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“So,” the Sheriff said.
“So,” Stiles echoed.
His dad raised an unamused eyebrow. “When I said you could have some friends over for Christmas this year, I meant your college friends. The nice, normal, human people you’re supposed to be meeting and networking and not killing things with.”
“What kind of holiday party would it be if we didn’t get to kill anything, Dad?”
“Less Red Wedding, more White Christmas?”
“Bo-ring. Hey, tinsel! We need tinsel, right? And mistletoe!”
“Aren’t some of your friends…” the Sheriff looked around the store carefully and coughed, “allergic to mistletoe?”
“Allergic. Smooth, Dad. And yes.”
“So why—“
“I’m just going to hang it up, not grind it into the punch bowl, Dad.”
“Is there someone you’re—“
“No! No, it’s just—it’s a thing people do. It’s festive. Decorative. It’ll be nice.”
“Nice,” the Sheriff said doubtfully, “is probably not going to be a good word to describe this party.”
Twenty minutes before the advertised start of the party, Allison and her dad showed up, one holding a plate of cookies and the other wearing a flamingly red Santa hat. Chris Argent bore a long-suffering look upon his face that said either “I lost a bet,” “I can’t say no to my daughter,”or both. Stiles was guessing both.
“Hey, guys, you’re early!” Stiles said. “But come on in, make yourselves comfortable.”
“My dad wanted to scope the place out,” Allison said with a glare pointed in her father’s direction. “Even though he knows we’re being completely open and honest with our parents about everything that’s going on now.”
“Right,” Stiles said, willing himself to look trustworthy and truthful. “Totally open and honest.”
Chris grunted, and Stiles resolved to go find a better hiding place for the wraith currently occupying his closet at the first available opportunity.
Twenty minutes into the party, Stiles was already checking things off his list of can go wrongs and amending them to have gone wrongs.
“Jesus, Isaac, my dad’s the sheriff! You can’t just spike the eggnog for a bunch of underage college students at the sheriff’s house.”
“Except I already did,” he said unrepentantly. “But, c’mon, you can hardly taste the rum. It just adds a little extra kick. Your dad won’t even notice.”
“Yeah, OK, whatev—“ Stiles spit out the sip he’d just taken. “That’s, like, 90-proof eggnog, Isaac! And people are pouring whole cups of it!”
“Relax, Stiles, it’ll be fine,” Isaac said, taking a gulp. “And it’s delicious! Drink more!”
“Stiles!” came his father’s voice from across the room.
“Well,” Isaac acknowledged, “maybe it’s a little strong.”
Twenty minutes after the next-to-last party guest had arrived (Deaton, uninvited, and beaming cherubically as if that didn’t matter at all), the doorbell rang. Stiles looked around, confused. “Wait, who are we missing? Danny couldn’t make it because he was visiting family in Hawaii, so—“
“You,” Stiles’ dad grunted as he opened the door, and oh, now Stiles remembered who was missing.
Derek stood awkwardly in the doorframe, holding a package that had obviously been wrapped by someone paid ten dollars an hour to do so.
“Why is there mistletoe?” Derek asked, looking up suspiciously.
The Sheriff stepped back quickly, hands held up in demurral.
“It’s festive!” Stiles said. “Traditional. Nice.”
“Poisonous.”
“We do have a nice pine wreath on the door, if that’s more to your taste.”
“I only eat fir,” Derek said, deadpan.
“Too bad,” Stiles said, “fresh out. Here, have something actually intended for human and/or werewolf consumption, like these delicious pigs-in-blankets. I thought you guys would appreciate them, especially.”
Derek frowned, but he took the platter from Stiles and started eating anyway.
“I meant just take one, but hey, that works, too.”
“What? No it doesn’t,” Scott protested. “My mom made those, with the extra butter and the super-secret dash of mayonnaise, and I need them.”
Melissa patted him on the shoulder. “I’ll make you more, honey.”
Twenty minutes after the last of the eggnog was gone and a pitcher of equally potent cider had mysteriously replaced it, Stiles began to question the accepted truth that werewolves couldn’t get drunk.
“Next year, how about you bring some normal friends?” his dad suggested, wincing at the sound of something unidentifiable breaking in the kitchen.
“Uh, sure,” Stiles said. “Right after I make some of those. But then where would all of my weird, awkward, not-normal friends go?”
“Speak for yourself, Stilinski. Or, wait, you already were,” Jackson butted in snidely.
“What are you even doing here?” Stiles asked. “Didn’t you move to London so you could be even more of a cliché?”
“We’re visiting my grandparents,” Jackson replied, almost as if embarrassed to have crossed the ocean for such a commonplace reason. “But they’re asleep already, so Lydia texted me I should come here. So I did, against my better judgment.”
“It’s barely nine o’clock,” Stiles said skeptically.
“Wheel of Fortune was over.” Jackson shrugged.
“I don’t remember the last time I was in bed by nine,” the Sheriff sighed enviously.
Stiles narrowed his eyes. “This is really just a plot to kill us all when we fall asleep, isn’t it?”
“No, Stiles,” Jackson sighed, rolling his eyes. “It’s really not. It’s just—I should go.”
“No,” Lydia said forcefully, grabbing his arm. “I haven’t seen you in forever, they haven’t seen you in forever—“
“And wasn’t that nice?” Stiles asked the ceiling. “So nice.”
“—And so you should stay and be social,” Lydia finished, somehow managing to glare at both Stiles and Jackson at the same time.
Stiles looked around for an excuse to extract himself from this situation, because although he was (mostly) over Lydia and (mostly) mature enough to ignore Jackson, that didn’t mean he wanted to deal with both of them at once. And, look, over by the punch bowl—a grumpy werewolf, looking ill-at-ease and in need of a host to come by and make him feel more comfortable.
“Gotta get back to my hosting duties!” Stiles said brightly.
Lydia snorted, but Stiles was already on his way across the room.
“So, Derek,” he said, sidling up. “Having fun?”
“No.”
“I have it on good authority that this is an awesome party, thrown by a really awesome guy, so I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t appreciate it.”
“Too much awesome,” Derek said flatly. “It’s overwhelming.”
Stiles grinned. “Then let me show you to the arts-and-crafts section of this shindig, which Mrs. McCall insisted we should have, and then you can be underwhelmed, and it will all balance out.”
Somewhat surprisingly, Derek let himself be led.
More surprisingly, he devoted himself to the task of bending pipe cleaners to his will with a concentration Stiles had only seen him apply to death threats and the carrying out thereof.
Derek was also surprisingly good with his hands. Or, maybe not surprisingly—now that Stiles looked more closely, they were really nice hands. Strong. Capable. The kind that could give a good massage, or hand job, or….holy shit, this was a dangerous line of thought. College was supposed to have helped Stiles get over this particular preoccupation. But…nope. Still absurdly attracted to the sourwolf.
Derek glared up at him. “Can I help you with something?”
You can bend me like a pipe cleaner, Stiles thought, but he was proud of himself for holding that thought back. “Err, no. Not at all. You just go on...making your special snowflake.”
Mrs. McCall popped her head in the room, raised an eyebrow and said, “I didn’t actually expect any of you kids to do the craft, you know.”
Derek frowned at his newly-crafted ornament.
“But it’s lovely,” she covered quickly. “Hey, you should hang it on the tree!” And before he could protest, she swept it off the table and out into the living room.
“Don’t glare at me,” Stiles said. “I in no way put her up to that.” And then he hurried out to guard the tree before Derek could snatch the ornament back.
“You were talking to Derek for a while,” Scott said suspiciously when they caught up later.
“Uh, yeah,” Stiles said. “Being friendly. Since we’re friends with him now, and everything. I think.”
Scott’s suspicion didn’t seem to be fading. “Are we?”
“Sure,” Stiles said. “He’s here, isn’t he?”
“So is Jackson.”
Stiles had nothing to say to that.
“Not for long, losers,” Jackson said. “This is the lamest party ever.”
“Maybe you guys could play a game,” the Sheriff suggested.
Stiles quickly crossed Truth or Dare, Spin the Bottle, and Red Rover off the list of games-not-likely-to-end-in-disaster. Video games would leave a lot of people watching, not playing. Pin-the-tail-on-the-werewolf was likely to alienate certain guests.
“A board game, son,” his dad sighed, interrupting Stiles’ admittedly dangerous line of thought. “Check the hall closet. Or—some might be under your bed, from when we cleaned.” So Stiles dashed up to his room to try to find Cranium—he knew he had it; it would be perfect. Maybe the tantalizing lure of further exercising his inner Creative Cat would even drag Derek out of whatever hiding place he’d found this time.
Except…Derek was in Stiles’ room. And appeared to be…sniffing his pillow, of all things.
“I was tired,” Derek said, a little too quickly. “Your party was boring. So I thought I’d take a nap.”
“Who are you, Jackson? For the last time, my party is not boring. And—a nap that involved you rolling around with my pillow like it’s wolf-nip?”
“It’s fluffy,” Derek said defensively, as if that totally justified it.
“Oh, it definitely is. But admit it, you really like it because it smells like me, and I’m awesome.”
Derek frowned. “No.”
“Admit it.” Stiles jumped on the bed next to Derek and leaned in to nuzzle his cheek against the pillow—the one that Derek was still holding. Dear god, what was he doing and where did his survival instinct go?
Derek looked at Stiles like he was insane, which was a definite possibility at this point.
“Or—never mind!” Stiles said. “Ignore me! I’m just here to grab a game, and I’ll leave you alone to your nap. Unless, uh, you want to play, which you’re welcome to. If you want.”
The wraith in the closet let out a low moan, followed by some rattling of hangers.
Derek followed Stiles downstairs.
The game involved no bloodshed, no tears, and no drop-ins from hunters, so Stiles counted that as a win. Especially as it concluded a party that featured none of those things, and he’d had disaster plans for all those contingencies.
Stiles walked with Derek to the door, said, “Hey, man, thanks for coming,” and meant it.
“Thanks for inviting me,” Derek said. But then he didn’t leave.
Stiles waited for the next thing. The oh, hey, my sketchy industrial loft’s power is out and I need a place to stay, or the Cora is coming to town, so make sure you give her a call, or the I heard about a new supernatural creature, so watch out for that. But what Derek asked was, “Is it OK if I call you?”
“You call me all the time, dude,” Stiles said, because it was true. He got almost as many texts from Derek as from Scott these days, everything from Who do I contact about petitioning for receivership of an abandoned property? to If you get hit with fairy dust, what should you do? Stiles was a way more thorough resource than ChaCha.
“Right. OK, then. Do you want to get coffee some time? While you’re in town. Or if I came to visit. Or.”
“Uh, yeah. Sure. Let’s do that.” Stiles wasn’t sure where this was coming from, or what favor request was on the other end of it, but he was always up for coffee. “Merry Christmas!”
“Yeah, you too,” Derek said, and then he finally left.
“Weird,” Stiles said as he headed back to kick out the lingering party guests. But that was Derek for you.
Isaac and Scott romped by, in were-form, with Allison squealing delightedly in front of them, and Stiles sighed and mentally deducted damages from his next paycheck. Werewolves couldn’t get drunk, his ass.
“Wrap it up, folks!” he said. “Go home, go to sleep, let Santa creep down your nonexistent chimneys and deliver the presents you don’t deserve!”
“Our house is never going to be the same again,” the Sheriff said with a sigh as the last of the guests tumbled out.
“Think positively, Dad,” Stiles said. “Maybe elves will come in the middle of the night and clean.”
“If that’s what you’re calling Derek now, I don’t even want to know,” his dad said wearily.
Stiles squawked in protest, but his dad was already on his way up to bed. Stiles’ Derek-dreams that night, of a grumpy werewolf with pointy ears wearing sinful green tights, weren’t even his strangest to date, though.
Things came up (and out of the ground, and through the rows of rows of beets in Mrs. Peterson’s garden), and so they never did get around to getting coffee before Stiles had to head back to Stanford, so Stiles tucked it away as one of those things that wasn’t meant to be, like a second season of Firefly, or like Derek getting feeling in his limbs back after the kanima venom and deciding to wrap them around Stiles and declare that they should make out.
But a few weeks into the new semester, Stiles got a text from Derek that said “Coffee?” and he replied “Anytime,” and Derek’s response was, “How about right now?” Stiles thought there was a country song that went like that, which was sort of alarming, because a) he tried to avoid listening to country music, and b) a country song couldn’t help but end badly, and Stiles was sort of hoping that this would finally work out.
“They don’t have the gingerbread lattes anymore,” he warned Derek as he walked up to him at the coffeeshop. “Which is what happens when you wait too long to follow through.”
Derek grimaced, and shoved a present at him, then began focusing intensely on the menu board.
“Dude, you already gave me a present,” Stiles said. “I know, because those candies were delicious, and I had to hide them in a super-secret box in my suitcase so my dad wouldn’t steal them all.”
“That was for both of you,” Derek said, and Stiles felt only a little bad, because there hadn’t been a gift tag, and it had been handed directly to him, ergo, food for him. “This is for you.”
Stiles opened it to find a Christmas ornament of Santa’s Magic Storybook. “Oh, wow,” he said finally. “This is just what I’ve always wanted. If only I’d gotten it in time to put it on the Christmas tree.” He held it out away from himself somewhat delicately.
Derek appeared to be attempting to carve his response into the menu with the force of his stare.
“But, no, really, thanks. Even if I’m pretty sure you got this for, like, 75% off at the after-Christmas sale just so you’d have something to hold in your hands while you waited for me.”
The silence coming from Derek made Stiles gleefully sure of his reasoning.
“OK, let me order, and then you can spill about your ulterior motive.”
“No, I don’t—“
“Excuses come after the coffee.”
And so, once Stiles had his latte in hand and had shoved another in Derek’s, he looked to Derek expectantly. “Well?”
“We’ve, you know.”
Stiles waited, but Derek apparently assumed that he did, in fact, know enough to finish the sentence on his own. Which, not really. “We’ve been through a lot together,” Stiles said noncommittally.
“Yes,” Derek said, “and.”
“And we’ve matured into a meaningful friendship, wherein we can go out for coffee and hang out even when there’s not a monster-of-the-week to tackle.”
“Right, but also.”
“Even those married couples that finish each other’s sentences give each other more to go on than this, dude. Just say what you want to.”
“IthinkIwanttodateyou.”
OK, so at this point Stiles might’ve been able to fill in that blank on his own, but it was still supremely satisfying to hear, because he’d only been waiting, oh, years for it. “Then go ahead and do it.”
“What?”
“Trust me, you’re not gonna get any objections from me. I’ve been throwing myself at you since—at least since that time after the rugaru senior year.”
Derek’s mind seemed blown. Since Derek was more or less accustomed to evil villainesses throwing themselves at him, Stiles could sort of understand that this might be challenging. Except Stiles was obviously a sure thing.
“You’re supposed to be able to tell these things, right? Sniff out arousal, sense discomfort, telepathically draw deeply personal thoughts from one’s mind?”
“The telepathy only works after we’ve blood-bonded,” Derek said seriously. “Also, sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between attraction and adrenaline.”
Stiles blinked. “Blood—oh, hey, sarcasm. You’d think I’d be able to recognize it immediately, being a master of it myself and all. But—that was sarcasm, right? Until I’m acclimated, you should maybe separate sarcastic and serious sentences a little more clearly.”
It occurred to Stiles that there were other things that it was probably more important to say, like Yes, God yes, throw me down and let’s get busy already. But from the slow smirk that was replacing Derek’s uncertainty, Stiles thought Derek might be getting that message anyway.
“Sarcastic:” Derek said, “you’re so eloquent when you’re nervous. Serious: It’s not turning me off.”
“Alrighty, then,” Stiles said. “Awesome. Be prepared to be referred to as my Hot New Werewolf Boyfriend.”
“That’s—“
“Without the werewolf part in front of uninitiated parties, don’t worry.”
Derek’s mouth quirked ever-so-slightly more upward.
“And just so you know,” Stiles said, “I liked your snowflake best. Your crafting skills put Hallmark to shame.”
And then Derek burst into a full-blown smile, and Stiles decided calm and casual was overrated, and just threw himself at the man. There was only so much he could take, and a smiling Derek wasn’t one of them.
“Merry Christmas, again,” Stiles said into Derek’s ear. And then he caught Derek’s reply with his mouth. It tasted a little like a latte, and a lot like perfect (even without the gingerbread).