Work Text:
They have a talk about it—Stiles’ idea, of course—when the accidental touching stops being accidental, and when they start making excuses to be alone together. Derek stands firm. He will not do one damn thing with Stiles until he’s eighteen, no matter how bad the sexual tension gets, no matter how hard it is to keep their hands off each other. They need to get this thing under control, not get carried away, not let it make them do something that can’t be undone.
Stiles shuffles through a range of emotions, right there in front of him, that Derek realizes halfway through is pretty similar to the infamous stages of grief in the pamphlet the shrink gave him after his family died.
Denial: “Oh, come on! You cannot be serious!”
Anger: “You’re being an asshole.”
Bargaining: “I’m not asking you to be my boyfriend or anything—I just want to do stuff. Naked stuff.”
Depression: “This sucks.”
And finally, acceptance: “Okay, fine, I get it. But I’m putting my birthday in your calendar right now and you had better be ready.”
Derek silently hands over his phone, and Stiles pokes at it for a suspiciously long time, so Derek’s not even sure what all he’s doing to it. Probably changing all his ringtones and contact names, but Derek lets him do it, doesn’t try to snatch it away from him. If he moves right now, his hands might land on Stiles instead of his phone.
They don’t touch each other when Stiles leaves, but they make a little too much eye contact, staring at each other as Stiles’ fingers clutch the edge of the door and his cheeks slowly turn red, and Derek’s kitchen reeks like lust for hours afterwards.
~*~
Stiles turns seventeen a few weeks later, and his friends have a cake-and-presents party for him, at Derek’s new house. Only one more year, Derek thinks. They can both wait a year.
At the end of the night, everyone leaves in a noisy, sugar-fueled rush, and Derek is futilely trying to cover the remains of the cake with a piece of cling wrap that keeps sticking to itself when his front door opens and Stiles walks back in. Derek thinks they’re going to have to have another talk, but instead of making a pass at him, Stiles hands him a present, wrapped in obnoxiously cheery paper.
“Happy my birthday,” Stiles says, grinning.
“That’s not how it works,” Derek says, unable to fully stifle the smile as he turns the present over in his hands. It’s thin and flat, not heavy. It smells like grade school.
When he unwraps it, it’s a chalkboard, the toy kind a kid would use to play school, on which Stiles has painstakingly drawn dozens and dozens of little lines in groups of…seven? Stiles watches, smirking like the clever thing he is, as Derek stares at it, finally gets it, and then carefully erases one of the 365 boldly drawn chalk lines with the tip of his finger.
~*~
The problem is, during that year Stiles keeps being smart and brave, and Scott keeps alternating between throwing in with Derek’s pack and telling them to go fuck themselves, so Stiles is the one Derek goes to more than he probably should. Not exactly making excuses to see him, but not trying overly much to find another solution, either. He tries not to be too hard on himself for it, especially when he sees the way Stiles smiles whenever he lays eyes on Derek. This is all they have, for now.
The problem is, during that year, they spend a lot of time together, working on problems, and then sometimes just hanging out in the same room working on separate problems. The attraction between them doesn’t abate at all, but they get better at dealing with it. And every night, before he goes to bed, Derek erases another line on the chalkboard, and it makes him feel better, makes it all more bearable, seeing the number of lines remaining grow smaller and smaller.
The problem is, during that year, they get to know each other—really get to know each other—and Derek comes to enjoy Stiles’ company more than he has anyone else’s in a very long time.
The problem is—the problem is during that year, Derek falls in love.
And so does Stiles.
But not with Derek.
The End
You can find several continuations (written by other writers) in the But Not with Derek collection. Some are happy endings and some are not--choose carefully! :)