Disclaimer: I do not own any recognizable characters in this work of fiction. The characters that I did create for this work are one-dimensional.
A/N: Written because it is Halloween (we still have twelve minutes of Halloween left here), and SpaghettiTacos said she was looking for a Sterek Halloween fic - she found one, but I still wanted to write one, and this one is far less hot than the one she found and read. Stiles and Derek are both adults at the end of the story (18 and 22 respectively).
"Aren't you just the cutest little puppy?"
Mrs. Wilkerson had glasses so thick that it made her eyes look like they were three times as big as what they were when she took them off, Stiles supposed that maybe that could be why she mistook him for a puppy when he was really a big, bad werewolf. One of the baddest of the bad. He was fierce and scary, and did she just pat him on the head?
"I'm a werewolf, rawr," Stiles said, and he emphasized his point by making the scariest face that he could, the one that always made Caroline McKeene tell Mrs. Haggerty on him for.
"You are so sweet. Mrs. Stilinski, he's just the cutest," Mrs. Wilkerson turned her gaze away from Stiles to look at his mom and she missed his scowl.
I'm not cute, he thought sourly and he crossed his furry arms over his chest while his mom shook hands with their neighbor who was suitably dressed as a witch, I'm fer. . . row. . . shush. . . yeah, fer-row-shush.
Stiles thought that maybe Mrs. Wilkerson would stop petting his head if he bit her, but then he didn't think that his mom would like that very much, and there were still a lot of houses on their block and his bucket wasn't even halfway full yet. And, he didn't really want to make Mrs. Wilkerson into a werewolf by biting her – everyone knows that people become werewolves if they're bitten by one, and that's a lot of responsibility for the biter, like his pa was always telling him about why they never got a pet, too much responsibility. Besides, she was a much better witch.
Mrs. Wilkerson dropped a Kit-Kat into his pumpkin shaped bucket and then waved as Stiles and his mom made their way to the next house. "Bye little werewolf."
Her laughter followed them down the sidewalk, and Stiles worried that maybe she was a real witch, because she even cackled like one. It made him shiver and he looked very closely at his Kit-Kat, vowing to check it for any spells that she might have placed on it. He didn't want to be turned into a frog or a cat or something.
"Wasn't that nice of Mrs. Wilkerson to give you a whole Kit-Kat?" his mom asked.
Stiles nodded and readied his most fearsome look for the next house. He didn't want anyone at the Porters' house mistaking him for a cuddly little puppy. They always gave out the bestest and mostest candy, but only to those with the scariest costumes. They didn't give as much candy to those who were 'cute'.
"Ooh, look what we have here Martha," Mr. Porter turned to look at his wife, and Stiles almost smiled, but he bit down on his bottom lip and narrowed his eyes.
"My, my, my, Marvin, isn't he just the scariest looking werewolf we've seen tonight?" Mrs. Porter shook her head and sure enough a handful of Butterfingers and Skittles rained down into his bucket.
By the time that he and his mom had made it to the end of their block, Stiles had perfected his super scary werewolf face and his bucket was almost overflowing with candy. He felt like skipping, because he'd finally mastered the skill, at least according to his PE teacher, but as they approached the last house on their block, he curbed his enthusiasm.
There was loud music spilling out of windows that had been painted black. The front yard looked spooky – there were ghosts and cobwebs dangling from spindly tree branches, skeletons poked their heads up out of the ground, and there were broken tombstones lining the walkway. Stiles felt like there were spiders walking up and down his back and he was almost too afraid to walk up to the front door, even with his mom holding his hand and squeezing it tight.
"Don't be afraid," his mom whispered, "it's all just for show."
Stiles gulped and tightened his grip on his mom's hand, because some of those monsters looked real – like Frankenstein's monster who lurched at him, or the mummy that chased after him and his mom as they walked up to the front door, or the headless doorman that opened the door before Stiles had even knocked.
There were a lot of big kids inside the house, some of whom Stiles recognized from school. Suddenly he didn't feel like a big, bad werewolf anymore.
"What're you supposed to be?" one of the big kids asked. She was chewing bubble gum, smacking it loudly and she twirled a strand of her long, brown hair, around her index finger and tilted her head to the side.
Stiles couldn't find his voice, because, even though she didn't look very scary in her dead princess outfit, the big girl was kind of sort of being mean, and she kept looking at him with a dumb look on her face. Stiles felt very, very small and he moved closer to his mom.
"He's obviously a werewolf, Kate," one of the big boys said, and he stepped forward and smiled at Stiles, and then knelt down when Stiles tried to hide behind his mother's legs. "And a scary looking one at that."
Stiles bit down on his lip and narrowed his eyes at the older boy, but he stopped trying to hide behind his mom, because the older boy seemed kind of nice, and he knew that Stiles was a werewolf. And, the big boy thought that he looked scary.
"You are a werewolf, right?" the boy asked, and Stiles nodded. "See, I told you Kate, he's a werewolf."
Stiles didn't like it when the boy turned away from him to look at Kate and he growled. His eyes grew wide and his heart started thumping in his chest when the boy turned to look at him and he saw himself mirrored in the big boy's green eyes.
"Did you just growl?" the big boy asked and Stiles shook his head, but, he'd be given away as a liar if the older boy could hear how fast his heart was beating, it felt like it was going to come right out of his chest and his hands felt sweaty, and not at all because the costume he was wearing was hot, even though it kind of was.
"My name's Derek," the boy said, and then he held his hand out to Stiles.
Stiles regarded the hand and the boy holding it out to him – he was dressed as a skeleton, and his hair was sticking out at all kinds of funky angles – and then he held out his hand and had to tamp down hard on his tongue so that he wouldn't blurt anything out, because he wanted to say something to the other boy, but was afraid that it might come out wrong, and Kate was watching both of them and it looked like she was trying hard not to laugh.
Derek's hand felt warm and strong and Stiles didn't let go of it right away. He felt his mom's hand on his shoulder, but ignored the conversation she was having with another adult that was taking place over his head.
Stiles felt his mouth stretching wide in a smile and his heart started to slow to a normal beat and he liked the way that Derek was looking at him, like they were the only two people in the entryway. It was almost the same way he felt when it his mom or dad spent special time with just him – Stiles time they called it.
"Honey," his mom jostled him and Stiles turned away from Derek to look up at his mom, "what do you say to Mr. Argent?"
For a second Stiles was confused and he frowned, but then he remembered what it was that he was supposed to say, and he gave the man who'd been talking to his mother a fierce scowl, because he was a werewolf after all, and Derek was looking at him and he wanted to be the most scary werewolf that he could in front of the older boy.
"Trick-or-treat," Stiles said in his growliest voice, and he held his pumpkin bucket out to the headless man who dropped a handful of cellophane-wrapped candies into the bucket. This close up, Stiles could see that the headless man wasn't really headless; his head was peeking out from the inside of his overly large jacket.
"You make a mighty fine werewolf there son," Mr. Argent said and his hand clamped down on Stiles' shoulder, making him wince.
The smile that he gave Stiles didn't seem to reach his eyes and it made his stomach feel all twisty, like sometimes happened when he walked past Mr. Hendersen's house on his way home from school – everyone knew that house was haunted and that if you went in past the fence, you never got out. Mr. Hendersen gobbled up little boys and girls, eating them like candy.
"Thank you sir," Stiles said and he swallowed and blinked up at the man who winked at him and then released his shoulder.
"Werewolves are monsters," the man said, "best kept to Halloween and storybooks."
The polite, 'Yes, sir,' stuck in his throat when Stiles saw that Derek was watching him, and that the older boy looked mad and scared and sad, all at the same time. Stiles kept the words tucked firmly in his mouth, like he often had to do at school so that his name wouldn't get written on the board for talking when he shouldn't be.
"I think they're cool," Stiles mumbled, straightening up just a little bit when he saw that Derek had smiled at his quietly spoken words. Mr. Argent had started talking with his mom again, and Stiles hoped that neither adult had heard what he'd said, because Mr. Argent didn't seem to like werewolves.
Stiles reached into his Halloween bucket and pulled out one of his most prized pieces of candy – a full package of Starbursts – and gave it to Derek.
"Thanks," Derek said, "Starbursts are my favorite."
Stiles looked up at the older boy and they both shared a shy smile. Derek opened the package of Starbursts and pulled one of them out. He handed it to Stiles who quickly divested it of its wrapper, without asking his mom first, and then plopped it into his mouth before his mom could see and tell him that he couldn't have any candy so close to his bedtime.
It was orange, and Stiles decided that, even though strawberry had been his absolute favorite flavor before, orange was now his favoritest of all flavors. His mom took his hand, and they said their goodbyes and thanks to Mr. Argent.
Stiles cast one last look over his shoulder as he and his mom walked out the front door. Derek was standing at his full height, and though Kate was tugging on his hand, trying to pull him into the other room, he was watching Stiles. The older boy waved at him, and Stiles returned the wave, craning his neck to look at Derek until Mr. Argent, head once more tucked safely within the folds of his disguise, shut the door between them.
It was late, well past Stiles' bedtime, especially for a school night. He was tired, and his skin was itchy from the fur of his costume, but Stiles half-skipped, half-ran home, dragging his mom along with him. His mom might blame it on the small piece of candy that he'd snuck when he shouldn't have, and his father might say that it was because he was hyped up from all of the excitement, but Stiles knew better.
It wasn't because of a stolen piece of candy, or because it was Halloween night. It was because of Derek.
Stiles couldn't put a name to what it was that he was feeling. That wouldn't come until many years later when he was older and better able to sift through his feelings and thoughts. He just knew that he liked Derek, and wanted to be his friend, even if he was just a little boy and Derek was older than him.
As Stiles lay in bed trying to sleep that night, it was enough for him to remember the way that the older boy had knelt down so that he was eye-to-eye with him, as though, he, a younger boy mattered. Then, there was the way that Derek had smiled at him. It was like the two of them shared a special secret that the rest of the world would never ever be let in on, no matter how much they begged.
And, then there was the way that, when Derek had looked at him, Stiles could see himself reflected in the older boy's eyes. And that, in Derek's eyes, Stiles – even with his crooked smile and two front teeth missing – looked happy, and smart, and perfect in the guise of a wolf. Like a sheep in wolf's clothing, except something much, much better.
But that wouldn't come until many years later. Not until long after Stiles had forgotten about the boy with the green eyes which had seemed to mirror his very soul, the tang of the orange from a secreted candy – his favorite flavor – on his tongue, and Mr. Argent's cryptic warning about werewolves.
It wasn't until almost two years after Scott had become a werewolf and Stiles had learned that werewolves weren't monsters that could only be found in storybooks or on Halloween night, as Mr. Argent had claimed, that he remembered. And when he did remember, he immediately sought out Derek, looked into the older man's eyes and saw all that he needed to – him, Derek, the wolf.
Of course, it didn't hurt that they kissed either.
Lips and tongue. The citrusy bite of orange. Teeth edging along jaws. Noses bumping and smashing into each other. Hands, unsure of what to do, hold, where to touch, hanging dumbly by their sides, before moving, seemingly of their own accord. Fingers skimming the surface of skin. Goose bumps and shivering that belied the heat between them. The sound of heavy breathing, panting, and. . .
"Derek?" Stiles' fingers stilled, but his mouth was pressed against Derek's, muffling the word.
Derek's eyes were closed and his hands rested on the small of Stiles' back. "Hmmm?"
"Did you just growl?"
"Mhm; we still kissing?" Derek questioned, and he opened an eye and lifted an eyebrow, his lips were still on Stiles'.
"Uh, yeah, just checking," Stiles muttered, and then he let himself get lost in the kiss.
Works Cited
Davis, Jeff, prod. Teen Wolf. MTV, Television.
Feedback would be greatly appreciated; feed the muse, pretty, pretty please - treats - I didn't get any Halloween treats.