Chapter Text
Derek risks slanting a look up at Stiles, who seems… not exactly happy, though it's hard to get a good read on him under the pulsating lights. He doesn’t seem angry or appalled by Derek’s passionate response to his kiss, but he’s fidgety and his mouth is sad. Derek wonders if he went too far – although, he reminds himself, it was Stiles who initiated the kiss, and the dancing, and this whole goddamned night. And it’s Stiles who is gripping onto him still, bony fingers digging fiercely into the meat of Derek’s shoulder. Yet he’s skittish and uncertain, refusing to fully meet Derek’s eyes, and that makes worry trickle icily down Derek’s spine.
He manages a nod. ‘Yeah. Let’s talk.’
‘Not here,’ Stiles says, and Derek remembers with a strange tilting sensation that they’re still on a dance floor, heaving with bodies. Stiles is right. This shouldn’t happen here.
‘Home?’ Maybe some privacy will help settle Stiles.
An odd shadow crosses Stiles’ face. ‘Right. Home.’
Derek’s heart sinks a little further. It’s not like he’d expected Stiles to throw a parade in celebration of the kiss or anything, but he also hadn’t expected this nervous reserve. Derek’s used to Stiles being unapologetically honest and unfiltered, so for him to continue the uncharacteristic evasiveness of the last week even now… it’s weird and it makes Derek feel wrong-footed.
Stiles lets go of him long enough to make an abstruse motion towards the exit, and turns to move through the crowd, reaching back tentatively. Derek grabs at the gesture with both hands and all his hope, and holds on tightly.
He’s not going to risk losing Stiles now.
There seems to be an unspoken agreement not to bring up the kiss, or any of the potential emotions surrounding it, until they get back to the loft, which leads to a very strange, silent Uber journey with them both trapped awkwardly in a tin can that smells too strongly of air freshener. Derek’s not actually sure he’s ever seen Stiles be quiet for so long before. Stiles jiggles his knees incessantly, staring out of the window at the street lights that flicker by. Derek tamps down on the urge to settle a hand on his knees to try and still them.
It's an unsettling contrast that the kiss, which was so much more than Derek had ever hoped for, should be followed by this thick, unhappy tension. Oddly, as Stiles gets more and more agitated, Derek feels more and more calm and in control.
He wants to tell Stiles it’ll be okay. He wants to tell him that if it was a mistake on Stiles’ part then yeah, it would suck for a long time, but in the end it would be okay because they’re friends, first and foremost. He wants to tell him that if it wasn’t a mistake – if, for whatever foolhardy, miraculous reason, Stiles wants him – then that’ll be okay, too (and so much more, of course). He wants to tell him about the soul-mark. He wants to tell him everything. It feels like Stiles is finally ready to hear it and then… Well, then Derek finally gets an answer. And then life will go on, and one way or another it’ll be okay.
There’s nothing he can do, though, except link his fingers more firmly with Stiles’ where they lie intertwined on the seat between them, and try to reassure him with the touch.
They reach the apartment building after what feels like several years of Derek’s life. He’s sure Stiles must have worn through the car upholstery under his nervous feet. It doesn’t bode well for his wooden floors, he thinks with an anticipatory wince.
They squeeze into the little elevator, apologising to each other repeatedly over who’s going to push the button, and Derek has to suppress a laugh at the importance they’re ascribing to such an inconsequential thing, in an effort to distract themselves from the much bigger, much scarier issue they’re both ignoring for now.
The peaceful sanctity of the loft doesn’t seem to settle Stiles at all. Derek stands, arms folded over his chest, watching in bemusement as Stiles paces all over the place, muttering to himself, getting more worked up by the second.
‘Do you want coffee? I could use some coffee. It’s not too late for coffee, right? I mean it probably is but it’s not like we’ll be sleeping tonight now anyway…’ He skids to a halt in between the fridge and the coffee machine and glances back over his shoulder at Derek, wide-eyed. ‘I did not mean it like that! I didn’t have, uh… I have no expectations or anything, I just meant because, you know, with the talking…’
‘Stiles.’ Derek cuts him off firmly. ‘No coffee for me, thanks.’
‘Okay.’ Stiles’ cheeks go a shade more pink. ‘Yeah.’ He looks down at the package of coffee in his hands. ‘I probably don’t need any either.’
‘You think?’ Derek raises an eyebrow.
‘Shut up.’ Stiles turns impossibly pinker. Derek wants to know how low the blush spreads under the black t-shirt that clings softly to his chest and shoulders.
‘Can’t shut up and talk,’ Derek says dryly. Usually being an asshole needles Stiles out of whatever hyper-focused rabbit-hole he’s going down, and he figures now isn’t the time to change up tried and tested methods.
Stiles’ eyes flash as he snorts. ‘Please. Like you won’t be using your eyebrows for ninety per cent of your communication anyway.’
Derek takes a slow step closer.
Stiles looks vaguely panicked and sets off in the direction of his bedroom. ‘Pajamas! I need pajamas. I can’t do my best thinking all gussied up. I need to be free, Derek, free to express myself!’
Gussied up? Derek’s other eyebrow slides right up to join the first somewhere up by his hairline as he trails Stiles to the bedroom, leaving several feet of space between them. ‘You want to put on pajamas to free your thoughts? I guess that depends on where your thoughts are going to be coming from…’
Stiles stops rummaging in his dresser and reflexively looks down at his lower body, mortification spread across his cheeks and chest in deep red splotches. He sniffs haughtily in Derek’s direction. ‘I fucking hate you.’
Derek smirks. ‘I’m pretty sure you don’t.’
‘Of course I don’t,’ Stiles murmurs, so low Derek barely hears it. ‘I-' Stiles catches himself. ‘Fuck…’ He pulls out the pajamas Talia gave him at Christmas and holds them to his chest like a shield and mutters, ‘I promised myself I wasn’t going to do this…’
‘Do what?’ Derek takes a step into Stiles’ room. It’s the messiest room in the loft by far, with video games and books and clothes shoved in careless heaps here and there, and the bedding always rumpled. Derek’s always felt a deep sense of satisfaction when he sees Stiles’ stuff inhabiting the space he owns, draped over the furniture Derek picked out when he bought the loft. It smells of Stiles’ cologne and shampoo and Stiles, layered into the bedclothes and the curtains. It feels safe and warm, like a den. For some reason the thought makes contentment unfurl cozily in Derek’s stomach.
He wrenches his gaze from the mussed-up bedding to find Stiles glaring at him. ‘You have ears like a bat, anyone ever tell you that?’
‘Do what, Stiles?’ Derek sighs in exasperation. ‘Can you just… step away from the pretzel pajamas? Please? So we can talk?’
Stiles nods jerkily and sets the pyjamas back in the drawer. Derek can see his agitation in the rapid rise and fall of his chest.
‘Hey,’ Derek says softly. ‘If you don’t want to, that’s fine. I need to talk to you, soon. But if you’re not up for it tonight that’s fine. I’ll be here tomorrow, and the day after that.’
Stiles glares at him sharply. ‘Can you stop doing that? You’re not helping.’
Derek sits on the edge of the bed, near the footboard because being anywhere near Stiles’ pillows feels too intimate right now. ‘You’re going to need to be more specific.’
‘Can you stop doing your adorable-asshole thing? Because I’m trying really hard to respect your boundaries and have some self control, and neither of those things are my best things, okay? Like they would not be on my resume under ‘Things Stiles is Excellent At’. And it’s already all going wrong because I let myself give in and then that kiss was… fuck, Derek.’ Stiles sounds sort of like he wants to cry as he drops down on the edge of the bed next to Derek, carefully not touching him.
Derek tucks a leg up under himself and runs everything through his mind for a moment before he blinks and shakes his head. ‘Yeah, try being even more specific than that.’
Stiles’ hand inches closer, bridging the space between them. His fingertips brush over the back of Derek’s hand tentatively, like a question. Derek can’t stop his hand from jerking closer to Stiles’ in response. Emboldened, Stiles gently laces their fingers together. ‘So here’s the thing…’ Stiles takes a deep breath in and then exhales it, gustily. ‘I’m in love with you.’
The words shimmer in the air for a long moment before they fade away into silence.
Derek stares at Stiles’ face, searching for reassurance of his sincerity, even though he knows Stiles would never joke about this. But still, he thinks wildly, Stiles could be drunk (though he knows he’s not) or possessed (admittedly unlikely) or, or, something. His blood pounds in his ears. He feels like something hot and tingly has filled his chest and stolen all his air.
‘I mean, you knew that, right?’ Stiles asks uncertainly.
‘No.’ Derek shakes his head. ‘Definitely didn't.'
‘Oh.’ Stiles twists his fingers anxiously. ‘I just thought… At Christmas with the mistletoe I was, like, horribly obvious, I thought for sure you at least suspected.’
‘No.’ Derek tries to put words together, but can’t make anything fit. ‘For… long?’
Stiles opens his mouth then closes it, and swallows. He looks away. ‘So… remember when Malia and I stopped seeing each other?’
‘Yeah…’ Derek does remember, extremely well. It was the night he’d come home to find Stiles in his clothes, in his bed. It’s a moment he often re-lives in glorious technicolor.
Stiles shifts a little, guiltily. ‘I haven’t really told you the entire truth of what happened there…’
Derek frowns a little. ‘Okay…?’
‘Uh, after you left to go to Beacon Hills, I was worried. You’d seemed sad and I didn’t really get to talk to you about it. I’d gotten half-way through planning this epic Thanksgiving day with just the two of us and beer and football and stuff, and you know, bro-time? But then you decided to go home instead. Anyway, it was uh, weird here without you.’
Derek feels a rush of retrospective affection, knowing he hadn’t been forgotten in the run-up to Thanksgiving. ‘Weird…’
‘Weird. Shitty. Um, it’s possible that I…’ Stiles makes a frustrated spiral in the air with his free hand. ‘It’s possible I missed you a little.’ He ducks his head. ‘A lot. It’s possible that I talked about you to Malia a bit. Or, you know… A lot. And so I called her the night before you came home to see if she wanted to go get pizza with me, and she was all like, ‘Sounds nice Stiles but I really think you should stay home and tell your roommate you’re in love with him,’ and I was all like, ‘Pshaw, joke’s on you, sister, Derek’s not even home for two more days, and p.s. you’re ridiculous, I’m obviously not in love with Derek,’ and she was all like ‘If you call me sister ever again I’ll rip your balls off,’ and I was all like, ‘Yeah, no, that’s fair,’ because I don’t even know where that came from, man, I have literally never called anyone ‘sister’ in my entire life before, except for this one time when I was crossing the road and there was this nun-'
‘Stiles,’ Derek says firmly.
Stiles blinks. ‘Right. Right. Okay, so she had just insightfully pointed out that my being latently in love with you was a slight barrier to my relationship with her, and that we should probably just stay friends, and then she hung up and I stared at my phone for thirty minutes because wow, was that ever a wake up call. I mean it's not like I'm not aware of how gorgeous you are, and yeah, maybe I'd had a couple of low key fantasies about, like, covering you in whipped cream and licking it off, and this one time I did have a dream we got married, and it was beautiful man, but. I guess I was in denial or something. I don’t know how she figured it out before I did. I guess I’m not all that subtle…’ He reaches out to shove Derek in the shoulder when he snorts. ‘Shut up. Anyway, I handled my moment of stunning elucidation like a boss and ended up wandering around the loft all bereft, like, smelling your sweaters and stuff and in the end I went and got in your bed and that was where you embarrassingly found me, dressed in your clothes. God, so mortifying.’
Derek hums. ‘No, I thought that was pretty great.’
Stiles laughs and covers his face with his hands. ‘Dumbass.’
Derek reaches over and gently wraps his fingers around Stiles’ wrists, pulling them away from his face. ‘Why are you so worried?’
Stiles swallows with an audible click. ‘Because of Christmas. Because… I think you love me, too.’
‘And that’s… bad?’ Derek shakes his head in confusion.
‘Yeah.’ Stiles’ face crumples. ‘Because you loved Paige, right?’
Derek’s head is spinning from the 180. ‘There’s nothing going on between me and Paige, there hasn’t been for years.’
‘Exactly! Because even though you loved her and she’s beautiful and lovely and you guys were great together… You still broke up with her for your soul-match. And I love you, and I tried to be selfless or whatever because I know how much your soul mark means to you. I want you to be happy…’
The familiarity of those words is not lost on Derek, nor their irony, and all he can do is gaze at Stiles with his heart in his mouth. ‘Stiles…’
‘But clearly I suck at selflessness and I obviously can’t stay away from you, not if you like me back. But I can’t be some stop-gap thing for you until your soul-match comes along and you leave me…’ Stiles’ voice breaks, and so does Derek’s heart, a little.
‘Stiles.’
‘-which is why I thought maybe it’s better if I move out because I can’t really be here with your stupid face, Derek-'
‘Stiles!’
‘-and Scott said I could crash with them until I find a place-'
In the end Derek crouches in front of Stiles, takes his face in his hands and kisses him quiet. It’s without a doubt his favourite way ever to shut Stiles up. He intends to use it often. Unless Stiles kills him for not telling him about the soul-mark sooner, or – worse – rejects him because of it.
‘Uh,’ Stiles manages, eloquently.
Derek knows now is the moment – knows it’s right and necessary and inevitable. After all, every second of his life so far has led him right here. But he’s still shaking, a little. ‘I need to tell you something. Shut up and let me, okay?’
‘’Kay.’
He takes a breath and meets Stiles’ gaze. ‘I love you, too. I want you to know that. I have for… a long time.’
Stiles’ eyes narrow. ‘A long- How long are we talking, here?’
Derek straightens up, leaving Stiles sitting on the edge of the bed, and brings his hands to rest at the waistband right above his soul mark. The air in the room feels thick and charged. Unsteadily he slips the button of his jeans through the button-hole and tugs the waistband down over his hip, rucking up the leg of his boxers, revealing the mark.
Stiles is, predictably, already talking again. ‘Okay, what is happening here? Because I know I’m not exactly Casanova or anything but even I know that taking your pants off shouldn’t be your first reaction to someone telling you they love- holy shit, what is that?’
Derek’s heart races, making blood surge through his veins fast enough to make him dizzy, and he steadies his hands against himself. ‘It’s exactly what it looks like, Stiles.’
Stiles slowly leans in closer, curling one hand around Derek’s hip bone while he traces the mark on Derek’s thigh with a feather-light fingertip. ‘Is this… a tattoo? Because I really don’t think that’s funny, Derek…’
‘It’s real.’
‘But…’ Stiles sits back far enough to look up at him. ‘But… It’s…’
‘The same as yours.’
Stiles falls silent as he starts to take in what that means. ‘Derek…’
Derek lets him look at the mark until he starts to feel squirmy with self-consciousness, anxiety snarling up in his stomach. He hikes his pants back up and sits down on the bed before his legs give out. Half a second later he feels the mattress bounce as Stiles stands.
Stiles walks to the other side of the room, scrubbing his hands through his hair. It’s several minutes before he says anything, and when he does he sounds furious. ‘What the fuck, Derek? Why would you… Jesus, I would never have…’
Never have stayed, Derek thinks miserably.
'I would never have hurt you like that…’ Stiles looks over at him, distraught. ‘I must have hurt you so much...'
Oh.
‘And god, I never would have…’ Stiles waves a hand towards his room, ‘…with Malia here, in front of you, I…’
‘I know.’ Derek moves his head until he snags Stiles’ gaze. ‘I know you wouldn’t have.’
Stiles shakes his head rapidly. ‘Then why the fuck wouldn’t you say something?’
Derek sighs. ‘You weren’t doing anything wrong. You didn’t know. And… I wanted you to be happy, too.’
Stiles slumps down into his desk-chair, exhaling loudly as he goes. Then he groans and presses a hand to his forehead. ‘Derek. The tattoo…’
Derek chews on the inside of his cheek, hoping he can make Stiles understand. ‘I know.’
‘Oh my god… Are you crazy? I would never have made you do the tattoo, I can’t believe you even did it. I know how you feel about your mark.’
‘I thought about telling you that first day. I came really close. But… come on, Stiles, you didn’t even know me. Are you really telling me there wouldn’t have been a Stiles-shaped hole in the door two seconds after I’d told you? You wouldn’t just have gone to find another tattoo artist and studiously avoided my part of town for the rest of your life?’
Stiles’ pregnant silence tells Derek he’s right.
‘Besides, you were with Lydia so what was the point? When you and Lydia broke up I was so glad that you came here, that you let me be here for you. I thought if I told you then it would seem like maybe I was trying to take advantage of you at a vulnerable time. And I figured maybe the soul-match thing meant friendship for us, even though I felt differently.’
Stiles just stares at him, jaw slack. Derek rubs his palms nervously on his jeans. ‘But you were never okay enough with the idea of it meaning friendship to date anyone else?’
Derek shrugs. ‘Maybe I would have been, in time. If you decided, right here, right now, that you didn’t want this… I’d respect that. And I hope in time I would come to care for someone else. But since you walked into the studio, I… It’s only been you.’
‘You didn’t know anything about me.’ Stiles sounds hoarse and exhausted.
‘I know that you don’t feel the same as me about soul marks, but. I trust this.’ He presses his fingers to his mark. ‘And time with you just… It hasn’t changed my mind. At all.’
Stiles blinks dazedly and shakes his head a little like he's trying to get everything straight in his mind. ‘I just can’t believe you put up with all my crap, this year.’
Derek shakes his head. ‘Look, I know it comes across as… Masochistic? But it was partly a selfish decision, not to tell you.’
Stiles looks up at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I wanted you to be happy. I still do. I love you, and to me that means that you being happy, with or without me, is more important than anything. But I also wanted…’ He trails off, searching for the right words. This is the last secret he needs to tell Stiles, the last knot in his stomach he needs to unpick. Then he’ll be fully bare in front of him, and the rest will be up to Stiles.
‘What did you want?’ Stiles prompts softly.
‘I wanted you to choose me,’ Derek says.
He’s not proud of the words, but letting them out is an unburdening nonetheless. ‘I knew right off the bat how you felt about soul-matches, and I knew that if I told you… Maybe in the beginning you’d have left, and then as we became closer, maybe you’d have felt some sort of sense of… obligation. I didn’t want that. So I wasn’t honest with you, I… I deceived you because I wanted you to stay with me. Or at least as close to me as you wanted to be, in the hope that one day you might choose me.’ He spreads his hands helplessly in front of him. ‘If you ever did choose me, I wanted to know that it was just because I’m what you want. No other reason. I wanted that. For myself.’
The words ring childishly in his ears, and he looks down at his hands, ears hot, as he waits for Stiles to call him out for being selfish or a creeper or just plain weird, but then he tips backwards with a yelp when Stiles barrels into his lap without warning. ‘I want you,’ Stiles says, pressing sloppy kisses to his mouth. ‘I want you because I want you. I fucking choose you, Derek, oh my god. Also, holy shit, that was the most words I’ve heard you say ever.’
Derek laughs against his lips, the sudden evaporation of months of worry and heartache leaving him light-headed.
‘When we tell this story to our friends and family…’ Stiles murmurs into his neck, alternating each word with a nip or a lick, ‘We’re going to leave out that part, and also the part where my own attempt at selflessness started with sweater-sniffing and ended with me accosting you in a club after like two tortured weeks. Let’s just stick with the version of this story where we continually try to out-noble each other until we couldn’t keep our hands off each other.’
Derek hums happily, eyes rolling back a little as Stiles teeth scrape over his collarbones. ‘Deal.’
He bites back a noise of protest when Stiles sits up. ‘Look, I want you, fuck, I want you. Like right now, in many different ways – in all the ways, actually. But, uh. I want to be sure that you’ll be okay even if I don’t convert to a soul-match believer overnight, even after I’ve re-contextualised our relationship and processed it all. I don’t want to hurt you any more than I already have.’
Derek puts his hands on either side of Stiles’ waist, holding him where he hovers, straddled over Derek’s thighs. ‘Stiles. I know you. Yes, I felt a connection to you from the first day, but I also know you. I’m not expecting you to change what you believe, but if you’re half as stubborn about loving me as you are about your soul-mate beliefs, then I feel pretty good about that.’ He pauses as Stiles’ face softens into a smile. ‘Now, I swear to god, if you don’t start taking my clothes off soon I’m going to go to my own room and get started without you because it has been a really long time...'
Stiles narrows his eyes wickedly. ‘Well I am curious about your mark, I’ll admit. I think that in the name of research I really ought to get a closer look.’ He dips his thumbs under the waistband of Derek’s boxers and smooths them over the sensitive tendons of Derek's hips, making him gasp and arch up. ‘Remember,’ Stiles says, all mischief and kiss-bitten lips, ‘I’ve never been with a guy before. But lucky for you, I’m a quick study.’
Derek is acutely aware of exactly how lucky he is. He loses himself to Stiles’ hands and mouth, as Stiles strips him down and winds him up, further and further. He whispers dirty-sweet things into his skin, tracing Derek’s mark with his tongue, and Derek’s bones dissolve into icy heat, made impossibly hotter in the knowledge that Stiles is paying attention to the mark solely to show Derek he’s loved, and it’s this that pushes him over the edge, much sooner than he'd like, fingers tangled in Stiles’ hair. Once he’s caught his breath he tugs Stiles up over him and wraps his hand around him, matching the rhythm Stiles’ hips find, and kisses his neck until he comes in Derek's arms, with a full-body shudder.
Afterwards, they arrange themselves more comfortably on Stiles’ pillows and lie tangled up in each other, petting at whatever exposed skin they can reach. Stiles strokes his fingertips absently over Derek’s mark. The touch isn’t the electric charge that Derek has read about, but more a sense of deep contentment, a blissful rightness that washes over him with every brush of Stiles’ skin against his own. He wonders if Stiles feels anything similar, and if he does, what would he attribute it to, if not the soul mark.
He moves his hand from where it’s slung over Stiles’ waist, reaching up until his palm is splayed over the skin where Stiles’ mark used to be. He’d only ever touched it with gloves on when he was tattooing it, and hasn’t ever touched it since. He thinks it feels hotter under his hand than normal skin, but he knows he might be willing that to be true.
‘Mmm,’ Stiles murmurs, drowsily. ‘You’re warm.’
Derek smiles.
‘Do you feel anything?’ Stiles blinks open eyes which are golden in the lamplight. ‘When you touch it?’
Derek shrugs a little. ‘It feels right.’
‘Even though it’s covered?’
‘I put that on your skin, though. It still means something to me.’
Stiles sits up a little on one elbow, and dips his head to kiss him. ‘Good. It means a lot to me, too, that you would honor my choice like that. Hey, what was it like when you first saw me? Fireworks? Choirs of angels? Cavalcades of gilded unicorns waltzing through the cold and lonely corridors of your heart?’
Derek snorts and shoves his shoulder. ‘Ass. No.’
‘Then what?’
‘It wasn’t some big moment. It was… I thought you were beautiful, but it wasn’t like, some big love at first sight moment, it was… familiarity. Certainty. Like, oh, right, of course, it’s you. It’s always going to be you.’
‘Oh.’ Stiles scrunches his nose thoughtfully. ‘That’s sort of exactly how I feel about you now.’
Derek’s chest aches with how happy he is, in this little bubble with Stiles. ‘You’re not moving in with Scott, then?’
Stiles makes a face. ‘Oh my god, I was freaking out so bad that I’d have to move out. I fucking love… this loft, man.’ He laughs when Derek punches him, then turns serious. ‘Is this okay? To already be living together? Like, it feels right to me, but, maybe it’s too fast?’
‘Feel right to me,’ Derek says, burrowing into a pillow that smells deliciously of Stiles, then he follows it up with a hopeful, ‘Kinda like when you touch my mark?’
Stiles lies back down with a chuckle and moves his hand to resume its gentle caress over Derek’s mark.
They fall asleep as the first smudgy tendrils of rose and gold appear over the horizon; the first sunrise of a new year.
*
In the end, they don’t end up telling any of their friends that they’re soul-matches. It’s Derek’s choice. He’s always been so private about it that it feels wrong to splash the news around now, but he does let Stiles tell anyone and everyone that they’re obnoxiously in love. Absolutely no-one is surprised.
His mom gets choked up when he tells her over the phone, and immediately sends them matching love heart pajama pants. Derek loathes them passionately, but wears them all the time because goddamn it they’re so comfy.
The one person they do tell about their soul marks is the Sheriff, who is as happy as Stiles predicted at the news. What’s surprising, though, is how moved Stiles is by how happy is dad is for him. For the first time he and his dad sit together and talk about his mom, while Derek brings them beers and drops kisses onto Stiles’ head, and later, holds him as his tears soak the pillow. It’s a deeply complex situation, Derek knows. But somehow it feels like this one connection has given Stiles a foothold into something that has been insurmountable to him, and for Stiles, that’s a lot.
Derek talks with Stiles about their soul-marks often. Sometimes it's bittersweet, like when Stiles finds Derek's dog-eared anthology of poetry with a bookmark in the poem he'd memorised and repeated to himself like a mantra, night after night. To love is not to possess. Stiles sets the book down with damp eyes and kisses Derek, slow and deep, like a promise. The discovery of the box of sketches under Derek's bed is much sweeter, leading to an hour of happy reminiscing about their not-so-very platonic roommate days. Derek looks at the beautiful curve of Stiles' jaw, and the pattern of moles that he now knows better than anyone else, and he decides not to tell him that he drew the moments so he'd always have the memory of them, even if Stiles left. Nothing good would come of Stiles knowing that.
There are other stumbling blocks, of course. Where Derek sees evidence of the soul-match bond (like how Stiles came to him, and not Scott, after Lydia), Stiles sees a nameless serendipity that could affect those without soul-marks just as much. Derek attributes the deep bliss of shared physical intimacy to their bond, where Stiles insists he feels the same thing but it's down to being stupidly in love.
Derek doesn’t always live up to his promise to be fine with Stiles not being a believer. Sometimes Stiles’ stubborn refusal to give much credence to their soul-bond stings, especially since his faith in it just grows evermore steadfast.
In return, Stiles gets annoyed by Derek’s refusal to acknowledge the possibility that he could find love again should anything happen to Stiles. ‘I don’t want that burden, Derek,’ Stiles says irritably. ‘It isn’t healthy to be one person’s everything. You need to live with more hope than that.’
Sometimes they fight about it, but it happens less as they grow further into the trust and security that comes with time, and even if they do fight, they come back to each other, and remind each other with kisses that it doesn’t really matter if the mysterious force behind Derek’s heart is different to the mysterious force behind Stiles’ – or even if it’s all dumb luck. They always choose each other, in the end.
*
On their one year anniversary, Stiles brings Derek breakfast in bed, and on the tray is a small, flat box. Derek opens it to find a sketch of a wolf, done in the same style as Stiles’ fox. ‘I want you to tattoo this on my thigh,’ Stiles says, ‘exactly where your soul mark is. And see? I want its eyes to be just like yours.’
Derek loves the gesture, and loves that Stiles wants to put a representation of Derek back into his skin. He loves the trust that Stiles has in him, loves making Stiles’ vision come to life and making it as fucking beautiful as he possibly can, to try to do Stiles justice.
Truthfully, though, he loves the fox, too. He knows Stiles worries it’s a sore point for Derek, but actually, it’s not.
He loves the fox that represents Stiles’ personality so well; his inquisitiveness, his intelligence, his mischief. He loves that the soul mark is still there, if only to his own practised eye. It’s there in the broad strokes and the lines of the fox’s form, an indelible skeleton forming the framework for Stiles’ own free will and choices.
And Derek is one of those choices.
He thinks about the ring box that he’d found tucked away, the last time they’d visited Beacon Hills, when he’d blearily mistaken Stiles’ bag for his own in the early hours of the morning. He thinks about the soft look his parents had shared across the breakfast table when Stiles had stumbled down and dropped into Derek’s lap instead of bothering to find a chair, and Derek had wrapped one hand around his waist and grabbed for the bacon with the other, putting it directly in front of Stiles and earning himself a sleepy kiss.
He glances up from the needle to find Stiles watching him intently with astute, affectionate eyes.
‘I was gonna get Satomi to do this as a surprise,’ Stiles says, ‘but when it came down to it, it feels right that you’re the only person to put any marks on my skin.’
Derek rumbles approvingly, deep in his chest, which makes Stiles laugh.
‘You wanna get dinner after? We could go to that diner with the wings you like.’
‘You asking me on a date?’ Stiles sparkles delightedly at him, making him flash hot all over.
Derek ducks his head. It’s embarrassing how flustered Stiles can make him, even after all this time.
‘Of course I’ll go on a date with you,’ Stiles says, low and warm. 'I actually have something I want to ask you.'
Derek bites his lip to keep from grinning like an idiot. Stiles would never let him live it down, even though it’s Stiles’ fault because Stiles chooses him.
Stiles chooses him, over and over.
Yeah.
Derek Hale is a lucky guy.