#nevertheless:

The ride home is uncomfortable - not because of Derek, who is quiet, but not awkwardly so. It’s uncomfortable because Stiles sits in a pool of, well, pool water, his shoes make strange squelching noises with every movement and the stray drop sliding down his neck makes him shudder intermittently. Despite all of this, when they arrive Stiles takes one look at Derek, who looks like a drowned cat, or perhaps like a very grumpy drowned puppy, and sighs.

“The bathroom’s up on the first floor, first on the left. Towels are in the cabinet, I’ll get you some sweats or something. No stripes, I promise.”

When Derek doesn’t even show his teeth, Stiles knows he made the right decision in not just letting him slip away into the shadows. Or drip away into the shadows. Stiles puts on some hot water and digs around in the freezer for the one pizza he has hidden there for emergencies. If this doesn’t count as an emergency, then what does. 

By the time the water shuts off in the bathroom, Stiles has the biggest pair of sweatpants he owns and an old police academy shirt that used to belong to his dad ready for Derek. He dithers over whether to add boxers, and then quickly grabs the least embarrassing pair and adds it to the pile as the door creaks open.

Derek has a towel wrapped around his waist and Stiles does his best not to ogle his shoulders or chest or the hint of thighs under the towel.

“Here you go,” he says, and hurriedly shoves the clothes into Derek’s hands. “When you’re ready, go check the pizza isn’t burning downstairs, would you?”

Then he turns away from Derek, hopefully before his flaming cheeks got too obvious and starts walking away when he realises he completely forgot to pick up some dry clothes for himself. But when he turns back to grab a shirt and some sweats, Derek has already dropped his towel. Stiles stares at his back, eyes travelling down from the spiral between his shoulder blades despite Stiles’ best efforts, over the dips at the bottom of his spine and finally across the curve of his ass. Then Stiles lets out what can only be called a squeak, decides dry clothes are overrated, and flees from the room.

After a brief attempt to drown himself in the shower, Stiles tells himself to man up and carefully peeks through the bathroom door. Some noise from downstairs gives him enough courage to slip into his thankfully empty room and quickly pull on some hopefully clean clothes from the pile on the foot of his bed. 

He almost expects Derek to be gone when he gets down, but to his surprise, he hasn’t escaped while Stiles was in the shower. Instead he’s standing in Stiles’ kitchen, cursing softly under his breath as he attempts to get the pizza off the tray and onto a plate. While Stiles is watching, he gives up on waiting for gravity to do its job and just pulls the pizza off with his hand, hissing when his palm touches the hot tray. 

“Dude, what the hell!” 

Stiles hurries forwards and almost burns himself as well when he grabs Derek’s hand. But as he watches, the wound heals until just a faint red streak remains and they end up simply holding hands. When Stiles realises that, he hurriedly drops Derek’s hand and busies himself with grabbing some cutlery and plates, willing down the colour in his cheeks. Behind him Derek puts away the tray and grabs the pizza, following Stiles when he leads them out of the kitchen and into the living room. 

“Get comfy, I’m going to get some hot tea - or would you prefer hot chocolate? I think we might still have some instant stuff somewhere. Not as good as made from scratch, but we definitely don’t have that in the house, my dad would sniff it out immediately. I’m surprised he didn’t find the pizza! Or would you like anything else, coffee, warm milk, water, a beer? We don’t have anything harder and we really shouldn’t even have the beer, but I think it’s Dad’s proof to himself and me that he’s not fallen off the wagon, so the beer is probably really old, but perhaps it’s still good. Does beer go off?”

He’d probably have kept on rambling if Derek hadn’t interrupted him: “Tea is fine, Stiles.”

“Tea it is!” Stiles replies brightly and escapes into the kitchen where he first bangs his head against the fridge. God, what is wrong with him! Then he sighs, drags a hand down his face and finally fills up a cup of tea for both of them. It’s not the drink he’d usually go for, especially not with pizza, but the shower has only done so much to warm him up, so tea it is. 

When he comes back into the living room, walking carefully to make sure nothing spills - they’ve had enough of both water and burns for one day, he thinks, Derek has cut the pizza into slices and sat down. To Stiles’ surprise he didn’t choose the armchair, but the couch, so now Stiles has to decide whether he’s going to take the armchair or sit down next to Derek. He hesitates and then sits down on the couch as well, reasoning to himself that it’s easier to get at the pizza that way. 

He promptly grabs a slice and shoves it into his mouth, mumbling: “Help yourself, dude,” when Derek doesn’t move to take a slice as well. Ignoring Derek’s disgusted look, he chews contentedly and switches on the TV, zapping through the channels until he ends up on something that looks familiar.

Stiles swallows and then says excitedly: “Dude, An American Werewolf in Paris!”

But to his surprise, Derek just furrows his brows in question.

“You’ve not seen it?” Stiles asks, confused. When Scott had first been bitten, Stiles had watched every single werewolf movie he could find, ostensibly in the name of research, but also just because most of them were hilarious, especially as he figured out this lycanthropy thing. 

“I am a werewolf, Stiles, I don’t have to watch crappy werewolf movies,” Derek says, sounding particularly disdainful.

“Dude, that’s the best part!” Stiles exclaims. “You get to make fun of all the things they get wrong! Crappy werewolf movies are the best movies now!” He gestures towards the TV. “Like look at the cannibalism here - not too closely, though, they really went all out - isn’t it absurd!” He stop and narrows his eyes when a worrying thought crosses his mind. “The cannibalism is absurd, isn’t it?”

“No, Stiles, I’d much prefer to eat you than this pizza,” Derek deadpans and Stiles’ tea goes down the wrong pipe when his mind offers up decidedly un-cannibalistic images for that. He waves off Derek’s suddenly concerned look and croaks after he’s gotten his cough under control: “Let’s just stick to pizza for now, shall we?”

“I didn’t mean -” Derek stutters, his cheeks flaming, and Stiles ignores the pang in his chest at that admission and quickly says: “Nevermind, look, here’s their cure - killing the one that bit you, so far, so good, but then also eating their heart. I don’t think Scott would have been able to eat Peter’s heart, even if he’d have managed to kill him. Thanks for that by the way; I know Scott probably doesn’t agree, but I’m glad you killed Peter. Imagine if the stories about the cure were just that - stories - and we’d have ended up with Scott as the Alpha! That would have definitely ended in tears. Not that you’re all fun and smiles, mind, but we’ll get you there yet. First of all, laughing at crappy werewolf movies. Eat up and then settle in, we’re going to enjoy this.”

Derek looks as though he wants to say something, but then he gives into Stiles’ obviously superior commands and snags the last piece of pizza. 

It takes a while, but about half way through the film he starts relaxing and, to Stiles’ surprise, even gets really into slagging off about all the inaccuracies. When it turns out the channel is having a werewolf night, it’s not even a question that they’re going to keep watching. Stiles just makes a dash up the stairs to raid his secret stash of unhealthy goodies, and then they settle in to watch the next film. And then the one after that.

Thankfully Stiles’ dad has the nightshift, otherwise this might be hard to explain.

Watching horrible movies with Derek is fun, way more than Stiles would have ever expected, and he even learns something, to the point where he’s tempted to write it all down. It’s valuable information after all! Derek’s humour is sharp and biting, but Stiles also forms a new appreciation for his trademark deadpan, which is hilarious in the right context. With every film they both sink deeper into the cushions, until Stiles’ side is pressed entirely against Derek, who is one hot line next to him. Thoughts already turning sluggish, Stiles wonders whether that’s a sign Derek is running a fever or whether he’s just naturally a supernatural furnace. Before he can ask him that though, he nods off, head sinking to rest on Derek’s shoulder and only wakes up hours later. 

The TV has been turned off, but Derek is still there, sound asleep next to Stiles, or rather, half under him, as they’ve both slid down in slumber. He looks far younger with his face slack and not caught in a frown and Stiles pushes himself up on his elbows so he can study him properly. Even the eyebrows look less intimidating like this, instead they look more, well, sad. Stiles bites his lip and ever so carefully brushes away a curl of hair that has fallen into Derek’s eyes. There’s faint lines at their corners and Stiles remembers them crinkling up as Derek had laughed at one of Stiles’ stupid jokes. He can’t remember having seen Derek properly laugh ever before. Smile, sure, though most of those had been fake as shit, but laugh? A full belly, throw his head back laugh? Never. 

And it’s a shame. 

Stiles resolves there and then that he’s going to fix that. He’s going to make Derek Hale laugh and be happy, if it’s the last thing he does.

Starting tomorrow. There’s a vampire movie marathon on tomorrow night, surely that will offer some hilarity. Certainly if they show Twilight - Stiles can’t wait to hear Derek’s comments on Jacob and the whole imprinting business. 

If they are really lucky, there might even be a Kanima movie marathon in their future, but Stiles isn’t placing any bets on that. Vampires will do for now and they’ll figure out the Kanima thing separately. 

But for now sleep beckons him again. He considers moving upstairs into his bed, but Derek is warm and the stairs are cold and who’s to stop Derek from escaping without breakfast in the morning if Stiles does not literally lie on him, so with that reasoning in mind, he wriggles carefully until he’s found a more comfortable position and then closes his eyes again, letting himself be lulled in by the calm rhythm of Derek’s slow breaths. 

Tomorrow can deal with all the inevitable questions. For now they sleep.