Things move onward.

Derek gets used to having the pack around all the time. Erica is eventually released from being grounded and starts coming around. Turns out they were never mistreated by the Alphas and in fact spent the entire time in some kind of werewolf boot camp and are the best behaved of the group.

Isaac moves in with Scott after it becomes clear that the Loft is not the right space for him (He can't study with Derek constantly pacing around the apartment). Scott and his mom seem to love this idea. The three of them turn into this semi creepy happy family almost overnight.

Peter is around a lot more than Derek is perfectly comfortable with. For the now he appears to be over his desire for power and death and destruction. He seems fine with flirting with Lydia. Derek is not amused.

But the worst part…

No.

The part that keeps bothering him is that Stiles doesn't come around. She used to be everywhere. He would turn around and she would be there. Or he could hear her. Or he would find something of hers. It's not that she is gone, it's just that she seems to not be around.

Which is not a thing.

It's not.

"It's a thing." Boyd tells him one afternoon.

"What?" Derek had been wandering the apartment.

"This restless pacing of yours because you miss Stiles." Boyd watches him with a cool kind of confidence that Derek is envious of.

"That's not what is happening." Derek denies.

"Derek," Boyd stands. "Buddy, You need to get over yourself and grovel."

"That's not what is happening." Derek is starting to sound like a broken record.

"When you do grovel," Boyd offers as he gathers his things. "Make sure it's some kind of creative nerdy groveling. The two of you are driving the rest of us crazy."

"Wait, what is Stiles doing?" Derek shouts after Boyd because he is a desperate loser.

Stiles now knows way more about the supernatural than any person who does not actually have supernatural powers should know. Deucalion has been courting her with books and databases.

Courting might be the wrong word. Although it isn't really. He wants to pay for her college and then bring her on as a member of the Alpha Pack and all things justice. Morrell and Deucalion are getting tired of each other, not in a horrible way but more in different 5 year plans way. Deucalion wants to keep on functioning like Zorro in his justice endeavors and Morrell wants to set up a more organized structured system with reporting and oversight. They were hoping that Stiles could help create a bridge as they moved in different directions.

Stiles was considering it.

Her dad was at least pleased as punch that someone thought footing the bill for her education was a good idea and he wouldn't need to fill out a million financial aid forms soon.

Only.

"Stiles." Her dad stood at the edge of her room looking worried.

"Yeah?"

"You have been watching Anime for three days."

"I have a lot of catching up to do." Stiles points out. All the supernatural shenanigans and research has kept her fairly busy and she is now very behind on many of her shows.

"One of them was about shirtless boys. I don't actually think there was a plot involved."

"They are on a swim team."

"That's not a plot."

"I know."

"I called Lydia." Suddenly the redhead is standing behind her father.

"You have been neglecting you skin care routine I see." Lydia appraises Stiles with a disapproving face. Stiles glares at her father.

"This if for your own good."

"No moping in the mall," Lydia reminds Stiles.

"I am not moping." Stiles is clearly pouting because Lydia has made it clear that they are going to the book store last, there is a difference.

"You are because you decided to call things off with Derek and now you don't have sex to give you those extra endorphins, so you're just bringing down everyone's vibe."

"I thought everyone would be way cooler with me being out of my terminally unhealthy relationship with the resident werewolf failure." Just because Stiles participated willingly doesn't mean she didn't know how crazy most of that was. They barely talked outside of sex. Hell, they hardly talked during sex. Their relationship had been sex. She knows that.

"While we all can agree that Derek has the worst possible luck I don't actually think that first part is completely true." Lydia sighs.

"You two are possibly the worst couple ever. You fight constantly. I have seen the way you two get one when forced to do something for ten minutes."

"You don't have to tell me." Stiles can tell this is going to be a crappy conversation.

"But you know what, he can translate your roundabout way of talking. You left me sitting in a car to hold him up for two hours so he wouldn't drown. He jumped in front of the Kanima for you. The two of you don't need to talk when shit goes down because you just react in the same way. Jackson might have loved me enough to stop being a Lizard for me but we never had that kind of connection." Lydia motions to the shoe store. "Now if you don't mind we have some retail therapy to get back to."

Stiles went with her mutely because there were somethings she just couldn't talk herself around. It was true actually, now that she thought about it. Stiles had been so caught up in thinking about all the ways they were wrong together, she hadn't spent any real time thinking about the ways they were right. If Stiles and Derek had been the same gender there would have been a buddy cop about them.

The goofy one. The serious one. Together they will solve this crime.

But wasn't that exactly what happened.

They had totally solved three separate crime sprees together. People were alive because Derek and Stiles had chosen to spend time together.

"Lydia…" Stiles began bashfully.

"Yes I know." Lydia didn't even turn to look at Stiles, just held up a really cute pair of boots.

"Why do you think I am making you clean yourself up today?"

"Because you take a sick kind of pleasure in torturing me?"

"Because when you go make a man grovel it's important to look like you can not only kill him with your bare hands but make him beg you to do it." Lydia turned. "I believe you would call this a makeover montage."

Stiles walked into Derek's loft expecting to find him looming in the corner as he was normally doing these days. What she found was not that.

"Um…."

The room was covered in boxes and Stiles could see things spilling out of the boxes.

"What's all this?" she asked completely forgetting her mission.

"Nearly every item sold on Think Geek." Derek replied from where he was half buried in boxes. He looked like crap. Sleep deprived and clearly in need of a decent meal. And yet still, crazy hot. So unfair.

"Why?" Stiles asked in utter disbelief.

"You like too many things." Derek sounded tortured. "I said to myself, get her something she will like. Well, depending on the day of the week and the weather forecast that means something different. So I bought everything I thought you might like." Derek looked a bit dazed.

"There's a corner entirely dedicated to Game of Thrones." Someone had put of signs for different fandoms.

"Boyd and Erica made me label things." Derek is sliding down so slowly that, bit by bit, he's covered in the boxes.

"Why?"

"I figured this would be a more romantic gesture than flowers." Derek sighed. "I need to figure out what I am keeping and what I'm returning."

Stiles marched over to where Derek was up to his neck in boxes and

unburied him. Derek blinked up at her owlishly.

"You are all dressed up." Derek sounded like he was trapped in a dream.

"You bought me nerdy stuff." Stiles felt that weird pain in her chest.

This kiss isn't really like any kiss before. There is a weird sense of urgency and yet a complete slowness to it. Derek realizes now that they are saying something they should have said long ago.

Normally now one of them would start ripping clothing off the other. That didn't happen. Derek found his hands in Stiles' hair. Hair that was down and curled for once. It haloed her head in a honey and whiskey brown glow.

Stiles is breath taking to look at. She always has been. He was stupid to ever consider her any annoyance or a pain. Everything about Stiles is perfect. From her cupid bow mouth to her foul language that comes out of it.

Derek's life is grey and boring without the Technicolor chaos that Stiles trails behind her like a wake of a lucky charms powered boat.

It should be weird that when he picks her up he knows that they must look like that couple from The Notebook. The part of him that hates everything. Should probably be pissed that his brain has filed away that information just from sheer amount of time spent with Stiles. But he isn't. And that's the root of this, isn't it?

He realized when Stiles' shirt was off and he saw the thin romantic lacey bra, that this was not going to be sex. This was going to be making love. Derek had never done that before. He thought that maybe this time, if he was going to do something he was going to it right.

There wasn't any hair pulling or clawing. Instead, he kissed every inch of exposed skin on Stiles. He ran his fingers through her hair and scratched at her scalp lightly when kissing. Derek didn't do talking, didn't do explaining or speaking his feelings.

So he put his mouth to better use. He told Stiles how he really felt by opening her up with the slowest and longest session of oral he had ever been a part of. It was a miracle that Stiles was more than a limp noodle by the time he was done.

She climbed onto him with a level of slink Derek had never seen before. When Derek came they were making eye contact.

It might be the best experience of his life to date.

"You're so beautiful." Derek confessed.

"You are not so bad yourself." Stiles patted him on his face. Derek furrowed his brows at her.

Okay, so maybe they weren't completely there with their verbal communication. It would take a while for them to get to the Loves in conversation. But suddenly he wasn't scared of that; he was excited to get there.

Stiles and him weren't a maybe, they were a sure thing that had been falling towards each other this entire time.