Originally, it'd been a source of giggles for the lot of them.
Well, no: Originally, it'd been an art assignment. Make a person your medium.
Lydia had slowly photographed Jackson slowly letting her cover him, nude, in paint. Boyd somehow knew how to do proper henna tattoos, and Erica had been awfully floral there for a few weeks. Isaac and Scott…well, Stiles didn't like to think about what Isaac and Scott had chosen. And he'd been able to stomach the thought of Jackson and his paint-nudity.
Stiles, however, didn't want to pair up in partners; though he would need some help.
Hence the giggles: Lydia had been mostly silent on the almost song-length amount of time she'd taped him dancing wildly behind Finstock, managing just barely to contain it; Danny had snorted wickedly as Stiles had booty-danced behind Scott and Isaac without either of them even cluing in, they were so lost in each other's eyes (he'd gotten tired and given up, slightly disgusted, instead of continuing until risking getting caught); Erica and Isaac got two different angles while Stiles had rolled his hips and shaken behind Derek for almost a full forty seconds. He'd dance-pranked almost everyone in his life, his father included (Melissa had cackled and given him away, but he'd managed to get a few moves in there before she'd broken).
And, when he'd editted it all and put it together, put the song he'd been dancing to in his head in to tie it all up, he was fairly freakin' proud.
His art teacher was actually proud enough to ask him if he was comfortable with presenting it to the class; if she could use it as an example when she did the assignment in the future. Stiles loved it, it was good; yes, absolutely.
What Stiles hadn't counted on, watching it in the darkened classroom with his fellow students for the first time since he'd finished putting the damn thing together, was how he'd looked, his head fallen back and his hips rolling freely and his movements actually displaying the things he usually hid; the solid bands of his arms and chest, the way his stomach was cut down in his hips, the smooth roll of his back into his ass and thighs—all usually hidden under layers and layers of clothing, now given away by the movement of his young and nubile body.
At first, it'd been about the giggles, really. But now Lydia and Erica's mouths were hanging slightly open and Danny was staring at him with the kind of heat you just don't look at Stiles Stilinski with.
Jackson snorted at lunch, sniping at him that it wasn't really him—couldn't be, he must've gotten someone else to do it.
"Nope. That was him. Grinding behind you. On the lacrosse field." Scott was thankfully still on giggle-mode. Isaac, however, was looking from Danny to Stiles like it was a freakin' tennis match.
"Yes, Scott, and we're all really very proud of you for taking that footage." Erica patted Scott's hand distractedly, still staring at Stiles. The only consolation there was that Boyd didn't seem worried or preparing to slaughter him, so he figured he didn't have to worry about Erica. Lydia, thankfully had moved on from amazement at his sexual desirable-ness and onto pride that she was his best friend (no one tell Scott), and that she'd helped him do part of it (sent him the software to edit the damn thing).
"You should come dancing with me sometime…" Danny murmured to Stiles, low enough that if their table mates were human, they wouldn't have heard it; deep and sexy enough that Stiles didn't have much of a leg to stand on in order to convince himself that Danny wasn't asking him on a date. The look in those big brown eyes, though, was not the Danny Stiles knew and loved; it was the Danny that would probably have sex with him at some point in the future. And Stiles was flipping the fuck out.
Half-choking on his milk, Stiles strangled out something along the lines of "F-Fine, sure, yeah, okay." The smile Danny threw him was…more predatory than Peter's had been, and he still had the heebie-jeebies from that smile.
Lydia leaned into his shoulder, her hair a bronze cascade over his arm, "I'll take you shopping beforehand, don't worry about it."
Stiles swallowed, eyes flicking around the table, "Yeah…good luck with that."
It's not his fault that by next Pack Meet (yes, he made all the possible "meat" packing jokes available after giving it that name and forcing everyone else to accept it), which happened to be that night, Stiles had worked himself up into an utter panic.
"I don't know how to actually dance, that was just creative editting and Red Bull-brilliance and I shouldn't be going out with Danny, he's like fifty-three times out of my league and, Jackson, you are an idiot best friend because you're not putting your foot down on me not dating Danny!"
Derek cocked his head slightly to the side, his expression shifting from Frown to What-The-Fuck-Did-I-Do-To-Deserve-This-Idiot Frown. Stiles knew his frowns. He could tell.
Jackson snorted, like he was the stupidest stupid to ever stupid, "I can't control who Danny dates. Besides, I don't have to worry about him. He'll have you for breakfast and then realize what a catch you aren't." Lydia smacked him upside the head. Hard. Then Isaac and Erica followed suite, Derek and Scott glaring hot enough to melt diamonds.
Derek cleared his throat after Jackson put up the proper façade of contrition, focussing his attention—which drew all attention—on Stiles, "If you don't want to date him, then don't date him. Say no."
Stiles's mouth, he knew, was open, his arms flailing silently. Lydia had learned to interpret Stiles-semaphore (part of the reason she was best-friend, sorry, Scott), and the laugh that came out of her was old-Lydia; the Lydia who'd trashed him and wouldn't tell him if he was on fire, "Oh, please, it'll be his first date. With anybody! He can't turn Danny down, it's not like you can get better than Danny!" Which, while true, Danny was awesome and sweet and a great person and a superb friend…Stiles's Stupid Teenage Reaction was immediately that he, specifically, would never get as good as Danny ever again. Which happened to be something his head was shrieking at him hopelessly because he couldn't do this.
That he went silent and still triggered Isaac to gather over to him, always the most attune with the emotions of those around him, and especially Stiles's. That brought Erica and Lydia almost simultaneously, and while Stiles loved them all, he didn't think this was helping. Derek was looking at them all bunched up around him, frowning a Frown that Stiles couldn't parse, but he was kind of distracted with how much he wanted to crawl into a hole and die, so he wasn't really trying. "Stiles, you don't have to date Danny if you don't want to date him." Derek insisted softly, "It's not fair to either of you if you date him when you don't actually want to."
Stiles swallowed, blinking. He knew he smelt like nerves and fear. Erica was running her hand through the back of his hair like she only did when he was worrying her. "I-I just…Bar's set pretty high for me right now, and Danny is Danny."
Lydia hummed, kissing his cheek errantly, "Yeah, he is Danny; but you're Stiles." She grinned at him from the side, wicked and adorable. Stiles had to wonder if she'd ever stop being his Kryptonite.
"Be my Yoda?" She wrinkled her nose, shuddering, but she did it with a laugh that he knew was agreement. Derek was silent through the rest of the evening, sitting down next to Stiles on the couch instead of on his usual armchair throne. He looked…loose, dejected and uncaring enough to trap back all his reactions. His shoulder and Stiles's were close enough to touch, and by the end of the night, Stiles had fallen asleep on his arm, the warm weight of Erica on his lap and Isaac against his legs, Boyd leaning on the back of the couch behind him, and Lydia's hair tangled loosely around Stiles's outflung hand where her head rested on Isaac's shoulder, Jackson's head in her lap.
It was weird that the only weird thing about it was Derek with him in the thick of the puppy pile. They were, after all, his puppies.
A day later (and several dollars short), Stiles collapsed face-first onto his bed from his door (physics don't matter when you're this tired), moaning at the sheer exhaustion that was the side-effect of letting Erica Reyes and Lydia Martin take one shopping. He had probably an entire wardrobe to replace his now, all of it fitted, none of it concealing any of what he'd been concealing for years. "Are you okay?" Stiles jerked out of his pillow and screamed in an entirely manly way, falling out of bed.
Derek was leaning against his windowsill, looking somehow more like a Greek god than he usually did. "Other than the massive coronary? Yeah, I'm peachy."
Derek's face darkened, and he moved to help Stiles up, his hands gentler than usual, "Peachy usually means that everything is wrong and we're all about to die. Start talking."
Stiles narrowed his eyes at Derek, pursing his lips, and he huffed as he dropped down on the bed, pulling his pillow over and hugging it so he could at least pretend he was slowly suffocating himself with it.
"Does this have to do with the video Erica made me watch? Of you…dancing?"
"Oh, God! She made you watch that?! Seriously?! I'm going to eviscerate her! Or, no, better yet, I'm going to let her ass get eaten by trolls next time!" Stiles threw his pillow, stormy. And then he realized that those forty seconds of dancing had been used, at the pivotal moment of the song, as the emphasis, and Stiles was so very, very dead. "Please, dear god, don't kill me, I just did it for class, I didn't mean any disrespect or anything like that! You can't maul me here, my dad will know it's not a mountain lion!"
Derek looked at him like he was the most absurd being on the face of the planet, actually not frowning. "I'm not going to maul you. Or kill you in any other way. It…It's fine. You actually…" Derek didn't finish his sentence, his eyebrows starting to frown again, and Stiles kind of really wanted him to finish that line of thought, thank you very much.
"I don't actually look like that when I'm dancing. I'm going to fail and I'm going to die of mortification doing it." Stiles hung his head in his hands, scratching his nails through his longer hair because it gave him sensory input.
"That's not why you're scared."
Five words. Admittedly, two of those words were contractions, but still. Five. Words. "That's not why I'm scared." Stiles grit out, anger flaring, "Of course that's not why I'm fucking scared! My dad…" Stiles's chest deflated like he'd been hit, all of it coming up like bile; like poison, "my dad still wears his goddamn wedding ring. He still misses my mom like it hasn't been years since we buried her. I-I can't handle…I can't handle losing someone like he lost her! Love tore my dad to shreds, and he's still in pieces, and now I'm supposed to put aside the fact that he drinks too much when it's really bad; that he doesn't let anyone touch her favourite coffee cup?! I can't just…I can't just ignore it, because it fucking terrifies me!"
Derek moved from Stiles's swivel chair to crouching in front of him, eyes steady and honest. "Stiles, you don't have to ignore it. But you don't have to let it rule you, either. You can't." Derek's eyes were almost amused as he steadied himself with a touch on Stiles's calf, "You ran into a goddamn troll den with a lit road flare screaming some sad assimilation of a battlecry." Stiles narrowed his eyes, because that was just baiting him, and Derek hit him with an innocent wince-smile that was somewhere between Andrew Garfield in the end of Spiderman and Lydia trying to be innocuous.
"That was an awesome battlecry. You're jealous of my battlecry." Stiles muttered half-heartedly. His head fell forward and then his and Derek's foreheads were pressed together, but it felt okay. Derek's hands were on either side of his thighs, against the mattress, and Derek was doing some kind of freaky Alpha mojo, because Stiles felt like he was calm again. His heart still kind of hurt, but he was calm.
"You out-octaved the banshee," Derek laughed, and Stiles smacked his arm, snorting and shaking his head as he pulled himself up and together, smiling wryly at Derek.
"You're trying to be horrible. It's not working. You're being too nice to be horrible." Derek shrugged, levering himself up.
"Tell no one. I've a reputation to uphold." Derek mocked his own threatening-voice, ducking out of Stiles's window to the sound of Stiles's guffaw.
Stiles sprawled backwards on the bed, the fatigue catching up, and if he dreamed of Derek's hands on his thighs, he was totally going to blame it on Isaac and Scott's art project. Because just…no.
Erica and Lydia were horrible human beings. Even if Erica wasn't technically human.
Stiles didn't really recognize himself in the mirror. He was…primped and polished and there was some sort of stuff in his hair, but when he touched it, it was softer than silk, and that was impossible, right?
"What did you do to me?" Stiles's voice wasn't the levellest, but it rarely was when questioning Lydia when she had some sort of torture device she was trying to convince him was for his eyelashes in her hand.
"The hair was a leave-in conditioner. Your hair, when it's happy, does all the work itself. Which I am severely jealous of. Now close your eyes, or so help me—"
"Lydia, Erica, stop." Derek ordered in a quiet, firm voice from the hallway, and Stiles almost deflated in relief—except he was in this ridiculous red suit and he didn't know if he could look Derek in the eye while looking like this. He looked like a clown or something, it was ridiculous.
Erica, because she was extra evil, caught his wrist, flicking it once and the next thing he knew, Stiles was careening out of the bathroom door, narrowly missing the frame with his nose. "H-Hi, Derek…" He did not whimper. Or whine. Big, strong male. Nope.
Derek blinked, swallowing as he took a small step back, "We are miracle workers. Love us accordingly." Erica demanded, cocking her hips as she and Lydia leaned together.
"You…you look good," Derek ducked his head, casting his eyes down (thankfully to the floor. Those damn pants were tight enough that he was beginning to feel like most of his body had been put in a red-silk condom). Lydia beamed, looking from Derek to Stiles and then doing a double-take on Stiles.
"Oh, my god! You are not wearing that clunky-ass thing! It's too big," Stiles tried to jerk his hand away before she got it off his wrist, but he wasn't fast enough. With the shirtsleeve slightly pulled up, the edge of crimson ink could be seen under the line of his sleeve, and Lydia gasped as he winced, surrendering as she tugged his sleeve up enough to see the robin in all her glory. Lydia's eyes were wide as she looked up at him, and Stiles hung his head.
"The…the robin is a sign of the return of warmth…hope and happiness…" Stiles stared down at his wrist, and Derek was the only person, even with Erica, who'd be able to see his hand shaking, it was that small of a movement. "I got it…when my dad wouldn't let go." Stiles breathed. Erica whined at his distress, and Lydia moved in for a hug, but Derek beat them both to it, pulling Stiles out from between them and snagging the watch as he did, taking Stiles's hand and snugging the watch back into place to cover the ink.
His eyes were unfathomable once again, but somehow it didn't feel like he was hiding a thing, "The robin is a signal to start living." Stiles stopped breathing for a moment, staring into Derek's eyes. He wanted to wrap his arms around Derek; he wanted to hug someone more substantial…more real…than the girls. He wanted to hug someone who didn't just know, but understood. Derek still had a hold of his hand, and it felt really good, like it hadn't felt for years when people touched him. Since his mom had gotten too sick to hug him tight. He felt…safe. His chest ached hard, and he couldn't help it when the three sharp raps on the door startled him closer to Derek. "Your date's here." Derek's voice sounded almost strained, and he squeezed Stiles's fingers gently before letting go. "Have fun."
Stiles knew what it meant that he'd rather fling himself into Derek's arms than go out on a probably less-likely-to-end-in-mauling-and/or-death date with Danny, but he knew that it wasn't something Derek would want. No matter how gentle his hand was, wrapped around Stiles's wrist.
Stiles took a deep breath, sharing a Last Look unlike any other he'd had with Derek before, and slipping past them all to go answer the door; to go on his date. He didn't see Lydia and Erica exchange knowing looks as Derek slipped away, jaw locked and mouth tight.
He wasn't entirely sure, but he was fairly certain that them getting kidnapped by something called a firedancer wasn't his fault. Danny had gotten him a drink; Stiles had loosened up; and the next thing Stiles had known, he was in the middle of a crowd of gyrating hips and grabby men, Danny right there against him, smiling small and sharp. The thing Stiles knew after that was that he was being forced to his knees in front of some kind of throne, and the living flame of a human-shaped thing was ordering him to dance. And then have sex. With flame-boy.
"Yeah…no thanks." Stiles drawled, wrinkling his nose.
As if on cue, the snarl that sent Stiles's heart a-flutter rumbled from the deep, and Stiles rocked back on his heels, getting upright and smacking his bound hands across one of the guard's faces, hissing as the back of his hand burned. He ran for Danny, ducking around him as Derek came charging in…naked.
Derek was naked. His claws and fangs were out, he was naked, and his eyes were Alpha-red. And he was naked. There was nudity. There was…a lot of…Stiles knew it was because clothes catch fire more easily than skin does, but…and he kind of half-thought he could probably drown the fiery bastards in drool if they gave him a minute.
Isaac and Scott, of all people, were his back-up, and Stiles yanked Danny upright and running for them the moment he saw them, barely looking away from Derek. From Derek being naked.
…Sonofacocklovingwhore—Derek was fighting an actual being made of flame, this had to be bad for his psyche.
Stiles stopped breathing, knowing he was going to do something stupid, though he didn't know what just yet. Stiles didn't give himself time to think of something, acting on instinct, which was to get Derek the fuck out of there.
His hands were still bound, but it didn't matter. Stiles rolled under the attack of a guard as he ran for Derek, smashing up with his clasped hands and backhanding him for good measure, the burn crying out in protest. He thrust his knee up as hard as he could, and stamped down on the foot of the other one advancing behind him. "Derek! Duck!" He'd seen it in a movie once, but the real shocker was not that his move to kick both his opponent and Derek's in the face while leaned against Derek's back worked; it was that Derek did. And thankfully missed the flaming sword that had had the trajectory of his neck, and sliced instead into the head of flame-boy, cleaving it in two.
Stiles landed a little unsteadily on his feet, yanking Derek from the path of the—holy God!—lava flowing out of the flame-boy like blood, running for the entrance of the cave with his hands firmly wrapped around Derek's forearm.
Lydia and Erica were waiting at the mouth of the cave with fire extinguishers, Derek and Stiles stumbling out past them until Stiles ran out of momentum. He turned on Derek, turning his head this way and that, looking at the scorch marks and the healing burns, and—oh, right…Derek was naked.
Naked and scorched around the edges and smiling at Stiles with relief in every line of his face. Derek flicked the golden ropes off from around Stiles's wrist, pulling him in and hugging him hard, hands searching out for wounds while Stiles just shook and pressed into him, closing his eyes and enjoying it, forcing himself to breathe. "That was more stupid than the time with the trolls."
"Shut up, I kicked ass both those times." Stiles mumbled into his shoulder, turning his head and catching the side of Derek's mouth in a kiss. He felt Derek come up short, and his heart stopped in his chest before Derek met his eyes, his own…asking…permission?
If Derek wasn't a brick wall and a werewolf, they would've been taken to ground by how hard Stiles was kissing him. It was slick and wet and messy and perfect. Stiles kind of wanted to fall headfirst into Derek's skin and never come back up for air. His hands curled into fists against Derek's chest as he panted reluctantly into the small space Derek put between them, fighting down the lightheadedness as he looked up at Derek through his lashes. They smiled like they knew what the other was thinking, wicked and taunting, and Derek rubbed his nose gently over Stiles's, an Eskimo kiss before Derek's tongue was in his mouth once more, Stiles crushed against Derek's chest, and his hands gripping Derek's hair.
"Oh, my god, PUT ON PANTS!" Lydia shrilled, hitting an octave even Stiles couldn't.
"I'd rather take mine off, personally." Stiles laughed cheekily and breathless in the best way, melted into the possessive, protective weight of Derek's arms around him, more than happy to let Derek hold him like that forever. Stiles knew he was blushing. He knew he was smiling like an idiot, utterly debauched and swollen from kissing. He knew he stank of arousal. Derek's body was a steady press against his back, letting him lean into it to hold him up, and he'd never fucking been happier. He wrapped his fingers through Derek's, letting his head fall back, and Isaac tossed him Derek's jeans, Scott hiding his face and probably sobbing. Stiles didn't care, handing the denim back to Derek and standing there until Derek had put the pants on and pulled him back against his body exactly as he had been. "Jackson has Danny?"
"Yes. I don't think you'll be getting a second date." Lydia laughed.
Stiles felt Derek breathing against the back of his neck, hands possessive and strong. He grinned, "Good!"
Weeks later, Derek was idly tracing Stiles's tattoo on the opposite wrist while they curled together on the couch for Pack Meet movie night…which, admittedly, none of the rest of the pack had been invited to.
"Are you still scared?" Derek asked, raising his wrist to his lips.
Stiles looked over, smiling slowly. He drew Derek into a kiss, sucking on his lower lip until Derek relented and shifted so that he was draped over Derek's chest completely, "I don't feel like I need to be. You're kind of really hard to kill." Stiles punctuated it with a grin, looking up at Derek through his lashes. Derek snorted, settling in, "Besides. Werewolves mate for life."
A/N: Originally posted on my Tumbr, for my darling rrrrimming.