The baby is warm and small and she's all wrinkled and frowny, bow lips somewhat pursed and pouty. Stiles' palms feel cold and sweaty against the blanket that's enfolding her as he holds her tight to his chest.

"What do you mean she turned up out of nowhere?" Derek asks, frowning at him, hand twitching above the baby's head, as if he wasn't sure touching her wouldn't make her disintegrate into nothingness. Stiles rolls eyes at him and bounces on the balls of his feet when the baby squirms.

"Exactly what I'm sayin', big guy. She just appeared on my bed. Onesie and diaper and all. Like this." He itches to gesture, make poof motions with his hands, but he's got two handfuls of baby that he's got to have the utmost care with. "I took a break from trig homework to take a leak and when I came back there was a baby. On my bed."

Derek raises unimpressed eyebrows at him, and Stiles shrugs minutely.

Whatever, everyone has to pee now and then, right?

"So, are you gonna touch her already? Because your hand's been hovering over her face like that for a while, and it's getting creepy."

Derek rolls his eyes at him and lowers his hand until his fingers are brushing the baby's features; brushing softly over her tiny button nose, and her soft cheeks.

Stiles' heart relocates itself in his throat, lodges itself there, stuck like an overly large bite of food that won't pass. It hurts when he swallows, beats loud to his own ears and painfully intense. Damn.

A few seconds pass by while Derek softly caresses the baby's face, and when his face starts melting into this content, peaceful expression Stiles clears his throat and asks, "So, do you know how to take care of a baby?"

That successfully breaks the spell.

The baby's wailing is piercing, Stiles doesn't know how Derek can stand it. He tries shushing her and cooing to her and bouncing her a little, but the crying only gets louder, and in addition to hurting his ears, it's hurting his soul.

"Stiles," Derek interrupts him mid-croon, eyebrows meeting over the bridge of his nose, "have you fed her since you found her?"

Stiles gapes and looks down at the baby's distressed face as she bawls.

"Jesus Christ, Stiles." Derek takes the baby in his arms, frowning at him like he can't quite believe Stiles is a real, existing and breathing person.

"I'm... going to buy formula, right now?"

"And a bottle." Derek adds, fixing his eyes on the sleeping infant. Then he furrows his nose a little. "And some diapers."

"Oh, man, gross."

They end up putting a list together of things they'll need to take care of the baby in the immediate future; Stiles checks blogs on the Internet because the last time he was this close to an infant he'd been one himself, and Derek just quietly scribbles things down every now and then, with the squirming baby on one of his arms (her little face red and gloomy and, Christ, she looks hungry now and it makes Stiles feel like an asshole for not thinking about this on his own).

"You should go get all that," Derek tells him once they are done with their list, nodding at it, eyes going from him to the baby a few times, "I'll stay with her."

"I won't break her, you know." He replies, even as he takes the list and sticks it inside his hoodie's pocket. "We were doing okay until you came along."

Derek rolls his eyes at him hard enough that had it been anyone else Stiles would've been worried about permanent damage.

"You forgot you had to feed her, Stiles."

Fair enough.

(Derek had ended up giving Stiles his credit card to buy everything, so there is that at least.

"Don't buy anything too ridiculous," he'd said as he handed the plastic card to him with pinched eyebrows, "or I'll make you regret it."

"Sure, big guy." He'd rolled his eyes as he took the card and put it away in his pocket.

Derek's lips had done that thing where they'd insinuate a smile, the barest shadow of it, without giving an inch. Stiles' heart had followed that invisible movement with an improvised tap dancing number of its own.

As he'd turned around, fists clenching inside his pockets and cheeks going red, he'd vowed to find the most outrageous item in stock and buy three.)

There are so many things. So much variety, and so many brands.

It's a little overwhelming.

"Need help?" An enthusiastic voice interrupts his perusal of the different brands and sizes of diapers.

"Yeah, that would be awesome." He says, turning around.

To come face to face with Caitlin. 'I like girls and boys' Caitlin.

"Oh, hi." He says, lamely, a small smile tugging at his lips. "I didn't know you worked here."

Caitlin smiles back at him, bright.

"Such's the life of the broke college student." She states; then, looking over his shoulder at the diapers' display, she adds, "I didn't know you had a baby."

Stiles gives himself whiplash turning towards the display and back, tripping over his own feet trying to put some distance between himself and it.

"Uh, no, no. No kids. Yet." He makes a few inconclusive and vague gestures with his hand, "I'm, uh, shopping for a friend? Who recently had a baby? And can't leave her alone yet, so I'm, uh, I'm helping them out."

"Oh," she says, smile as bright as ever, bouncing on her feet. "That's so sweet of you." Then she laughs a little and shakes her head, "for a minute there I thought I'd made out with a hot dad."

Stiles grins at her, feeling pretty damn good about himself for the 'hot' part.

"So," Caitlin says, "what do you need to buy?"

Stiles handles her the list, watching her eyebrows climb at the length of it.

"Your friend was, um, a little unprepared for this, weren't they?"

Stiles flinches and scratches his chin, mutters kinda.

"So," Caitlin starts, intently studying the diapers' display, "how recently did this friend have their baby? How old are they?"

"About three weeks? I think?"

Caitlin seems shocked for all of two seconds before arranging her face back into a pleasant and non-judgmental smile.

"Okay then," she says under her breath as she reaches for a bright purple box of diapers with the label 'Luvs' on it. "These ones should be the right size."

"These ones were the ones Emily's baby brother used." She handles the box to him with softer eyes, and her mouth set in a sad smile. The expression is soon gone, however, as she checks on the other items on the list.

The words are like a knife burying itself underneath Stiles ribs, digging in in in. A little reminder that they haven't been the only ones who've lost so much in these past months.

Caitlin looks up at him and smiles brightly again, says we'll get the bottle and formula first. Stiles gives her a lackluster smile and a nod.

He's putting all the bags (so many bags, so so many bags) filled with baby stuff in the jeep's trunk when his phone goes off, annoying generic ringtone that he hasn't yet bothered to change blaring until he takes the call.

"Unless someone's dying I'm busy. As hell." He holds the phone in place between his ear and a raised shoulder as he keeps putting things away, wondering how the hell it's fair that something so tiny needs so much stuff.

And that's when he hears the piercing wailing in the background.

"Please tell me you're done," Derek grinds out, almost comically anguished, and Stiles feels for him, really.

On his bones.

(The only reason why he hurries up putting the rest of the stuff away and sprints to the driver's side door, tripping all over himself, is because he's a decent guy who wouldn't let a baby starve. Really.)

As soon as he parks the jeep outside his house, Derek is coming outside, bawling baby in arms and a harried look on his face. Stiles gets out of the car as Derek practically sprints towards him.

"Stiles," he greets him pointedly when he's just a few feet away, green eyes narrowed dangerously, but arms holding the baby softly against his chest, one hand patting her back comfortingly. "What the hell could have possibly taken you so long? She's been crying non-stop."

Stiles rolls his eyes at Derek but cringes as the baby lets out a particularly loud and pained sound, and then does this little piteous noise like she's trying to hiccup but it's getting held up in her throat. It's awful.

"Yeah, sorry," he answers then and makes motions at Derek to give the baby to him, which makes Derek look at him uncertainly.

"Dude, really? How many times do I have to tell you that I won't break her? We were doing perfectly fine before you showed up. Just, hand her over and get all the bags inside, okay? You don't wanna wait for my skinny ass to finish bringing all of that inside, do you?" He nods towards the jeep's trunk and takes the baby from Derek while he's oscillating between frowning at him and the jeep in confusion.

"All of that what?" Derek asks, voice taking a carefully neutral tone as he takes a few cautious steps towards the trunk.

Stiles shrugs, biting his lips to hold a smirk in as he bounces the baby a little.

Derek's baffled expression when he opens the trunk and takes in the amount of bags there makes Stiles' face break into what must look like an insufferable and shit eating grin. He's not even sorry about it.

"Stiles," Derek bites out and looks at him with raised eyebrows, "what the hell."

"Yeah, turns out babies are higher maintenance than we thought and our list was found lacking."

As he's making the way towards the house he hears Derek throw an incredulous and somewhat flustered sounding Stiles! In his direction that makes his lips curl up into a smile as he crosses the front door's threshold..

"Looks like he found the breast pump." He tells the baby in an overly cheery and dulcet tone, and her eyelids flutter in response, one tiny fist uncurling and curling again.

Derek is good with the baby.

He knows how to hold her and how to properly feed her (he'd even taken over bottle-preparing-and-testing duty after taking a look at Stiles nervously reading the instructions at the back of the formula-biting his thumbnail aggressively and sort of jiggling his leg in place, as awkward a motion as that was while standing- and deeming him unsuitable for the task), even knows how to burp her. Holds her tight against his shoulder with big hands that seem even bigger when splayed on her tiny back, on top of this new baby themed dishtowel, taps her lightly and whispers short little words to her that Stiles can't quite hear, but tug at his heartstrings anyway because even though all he hears is gibberish it sounds comforting.

Stiles doesn't want to think much about where all of this experience comes from, why all of this comes to Derek so naturally and easily, doesn't want to ask. The way he softly runs his hand over the peach fuzz on her head after she's let a sonorous burp (that, well yes, does make Stiles snort because he's seventeen, okay) and looks at her, all sad smiles and nostalgia and longing in his squinted eyes,all gut wrenching intensity in the way he cradles her so so carefully once he is done, tells him more than enough.

Stiles feels as if there was a rock trying to make its way down his throat as he watches Derek taking care of her with that look on his eyes, feels heartburn in the worst possible way.

"I'll, uh, I'll go wash the bottle." He says, voice grainy, when it all threatens to become too much for him, when it all starts to feel too close to overflowing from his body and his stupid mouth, too close to being all rushed, spilled soft words of I'm sorry for everything that's happened to you and I'm sorry you can never catch a fucking break, man and tenderness is a good look for you.

Derek's only reply is a humming noise that feels cottony to Stiles' ears, tingly on the nape of his neck.

Derek does make Stiles change her diaper, though.

Stiles had tried to protest to that, but his argument that Stiles had a far less sensitive nose was a pretty solid one and Stiles wasn't that much of an intentional dickhead.

The first time they'd needed to, he'd given Stiles directions as he'd taken her into his room and laid her down on top of a towel (Caitlin had suggested a changing pad, and he'd looked at the box with furrowed brows for a few moments and almost bought it, before remembering that it was... well, it was probable that the baby wouldn't be with them for that long, so he'd shaken his head at her after a little while, said "no, maybe we'll come by and get that later".) on his bed, taking special care to support her head properly as she went down, standing at the door and frowning a little (probably at the smell); and he'd kept giving instructions while he unbuttoned her onesie. And as he was pulling the sticky taps, scrunching his nose at the way the smell (the stench) had gotten stronger.

"Okay, okay, I get it. Dude, I have this, okay?"

He didn't. He didn't have it.

Oh God, he absolutely did not have it.

(Stiles would tell Derek to shut up but it's the first time Stiles has ever heard him laugh and even though he's covered in- poop, he's covered in baby poop, he still can appreciate that.)

Bathtime was something Stiles hadn't wanted to face yet; or at all really. But it had also been also necessary after that.

And bathtime had been... Something.

The baby was young enough to not make a mess, just squirm around in Stiles's hands, kick at the water irregularly every now and then but it had still been unnerving and stressful. Derek had sat on the toilet and let him to his own devices, the asshole.

"You're doing okay, Stiles. You totally have this."

"I swear to God if I drop her I'll put Nordic Blue in your dinner," he'd muttered, pouring some water with a cup on the baby's head, paying special to care to avoid pouring it on her eyes.

When she finally goes to sleep after they feed her for the second time, Stiles and Derek end up on Stiles' bed, propped up against the headboard side by side in companionable silence. Stiles didn't really register how they ended up like this, but he isn't objecting. He's bone tired and lax with the baby sleeping on his chest and Derek's body brushing his, heat seeping through their layers, and he's comfortable.

"We should call her something in the meantime." Stiles whispers after a while, though, because his mind never gives him a break and he's been obsessing over this for the last ten minutes. He's got his hand on her back, and he's feeling the steady rhythm of her breathing, and really, they just can't keep calling her the baby much longer.

"Stiles, we can't- you can't get attached." Derek's voice is soft and low, even as he corrects himself.

I think it's a bit late for that, big guy.

"Still," Stiles says before his mouth runs away from him, and he tries to lift Laura off his chest, but she furrows his brows in her sleep, squirms and brings her fists up, as if preparing herself to put up a fight. Or to wake up and cry desolately until Stiles feels like a shitstain. "Oookay, you can stay there, no problem. Chill."

Derek is... Smiling, when he looks back up at him.

And that's how he ends up blurting, "we could call her Laura?"

Derek freezes on his spot next to Stiles, muscles locked up tight.

"... Or not?" He quickly amends, heart racing.

Fuck, he fucked up, he fucked up, he-

"That's-" Derek interrupts his inner meltdown, face pale but green eyes and locked firmly on Stiles, voice low but steady, "that would be... Okay. I think that would be fine. With me."

The corner of his mouth tilts, and he drops his gaze to the baby resting on Stiles' chest (Stiles tries not fixate on his dark, long eyelashes), and he looks sad; yes, he looks sad and devastated and Stiles gets it, but he also looks warm and devastatingly open, tiny smile growing faintly as the baby snuffles in her sleep.

"She does look like a Laura," he says then.

Stiles, because he doesn't know how to properly respond to meaningfulness, asks, "and how, exactly, does a Laura look like, dude?"

And it makes Derek snort and roll his eyes at him.

"She's not a werewolf. Or anything else that I know of. She smells human to me. But we should still call Deaton," Derek says after a moment of silence, adjusting his position against the headboard, shoulder and leg coming to press firmly against Stiles. "If someone can tell us anything about this, it's him."

Stiles groans, because yeah, Derek's probably right, and Deaton's a more than alright man (he's great with Scott, and that's thawed him some over time), but trying to squeeze any information out of him? Yeah, that's not a process Stiles enjoys much.

Deaton tells them to bring Laura in the next morning when they make the call, brief and mysterious and forthcoming as ever, says that he can't help them right now, that he's... busy, which doesn't sound suspicious at all, right?

"I'm about to neuter a cat, Mr. Stilinski, would you and Derek want to be present for that? It is a rather interesting procedure."

"No," Stiles replies, because dry humor or not, he's been covered in poop today already and he doesn't need to add any more traumatic experiences to his day. "No, that's okay. We'll wait. We can wait. Tomorrow. We'll go tomorrow."

Deaton huffs out a vaguely amused sound, hastily bids him goodbye and hangs up on him without giving Stiles any time to reciprocate or even try to sound polite.

Derek leaves maybe two hours or so after that.

Isaac had texted him about hanging out, and he'd gotten a look on his face, pinched and guarded. He'd done things with his eyebrows, and made several aborted attempts at writing a reply that ended up with him putting his hands back on his thighs and gripping them like lifelines just to grab the phone back and attempt again.

"You should go, man," Stiles had said, after watching him do this dance a few times. "Laura and I will be fine. And you should-" he gestures around awkwardly with one hand while he holds onto Laura with the other one trying to convey bonding/patching things up/tying up loose ends/unfucking things in a single loop of his fingers, "with Isaac. Since he's- you know."

He hadn't wanted to say since he's leaving, but it'd still hung between them, unspoken but clear as day, almost tangible in its weight.

Scott wasn't talking about this. He wasn't talking about Allison and Chris leaving, and choosing to take Isaac with them. And Stiles wasn't pressuring him, because despite his innate nosiness, he did know how to be a good friend to Scott, how to be a good brother to him, how to and when to push or let sleeping dogs lie.

(He also knew Scott had talked to Allison about this, that they'd gotten together after the nogitsune had fallen, and that they'd sorted things out. Had talked pack business and hunters business and them business.

Allison had explained about Chris wanting to leave for a while, about him sitting her down and for the first time in maybe ever speaking with her with all the cards on the table, talking to her about responsibility and learning about their history and about other hunting clans and yes, about him needing to just be away from the place where he'd lost his wife, his sister, and had almost lost his daughter too; about craving distance. Scott told him about how she'd looked at him and given him a sad, tired smile with dimples, and said he's my dad, and he's never been this open with me, Scott- I have to do this.

And that had been that. Stiles hadn't even tried to mollify Scott by telling him she'd come back. Eventually. Scott knew that. But everyone was still- touchy about her. Everyone was. They'd cut it so close that sometimes even Stiles felt the need to sent Allison a text to check in on her, just to be sure that she was still here, walking and breathing amongst them.)

"Yeah, I should," Derek had replied, and gotten on his feet.

Then he'd done this thing where he'd crowded into Stiles' space to touch Laura's face, which had almost killed Stiles on spot.

Laura had opened her eyes sleepily, blinked once or twice, and then seemed to focus on Derek, even though what little Stiles knew about babies told him she probably couldn't make even the contour of him yet.

Derek's face had softened anyway, the tense line of his lips going loose and his eyes going crinkly. Stiles bit his lips to contain anything stupid from coming out, and then licked them to soothe the pain over; Derek had caught the tail of that motion, eyes trailing it until Stiles set his lips back in a tiny smirk.

"Gonna kiss me goodbye, honey?"

He'd thrown a wink in for good measure, and Derek had raised both eyebrows at him, all are you aware of what's coming out of your mouth?, but there'd been a small blush dusting his cheeks there too.

"See you tomorrow, Stiles," had been all he'd said before getting out of his room.

Stiles had refrained from staring at his ass as he walked away by looking down at Laura, who had still been blinking sleepily, and promptly decided to yawn at him, all cute and wrinkled at the same time Stiles heard the front door opening and closing.

His dad's reaction at finding Stiles sitting at the kitchen table with Laura asleep on his arms when he comes back home from work is... well, it's actually better than expected. He just rubs one of his hands against his chin, groans, plops down onto one of the other chairs and while he pinches the bridge of his nose, he says:

"I thought we'd always been very clear about the importance of wearing condoms?"

Which makes Stiles blink, dumbfounded, a few times, mouth gaping.

"I know Malia and you have been... sexually active in the past, before she left town with Mr. Tate," his dad continues and if Stiles didn't have a tiny, frail human being's life in his hands (quite literally), he'd bolt to his feet and run, or at the very least cover his ears and start humming enthusiastically because no matter how open he is about his sexuality this is his dad.

"Dad, dad, stop," he says instead, interrupting him before he can say anything permanently damaging to Stiles' life (or worse: his libido), "she is not mine. This baby? Totally not mine. I haven't had a kid. You're still grandkidless-"

"Okay, okay, I get it." He cuts him off mid-sentence, "not yours."

"Not mine." Stiles repeats, over enunciating the words.

"So," his dad starts, looking at him as if he wasn't quite sure he wanted to keep questioning Stiles, but had to, "whose baby is it? And why have they left them with you?"

Stiles is downright insulted by the implications in his dad's words. Really, he is.

"I'll have you know," he says, haughty and hugging Laura tighter to his chest, ruffled like a wet cat, "that I've been taking excellent care of her so far."

"I will need a drink for this," is what his dad replies to that, getting on his feet and walking to the cabinet where he keeps the strong stuff.

"Magic."

"Yep," Stiles replies, popping the 'p' obnoxiously, squinting at his dad and bobbing his head up and down like one of those toy dogs people put in cars, "magic."

"A baby." His dad says, stretching his legs and crossing his arms as he reclines himself on the chair, a worn expression on his face, "A baby materialized out of thin air. Into your room."

"Got it in one, daddy-o."

His dad reaches for the whiskey bottle and pours himself a finger.

Stiles winces but says nothing as his dad drinks it in one go.

"I swear to God, Stiles, if you have kidnapped this child-," his dad starts.

Stiles frowns.

"What? No. No, dad. I wouldn't," he takes a deep breath, looks down at Laura, who's frowning in her sleep, and bounces her a little, face going softer, "I wouldn't do anything like that, okay? And if I knew anything else, I'd tell you. 100% honesty policy, okay? Or at least, you know, 95%."

His dad looks at him for a few seconds and then nods.

"Okay. Okay, kid. I believe you. It's just, a baby? First werewolves and hunters, then druids and demons, and now a magical baby?"

"Trust me, I know."

His dad helps him with a Laura for a few more hours, talks to him about when he was baby, how fussy he was, and how colicky and smiles fondly down at Laura all the while, grabbing at her little fist with his own big hand and enfolding it tenderly.

"I wish we still had some of your old stuff," he says when Stiles is warming up formula for her. "But when your mom- when she- she felt it was better to give it all away to someone else who would need it."

Stiles' heart stops. And his hands do too.

They don't talk about his mom. It's an unspoken rule of the Stilinski household. Even during the whole nogitsune debacle, they'd mostly spoken around her, around the name of her, around the weight of her. This is maybe the first time his dad has brought her up while sober.

It feels momentous.

"She's going to need somewhere to sleep," his dad says after clearing his throat when Stiles fails to come up with anything to say back.

"She'll, uh, she'll sleep with me tonight."

His dad snorts.

"Good luck with that, kid."

Stiles gets two hours of sleep. Maybe two hours and a half. Tops.

It's a good thing he's used to pulling all-nighters.

It's not even that Laura stays up all night crying.

Don't get him wrong, she does cry. She spends what feels like at least an hour crying non-stop at about three am, and Stiles takes to walk around his room bouncing her, trying to calm her down, asks her questions she can't answer.

Are you hungry? Do you need a diaper change? Does something hurt? What the- what is wrong with you? Please.

He does check her diaper, and he does give her a bottle, but she doesn't quiet down. She just keeps going on and on until it feels like it's hurting her throat to keep producing so much noise, and Stiles feels bad for both her and his dad.

At one point he lies down with her on his chest, starts rubbing soothing circles on her back, and whispering incoherent stuff at her and it seems to calm her down. So he keeps going. He caresses her back and grabs her tiny feet and her little hands, and trails his hand over her the back of his head, and she goes practically silent, teary eyes blinking sleepily, red blotched face relaxing.

"Huh," he whispers to himself, feeling victorious.

… The feeling doesn't last much.

Once she falls asleep, he's left with her bundled on top of him, splayed like the world's pinkest, most adorable frog, and Stiles finds himself unable to move for fear of waking her up.

He lies on his back, still, for about an hour, breathing carefully, hands at the ready so she won't accidentally fall or something.

Once he feels certain enough that she won't wake, he moves her to his side, carefully and sighs, rearranging his limbs to get some sleep (he winces when he notices one of his legs has fallen asleep, great).

Only he can't sleep.

He's just... he's worried. He's worried he'll roll around in his sleep and crush her.

Oh God.

He looks at her tiny raising and falling chest, and feels panicky at the thought of accidentally harming her.

"Oh God," he says, "this sucks."

He ends up falling asleep at about six, and when he wakes up one or two hours later, to his father's noisy alarm, he can't shake the sense of dread that's choking him until he checks on Laura, checks that she's still breathing and that she's not bruised or, or broken in any way.

She wakes up when he's done inspecting her, long fingers still holding onto one of her little legs; she blinks at him and yawns, big and scrunching up her face, and kicks with the leg his holding.

"And good morning to you, too." He whispers, and bends over her to place a kiss on her cheek because he's tired and achey from what he assumes was sleeping on the same position, neck bent and arms next to Laura, almost touching her just to check she's there, and legs trying to bracket awkwardly around her little body.

There's a little drool on her where his lips touch her soft skin, and it should feel gross, but she makes this tiny noise at him and starts opening and closing her mouth against his cheek in what he knows is a reflex but feels like a kiss, and he can only smile.

So much for not getting attached, huh?