#top!derek

Bastard, Stiles thinks despondently, and sticks his head back into the blissfully cool darkness of the freezer.

“Why doesn’t anyone have a goddamn air conditioner?” he moans. “I know we’re in northern California, but surely someone would have the presence of mind to have central air.”

“Not if you live in a town in the mountains, where it never gets hotter than 70 degrees. And anyway, you know you’re at least partially responsible for this.” Derek’s voice is muffled by the confines of the refrigeration unit, but the judgement there is hard to miss. Stiles glares at an economy-sized box of frozen waffles.

“That’s victim-blaming,” he grumbles. He can practically hear Derek rolling his eyes. “Not cool.”

“How did you manage to mortally offend a tempestarii during the two hours she happened to be passing through town, anyway?”

Stiles snorts derisively, but otherwise remains resolutely silent. There’s no use in denying it, not when Derek could hear him lying from three towns over, but he’ll be damned if he says anything more on the matter. Instead, he rests his overheated face on a bag of frozen peas, and wishes a pox upon all weather-witches.

“Hey.”

His voice is so close that Stiles startles, turning too fast and nearly braining himself on an ice cube tray. Derek steadies him with hand on his shoulder, unable to disguise his amusement even as he sighs long-sufferingly. The blessed chill of the freezer escapes into the kitchen, heat rushing to fill its place, and Stiles levels a glare at the werewolf’s stupid, handsome mug. He’s standing so close that Stiles can smell him, woodsy with a hint of perspiration. He blames the rabbiting of his heart on shock; it has nothing to do with Derek’s sudden proximity, or the way his reluctant smile softens the lines of his face.

“We need to get you a bell,” Stiles mutters, studiously avoiding Derek’s gaze. Derek raises a sardonic eyebrow, but refuses to be otherwise deterred.

“Tell me what happened,” he says, calm as still waters. He squeezes Stiles’ shoulder, and Stiles knows that he means for it to be reassuring, and that makes his own despairing longing that much worse. “If we know what she was thinking at the time, we can figure out what kind of spell she used, and it’ll be a lot easier to break.”

Stiles winces, folding his arms across his chest defensively.

“Can’t we just figure it out the old-fashioned way?” he protests, jerking his head to the pile of papers and arcane tomes that he’d dumped onto Derek’s coffee table. He’s being childish and he knows it, but he can’t shake the memory of the tempestarii’s sneer, the way the hunger in her eyes had turned to mocking rage.

“Of course, we can,” Derek says, shrugging. Then he reaches out and shuts the freezer door, eliminating the vestigial traces of cool air that had been soothing Stiles' burning face. “But you can’t live in my fridge while we do it.”

“Cruel!”

“You don’t pay my power bill.”

Sullen silence reigns for the better part of a minute as Stiles glowers and Derek waits him out impassively, still standing distractingly close. It’s a losing battle, and Stiles knows it, but he’s been avoiding this conversation for so many years that the thought of having it all out in the open now makes him queasy. He grits his teeth and steps back until he can lean against the fridge, trying for casual and missing by several miles.

“She was an asshole,” he mutters, trying to focus on anything other than Derek’s questioning frown and his emphatically bare torso.

Derek is unmoved.

“And?”

Stiles makes the mistake of meeting that wonderful green gaze, and folds like a cheap suit.