headlong (I'm falling in a)

by hito

Chapter 4

Notes:

Done! Thank you so much to everybody who commented on this along the way -- there's genuinely no way this would ever have been finished without you. You know who you are. <333!

It will be fine, Stiles reassures himself on his way home. Derek will understand. Scott might not, but Derek likes Allison, and if she did want to be a werewolf Derek would go for that in a heartbeat, Stiles knows.

Derek has never suggested it, not like Peter, but Stiles knows he would welcome it, would welcome any of them, and Stiles doesn’t think Derek’s going to turn Allison away because Scott is mad at her. He can’t afford to do that: she knows about the pack, she accepts it, and one day she might even change her mind about joining it. Derek probably wants her to change her mind quite badly.

Stiles is surprised Derek hadn’t suggested it to Scott as a method of getting her to stick around. If humans aren’t suitable mates for werewolves the logical thing to do is fix it so humanity is no longer a problem, right? And if Allison had gone for it they would have stayed together forever; they would have had to. What other choice would there have been? If they’d broken up they would’ve been stuck together forever anyway, forced into proximity by virtue of being part of the same pack, and Derek has no patience with quibbling over hurt feelings, or at least not when it threatens his pack. He’d proved that with Lydia and Jackson.

What could Scott have done if they had broken up? Found another girl who might not have completely lost her mind when she found out the monsters were real and she was dating one, risked it all again, turned her and crossed his fingers? Every time?

What is Scott going to do?

Allison can leave, if she wants to.

Are Scott and Lydia actually going to end up together because there’s no other option?

Stiles doesn’t think Derek wants that—if he’d ever considered it he would have figured that Derek would eventually have raised the issue with Allison, tried to get her to become a real part of the pack, but maybe that wasn’t what he wanted either. Maybe he wanted Scott and Allison to break up so Scott would bring more converts. That doesn’t feel right, but Derek does want more packmembers, wants to build a community around himself to replace the one he lost, and how else is he going to do that?

Is he going to ask Stiles to become a werewolf? Stiles’ stomach jumps and Stiles swallows hard, swallows it all back down because he doesn’t—he doesn’t think about it, hasn’t since Peter Hale offered it to him years ago, offered to do that to him like he was giving a gift, threatening to change him and take him away from everything he knew, everyone he knew, to change his life entirely. Stiles hadn’t wanted it. He can’t think about it now, even now. He can’t.

Derek can’t ask, because Stiles can’t think about it, but what if he doesn’t, what if Stiles is like Allison, left out always, left behind eventually, what if Lydia is right? What if Derek doesn’t want to ask? And none of it matters, because Stiles can’t, and he can’t let it matter.

Stiles is frowning as he walks down the corridor towards his door, but he forcibly puts his concerns aside, because it’s Sunday, and he’s already wasted half the day. He hasn’t even had lunch yet! So he is going to go in there and watch Derek make him something to eat and then they’ll have sex for a couple hours because he needs to prepare for the week and it has been so long since they last had sex, and then he’ll call Scott and make sure that miserable though he may be he is untroubled by the kind of freakout Stiles is having about his future right now. And then they’ll have more sex and Derek will remember to set the alarm in time for Stiles to have a shower. Stiles has a plan and it is a good one.

So of course, when he opens the door Scott is still curled up in a ball on Stiles’ couch, and Danny and Jackson are piled on top of each other so they can game on Stiles’ laptop.

Stiles marches over to the socket and pulls the plug but his laptop’s battery is fully charged so it isn’t quite as effective as he’d hoped.

“Where’s Derek?” he asks, and, “What are you still doing here?” and Jackson looks up from Danny’s frantically moving fingers to jerk a thumb in the direction of the bedroom.

Derek’s drying off after a shower, one foot up on the bed, rubbing the towel around his calf. When he sees Stiles he drops it, prowling towards him, and Stiles shuts the door quickly. “Hey,” he says, too excited already, and Derek kisses him, body pressed close, hands searching, seeking entry. “I need to talk to you,” Stiles says when he can, and Derek rumbles, picks him up, carries him across the room in two long strides and drops him on the bed.

Stiles starts working himself further up the mattress, attention fixed on Derek, crawling up after him. Derek’s gaining on him, so Stiles kicks harder, dislodging the quilt, ruining the neatly made bed.

“Stiles,” Derek says, stopping, frowning down at the rumpled material. “Why are you always so messy?”

Stiles lifts his head to follow Derek’s gaze but Derek doesn’t give him the chance, dismissing his annoyance over his wasted effort and nudging Stiles’ head back to kiss him again.

“Hey,” Stiles protests, after a while, tightening his grip on Derek’s neck, holding him still so he can sweep his tongue into Derek’s mouth.

“Yeah?” Derek asks, but then he sucks on Stiles’ tongue so he can’t possibly be expecting an answer.

“I need to talk to you,” Stiles says when Derek is nipping his way down Stiles’ jaw.

“About what?” Stiles likes being bitten; there’s nothing wrong with that. He tilts his head back a little more.

“Stuff,” Stiles manages, but he doesn’t get a response.

Derek’s busy. Stiles understands.

Derek gets distracted once he has Stiles’ shirt off though, ducking his nose behind Stiles’ ear, skipping down to his armpit. “You smell of Scott,” he says, frowning again.

“I do not,” Stiles says. “I’ve barely touched him all day!”

“And you hardly smell like me at all anymore.” Derek’s moving down Stiles’ body, hands around his waist, lifting him so he can nose down his belly more easily.

Stiles’ hands fly to his jeans, clutching the waistband in belated self-defence. He is not having sex with Scott and Jackson in the next room. That is not going to happen. “I just had a shower,” Stiles says. “I used Scott’s gel.”

“Hmm,” Derek says, and sucks a bruise into Stiles’ stomach. Derek pulls Stiles’ hands out of his hair and asks, “What stuff?” Derek’s hands try to make their way back to Stiles’ jeans, but Stiles slaps them away. “What stuff did you want to ask me about?” Derek lays his cheek over the bruise, looking up at Stiles patiently, and it takes a second but Stiles remembers.

“I don’t want to talk about it now,” he says, putting a hand on Derek’s head to still him when he starts to move. “But I do want to know what happened earlier.” Derek looks shifty, so Stiles clarifies. “With your weird juju? Was that mind-control? Because I didn’t know that existed and I thought it was a vampire thing anyway and why didn’t you tell me? You have to tell me things that are going to freak me out.”

“It wasn’t mind control,” Derek says, attempting to lick his way down Stiles’ stomach, but Stiles is wise to his tricks and pulls him away forcibly. “I’m the alpha. The pack wants to please me. That’s all. They don’t have to do it.”

“You can make your pack want to please you?” Stiles is distracted trying to work through it, so he lets the licks continue this time. “And Scott and Jackson did, they apologised. I didn’t apologise.”

Stiles yelps. Derek has bitten into him, a bright, sharp pain, teeth too deep in Stiles’ flesh. Stiles pants as Derek holds him there, unable to move. He doesn’t even want to, upper back arched off the bed, mouth open, frozen in place apart from his feet, flexing helplessly.

Derek withdraws gently, and Stiles collapses back when Derek’s mouth leaves his skin, but he can still see where Derek bit him, the skin reddened but unbroken. Derek moves down, putting his mouth on Stiles’ cock through his jeans, sucking hard, probably hoping to end past and future conversation right there, but Stiles ignores the unbidden thrust of his hips and tugs at Derek’s ears until Derek responds, coming up to face Stiles, and Stiles needs to talk to him now, means to, really, but he’s kissing him instead, licking Derek’s blunt, human teeth, biting recklessly at Derek’s tongue, at his lips.

Derek lets him, rocking his hips against Stiles, grinding their bodies together almost violently. It must be painful, rubbing against Stiles’ jeans like that, but Derek doesn’t seem to care and Stiles’ nails are digging into Derek’s back, urging him on.

“Did you want to?” Derek asks, voice rough.

“Fuck,” Stiles says, and Derek growls, finally unsnapping the row of buttons on Stiles’ jeans and wrapping his hand around both their cocks, fucking into his own hand beside Stiles, and Stiles catches himself trying to match Derek’s rhythm before he says, “Stop.”

Stiles isn’t disappointed when Derek does. “I’m not having sex with Scott right outside,” he says.

“He won’t care.”

“I care!”

“When are we ever going to have sex if you’re constantly worried about people noticing?” Derek asks, like Stiles is being extremely unreasonable in denying him this.

“I don’t care,” Stiles says stubbornly. “I’m not doing it.”

“Okay,” Derek says obligingly, and lets go of Stiles, moves up a bit, and pulls on his cock until he comes all over Stiles’ chest.

Stiles is left gasping, blinking down at the mess on his chest as Derek gets up and goes to the dresser, throwing on clothes efficiently, heedless of Stiles’ disarray.

“Hey,” Stiles says, when Derek moves towards the door. “Hey!”

“Oh,” Derek says, coming back to the bed, dropping down to hover over Stiles, kissing him quickly and then looking at what he did to him, glancing uncertainly from that to Stiles’ outraged face again and again. He grins. Stiles slaps his arm hard.

“Not funny!”

“No,” Derek says, kissing him again, hand on his chest, thumb stroking gently, and Stiles is choosing to take that as an apology until he realises Derek is rubbing his come into Stiles’ skin.

“Hey!” he says. “Asshole!” But he’s grinning now too, so he supposes he can’t blame Derek for not being convinced. Derek grabs Stiles’ shirt from the floor and uses it to dab at Stiles’ chest, getting the worst of it off before tossing it aside again and going back to rubbing like he thinks Stiles will have forgotten what he’s doing. Stiles slaps his hand away. “That isn’t clean,” he says, but he can’t work up a frown so he gets up to borrow a shirt off Derek.

When he opens the top drawer it’s full of folded clothes, but none of them are Derek’s. Stiles looks at the neat room, the bare floor, and pulls open the second drawer. He moved a really random assortment of stuff in. Derek doesn’t have all that much, but if they’re going to be sharing this storage space Stiles thinks he might be living out of boxes longer than he’d hoped.

“Are you always that messy?” Derek asks from the bed.

“Kinda,” Stiles admits sheepishly. “Thanks for—“ He gestures to the drawers. He is relieved, now that he doesn’t have to worry about the possibility and can let himself admit it existed, that Derek didn’t just dump all his shit back in his own room.

“Just don’t expect it to become a habit,” Derek says. “I’m not your housekeeper.”

“Sorry,” Stiles says, and he means it, but he’s smiling when he pulls on one of his own tshirts, grabbing a flannel shirt to go over it.

He walks straight out the door without waiting for Derek, because if he waits he’s going curl up in mortification and never emerge from that bed. Also, he hasn’t come yet, and he needs to fix that right now.

Scott is still curled up on the couch, possibly having moved from heartbreak to mortification himself. Whatever, Stiles didn’t come, it doesn’t count.

“Hey,” Stiles says, tapping Scott’s dangling hand with his foot.

Scott squints malevolently at him, then blinks in surprise. “That wasn’t what you were wearing when you went in,” he says. “Are you—“ Stiles shrugs uncomfortably. “Whatever, I don’t care, because we are no longer friends. My friends don’t force me to listen to them having sex.”

“I wasn’t having sex,” Stiles protests, feeling his restraint should be applauded. “I am such a considerate friend that I didn’t even come!” Feeling too embarrassed to do it still counts. Scott covers his face with his hands. “So you all need to leave now so I can.”

“I can smell Derek all over you,” Scott moans from behind his hands, sounding queasy.

Stiles turns to Jackson and Danny. Jackson is slumped against Danny’s side now, head on his shoulder, but they’re otherwise unmoved. “Nothing to say?” Stiles asks, feeling belligerent. “Get it out so you can leave and we can never discuss this again!”

“No,” Jackson says.

“No?”

“My parents have sex all the time,” Jackson says. “Mostly even with each other. You get used to it.”

“I do not want to get used to this,” Scott complains.

Derek comes out of the bedroom. “You’re not going anywhere,” Stiles says firmly. “Everyone else is just leaving.”

“We have to leave so you can have sex?” Jackson asks, sounding a little hurt.

“Happily,” Scott says, and sits up. Derek takes a seat next to him.

“Make them leave!” Stiles says, but Derek doesn’t.

“Why do we have to leave?” Jackson asks.

“So we’re not going to be sleeping in Derek’s bed anymore?” Danny asks.

“Yes we are,” Jackson says, frowning.

“Okay,” Danny says. “Only they’re not going to be having sex beside us, right?”

Jackson stops with his mouth open, looking fascinated, and turns to Derek for an answer.

“No!” Stiles says. “Absolutely not!”

“Seriously,” Scott says, getting up. “That’s my limit. See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says weakly. “Uh, dinner?”

“Sure.” Scott waves over his shoulder on his way out the door.

“Why can’t we stay?” Jackson asks again, and Stiles would feel bad, but. He can feel bad after he’s come. That’s fine.

“Because I want to have sex on the couch,” Stiles says.

Jackson starts to protest again, but Danny drags him to his feet. “You can talk about it tomorrow,” he says. “I think it’s time for us to leave.” Danny throws Stiles a look that Stiles hasn’t seen in a while, not since they started hanging out, and they aren’t close but Stiles had gotten used to Danny not being pissed off with him all the time. He looks impressed too, though, and Stiles supposes that’s an improvement.

“We’ll see you for dinner,” Stiles says, but that’s no consolation to Jackson, and Stiles ignores the wide eyes staring mournfully back in from the tundra of the hall as Danny shuts the door.

Derek is lounging on the couch, watching Stiles in amusement.

“So,” Stiles says self-consciously, making an aborted movement towards the bedroom then deciding that was the right idea. “Come on.”

Derek grabs him on his way past, pulling him down onto his lap. “I was promised the couch,” he says, mouth curling.

“Really?” Stiles asks sceptically, but Derek just tugs him closer, adjusting his limbs, settling him down until Stiles is forcibly reminded that he really just wants to come right now and he doesn’t really care where it happens as long as it does.

“You can’t just throw the pack out like that,” Derek says, rocking up against Stiles.

“I didn’t,” Stiles says, jolted by Derek’s movements, tightening his hands on Derek’s shoulders to secure himself. “You let me.”

“Yeah,” Derek says, hands hard on Stiles’ hips, “but you can’t.”

“But—“ Stiles says, but he can’t really finish that sentence, because Derek is right—he can’t throw the pack out every time he wants to have sex with their alpha, because he wants this all the time, okay, whenever he can get it, and he can’t really disrupt the running of the pack in order to accommodate his sex life, even if he feels like that’s totally appropriate, way more important. He knows it isn’t. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

“Good,” Derek says, tilting Stiles forward until they’re pressed together.

“But they’re not sleeping in our bed,” Stiles says, but Derek doesn’t respond. “I’m not having sex beside them!” Stiles insists.

“Fine,” Derek allows grudgingly, hips rocking against Stiles’ ass now, which is less immediately satisfying for Stiles.

“Seriously!”

“I said fine,” Derek grunts, and Stiles takes that as agreement so he can avoid the fight and give his attention to rolling his hips against Derek’s stomach, cock rubbing against the rough material of his jeans. He just put these clothes on and he’s about to ruin them, so he undoes his own fly quickly and pulls out his cock but then he doesn’t know what to do with it, Derek rocking rhythmically under him, Stiles crushed against Derek’s body with every movement, one hand braced on the back of the couch. He’s still embarrassed, even alone with Derek, and he’s always known how to handle having a hand on himself, who doesn’t, but not when Derek’s right there, looking at him, and then Derek puts a hand on Stiles too, thank god, keeps it there as he tips Stiles onto his back on the couch and comes down on top of him.

“Really?” Stiles asks. “Here?”

“Yeah.”

Derek’s tugging at Stiles jeans, having trouble getting them off, so Stiles wriggles around trying to help. “So what was that earlier?” Stiles asks. “Why did I wake up to you having some kind of tea party with your least favourite neighbour?”

“It was nothing.”

“No, really,” Stiles says, finally shaking the jeans off his foot and wrapping his legs around Derek, then unwrapping them so he can work on Derek’s jeans, and what was his objection to his friends seeing him naked again? Clothes are so much trouble.

“She just came over to clarify some things.”

“Like?” Derek’s jeans are so much tighter than Stiles’; Stiles doesn’t know how they’re so much easier to get off, too, but he isn’t questioning his luck.

“She was telling me about her pack,” Derek says, stopping Stiles when he tries to close his legs around Derek’s hips, spreads them wide instead. “Stay here.” He touches his fingers lightly to the inside of Stiles’ thigh and rises, and Stiles wants to protest, but he’s watching Derek walking to the kitchen, tshirt not doing a thing to cover his ass and then he’s watching Derek’s cock as he walks back, and somehow it just doesn’t seem important.

Derek brings something with him, one of the oils he uses for cooking, and jesus, Stiles is going to object to that, but then Derek’s fingers are wet against his ass, sliding slick and greasy inside him and the words die in his throat as he clenches around them, tries to sit up, anything to feel more. Derek pulls out to get more oil and Stiles forces out, “What did she tell you?”

“That they’re not coming here,” Derek says, but his fingers are working inside Stiles, and Stiles is trying hard to care, but it’s difficult. “That they don’t want to take any of you.”

“Oh,” Stiles gasps, spreading his thighs wider, trying to get Derek deeper, three fingers in and wanting more. “So you’re buddies now?”

“Sure,” Derek says, removing his fingers. “As long as you don’t talk to her.”

“But she can see me naked!” Stiles says. “Weird.”

“Why shouldn’t she see you come naked from my bed?” Derek asks, holding Stiles still as he shoves in. “She knows you’re mine.”

“Oh,” Stiles says helplessly, entire body trembling as Derek keeps him there, keeps him open and stretched, straining as Derek stays deep inside, tries to shove deeper and deeper, slamming against Stiles. Stiles can’t focus on anything Derek is telling him, but he knows he has something to tell Derek and he wants to do it now, while Derek can’t get too mad at him. “Uh—“ He puts his hands on Derek’s chest under his tshirt, bares Derek’s skin and pulls him closer, mindlessly wanting the contact, but Derek just gives him a second and then raises himself so he can use the leverage to pull out and fuck back into Stiles. “Uh,” Stiles grunts, struggling for words. “I meant to tell you earlier,” he gets out, “I invited Allison to dinner.”

Derek’s balls are slapping against his ass with every thrust and the sound is driving him to distraction, driving him out of his mind. Derek’s skin is giving under Stiles’ fingernails. “We’re not doing this all day?” Derek asks, smile gleaming.

“We are,” Stiles says. His head is hitting the arm of the couch every time Derek thrusts now, and Stiles makes a sound he isn’t willing to admit to when Derek stops moving to grab a cushion and push it under Stiles’ head. He can’t unclench his hands until Derek is fucking him again, and then it’s only to claw at Derek’s ass when he gets as deep as he can, trying to hold him there, trying to open himself up to it and pull Derek closer at the same time. “I meant tomorrow,” Stiles says shakily, mid-thrust, and Derek slams into him hard, sends the cushion flying, but Stiles doesn’t notice, too busy coming as Derek grinds into him, finally snapping his legs around Derek’s body, curving up around Derek and shaking and shaking, barely able to hold onto him.

His breathing is still ragged when he relaxes, legs falling apart of their own accord, body so limp he can’t even lift his head from the hard edge of couch digging into it. Derek pulls him back down the couch, pushing into him slowly, hips moving lazily, but Stiles is making noise every time Derek moves, cock dragging inside him now, and Stiles’ ass is pulsing, trying to hold on, keep Derek inside.

“Fine with me,” Derek says easily, stroking down Stiles’ thigh to his knee. “But I’m not explaining it to Scott.”

“Ah,” Stiles cries weakly, knee jerking under Derek’s hand, fresh sweat starting, shivers racing through him. “Fuck.”

“So you don’t want to do this tomorrow at all?” Derek asks, angling his hips to hit Stiles where it matters, making Stiles cry out again, and he doesn’t even want it, he can’t, can’t help it. “You think today will be enough and you can go to class tomorrow and have your friends over for dinner and not want it at all?”

“Please,” Stiles says.

“You think you can wait and do it before bed with the lights off?”

“Oh,” Stiles says, quivering, feeling his spine go hot, belly liquid, cock completely soft. “Oh, don’t. Please.”

“Don’t what?” Derek sounds curious.

“I don’t know,” Stiles says. “Just do it.”

“Yeah,” Derek says, and goes deep again, works himself there until Stiles feels him jerk inside, knows he’s coming and opens his mouth, soundless with the pleasure of it. “Okay,” Derek says, seconds later, pulling out and smiling fondly down at Stiles, leaving him wet and filthy, sweat soaking into the couch their friends will have to sit on tomorrow. “Bed now.”

Stiles gets there before Derek does.

He doesn’t remember most of it afterwards, hours and hours in bed blending together, flashes sticking with him: the ache in his legs as he wrapped them around Derek’s neck; Derek’s hands compensating for Stiles’ awkwardness as he rode him, crying out with it, crying out for it; long kisses that had Stiles pinning Derek down so he could get some action; every single time he came; and every time he made Derek come.

He remembers scrabbling for more at the end, too weak to get it, too weak to take it even if Derek would give it to him, remembers Derek painstakingly cleaning him off with his tongue, sweat and come both, and then making him get into the shower before going to sleep, like what’s the point of licking him clean if he’s going to have to shower anyway, and then he wakes up.

His phone is on the locker beside the bed. It’s late, and he curses as he hurls himself upright, going to the dresser—drawer, he has a drawer, he can’t believe it, he has two, he needs more space—and throwing stuff on, glad after all that he’s clean and ready to go.

Derek is on the phone when Stiles gets out, leaning on the counter, speaking to his cell two feet away. “—fine, Lydia,” he’s saying, sounding annoyed, “and you should have said something at the time if you were worried about her. Everyone is coming, and—“

Stiles doesn’t care about Lydia’s pangs of conscience, so he insinuates himself between Derek’s arms, leans up to snatch a kiss and then snatches his breakfast. It actually might be Derek’s breakfast this time, but that counts. Derek lets him, anyway.

Lydia has taken the opportunity provided by Stiles’ distraction. “—should tell him not to come,” she’s saying. “It was his inability to deal that caused the problems to start with, and that isn’t going to get better now that she’s dumped him. If he can’t get over himself and be a team player here, same as I did, shut up Stiles, I can hear you, then he should lose the right to be present until he does.”

Stiles chokes. “Hi, Lydia,” he says. “Looking forward to tonight?”

Derek frowns at him. “Stop trying to teach me my business,” he tells Lydia sharply, and overrides her when she tries to backtrack. “I’ll take care of it. Make sure she’s here.”

“Fine,” Lydia says, and Stiles stretches to reach the phone.

“Bye, Lydia,” he says, and disconnects. Derek lets him do that too, so he must be more annoyed with Lydia than he is with Stiles.

“Sorry,” Stiles says. “I didn’t mean to make trouble.”

Derek’s still scowling, but he shrugs. “Would’ve happened eventually,” he says, and opens his mouth to Stiles’ kiss.

Stiles hoists himself up on the counter, pulls Derek in between his legs, and it isn’t that late, they can probably both come before Stiles has to leave, or at least before it would make him too tardy, but Derek hauls Stiles off him when Stiles goes for his belt.

“No,” Derek says, amused, and stuffs the last of his waffle in Stiles’ mouth. “You had plans for today, right?”

“Did I, do I have to?”

“Yes,” Derek says. “You can wait.”

Stiles suspects that has ceased to be true, but he decides to give it a try and stops trying to climb Derek. “Fine,” he says sulkily and bites his tongue when he realises he sounds like Lydia. “Ow.”

Derek licks the blood from his mouth, keeps licking long after it’s gone, and Stiles feels virtuous when he pulls away first. “I’ll see you later,” he says, shooting for casual, only looking back at Derek once on his way out the door, standing where Stiles left him, picking the blueberries out of Stiles’ porridge before he eats it. Stiles regrets it once he’s out in the hall, regrets not eating the food Derek made him, not looking longer, leaving at all, but if he doesn’t keep going he’ll never get anywhere at all, so he rushes down the stairs and out into the warm air, the blue skies, and tries not to wish the day away.

*

He isn’t very successful at that. He hates his class, hates his professor, and doesn’t even get to have lunch with Jackson, ending up with Danny sitting in surly silence across the table.

“So,” Stiles ventures after the atmosphere becomes oppressive, “what’s up with you and Jackson?”

“Nothing. What’s up with you running your friends out of their den?”

“Den?”

“Whatever,” Danny says impatiently, folding his arms. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “I mean, I did, but. I just wanted to have sex in peace.”

Danny is still disgruntled. “That doesn’t give you the right—“

“It doesn’t give them the right either, though,” Stiles interrupts, suddenly angry with the judgement. “They don’t have the right to my sex life.”

“Maybe that’s true,” Danny says slowly. “But you’re having sex with their alpha in their home, so maybe it isn’t.”

“It’s my home. It isn’t theirs.”

“Not technically. It’s the only place they have to be pack.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says unhappily. “But they don’t get to—Jackson doesn’t really think he’s going to get to watch me having sex with Derek, does he?” Danny doesn’t answer. “Does he?” Stiles demands.

“I think I got him straightened out,” Danny says, the opposite of reassuring, and then, “Just tell Derek you’re really not into it and he’ll definitely set Jackson straight.”

“Yeah, you are having trouble keeping Jackson straight lately, aren’t you?” Stiles says, and just like that Danny’s glaring again, and they spend the rest of their lunch bickering over Jackson’s nonexistent virtue. Or, well, extant in the Catholic-girl way, since he’s probably saving his gay virginity for Danny. Danny does not react well to that opinion, and Stiles is temporarily glad to get back to class, gladder still to be done for the day, even if Lydia and Allison are already there when he gets home so he has to give up all hope of getting Derek to turn the heat on the stove down low and sneaking a round in.

“We could,” Derek says, grinning at Stiles’ complaint while Lydia shoots daggers from across the room, but, “No!” Stiles says, heeding Danny’s advice. “I am so not into exhibitionism, like, at all.”

“I can hear you,” Lydia says loudly. “Exhibitionist. I got here early on purpose because I didn’t want to end up like poor Scott. I value the sanctity of my eyes.”

“Does everybody know about that?”

“Sorry,” Allison says, trying to hide her grin.

She looks better. She’s sober, anyway, and she says she went to class. Scott didn’t, and Stiles has been ducking increasingly desperate calls from Jeremy all day.

“I know what you did here yesterday,” Lydia says, louder. “You didn’t even clean up. You are both disgusting. Derek, why didn’t you clean up?”

Derek is grinning, proud of himself and not even trying to hide it. Stiles is flushed with humiliation. “No need to be jealous,” he tries.

“Why would I be? I’m not the one who isn’t getting any. Sorry,” she tells Allison, and she sounds like she means it but she keeps saying that shit anyway.

Allison hides her wince quickly. “That’s okay,” she says quietly. “I know that’s true.” Lydia snaps her mouth shut and changes the subject.

Stiles fiddles with his phone in his pocket, thinking about calling Scott, giving him a heads up, knowing he should but really not wanting to, not wanting to admit to having had a hand in this. He fiddles and considers and puts off until he hears a key in the door and seriously. He doesn’t care if this is the pack’s home away from home or whatever, he is getting those keys back. They can always break in if it’s really an emergency.

Jackson and Danny appear, and Stiles relaxes, thinking he’s safe for another little while, he can put up with Danny no problem, but they leave the door open and Scott slips inside a second later.

“Hey,” he says, not meeting anyone’s eyes, and he could tell Allison was here, of course he could. He came in anyway, though, and Stiles chooses to believe that’s a positive sign.

“I’ll get dinner started,” Jackson says. Danny follows him across the room, glaring at Stiles all the while.

“This was Lydia’s idea,” Stiles says, and Lydia scoffs. “It had to happen eventually!”

“Stiles,” Allison says. “It’s fine. Right?”

She darts a wary look at Scott, but he still won’t look at her. “Right,” he says, shoulders hunching unhappily, and then he breaks, bolts to stand beside Jackson, apparently just fascinated by the pasta pouring into the pan.

Allison follows him over, ignoring Stiles’ frantic negatory hand gestures. “How are you?” she asks tentatively.

Scott’s shoulders creep closer to his ears. “Fine,” he mutters, leaning in further, the better to watch the pasta-bows sit inert in the lukewarm water. Jackson throws him a dubious look, pulling his saucepan away protectively.

“Yeah,” Allison says, tucking her hair behind her ear, folding her lips together. “Me too. You’re—It’s okay that I’m here, right? I mean—“

“It’s fine,” Scott says tightly.

“How was class today?” Derek lobs.

“It was fine, it was good,” Allison says distractedly, eyes drawn back to Scott immediately. “You?”

“Fine,” Scott says, and his back is like steel, a wall set against her. Danny switches the stove off and pulls Jackson away, inured to his whining. “I had a great day.”

“Spanish, right?” Allison presses. “How did you do with—“

The counter cracks under the pressure of Scott’s hand. “Don’t act like you care,” he growls.

“Scott,” she says, and she’s still smiling hopefully, but she has the sense to back up when he turns. “I do.”

“You don’t,” he says angrily. “If you did you wouldn’t be here.”

Allison’s face falls, and Scott steps forward, hands outstretched like he’s going to pick her up and remove her from the apartment, but Derek says, “Don’t, Scott,” and he stops, breathing heavily, fury increasing. Jackson slides back in behind Scott’s back, flipping the switch again, checking on his meat.

“You aren’t supposed to be here,” Scott says. “You have no reason.”

“I didn’t just come here for you,” Allison says, stung.

“You have no right. You shouldn’t—”

“It’s my decision,” Derek interjects, and Scott changes trajectory, not for the better.

“You’re such a bitch,” he spits, and she looks shocked. “You know I don’t want you here and you’re just rubbing it in my—“

“Stop,” Derek says, and Stiles shakes it off, but Scott’s mouth stills in the midst of forming a word, and Jackson’s spoon stops scraping against the pot. Lydia’s stride falters on her way across the room to Allison, but it’s just a blip and she doesn’t miss a step.

“I should go,” Allison offers with some difficulty.

“No,” Derek says, but she looks unconvinced.

“Stay,” Stiles says. “We’ll all stay, get everything out in the open.” He raises his voice. “And everyone will try and be less of a douchebag.”

Scott’s shoulders twitch but he doesn’t demur. “Okay,” Allison says, eyes wide and uncertain.

“You don’t have to talk about it,” Derek says. “It’s probably best you don’t. Scott will be fine. He won’t make trouble.”

“Okay,” Allison says again, casting a glance towards Scott, the frustration in his eyes, the resignation in the set of his mouth. “Okay,” she repeats, at a loss, turning back to the group, Derek’s blank stare, Stiles’ awkwardness. Danny is stirring Jackson’s pasta for him, Jackson’s hand under his, alternating between glaring at Derek and looking curiously at Allison. Lydia is standing with her hand on Allison’s arm in support, drifting towards boredom.

“We can talk about something else,” Derek says, but then he doesn’t.

“Lydia is having sex with Dutch,” Allison blurts into the silence in desperation, turns to Lydia immediately, mouthing sorry, and Lydia looks daunted, but she raises her chin in Derek’s general direction.

“Lydia,” Derek grits out. “Really?”

“Oh,” Stiles says. “Wow, I feel dumb.”

“That’s because you are,” Lydia says sniffing, and tosses her hair defiantly.

“So any old alpha then?” Stiles asks, and it’s at least partly a real question, but he can’t really blame Lydia for the death-stare.

“You said not to hang out with Stephanie,” Lydia says to Derek. “You didn’t say anything about Lochlann.”

“I didn’t think I had to,” Derek says. “I didn’t think you’d be this stupid.”

“It isn’t stupid!”

“I’d almost prefer you’d tried your luck with Stephanie.”

“I still can,” Lydia says.

Derek’s eyes tighten. “Go ahead,” he says, and jerks his chin towards the door. “Try wherever you can find to take you. Now.”

Lydia stumbles a little on her way to the door, and then she’s gone. Derek turns back to the rest of the group, face forced back to blankness.

“Seriously?” Stiles asks, but he shuts his mouth at Derek’s glare. “Fine,” he says. Everybody needs to stop being so mad at him, but seriously?.

“I should—“ Allison says, jerking her thumb at the door, but she doesn’t move.

“No,” Derek says.

“She’ll be fine,” Stiles says. “Maybe. Okay if I choose the topic this time, Als?”

She laughs, then stops short, distressed. “I didn’t mean to—“ she says to Derek.

“She needs to understand her position,” Derek says.

“But you aren’t going to—“ she starts, swallows. “You aren’t going to throw her out?”

“He didn’t throw you out,” Jackson says, grinning. “And he doesn’t even know about—“

“What?” Derek says, sharp, and Jackson looks like he’s about to swallow his own tongue.

“Lydia called Stiles mean names the other day,” Danny cuts in, exasperated, heading Stiles off at the pass, which was for the best because Derek is irritated enough as it is without Stiles lying to him. “Jackson was worried you wouldn’t like it.”

Jackson widens his eyes and keeps his mouth closed. If Stiles can tell he’s terrified then Derek can too, but there’s no way he can tell why, right?

“Is Lydia giving you trouble?” he asks Stiles, staring suspiciously at Jackson.

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

“We’ll talk about it when she gets back,” he says, tells Allison, “She will come back.”

She nods jerkily, not looking reassured.

“It will be fine,” Stiles says, and he doesn’t know if that’s true but she smiles at him anyway, relaxes a little.

“Dinner’s ready,” Jackson says, and after a moment of incomprehension everyone springs into action, eager for a little normality, gathering around with plates and cutlery and carving knives and—is that a colander? Stiles didn’t even know they had one. Scott and Allison are smooshed together in the queue for food, and if they care they aren’t letting it show.

“So,” Danny says to Derek, his linemate. “How come you don’t cook more often?”

And Stiles doesn’t think that was the change of subject Derek was hoping for, but it suffices.

*

“So,” Stiles says later, and they are in bed but at least the lights are on. His fingers are on Derek’s bare stomach, stroking absently, and he isn’t grossed out by the cooling sweat or anything, but he’s a little surprised Derek isn’t hustling him off to the shower and changing the sheets. It is a schoolnight.

“Yeah?” Derek sounds sleepy.

Stiles is too, and his brain is lagging behind, still caught up in the sex, trying to convince him they could go again, but he feels like it’s easier to ask Derek questions now. He feels like he deserves an answer now, with Derek’s shoulder warm under his cheek, Derek relaxed and content beside him.

“So you think Lydia will come back?”

“She doesn’t actually have anywhere else to go. I wouldn’t let her leave anyway, but she’ll be easier to handle once she figures it out for herself.”

“She’ll resent you,” Stiles says, throwing his leg over Derek’s and blinking, trying to keep the drowsiness at bay. “Like her daddy. Look how well that turned out.”

“And she wondered why I didn’t want to go near her,” Derek mutters.

“Because I’m gorgeous,” Stiles says loftily. “Of course.”

“Obviously.”

“Do you want to make me a werewolf?” Stiles asks, and he doesn’t realise he’s stepped on a landmine until Derek’s shoulder stiffens, Derek’s head lifts, and Stiles belatedly recognises that might’ve sounded like an offer. “I’m only asking!” he says, panicked, although there’s no reason to be. “I’m not saying I’d do it!” Derek’s head doesn’t settle back on the pillow. He doesn’t even look at Stiles. “Because I wouldn’t!”

“No,” Derek says. “No, I don’t want to.”

Stiles is struck silent, and that feels worse than the fear that he’d just agreed to something he couldn’t do, didn’t know if he could handle and couldn’t take back. “You’re lying,” he says, and he believes it after he hears the words. “You’re lying.”

“It isn’t going to happen,” Derek says, voice hard.

“It isn’t your choice.”

“It is. I won’t allow it.”

“I’ll get Scott to do it!” Stiles says, and Derek’s face blanches but Stiles has already heard what he just said and is saying, “No, that’s ridiculous, what am I saying, what would my dad do, I don’t even want to.”

“Scott won’t do it,” Derek says. “I won’t let anybody do it.”

“Lydia almost did it by accident the other day,” Stiles says.

Derek looks terrified.

Christ, Stiles doesn’t understand the words that are coming out of his mouth, he just isn’t going to speak anymore, he clearly cannot be trusted with a tongue. “I mean, kind of, she nearly scratched me, she could have.” Derek’s hand is curling slowly, and Stiles knows he wouldn’t hurt him but he’s afraid anyway. “She didn’t mean it. You can’t make her leave, she didn’t even do anything.”

“I wouldn’t have you in the pack,” Derek says. “If you ever even thought about it.”

Stiles—believes him. And he wouldn’t do it—he couldn’t—but he has been aware of it, the maybe of that future.

“What?” he asks. He hates the way his voice sounds.

“You heard me. You can’t do it.”

“I could do it,” Stiles says, and he’s thinking of what Peter Hale had said, powerful and strong and better, though he hasn’t let himself remember that in a long time. “I know I could.”

“You won’t,” Derek says, final. He stares at Stiles while Stiles struggles to come up with something to say, with a way he can let himself feel. “Maybe you should go.”

“No!” Stiles says, and this is panic. “No, no, I’m staying, you can’t make me.”

“Stiles—“

“Look, just forget I said anything, forget this conversation happened, okay? Things can just stay the way they were, they were fine, they can stay like that. I didn’t even want them to change.” Derek starts to speak, but Stiles can’t let him. “Lie down,” he says quickly, and ignores how sad Derek looks because Derek doesn’t look sad and this ridiculousness isn’t about to make him start. “Just lie down.”

Derek doesn’t hunch, either, but Stiles can’t think of another word for it when Derek pulls his hands out from between his knees and unfurls, pulling himself up to full height. He gets off the bed slowly, moves quickly to snap off the light, and it’s too long before the mattress dips with his weight. He doesn’t lie close to Stiles, but that’s okay, he’s still there beside him, even if Stiles can’t bring himself to bridge the distance either. The sheet feels cool without Derek’s warmth and Stiles closes his eyes against the darkness. He ignores the shakiness of his breath, the jangling in his head, Derek’s silence and stillness, and spends a long time trying to fall asleep, all languor lost.

He pretends he’s managed it when Derek slides silently out of bed and leaves the room, pretends Derek is buying it.

Derek sits on the couch for a long time. It’s dark and silent and still there too; it’s just somewhere Stiles isn’t.

*

Derek is gone when Stiles wakes up. Stiles tries to make breakfast himself; he burns it horribly but eats it anyway. He keeps checking his phone for messages from Derek in his lecture, but all he gets are increasingly weird texts from Danny. denial he returns, aren’t u supposed to try n convert the pretty ones? He ignores Danny’s response, all-caps and indecipherable even to Stiles, but eventually tells him stop making him do all the work. mean, because he feels the need to re-establish his good-friend credentials after last night.

He’s feeling pretty good about it until he gets, no longer friends. Whatever, who cares what Danny thinks, Jackson will thank him later.

There’s still nothing from Derek when Stiles gets out for lunch, and he doesn’t recall a single word he’s heard today, so he gives up the ghost and goes home.

Derek isn’t there, and Stiles hangs around for a few minutes, checking his phone obsessively, trying to convince himself just to call, but he doesn’t want to know if Derek isn’t going to answer, and after redundantly checking for missed calls one too many times he goes to find Derek, slams the door behind himself.

It feels good for long enough to get him almost to the bar, onto the street, and then he drives around the block three times before he pulls over twenty metres away from the lot he can’t turn in to.

He’s still trying to work up his courage when Lydia spills out of the lot, moving rapidly down the street. She doesn’t notice Stiles until she’s coming up on him and then she carries on, walks right past.

“Hey!” Stiles says, tumbling out onto the pavement.

She stops because she has to, and when she turns around her face is blank and her voice is controlled. “Derek isn’t in yet.”

And she’s stepping away, so Stiles says, “That isn’t, I wasn’t, he’s avoiding me anyway, he doesn’t want to see me,” and she stops again, but she barely even looks curious, her eyes dulled and opaque.

“Is it weird for you?” he asks, the thought occurring for the first time. He jerks his head towards the bar. “Knowing he’s listening to you, even though you can just listen back. I can’t listen back.”

“He isn’t listening,” Lydia says. “He wouldn’t bother. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Get in the car,” Stiles says. “You’re going to get in the car.”

He’s surprised when she does; if anyone were going to obey him, he wouldn’t have expected it to be Lydia, but he’ll take it, and it seems she’ll take him over nobody. They’re better off not being alone, even better off together maybe, he thinks, though Lydia doesn’t look present enough to have an opinion.

Stiles doesn’t know where to go, because he wants to get Lydia away from Dutch but he also doesn’t think he can take running into Derek right now, so he can’t go home, and he has no idea where Derek goes when he isn’t home or at work, which is not helpful in picking somewhere he won’t be.

“Does Derek have a gym?” he asks Lydia, and she rolls her eyes at him, which, sadly, is an improvement.

He pulls over on a street he doesn’t recognise, sprawling houses set well back behind their fences.

Once the engine is off, the car is silent, and Stiles doesn’t quite know how to start, but he tries. “You’re going to come home,” he says. “That’s what Derek said you were going to do.”

“I don’t want to do what Derek says.” Her voice strains, which is ridiculous, because what is she even saying? Nonsense, that’s what.

“Well, sorry,” Stiles says. “Kind of your job.”

“But not yours, right?” She’s sneering at him, but she’s so upset he can’t bring himself to care. “And I do not want to take orders from you.”

“You don’t,” Stiles says, frowning. “You don’t have to.”

“Not yet,” she says, tilting her head back onto the seat. The skin around her closed eyes looks thin.

“Not ever,” Stiles admits. “Derek told me.”

“Whatever. He says that now.”

“I think—“ Stiles says. “He meant it.”

“Whatever. It doesn’t even matter, you’re taking up the spot anyway. It isn’t fair.”

“So—“ Change things, he wants to say, but she has tried, hasn’t she? “So Stephanie—“ The suggestion feels like ash in his mouth, would feel that way even if he didn’t know how much Derek would hate his saying it. He doesn’t want her to go.

She laughs, lifts a smiling face to him. “Stephanie is sorry,” she says conversationally. “She’s sorry, but her pack has a surplus of females and they aren’t recruiting right now. She was allowed to go away to college to stay with her human boyfriend, in the hope that when they return he won’t be quite so human. I can check back in a few years, if I still want to. They might have evened out the numbers some by then.”

“Right.” Stiles doesn’t actually want to ask, but. “And Dutch dumped you?”

“Oh, no,” she says quietly, and closes her eyes again. “Not really. He just isn’t interested. In other werewolves, other packs, in forming a pack of his own, in mating. He’s interested in me, he says.” She sounds bitter. “He just isn’t interested in giving me anything I want.”

“You can stay,” Stiles says a little desperately. “Nothing’s going to change, I’m not going to—“

“I’d be better at it than you,” she says, and her eyes when she looks at him are watery, squinting against the sunlight. “Am I just supposed to hang around, doing nothing forever? I’m supposed to be the one giving the orders, okay? It’s who I am.”

“It won’t be forever,” Stiles says. “Things won’t be like this forever.”

“It feels like it.”

“Scott and Allison broke up,” he says, and he doesn’t say anything about him and Derek, because they haven’t. “What do you think is going to happen? It isn’t just going to be us forever.”

“It won’t matter. I won’t have the status—“

“There’ll be other wolves for you to boss around. You won’t have to be having sex with Derek to do it.” She wants to believe him, but she isn’t quite there, mouth still turned down. “There’ll be a place for you. I mean, you didn’t think you were going to waltz into Stephanie’s pack and hook up with the alpha, right?” She looks away. “Oh my god, did you? You did!”

“No,” she says, frustrated. “I thought I was going to be Stephanie, okay?”

“Seriously? Find a fucking boyfriend and be Stephanie!” Stiles says, out of patience. “It isn’t exactly rocket science.”

“I can’t,” she says.

“You can’t what?” he asks incredulously. “You can’t find a boyfriend? Because you just did, even if we’re deciding he’s a loser douchebag now.”

“He isn’t a loser,” she says sulkily.

“Oh, no,” Stiles says. “No, not happening, you are not clinging on to that skeevy forty-year-old, little miss daddy-issues. He doesn’t even own that place, right? He just cleans tables and waits for the next batch of freshmen to come through the door?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Lydia says, and Stiles ignores her because he thinks she’s probably right but he doesn’t want her looking back nostalgically at a wolf who isn’t interested in pack. That’s just wrong.

“And he’s been here how long and he hasn’t even managed to pick up one single little beta? Derek has three, and he wasn’t even trying—“

“That just kind of happened, though—“

“And who are you going to be bossing around with him, huh? Drunk fratboys wanting one more beer? Are you going to be a waitress?” Lydia rears back and wrinkles her nose. “Because that’s all he’s got.”

“Whatever,” she snaps, “like Derek’s been so good to me anyway. He made us come here didn’t he?”

Stiles has never heard her sound resentful about that before. “Yeah,” he admits. “But you were okay with it, right? You didn’t want to leave everyone either.”

“No,” she says, low, and, “I was supposed to be brilliant.”

“You are,” Stiles says helplessly, watching her unhappy face, remembering how much he had thought he loved her once, how much reason he would still have for it. “You will be.”

“How?” she asks, and waits for the answer.

“This isn’t everything we can do. Stephanie left home—“

“She has to go back.”

“They would come,” Stiles says. “If you wanted to do something else, after we were finished here, they would stay with you.”

“They wouldn’t,” she says, and he thinks she sounds frightened.

“It wouldn’t be now,” he says. “Or forever. It wouldn’t be what you wanted.” He watches her jaw firm, and knows it would be enough.

“Do you think he would do that?” Her eyes are wide and bright.

“Yeah.”

“You could make him, right?”

“I wouldn’t have to.”

“But if he wouldn’t do it for me, you could make him do it for you, right? You would want to do it too.”

“He’ll do it for you.”

“But if you—“

“He doesn’t care what I want,” Stiles says abruptly. Lydia looks dubious. “You’re a werewolf. He’ll do it for you.”

“Because he’s clearly so willing to give me whatever I want,” she says, though it looks like it pains her. “Unlike you. Anyway, you’re still pack, haven’t you been through this with him?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, “last night, when he told me he didn’t want me to be a werewolf. Not that I want that!” He makes belated frantic disclaimatory sweeps of his hand, but gives up at Lydia’s superciliously amused look. He’s angry, suddenly, and mostly not with her. “I didn’t have to come here,” he says. “Not like you did. I didn’t have to move in with him. I could have made friends. I could have had a life of my own here. I do everything any of you could possibly want and he still doesn’t think I’m good enough. Whatever, he doesn’t want to fuck you, that’s new and traumatic for you I’m sure, but you’re already his second. You’re a werewolf and you’re good at it and you’re in. You have a place here. He doesn’t even want me to be part of this.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Lydia says matter-of-factly, which is just wrong, because the rest of the world is ridiculous, not Stiles. “But I’m not your relationship counsellor so you can take me home now.”

Stiles turns the key before he realises, backtracks to glare at Lydia in puzzlement. She’s already scoffing at him.

“Are you seriously upset because your boyfriend doesn’t want you to die like everybody he’s ever loved already has?” She pauses to judge him. “Not that he loves you.”

“Right,” Stiles says in dazed agreement. “Of course he doesn’t.”

“He’d just rather you were alive and human than die during the change or whatever. Guess he doesn’t really want to expand the pack that badly after all.” Lydia can widen her eyes a truly incredible amount when she’s trying to convey sarcasm. “You owe me for this. I’m picking our next college.”

And that isn’t true, it isn’t, Stiles knows it can’t be, but— “Whatever,” Stiles says numbly. “Fine.”

He starts the car.

*

Stiles drops Lydia off at Jackson and Danny’s, which leads to more angry texts, but Lydia is not Stiles’ fault and Danny should know that by now.

Derek is at home when Stiles gets in. Stiles manages to confine his reaction to a deep inhalation; he doesn’t think the relief is obvious. He stands inside the door for a moment, listening to Derek moving around in the bedroom, marshalling himself.

It doesn’t matter what Lydia thinks; she doesn’t know anything anyway and even if she does it doesn’t matter and it doesn’t matter if she’s wrong because Stiles knows she is and that’s what matters. That he knows. He isn’t—expecting anything. He knows what he has and he’s fine with it. He just needs to make sure Derek is too.

Derek’s here, though, so Stiles will totally be able to do that. He can show Derek there’s no reason for him to freak out. Stiles will be fine; he can handle this.

He rubs sweaty palms on his jeans before walking into the bedroom, but he can’t go any further once he’s there, stopped short because actually, he might not be able to handle this.

“What are you doing?” Stiles asks, voice high and thin. He clears his throat.

Derek stops throwing Stiles’ clothes into a taped together box so his eyes can flicker over Stiles without touching down. “I have to get to work,” he says. “I don’t have time to talk.”

Stiles grabs his hands when he reaches back into the drawer. “Hey, stop,” he says, asks, “What are you doing?” again, though he isn’t sure he wants to hear the answer.

“This was a mistake,” Derek says.

“It wasn’t,” Stiles says, laugh edging the words, but Derek’s hands clench and his eyes are angry when he looks at Stiles.

“This isn’t what I want.”

It takes Stiles a second to breathe through that, because Derek isn’t supposed to say things like that to him, especially when it isn’t even true, and if it is Stiles isn’t going to let it stay that way. Derek isn’t allowed not to want him. He can’t lose Derek. He isn’t going to.

“So what do you want?” Derek hasn’t pulled his hands away from Stiles, so Stiles can feel it when the bones work under the skin. “Tell me.”

Derek shakes his head sharply. “I need to move your things—“

“You said you wanted me. Were you lying?” Derek doesn’t answer, and Stiles knew Derek had meant it, but it’s still a relief and he moves forward, buoyed by the hope bubbling up in his chest. “You want me to be a werewolf, I know you do, you have to, you want everyone to belong to you and be in your pack and you’d want that for me too, even if—“ He swallows. “Lydia says you’re afraid. You want me to be a werewolf but you’re afraid to change me. Your uncle said—“ Derek’s shoulders jerk when Stiles mentions Peter, but he doesn’t speak, not even to deny being afraid. “He said the change might kill me.” Derek swings away from Stiles’ touch, looks at him with stark eyes instead. “When he offered it to me, he told me that. I said no, obviously. Would it have been easier, if I had?”

“You didn’t,” Derek says. “Probably not.”

“I would never have let him do that to me,” Stiles says, “but Derek—“

“No,” Derek says harshly, stepping back. “I’m not going to do that to you.”

“Not now. But you can’t say never—“

“Never,” Derek says. “I can’t. And it isn’t fair to you—“

“Exactly—“ Stiles begins, but Derek cuts him off.

“I know it isn’t fair to you, but I don’t care, and it isn’t fair to ask you to hang around and not offer you the choice.”

Stiles is a little bit stumped by that, because he still isn’t all that used to dealing with Derek admitting he doesn’t have everything totally under control.

“It is my choice,” he says, “you can’t actually keep me from it forever—“

“That’s why you should go.”

“Go where?” Stiles picks the box of clothes up and tosses it onto the bed. “Do you want me to go back to my room?” Does Derek want him to move out of the apartment completely? He can’t want that, and Stiles isn’t going to anyway; if that’s what Derek wants, Stiles isn’t going to give it to him. He doesn’t, though, Stiles is just—

Stiles is beset by doubts, but he knows Derek doesn’t want him to go.

“You never wanted to be here.”

“I do now.” Stiles tries to move closer to Derek, tries to stretch up for a kiss, but Derek puts hands on his shoulders, holds him away.

“I think you should transfer to another school,” Derek says, terrifyingly serious. “This one wasn’t even on your list. I think you should go.”

“No—“ Stiles says blankly, incapable of coming up with a single coherent thought in the face of Derek’s idiocy.

“And you should stop skipping class before even this one won’t have you.” Derek pushes Stiles away gently. Stiles is working up to a shout; Stiles is numb; Stiles doesn’t stop him when he steps past him, towards the door. “I printed out some forms for you. You should read them while I’m at work.”

“Derek—“ Stiles protests, but Derek doesn’t come back.

*

“What?” Danny snaps when he picks up Jackson’s phone. “Lydia just left. What do you want?”

“Uh, is Jackson there? Is he allowed to come to the phone, please? It isn’t past his bedtime yet, is it?” If Jackson and Danny actually do get their shit together anytime in the next decade, pissing Danny off probably isn’t Stiles’ best move, but he doesn’t really care right now.

There’s a scuffle at the other end of the line and then Jackson speaks, breathless. “What’s up? Don’t mind Danny, he just sometimes can’t stand you a little bit, you know how he is about you.”

“A little—“ Stiles starts, but he hears Danny say, “Sometimes?” and he doesn’t really have the time to argue his worth to Danny, particularly because he suspects Jackson would be useless as an intermediary.

“Stiles wants to know if it’s really only a little?” Jackson asks Danny, proving Stiles’ point.

After a minute, Stiles breaks into Danny’s enthusiastic condemnation of his character, morals and being. “Can you come over?” he asks Jackson. “Not Danny. I mean, if you can bear to be separated.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Jackson says shiftily. “But I might be busy. It’s none of your business who I might have plans with.”

“Hey, I like Danny, but I’m really not in the mood to have someone hate me right now,” Stiles says. “I was kind of hoping you could help me out with something?”

“Me?”

Stiles tries to tune out Danny’s continuing complaints while Jackson considers. “I already tried Scott,” he admits, when he begins to suspect Jackson’s keeping quiet just to force him to listen. “He’s out with Jeremy. He’s never here when I need him.”

“Okay,” Jackson says eagerly. “I’m on my way.”

*

Stiles spends a couple minutes googling and then texts Jackson a shopping list. He’s going with the first result because he has no idea what he should be looking for. Google never fails him; it will be fine.

“You know what that stuff is, right?” he asks anxiously. “You can get it?”

“What stuff?” Jackson asks.

“Read your texts,” Stiles says, and waits while Jackson does.

“Why do you want me to get that? Wait, why do you want me to come over?”

“For help!” Stiles says in a strangled chirp. Jackson’s cursing when he hangs up.

Stiles paces nervously while he waits, reading and rereading the page of instructions. He gets a text from Jeremy, asking him to take Scott off his hands, but Jeremy should have known better than to take Scott out and inflict him on the world at large, so Stiles has no sympathy for him. Jackson gets there faster than he’d expected, and Stiles falls on the paper bag, desperate for a distraction.

“Hey, Jackson,” he greets his friend belatedly. “Thanks.”

Jackson gives him a wry look and slopes over to the laptop while Stiles fumbles his ingredients out onto the counter. “This is what you want my help with?” he asks. “This is the easiest thing in the universe. Also, I’ve never made it before, how do you even think I’m going to be able to help you?”

Stiles stops turning the tub of cream around and around in his hands to turn and stare at Jackson. “Because you know how to cook?” he says. He should probably try to sound less like he’s calling Jackson a moron when he’s asking him for a favour, but Jackson looks bizarrely pleased, to the degree that Stiles starts questioning the assumption. “I don’t even know what to do with this,” he says, proffering the cream. “I mostly just know how to grill and microwave stuff. You do know what to do with cream, right?” He shakes the tub uncertainly. “Because cream’s supposed to be fluffy, right, and this sounds like liquid? Has it gone off?”

Jackson rolls his eyes and snatches the cream away to safety.

“Can I borrow your kitchen tomorrow?” he asks. “I was thinking about making dinner.”

“Sure,” Stiles says, distracted by his phone. Jeremy has started sending him photos of Scott along with the pleas for rescue. “You don’t really need to ask me to come over for dinner, you know.” The latest update shows Scott trying, and miserably failing, to motorboat some poor girl. “I’ll make sure Scott’s here too. He needs to stay in for a while. I mean, assuming everything—“ Jackson’s looking at him blankly. “You know, assuming.”

“I was thinking of making dinner for Danny,” Jackson explains. “Maybe. I probably won’t. Forget about it, it’s a stupid idea.”

Stiles is shaking his head frantically. “No!” he says. “That is an awesome idea, you should totally do that!”

“I don’t think so,” Jackson demurs. “I really think that’s a terrible idea, I don’t know why I ever thought it was a good one.”

“Because it is!” Stiles insists.

“No,” Jackson says flatly.

“Fine,” Stiles huffs, looking at Jackson speculatively. “So you and Danny, huh?”

“No,” Jackson says unhappily. “I don’t know.”

“Well I do, and I’m thinking yes,” Stiles says. Jackson opens the box of meringues. “We don’t really need to make those ourselves, do we?” Stiles asks. “The website said we did, but I am absolutely not doing that.”

“I don’t think so,” Jackson says doubtfully. “I don’t see why, but if it said we did—“

“No,” Stiles decides. “Command decision. By the way, I’m taking full credit for this.”

“Fine,” Jackson says, unscrewing the cream. “Do you want me to call you when it’s done?”

“No,” Stiles says, injured. “I’m doing it.” Jackson pours the liquid into a bowl. “That doesn’t look like cream at all. Are you sure—“

“Your mom never baked, huh?” Jackson asks, picking up a fork.

“Uh,” Stiles says awkwardly, really very interested in whatever Jackson is doing with that fork. “Not really. We went to Dairy Queen a lot.”

“We always just bought in,” Jackson says. “This is the first time I’ve done a dessert myself.”

“Uh—“ Stiles says.

“It’s easy,” Jackson reassures him. “Open, mix. Done. Is it some kind of anniversary or something?”

“Huh?”

“A week from the first time you fucked?”

“Oh, no. It, uh—first fight.”

“Oh,” Jackson says, hand slowing. “And you’re doing this to make up for it? In that case, I feel I should be compensated for my assistance.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Stiles says. “I’m just—“

Jackson eyes him for a moment and lets it go. “Break up the meringues,” he says. Stiles thinks he was trying for kindness; it wasn’t entirely unsuccessful. It isn’t time to do it, but he breaks them. They smash satisfyingly in his hands, and he starts to smile.

“So you know what you’re doing, right?” Jackson asks when they’re done, hovering at the door, looking back at his work anxiously.

“Doing?” Stiles asks, looking back at the food in puzzlement. “I thought it was done.”

“You’ll be okay?”

“Oh,” Stiles says. “Oh, yeah, of course. Thanks. Hey, I’ll let you know how it goes tomorrow?”

“Right,” Jackson says, then scowls forbiddingly at Stiles. “He’s due home right away, right? Because the recipe said to serve immediately.”

“Sure!” Stiles shuts the door in Jackson’s face so he can pace in peace. He puts the bowl in the fridge after a while. It seems safer, because what was it Derek had said about strawberries? Do they go off right away once you cut them? Or is that cream, because Stiles does not trust that cream, cream isn’t meant to look like that. He opens the fridge and cautiously tastes it for safety. It seems okay, so he resumes pacing.

He dives on his phone when it beeps. Video from Jeremy, fantastic. He isn’t going to watch that.

He’s halfway through cringing behind his hand as Scott raucously humiliates himself when he hears Derek’s key in the door.

“Hi,” he squeaks, while Scott hollers on in the background.

“Hi,” Derek says discouragingly.

It takes Stiles a few tries, but he shuts Scott up. “So,” he says, while Derek just stands there inside the door, watching him twist his hands awkwardly. “We need to talk, but I have something for you first.”

He opens the fridge and pulls out the Eton Mess, offering the bowl up. Derek steps forward jerkily, stops himself before he gets too far.

“It tastes good,” Stiles says, grabbing two spoons and going to the couch, closer to Derek. “But I’m not sure what it’s supposed to taste like, so.” He eats, and it really is good. “Are you just going to stand there and watch me?”

Derek moves forward, takes a seat beside Stiles, keeping a cautious distance between them. Stiles hands him a spoon.

“Did you make this yourself?” Derek asks, eyes on the food, a smile lurking about his mouth.

“I did,” Stiles says with dignity, “although I may have had some help.”

They eat in silence.

“Thanks,” Derek says after a while. He won’t look up at Stiles.

“Derek—“ Stiles says, but Derek just takes another spoonful. “Derek. I’m not going away. You can’t make me.” His voice is gentle; he didn’t mean to make it that way and he wouldn’t have thought Derek needed it, but he isn’t speaking, still isn’t looking at Stiles. “You know you can’t make me, don’t you?”

Derek keeps eating resolutely and fuck gentleness, Stiles wants to yell, wants to let himself lose his temper, show his impatience, but he can’t afford to: that isn’t going to get him anywhere. He scoops up another spoonful of his own. The bowl is almost empty. “You like it?”

“Yeah,” Derek says, and after a minute, reluctantly, “I haven’t had it in a long time.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, squirming a little, because he didn’t mean to overstep, but he doesn’t think Derek would see it that way, and anyway, Derek did it first. “You better make me breakfast tomorrow.” Stiles swallows the last of his cream and strawberries and drops his spoon back into the bowl, leaving the last of it to Derek. “I missed it this morning and I learnt to cook for you! Okay, there was no actual cooking involved per se, but it counts!”

The bowl makes a quiet clink when Derek puts it on the coffee table. “Your Dad says you want to be a lawyer.”

Stiles scoffs, because that probably isn’t true—that was a whole year ago, he’d been watching a lot of Suits while he was trying to fall asleep and Scott was on his Dad’s radar pretty much constantly at the time—although it does still sound like a good idea if inspiration doesn’t strike.

“You can’t do that with me,” Derek says.

“You have something against the legal profession? I don’t have my heart set on it—“

“You couldn’t do anything. If you got a great job across the country I couldn’t go. I wouldn’t want to.”

“But you’d let me go,” Stiles says slowly. Derek flinches. “You think I’d go.”

“Everyone does, eventually.”

“Humans?” Stiles asks. “They don’t stay.” And if Derek turns him he might die anyway. “You don’t get to decide what I want,” Stiles says. “And you don’t get to decide what I can’t do with you.”

“You don’t understand,” Derek says, frustrated.

“Lydia says you love me,” Stiles says.

Derek opens his mouth, shuts it, stands up so he can turn away.

“It’s true,” Stiles realises. “You love me.” Derek frowns at him, and Stiles shuts that line of thought down, shoves the rising certainty aside, tries to ignore the joyous fizzing hope blocking his throat. None of it will matter if he doesn’t get this right. “So tell me,” he says steadily, sure of this. “Let me decide. Because I’m going to. It might as well be now.”

“I won’t want to let you go,” Derek says.

“That’s good.”

Derek scowls, and Stiles shuts up, temporarily. Derek takes a few steps away, so when he speaks to Stiles it’s at a deliberate distance. “I’ll want to turn you. I want to turn you right now, to keep you with me, even though I know it might kill you.” Derek’s eyes are dark as he frowns at something that isn’t Stiles, for once. “I’ve seen it,” he says, refocusing abruptly on Stiles. “I’ve seen wolves turn their mates and watch them die. I don’t want to do that. But I might. If you stayed with me and finished college and wanted to leave I might do it just to keep you, because you wouldn’t be able to leave, once I had done that.”

“Why?”

“You’d be mine. You’d be tied to me permanently if I turned you now. You already are, but not enough, not the way I want you to be.”

Stiles stands to face Derek, trying to feel sure of his ground when he has no idea what the terrain is like. “How do you want it to be?” He thinks his voice might sound breathless, because he is, but it’s hard to tell over the pounding in his ears. He takes a few deep breaths to steady himself, watches Derek watch his chest rise and fall.

“I want to mate you,” Derek says, and he’s looking at Stiles now, won’t let Stiles look away. “I want to breed you. I want to rut under the moon until I’ve come so far inside you you’ll never be able to get it out, until your belly swells from me and I won’t stop because it won’t ever be enough.”

“You know you can’t do that?” Stiles asks shakily, into the silence. “You can’t make me pregnant.”

“Not now,” Derek says. “Not while you’re human. I know you wouldn’t want it, but I do. I want to do it right now, even though it wouldn’t take. I want to try. And if I turned you, you wouldn’t be able to leave me. You wouldn’t even want to. And I would do that to you. I wouldn’t give you a choice. So I’m giving it to you now.”

“Trying to make me go away isn’t giving me a choice,” Stiles says through his laboured breaths. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

“This isn’t what you wanted,” Derek says.

“No, it isn’t,” Stiles admits. “Not that you seemed to care about that much before.” Derek twitches, but Stiles doesn’t let him speak. “It isn’t what Lydia wanted either. So we’ll be doing something else together, once we’re done here.” Stiles watches the questions chase across Derek’s face. “You’ll be coming,” he says. “Because I say so. You don’t get a choice.”

“It isn’t that simple,” Derek says, and Stiles laughs.

“No,” he says, amusement lingering, heart calming. “It is not simple, but it’s what’s going to happen. I’d say take it up with Lydia if you’ve got a problem, but really, I think you should be more worried about me, here.”

Derek moves forward hesitantly, in fits and starts, until he’s close enough that Stiles can reach out and pull him in.

“I’ll be fine,” Stiles says quietly. “I’ll make sure of it. You don’t have to worry about that.”

“I have to worry about you,” Derek says, “All the time,” and Stiles smiles, because that’s leverage for another day.

“You don’t have to worry that I’m going to freak out when I realise what I’m getting into,” Stiles clarifies. “You’re going to give me what I want. And I can handle it if you don’t.”

Derek sighs, and Stiles thinks it sounds like capitulation, so he pulls again, and this time Derek’s head lowers to kiss him.

“See?” Stiles says, in between kisses, trying not to smile so wide he won’t be able to continue. “I’m winning already.”

Derek growls when he tackles Stiles to the couch, but he’s finally smiling too.

“Bed,” Stiles says, struggling up and hauling Derek across the room into their bedroom, and it’s still theirs, it will still be theirs even if he doesn’t turn, even if he decides not to give Derek what he wants, what he really wants even if he says otherwise, Stiles knows he’s lying now, Derek has admitted it, he can’t take it back.

The room is dark, and they don’t bother to turn on the light as they stumble across it, as they tumble onto the bed. But Stiles is reconjugating rapidly in his head: from won’t through would to will. Is will a verb? Is that the kind of thing he’ll have to know if he wants to be a lawyer after all? Derek’s mouth tastes of strawberries and sugar, and Stiles licks and licks at it and hardly notices as threads snap and denim tears and his clothes disappear.

Derek won’t want him to do it, he still won’t want to risk it, but Stiles can talk him around. He has time. Derek’s hand is on his cock and Derek’s teeth are in his shoulder and Stiles doesn’t think about it, doesn’t have to worry because Derek won’t do anything to him, not now, and Stiles doesn’t think he would care if he did.

Derek flips him onto his stomach, covers Stiles’ body with his own, holds his hands firm against the pillow and puts his teeth against Stiles’ neck. Stiles writhes, tries to move under Derek, get some friction, make Derek move, anything, but he stills when Derek’s teeth tighten on the jut of bone, helplessly still and shivering, gasping.

“It’s supposed to be easier like this,” Derek says, but Stiles can’t listen once he’s released, can’t hear a thing, twists to get to Derek’s mouth again, to get his legs up around Derek’s hips, and he didn’t mean to feel the burn shoot past his wrists, down into his forearms, but he likes it, fuck.

“Fuck,” Stiles says, trying to bite at Derek’s mouth but not quite able to connect, and Derek laughs, gives Stiles’ lip a quick nip, laughs again when he whines. “Come on,” Stiles says. “Fuck, it’s been forever, why are you laughing, why aren’t you—“

Derek lets Stiles’ hands go, keeps laughing as Stiles whines again because he’s a useless, heartless bastard, keeps laughing as he swallows Stiles’ cock down and rides it out as Stiles thrashes, fucks into the vibration of his laugh, holds his head there so it won’t go away.

And then it does, because Derek really is a bastard and he just lives to torture—

Derek’s hands spread Stiles’ legs and lift his ass up to Derek’s face; Derek’s tongue swipes over his hole, testing, teasing just enough; and Stiles lies there, easy prey, and makes weak, desperate noises that he can’t even be embarrassed about as he remembers how much he’d liked this.

Derek’s fingertips circle his hole, hold it open so he can slide his tongue right in, and Stiles is gasping and crying out before he even feels it. His stomach muscles contract, lifting him off the bed like he thinks that’ll get him more, but he can watch Derek while they hold him there, watch his face right against him while he feels his tongue lap inside him and he has to close his eyes against it even before his overtaxed muscles give out and he collapses back against the bed.

Derek pulls back, breaking Stiles’ heart a little, but it’s only to say, “I liked it better last time. When I could taste myself inside you from the night before,” and leave Stiles’ heart jackrabbiting in his chest while he gets back where Stiles needs him.

Derek keeps going through the broken, stuttered sounds Stiles can’t hope to contain or control, holds Stiles steady so he can give it to him while Stiles’ thighs clamp around Derek’s head and his knees lock.

Stiles loses track quickly, aware he’s babbling but not hearing it, barely able to follow what Derek’s doing to him, just reacting to every slick movement, twitching and jerking and begging, probably; he hopes so: this deserves it.

He’s going to come, he’s going to, it doesn’t even matter that Derek hasn’t touched his cock, that Stiles isn’t capable of reaching for it himself; he throws his head back and flattens his shoulders to the mattress in preparation, hands clasping the sheets, and then Derek pulls away and Stiles cries out.

He tries to say something, anything to get Derek back there, but he can’t form words. Derek tries to turn him onto his stomach again, but Stiles grips Derek’s back, flails his rubbery legs back around Derek’s hips and hangs on.

Derek doesn’t seem to mind, just presses down against Stiles’ body, drops bites at random while he slicks his own cock, then flicks Stiles’ trembling hole and pushes in through the spasms.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, but all he can do is lie back and enjoy the rocks and jolts as Derek fucks him. The sheets are wet under him and he can feel them give and move up the bed with him. “Fuck,” he says, and he wants it so much, wants Derek to come for him, is so ready for Derek to make him come, jesus, what’s taking so long?

Derek’s just going for it now, though, so Stiles doesn’t think it will be much longer, and he needs this, needed it five minutes ago with Derek’s tongue in him, half an hour ago when Derek walked through the door, needed it this morning and this afternoon when Derek walked out and left him alone.

His nails cut into Derek’s back, remembering, and Stiles doesn’t mean it as encouragement but it makes Derek fuck harder into him anyway, leaving him quaking and gasping brokenly, and Derek isn’t thinking of Stiles that much right now, driving straight at his own pleasure, but Stiles comes before he does anyway, losing it when Derek pulls him back down onto his cock and tilts his hips up that little bit more, pressing him that little bit further open, inching that fraction deeper and making Stiles seize with the ache that blossoms into fire, seize up around him as he comes between them, pulsing and shaking and blessedly mindless, slumping loose back on the bed as his entire body relaxes and his hole keeps tightening around Derek, spasming and working without any input from Stiles, until Derek groans and comes inside him, finally.

“You could lick it out now,” Stiles forces out with a grin. “If you wanted to.” He doesn’t think he’s capable of another round, but Derek does like to prove him wrong.

But Derek is still groaning over him, shoulders hunched, dick twitching inside Stiles. Stiles clenches down on him just for the hell of it, laughs when Derek cries out and rears up, but Derek’s face is still distorted, and his cock is still moving inside Stiles, pushing him open even though he’s in, he’s all the way in already.

“What’s that?” Stiles asks, squirming. “What are you doing?”

“I told you,” Derek grits out. “I told you I would.”

“What—“ Stiles’ eyes widen, and he’s suddenly a lot more with it. “Wait, are you trying to breed me? Now? But you can’t!” He isn’t panicking, he really isn’t, okay, Derek said it couldn’t happen, and Stiles is pretty sure Derek isn’t one of those guys who claims you can’t get pregnant if he pulls out or if you’ve just finished your period or whatever. He’s, like, eighty percent sure. Seventy—five. He’s almost seventy-five percent sure.

“Just for fun,” Derek says, baring his teeth in a grin as he grows inside Stiles, swells larger until Stiles is sure he can’t take it, can’t take anymore, it’s going to pop out of him, it has to. It doesn’t, though; it keeps growing until Stiles’ spine curves violently up around Derek so Stiles can put his teeth in Derek’s shoulder though Derek doesn’t seem to notice, until Stiles’ legs are splayed wide because he can’t close them, and his nails are digging into Derek’s back because he needs to hold himself there.

“Ah,” Stiles says shakily. “Is it—“

Derek rocks his hips a little, and he can’t move inside Stiles’ body, he’s too big for that, but Stiles’ teeth clamp down and his fingers claw and he’s pretty sure he draws blood anyway.

“Is it always like this?” Stiles manages, after Derek holds still for a while, the prick. He laughs sharply, but breaks off with a groan when it just makes him quiver around Derek.

“No,” Derek says. “I’m not going to do this to you all the time.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, relieved, and he feels his fingers unclench, his shoulders lose a little of their painful tension. “Okay.”

“Didn’t you wonder why, though?” Derek asks. “Why I never suggested a condom? Did you think about it?”

“No,” Stiles admits, and thinks about it then. “I would’ve thought it was scent.”

“Yeah.” Derek huffs a laugh, and Stiles gasps. “That’s good too. Why didn’t you ask for one? I thought humans always did.”

“Uh—“ Stiles protests. “I do not want to know anything like that about my friends’ sex lives.”

Derek laughs outright at that, and Stiles’ spine arches again, not quite right, and then Derek’s hands are underneath him, supporting his back, holding Stiles’ chest easily against his own. It’s better.

“It feels good,” Derek says, dipping his head to nudge around Stiles’ closed eye with his nose. “Holding my come inside you so it won’t spill out, so it’s where it’s supposed to be. If you were a werewolf you’d—“ He closes his mouth on the words, on anything that might sound like an inducement. Stiles can feel his overstretched skin begin to relax as the swelling starts to subside.

“Would I like it?” Stiles asks. “Would it not hurt?” Derek makes a small unhappy sound in his throat, and Stiles didn’t mean to make him sound like that. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “I love you. I like it anyway.” Derek makes another sound, but this one is better, this one is good. “I do,” Stiles says, glad his eyes are closed, holding on tight to Derek. “Do you believe me? I can say it again in the morning. I’m won’t say it all the time, I’m not going to get girly on you or anything, but I’ll say it until you know it’s true.”

“I know it’s true,” Derek says. “I believe you.”

He lowers Stiles back to the bed so he can put his hand on Stiles’ cock. Stiles hadn’t actually realised he’d gotten hard again, but he notices now, with Derek’s hand stroking lightly, tightening, pulling slowly.

Stiles rocks into it a little, and he can do that, it feels okay.

“You’d like it,” Derek says, low. “You’d want it, because it would feel so good, because you’d want me to give you pups.” He starts sliding around in Stiles a little as Stiles loosens up around him, and he’s still huge, but he can move now, it’s okay, it’s good. Stiles doesn’t think Derek is going to get hard enough to fuck him again, but he doesn’t think he could take it anyway, not after this, and this is good, this is—

“You’d want it all the time,” Derek says. “You’d want to know I wanted you this much.” And Stiles comes without warning, clenching down on Derek’s fattened cock inside him, wide, wide open and vibrating apart.

Derek slides out of him, shocking him back to awareness, and when Stiles makes a noise it’s one of protest.

He doesn’t know what to think of himself, a horrible, hopeless mess who can’t draw enough breath to speak, can’t care enough about anything to stop shaking and get himself together and figure out what just happened to him, what he just did, but Derek is smiling at him and lying close, not going away, not going anywhere, and Stiles has exactly what he’d wanted, so he tucks his head in under Derek’s chin and goes to sleep.

It’s bright when he wakes up, and the bed is empty. He drags himself out to check the time and his body aches all over, but nothing too bad, nothing he’s worried about.

It’s almost noon and Derek didn’t wake him for class. Hah. Stiles wins again. Derek has probably already left, though, and Stiles really has to figure out what he does in his free time. He has to go to a gym, right? Or does he run, like, on the street? Stiles sees people do that all the time, but he can’t imagine Derek having the patience. Maybe he’s wrong.

When he stumbles out into the living room, Derek is in the kitchen, making what looks like breakfast, smiling sheepishly. “Got up late,” he says. Stiles’ smile might split his face, but that’s okay.

He goes to join Derek, plucks his own breakfast off the counter where it’s waiting for him and watches Derek barely grill his meat. Stiles is glad he gets his own food.

Derek is almost finished eating when Stiles says, “I love you. I know you said you believed me, but just in case,” and Stiles is glad he was already done because Derek abandons his food and drags Stiles to the kitchen floor, apparently set on proving he really does like tasting himself inside Stiles and when Stiles kicks the counter it’s hard enough that his bowl topples off the side and brains him. Stiles ignores it and comes anyway; he knows what matters.

They’re still lounging around, lazily hanging all over each other, touching with purpose when they can work up the energy but touching all the time anyway, when Jackson shows up that afternoon.

It isn’t a particularly good time; Derek is hard again and just starting to suck on Stiles’ soft cock in a way that’s inevitably going to lead to more sex on the couch when he walks in, and Stiles is throwing Derek a filthy look for not warning him, about to demand Jackson’s key back and actually take it this time when he realises that seriously, it’s his own fault. He should know better by now.

“Hey,” Stiles says. “We were just going to bed.” He gets off the couch and drags Derek with him, across to their bedroom. Derek is naked; Stiles is wearing a shirt and nothing else. Jackson isn’t the first person he didn’t want seeing his dick this week, but Stiles was less embarrassed when Stephanie saw him naked, even though he hardly knows her, because he feels like Jackson is judging him and judging him hard. Hah. Well, who cares what Jackson thinks.

Jackson trails them across the room, so Stiles shuts the bedroom door in his face and pulls Derek down onto the bed, wanting to get back to business, but Jackson knocks perfunctorily and opens the door.

“Hey,” he says. “Sorry, Stiles. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“Uh,” Stiles says, looking from Jackson to where Derek is hovering over him.

“You said I could come over to get stuff ready for Danny, right?” Jackson asks. “Because I’m going to make him dinner. I think I am. I think I’m going to—“ He breaks off, frowning. “I’m making him dinner,” he says decisively. “I’ll probably give it to him.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, just a little distracted by Derek’s mouth on his neck. “That’s nice. You should do that.”

“But I can go,” Jackson says. “If you want me to.”

“Oh,” Stiles says. “Oh, no, why would you go? It’s fine.”

And it isn’t quite what Stiles meant, but that’s how Jackson is still standing in the doorway when Derek pushes his tongue into Stiles’ mouth, licking him open, pressing his body down. Stiles can’t stop the roll of his body against Derek’s, but he breaks the kiss, gasping, turning his face away. Jackson is watching without reaction, like he’s a bouncer at a strip club.

“Derek,” Stiles groans.

Derek hums approvingly, mouth moving down Stiles’ throat, fingers unhooking the buttons of his shirt, sliding down his skin.

“Derek,” Stiles says again, insistent, but Derek’s eyes are closed, mouth on Stiles’ nipple, and Stiles barely has the coherence to explain why he would have a problem with Jackson watching while this continues. Stiles is trying to hang on to a little control, but he’s hardening defiantly, reason slipping away, and Jackson may not be able to see it, but he knows it’s happening, can probably smell it, god. Derek pulls Stiles’ shirt off his shoulders, and Jackson’s eyes track the movement absently, not even skimming over Stiles’ bare cock.

Derek might not even have a problem with Jackson seeing this, but Stiles can’t deal.

“Jackson—“ he moans, and that’s enough.

Derek detaches from Stiles’ nipple with a pop, glaring at Stiles before vaulting off the bed to close the door; Jackson has already disappeared, discretion being the better part.

Derek returns to Stiles growling, mouth a little rougher when Stiles gets it back on his skin, but that’s okay. That’s good.

On the other side of the door, Jackson makes himself at home.

end