“Why did you ask me that?”
“Huh? What's that?” Stiles mumbles the query without looking away from Derek's laptop screen. The laptop Derek kind of bought for Stiles for when Stiles is at the loft.
There's a ballpoint pen shoved in the kid's mouth, God, that mouth, and another slid behind an ear to click to death in the In Between Typing Times.
The others had dispersed a couple of minutes ago. Apart from Derek and Stiles, only Lydia and Deaton now remain, and they're deep in conversation about the preliminary theory of who or what is killing the humans of Beacon Hills this week, and are at the opposite side of the vast top-floor space, making coffee. Scott and Malia left to rally the other ʼwolves for a pack meeting proper about the situation, before it gets dark. Granted, Peter is probably still lurking somewhere, what with lurking being one of his favourite pastimes, and can obviously hear any and all conversations that are, or could be, going on. But Derek has sadly never been able to hide much from his uncle, anyway.
Derek thinks about elaborating on his question, but can't. He tries not to stare at Stiles, and fails.
Stiles is just squinting at the screen and looking like he has forgotten Derek said anything at all, or is even in the room still. Derek is just standing there awkwardly in his own fucking home, looming over Stiles like a creeper as Stiles taps away furiously at the keyboard and violently zig-zags the mousepad like an actual lunatic.
The Boy Who Runs With Wolves.
Derek is caught off guard. “What?” Always and only by Stiles.
Stiles doesn't skip a beat, unlike Derek's heart. “Why wouldn't I ask?” he adds.
“I, uh, I don't—” Derek swallows any confidence he'd mustered and trails off pathetically, looking away even though those big brown eyes are still in fact on stalks, zoomed-in and fixed intently at whichever web page is currently the most interesting.
Dusk is beginning to close in and around them and the light filtering through the loft's huge multi-pane window has dimmed somewhat. The glow of the computer screen now fills Stiles's eyes with arrhythmic shapes and bright sparks as they flick like lightning from one tab to another. As mesmerising as it is to watch, the sight becomes a little too much for Derek and he has to force himself to look away.
Stiles's long, big-knuckled fingers then still their movement, and Derek just watches the kid more as Stiles takes the pen from those devastating lips, and sneaker-feet toes spin the swivel chair around slowly to face Derek where he stands, arms crossed reactively over his chest. His heart.
“I wanted to know if you were okay, man. Like. I was concerned, y`know?” he says, like that's nothing at all. As if it's something Derek hears often. He tilts his head to catch Derek's eye—which works, of course. It always works, no matter the nature of the moment they're caught up in.
Derek feels guilty just for looking. And not only because he wants to touch, but because he wants to let Stiles care.
“I care, dude,” Stiles says on cue, and Derek tries to self-implode while Stiles waits for Derek to look at him and say don't call me dude, and maybe hopes to not have his head bitten off or his throat ripped out.
Derek does look again, but not for long. Can't afford himself too much. Just brief glances, because it's safer that way. Self-preservation and all.
“You do know that, right?” Stiles tries again. “That I care.”
Derek wants to ask Stiles if they can talk. If Derek can tell Stiles things, tell him all of it. Derek wants to ask Stiles if he will stay and if he'll let Derek spill everything, like Derek never does, not anymore, and if he'll hold Derek's hand when Derek cries about it, like Derek won't allow himself these days. Derek wants to ask Stiles if Derek can touch him and hold him and if Stiles would hold him back and if Stiles could ever be his.
“Don't call me dude,” he answers, because he can't not. And then he steals himself, head staticky and heart thumping, and dares himself to say, after what is probably too long a pause, “And yeah. Maybe.”
Then they look at each other. They just, look. Look and look. And they each keep looking at the other for a very, very long time, definitely too long for two people supposedly not much more than allies or acquaintances. Comrades, at tenuous best.
Then they look for longer. Look for more. Until it seems like they're the only two people in the room, in the building, in the world. Something is happening, and Derek is pretty sure it's not just happening to him. He is equally as stunned as he is completely fucking terrified about it.
Eventually, Stiles says, “Derek, we're friends.” And then he's licking his lips and looking Derek up and down, shameless, and adds with a shrug of one shoulder, “Till we're not.” The latter is spoken like a secret, but without the slightest hint of malice or threat. That's not how he means it.
It sounds more like a promise, if Derek is remembering correctly what genuine affirmations sound like.
The sparks from Stiles's eyes then flash blue in both of Derek's and all of Derek's neurons and mutated cells flare into overdrive as his nail beds tingle and the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He has to fight not to whine like a pup and has truly never been more happy of the fact Stiles is unable to scent chemo-signals, because Derek would be so fucked.
Derek has a reply for Stiles but it's caught in his throat, the sentence forming then solidifying fast as a quick-drying glue. He's just. Standing there. Statuesque. Alternating between trying to swallow his words down and attempting to speak them, like a dipshit, and just looking and looking and looking at Stiles.
In an entirely mortifying turn of events, it is actually the sound of Peter's low, mocking chuckle from some tucked away shadowy place in the loft that forces Derek unstuck, and it takes all Derek has to not both roll his eyes to the back of his skull and growl, I'm going to kill you again now, Uncle.
Instead, he un-clenches his fists and tries for a smile, or at least a hint of one—he doesn't want to freak the kid out—and manages to repeat Stiles's words back at him. “Till we're not,” no more than a whisper.
Stiles is looking and looking and looking at Derek, before he's asking, “Can I stay for the evening? You can talk to me while I research. I always work better with noise. It'll be soothing,” like he's ordering pizza instead of answering all of Derek's prayers, his usually erratic eye-contact as unwavering as his usually erratic heartbeat that is now weirdly steady as a metronome.
Derek fights the urge to bite into his lip with his fangs. He wants to draw blood, and to taste it.
He embarrassingly feels his eye twitch and his breath hitch as he sputters, “What would you want me to talk about?”
Stiles slowly swivels back towards the glow of the laptop, ethereal milky skin and dark moles once more luminous in its white light, at the very same time the evening's first moonshine peeks through clouds and seeps in through the loft's huge skylight. He annoyingly starts clicking away at the Clicking Pen while shoving the other back between his beautiful, beautiful lips, now mumbling his words around it again, speaking them as if they're the most obvious thing in the universe.
for @poebin, for asking <3 (unedited, soz)
dededos
kianamaiart
andulkaphoto
tangentwithtanner
annaxmalina
stormborns
turnnoffyourmind
pixelskylines
