#chubby!derek

Derek’s eyes were squinty and suspicious, maybe annoyed, which pretty par for the course, so Stiles took a brief moment to hate himself for being disappointed by it. He shouldn’t have expected anything else. 

He took another moment to give him a once over—to take in the way he was dressed comfortably in a threadbare t-shirt and sweatpants that dug into his sides. It was considerably more revealing than the looser shirts and leather jacket he always had on these days, and he looked soft; softer even than he’d been looking over the past few months. That had just been relaxed. Like an athlete who’s settled down and stopped trying to be as jacked as physically possible. 

Now, though. Stiles felt the itch to catalogue, to calculate how much he must’ve gained over the holidays. Ten pounds, maybe. 

He shook himself out of it and opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, Derek said, “If you came by to pick up those books, they haven’t gotten here yet.”

Stiles was a little taken aback. He stopped fiddling with the wrapping paper of the gift in his pocket and put his hands up, defensively. “You think I came over on Christmas Eve to do research?” 

It was Derek’s birthday, too, which Stiles wasn’t sure if he was supposed to know. 

Derek rolled his eyes and opened the door so Stiles could step out of the cold. He folded his arms, which was distracting for two reasons: the way their beefiness kept him from being able to do it properly, and the way it made his soft pecs scrunch together. His shirt had a tastefully deep V, and Stiles’s mind screamed cleavage.

Derek said, “I think your dad’s probably working, everyone else you know is asleep because it’s the middle of the damn night, and you want a distraction.”

Derek wasn’t wrong, per se, and Stiles hated and loved how well Derek knew him. But he wasn’t completely right, either. 

Peter and Cora would be arriving tomorrow, and Stiles wanted to face this with only Derek to watch him fall, rather than his entire family. Even if they were out of the room, they would almost certainly overhear. Nosiness was probably a part of the werewolf genome. 

So now was the time to give him the gift, but he was hesitating. Faced with it, his heart was fluttering in his chest, panicky, and he kept thinking of all those times he tried to give gifts to Lydia, and how well that turned out for him. And this—this gift was a thousand times more personal than a TV or any one of the asinine things he’d bought to try to impress her. 

Intellectually, he knew Derek wouldn’t reject it, not like that, but Stiles also knew that doing this was going to change things, irrevocably. If Derek made Stiles explain it, and he would, then he would know. It would leave Stiles exposed. 

He sputtered and said, “Nuh uh.”

Derek let out a soft huff of laughter, the edges of his mouth barely turned up in a smile, and walked towards the kitchen. He took a pot off the stove as Stiles walked up behind him. 

“What’s that?” 

“Hot chocolate.” 

“That smells amazing.”

“Secret recipe.”

Stiles’s eyes widened and he let out a bark of laughter. “You have a secret hot chocolate recipe?” 

Derek didn’t reply, but the apples of his cheeks flushed with color. He poured a mug for Stiles without him having to ask, and dropped a dollop of whipped cream and a sprinkle of cinnamon over each. When he handed Stiles his mug, he took it gratefully in both hands like it was a precious artifact. It felt like it was. 

Derek hadn’t decorated for Christmas, but then neither had the Stilinskis, just like they hadn’t for nearly ten years. So Stiles got it. This was still new—the Hale house, rebuilt. There were no Christmas lights on it, and there was no tree, but there was a functional, tasteful kitchen and perfect cup of hot cocoa in Stiles’s hands, and that meant something. 

He took a sip and immediately scalded his tongue. He fanned it, but it didn’t help. Derek just watched him, eyebrow cocked in vague amusement, and blew a stream of air over the surface of his. He said, “What are you really doing here, Stiles?” 

Stiles cleared his throat, stared down at the tile floor, and opened his mouth. Nothing came out, so he licked his lips free of whipped cream and tried again. He knew Derek could hear the furious rhythm of his heartbeat and it did nothing to calm his nerves. “So, uh. Christmas, huh?”

There was a sound, suddenly, like something big and heavy was stomping across the roof. Several somethings. Or one something with a lot of legs. In this town, you could never be sure.

Stiles stared at the ceiling and whispered, “What the hell was that?”

“Stay here,” Derek growled through fangs, dropping his mug on the counter and pushing him out of the way with clawed hands.  

“Like hell I—”

Derek turned his head and flashed dangerous, red eyes at him, like Stiles was one of his betas. “Stiles, stay here.”

There was no point in arguing when he was like this, so Stiles waited for his footsteps to reach the landing of the second floor before peering out of the kitchen windows. Stiles couldn’t see anything—just the desolate dark of the Preserve, just barely bright enough to see because of the light pollution’s reflection off of the snow. 

He slipped out the back door and stretched out his fingers. Power burned through him, fierce and bright, and it tingled in his palms. He started off at a run, winced as his footsteps loudly crunched through the snow, but kept going until he was far enough from the house to see the roof and—huh. 

There was a man in red standing on top of the house. A man with a white, bushy beard. Stiles blinked for a moment, screwed up his eyes and opened them again to make sure he was really seeing what he was seeing. 

Stiles cycled through several emotions. Surprise and confusion were almost immediately taken over by a probably suicidal urge to laugh, but Stiles knew that just because he looked like Santa Claus didn’t mean he didn’t pose a threat. Mostly, though, in that moment he was deeply, deeply annoyed. 

Of course this shit would happen on Christmas Eve, and of course it would be the exact moment where Stiles was trying to work up the nerve to give Derek that stupid gift. Which is why Stiles shouted up at the man on the roof, “Hey, buddy, what the hell do you think you’re doing!?”

The man screamed and slipped, slid on the ice, and despite himself Stiles’s hands flew up, flailing, as if to brace him. The man’s foot met the pitched part of the roof and he fell. He landed on the ground with a sickening crunch. 

“Holy shit!” 

Stiles ran over to the man lying prone on the ground and skidded to a halt as he watched him burst into flames. 

“What the fuck, what the fuck,” he said, desperately. 

Derek charged out of the door, yelling, “Stiles! Are you okay?” 

“Uh, yup.”

Stiles crept towards it—what was now charred ashes still sparking with mostly extinguished flame, framing a suspiciously pristine suit in the exact shape of a person. He nudged it with the toe of his shoe. 

Derek said, “What happened?”

“Uh,” Stiles said, eyes wide as he looked from the suit up to the roof of Derek’s house. He put his hands on his hips, sighed and said, “Dude, I’m gonna be honest here. This isn’t really what I was expecting.” 

“Did you…” It looked like it was physically painful for Derek to force out the words, “Blow up Santa Claus?” 

“What?! No. Jesus, Derek. He just—“ Stiles wove his hands in the direction of the scorched Santa costume, “I don’t know! Fell.” 

Derek crossed his arms over his chest and said, “He fell?” 

“And then he exploded.”

“Unbelievable. I leave you alone for one minute—“

“Hey! You know, if you were right, which you’re not, by the way, I’m the one who got rid of… whoever this was. You should be thanking me, wolf man.” 

“For what? Killing a mall Santa in my yard?”

“I didn’t kill him! Come on, do you really think I just came out here and used weapons grade magic on a perfectly innocent man in a costume? Get real.” 

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Oh, low blow, dude. I haven’t accidentally blown anyone up in years. And I would hardly have called them innocent.” 

Derek rolled his eyes but waved a hand in concession. Stiles knelt down to inspect the ashes. “Besides,” he said, reaching his pointer finger out, “This was clearly some kind of demon, right? This is not… normal.”

“Stiles, don’t touch that.”

“Ow,” Stiles said. He stuck his burned finger in his mouth. 

Derek sighed, said, “We should call Scott.”

“Yeah, in a minute.” Stiles ran his fingers over the fuzzy white trim on the coat. 

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for clues, duh. For a sheriff’s deputy, you suck at solving crime.”

As he touched the pocket on the side, a business card slipped out and fluttered into the ash. Stiles grabbed it before it got too singed. It said merely Santa Claus, subheadline: North Pole. On the other side, it read: If something should happen to me, put on my suit. The reindeer will know what to do. 

There was no phone number, no email, no company name. “Creepy,” Stiles said. 

He handed it to Derek, who inspected it for all of a second before saying, “It’s just a business card.”

Indignant, Stiles said, “Just a—for what business? Flip it over.”

He did, and his brow furrowed as he read. “Hm.” Derek handed the card back to Stiles and he pocketed it. 

“You should put it on, see what happens,” Stiles said. 

“No.”

“Come onnn, I think it’d suit you.”

“Shut up. You want a real clue? I can show you one. Follow me.”

Stiles sighed and got to his feet, dusting snow off the knees of his jeans. He followed Derek around to the side of the house, where he had a ladder lying on the ground that he’d been using to repair the gutter that had gotten damaged in a harpy attack. Derek lifted it with one hand as if it weighed nothing at all, set it against the roof and started to climb. 

Stiles took the opportunity to admire the curves of his ass and the way the slight softness of his sides swelled above the waistband of his sweats before following him. 

He heard them before he saw them: the sound of huge animals clopping their hooves on the roof where they stood, huffing breath through their noses… jingling. There was a lot of jingling. 

And low and behold, when Stiles reached the top, there was an honest to god sleigh attached to nine enormous reindeer on Derek’s roof. 

“Dude, what the fuck.” Stiles grunted, heaving himself up. “This is not happening. I refuse to believe this is happening.”

“You personally beheaded a chupacabra about six months ago. This is really where you draw the line?”

“Yes.” Stiles treaded carefully across the ice so he could get closer to one of the reindeer. Its hackles rose and it grunted at him distrustfully as if Stiles wasn’t the one who should be distrustful in this situation. “Chupacabras are one thing, Derek. This is—I don’t know what this is. What do you think this is?”

“What, no theories yet?” 

“Off the top of my head?” He ticked off on his fingers, “Fairies, alternate reality, demons, wolfsbane hallucination, dream magic, witches, trickster, shapeshifters, some kind of Krampus-like holiday specific nightmare creature. The only thing I’ve ruled out so far is Christmas Miracle.”

Stiles slipped a little on the way towards the sleigh, teetering for barely a second before Derek grabbed his arm. Stiles let out a breath and looked up to find Derek close, close enough that he could feel the warm bursts of breath on his face, trailing from Derek’s mouth in smoky clouds. Derek reached out his hand and said, “Give me your phone, I’m calling Scott.”

Stiles pulled the phone out of his pocket at exactly the same moment one of the reindeer shook out its head. Its antler knocked the phone from Stiles’s hand and sent it hurtling to the ground. When it hit the edge of the roof, the sound of broken plastic and glass and metal was unmistakable, and he watched as it bounced off the edge and fell into the snow on the ground three stories below. Just like Santa. 

Reflexively, Stiles closed his eyes and drew energy from the earth, focused until the phone hit his palm. The glass was shattered, screen dark behind it, no matter what buttons he pressed. He tried shooting a bit of electricity through his fingertips to see if it would wake, but all he did was shock himself, making him drop the phone off the roof again. 

Stiles pointed an angry finger at the deer. “You little asshole! That is the third phone this year I’ve lost to this kind of bullshit.”

Derek said, “Let’s go back inside.”

Stiles sighed, trying to shake off his irritation. He said, “In a minute, I wanna look at this stupid sleigh first.”

Up close it was like nothing he’d ever seen: full of intricate, whimsical gold detailing on lacquered red wood, and startlingly authentic. He climbed into it, studying its contents. The back was loaded with red velvet sacks overflowing with gifts in shiny wrapping paper. The dashboard had various knobs and buttons whose purposes were mysterious to him. It was nothing like a car—nothing like anything he’d ever seen. 

Suddenly, the reindeer jerked the sleigh a foot or so forward. Stiles screeched and fell back onto the bench. 

That’s when he noticed the suit. It was under his ass and folded neatly: pants, jacket, suspenders, hat, and belt, boots on the floor, all of them delicately singed. 

“Whoa, what? Derek, come look at this.”

Derek looked at the suit and his eyebrows furrowed. He turned back to peer over the rooftop. “There’s nothing down there anymore. How did those get here?” 

“Fuck if I know, dude.” He did some jazz hands. “Magic”

“Christ.” Derek pinched his nose in the space between his eyes as if he’d contracted a migraine from the sheer absurdity of the situation. Stiles knew the feeling. 

Derek sat on the bench next to him and in an instant, the sleigh shot forward. The reindeer broke into a sprint and sent them hurtling off the edge of the roof. Stiles shouted and grabbed onto Derek’s shirt and they went into a freefall for one terrifying second before they were airborne. “Oh my god!” Stiles screamed. 

Derek held onto him with one arm and the sleigh with the other. He looked as if he was contemplating jumping for a moment, but they were already too high up, especially for Stiles. Derek said, “Can you do something? Can you make them stop?” 

“Unfortunately I don’t know how to mind control, and if I did, I’d be busy using it to make you less annoying.” It was a valid question, and Stiles knew he was being unfair. He said, “I could. Try to teleport us, but Derek—” Last time Stiles tried that particular spell, he landed himself in the hospital. He wasn’t strong enough, and he knew it. 

“No. It’s fine. We’ll find another way.”

They went sailing above the trees, higher and higher, and the twinkling lights of Beacon Hills glittered below them. It was pretty, and if this were any other situation, Stiles would have been ecstatic. A part of him still was; they were flying. But as it was, he was mostly just annoyed. Again. 

Once he was reasonably certain they weren’t going to die, he loosened his grip on Derek’s t-shirt and patted his chest apologetically. It jiggled a little, god help him, and he cleared his throat and shifted a couple feet over so he wasn’t plastered against Derek anymore. He hazarded a look at his face, which was twisted into mild irritation. Stiles said, “Well. Go ahead and say it. It’ll make you feel better.”

“I fucking told you we should’ve gone inside.”

“Yes, you did. Feel better?”

“Not. Really.” 

He was shivering, arms folded together. It was freezing up there, and Derek’s ensemble, however appealing, was sorely lacking in the warmth department. His bare arms were covered in goosebumps. Stiles had a sudden urge to give Derek his jacket like they were on a date, but then he thought of something better. He smirked. 

“You’re cold,” Stiles said.

Derek leveled him with a devastating glare. “No shit.”

Stiles lifted up the Santa coat and shook the ashes out. “You know, we have a perfectly good coat here. Looks warm, too.”

“No.”

“Come on, man, you’re gonna catch your death out here.”

“I would rather die than put that on.”

“Jesus, you’re so vain sometimes. You’re worse than Jackson.” 

“It’s not—Someone just died in that, Stiles.”

“Yeah, so no one’s using it! It’s perfect.” 

“No.”

“Exposure is no way to die, man. Don’t let your pride get the better of you.”

Derek growled and bared his teeth. After a couple of seconds he said, shivering, “What did that business card say?”

“If something should happen to me, put on my suit,” Stiles recited. “The reindeer will know what to do.”

“And what about that makes you think putting on the suit sounds like a good idea, exactly.”

“The reindeer have already whisked us off to the fucking North Pole or whatever, I doubt it even matters.” 

“No.”

“Come on, put it on. Please please please please.” 

Derek was trying to ignore him so Stiles took the initiative to drape it over his shoulders for him. Derek’s face was furious, but to Stiles’s surprise, he kept it on. This only encouraged Stiles to pick up the hat next and perch it on Derek’s head. He looked murderous, and Stiles laughed so hard he thought he might puke. 

Derek made like he was taking the coat off, and Stiles reached out to hold the collar in place. “No, no, no. I’m sorry, I’m so—” Stiles let out another peel of laughter. “I’m sorry. Keep it on. You look great, I promise. Best Santa ever.”

Derek made a sound in his throat like a growl and angrily shoved his arms through the sleeves, wrapping the coat around himself. God, Stiles wished he had his phone. This would have been his lockscreen for the rest of his life. 

“Don’t look so grumpy, Mr. Grinch. It’s Christmas!” 

“Glad to see that laughing at my expense has renewed your Christmas spirit.”

“You really have no idea.”