I am so sorry.
Just so you's guys knowses, I wrote this before I found out Jen is the Darach.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. I make no profit from this.
Derek is haunted by the ghosts of his past.
Literally.
It's a lot funnier than it sounds.
Well, no, not really.
(Just a little.)
Erica's ghost hovers just above the arm of the sofa, her legs crossed in a mock of sitting. Stiles picks at his short, square fingernails; Derek studiously pretends that this isn't the most entertainment value his apartment has ever seen, but watches anyway.
"Ugh," she says.
Neither of them deigns to return a sympathetic grunt. Dicks.
She tries again. "I'll give you guys fifteen bucks to do it and let me watch."
Derek's eyes snap up after a second, while Stiles just sort of lazily drops his head onto the back of the couch to look at her. "You're dead," he informs her, like it's some sort of newsflash to her. Derek flinches; he prefers to just tell her that's she's a ghost, because Derek always thinks his exact words matter. She thinks that he reads too much and has deluded himself to believe he's actually in a book. "Your ghost money is no good here."
Erica tosses a curl over her shoulder—she has to concentrate on it to do it. "I had a stash of cash buried behind my house in case of emergency," she explains, forgoing telling them that emergency was originally code for running away. Stiles mouths 'stash of cash' a couple times and Derek continues to look unimpressed. "There's enough. You could even sell some old meds of mine if you want more."
"Sounds like a lot of leg work," Derek drawls, dry as a bone. Ugh, death humor, gross.
She smiles at him, extra sharp and wicked. "It's not just the legs I wanna see workin', sugar."
Derek's face floods with color, two twin splotches of red high on his cheekbones. God, those cheekbones. Erica wants to see them flushed against his beige sheets, or Stiles' abdomen, or Stiles' ass. Really, she's not picky.
Stiles ignores him and plows on (oh, that's something to think about). "Wait. Is this fifteen dollars each or do we split it? And don't make any splitting-me-in-half jokes, because I've already thought of them all." Erica pouts at that. "Anyway, seven-fifty doesn't really cut it for me to sleep with the Grouch." He jabs his thumb in Derek's direction.
"I'm not the Grouch."
"You live in a garbage can, you hate happiness, and your eyebrows are out of control," Stiles snipes back. "Face it, bud: you're the Grouch."
"I don't hate happiness," Derek murmurs indignantly.
"Uh, yeah. Ya do."
"Aw, yeah," Erica leers. "Get it."
Derek's exasperated "We're not gonna have sex" is well matched by Stiles' incredulous "For seven-fifty?" Stiles wins by the tip of his eyebrows, which have climbed much higher and louder than Derek's.
"It's better than that shit minimum wage you already make," Erica points out. Stiles looks trumped for a minute. "I'm treating you nicer than most employers would after years of dedicated work."
His brow furrows as he stews in momentary silence. "Sooo," he draws out the vowel sound. "It's by the hour, then?"
Derek coughs a little, like he can't believe he's hearing this. Prude.
Erica gives Stiles her best sass face, courtesy of Master Lydia. "You really think you're going to last more than an hour? Or, like, thirty seconds?"
Stiles chuffs, and now he's the one blushing. "It's not me you have to worry about. I jerk it twice a day." His blush worsens at that, probably because he knows they heard the unspoken 'at least' in that sentence. "I'm talking about Forever Alone over here. Who knows the last time he got any."
"Wow," Derek says, voice clipped but absolutely thick with sarcasm, "do you get awards for your seduction techniques."
Stiles opens his arms in a sweeping gesture, like look at all the fucks I give about your shitty opinion. "Baby, if you wanted strange, all you had to do was ask nicely," he bites back.
"How are you still a virgin," Derek returns with breathy, faux amazement, because he rarely likes to take the high road. At least when it comes to Stiles.
There's probably a dirty joke in there about the low road and coming, but Erica's too lazy to consider it.
"Hey." She nudges a scowling Stiles with her mind. Ghost mind. He hates it, thinks it's freaky, even though he's the one who made her watch that movie with the erotic pottery wheel. "Does this mean you want Derek on top?"
Stiles gapes like a fish—oh, yeah, he totally does—and her former alpha has to look away. Even in the low lighting (or no lighting, because Derek either doesn't like electricity, or he thinks it is sorcery or something), she can spot the red on Derek's neck. It's almost sweet.
Until they don't move or speak for the next minute—then, it's just annoying and repressed. She sighs. "Fine," she relents. "If you two won't do the nasty, then I'm gonna head off. Maybe watch those other two pretty morons give each other handjobs and pretend it's not gay."
Stiles gives her a bemused look. "Danny and Ethan...?" he ventures.
Erica rolls her eyes. Like those two are pretending jack shit. "Scott and Isaac," she corrects flippantly.
Stiles chokes on his own spit and Derek crosses his arms, probably to stop himself from patting the scrawny teenager on the back and incriminating himself for having feelings. "They're, uh," Derek stammers, awkward as ever, "doing that?"
"No," Laura replies, floating out of the kitchen. She has an imaginary jar of peanut butter in her hands with an imaginary spoon stuck in the imaginary contents. "But you can see them fisting each other's cocks in their eyes. The sexual tension is through the roof." Erica nods in agreement.
Muttering and groaning about unwanted "visuals," Stiles presses the heels of his palms against his eyes and sinks down on the couch like he's melting, all lax limbs and such. Derek stares. A lot. It's actually kind of sad.
Erica appears next to her fellow spirit and gestures towards the jar. "Why'd you do that? It's not even real."
Laura frowns at her hands and the jar dissipates. "I miss peanut butter," she confesses.
"I miss chocolate," Erica offers in sympathy.
Laura snaps at the two living people in the room—rather, she fashions a snapping noise and mimes the action, given her lack of corporeal fingers—and reclaims their attention. She uses her best alpha voice. "Eat peanut butter," Laura commands them with grave solemnity. "And chocolate. You won't always get the chance to."
Stiles squints. "Is this still a sex conversation or?"
"Not necessarily. Just enjoy your favorite foods. Enjoy all the food. And people. Become hedonists." She flaps her hand vaguely.
"Uhh, okay," Derek says eloquently.
Laura glances at Erica. "Meet you at the McCall house." She doesn't say when; time is irrelevant to ghosts, for the most part. And then she vanishes. Death has made her an abrupt spirit. Or maybe she was always that way, who knows. Erica certainly never met her when they were both alive.
Erica likes to think they would have hated each other, so that this situation is the only one in which they could get along.
"Did... did your sister just tell us to have kinky food sex?" Stiles turns his head to look at Derek and the weak, afternoon light spilling in from the high windows flashes in his wide, whiskey-colored eyes. God, those eyes. When she was alive and had a crush on him, she thought no one could be immune to them. She still thinks she's right.
Derek swallows (there's a visual) and keeps staring. "I don't even like peanut butter," he grumbles, as only he can truly kill a mood. And the Oscar goes to.
Stiles laughs anyway and Erica chooses to go invisible, despite Derek's infi-red laser eyes. He's always too distracted with Stiles around to notice. Plus, that grumble sounded a lot more like negotiations than the brakes to her.
"Have you seen Boyd?" Derek asks later when he strolls out of the kitchen, buck naked with a plate of sandwiches.
On the bed Stiles makes grabby hands for the PB&J. "Did you bring milk?"
"No. I'm not your butler."
"Then, also no," Stiles replies, tearing into the soft bread. "Boyd hated me. I don't think he would have stuck around just to see us making the beast with two backs."
"Shakespeare."
"Yeah, five points." Stiles sneers, "Did Jen teach you that?"
He gets a tackle for his reward.