A/N: I got this idea yesterday; so I'm planning to do a few (maybe five) little fics like this about Stiles and Derek around Christmas time. Each chapter will be a separate situation, with different versions of Stiles and Derek for each one. Most, if not all, will be AU. But yea, here's the first bit of Christmas-y Sterek, and I swear, it'll get more Christmas-y than this in other chapters.
Summary: "Derek hears a loud thud from the apartment next door, then a 'shit, goddammit' follow soon afterwards. He hears a groan, then there's a short pause, and then a muttered 'stupid fucking dumbass tiny weak ass ladder.'" Derek's night is interrupted by a knock on the door, where he finds his new neighbor standing, with a request to take him to the hospital after a Christmas light mishap.
Derek hears a loud thud from the apartment next door, then a "shit, goddammit" follow soon afterwards. It must have come from Derek's new neighbor. He just moved in last week, so Derek doesn't know his name, but he has noticed that his neighbor is in fact pretty cute.
The loud noise he just heard is kind of a cause for concern. Derek walks over to the wall of his apartment, the one that connects to the apartment next door, and presses his ear to it. He hears a groan, then there's a short pause, and then a muttered "stupid fucking dumbass tiny weak ass ladder."
Derek bites back a laugh; the guy next door seems to be just fine. He goes back to his kitchen area, and picks up the bowl of gingerbread cookie dough.
Every year when Derek was younger, he and his mom would bake Christmas cookies. They would shut the door to the kitchen, and keep everyone else in the family from entering for the two whole days before Christmas. Derek's mom always said that fresh cookies tasted better, so they would wait until the last minute to make them. For those two days, the rest of the family would eat takeout or go out to eat, but Derek would stay with him mom in the closed off kitchen, and bake. They would make every single type of cookie imaginable. Chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, peanut butter, shortbread, gingerbread, sugar, snicker doodles, and at least five other kinds. Derek's mom knew all the recipes by heart, and one by one, Derek learned them too.
When his parents died, Derek stopped baking at Christmas. It wasn't the same without his mom, and to be frank, it made him sad baking cookies without her around, or his dad to eat them. But after a while (nine and a half years, to be exact,) Derek decided that he would bake Christmas cookies every year so that he could keep that connection with his mom, whether she was by his side or not.
He's on his third batch of cookies right now, he's already knocked out the sugar cookies, which are cooling and almost ready for frosting, and he finished the chocolate chip cookies in record time. The gingerbread is just about ready to roll out, so Derek puts the bowl back on the counter, and reaches up into the cabinet for the flour to roll the cookie dough out on.
He sprinkles the flour across his counter, and scoops the gingerbread on top of it. He pats some flour onto the rolling pin, and right when he picks it up to start rolling, Derek hears a knock on the door.
"One second!" he calls, before going over to the sink to wash his hands. Derek grabs a kitchen towel, and dries his hands as he walks to his door and pulls it open. Someone topples forward and Derek barely has a chance to grab their arm and steady them.
It's the cute guy from next door.
"Ha," Derek says, "falling for me already? We just met."
Derek immediately smacks himself internally for saying something so cheesy. What the hell did I just say? he wonders. Where did that even come from?
"Crap, sorry," says the guy, completely ignoring Derek's idiotic remark, thank God. "I was leaning on the door and I didn't think it would open so quickly and then it just opened and I totally lost my balance and wow thanks for grabbing my arm, I was going down like a chopped tree, that would've left a bruise."
"No problem," says Derek, smirking at the guy for his little ramble. He's cute; Derek has to admit it again, with his fluffed up brown hair and little moles on his face and neck, and his festive green and red flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
"I'm Derek," he tells the guy, holding out his hand.
The guy takes it, and shakes his hand.
His fingers are soft, and really, really warm.
"I'm Stiles," he tells Derek, and Derek cocks his head at him.
"Don't ask," Stiles grimaces. "Horrible first name, Stilinski is my last name, so Stiles it is."
Derek nods, understanding.
"So what did you need Stiles?" he asks, testing out the name in his mouth. (It flows smoothly off his tongue, and Derek smiles at his observation.)
"Oh, yea, that," stammers Stiles. "Well actually, I was hoping… do you think…. you could maybe…" He pauses, and Derek waves him to continue.
"Doyouthinkyoucoulddrivemetothehospital?"
Stiles speaks so fast Derek has to strain to distinguish separate words. It takes him a second, then it hits him.
"The hospital?" Derek asks, "are you alright? What happened?"
"Well," starts Stiles, "I would drive myself, but it's my ankle…." He trails off, and Derek, for the first time, looks down at Stiles' feet.
He gasps.
Stiles' left ankle is swollen to three times the size of his right one, and it is black and purple.
"Oh my god," says Derek. "Come in, sit down, that looks awful!"
"Thanks," Stiles says dryly. "I didn't notice."
"No, I didn't mean-" starts Derek, but Stiles is laughing.
"I'm kidding man, sorry, sarcasm is my best friend. But yea, a seat would be nice."
"Do you need a hand?" Derek questions, (while filing away in his mind the information he just learned about his new neighbor) but Stiles shakes his head.
"I'm okay, just lead the way," he replies.
Derek waits for Stiles to come a few feet inside his apartment, and then shuts the door behind him. He then leads Stiles to his couch, which is in his living room, next to the kitchen.
Stiles plops down on the couch, and lets out a sigh of relief.
"I'm getting you ice," Derek states, then goes over to the freezer for an ice pack, which he wraps in a towel and gives to Stiles.
Stiles can barely reach to his ankle, without twisting his body in an awkward position, and after a few failed attempts he looks up at Derek with his big brown eyes, and Derek knows in a second what Stiles needs.
"Here," Derek says quietly, sitting down too. "I'll hold it."
Stiles smiles, and lifts his foot onto Derek's lap.
"But only for a little while," continues Derek. "Then I'm taking you to the hospital, and you can tell me what happened on the way."
"Deal," says Stiles, and he hands the ice pack to Derek, who gingerly places it on Stiles' swollen ankle.
"Tell me if it hurts more," says Derek, and Stiles nods, before looking around.
"Wow, what smells like Christmas?" he asks.
"They're cookies I made." Derek tells him.
"Well you know what might help my ankle?" asks Stiles, a smile on his face.
"If you say cookies, I swear I'm gonna…" Derek trails off.
"Cookies!" Stiles exclaims, smiling even wider.
Derek shakes his head and chuckles. He reaches over to the table, and grabs a couple warm chocolate chip cookies, before putting them on a napkin, and handing them to Stiles.
"Oh my god these look incredible, thank you!" Stiles all but screams, and Derek shakes his head at the overenthusiastic guy sitting with his foot in Derek's lap.
The overenthusiastic cute guy sitting with his foot in Derek's lap.
Stiles munches on the cookies while Derek holds the ice, and the apartment is bathed in silence.
After about five minutes, Derek puts the ice on the table, carefully moves Stiles' foot off of his lap, and stands up.
"Come on," he says, "we really should get that ankle looked at. And on the way there, you can tell me what happened."
Stiles sighs.
"Fine," he says, with an air of defeat, stumbling awkwardly to his feet. "It's really embarrassing though."
"Now I have to hear it," Derek says, and Stiles frowns playfully at him, before hobbling to the door, which he opens and steps into the hall.
"One second," Derek calls, before grabbing his wallet and car keys, and turning off the oven. The cookie dough can sit on the counter; he'll just make another batch later.
After getting in the elevator, ("no way are you going down three flights of stairs," Derek had told Stiles, who had stubbornly started heading to the staircase.) Derek and Stiles stand in silence. Stiles is shuffling around, obviously in pain.
Derek offers his arm to Stiles, who wraps his own arm around it, and leans heavily on Derek.
They make it to Derek's car, which is (thankfully) parked right outside, and Derek opens the passenger door and helps Stiles get in before getting into the driver's seat himself. He drives in silence for a few minutes, and then coughs.
"I believe you own me an embarrassing explanation of your current condition," he says, and Stiles groans.
"Okay, okay," he says. "It's the least I can do."
Derek wants to smile, but that would be rude because Stiles is in pain.
He smiles anyway at Stiles' reluctance, and Stiles starts his story.
"Okay. So because it's Christmas, and I just moved in, right? I wanted to hang up some lights in my apartment! To make it all festive!" he begins. "There are already hooks up in the apartment, so I didn't have to do any of that, but when I got out my lights, I realized I had nothing to stand on to reach the hooks."
"Uh oh," Derek interjects, and Stiles makes a yea man, seriously face at him.
"So I decide to look around in the apartment, right?" continues Stiles. "And guess what I found in a closet? A ladder!"
"Oh no," says Derek, who thinks he knows where this is going.
"Oh yes," says Stiles. "I mean, sure, it was a dusty old ladder that looked like it had seen better days, and sure, it looked like it was missing a few pieces, but who am I to judge a book by its cover?"
Derek snorts. "When the book you're judging is a ladder that looks like a death trap, I'm pretty sure you're allowed to judge."
"Okay, maybe" sighs Stiles, "but the point is I didn't judge, and I decided that ladder would be the rusty old ladder who could. So I huffed and puffed and dragged it to the other room, and set it up, and it was the perfect height to hang the lights, which I had wrapped around my neck, by the way, for optimal access..."
Derek snorts, and then almost veers into the opposite lane of traffic from laughing so hard.
"You. Had. A. String. Of. Christmas. Lights. Wrapped. Around. Your. Neck." He states slowly, shaking his head in disbelief.
"Hey, it was a good idea at the time!" Stiles defends himself.
Derek laughs again.
"So you had the lights wrapped around your neck… and then what?" he asks.
"So I get to the top of the ladder, and right when I'm reaching up to put on the first part of the strand of lights, it gets a little tangled around my neck, so I'm working to untangle it, and the ladder…the thing just folds, like a house of cards. And not only did I fall like four feet to the ground, but my left ankle got caught in between two of the rungs when the ladder closed, so it folded on my ankle while I fell."
"Ouch," Derek says, wincing. "No wonder your ankle looks the way it does. That has to be a bad sprain, if not a small fracture."
"Oh, yea, tell me about it," says Stiles. "But anyway, there's the incredible story of how I'm an idiot and I possibly broke my ankle trying to decorate for the holidays. Merry frickin' Christmas."
"Technically, it's not Christmas yet," Derek points out, and Stiles scowls.
"It's a couple weeks before, close enough," he grunts in frustration, and Derek smirks.
They pull up outside the emergency room, and Derek helps Stiles inside. They go up to the counter, and luckily, there are only two people ahead of them.
Stiles gets in within the first fifteen minutes of them being there, which is a Christmas miracle in in of itself, and comes out on crutches ten minutes later with his ankle wrapped in an ace bandage.
"Sprained," he says, coming over to Derek, a bit unsteady on his crutches.
"Well that's good," Derek says, standing up. "At least it's not broken."
Right as Stiles approaches Derek, he gets one of his crutches caught on the rug in front of him, and goes pitching forward.
Derek grabs him before he can fall.
"Falling for me again?" he laughs, "That's twice in one night."
Derek straightens Stiles' crutches and leads the way out the door, smiling.
He doesn't see Stiles' ear to ear grin, and he doesn't hear the whispered "maybe" in response to his rhetorical question.
A/N: Thanks for reading! :)