gave us his blessing to date, which I’m pretty sure makes it legal, because I read an article about how some fifteen-year-old in Los Angeles married a guy who was like, sixty, and it was okay because her parents said so.”
“Gross,” Scott says.
Stiles frowns. “Not the point.”
“Right,” Scott agrees. They’re probably getting way off track at this point. He furrows his brow and tries to figure out how to make Derek un-comatose so that he can bone his best friend or whatever. Still gross. “So… you were talking about homework. And then…”
“I told him I was halfway done with the Gatsby reading and then something crashed in the kitchen.”
Scott suddenly remembers that he’s supposed to be reading The Great Gatsby for English over break too. They’ll have a test, and with his luck, it’ll be the first day back after vacation. Shit.
“I went to the kitchen to see what happened and he was just… unconscious.” Stiles starts to sound panicky again, his heart rate ratcheting up in his chest and his breathing getting shallow. His eyes dart towards Derek and the twitchiness in his fingers moves throughout his whole body almost. Scott grabs both of Stiles’s shoulders and shakes him a little.
“Calm down,” he says, doing his best impression of Derek’s alpha voice.
It does the trick. Kind of.
Stiles scoffs at him and swats his hands from his shoulders. “That doesn't work when you do it,” he huffs, though his breathing is starting to sound a little better already. “Barely works when he does it.”
Scott offers a crooked smile. “Worth a shot,” he answers and shrugs. “Okay, so there was a crash. How do you know it was the apple that put him to sleep?”
Both boys turn to the offending apple, which is sitting on the coffee table, all gooey and caramel-nut covered with drizzled patterns of milk, dark, and white chocolate over the top. It looks pretty awesome, actually. Except for the inside, which has gone a little brown after being left in the open air for the last few hours.
Stiles looks frustrated, but he clearly sees the value in going over the details no matter how insignificant they might be. “Well, a slice was missing and he knocked the popcorn bowl off of the counter, so it’s an assumption. Or, a hypothesis, I guess.”
Scott nods. It seems fair. “Maybe Edith likes you?” Scott poses.
Stiles flails again. Scott absently dodges the flying limbs. “Dude, I know she likes me, if she didn’t like me she wouldn’t give me a free caramel apple every time I show up at her booth, even though I might not ever do that again because of my comatose werewolf boyfriend.”
Scott wrinkles his nose a little. “No, I mean, like likes you,” he clarifies reluctantly.
Stiles abruptly stops flailing again. “What? Dude no, she’s fifty.”
“Uh, you did tell me there was a fifteen-year-old who married some sixty-year-old dude in LA,” Scott points out reasonably. “So it happens.”
“Yeah, in LA,” Stiles counters, just as reasonably.
Scott sighs. “Yeah okay. Well, maybe she likes you as you know, a grandson or something. You think maybe she was trying to protect you from the big scary werewolf?” It wouldn’t be the first time someone tried to protect Stiles from his friends. The hunters are really good at thinking they know what’s best for everyone.
Well, the hunters except for Allison. Allison is awesome, and Scott wishes she was here, because this place smells way too much like Derek and Allison would know what to do.
Stiles snaps his fingers in front of Scott’s face. “Buddy, stay with me.”
Scott shakes himself out of it. “Right. Okay.” The two of them, he realizes, kind of suck at focus sometimes.
Stiles has an excuse at least.
Scott puts his hands on his head and smacks himself a few times to get himself jump started again. “So. Maybe we should find Edith?”
“Uh, left for Fresno yesterday evening, dude.”
“How far is Fresno?” Scott asks.
Stiles looks at him incredulously. “Four hours south.”
Scott turns thoughtful. He and Isaac could probably make that trip tonight, if they had to. It’s kind of problematic because it’s Christmas Eve, but Scott is sure his mom left for the late shift at the ER at ten tonight, so she won’t be back until late tomorrow morning at the soonest.
Stiles, reading his mind, shakes his head. “Nope. Nope. Your mom never gets Christmas off, you are not running to Fresno to fight a witch so you can miss it.”
“I was thinking I’d drive, maybe?”
Stiles shakes his head emphatically. “Even worse, dude.”
Scott concedes that fact, mostly because he’s not allowed to drive his mother’s car pretty much for forever after the incident with the Santa Cruz witches. Plus he’s not exactly insured to drive Stiles’s jeep, which kind of presents a problem, but the Sheriff had said that they’d get that changed at the beginning of the year. Which is still basically a week away.
Scott sometimes thinks Derek has the worst timing in the world. He supposes they could wait for the Sheriff to get back and see if he’s got a plan, because the Sheriff is probably the most responsible adult Scott knows (no offense meant to his mother), except that the Sheriff doesn’t get off shift until something like three in the morning and by then Derek might be dead or permanently asleep forever.
Stiles scrubs absently at his face and glances furtively back at Derek. Scott crouches by the alpha’s side and stares at him intently.
“So Edith, who you like and who likes you,” he sums up, because he has to, to streamline his thoughts after all the tangents he and Stiles went off on, “gave Derek an apple that made him go to sleep. Even though he didn’t do anything to make her mad.”
Stiles nods.
“She might be a witch,” Scott adds, because as far as he knows, Stiles hadn’t known that earlier, even though Stiles is kind of a witch, or man-witch, or something, himself.
“If by ‘might be’ you mean ‘definitely no question,’ then yes,” Stiles corrects, and crouches down next to Scott while the two of them stare at Derek in a completely not creepy way (maybe it’s a little bit creepy).
Scott huffs, because his head is starting to ache more, and Derek still smells like Derek and not at all like Allison. “And you don’t think she was in love with you, or that she hated Derek,” Scott adds. “She usually gives you one of these apples for Christmas.”
“I usually want one of these for Christmas, to be fair,” Stiles adds. “And none of them have ever put me into anything but a sugar coma.”
Scott considers the whole turn of events very carefully.
“Maybe it’s some sort of life sucking spell,” Stiles theorizes, voice going a little bit higher in panic. “I’ve read about those with Deaton. I mean, Edith looks great for fifty. Maybe she eats the life forces of strapping young deputies all the time.”
Scott is kind of skeptical about that. Mostly because if it was the case, there would probably be a lot more people in the hospital who mysteriously went into comas after eating caramel apples. Scott is beginning to think Stiles isn’t exactly rational when it comes to Derek. Scott really hopes he’s not this weird about Allison. He likes to think he isn’t, but his grades tell him otherwise.
“Or, or, or… she has some sort of grudge against carnivores?” Stiles suggests next. “I mean, she’s pretty strictly vegan. So, a wolfman who eats small woodland creatures would probably piss her off, right?”
“You eat meat,” Scott reminds him. “And we don’t eat woodland creatures.”
Stiles deflates. “Right. Plus she owns a dog. She’s totally a dog person.”
Scott makes a face, because he still hates the whole dog comparison, mostly because he’s never tried to sniff anyone else’s butt before. He crosses his arms and tries to think.
There’s something niggling at the back of his mind, a little bit, about how everything that’s happened to Derek and Stiles is kind of…familiar. Like he’s heard it all somewhere before. But he’s pretty sure no one else has been in a coma recently, and Lydia’s coma had been so long ago it doesn’t really count anymore, especially when they know it was caused by a werewolf and not a vegan witch from Fresno. He sighs, because usually Stiles is the one who figures these things out for them, except now Stiles is too busy freaking out about comatose Derek, which really just leaves Scott to do the heavy lifting, because everyone is with their families except for Isaac, who is taking his shift making sure nothing eats the Sheriff (the Sheriff isn’t supposed to know about the fact that he’s a shift, but Scott is pretty sure the Sheriff knows by now because he has a way of figuring things out, like, all the time). They could call Deaton, but Deaton is visiting family God-knows-where and probably won’t even answer his phone. Scott shakes his head and tries to think some more, because he’s clearly on his own on this one.
“What?” Stiles asks, when he sees Scott’s thinking face. “Do you need the bathroom?” Scott’s mom tells him his thinking face is a lot like his need-to-poop face.
Scott scowls. “No. I was just… I mean… this sounds familiar. Like, the apple, and falling asleep, and not waking up and witches…” he trails off abruptly when he gets it. His eyes light up with realization at the exact same time Stiles’s do.
“Snow White?!” they both shout, somewhat disbelievingly.
Scott feels himself grinning, because clearly he is a genius. “So then you just need to kiss him?”
Stiles flails again. Scott dodges, but bumps into the corner of the coffee table as a result. “That seems kind of overly simplistic, don’t you think?” Stiles blurts, like he’s trying to talk himself out of his own deduction.
Scott rubs at his elbow. “Yeah, but it probably won’t hurt if you kiss him,” Scott says, and takes a moment to marvel at that, because never in his life would he have thought that telling someone to kiss Derek Hale wouldn’t hurt them.
Stiles looks like he thinks it’ll hurt though, and shouldn’t he be over that by now? They make out like all the time. Scott knows because he can smell the aftermath pretty much every time he sees Stiles or Derek. His life is awful. “Just kiss him and see,” he insists. It makes sense as a plan of attack at this point. It’s not like they had one before.
Stiles kind of flinches backwards, eyes sliding from Derek to his own hands, to the ground. “What if it doesn’t work?”
Scott’s head hurts again. Along with his elbow now, because the coffee table sucks. “Uh, I’m pretty sure that’s how it worked in Snow White,” he points out, somewhat impatiently.
“I’m not a prince,” Stiles reminds him.
Scott thinks about that. It is a point. Maybe he’s getting his fairytales mixed up. His mom watches that one show on Sunday nights about fairytales and they keep changing things, and Disney probably changed some things from the originals too, so Scott isn’t really sure what got lost in translation. What if there’s no actual kissing at all? What if it hadn’t even been from an apple in the first place?
He’s really not good at this, he decides, and turns helpless eyes on Stiles. “Is being a prince one of the rules? I thought you just had to be his one true love or something.”
Stiles flushes and slumps a little, but doesn’t say that the one true love rule is wrong, which is kind of a relief. “Yeah,” Stiles hedges, cheeks flushed but in a totally embarrassed way now, “well, I don’t actually know if I’m that either?”
Oh. Well. That’s… huh.
Awkward.
Scott reaches out tentatively and pats Stiles’s shoulder in a completely stupid way, mostly because this probably isn’t the time or place to have a relationship freak out (Scott, through much trial and error, has kind of started to learn how timing and priorities work in life-or-death situations, even if he’s not always the first to put the theories into practice). “Uh,” he chokes out, “so does this mean you don’t like him anymore?”
Stiles looks at him like he’s insane. “Are you kidding me?”
Now Scott is really confused.
Stiles turns redder, somehow. “What I mean is, I’m not sure if he likes me that much,” he mutters, and if Scott didn’t have werewolf hearing, he would’ve totally missed that.
On the plus side, Scott learns tonight that werewolves can still get migraines. That’s probably something useful to know, in an abstract way. “Seriously, Stiles?” he demands, and can’t help it when he ends up shouting a little, because he has no idea where any of this is coming from or how Stiles could even think that. Derek actually likes listening to Stiles ramble. For a long time, it was hard for Scott to imagine Derek actively liking anything because most of the time he’s known Derek it really just felt like he was barely tolerating life in general. The fact that his heartbeat jumps in excitement whenever Stiles is within a two mile radius is pretty much telling enough, but the fact that Scott has also been witness to Derek’s deep, creepy inhales of Stiles-smell whenever Stiles is in smelling distance pretty much cements it. He even does it after Stiles is fresh off of lacrosse practice, which is nasty, because nothing anywhere smells good after lacrosse practice. Scott is pretty sure Derek and Stiles are creepy gross Twilight style soulmates at this point, because he loves Stiles, he does, but he does not breathe through his nose after they leave the field together, because then he would choke and die on the stench of sweaty pads and teenage boy. He’s surprised Stiles doesn’t seem to have that same problem, because…
Oh. Oh right.
Because he doesn’t. Because Stiles just smells regular stuff and can’t hear heartbeats or smell Derek smelling him, which leaves Stiles with nothing but words to communicate with. And Derek is about as communicative with words as Scott’s great-aunt Agatha, who is dead.
Maybe Scott should tell Stiles about all that stuff. Scott doesn’t want to, but there is a comatose alpha on the Stilinskis’ couch and Stiles is pretty much not down for being the brains of their operation tonight. Which leaves Scott.
Scott takes a deep breath. “Uh,” he begins, then just as abruptly trails off. This is swiftly heading into territory he is not qualified to traverse.
Stiles doesn’t notice. “I mean, three months, man! I date him for three months and we barely get past making out. He always stops first, and says you know, my dad, which, on the one hand, buyable excuse? But on the other, maybe I’m bad at kissing, because he’s still apparently thinking about my dad. It’s enough to give a guy a complex.”
Stiles sounds kind of devastated, so unfamiliar territory or not, Scott has to do something about it, since it’s terrible.
“He smells you!” he finally blurts, in a manner that is not unlike Stiles sans medication.
It does the trick though, because Stiles trails off. “Huh?”
Scott flushes. “Uh, he smells you. Like, all the time. Even when you stink.”
Stiles looks wounded.
“You know, like after lacrosse, or when we get nachos stink,” Scott amends quickly. “Even then, he still looks like he wants to, I don’t know, roll around in your smell all the time. Even when you’re miles away, he can pick you out and he takes these deep, creepy breaths and his pupils dilate and it’s gross and weird and makes the rest of us really uncomfortable.”
Stiles stares at him.
Scott is deeply disturbed by having to voice these realities out loud. “I see him do it all the time. Lately he starts to look kind of secretly happy too. You know, as much as Derek can look happy. We weren’t supposed to tell you.” Pause. “Please don’t tell him I told you.”
For a moment, there is stunned silence in the living room.
“What, seriously?” Stiles manages, eventually.
Scott just nods and wishes he was anywhere but here. He could still run to Fresno. He’s more than willing at this point.
But then Stiles lights up. “That’s totally like, a wolfy adoration thing, isn’t it?”
Scott isn’t sure if he’s supposed to respond to that, so he doesn’t.
“I know,” Stiles continues, because sometimes he doesn’t actually need responses, which is probably why he and Derek work out so well, actually. “I know because you totally do that with Allison! Derek is in Scott-love with me.”
Stiles is lucky Scott knows him so well, or he might be offended by that. As it is, he just sighs and says, “Stiles, Derek’s still in a coma.”
Stiles blinks. “Right. Okay.” He turns back to the couch, where Derek is, indeed, still asleep. Stiles lingers over him a little bit, heart rate pounding hard and fast in his chest. Scott holds his breath as he watches, then wonders if he should look away, and then wonders if this makes him one of those squirrels or chipmunks in Snow White, mostly because he really doesn’t want to be one of the seven dwarves. Everyone would probably call him Dopey, and then there would be fighting.
In the background, the living room clock chimes to midnight, and Scott can’t believe he’s been here for over an hour freaking out with Stiles over Derek.
Meanwhile, Stiles continues hesitating, just kind of hovering above Derek like he’s not sure how he wants to do this. “Stiles!” Scott barks, because this is not how he wanted to spend the first moments of Christmas. (He was going to spend it lurking outside of Allison’s window, except that Mr. Argent totally whisked her away to Europe for break, probably to train her in more ways to kill things awesomely).
“Sorry, sorry. I was just thinking. How long are these supposed to go on for? Pressure? Quality? It’s like wedding kisses. Are you supposed to keep it short and sweet or do you just kind of mash together and stay still until the applause stops? Do I use tongue?” Stiles babbles, before wiping his palms nervously on his jeans like he’s never kissed Derek before or something.
Scott sighs. “Probably… just do it until he wakes up?” he suggests, in what he thinks is a very reasonable manner. Looks like Stiles isn’t the only smart one in the group, despite what Scott’s GPA has to say about it.
“Right Good plan,” Stiles answers, before screwing his eyes shut, putting a hand on Derek’s cheek, and pressing his lips to Derek’s.
Scott quickly turns away when that happens, because eugh, but before he knows it, he’s spinning right back to towards them, once he hears the sounds of Derek’s heart jump starting up to normal speeds and Derek’s lungs expanding with a deep breath of air. Derek’s eyes open suddenly too, wide and kind of comically surprised.
Scott stares. Apparently his plans are unexpectedly awesome lately.
In the meantime, Derek blinks a few times in bewilderment, one arm reaching out to automatically wrap around Stiles’s shoulders while Stiles slumps in relief over him. Their heartbeats thump erratically against one another.
“Nggh,” Derek grunts after a beat, intelligently.
Stiles snorts in amusement heavily tinged with relief. “Go true love’s kiss,” he celebrates lamely to himself, pumping a single fist in the air and sounding more exhausted than jubilant.
Derek just stares up at Scott, who is still staring at them.
And then Derek glares. Scott doesn’t care how many of the alpha’s expressions Stiles has supposedly cataloged and tried to teach them, as far as Scott is concerned, Derek only has two. Glare and Glare More. “You weren’t supposed to tell him about the smelling thing,” Derek says accusatorily, because of course those are the first words out of his mouth after nearly dying from a sleep coma on Christmas.
Scott sputters “You heard that?”
“I heard all of it,” Derek says, glancing pointedly at Stiles.
“Shit,” Stiles mutters, face still nose-down somewhere against Derek’s chest. His fist is still kind of hanging half-heartedly in the air above his head too.
Derek huffs when he hears that, turning back to Stiles for a moment, his face going all soft and gooey and weird in a way that makes Scott want to be anywhere but here.
“You’re an idiot,” Derek murmurs quietly, and then raps his knuckles gently over the top of Stiles’s head once. Stiles groans against his sternum.
“Also embarrassed, so let’s never speak of this ever again?” Stiles offers, hopefully.
“We’re talking about it,” Derek answers, and wow, Scott never thought he’d hear the day when Derek Hale actually wanted to talk about something.
Scott tries to sidle quietly towards the door while they’re distracted like that because as miraculous as Derek and conversation is, he doesn’t really want to be here for it all the same.
But then Derek pins him with his eyes again, in this familiar, kind of blood-curdling alpha way that is completely unfair. Scott wonders if this means he’s going to get thrown against a tree later or something, which also isn’t fair, because it’s Christmas. He doesn’t think he ever deserves to get thrown into trees, but especially not on Christmas.
But then Derek surprises him when all he does is say a curt, but clearly audible-to-human-ears, “Thanks, Scott.”
Scott is not ashamed to admit he goes kind of bug-eyed. “Uh…you’re welcome?” he manages, after an awkward minute where Derek starts to glare again, because for some reason, he seems to think people shouldn’t be surprised when he’s civil. Except they are pretty much all the time, which really should tell Derek something.
“Yes, totally, thank you,” Stiles adds quickly, and sits up to look at Scott. “I never would have imagined that Derek is actually a Disney Princess in disguise. Best Christmas present ever, dude.”
Derek growls, but not at Scott and not in a way that’s actually supposed to be menacing. In fact, it might even be grosser than that weird gooey face he just made at Stiles, which Scott hadn’t thought was possible.
He’s learning a lot of things tonight. Against his will.
Scott takes it as his like, millionth cue to leave this place and uses every possible werewolf agility plus-one on his ability sheet to head out the door while trying not to listen to the murmured conversation currently beginning on Stiles’s couch.
Scott winces when he realizes he’ll probably never be able to play video games on that couch ever again after tonight.
It isn’t until he hits the tree line when his phone buzzes in his pocket with a new text. When he takes it out, he sees it’s from Stiles. It reads:
“Yeah okay, definitely a present after all. Edith has a customer for life. Merry Christmas, dude!”
Scott makes a face and puts his phone away so that he can lope into the winter darkness properly and try not to think about whatever shenanigans are happening on his once favorite Halo 2 couch.
He wonders what Allison is doing right now.
END
I am so food coma'd right now I'm pretty sure I make zero sense.
Back to Kid Tested, Father Approved
Universe: Teen Wolf
Theme/Topic: Stiles and Derek's first Christmas together, in which Derek does not even realize that it is Christmas.
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: DerekxStiles with some Scott being a genius potato.
Spoilers/Warnings: Through S2
Word Count: 5,575
Summary: Companion Piece to “Kid Tested, Father Approved”- The one where Scott is Stiles’s lucky charm.
Dedication: for juin’s holiday fic request! Happy Christmas, bb, and thanks for the card and the candy! <3 I only got two requests this year so I procrastinated like crazy writing them. LOL MAYBE I AM STILL ON TIME? IDEK.
A/N: I am not actually sure if this fits the prompt except by definition, but whatever, this is how I roll. LOL. Also, Does this make it a cereal series? In either case, I thought I’d challenge myself and work outside the Sheriff’s perspective for a bit. Scott is surprisingly difficult? Worth a shot. SORRY ALL.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement intended.
Scott knows Stiles wasn’t expecting Derek to make a big deal over their first Christmas or anything, but he’s pretty sure Stiles did kind of hope that Derek would at least be conscious for it. Some of it.
“And this was a present?” Scott repeats, looking down at Derek, who is laid out on the Stilinskis’ living room couch, unconscious to the world. If Scott couldn’t already hear his heartbeat - slow, but steady - he might think Derek is dead.
“Obviously not, dude! I think that was maybe sarcasm. Sneaky witch sarcasm,” Stiles responds while flailing rapidly at him in a generally distressed manner. Scott is thankful for werewolf reflexes not for the first time, because for years and years before, he’d been smacked by those very same flaily hands way more often than he likes to remember. This time he dodges because he can.
Scott frowns some more at Derek. “Did Derek piss off a witch?”
Stiles rolls his eyes at him and gestures at Derek, who is still unconscious and still in uniform, which means if they’d been in public while he’d been dressed for work he couldn’t have been that offensive. Beacon Hills is a small town. As far as Scott knows, no one has said anything to anyone else within his really wide hearing range about upstanding Deputy Hale doing something untoward to any townsfolk - witchy or otherwise - today.
Stiles doesn’t know that though. Scott should probably say something. It’s just it’s sometimes hard to get a word in edgewise with Stiles, and Scott has gotten kind of conditioned into standing by and waiting out the worst of his friend’s verbal freakout barrages at this point in their relationship. “Obviously, dude,” Stiles drawls, and blinks rapidly a few times, “she must have cursed him or something.”
Then Stiles groans to himself and runs his hands through his hair, which has grown out slightly over the last few months for reasons Scott probably doesn’t want to know too much about, because it seems like everything Stiles does these days is tied up with Derek somehow, and that is just a whole lot of TMI about his best friend’s life and why Derek would want Stiles to have longer hair in the first place. Scott is pretty sure he gets enough TMI in his life as is and shouldn’t go around imagining it himself, especially with how Stiles goes on and on about Derek like, 90% of the time now.
Scott sure hopes the way Stiles talks about Derek isn’t like how he is when he talks about Allison, because that would mean a whole bunch of people must want to brain him on a sidewalk or something. Except who wouldn’t want to hear about Allison? She’s pretty and smart and smells nice. Derek is Derek. He’s kind of mean and he smells like wet dog and soggy leaves most of the time.
Stiles makes a few more vague, unhelpful gestures with his hands as Scott thinks these things, one wave towards unconscious Derek, and one towards the outside world at large. “I don’t even know why she would curse him. I mean, it was Edith, you know Edith.”
Scott furrows his brows and thinks he doesn’t know Edith, because he doesn’t actually know everyone Stiles knows despite Beacon Hills being a small town and the two of them being joined at the hip sometimes. “Uh…”
“The apple lady,” Stiles repeats, with a roll of his eyes. “The one that drives up from Fresno every two weeks for the Artisan Market.”
Scott blinks. “We have an Artisan Market?”
“Oh my god, it’s like we don’t even live on the same planet,” Stiles groans.
Scott thinks about that. “Oh you mean the farmer’s market?”
“Not the same thing at all,” Stiles corrects him, though he seems to be losing some of his nervous energy now. Now he just looks tired, and smells kind of worried.
Scott knows Stiles goes to the market every weekend to buy organic stuff for his dad and his dad’s heart and increasingly, the picky werewolf he is dating. Scott is pretty sure it’s just a Derek thing, the picky eating, because all the other werewolves he knows are perfectly fine with eating whatever gets put in front of their faces, pesticides, preservatives, chemicals and all. What’s the point of werewolf healing if you can’t eat all the horrible things you want?
Meanwhile, Stiles starts to go into a litany regarding how many years he’s known Edith and how he likes her caramel apples during the holidays and dried apples in the spring and etc. etc. etc., until Scott’s head starts to hurt. So he eventually interrupts and asks, “What happened?”
Stiles takes a deep breath, like he knows he has to focus, even though his fingers are twitchy and he keeps shifting his weight from foot to foot. Scott wonders if he remembered to take his medication today. “Okay, so we were shopping yesterday afternoon, right? And I was using Captain Muscles here to help haul stuff, because I need so much more produce now that he’s basically here all the time freeloading...” Stiles makes a rolling motion with one arm while starting to pace a little, though the living room is kind of small, so it’s more like turning in a little circle every few seconds. “Anyway, I took him to Edith’s booth and we caught up and she asked me what the number one thing on my Christmas list is this year like she does every year and I usually say a triple-chocolate caramel apple right? So I said that. But then she laughed and said I was lying, which is not part of the script that we have carefully honed since I was ten.”
Scott thinks it’s probably because Stiles was too busy staring at Derek in uniform - which is weird considering Stiles’s dad is always in the same uniform, but whatever - to be sincere in his flattery of the apple lady’s tasty-sounding wares. “So she realized you didn’t want a triple-chocolate caramel apple more than you want Derek for Christmas?” Scott asks with a wince because gross.
Stiles flushes slightly. “Apparently I’m an easy read?”
Scott snorts. “Uh, yeah.” Though he supposes he can’t say anything about that and not be a kettle. Or a pot. Or whatever.
“Shut up. Anyway, Derek was completely civil to her. He might have even been friendly. You know, for Derek. So I have no idea how he offended her. Or that she was apparently a witch, holy god.”
Scott thinks Derek’s attempts at being friendly are kind of awkward and horrible at best. It’s not a far stretch of his imagination to think that Derek might have offended her with it somehow.
Scott doesn’t say so though, because it probably won’t help at this point, and it’s not like Stiles doesn’t know his new boyfriend is offensive most of the time already. “Then what?” he asks instead, and sometimes people think he’s dumb because he repeats himself a lot like that, and asks questions that are already kind of implicit to the situation, except that they have to understand Stiles is his best friend and Stiles is notoriously easy to derail, so being repetitive and transparent is usually a more helpful thing than not in Scott’s life.
“Then she gave us a free triple-chocolate caramel apple anyway, like she does every year, and told Derek he was adorable with his grumpy face and his funny eyebrows. He probably didn’t like that, but hey, he just took the apple and said thank you, so I feel like he’s really coming along in the plays-well-with-others category.” Pause. Frown. “Except now he’s in a coma.”
“Except now he’s in a coma,” Scott agrees, glancing at Derek again, who, under other circumstances, would look hilarious sacked out on the Sheriff’s couch with a trace of caramel dotting the corner of his lip.
“Oh god, maybe I offended her, with my insincere desire for her stupid apple,” Stiles frets. “But it’s not like I didn’t want a caramel apple. There are just…things, other things, that are a little higher on the priority list.”
Scott tries not to think about those things. “When did he get…comatose?” Scott pushes instead.
Stiles sighs. “Like, two and a half hours ago? We came back from dinner, I was picking a movie, and he was in the kitchen making popcorn. The last thing he asked me was if I finished my homework for break yet.”
“That is so weird,” Scott interrupts, because he can’t help it.
Stiles doesn’t miss a beat. “I know, right? It’s winter vacation, who talks about homework on Christmas Eve?”
Scott doesn’t say he means it’s weird that Stiles has an older boyfriend who is an adult and who worries about the state of his homework. In the background, Stiles rambles on.
“…but I kind of think my dad has brainwashed him or something, because he’s startlingly obsessed with making sure he doesn’t piss Dad off, you know, despite everything.” Stiles scowls. “I tell myself that’s why we probably why we haven’t gotten past second base yet.”
Which makes sense, because Scott doesn’t know anyone who has actually run home that still uses the whole baseball analogy thing when they’re talking about sex afterwards. He’s still kind of surprised that Derek and Stiles have managed to hold back this long though. “Wait, haven’t you been dating since October?”
Stiles makes another really obvious gesture at him that translates to something along the lines of ‘I know right?’ except it probably involves a lot more words in Stiles’s head.
“Weird,” Scott grunts in brotherly solidarity, even though he doesn’t really want to think about Derek or Stiles rounding any bases anymore.
“I know right, he practically gave us his blessing to date, which I’m pretty sure makes it legal, because I read an article about how some fifteen-year-old in Los Angeles married a guy who was like, sixty, and it was okay because her parents said so.”
“Gross,” Scott says.
Stiles frowns. “Not the point.”
“Right,” Scott agrees. They’re probably getting way off track at this point. He furrows his brow and tries to figure out how to make Derek un-comatose so that he can bone his best friend or whatever. Still gross. “So… you were talking about homework. And then…”
“I told him I was halfway done with the Gatsby reading and then something crashed in the kitchen.”
Scott suddenly remembers that he’s supposed to be reading The Great Gatsby for English over break too. They’ll have a test, and with his luck, it’ll be the first day back after vacation. Shit.
“I went to the kitchen to see what happened and he was just… unconscious.” Stiles starts to sound panicky again, his heart rate ratcheting up in his chest and his breathing getting shallow. His eyes dart towards Derek and the twitchiness in his fingers moves throughout his whole body almost. Scott grabs both of Stiles’s shoulders and shakes him a little.
“Calm down,” he says, doing his best impression of Derek’s alpha voice.
It does the trick. Kind of.
Stiles scoffs at him and swats his hands from his shoulders. “That doesn't work when you do it,” he huffs, though his breathing is starting to sound a little better already. “Barely works when he does it.”
Scott offers a crooked smile. “Worth a shot,” he answers and shrugs. “Okay, so there was a crash. How do you know it was the apple that put him to sleep?”
Both boys turn to the offending apple, which is sitting on the coffee table, all gooey and caramel-nut covered with drizzled patterns of milk, dark, and white chocolate over the top. It looks pretty awesome, actually. Except for the inside, which has gone a little brown after being left in the open air for the last few hours.
Stiles looks frustrated, but he clearly sees the value in going over the details no matter how insignificant they might be. “Well, a slice was missing and he knocked the popcorn bowl off of the counter, so it’s an assumption. Or, a hypothesis, I guess.”
Scott nods. It seems fair. “Maybe Edith likes you?” Scott poses.
Stiles flails again. Scott absently dodges the flying limbs. “Dude, I know she likes me, if she didn’t like me she wouldn’t give me a free caramel apple every time I show up at her booth, even though I might not ever do that again because of my comatose werewolf boyfriend.”
Scott wrinkles his nose a little. “No, I mean, like likes you,” he clarifies reluctantly.
Stiles abruptly stops flailing again. “What? Dude no, she’s fifty.”
“Uh, you did tell me there was a fifteen-year-old who married some sixty-year-old dude in LA,” Scott points out reasonably. “So it happens.”
“Yeah, in LA,” Stiles counters, just as reasonably.
Scott sighs. “Yeah okay. Well, maybe she likes you as you know, a grandson or something. You think maybe she was trying to protect you from the big scary werewolf?” It wouldn’t be the first time someone tried to protect Stiles from his friends. The hunters are really good at thinking they know what’s best for everyone.
Well, the hunters except for Allison. Allison is awesome, and Scott wishes she was here, because this place smells way too much like Derek and Allison would know what to do.
Stiles snaps his fingers in front of Scott’s face. “Buddy, stay with me.”
Scott shakes himself out of it. “Right. Okay.” The two of them, he realizes, kind of suck at focus sometimes.
Stiles has an excuse at least.
Scott puts his hands on his head and smacks himself a few times to get himself jump started again. “So. Maybe we should find Edith?”
“Uh, left for Fresno yesterday evening, dude.”
“How far is Fresno?” Scott asks.
Stiles looks at him incredulously. “Four hours south.”
Scott turns thoughtful. He and Isaac could probably make that trip tonight, if they had to. It’s kind of problematic because it’s Christmas Eve, but Scott is sure his mom left for the late shift at the ER at ten tonight, so she won’t be back until late tomorrow morning at the soonest.
Stiles, reading his mind, shakes his head. “Nope. Nope. Your mom never gets Christmas off, you are not running to Fresno to fight a witch so you can miss it.”
“I was thinking I’d drive, maybe?”
Stiles shakes his head emphatically. “Even worse, dude.”
Scott concedes that fact, mostly because he’s not allowed to drive his mother’s car pretty much for forever after the incident with the Santa Cruz witches. Plus he’s not exactly insured to drive Stiles’s jeep, which kind of presents a problem, but the Sheriff had said that they’d get that changed at the beginning of the year. Which is still basically a week away.
Scott sometimes thinks Derek has the worst timing in the world. He supposes they could wait for the Sheriff to get back and see if he’s got a plan, because the Sheriff is probably the most responsible adult Scott knows (no offense meant to his mother), except that the Sheriff doesn’t get off shift until something like three in the morning and by then Derek might be dead or permanently asleep forever.
Stiles scrubs absently at his face and glances furtively back at Derek. Scott crouches by the alpha’s side and stares at him intently.
“So Edith, who you like and who likes you,” he sums up, because he has to, to streamline his thoughts after all the tangents he and Stiles went off on, “gave Derek an apple that made him go to sleep. Even though he didn’t do anything to make her mad.”
Stiles nods.
“She might be a witch,” Scott adds, because as far as he knows, Stiles hadn’t known that earlier, even though Stiles is kind of a witch, or man-witch, or something, himself.
“If by ‘might be’ you mean ‘definitely no question,’ then yes,” Stiles corrects, and crouches down next to Scott while the two of them stare at Derek in a completely not creepy way (maybe it’s a little bit creepy).
Scott huffs, because his head is starting to ache more, and Derek still smells like Derek and not at all like Allison. “And you don’t think she was in love with you, or that she hated Derek,” Scott adds. “She usually gives you one of these apples for Christmas.”
“I usually want one of these for Christmas, to be fair,” Stiles adds. “And none of them have ever put me into anything but a sugar coma.”
Scott considers the whole turn of events very carefully.
“Maybe it’s some sort of life sucking spell,” Stiles theorizes, voice going a little bit higher in panic. “I’ve read about those with Deaton. I mean, Edith looks great for fifty. Maybe she eats the life forces of strapping young deputies all the time.”
Scott is kind of skeptical about that. Mostly because if it was the case, there would probably be a lot more people in the hospital who mysteriously went into comas after eating caramel apples. Scott is beginning to think Stiles isn’t exactly rational when it comes to Derek. Scott really hopes he’s not this weird about Allison. He likes to think he isn’t, but his grades tell him otherwise.
“Or, or, or… she has some sort of grudge against carnivores?” Stiles suggests next. “I mean, she’s pretty strictly vegan. So, a wolfman who eats small woodland creatures would probably piss her off, right?”
“You eat meat,” Scott reminds him. “And we don’t eat woodland creatures.”
Stiles deflates. “Right. Plus she owns a dog. She’s totally a dog person.”
Scott makes a face, because he still hates the whole dog comparison, mostly because he’s never tried to sniff anyone else’s butt before. He crosses his arms and tries to think.
There’s something niggling at the back of his mind, a little bit, about how everything that’s happened to Derek and Stiles is kind of…familiar. Like he’s heard it all somewhere before. But he’s pretty sure no one else has been in a coma recently, and Lydia’s coma had been so long ago it doesn’t really count anymore, especially when they know it was caused by a werewolf and not a vegan witch from Fresno. He sighs, because usually Stiles is the one who figures these things out for them, except now Stiles is too busy freaking out about comatose Derek, which really just leaves Scott to do the heavy lifting, because everyone is with their families except for Isaac, who is taking his shift making sure nothing eats the Sheriff (the Sheriff isn’t supposed to know about the fact that he’s a shift, but Scott is pretty sure the Sheriff knows by now because he has a way of figuring things out, like, all the time). They could call Deaton, but Deaton is visiting family God-knows-where and probably won’t even answer his phone. Scott shakes his head and tries to think some more, because he’s clearly on his own on this one.
“What?” Stiles asks, when he sees Scott’s thinking face. “Do you need the bathroom?” Scott’s mom tells him his thinking face is a lot like his need-to-poop face.
Scott scowls. “No. I was just… I mean… this sounds familiar. Like, the apple, and falling asleep, and not waking up and witches…” he trails off abruptly when he gets it. His eyes light up with realization at the exact same time Stiles’s do.
“Snow White?!” they both shout, somewhat disbelievingly.
Scott feels himself grinning, because clearly he is a genius. “So then you just need to kiss him?”
Stiles flails again. Scott dodges, but bumps into the corner of the coffee table as a result. “That seems kind of overly simplistic, don’t you think?” Stiles blurts, like he’s trying to talk himself out of his own deduction.
Scott rubs at his elbow. “Yeah, but it probably won’t hurt if you kiss him,” Scott says, and takes a moment to marvel at that, because never in his life would he have thought that telling someone to kiss Derek Hale wouldn’t hurt them.
Stiles looks like he thinks it’ll hurt though, and shouldn’t he be over that by now? They make out like all the time. Scott knows because he can smell the aftermath pretty much every time he sees Stiles or Derek. His life is awful. “Just kiss him and see,” he insists. It makes sense as a plan of attack at this point. It’s not like they had one before.
Stiles kind of flinches backwards, eyes sliding from Derek to his own hands, to the ground. “What if it doesn’t work?”
Scott’s head hurts again. Along with his elbow now, because the coffee table sucks. “Uh, I’m pretty sure that’s how it worked in Snow White,” he points out, somewhat impatiently.
“I’m not a prince,” Stiles reminds him.
Scott thinks about that. It is a point. Maybe he’s getting his fairytales mixed up. His mom watches that one show on Sunday nights about fairytales and they keep changing things, and Disney probably changed some things from the originals too, so Scott isn’t really sure what got lost in translation. What if there’s no actual kissing at all? What if it hadn’t even been from an apple in the first place?
He’s really not good at this, he decides, and turns helpless eyes on Stiles. “Is being a prince one of the rules? I thought you just had to be his one true love or something.”
Stiles flushes and slumps a little, but doesn’t say that the one true love rule is wrong, which is kind of a relief. “Yeah,” Stiles hedges, cheeks flushed but in a totally embarrassed way now, “well, I don’t actually know if I’m that either?”
Oh. Well. That’s… huh.
Awkward.
Scott reaches out tentatively and pats Stiles’s shoulder in a completely stupid way, mostly because this probably isn’t the time or place to have a relationship freak out (Scott, through much trial and error, has kind of started to learn how timing and priorities work in life-or-death situations, even if he’s not always the first to put the theories into practice). “Uh,” he chokes out, “so does this mean you don’t like him anymore?”
Stiles looks at him like he’s insane. “Are you kidding me?”
Now Scott is really confused.
Stiles turns redder, somehow. “What I mean is, I’m not sure if he likes me that much,” he mutters, and if Scott didn’t have werewolf hearing, he would’ve totally missed that.
On the plus side, Scott learns tonight that werewolves can still get migraines. That’s probably something useful to know, in an abstract way. “Seriously, Stiles?” he demands, and can’t help it when he ends up shouting a little, because he has no idea where any of this is coming from or how Stiles could even think that. Derek actually likes listening to Stiles ramble. For a long time, it was hard for Scott to imagine Derek actively liking anything because most of the time he’s known Derek it really just felt like he was barely tolerating life in general. The fact that his heartbeat jumps in excitement whenever Stiles is within a two mile radius is pretty much telling enough, but the fact that Scott has also been witness to Derek’s deep, creepy inhales of Stiles-smell whenever Stiles is in smelling distance pretty much cements it. He even does it after Stiles is fresh off of lacrosse practice, which is nasty, because nothing anywhere smells good after lacrosse practice. Scott is pretty sure Derek and Stiles are creepy gross Twilight style soulmates at this point, because he loves Stiles, he does, but he does not breathe through his nose after they leave the field together, because then he would choke and die on the stench of sweaty pads and teenage boy. He’s surprised Stiles doesn’t seem to have that same problem, because…
Oh. Oh right.
Because he doesn’t. Because Stiles just smells regular stuff and can’t hear heartbeats or smell Derek smelling him, which leaves Stiles with nothing but words to communicate with. And Derek is about as communicative with words as Scott’s great-aunt Agatha, who is dead.
Maybe Scott should tell Stiles about all that stuff. Scott doesn’t want to, but there is a comatose alpha on the Stilinskis’ couch and Stiles is pretty much not down for being the brains of their operation tonight. Which leaves Scott.
Scott takes a deep breath. “Uh,” he begins, then just as abruptly trails off. This is swiftly heading into territory he is not qualified to traverse.
Stiles doesn’t notice. “I mean, three months, man! I date him for three months and we barely get past making out. He always stops first, and says you know, my dad, which, on the one hand, buyable excuse? But on the other, maybe I’m bad at kissing, because he’s still apparently thinking about my dad. It’s enough to give a guy a complex.”
Stiles sounds kind of devastated, so unfamiliar territory or not, Scott has to do something about it, since it’s terrible.
“He smells you!” he finally blurts, in a manner that is not unlike Stiles sans medication.
It does the trick though, because Stiles trails off. “Huh?”
Scott flushes. “Uh, he smells you. Like, all the time. Even when you stink.”
Stiles looks wounded.
“You know, like after lacrosse, or when we get nachos stink,” Scott amends quickly. “Even then, he still looks like he wants to, I don’t know, roll around in your smell all the time. Even when you’re miles away, he can pick you out and he takes these deep, creepy breaths and his pupils dilate and it’s gross and weird and makes the rest of us really uncomfortable.”
Stiles stares at him.
Scott is deeply disturbed by having to voice these realities out loud. “I see him do it all the time. Lately he starts to look kind of secretly happy too. You know, as much as Derek can look happy. We weren’t supposed to tell you.” Pause. “Please don’t tell him I told you.”
For a moment, there is stunned silence in the living room.
“What, seriously?” Stiles manages, eventually.
Scott just nods and wishes he was anywhere but here. He could still run to Fresno. He’s more than willing at this point.
But then Stiles lights up. “That’s totally like, a wolfy adoration thing, isn’t it?”
Scott isn’t sure if he’s supposed to respond to that, so he doesn’t.
“I know,” Stiles continues, because sometimes he doesn’t actually need responses, which is probably why he and Derek work out so well, actually. “I know because you totally do that with Allison! Derek is in Scott-love with me.”
Stiles is lucky Scott knows him so well, or he might be offended by that. As it is, he just sighs and says, “Stiles, Derek’s still in a coma.”
Stiles blinks. “Right. Okay.” He turns back to the couch, where Derek is, indeed, still asleep. Stiles lingers over him a little bit, heart rate pounding hard and fast in his chest. Scott holds his breath as he watches, then wonders if he should look away, and then wonders if this makes him one of those squirrels or chipmunks in Snow White, mostly because he really doesn’t want to be one of the seven dwarves. Everyone would probably call him Dopey, and then there would be fighting.
In the background, the living room clock chimes to midnight, and Scott can’t believe he’s been here for over an hour freaking out with Stiles over Derek.
Meanwhile, Stiles continues hesitating, just kind of hovering above Derek like he’s not sure how he wants to do this. “Stiles!” Scott barks, because this is not how he wanted to spend the first moments of Christmas. (He was going to spend it lurking outside of Allison’s window, except that Mr. Argent totally whisked her away to Europe for break, probably to train her in more ways to kill things awesomely).
“Sorry, sorry. I was just thinking. How long are these supposed to go on for? Pressure? Quality? It’s like wedding kisses. Are you supposed to keep it short and sweet or do you just kind of mash together and stay still until the applause stops? Do I use tongue?” Stiles babbles, before wiping his palms nervously on his jeans like he’s never kissed Derek before or something.
Scott sighs. “Probably… just do it until he wakes up?” he suggests, in what he thinks is a very reasonable manner. Looks like Stiles isn’t the only smart one in the group, despite what Scott’s GPA has to say about it.
“Right Good plan,” Stiles answers, before screwing his eyes shut, putting a hand on Derek’s cheek, and pressing his lips to Derek’s.
Scott quickly turns away when that happens, because eugh, but before he knows it, he’s spinning right back to towards them, once he hears the sounds of Derek’s heart jump starting up to normal speeds and Derek’s lungs expanding with a deep breath of air. Derek’s eyes open suddenly too, wide and kind of comically surprised.
Scott stares. Apparently his plans are unexpectedly awesome lately.
In the meantime, Derek blinks a few times in bewilderment, one arm reaching out to automatically wrap around Stiles’s shoulders while Stiles slumps in relief over him. Their heartbeats thump erratically against one another.
“Nggh,” Derek grunts after a beat, intelligently.
Stiles snorts in amusement heavily tinged with relief. “Go true love’s kiss,” he celebrates lamely to himself, pumping a single fist in the air and sounding more exhausted than jubilant.
Derek just stares up at Scott, who is still staring at them.
And then Derek glares. Scott doesn’t care how many of the alpha’s expressions Stiles has supposedly cataloged and tried to teach them, as far as Scott is concerned, Derek only has two. Glare and Glare More. “You weren’t supposed to tell him about the smelling thing,” Derek says accusatorily, because of course those are the first words out of his mouth after nearly dying from a sleep coma on Christmas.
Scott sputters “You heard that?”
“I heard all of it,” Derek says, glancing pointedly at Stiles.
“Shit,” Stiles mutters, face still nose-down somewhere against Derek’s chest. His fist is still kind of hanging half-heartedly in the air above his head too.
Derek huffs when he hears that, turning back to Stiles for a moment, his face going all soft and gooey and weird in a way that makes Scott want to be anywhere but here.
“You’re an idiot,” Derek murmurs quietly, and then raps his knuckles gently over the top of Stiles’s head once. Stiles groans against his sternum.
“Also embarrassed, so let’s never speak of this ever again?” Stiles offers, hopefully.
“We’re talking about it,” Derek answers, and wow, Scott never thought he’d hear the day when Derek Hale actually wanted to talk about something.
Scott tries to sidle quietly towards the door while they’re distracted like that because as miraculous as Derek and conversation is, he doesn’t really want to be here for it all the same.
But then Derek pins him with his eyes again, in this familiar, kind of blood-curdling alpha way that is completely unfair. Scott wonders if this means he’s going to get thrown against a tree later or something, which also isn’t fair, because it’s Christmas. He doesn’t think he ever deserves to get thrown into trees, but especially not on Christmas.
But then Derek surprises him when all he does is say a curt, but clearly audible-to-human-ears, “Thanks, Scott.”
Scott is not ashamed to admit he goes kind of bug-eyed. “Uh…you’re welcome?” he manages, after an awkward minute where Derek starts to glare again, because for some reason, he seems to think people shouldn’t be surprised when he’s civil. Except they are pretty much all the time, which really should tell Derek something.
“Yes, totally, thank you,” Stiles adds quickly, and sits up to look at Scott. “I never would have imagined that Derek is actually a Disney Princess in disguise. Best Christmas present ever, dude.”
Derek growls, but not at Scott and not in a way that’s actually supposed to be menacing. In fact, it might even be grosser than that weird gooey face he just made at Stiles, which Scott hadn’t thought was possible.
He’s learning a lot of things tonight. Against his will.
Scott takes it as his like, millionth cue to leave this place and uses every possible werewolf agility plus-one on his ability sheet to head out the door while trying not to listen to the murmured conversation currently beginning on Stiles’s couch.
Scott winces when he realizes he’ll probably never be able to play video games on that couch ever again after tonight.
It isn’t until he hits the tree line when his phone buzzes in his pocket with a new text. When he takes it out, he sees it’s from Stiles. It reads:
“Yeah okay, definitely a present after all. Edith has a customer for life. Merry Christmas, dude!”
Scott makes a face and puts his phone away so that he can lope into the winter darkness properly and try not to think about whatever shenanigans are happening on his once favorite Halo 2 couch.
He wonders what Allison is doing right now.
END
I am so food coma'd right now I'm pretty sure I make zero sense.
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