"I'll be in my room if you need me, dad," Stiles reassured his father, hanging onto the door frame as he looked into his dad's bedroom. On one hand, he didn't want to leave his father alone, but on the other hand Sheriff Stilinski did like his 'me-time' to destress. Sheriff smiled at Stiles, then gave him a rather puzzled look as he leaned back against the pillows on his bed, sinking down under the quilt.
"So, when are the guests going to leave again? There's two, right? The baby and Derek?"
Stiles opened his mouth to respond, but honestly he didn't know when Derek planned on vacating his house. In fact, he had no idea what was going on with the Hale house - for all he knew, they could have rebuilt it already. All he knew for sure after visiting their motel room was that none of the Hales had an issue with not cleaning. "Um, I...actually, I don't know, I'll check with them. And get back to you on that." He patted the door frame with a frown, then turned to leave.
"Stiles?" His dad called after him, and he craned his head back to look over his shoulder at his father. "Make sure to wake me up if you need anything. Anything. I don't care if you think I need to rest, if something happens you wake me up."
"Yeah, I will, dad," Stiles lied, knowing fully well he wouldn't wake his father from resting even if the apocalypse had befallen the earth. He shut the door as Sheriff pulled the covers over his shoulders, laying on his side in bed. The teen sneaked down the hallway to the stairway, walking down the wooden steps as quietly as possible without making them squeak. He heard a door shut, and then open again, and then almost inaudible murmurs emitting from the kitchen. His curiosity grew as he strode through the hallway, knowing he had left only Scott and Derek in there with a sleeping Luna. Gramma, Talia and Cora had left for the motel.
"Hey," He said as he came back into the room, looking at whoever was rummaging in the refrigerator. With a sideways glance he spotted both Derek and Scott at the table, watching the person at the fridge. With a baffled look on his face, he reached over to move the fridge door to look over the top of it. There was Peter, grabbing the milk carton from the back of the fridge. "Hey, no, this guy isn't staying, right?" He asked as he turned to look at Derek skeptically. Peter straightened, shutting the fridge and cracking open the carton.
"Hey car thief," He said as he took a swig from the carton, then leaned on the counter. Stiles opened his mouth to object to the grossness of a now-communal milk carton, but the car thief comment caught his attention before he could finish.
"Once. Once, I escaped with a car. A thief is someone who intends to steal a possession, and I didn't keep your car. It got impounded." Stiles explained heatedly, reaching over to grab the carton from Peter's hand. "Don't drink out of the carton, that's disgusting!"
"Boohoo. Hey, Derek," Peter said, ignoring Stiles' protest in favor of wandering off around the counter island. "How'd the meeting go?"
Derek still seemed upset at Peter as he moved closer, but instead of avoiding the question he kissed Luna's head and responded idly, "Wouldn't know. Seemed to go well. Don't know what the end result was."
"Why? Didn't you go?"
"I..." Derek began, his eyes falling on Stiles. Stiles rolled his eyes and then looked at Scott, who shrugged.
"I didn't do anything, the baby bit me, so if you're about to blame your lack of knowledge on me, just know that you're inadvertently blaming the baby," He defended himself as he walked over to the table, pulling out a chair near Scott. Scott was on his phone, for the most part not paying attention to everyone around him.
"Oh, so you had to save princess over there," Peter said understandingly, and Stiles threw his hands in the air.
"Not a princess," He replied icily, lowering his voice. "Scott, help me out here."
Instead of helping, Scott looked up at Peter, who gave him an intimidating glare. Stiles didn't expect Derek to speak up instead of his best friend.
"Look, Talia doesn't want me talking about it," Derek explained quickly, and Peter gave him a look of disbelief. "If you wanted to know so badly you wouldn't have run off to pout like a kid. If you want to know what happened, ask her, not me. I'm not being the middle man for you. Own up to your issues with my mom and deal with them. And leave Stiles out of it, at least he was doing something helpful. Even if he did it really badly, he at least did it."
"Hey, I tried," Stiles interjected.
"Wait, so you know what happened and you're not telling me? We're going to do this now? She's my sister. We have family feuds. It's normal. Just tell me what happened so I can sleep tonight." Peter commented with a leer, dropping the carton on the counter when Derek gave him nothing more than a stare. "Yes, I rented a motel room separate from the girls. I won't see them tonight. You try living in close proximity to miss occupy-the-bathroom and Gramma, who snores so loud we got a noise complaint the first night. Let me remind you I showered at nine in the morning because 'ladies go first' and they took for-goddamn-ever. While you're over here in a spacious two story house, I'm trapped in a man's worst nightmare - to be in a single room with three women and all of them family."
"Fine," Derek caved, though he looked vaguely guilty as he did so. "Yes, they're helping us. We're good. It'll probably end in a truce like it did before."
"Good," Peter concluded as he looked around the counter, picking up a napkin out of the container and wiping his mouth. He threw it back on the counter, which got him another well-deserved glare from Stiles. "I'm going to go. Car thief doesn't seem to like having me here,"
"No, it's fine, really," Stiles said with sarcasm, "Stay and dirty everything, makes the place looked lived in. I mean, no one else wanted that milk."
"Nice utilization of sarcasm, car thief." Peter critiqued as he started off towards the front door. He gave a lazy wave as he opened the door and exited.
Stiles stared at Derek, who had preoccupied himself with looking at Luna. She was laying on his chest fast asleep. "Someone's pooped." He said in a hushed tone, looking at the baby from the side. She was sucking on her tiny thumb as she snored lightly.
"Yeah. Better take her to bed." Derek stood up from the chair, walking towards the hallway. His green eyes fell on Stiles as he turned, and he looked strained as he tried to force himself to say something. Stiles' eyebrow perked up with vague interest as he watched the other struggle internally.
"What?" Stiles asked finally, and Derek sighed.
"Sorry about Peter. He's a real asshole. Not only to you, but to everyone. There's...reasons." Derek explained slowly, as if he was hesitant to proceed with any further information. After a brief pause he uttered, "He's bitter. Well, night. Night Scott." He added, and Scott waved over his shoulder as he typed something into his phone. Stiles finally focused on his best friend now that everyone had left the main area.
"Dude, what are you doing on your phone?" He asked finally, his eyes on Scott's phone. Scott turned it off, thinking he could keep Stiles from seeing his email box. "Was that an email to a teacher?"
"Yeah. Hey, let's talk about it tomorrow, okay?" Scott said with a weak smile, then stood up. "Man, I'm fucking tired. Let's go to bed." He walked over to where he had set his mom's turquoise yoga mat rolled up leaning on the wall, picking it up with one hand. "My mom gave me this to sleep on. Says she might invest in a blow up bed, but I don't know, I mean, I don't care if I'm on the floor."
"If you want the bed, you can have it," Stiles offered immediately, suddenly realizing Scott had been doing a lot of floor time. "I don't want to hog the soft surface."
"No, dude, it's fine. The floor's better for my back." Scott assured his friend, grinning as they turned and went upstairs. Stiles hit the lights as they exited, then locked the front door. Making sure the bolt was secured, he finally padded after Scott up the steps, turning into his room with the other.
After they spent awhile getting ready for bed and assembling the sleeping area once again, Stiles flopped on his bed and yanked the sheets up to his chin. "Night dude."
"Night Stiles," Scott commented from the floor. "Hey, Stiles."
"What?" Stiles asked, peeking over the side of the bed.
"I don't have to worry about bed bugs."
Stiles smirked as he thought about the other creatures that could be crawling on the floor, but he thought quickly about the ramifications if Scott figured out he was in a potential bug-heavy zone. He'd probably lose his bed. "Yeah, Scott. No bed bugs for you. Unless they like yoga mats."