Derek found his boyfriend with the kids in the dining room with their heads stuck together. At least Lucy and Justin had no qualms pestering Stiles like they would pester anybody new to the family. Lucy had slid off Stiles' lap but she was now using the armrest again to push herself up in excitement. Her brother was calmer and he was still looking at the chair as if it was a puzzle to solve but he also was very interested in what Stiles had to say. Apparently, they were still stuck on amusement parks and the fact that Stiles could just skip the line.

"Mom said that it's rude to cut lines," Justin said. It was the first Derek had heard from him today but he had always been the quiet one.

"And she's right," Sties told him. "But often I can't use the normal entrance, I'd get stuck and then nobody would get past me. That would suck, wouldn't it?"

The kids nodded in unison.

"So I use a different entrance which has its own line," Stiles explained. "Lucky me, most of the time I'm the only one in that line."

Derek couldn't help the warm feeling in his stomach when he saw Stiles with the kids and he just hoped that his mom would see the same. But when he glanced over at her, he doubted it.

From the kitchen entrance Laura and her husband Frank came into the room and they even managed to make it look as if they had been busy with preparing dinner and not as if they had been lurking around the corner to have a look at Stiles before they entered the room.

"Mom, Stiles says he doesn't cut lines," Justin told her in a loud voice. "He's not rude."

"I never said that, honey." Laura hurried to say, her face a little red on the cheeks.

"I'd never cut lines." Stiles pretended that he didn't notice her guilty expression and kept his focus on Justin. "Derek would strangle me. He had to deal with rude customers way too often, it would tick him off."

"Did you strangle customers, Uncle Derek?" Lucy asked as if that was the best thing ever.

"Only if they were really mean."

Next to arrive was Peter who only looked a little bit disappointed that he'd missed the introductions.

Cora and Miles came in a few minutes later and once again it was awkward as hell. Cora gave Derek the cold shoulder and he guessed that he would have to talk to her later to clear some things up but he was not looking forward to it.

She and her soon to be husband greeted everybody with hugs and kisses but Derek only got a short half-embrace before she turned to Stiles.

"Don't you want to introduce us, Derek?" She asked in a clipped tone. Cora wasn't the tallest person but with Stiles always sitting, everybody had to look down to look him in the eye. Which she did on purpose now.

"Stiles, this is my sister Cora and her fiance Miles." He said and took his place at Stiles' side. Stiles had still two kids plastered to him but he managed to get a hand free to greet them.

The last to arrive was Josh, one of Derek's cousins. Due to work his parents had moved to Michigan a few months ago but they didn't want Josh to switch schools this close to finishing high school so he stayed with Derek's parents until he graduated. After that it would be college anyway and who knew where that would lead him.

It was kind of cliche but Josh was a teenager so he did crawl out of his room at the last minute, greeted everybody with a wave and a general "hello" before he buried his nose in his phone again. He did have a curious look at Stiles but then he just accepted him as an addition to the family.

"Josh, can't you put that away for five minutes?" Talia scolded him but did nothing to enforce the rule. Most likely because Stiles was here and she didn't want to make a scene in front of their guest.

There was a moment of confusion in which they tried to figure out where Stiles should sit and which chair to remove for him but in the end the kids insisted to have him between them. And if Derek read him right, Stiles was more than okay with that solution. This way he had a child left and right as a buffer between him and the next adult.

Derek took the seat across from him so Stiles couldn't get attacked from the front either. It was sad but Derek didn't feel comfortable with his family today.

However, so far they had at least tried to be civil even if it was clear that they had no idea what to do with Stiles.

Andrew and Laura brought in plates and bowls and for a minute everybody was busy with filling their plates.

"Stiles, can you cut my meat?" Lucy asked, already pushing her plate towards him. On her other side Laura tried to hold her back but it was too late.

"Sweety, Stiles is our guest, don't bother him." She told her daughter.

"No problem," Stiles assured her and started to cut the meat. "This alright?"

Lucy nodded happily and proved it by putting a piece into her mouth.

"Thank you." She said around the bite.

At least she was polite, Derek guessed. And if he was honest, Stiles was the last person who would complain about somebody talking with their mouth full.

The next few minutes went by in silence, the only noises coming from all of them enjoying their meal.

"So Stiles." Cora broke the silence. "How did you and Derek meet?"

Derek froze with his fork in mid-air, they hadn't agreed on a story to tell about that. That they had met on a BDSM dating site, Stiles looking for a sub and Derek looking for a dom, wasn't a story to tell at the dinner table.

"Online." At least Stiles had the decency to swallow before he answered. "He made a comment on an X-Men quote on my profile and I asked him if he'd taken his profile picture himself. It kind of grew from there."

Which was actually true. Stiles gave him a wink as if he knew exactly what was going on in Derek's head, which was probably true. Not that it was hard to guess this time.

Cora made a noise as if that proved her point. Whichever point that was.

"Did you tell him about your … condition right away or did you lead him on?" Cora asked in a tone that made clear that she was already sure about the anwer.

It didn't help that she hit right into Stiles' insecurity when it came to his chair with this question. And in this case it hadn't just been about meeting Derek, it had been about the fact that Stiles was a dom and that his chair had been a deal breaker way too often.

"It didn't come up while we were texting," Derek answered for him. "When we set up our first date I asked how I would recognize him and he said that I should look for the guy in a wheelchair."

"And then he sneaked up on me and I almost fell out of my chair," Stiles added with an accusing tone and jabbed his fork in Derek's direction.

"You had your back to the door and your headphones on." Derek reminded him. "And you were dancing."

"I wasn't dancing," Stiles answered with a fake sulk.

"Could have fooled me." They exchanged a look over the table, for a second lost in fond memory.

"You can dance?" Justin asked the question which most likely was on everybody's mind.

"If I'm in the mood," Stiles said but didn't explain farther, leaving the whole table with a confused expression. Derek could show them a picture of a dancing Stiles but for some reason it felt wrong. He had entered a competition with that picture and he had no problems showing it to his friends and Stiles' dad but with his own family, he was wary. He didn't want to hear what they had to say about it.

"Can you show us?" Lucy asked.

"Maybe later." Stiles said vaguely with a glance at Derek. He had said something about giving Derek a lesson in dancing with him just in case it would come up at the wedding but so far they hadn't come around to that.

"Lucy, stop asking those questions, you're making him uncomfortable." Laura tried to rein her in. "Derek, why don't you tell us more about your road trip. I doubt the amusement park was your only stop."

"Yeah, I thought you would fly here," Cora spoke up. "Can you leave work for that long? I mean even if you leave right after the wedding, you'll be off work for how long? Two weeks?"

At the end of the table Josh snorted. "Dude, they've been on the road for three weeks already. Don't you follow his Instagram?"

"You too?" Derek groaned and couldn't help but wonder how many of his family were stalking him online. But it looked like at the table it were only Josh and Peter. At least that.

"Is that why you met with Peter yesterday? Did you ask him about that job offer I mentioned?" His mother perked up. "Did you finally come to your senses and quit your job? You're coming back to Beacon Hills? That's wonderful."

"What?" Derek needed a moment to process her line of thoughts. "I'm not coming back to Beacon Hills. I live in New York, Stiles lives in New York, we like it there." There might be a place for the both of them, plus Jack, in the near future but leaving New York was not an option. And for sure he wouldn't move back here.

"Think about it." Talia almost begged him. "If you and Stiles are serious." And I hope not, hung unspoken in the air. "You'll need a job that pays better than what you have been wasting your time with the last few years. Think about the medical bills. And Stiles' family lives here, they can help you taking care of him."

"Wow, lady." Stiles cut in. His tone had some steel to it, demanding attention. It was almost his dom voice. "My medical bills are none of your business and they're none of Derek's business either. They are my bills and I pay them with my own money. And for sure I don't need a caretaker." He spit the last word back at her.

Over their trip Derek had been mistaken for his caretaker a few times and they had laughed it off and sometimes had even taken advantage of it but this was something different.

Talia gave Stiles a cold look.

"Your father is the sheriff and your stepmother is a nurse." She told him. "Your stepbrother is the local veterinarian."

"Somebody has been nosy." Stiles tried to hold up the brave facade but Derek knew him well enough to tell that his mother had struck a nerve.

"Point is, your family is not exactly swimming in money." Talia continued.

"Now I'm what? Some kind of gold digger?"

"Talia, I think this is enough." Peter stepped in but she ignored him.

"Besides, Derek isn't really swimming in money either, is he?" Stiles shot back and Derek just knew that his next words would be ugly. "After you failed to blackmail him into changing his majors by cutting off the money, you just paid enough to cover his college debts. He didn't even dare to quit his retail job because he didn't trust you to bring him all the way through college. So even if I were a gold digger, there isn't much gold to dig with Derek." There were hectic blotches high on his cheeks and his chest was heaving.

He threw Derek a glance, a silent apology for using this as a weapon. Derek didn't like the uncomfortable silence lying over the table and he would have preferred if this hadn't come up ever again but he did give Stiles the hint of a reassuring smile. His mom had been the one who had started this.

"Then tell us, Stiles." Talia crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. "How do you earn your money?"