"Stop being so quiet," Scott complained during lunch the next day. They were sitting alone; for various reasons, everyone else had other places to be. "It's weird."

Stiles looked up from the mutant paste on his plate (beef stroganoff according to the lunch staff; dinosaur vomit according to his taste buds) and pulled a face. "I'm not being quiet. I'm thinking. There's a difference."

"About the scent thing?" Scott leaned forward. "Because I have some ideas-"

"What? No, that's already figured out," Stiles replied, pushing his plate away and leaning forward as well so he could drop his voice. "Derek said it's just intent, like with the mountain ash."

Scott's eyebrows jumped up. "Derek said? When did you talk to him?"

Letting a long breath, Stiles looked around and licked his lips. "He came over to my house on Saturday for no reason and then just...invited himself to eat dinner with me and my dad."

Now Scott's brows were pulled together and his head was tilted to one side. He looked like a confused puppy. "Dude. Seriously?"

"Yes!" Stiles looked around furtively and went on: "And then he took me out for coffee on Sunday. What the hell, right?"

A sneaky expression was stealing onto Scott's face. "Coffee, huh?"

"No!" Not Scott, too! Stiles clawed at his hair. "I mean, yes, but not like that!"

Scott was still grinning like the cat who got the canary. "Think about it, bro: if you were a girl and Derek was doing all that stuff, what would you think? He came over for a family dinner and took you out on a coffee date." At Stiles' stricken expression, Scott laughed and whispered, "Dude! Derek has the biggest crush on you! He wants to get gay-married and have your adopted babies!"

"No, shut up, stop that." Stiles could feel how pale his face was. "Seriously, no. That doesn't even make sense. We barely get along! He tries to kill me on a regular basis."

"Maybe Derek still flirts like a fifth-grader. Y'know, shoving and hair-pulling and stuff like that." Scott shrugged. "To be fair to him, you did have him arrested for the murder of his own sister. And you kinda suggest we leave him for dead, like, all the time. So maybe it's a love-hate thing." Scott grinned again, clearly pleased with himself. "Is that what it is? You guys loooooove each other."

"Would you stop that?" Stiles hissed, looking around worriedly. "Who's side are you on here, anyway?"

Scott only leaned back in his chair, taking a crisp bite from the apple he'd swiped from Stiles' plate when he wasn't paying attention.

"You're the worst," Stiles groaned, putting his head in his hands.

X

Derek was in Stiles' bedroom when he got home, sitting very nonchalantly at his computer and frowning at the lunar calendar Stiles had saved as his desktop.

"Awesome," Stiles sighed, clunking his backpack down by the door. "Why am I constantly beset by werewolves? I swear you guys are like a plague."

When Derek turned to face Stiles, he managed to look even grumpier than usual. "Why do you have all these books?" he asked, slapping a stack Stiles was sure had been properly shelved when he'd left that morning.

The titles seemed to have a common theme. The Farmer's Almanac. Medicinal Herbs: A Beginner's Guide. Edible and Poisonous Plants of Northern California. Stiles' mom's old tarot book. Beasts Factual and Fantastic. The Monster Spotter's Guide to North America.

Stiles scanned the titles and looked up at Derek's worried face confusedly. "Isn't it obvious? My best friend is a werewolf. An actual werewolf. And this town has more supernatural occurrences than freakin' Sunnydale. I like to be prepared." He snatched the books up and sniffed, "Not that it's any of your business."

Derek looked unappeased. "Why do you take it upon yourself to study all of this? Curiosity? Or something else?"

"Always with the nosy questioning," Stiles huffed as he reshelved his books. "I study it because no one else is going to even though someone clearly needs to. Plus, it's interesting. Now, as enjoyable as all this has been, it's a school night and I have homework-"

"That can wait. You're going to hang out with me right now."

Stiles closed his mouth so quickly his teeth clicked together. What? He turned around, but Derek was still wearing his usual serious face. "We're doing what?"

"Hanging out," Derek repeated, still solemn and tight-jawed. He fished around in his coat pocket and pulled out a brown paper bag, which he tossed to Stiles. "I brought you a burrito."

It was cold- and not just a little smushed- but it was, in fact, a burrito. Holy shit, Stiles thought, staring down at the floppy beef-and-cheese in his hands. Derek is totally in love with me.

"What?" Derek asked, looking uncomfortable. "Why are you nervous? It's not poisoned."

"Oh." Stiles swallowed audibly, feeling his Adam's apple bob in his throat. "I...uh...I'm not-"

"Liar."

Okaaaay. Thinking on his feet, Stiles snatched up a PS3 controller and threw it to Derek. "I'm worried that you're going to completely suck ass at zombies and I'm going to have to carry us the whole time. Prove me wrong, Mr. Alpha."

Derek looked at the controller like he'd never seen one in his life, before looking up at Stiles. "What?"

x

Derek was bad at COD. Like, really bad. Abominably bad. So bad that they usually didn't even reach the oh-shit-zombie-swarm part before Derek was frantically smashing buttons and yelling- despite being about four inches away from him on the edge of the bed- for Stiles to come save him. So when Stiles suggested Derek play in training mode for a little while just to get used to the controls, it was definitely not so he could casually observe him while Derek was distracted. Nope. It was totally for Derek's own good.

Still. There might have been some stealthy observations going on.

Stiles was pretty comfortable with his sexuality. Comfortable enough that he could joke around about it with Scott, who'd known him pretty much all his life, and comfortable enough that he could look at dudes like Danny or Derek appreciatively without freaking out about it later. It helped that his mom and dad had known he was an equal-opportunity kind of guy since he was a kid (can't really deny it when you get sent home from Boy Scouts for 'behaving inappropriately' with your tentmate- who, Stiles has always added adamantly, was totally amenable to what they were getting into) and they were never anything less than completely supportive. Sometimes too supportive. Just thinking about the version of 'the talk' he got was still enough to make him cringe.

But it was one thing to be comfortable with it in theory, when the statistical likelihood of getting some action from anyone these days, regardless of gender, was pretty much nil...and a whole other thing being comfortable with it in practice, when he was sitting one hand's width from a smoking hot twenty-something-year-old dude who maybe wanted to get into his pants. There was nothing comfortable about that. Stiles was mainly terrified...but also surprisingly interested, considering how not-an-option the very concept had seemed a few days ago.

"Stop watching me," Derek snarled. "I play like shit when you're looking."

"You play like shit pretty much always," Stiles diverted, grabbing up his controller and returning his attention to the TV. "Ready to give it another try?"

"No," Derek answered immediately.

Stiles grinned and started setting up a game. "Thatta boy," he said, poking Derek with his elbow. "We'll show those zombie bastards this time."