Leaving Out the Whistles and Bells (gift for oldsmobile_98)
Title: Leaving Out the Whistles and Bells
Author: brilligspoons
Recipient: oldsmobile_98
Pairings: Derek/Stiles
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~3300
Warnings: sex pollen (sort of)
Summary: Stiles tries very hard not to make his Derek problem a ~thing and fails. Everything works out in the end.
Author's Notes: Thanks to my beta reader for being awesome and patient with me. Hope you enjoy reading this, oldsmobile_98! :)
"I just don't understand, you know? The whole thing. Nothing about this makes any sense whatsoever."
Stiles tries to say, "You think I'm not completely, one hundred percent aware of how ridiculous this situation is?" but it's difficult to get out while he's simultaneously attempting to smother himself with the carpet.
He's lying on his stomach on the floor at the foot of Lydia's bed, and has been for twenty minutes or so, and while her feet kneading his back feels really good (and mildly arousing, Stiles is not afraid to admit that), Stiles wishes the act were more heartfelt. If anything, he gets the impression that she's trying to help him out with the asphyxiation thing, which - that should definitely not be as endearing as he finds it. He lifts his head up off the floor and sighs dramatically.
"It's not fair, either," he says. "I don't even really like the guy. He's a total dick, and he takes the 'I'm the alpha' attitude way too seriously. I feel like a crush this monumentally stupid should've gone the way of the Dodo by now, you know?"
Lydia taps the back of his head with her foot. "Can you really call it a crush, then? Sounds more like soul-crushing attraction to me, and that I can get behind. That man has some serious musculature."
"Oh god, he does." Stiles squirms around until he's sitting upright and cross-legged, facing her. "It's more than a little distressing for me. Did I tell you that he caught me trying to empty my dresser so I could move it, and then he lifted the whole thing and set it down across the room without even needing to catch his breath?"
"You may have mentioned it once or twice," Lydia says.
"Those biceps are just -"
"Massive? Awe-inspiring? Swoon-worthy?" Lydia tosses her physics notebook at Stiles' head. "If I'd known you were going to sit here and gush over his body, I would never have invited you over to work on our project."
Stiles picks up the notebook and flips through it, pausing when he reaches her notes from that morning's class. "I don't even know what any of these things mean."
"I don't expect you to," she says. "Now, are we done talking about Derek Hale's magnificent muscles? Because while I could do all the work myself and do it better, I don't really think this teacher deserves that much dedication from me."
Stiles hands her back the notebook and says, "Yeah, yeah. I was boring even myself. Whatever. I'll get over it."
Lydia leans forward and pats him on the head. "It's sweet that you think that, honey."
***
He doesn't get over it, to the surprise of no one who has ever met him.
He's lying in bed one night, unable to sleep because his mind is racing and refusing to let him stop thinking about it. In the wake of what he's decided to call his Second Sexual Awakening (both Scott and Lydia think this is a terrible title), Stiles often finds himself replaying every interaction he's ever had with Derek in full mental Technicolor. There aren't many, honestly, and many are filled with gratuitous violence of one kind or another, but somehow his brain manages to zero in on other things every once in a while. Like Derek's hand on his chest, pushing him out of harm's way. Derek wrapping his hand around Stiles' wrist to take control of the phone when Scott calls with news. Derek flexing his arm after they drew the wolfsbane out of his system - okay, Stiles can maybe admit that there's a pattern there.
But then there's Derek's stupid little smirk when Stiles asks something Derek thinks is actually glaringly obvious, and his genuine concern for Scott and Isaac and Boyd and Erica, and the way his eyebrows scrunch together when he's frustrated with someone -
It makes Stiles' chest go a little bit warm, is all.
...maybe a lot warm.
Stiles shoves his face into his pillow and starts counting backward from one hundred to take his mind off things.
(Which doesn't actually work at all.)
***
Of course Derek shows up in his living room not too long after that. This is Stiles' life, after all. He should know better than to think he'd be able to avoid the focus of his very awkward crush.
"You're in my house," Stiles says when he wanders in after school and spots him sitting on the couch. "You're here, which is a place you should definitely not be, and you're not even hiding, what the fuck, Derek?"
"I think I'm sitting," Derek replies. He pats the cushion and looks as though he's considering his current state of being. "Yes, that is what I'm doing. And I'm also about to take a sip of water." He takes a big mouthful from the glass that had been sitting on the coffee table in front of him.
Stiles watches his throat move as he swallows and feels vaguely like he's going to faint at any moment.
"I am not prepared to deal with this," he says, and then he's turning on his heel and bounding up the stairs. He hears his dad ask Derek if that was his son making all that noise, and Derek must say something hilarious because his dad's laughter echoes all the way to the second floor of the house and into Stiles' room. He wonders if his dad would be laughing if he knew that Stiles imagines what the lower half of Derek's body looks like on a regular basis - and then he kicks himself because he wasted a perfectly good opportunity to find out why Derek and his dad are meeting by getting distracted by Derek's neck.
I could have sworn I was better at this shit before Derek became a thing, he thinks. I must be losing my touch.
He tosses his backpack on the floor near his desk and pulls his phone out of his pocket. He taps out a message to Scott, asks him if he has any idea why Derek is hanging out with his dad, and sends it. Stiles hesitates for a moment, then sends the same message to Isaac, Erica, and Boyd as well.
An answer comes in a half hour later from Erica. She semi-unintelligibly informs him that Derek's trying to get in the sheriff's good graces, probably to get him to call off the plainclothes cop who's been following him around while he looks for a new apartment. Stiles personally thinks that this is the first intelligent move that Derek has made in a long time, though he probably should have done something about his person-of-interest status months and months ago.
The apartment search is also a good thing. Stiles is very much in favor of people not squatting in unfavorable environments, like condemned and/or abandoned buildings.
He realizes then that he's just standing in the middle of his room staring at nothing, and has been for the better part of ten minutes. Stiles briefly considers pulling out his chemistry textbook, but the memory of Derek swallowing blindsides him. A flash of warmth shoots through him, but just as he's unzipping his pants and about to throw himself down on the bed for a quick intimate encounter with his right hand, there's a knock on his door.
It's probably Derek. I hate everything, Stiles thinks.
He's right.
"Doing homework?" Derek asks innocently.
"I was about to get down and dirty with some chemical reactions, yes," replies Stiles. "Finished buttering up my father?"
"It's a work in progress." Derek takes a folded up piece of notebook paper out of his back pocket and hands it to Stiles, who takes it and tries very hard not to shiver when his fingers brush against Derek's. "I need these things."
"I'm not your personal shopper. Go to the grocery store like the rest of us."
"It's stuff I need from Deaton," Derek says. "Things I can't actually touch."
Stiles glares at him. "You're assuming I even have time to run your stupid errands. I'm busy. Very busy."
"If you have time to gossip with Lydia, you have time to pick up a few things from the vet's office and bring it to my place."
He feels his jaw drop as Derek turns and wanders back down to the front door. Sheriff Stilinski says goodbye as they pass each other on the stairs. He looks at the piece of paper in Stiles' hand, and then looks him in the eye.
"Kid," he says, "you know your pants are unzipped right now, right?"
Motherfucker, Stiles thinks.
***
Stiles visits the vet's office after school the following Friday. Scott is talking to a concerned owner about their dog's shots at the front desk, and he waves Stiles behind the counter as if he'd known to expect him. Stiles grumbles under his breath but greets Deaton once he reaches the examination room and hands him the list Derek had given him.
The items that Derek needs from Deaton turn out to be what looks like a hundred yards (give or take) of stiff rope made from unknown fibers, an oilskin satchel, a glass jar of dried wolfsbane, and a ridiculously heavy sickle that Stiles gingerly wraps in his hoodie to avoid cutting himself with it.
"Besides the wolfsbane, I honestly don't understand why Derek didn't just come over here and get this stuff himself," Stiles says.
Deaton shrugs. "He's been avoiding me for a few months. I didn't even know he'd agreed to do this for me until you showed up with that list."
"What's this all for, anyway?"
"There's a strain of wolfsbane that grows at the bottom of one of the crevasses a few miles into the reserve," Deaton says. "I've tried getting it myself, but the first attempt was interrupted by a mountain lion, and the last attempt ended in me breaking my leg. Not exactly keen on repeating the experiences."
"Hence your very own werewolf retrieval unit," says Stiles. "They can be useful sometimes. I'm guessing he burns this wolfsbane to counteract the effects of the other?"
"Simply put, yes. And tell him to try not to lose the sickle - it's the only one I have on hand."
***
Derek's apartment isn't all that far away from the vet's office. Stiles pulls into an empty space directly in front of the building and grabs the smaller items off the back seat to bring inside with him. The rope, he figures, he can leave to Derek's superior strength - he'd watched Deaton struggle to put it in the back of the Jeep, and he knows there's no way he could even pick it up without seriously injuring himself. Besides, Stiles thinks, he's going to have to deal with it eventually anyway. I have officially done more than my fair share of Derek's work for him. He rings the doorbell and is buzzed in moments later, and when he finally makes it up the five flights of stairs to the apartment, Derek is leaning against the post with a smirk plastered across his face, waiting for him. Sans shirt. Stiles feels his mouth go dry.
"You should probably put a shirt on," he says instead of the 'hello' he was hoping would come out of his mouth, "for when, you know, you go move the rope from my car to yours. This isn't that kind of neighborhood."
"I don't know," says Derek, "the ladies who live in 1A don't seem to mind when I walk around like this. You don't seem to mind, either, for that matter."
"You're indecent and need to be stopped." Stiles shoves the bag at his chest while trying not to look at him too much and turns back toward the stairs. "I'll meet you down there."
Derek catches up to him (shirt on, so Stiles can start breathing again) on the second to last set of stairs, grabs the rope from the back of the Jeep, and then steers him across the parking lot to his car.
"Dude, I'm not going with you," Stiles says as he's pushed into the car. Derek tosses the bag and the rope into the back seat. "That was not a part of this little arrangement. I got the stuff so you could go on ignoring Deaton, and now I have to - take care of my own. Stuff." The protest sounds feeble even to him, but he stands by it.
"And I need someone to handle the dried wolfsbane and make sure I don't accidentally poison myself," says Derek. "Know anyone who's not a werewolf and not actually doing anything today? I think you do."
"I could have plans - homework, video games, reorganizing the tupperware."
Derek snorts.
"Fine," Stiles says. He buckles the seatbelt and settles against the back of the passenger seat. "I take back every nice thing I've ever said about your - you." He waves a hand in the direction of Derek's body. "Just so you know."
"My me? Really." Derek shoots him a grin. "You should tell me more about that."
"Shut up." Stiles feels his face heat up. With more bravado than he probably has, he says, "If you're trying to flirt with me, you're doing a shitty job."
Derek makes a noise like he's been unduly insulted and doesn't say anything.
Stiles fidgets for the rest of the drive. A million thoughts race through his head, mostly reminders to himself that it's an inappropriate time to have a boner and that he should be angrier with Derek for trampling all over his life like this, but his eyes keep getting drawn to the back where the oilskin bag is resting. The outer dull curve of the sickle is poking out from under the flap of the bag, and Stiles wonders why they couldn't just use any old knife for this errand. He hesitates, then asks the question out loud and rolls his eyes when Derek shrugs in response.
"It's like dissection," Derek says. "You can't use a meat cleaver to cut a frog open if you want to examine the organs. Some plants need to be cut from their roots in certain ways, not just pulled from the ground, to preserve what you want to get from them until you can."
"Huh," says Stiles.
"What? I know things."
"No, I just - wasn't really expecting that to make as much sense as it did."
Derek shrugs again and pulls off onto the side of the road. "Grab the bag, I'll take the rope. The crevasse isn't too long a walk from here."
Not too long a walk turns out to take forty minutes. Stiles restrains himself and only throws it in Derek's face twice. Once they arrive, Derek secures one end of the rope to a treetrunk and tosses the rest of it down into the crevasse, leaning over to watch its progress and flicking it once to knock it free from a fallen branch.
"Question! How am I supposed to be helping you if it's all the way down there?" Stiles asks. Derek just looks at him from out of the corner of his eye, and Stiles feels his stomach sink to his knees. "What? No. No, I'm not piggybacking down with you. Do you know how incredibly unsafe that is? Deaton is infinitely more competent at this shit than I am, and even he wanted to leave this to you."
"It's not that far down."
Stiles throws his hands in the air. "Not that far - we really need to get your distance perception checked, dude. If we fall, you better hope I don't die, or I will haunt the fuck out of you."
Instead of responding to the dig, Derek simply grabs Stiles around his chest with one arm and takes hold of the rope with his free hand. Stiles instinctually flails at having his balance thrown for a moment, but as soon as Derek moves like he's going to jump, he presses himself closer and clings. He closes his eyes, and then they're rappelling down into the crevasse, and before Stiles can convince his body to breathe again, Derek is setting him down on his feet. He lurches to one side and falls, landing hard on a knee.
"Never again," he wheezes. Stiles allows himself a brief moment of annoyance over not being able to even enjoy being all wrapped around Derek's body before he musters up the energy to glare. Derek grins and tosses something to him. Stiles catches it and looks down at his hand - a lighter. The oilskin bag lands against his hip, and he lets out a huff of breath at the sudden impact.
"There's a whole patch of it over there," Derek says, motioning to a small circle of purple flowers a few feet from where they landed. "Pretty sure all you need to do is make a circle around it with the dried wolfsbane Deaton gave you and then light that on fire. Once the smoke clears, I'll cut the stems and put them in the bag."
Stiles is just about ready to call the whole thing a success, which of course is when he notices the smoke being absorbed into the flowers, not clearing. Derek, apparently, does not, because he takes hold of the sickle and kneels down next to the patch of flowers and begins to cut them. Stiles hears Derek's breath catch and sees his back stiffen.
Nothing is ever easy, Stiles thinks. He takes a step back from Derek. "You doing okay there, buddy?"
There's no response other than Derek's continued heavy breathing. Stiles takes another step back, but the next thing he knows, he's on his back and Derek is tugging at his hoodie and shirt so he can lick Stiles' neck.
"Okay," Stiles says. He squirms underneath Derek and gets another lick and a small bite near his ear for his trouble. Stiles shivers, he can't help it. He's had dreams about this. "Okay. Clearly my first mistake was not asking Deaton what the side effects of this strain are, but at least I know how to make instant cuddly werewolf now."
Derek shoves his hips down on Stiles' and grinds. Stiles gasps.
"Oh," he says.
***
Stiles throws himself face down onto the rug at the foot of Lydia's bed and groans. A notebook lands on his back, and he winces and twitches, feels the muscles in his back protest even the slightest movement.
"I received an interesting text from Scott last night," Lydia says casually. "Something about werewolf viagra and your knees being all torn up."
"It's not what you're thinking," says Stiles. "I had to drag Derek's amorous ass through half the reserve. He's heavy. And handsy. I fell down a lot. I will never approach any kind of wolfsbane without knowing everything it does or how to actually counteract it from now on, I swear to god."
Lydia makes a little noise that may or may not be a laugh. "Handsy? And you didn't enjoy that?"
"Looks like him being doped up on flowers is a huge turnoff for me. Who knew?" Stiles sighs and carefully rolls over onto his back. His text message notification chirps from his backpack, and he reaches out weakly to grab for it.
"I suppose you can tell me all about how this affects your not-crush once we've finished this portion of the assignment," she says. "Jackson's not picking me up until seven, so I have some free time and could use some amusement."
"Yeah, yeah," Stiles says.
He rifles through the front pocket of his bag for his phone and thumbs it open. The text is from Derek, and all it says is, Sorry. Stiles' heart twists, and his chest heats up ever so slightly. He types back make it up to me, and the almost instantaneous response is Yes. Stiles tosses his phone to one side.
"Alright," he says to Lydia, "let's get this over with."
Author: brilligspoons
Recipient: oldsmobile_98
Pairings: Derek/Stiles
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~3300
Warnings: sex pollen (sort of)
Summary: Stiles tries very hard not to make his Derek problem a ~thing and fails. Everything works out in the end.
Author's Notes: Thanks to my beta reader for being awesome and patient with me. Hope you enjoy reading this, oldsmobile_98! :)
"I just don't understand, you know? The whole thing. Nothing about this makes any sense whatsoever."
Stiles tries to say, "You think I'm not completely, one hundred percent aware of how ridiculous this situation is?" but it's difficult to get out while he's simultaneously attempting to smother himself with the carpet.
He's lying on his stomach on the floor at the foot of Lydia's bed, and has been for twenty minutes or so, and while her feet kneading his back feels really good (and mildly arousing, Stiles is not afraid to admit that), Stiles wishes the act were more heartfelt. If anything, he gets the impression that she's trying to help him out with the asphyxiation thing, which - that should definitely not be as endearing as he finds it. He lifts his head up off the floor and sighs dramatically.
"It's not fair, either," he says. "I don't even really like the guy. He's a total dick, and he takes the 'I'm the alpha' attitude way too seriously. I feel like a crush this monumentally stupid should've gone the way of the Dodo by now, you know?"
Lydia taps the back of his head with her foot. "Can you really call it a crush, then? Sounds more like soul-crushing attraction to me, and that I can get behind. That man has some serious musculature."
"Oh god, he does." Stiles squirms around until he's sitting upright and cross-legged, facing her. "It's more than a little distressing for me. Did I tell you that he caught me trying to empty my dresser so I could move it, and then he lifted the whole thing and set it down across the room without even needing to catch his breath?"
"You may have mentioned it once or twice," Lydia says.
"Those biceps are just -"
"Massive? Awe-inspiring? Swoon-worthy?" Lydia tosses her physics notebook at Stiles' head. "If I'd known you were going to sit here and gush over his body, I would never have invited you over to work on our project."
Stiles picks up the notebook and flips through it, pausing when he reaches her notes from that morning's class. "I don't even know what any of these things mean."
"I don't expect you to," she says. "Now, are we done talking about Derek Hale's magnificent muscles? Because while I could do all the work myself and do it better, I don't really think this teacher deserves that much dedication from me."
Stiles hands her back the notebook and says, "Yeah, yeah. I was boring even myself. Whatever. I'll get over it."
Lydia leans forward and pats him on the head. "It's sweet that you think that, honey."
***
He doesn't get over it, to the surprise of no one who has ever met him.
He's lying in bed one night, unable to sleep because his mind is racing and refusing to let him stop thinking about it. In the wake of what he's decided to call his Second Sexual Awakening (both Scott and Lydia think this is a terrible title), Stiles often finds himself replaying every interaction he's ever had with Derek in full mental Technicolor. There aren't many, honestly, and many are filled with gratuitous violence of one kind or another, but somehow his brain manages to zero in on other things every once in a while. Like Derek's hand on his chest, pushing him out of harm's way. Derek wrapping his hand around Stiles' wrist to take control of the phone when Scott calls with news. Derek flexing his arm after they drew the wolfsbane out of his system - okay, Stiles can maybe admit that there's a pattern there.
But then there's Derek's stupid little smirk when Stiles asks something Derek thinks is actually glaringly obvious, and his genuine concern for Scott and Isaac and Boyd and Erica, and the way his eyebrows scrunch together when he's frustrated with someone -
It makes Stiles' chest go a little bit warm, is all.
...maybe a lot warm.
Stiles shoves his face into his pillow and starts counting backward from one hundred to take his mind off things.
(Which doesn't actually work at all.)
***
Of course Derek shows up in his living room not too long after that. This is Stiles' life, after all. He should know better than to think he'd be able to avoid the focus of his very awkward crush.
"You're in my house," Stiles says when he wanders in after school and spots him sitting on the couch. "You're here, which is a place you should definitely not be, and you're not even hiding, what the fuck, Derek?"
"I think I'm sitting," Derek replies. He pats the cushion and looks as though he's considering his current state of being. "Yes, that is what I'm doing. And I'm also about to take a sip of water." He takes a big mouthful from the glass that had been sitting on the coffee table in front of him.
Stiles watches his throat move as he swallows and feels vaguely like he's going to faint at any moment.
"I am not prepared to deal with this," he says, and then he's turning on his heel and bounding up the stairs. He hears his dad ask Derek if that was his son making all that noise, and Derek must say something hilarious because his dad's laughter echoes all the way to the second floor of the house and into Stiles' room. He wonders if his dad would be laughing if he knew that Stiles imagines what the lower half of Derek's body looks like on a regular basis - and then he kicks himself because he wasted a perfectly good opportunity to find out why Derek and his dad are meeting by getting distracted by Derek's neck.
I could have sworn I was better at this shit before Derek became a thing, he thinks. I must be losing my touch.
He tosses his backpack on the floor near his desk and pulls his phone out of his pocket. He taps out a message to Scott, asks him if he has any idea why Derek is hanging out with his dad, and sends it. Stiles hesitates for a moment, then sends the same message to Isaac, Erica, and Boyd as well.
An answer comes in a half hour later from Erica. She semi-unintelligibly informs him that Derek's trying to get in the sheriff's good graces, probably to get him to call off the plainclothes cop who's been following him around while he looks for a new apartment. Stiles personally thinks that this is the first intelligent move that Derek has made in a long time, though he probably should have done something about his person-of-interest status months and months ago.
The apartment search is also a good thing. Stiles is very much in favor of people not squatting in unfavorable environments, like condemned and/or abandoned buildings.
He realizes then that he's just standing in the middle of his room staring at nothing, and has been for the better part of ten minutes. Stiles briefly considers pulling out his chemistry textbook, but the memory of Derek swallowing blindsides him. A flash of warmth shoots through him, but just as he's unzipping his pants and about to throw himself down on the bed for a quick intimate encounter with his right hand, there's a knock on his door.
It's probably Derek. I hate everything, Stiles thinks.
He's right.
"Doing homework?" Derek asks innocently.
"I was about to get down and dirty with some chemical reactions, yes," replies Stiles. "Finished buttering up my father?"
"It's a work in progress." Derek takes a folded up piece of notebook paper out of his back pocket and hands it to Stiles, who takes it and tries very hard not to shiver when his fingers brush against Derek's. "I need these things."
"I'm not your personal shopper. Go to the grocery store like the rest of us."
"It's stuff I need from Deaton," Derek says. "Things I can't actually touch."
Stiles glares at him. "You're assuming I even have time to run your stupid errands. I'm busy. Very busy."
"If you have time to gossip with Lydia, you have time to pick up a few things from the vet's office and bring it to my place."
He feels his jaw drop as Derek turns and wanders back down to the front door. Sheriff Stilinski says goodbye as they pass each other on the stairs. He looks at the piece of paper in Stiles' hand, and then looks him in the eye.
"Kid," he says, "you know your pants are unzipped right now, right?"
Motherfucker, Stiles thinks.
***
Stiles visits the vet's office after school the following Friday. Scott is talking to a concerned owner about their dog's shots at the front desk, and he waves Stiles behind the counter as if he'd known to expect him. Stiles grumbles under his breath but greets Deaton once he reaches the examination room and hands him the list Derek had given him.
The items that Derek needs from Deaton turn out to be what looks like a hundred yards (give or take) of stiff rope made from unknown fibers, an oilskin satchel, a glass jar of dried wolfsbane, and a ridiculously heavy sickle that Stiles gingerly wraps in his hoodie to avoid cutting himself with it.
"Besides the wolfsbane, I honestly don't understand why Derek didn't just come over here and get this stuff himself," Stiles says.
Deaton shrugs. "He's been avoiding me for a few months. I didn't even know he'd agreed to do this for me until you showed up with that list."
"What's this all for, anyway?"
"There's a strain of wolfsbane that grows at the bottom of one of the crevasses a few miles into the reserve," Deaton says. "I've tried getting it myself, but the first attempt was interrupted by a mountain lion, and the last attempt ended in me breaking my leg. Not exactly keen on repeating the experiences."
"Hence your very own werewolf retrieval unit," says Stiles. "They can be useful sometimes. I'm guessing he burns this wolfsbane to counteract the effects of the other?"
"Simply put, yes. And tell him to try not to lose the sickle - it's the only one I have on hand."
***
Derek's apartment isn't all that far away from the vet's office. Stiles pulls into an empty space directly in front of the building and grabs the smaller items off the back seat to bring inside with him. The rope, he figures, he can leave to Derek's superior strength - he'd watched Deaton struggle to put it in the back of the Jeep, and he knows there's no way he could even pick it up without seriously injuring himself. Besides, Stiles thinks, he's going to have to deal with it eventually anyway. I have officially done more than my fair share of Derek's work for him. He rings the doorbell and is buzzed in moments later, and when he finally makes it up the five flights of stairs to the apartment, Derek is leaning against the post with a smirk plastered across his face, waiting for him. Sans shirt. Stiles feels his mouth go dry.
"You should probably put a shirt on," he says instead of the 'hello' he was hoping would come out of his mouth, "for when, you know, you go move the rope from my car to yours. This isn't that kind of neighborhood."
"I don't know," says Derek, "the ladies who live in 1A don't seem to mind when I walk around like this. You don't seem to mind, either, for that matter."
"You're indecent and need to be stopped." Stiles shoves the bag at his chest while trying not to look at him too much and turns back toward the stairs. "I'll meet you down there."
Derek catches up to him (shirt on, so Stiles can start breathing again) on the second to last set of stairs, grabs the rope from the back of the Jeep, and then steers him across the parking lot to his car.
"Dude, I'm not going with you," Stiles says as he's pushed into the car. Derek tosses the bag and the rope into the back seat. "That was not a part of this little arrangement. I got the stuff so you could go on ignoring Deaton, and now I have to - take care of my own. Stuff." The protest sounds feeble even to him, but he stands by it.
"And I need someone to handle the dried wolfsbane and make sure I don't accidentally poison myself," says Derek. "Know anyone who's not a werewolf and not actually doing anything today? I think you do."
"I could have plans - homework, video games, reorganizing the tupperware."
Derek snorts.
"Fine," Stiles says. He buckles the seatbelt and settles against the back of the passenger seat. "I take back every nice thing I've ever said about your - you." He waves a hand in the direction of Derek's body. "Just so you know."
"My me? Really." Derek shoots him a grin. "You should tell me more about that."
"Shut up." Stiles feels his face heat up. With more bravado than he probably has, he says, "If you're trying to flirt with me, you're doing a shitty job."
Derek makes a noise like he's been unduly insulted and doesn't say anything.
Stiles fidgets for the rest of the drive. A million thoughts race through his head, mostly reminders to himself that it's an inappropriate time to have a boner and that he should be angrier with Derek for trampling all over his life like this, but his eyes keep getting drawn to the back where the oilskin bag is resting. The outer dull curve of the sickle is poking out from under the flap of the bag, and Stiles wonders why they couldn't just use any old knife for this errand. He hesitates, then asks the question out loud and rolls his eyes when Derek shrugs in response.
"It's like dissection," Derek says. "You can't use a meat cleaver to cut a frog open if you want to examine the organs. Some plants need to be cut from their roots in certain ways, not just pulled from the ground, to preserve what you want to get from them until you can."
"Huh," says Stiles.
"What? I know things."
"No, I just - wasn't really expecting that to make as much sense as it did."
Derek shrugs again and pulls off onto the side of the road. "Grab the bag, I'll take the rope. The crevasse isn't too long a walk from here."
Not too long a walk turns out to take forty minutes. Stiles restrains himself and only throws it in Derek's face twice. Once they arrive, Derek secures one end of the rope to a treetrunk and tosses the rest of it down into the crevasse, leaning over to watch its progress and flicking it once to knock it free from a fallen branch.
"Question! How am I supposed to be helping you if it's all the way down there?" Stiles asks. Derek just looks at him from out of the corner of his eye, and Stiles feels his stomach sink to his knees. "What? No. No, I'm not piggybacking down with you. Do you know how incredibly unsafe that is? Deaton is infinitely more competent at this shit than I am, and even he wanted to leave this to you."
"It's not that far down."
Stiles throws his hands in the air. "Not that far - we really need to get your distance perception checked, dude. If we fall, you better hope I don't die, or I will haunt the fuck out of you."
Instead of responding to the dig, Derek simply grabs Stiles around his chest with one arm and takes hold of the rope with his free hand. Stiles instinctually flails at having his balance thrown for a moment, but as soon as Derek moves like he's going to jump, he presses himself closer and clings. He closes his eyes, and then they're rappelling down into the crevasse, and before Stiles can convince his body to breathe again, Derek is setting him down on his feet. He lurches to one side and falls, landing hard on a knee.
"Never again," he wheezes. Stiles allows himself a brief moment of annoyance over not being able to even enjoy being all wrapped around Derek's body before he musters up the energy to glare. Derek grins and tosses something to him. Stiles catches it and looks down at his hand - a lighter. The oilskin bag lands against his hip, and he lets out a huff of breath at the sudden impact.
"There's a whole patch of it over there," Derek says, motioning to a small circle of purple flowers a few feet from where they landed. "Pretty sure all you need to do is make a circle around it with the dried wolfsbane Deaton gave you and then light that on fire. Once the smoke clears, I'll cut the stems and put them in the bag."
Stiles is just about ready to call the whole thing a success, which of course is when he notices the smoke being absorbed into the flowers, not clearing. Derek, apparently, does not, because he takes hold of the sickle and kneels down next to the patch of flowers and begins to cut them. Stiles hears Derek's breath catch and sees his back stiffen.
Nothing is ever easy, Stiles thinks. He takes a step back from Derek. "You doing okay there, buddy?"
There's no response other than Derek's continued heavy breathing. Stiles takes another step back, but the next thing he knows, he's on his back and Derek is tugging at his hoodie and shirt so he can lick Stiles' neck.
"Okay," Stiles says. He squirms underneath Derek and gets another lick and a small bite near his ear for his trouble. Stiles shivers, he can't help it. He's had dreams about this. "Okay. Clearly my first mistake was not asking Deaton what the side effects of this strain are, but at least I know how to make instant cuddly werewolf now."
Derek shoves his hips down on Stiles' and grinds. Stiles gasps.
"Oh," he says.
***
Stiles throws himself face down onto the rug at the foot of Lydia's bed and groans. A notebook lands on his back, and he winces and twitches, feels the muscles in his back protest even the slightest movement.
"I received an interesting text from Scott last night," Lydia says casually. "Something about werewolf viagra and your knees being all torn up."
"It's not what you're thinking," says Stiles. "I had to drag Derek's amorous ass through half the reserve. He's heavy. And handsy. I fell down a lot. I will never approach any kind of wolfsbane without knowing everything it does or how to actually counteract it from now on, I swear to god."
Lydia makes a little noise that may or may not be a laugh. "Handsy? And you didn't enjoy that?"
"Looks like him being doped up on flowers is a huge turnoff for me. Who knew?" Stiles sighs and carefully rolls over onto his back. His text message notification chirps from his backpack, and he reaches out weakly to grab for it.
"I suppose you can tell me all about how this affects your not-crush once we've finished this portion of the assignment," she says. "Jackson's not picking me up until seven, so I have some free time and could use some amusement."
"Yeah, yeah," Stiles says.
He rifles through the front pocket of his bag for his phone and thumbs it open. The text is from Derek, and all it says is, Sorry. Stiles' heart twists, and his chest heats up ever so slightly. He types back make it up to me, and the almost instantaneous response is Yes. Stiles tosses his phone to one side.
"Alright," he says to Lydia, "let's get this over with."