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Stiles was a saint, Derek decided.
In the three weeks since Derek arrived, Stiles had not complained about his unplanned houseguests even once. On the contrary, he seemed to welcome the company, poor as Derek thought it must be in the form of a severely sleep-deprived werewolf and his extremely fussy baby. But he supposed that Stiles’ sleep schedule had always been out of whack, even more so after the Nogitsune, so perhaps the wailing baby waking up like clockwork every four hours (an improvement over the previous three) wasn’t such a big deal.
Somehow, Stiles’ work schedule was extremely flexible. He worked odd hours sometimes, late nights or early mornings, and at one point nine days in a row for at least eleven hours each day (Derek pointedly did not comment, though he was highly concerned about this). Thankfully, this stretch was followed by a full week of Stiles doing absolutely nothing except watching movies, playing with Nessa, and hanging out with Derek and Elijah.
Derek was not surprised in the slightest to find that Stiles was absolutely amazing with babies. At least sixty percent of the times that Elijah woke up screaming during nighttime hours, Stiles stumbled sleepily (or not so sleepily) into Derek and Elijah’s room, ready to comfort Elijah while Derek readied a bottle. More than once, he shooed Derek back to bed and simply took Elijah back with him to his makeshift home office, strapping him to his chest with a baby carrier (of which the origins Derek was unsure of) and continuing to work on whatever case he had. Derek protested heavily the first few times, forgetting briefly that arguing with Stiles was like arguing with a brick wall: pointless and irritating. Then, once he stopped fighting it and just used the opportunity to catch an hour or two of sleep extra on those nights, he realized how much better he was starting to feel. So he let Stiles help.
It's not permanent, he kept telling himself sternly the first week. Eventually, when he felt less like he was drowning and more like he was at least doggy-paddling, he and Elijah would pack up and go back to Philadelphia. They’d leave Stiles to his life with the understanding that the door was always open in case Stiles wanted to visit in turn.
It was nice for now though.
Derek hadn’t actually lived with anyone in such a capacity…ever, probably. Isaac had flitted in and out of the loft as he saw fit, as inconsistent with Derek as Derek was with him. (They were doing well now, the two of them; Isaac called at least once a week, always eager to regale Derek with stories of his long-term French girlfriend. He reminded Derek of Scott when he first met Allison, way back when, in a much more grown-up, healthier way.) He and Braeden didn’t actually stay together that long after he left with her, certainly not long enough to put down roots. He spent a year or so with Cora and her pack in Chicago at one point, but for all that he loved his little sister, he figured that they probably wouldn’t have been super close even if they’d been able to actually grow up together. Hell, Derek had worshipped Laura, but their bond was built more on survivor’s guilt and trauma than a really close sibling-ship.
Living with Stiles was both an adventure and, somehow, the most comfortable Derek had ever been. Stiles took up space whether he meant to or not, filling a room with vibrating energy and noise and emotion. He was still familiar enough that Derek wasn’t caught off guard by the subtle changes that were present – and they were. For one, Stiles had better control of his limbs, it seemed. He wasn’t quite as loud, though he still talked just as much, if not more. He still spoke seemingly without thought, but he skillfully avoided any personal landmines of Derek’s even before Derek realized he was approaching them. He stood close, disregarding personal space, but was utterly respectful of Derek’s privacy. He was different than he had been when Derek met him close to eight years ago now, and yet, Derek felt like no time had passed at all between then and now.
And it needed to be said again just how good Stiles was with Elijah. Forget the late-night feedings and diaper changes, the bare necessities of caring for a baby; Stiles enjoyed having a baby in his house. He ignored every parenting book Derek had brought with him (an embarrassing number, truly) in favor of talking to Elijah as though he were just an extremely tiny adult, carrying on one-sided conversations and taking every giggle, squeal, and various other baby noises as intelligent responses. He held Elijah almost as much as Derek did, seemingly unwilling to just let Elijah be for longer than naptime or tummy-time. He (gently, so gently) flew Elijah around the house making airplane noises until Elijah was shrieking with laughter, eyes flashing gold with unrestrained excitement. He let Elijah gnaw on his finger with toothless gums. He read Steinbeck to Elijah instead of nursery rhymes.
If Derek hadn’t already been kind of-just-a-little-bit in love with Stiles already, this would have done the job. Because Derek didn’t come here in search of a second parent for his child. Honestly, even without Elijah, he was pretty sure he would have ended up here sooner than later anyway. His apartment was already half in boxes by the time Elijah came around, the baby werewolf was just the final straw on the strain of the camel’s back. He came here because he was weak, and desperate, and wanted the closest thing to a pack he’d had since his family was brutally murdered.
All Derek had wanted was to exist in Stiles’ presence, pathetic as that sounded. Instead, Stiles seemed like he was doing his best to make Derek forget that life couldn’t always be as good as this. And Derek didn’t know what he was supposed to do with that.
At Stiles’ encouragement, Derek finally alerted the rest of the Beacon Hills pack to Elijah’s existence in the form of a clumsily-written blog post on Stiles’ website, complete with several pictures. Cora simply liked the post, already fully aware of the fact that her brother was a father now. Scott called his phone for the first time in over four years no less than five minutes after the post was published, full of congratulations and excitement. Malia’s voice in the background was less excited about Elijah than curious about his and Stiles’ relationship – and completely unimpressed when Derek informed her that there was not, in fact, a relationship. Isaac berated him for neglecting to mention Elijah during their last several phone calls via voice note, since Derek was still on the phone with Scott when Isaac called and couldn’t figure out how to merge the calls. Liam, Mason, and Corey all wanted to know when they would be allowed to come meet the baby. Even Jackson and Ethan responded in the form of a care package with a wedding invitation attached, addressed to both him and Stiles and no plus-ones included.
Derek was overwhelmed in the best way by the support, but he couldn’t help but take note of Lydia’s lack of response. Stiles hadn’t gone into much more detail about their breakup, but Derek did know that she kept up with the blog. He worried over it for days, and wasn’t even sure why. It wasn’t like he and Stiles were together; this was a temporary arrangement (though it felt less and less temporary with every passing day), and besides, he and Stiles weren’t a thing (even if Derek wanted to be). It wasn’t like Derek had ever been close with Lydia either. Protected her, sure. Relied on her and trusted her (eventually), yes. But he couldn’t recall a single conversation they’d had just the two of them, unless the obligatory yearly ‘happy birthday’ texts they exchanged counted. So why was he so anxious over her? She and Stiles weren’t together, and he and Stiles weren’t a thing, and he should not be worried about hurting her feelings.
But he was.
Finally, two weeks after the blog post and close to a month after he’d arrived in D.C., Derek received an email. It was concise and to-the-point, including a congratulations, a comment on how Elijah looked like Derek, a list of recommendations for werewolf-friendly daycares in the D.C. area (and how she found those, Derek would never know), and an offer to track down Elijah’s mom and force her to pay up. The final two sentences were an assurance that, if Derek was serious about Stiles, then Lydia had no ill will towards Derek if he wanted to pursue it – in her words, they both deserved, more than anything, to be happy. But if Derek was not serious, then he needed to back off and leave Stiles alone, because Stiles did not need to have his heart broken again. Signed With Love, Lydia, Derek had no doubt that she meant every word, and it settled the guilt he had been holding onto.
It did make him think that, perhaps, it was time to leave. He didn’t want to; if Derek had his way, Stiles would love him back, or at least be open to the possibility. But for all that Derek had grown as a person and let go of his guilt surrounding his family, he was still afraid of being a burden. Stiles showed no sign of resentment for Derek crash-landing back into his life and essentially forcing him to become a pseudo-parent, but it was better to go before there was time for that resentment to form. Besides, Derek felt better equipped now. Stiles’ help had given him enough breathing room to re-orient himself and really accept his new reality as a father. Derek was beyond grateful, but he couldn’t impose anymore.
Stiles, naturally, thought this was incredibly stupid.
“You know I’m not asking you to leave, right?” he questioned indignantly, spoon of mashed potatoes hovering, forgotten, between his plate and his mouth. “Like, have I given any indication that I want you to get out? Truly, because if so, I need to know so I can stop doing it.”
“No, of course not,” Derek said hastily, abandoning his own spoonful of chili (bless Stiles for his somewhat unconventional food combinations that always turned out to be delicious). “I just – it’s time, you know? I really, really appreciate all your help, really, I don’t know how I would have gotten through this first stage without you. But I’ve taken up enough of your time and space.”
Stiles stared at him, clearly unimpressed. “So that’s what this is about.”
Derek swallowed, feeling caught out. “What do you mean?”
Stiles rolled his eyes, finally putting down his spoon and leveling Derek with a stern look that was very reminiscent of his father (and Derek’s, actually, which didn’t hurt so much as surprise him). “You’re doing your old self-sacrificial schtick where you back off or push people away because you feel like you’re burdening them, right? You think that if you leave now, even though I don’t want you to, it’ll stop me from eventually wanting you to. Am I right, or am I right?”
“I—it’s—I don’t do that,” Derek said weakly.
“What-the fuck-ever dude, yes you do. You pushed Isaac away when the Alpha Pack was hanging around to ‘protect him,’ even though that was basically useless because they already knew he was your beta and associated him with you. You pulled away from me and Scott after the sacrifice with the Nemeton, even though we never asked you to. You let Cora go without a fight, which to be fair wasn’t a bad idea because you’re both doing pretty good now, but at the time it was because you thought you were a sorry excuse for a brother, right? And now you’re trying to leave again, even though I didn’t ask you to.”
And, well, Derek did not have a good argument. “Don’t call me dude,” he muttered.
“Do you want to leave?” Stiles asked bluntly.
Derek used to be a good liar, if only by omission. He’d lied to Paige about what he was, and she got killed for it. He’d lied to his family about Kate, and they got killed for it. He lied to Erica and Boyd about he danger he was putting them in by becoming werewolves, and they got killed for it too. But for the life of him, he couldn’t remember a time where he had successfully lied to Stiles. He knew that if he tried now, Stiles would call his bullshit immediately, rather like he already had. “No,” he mumbled, fixing his gaze on a scratch in the table that Elijah had put there with a tiny claw a few days ago.
“Do you think I want you to leave?”
Truthfully, no, Derek didn’t. He didn’t know what Stiles had been like before he’d arrived with Elijah, but the Stiles he’d been living with for the past month or so was happier than any other version of Stiles he’d ever met. That didn’t mean it was because of Derek though, or that it wouldn’t change sooner or later. So Derek pointedly didn’t answer, glaring at the scratch until Elijah, sitting in his hi-chair and fiddling with a rattle, began to sniffle tellingly, picking up on his father’s discomfort.
“God, you’re stupid,” Stiles said under his breath. “Look, Derek, if you really want to go, I’m not going to stop you. The door is always open, your phone calls will never not go through. But you – I want you to stay. I get it if living with me full-time is too much, trust me, and if you want to get your own place in the area that’s fine, but I like having you here. You and Eli are not burdening me in any way, shape, or form. In fact, I didn’t realize how lonely I felt until you showed up. So you can go, but don’t pretend you’re doing it on my account.”
Well, if Derek had been looking for confirmation that Stiles, at the very least, liked having Derek around, he had it. Explicit and blunt, everything Stiles had always been. So comforting, so familiar, that it made Derek’s chest hurt. He found himself fighting the urge to wrap Stiles up and bury his face in his neck. Thankfully, the tiny dining table was between them at the moment and Nessa was lying on his feet, solid and heavy. “I still have some stuff in Philly,” he said cautiously.
Interestingly it was this that made Stiles flush a little bit. “Yeah, about that,” he said awkwardly, reaching up to scratch the back of his neck. “I, uh, may have taken the liberty of calling your landlord and setting up an appointment with a moving company to bring your stuff here. It’s possibly, maybe, sitting in a storage unit nearby.”
God, Derek loved Stiles more than he knew what to do with. “A little presumptuous, don’t you think?” he teased, quirking an eyebrow experimentally with a vague memory of the way Stiles’ heartbeat would ratchet up way back when anytime he did that.
Stiles did not disappoint; his pulse ticked up and he went even redder. “Your lease was going to end soon anyway,” he defended himself. “And you were already here, so…”
Derek wanted to press further, see how flustered Stiles could become, but he settled for cleaning up their dishes when they finished dinner and, after a beat of hesitation, wrapping a hand around the back of Stiles’ neck and pressing their foreheads together. Not so platonic of him perhaps, but Stiles just squeezed Derek’s hip affectionately before attending to a sleepy Elijah.
***
So Derek and Elijah stayed in D.C. and, somehow, it was even better than before. For one thing, Derek was no longer pretending that he had any intention of leaving. Any guilt he might have held onto was quickly beaten to a pulp and thrown out with the next trash pickup. For another, Stiles began making room for some of Derek’s things, starting with an old bookcase that Derek found at a flea market a couple years ago and filling it with a mix of their accumulated books from their time apart.
“We can just put mine there,” Derek said when he saw that Stiles had hauled it in from the storage unit and set it up in the hallway. Rather than organize in the living room and use the coffee table for space like a normal person, Stiles had plopped himself right down on the floor, surrounding himself with books and completely blocking off the way to the bathroom in the process. He wouldn’t have even realized that Stiles had emptied his own bookshelf in the living room, except that Derek knew for a fact that he had never had a physical copy of the Argents’ beastiary before, nor Grapes of Wrath.
“We could,” Stiles said distractedly, looking down at the second Hunger Games book in one hand and a book on Roman history in the other, “but our tastes actually overlap quite a bit, at least by broad genre. I’m coming up with a system.”
“Is the system chaos?” Derek asked, watching Stiles line up the entire Redwall series on the bottom shelf (Derek’s, bought pre-Elijah for nostalgia purposes) and fit in a biography of Hilary Duff in the final remaining space. Surely, there was not even a hint of relation there.
“Go take Nessa for a walk,” Stiles commanded, “and stop judging my methods.”
When Derek got back from a very long walk with Nessa (he found that he had more time than Stiles did to truly burn her energy out, so he had no issues spending two or three hours out with her in the evenings), both shelves were filled again with no remote degree of separation between Derek and Stiles’ books, nor any sort of true organization system that Derek could parse. He highly suspected that Stiles was just trying to make it more difficult for Derek to leave later by mixing their belongings together until they were indistinguishable – which was entirely unnecessary – but Derek just smiled and went to give Elijah a bath.
The bed in the guest room-become-Derek’s bedroom was replaced next by Derek’s own, done in an afternoon when Derek went out to survey a couple of shop spaces for lease; he wasn’t certain yet what sort of business he wanted to open up, but the idea of a bookstore appealed. Something supernaturally-friendly, of course, maybe even twenty-four hour if he could swing it. When he got home and went to flop down on the slightly stiff mattress he had been dealing with for three months now, he was caught off guard by how comfortable it was now – and familiar. When he sat up and took a closer look, he saw that his bedframe was there too, plus his singular bedside table and chest of drawers.
“Where did the other furniture go?” he called out, knowing Stiles was working in his home office.
“Storage unit,” Stiles called back. There was a scape of a chair and footsteps, and then Stiles leaning against the doorframe with Elijah strapped to his chest. “I know you’ve been sucking it up, but that mattress sucked, I knew it when I bought it. You’re just lucky I didn’t bring my bed in here and steal yours because, holy shit dude, your mattress is awesome. I totally did not take a nap in here earlier, just so you know.”
He totally did; Stiles’ scent was all over the comforter. Derek wasn’t upset about it. “May have been a good trade, considering you barely let me help pay rent,” he said casually, trying not to wonder how long it would have taken for Stiles’ bed to lose his scent and take on Derek’s.
Stiles rolled his eyes. “We’ve been over this dude, I don’t want your money.”
“And I told you, dude, it’s the bare minimum requirement of having a roommate,” Derek said, slightly mocking but smiling a little at the sight of Elijah gnawing on a teething ring. “Especially when you didn’t actually ask for said roommate.”
Stiles wrinkled his nose. “You should never use that word again.”
“Well, maybe I’ve been spending too much time with you.”
“No such thing,” Stiles countered, waving a casual hand. It didn’t hide the sudden skip in his heartbeat and slight flush of his cheeks. Once again, Derek was left wondering what that meant. He wondered when Stiles had learned how to better mask his own chemo signals, and wished he hadn’t; it had been a lot easier to read Stiles when he could rely on his emotional state to help.
He kind of wanted to ask, but if there was one thing Stiles had always been good at, it was deflection. Stiles was excellent at changing the subject in such a way that it seemed like the other person’s idea, particularly when approaching sensitive subjects. There was a reason why it took them so long to figure out that Stiles was the Nogitsune so many years before, and it wasn’t because they weren’t paying attention.
Derek remembered spending more than a few nights helping track down a sleepwalking Stiles before any of them realized what it meant; him, Scott, and Allison all had night terrors, but they all just figured that Stiles’ were manifesting differently for some reason. Any attempt to talk about it was waved away. “I’m okay, I just need to lay off the Adderall.” “I mean, I literally died, no one’s going to be totally normal after that.” “Dude, don’t worry yourself over this, you’ve got bigger problems than me.”
That last one had actually offended Derek when he’d heard it; other excuses were always said in front of someone else, whether by day or in the dead of night when Derek had Isaac, ever concerned over the family he’d made for himself, with him. But Derek had found Stiles by himself one night, not long before the Nogitsune took over completely. The sheriff had called Derek himself that time, rather than Scott relaying the message like normal. On a strange instinct that, even now, Derek still didn’t understand, he’d gone first to the old husk of a house, just barely standing any longer. Stiles had been standing eerily still just in front of the staircase, gazing up it with blank eyes. Derek, despite everything in him telling him it was a bad idea, came around in front of Stiles before laying a hand on his shoulder to shake him out of it, thinking that being met by a familiar face rather than empty space and an invisible touch would be better. But Stiles’ fist had come up immediately, colliding with Derek’s nose.
Then, the screaming started.
It took longer than it ever had that night for Derek to calm Stiles down. Blood streamed from his nose, which had broken with a nauseating crunch, but Derek barely noticed as he wrestled Stiles down, capturing his flailing fists on the way. Stiles thrashed desperately, trying to get away and wailing all the while, until Derek was sitting on the floor with Stiles between his legs, back to chest, rocking them back and forth and singing some old, half-remembered lullaby in Stiles’ ear. By the time Stiles went quiet and still, there were tearstains on both their cheeks, and Derek held onto him for longer than what might have been considered appropriate. He hadn’t been sure back then who it was more comforting for, him or Stiles.
Derek, for the first time, asked Stiles what it was he had seen. What was torturing Stiles so badly that he didn’t even recognize his own pack (because, at that point, Derek knew in his heart that Stiles was part of his pack, and he was part of Stiles’, humanity be damned). What led Stiles to the old Hale house, out of anywhere else he could have possibly gone. And Stiles lied, like always, saying he didn’t remember. His heartbeat stuttered, his scent went even more sour, and he began to pull away. Without thinking, Derek tightened their arms over Stiles’ chest, sliding his hands from Stiles’ wrists to interlock their fingers. “Just tell me,” he’d said, practically begged, for reasons he didn’t want to examine. Maybe he just wanted Stiles to actually talk to someone about this; maybe he wanted to be the one to take Stiles’ pain away.
And Stiles said: “Dude, don’t worry yourself over this, you’ve got bigger problems than me.” The words were laced with no small amount of bitter regret. Paired with the way that Stiles firmly shoved his way out of Derek’s arms, it stung. Badly.
He should have been more insistent, Derek always thought later. Even now, after years and years of other supernatural dangers and then just life, Derek thought about that night and wondered if maybe the Nogitsune wouldn’t have taken such a firm hold if only…what, exactly? Derek had been better? A better friend, a better pack? Less broken, more trustworthy? If Stiles had actually known how much Derek cared, would it have made a difference?
He didn’t know. He probably never would.
He realized that he’d been staring at Stiles for maybe a beat too long, trying to gauge what Stiles was thinking. A slow smile spread over Stiles’ face, still in the doorway. “You’re doing that wolfy thing that Scott and Liam used to do all the time,” he said, smile turning in to a smirk. “Trying to figure out what I’m feeling without asking me.”
“I am not,” Derek lied. Badly, based on the shit-eating look on Stiles’ face.
“You do that a lot,” Stiles said casually. Elijah babbled a little and Stiles automatically gave him a finger to hold onto. The baby, naturally, started gumming on that instead of the teething ring, but Stiles didn’t seem to mind. “You get frustrated when you realize you can’t do it anymore too. Have to actually use your words, big guy.”
Derek shrugged, ducking his head; he felt a little embarrassed at being called out, but Stiles was right, and he supposed that wasn’t entirely fair of him. “It’s instinct for me,” he said quietly. “I do it with everyone, for the most part. Always have. Scott and Liam probably just learned mostly out of necessity for you. You talk a lot, but it’s not always easy to follow. You’re like…a puzzle with some of the pieces missing. The chemo signals were a really good way to fill in the gaps, for the most part. Without those…I don’t know. Maybe I miss it a little, knowing how you’re feeling without having to reach too hard for it.”
“You can just ask,” Stiles teased. He finally moved out of the doorway and plopped down on the bed in front of Derek. Elijah reached his chubby fists out, making grabby hands at his father. With a warm feeling, Derek unstrapped the baby himself, ignoring the skip of his own heartbeat when his fingers brushed Stiles’ chest through his shirt. Stiles, for his part, went a little pink in the face.
“I could,” Derek acquiesced once he had Elijah securely in his own lap, teething ring back in his mouth, “but would you tell me the truth?”
He wondered if Stiles was thinking back on that night too when Stiles answered, “I’d try to.” He shuffled forward a little bit, bringing up his other leg and sitting cross-legged on the bed so that their knees touched. Derek wondered absently if Stiles even realized he’d done it. “I think I’ve always tried being more honest with you, especially after learning what you went through with Paige and Kate. After what Miss Blake—Jennifer—did. Not because of, like, pity or anything, just…I don’t know, I figured trust was earned, you know? And God knows Scott and I gave you no reason to trust us at first, and someone had to take that first step, so…I tried. I don’t know if I always succeeded.”
“You were easier to trust than the others,” Derek admitted, easier than he would have if he’d been asked years ago. “At least I knew when you were out for my head on a stick. You didn’t do that back-and-forth bullshit Scott did when we all met each other.”
“The chemo signals,” and it sounded like a subject change, to get away from uncomfortable topics, but Derek knew it wasn’t, “I learned how to mask them effectively for this job. Or, that’s what I told Scott. Really, I was working on it before we’d even graduated high school, not too long before the Wild Hunt took me. Between him and Malia and Liam, I felt like I had no privacy. It’s more of a habit now than anything, not something I necessarily do on purpose anymore. It’s not because I don’t want you to know what I’m feeling; I hope you know that.”
Derek hadn’t known that, but he didn’t tell Stiles that. Instead he said, “It’d be okay if you didn’t. You’re right, it is essentially an invasion of privacy. It’s just…hard to see it that way when it’s something you learn to do as a part of who you are.”
Stiles shot him a look like he knew what Derek wasn’t saying, but he let it go. “I wouldn’t mind,” he said quietly, dropping his gaze to the thread he was fiddling with on the comforter. “The lines for us are probably blurred beyond belief at this point anyway, right?”
What lines? Derek wanted to ask. He wanted to know if Stiles meant it how it sounded, if Stiles’ physical reactions were an indication of feelings that went deeper than friendship and co-parenting. He wanted to know if Stiles hovering close enough to touch the majority of the time meant what Derek wanted it to mean, if the easy affection they’d developed over the last couple of months filled the empty space in Stiles’ chest the way it did Derek’s. He wanted to know what Stiles would do if Derek crowded closer, fell headlong into him and erased the line entirely.
Derek didn’t ask. Because sometimes he caught Stiles looking at him contemplatively, or smiling softly in his direction, or doing something that more firmly entrenched Derek in his life, in his home. But there were times when Stiles seemed withdrawn, throwing himself into work with an intensity that rivaled his determination in high school to protect Beacon Hills, even though it was never his responsibility to do so, and these times usually followed some sort of communication from Lydia, whether it be a text or call or email, whether just a few words were exchanged or enough to fill several pages or hours. Stiles didn’t talk about her, didn’t talk about the relationship they’d shared, or how they’d gotten there, or how they’d fallen apart, other than what he’d told Derek that very first night. Because Stiles had said that he’d let Lydia go for her own good, but sometimes Derek wondered how much of it had truly been Stiles, and how much of it had been Lydia herself.
Derek wanted, but he couldn’t bring himself to ruin this thing they were building. Not when he felt the most at home he’d ever felt in his life, even including his childhood with his family.
“You can nap in here whenever you want,” he said instead. “I don’t mind.”
He didn’t need chemo signals to know that it was the right thing to say when Stiles’ face split into a wide grin. Derek breathed in, let the firm press of Stiles’ forehead to his own settle in his chest, and forced himself to be content with what he had. It was enough.
It was enough.