Paz can't stop looking at the tiny bundle in Stiles' arms, can't stop fisting her tiny hand around the blanket and going for an even tinier hand but stopping herself before getting to touch; she's all wide eyed amazement and visible excitement as she asks Stiles in a tiny voice filled with wonder about her.
Stiles smiles at Paz as he gives Dea her bottle and answers all her questions, even though she's already asked most of them the few times she's come visiting with Scott and Kira after the twins were born; yes, she's mine and uncle Derek's; yes, her and Alec are sister and
brother; no, they can't play yet because they are too little.
Paz nods at him and hangs to every word he says, which makes him feel pretty neat; he hopes his own kids like him half as much as Scott and Kira's one does.
Kira herself comes up to him as he's almost done burping Dea, and asks him to hold her with her bright eyes open almost as wide as her daughter's, with that open and earnest sweetness that never fails to make Stiles think about the fact that Scott managed to find someone as... Unerringly good and kind and gentle cored as him. It feels so improbable to someone as sceptical as Stiles. And yet here Kira is, corporeal and smiling and genuinely good. Amazing.
He hands her Dea as soon as she's burped a few times (and puked some milk all over her towel, too, which is less cute than the burping but still makes Stiles smile and speak smushed up baby words of encouragement at her).
Kira sits down on one of the armchairs and holds Paz and together they hold Dea. She looks tiny and new and rosy in their arms, scrunching up her nose when things get too noisy, falling back to a restful sleep when Paz coos at her and carefully touches her face and forehead and rubs a finger on her button nose.
Stiles already has two kids, and yet the scene still makes him crave some more.
On the other side of the room, Alec starts crying. Stiles grimaces and rethinks it.
Two is okay.
(For now.)
"Okay, yes," Cora agreed, giving her brother a tiny smile that made Stiles feel a little like an intruder.
It wasn't till Cora had rolled her eyes at him and drawed him along Derek into a crushing hug that he realized he'd been holding his breath the past few seconds; didn't notice that he'd been feeling a little off kilter, that he'd been tight and tense, until he'd melted into it, one of his hands going to the back of Derek's neck to give him a little squeeze that meant so many things in the bodily language they'd been cultivating for years.
Most of all, he hadn't realized just how much he wanted this until Cora said yes and his stomach had unknotted itself, had relaxed and basically gone to rest inside him, all warm and settled.
Alec isn't much of a crier compared to Dea. She's vocal and then some about her needs. If she's hungry, or if she wants a diaper change (or if she wants to be held), she's gonna let you know. Loudly.
Alec, however, is the more prone to colics and rashes and random allergies out of the two.
He's a good sport about things but he starts crying every night at 8pm like a clock because of the gas, and he spends at least an hour or two completely miserable, nuzzling into the chest of whoever's holding him and scrunching his eyes shut with all the intensity he can muster.
It's heartbreaking. And a little adorable.
That last one makes Stiles feel like a terrible dad a little bit.
(Then again, Derek worries about those things enough for the both of them.)
"Did I hurt him?" Allison asks him as he heads over to where she is sitting on one of the McCall's couches with a desperately crying baby in her arms, all doe eyed.
"No, no, Allie! He's okay, you're doing fine," he sits next to her and takes Alec's tiny fist in his hand.
"Hey, little guy, hey. Are you having gas? Does it hurt?" Alec stops crying a little and opens his eyes, bats his short, meager eyelashes and seems deep in thought; Allison angles him towards Stiles as he sits down next to her, looking awe struck. "I know, baby. Farting sucks so much when you can't push it out on your own."
"Oh my God, Stiles, so gross," Allison wrinkles her nose at him and he smirks at her.
The first time, it didn't take.
They had known their chances were 20%. They'd talked about the outcomes; either it takes or it doesn't. And if it didn't take, they'd just keep on trying.
Turned out they weren't as prepared as they'd thought for the insemination not to work.
"It's okay," Derek told Cora when she told them she needed to go do some stuff after they left the doctor's office.
She had looked at them with this sad, remorseful face, after, and it had nibbled at Stiles' insides.
"Hey," he called out as she turned around, "this is not on you."
She'd stiffened in place, back tight and shoulders tense.
Derek had squeezed his hand, bumped his shoulder, looked at him with gratitude for catching that.
"Thanks," Derek said, voice quiet enough that Cora would only be able to hear him thanks to her werewolf abilities. It was honest, and intimate, and it had made Stiles want to hug him for a few hours.
Cora had turned her face to them and smiled, this lopsided thing that was so her that it instinctively made Stiles want to rile her up, and then started walking away, knowing that they needed time on their own to regroup.
Derek rolls his eyes at him as he gets some plates and cutlery on the table.
He hides the beginnings of a smile when Stiles blows a noisy kiss at him.
He brushes his knuckles against Stiles' shoulder as he passes him by on his way to the kitchen, and Stiles feels anchored by the touch.
"You know you love me," he tells Derek's retreating back, Alec's fist still inside his hand.
"I'd love you even more if you didn't insist in talking about farting with our newborn baby."
He's about to give Derek a well thought out reply about how important it is to get the babies used to thinking about bodily functions as natural and nothing to be ashamed of, when Dea starts wailing.
Which makes Paz start crying, too.
Derek comes out of the kitchen as he's getting up, tells him he's got it and goes up to Kira, who's taking turns soothing Paz and Dea and looks just the slightest bit overwhelmed.
"Parenthood, huh," he tells Allison then, wiggling his eyebrows at her, even though she's sort of distracted, looking at Kira, Derek and the kids with intensity, biting her lip as she cradles Alec. "So glamorous and exciting."
"I asked Lydia to have a baby with me," she blurts out then.
The room goes quiet. Even the babies quiet down. Paz hugging her mom tightly, and Dea on Derek's chest, sucking at her fist with determination (and a frown on her face that has Hale spelled all over it).
Scott is the first one to break the silence by coming out of the kitchen wearing oven mitts, grinning like a wild person. He goes over to Allison with purpose and visibly stops himself from throwing himself at her because of the baby and instead hugs her loosely by the shoulders and rests his face atop her head.
"Congratulations, Allie," he beams at her. "God, you two are going to make great moms. I call dibs on godfather. Can I do that? Is it too early?"
Allison lets out a choked laugh, and Stiles gestures at her to give Alec over, so she can properly get her Scott McCall Hug.
Life changing decisions really warrant those.
The second time, it took.
The six months prior had been both the longest and the shortest ever, and finally sitting at the doctor's office waiting for the news had been nerve wracking at the very least.
"Jesus, calm down, you freaks, I am so pregnant. I can feel it. Derek can feel it. Everything is okay," Cora whispered as they waited for their doctor to arrive.
"Yeah, sure," Stiles nodded along, thumb firmly at the side of his mouth so he could resume biting his nail raw as soon as he was done talking.
Derek reached to him, took his hand and held it on top of his leg, clasped firmly. It made him lean into his warmth and exhale a shaky breath.
"It's gonna be okay," Derek told him.
A comment about how the tables had flipped on them, that Derek was now the one being optimistic was at the tip of his tongue, but he bit on it because he wanted to twist it and make it ugly, make it sharp and painful, and Derek didn't deserve that.
He just buried his face on Derek's shoulder, squeezed at his hand and took a deep breath.
After the doctor came in with a thin folder in her hands and a kind smile accompanied by crinkly eyes, Stiles spaced out a little, focusing on breathing; in and out, repeat. Inhale, exhale. Again.
What brought him back had been Derek's arms around him, his face on his neck, the faintly there wetness dripping there as Cora laughed boisterously and joyous, and tapped Derek hard enough on his back to rattle them both in place.
"Oh God," he looked at the doctor, and she nodded at him, hands held together on top of her table, and he held Derek back, pawed at his back and took handfuls of the fabric of his shirt as he kissed whatever he could reach of him; he smacked his lips on Derek's hair, the side of his head, his forehead when he looked up, letting them rest there for a while, before blurting out "Oh, God, we're gonna be daddies", against Derek's slightly damp skin.
(Scott hugged him for at least ten minutes straight when he came by later that day, just barrelled into their house and jumped on him, enfolded him in his strong arms and held on until Stiles was a little bit of a sobbing mess.)
Allison seems shaken up, now that she's let the words free, like she's not actually sure whether that was a great idea even as she hugs Scott back and keeps laughing a little, eyes glassy, and Stiles feels her. Deciding on parenthood had been a big thing for Derek and him.
He looks across the room at Derek, and finds him already staring at him as he bounces Dea in place, a tiny content curl on his lips, and some telling wrinkles at the corners of his crinkled eyes that slightly betray his otherwise youthful visage and never fail to make his stomach flutter, even ten years later. He can't help smiling in return, his lips going on all soft and his heart skipping a beat like he's all of seventeen again and longing over a crush.
Alec fusses in his arms, tugs at the fabric of his shirt and he looks down at him, holds him on the crook of his elbow and traces his little soft cheek.
"Heard that, little man? You're getting more playbuddies," he bites tenderly at Alec's tiny fist and Alec squirms, and Stiles, in turn, decides to take it as him being excited about the affair.
Allison laughs some more and reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder and give it a gentle squeeze; when he looks up at her, she's blinking away tears, smiling wide.
"Mommy, we're getting a new baby?" Paz whispers at Kira, loud enough that the entire room hears it.
That sets the other people in the room in motion, and soon Kira and Paz, and Derek and Dea are surrounding Allison and offering their congratulations.
Paz, in particular, is excited enough that she could probably power the entire house on her energy (literally, possibly, they aren't really sure when her powers should start manifesting and Noshiko has been very clear on it varying from case to case). She's hugging Allison's waist and looking up at her all sweet and bubbly.
"Is the baby in your tummy?" She asks, and pats at the covered expanse of Allison's belly, gently.
Allison picks Paz up and sits her on her lap.
"Not yet," she explains, and then continues, very seriously, "Aunt Lydia and I have to write to the storks and wait for their reply. It's going to take some time."
Stiles rolls his eyes at that because that stork explanation doesn't make a lot of sense anymore after Cora but Paz just nods at her, entranced and absolutely convinced that that is the proper way to go for getting a baby. Then she turns towards her parents, and asks whether she can write to the stork too, so she will get a baby brother.
Derek laughs along with him (in a quieter, less obnoxious fashion, he'll admit to that) at the way Kira and Scott blush a little because there are reasons for life bringing them together, and at least one of them is their compatibility of asshole tendencies.
When Cora was eight months along and she was surly and moody and generally not Stiles' or Derek's biggest fan, the only person who could get her in a good mood was tiny Paz.
Then again, Cora would have to be a cold blooded, heartless person to resist the charm of a tiny person with Kira's eyes and Scott's smile and a mix of their sweetness, determination, and level of awesome.
Paz spent a lot of time over (which Stiles knows Kira and Scott were grateful for and took great advantage of because they always showed up to pick her up looking the very picture of bright eyed and bushy tailed), trailing after Cora and sitting with her and talking her ear off.
Cora always looked at her with this fond exasperation that made Stiles smile.
Paz always had a thousand questions to ask, 'are the babies coming soon', and 'do they fight in there?', 'does it hurt?', 'do they know I'm here?'; and in a show of patience that Stiles had never really thought Cora capable of, she always replied, all nice and sweet tempered.
"I think Paz is Cora's favorite. She definitely likes Paz better than you," he'd told Derek once, in bed, brushing his lips against Derek's collarbone.
Derek had snorted in reply, fingers tangled in Stiles' hair.
"That's okay, baby," Stiles had added after a while, "You are my favorite."
"I'm glad," Derek had replied, deadpan, even though he'd leaned to press a kiss on Stiles' forehead, and then on his cheek.
"I don't know why, but you are my favorite too," he'd said then, nosing at his hairline.
"Oh boo, I love you too."
"Good."
Derek has to go back to the kitchen with Scott, so he hands a now quiet Dea back to Kira, who is sitting down next to Stiles.
He puts her carefully on Kira's waiting arms and while he's down there, he seeks Stiles out for a kiss. Stiles holds the back of his head with one hand as he holds Alec to his chest with the other and leans into the kiss, lets himself savor the feeling of his husband, the father of his babies', lips on his as the world keeps turning around them, calm and assured. When they part the tips of Derek's ears are red and Stiles licks at his lips just to see Derek's eyes trail the action.
Allison and Kira make cutesy remarks about them that Stiles ignores in favor of watching his husband's ass in a pair of jeans Stiles bought for him as he walks back to the kitchen, asking Scott if the mashed potatoes need anything else and if the gravy's ready.
He's about to reply with something elaborate (or at least elaborate enough that the crudeness will go over Paz) when Allison's phone starts ringing. By the besotted look she gets, it's probably Lydia.
She excuses herself and apologizes to Paz for having to put her down (even though Paz doesn't seem to care much, running up to her mom and squeezing herself between her and the armrest to look at Dea) before leaving for the bathroom for a semblance of privacy.
Kira grins at him and shrugs.
Lydia's been roped into spending Christmas with her dad and his new wife over in France, where he'd relocated after the messy divorce.
She'd promised both Scott and Allison to bring back word from Isaac (who decided to stay there once the Argents came back). Stiles tries to imagine those two hanging out in glitzy Paris and feels teenaged and inadequate all of a sudden for a few seconds.
Kira leans on him, and they spend a few minutes talking about baby stuff; powder versus none, what diaper brands are better; Stiles tells Kira about this 'oleo calcaire' liniment thing they are using since Cora recommended it to them, said it was the closest to something most people use back in Argentina for baby butts.
That makes Kira ask about Cora.
"She's back in Misiones," Stiles tells her, and gently taps Alec's butt rhythmically a few times to make him stop fussing and go back to sleep, "stayed a few weeks after the babies were born, but she was missing her pack a lot, you know?"
Kira nods at him and cards her fingers through Paz's hair.
Cora told them she was leaving a week after the twins were born. She'd been having breakfast with them and looking like she hadn't given birth seven days ago, only some extra fat clinging to her face and arms and waist.
Derek only nodded at her as he gave Dea her bottle.
Stiles felt compelled to ask her to stay at least a little longer, but felt instantly selfish, knowing that she had a pack and a family of her own that she called every day and missed like crazy.
"Thank you," he'd said instead, looking at her as he burped Alec. He didn't feel up to specifying all the reasons why he was thanking her, but she smiled at him, lopsided and a little mean (just the way they'd always been) and he'd known she got it.
When the doorbell rings some time later Kira sends Paz to go get it, which makes her puff up in pride as she runs towards the hall, and Kira yells after her to slow down.
"God bless for her inheriting Scott's grace," she says, and her voice sounds a little breathless and high, and Stiles wishes he didn't totally understand her. But he does. Sometimes Dea will try to flip herself on her crib and he'll freak out or Alec will shove his head backwards and Stiles will basically have a string of heart attacks.
"Well, I wouldn't call it 'grace', exactly," he tells her, instead of I know how you feel, dude.
"Hey!" Scott yells at him from the kitchen, affronted, "I'm not the one with spatial awareness issues."
"I remember you pre-bite, Scotty, don't make me tell your lovely wife here exactly how much of a clumsy dork you were back then."
"No fighting, kids," a voice interrupts their banter.
It's his dad. Melissa and Chris are with him, all looking festive in the garish Christmas themed sweaters Stiles bought for them some years ago.
Paz is grabbing Melissa's hand and telling her all about some games she's been playing with Scott and Kira, and a show she loves, and some story about storks that's probably at least 45% Allison related.
Chris walks behind them, still looking uncomfortable even ten years later; Stiles can't blame him, can't say that a part of him won't always look at him and think of Gerard, of Boyd, Erica, of awful things that are now in the past. But he also knows Chris has been on his own path trying to become a man worthy of following the guidance and steps of his daughter, and Stiles can respect that.
Paz calls him 'grandpa', the same way she does Ken, Rafael and his dad. Scott told him once, over beers, that she said it was because she didn't want him to feel left out and get sad.
Sometimes Stiles can't believe this is their life now. That they get to worry about mundane stuff like this, get to marvel at their kids' everything, and that the extent of their worries is whether they'll get a bump or a rash or a cold.
Stiles know they all get chased by the past now and then; sometimes he'll wake up covered in sweat, tear tracks on his cheeks, and Derek holding on to him, trying to make him count his fingers, splaying their hands together in front of Stiles' face and going 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 with him until Stiles has come down, until he can stop gulping air in like he's been drowning.
Sometimes Derek will be silent and drawn into himself for hours at a time, and Stiles will know he's feeling guilty; sometimes they'll be walking on the streets or shopping at the grocery store, and they'll catch something, a flash of blond hair, a leather jacket, someone tall and big and gentle looking, and the both of them will look for each other, hold on to each other more firmly.
And Stiles knows they are not the only ones who go through these things.
But even then, they've all learned let go of the past enough to build a future for themselves, with the passage of time.
The night after Cora left, Stiles and Derek took the babies to bed with them. They'd previously agreed to have them on their own cribs to make them independent and a ton of other good parenting stuff Stiles had read up on his numerous baby books and websites (so many newsletters, so many of them; his mail looks like babydaddy central 24/7), but they'd been used to having the energy and presence of Cora as a sort of buffer between them for close to an year and a half, and this felt momentous; the four of them together, alone, for the first time.
And to be honest, Stiles looked at Derek's face, at the way he was smiling so soft and happy at their kids as he took turns trying to make their tuft like hair stop sticking up all over the place, and then looked down at his own hand, resting softly atop Dea's rising and falling little tummy, and he instantly knew they were gonna be those parents. Those pushover ones that everyone else pokes fun at.
Alec scrunched up his nose, at the brink of waking up, and he started cooing loving incoherences at him as Derek put him on his chest and rubbed at his back soothingly.
Stiles was pretty sure they already were at that stage.
"Hey, big guy," Stiles whispered at Derek after checking Dea's tiny diaper before putting her on his chest too.
"Hum?" Derek mumbled back at him, letting one of his hands seek for Stiles' hand, squeezing it briefly before dropping it to a tiny sliver of uncovered skin at Stiles' waist, between the hem of his sleep shirt and the waistband of his pajama pants; he let his thumb rub circles there and it distracted him a little from his train of thought.
"Who would've thought we'd end up with the 2 kids and the house with the white picket fence, huh?"
Derek snorted indelicately at him, making Alec startle a little and flail his fist and then grab at his beard and tug, which made Stiles choke on a laugh and Derek hiss.
Derek talked Alec through letting go of his beard, all sweet and fatherly, and fuck, Stiles wanted to kiss him senseless, because he was just so good at this, natural like he'd been born to have babies lying on him like pink, pouty starfishes.
"It isn't white," Derek said after a while, once Alec was sleeping again, his cheek on Derek's chest and his arms and legs strewn around, Derek's hand rubbing his back.
"Huh?" He rearranged Dea, who was kind of slipping to the side; it made him the tiniest bit nervous, so he held her with both hands, one on her back and one on her diapered butt. She was so small that his hands were practically overlapping.
"Our fence. It isn't white," Derek elaborated.
Stiles snorted.
"Of course you'd focus on that, you dork."
He looked up at Derek and he was looking back at him. They smiled dopily at each other for a few seconds.
Then both of their kids started crying, possibly hungry. Again.
Parenthood.
Kira's parents arrive when Stiles is changing Dea's diaper at Kira and Scott's room (she's a private baby); Stiles can hear the door, but mostly he can hear Paz getting all excited about her grandparents. Apparently they bring presents. And pie.
Once he makes it back to the dining room, most everyone's at the McCall-Yukimura table, for the exception of Scott, Derek, and weirdly enough, Chris Argent, who are all bringing the food over from the kitchen.
He greets Noshiko and Ken (whom Stiles still feels weird addressing that way because he will forever think of as his high school history teacher) and sits next to Allison, who's holding Alec again and appearing to be trying to devise a way to grab her water glass with him still in arms, by the way she's looking between the two while biting at her lip.
"The eating dinner with a baby part is hard." Stiles tells her as he cradles Dea with one arm and reaches for Allison's glass with the other so he can put it closer to her. "Derek and I took turns eating our meals for the first two weeks."
"You could always use those perfectly good bouncy chairs Melissa and I gave you for your baby shower," his dad interjects, from across them, looking all stern.
"We do use them! They are in the living room!" Stiles tells him, "but sometimes we just..."
"Want to wear them like scarves?" Melissa asks, and Kira laughs a little.
"Something like that," Stiles shrugs.
"Ken was like that," Noshiko says, looking at her husband with affection. "He'd spend hours walking Kira around and then she wouldn't fall asleep unless you picked her up."
Ken laughs heartily and Kira blushes a little and rolls her eyes, Scott comes out of the kitchen carrying a ham that's almost as big as his head and he drops a kiss on his wife's cheek as he puts it on the table.
"I bet you were the cutest baby," he tells her, sickeningly sweet.
Stiles groans, and Derek comes out of the kitchen carrying some green beans and gravy, and once he's placed them in their strategic places (far away from Stiles' dad), he sits next to Stiles and flicks him on the nose.
"And what's that for?" he asks as he hands Dea over to him.
"You were being a jerk." Derek replies, and takes the baby carefully from him, kisses her nose before hugging her to his chest.
He rolls his eyes and gets up from his seat to go look for the bouncy chairs back in the living room.
Chris is sitting next to his dad when he comes back, and there's a humongous bowl of salad right in front of him. His dad is frowning at it like he'd want nothing more than to shoot it a couple times with his service gun.
He takes Alec from Allison and sets him on one of the little plush chairs, and then moves it a safe distance from their own chairs, places the second one near Derek, so he can put Dea there whenever he's ready.
Melissa's cutting up the ham and everyone's passing plates around, little conversations here and there, and Stiles takes a tiny moment after sitting down to look around and take every part of the scene in, to imprint it in his memory.
Derek holds his hand under the table and leans in to kiss him. One of the babies makes a sleepy noise behind them, someone laughs somewhere around them. Stiles smiles into the kiss and feels at home.