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“Hey, uhm…”
Stiles looks up from the onion he’s halfway chopped. Scott sounds an awful lot like the time he said: “oh uhm, hey Stiles, I brought home this guinea pig from the clinic today, and I couldn’t let it be lonely, so I went to the pet store and bought it three friends because two isn’t really enough, but three was an odd number.”
There don’t appear to be any animals in Scott’s arms. Butterfly, the calico that had come back with him a few weeks ago, takes that moment to wind her away around Stiles’s feet.
Stiles wipes his hands on his apron. “Usually, that’s followed up with a sentence.”
He doesn’t need to add “one that I’m probably not going to like.” Scott can hear it in the way Stiles is looking at him.
“I lost something,” Scott stutters. “And I need your help to find it.”
Stiles steps away from the kitchen island. He’s only gotten to the ‘chop the onion’ stage of dinner, at least. Though when he forgets he was making soup Scott can buy them pizza.
“Okay, buddy. I’m gonna need a little more to go on here. Size? Shape? Color?”
Scott’s face flushes, which is as adorable as it ever is. And the big browns are working overtime. It’s not like Stiles is going to say no- lord knows Scott has found any number of things he’d temporarily lost track of.
“Uhm. It’s small. Like,” Scott makes a square with his hands. “A box. About yay big.”
“A box?”
Scott shrugs.
“Where have you already looked?” Stiles unties his apron and hangs it on a kitchen chair. It’s covered in pictures of little cats. It’s supposed to be Scott’s apron, but well, Stiles likes it. Werewolves aren’t the only ones who enjoy smells.
“Everywhere in my room, your desk..”
Stiles tilts his head.
“Things have a way of ending up there.”
“You make a point, go on.”
“Dining room basket, the place I thought I had left… uhm, back shelf on my closet and in the jeep. Just in case.”
Stiles blinks. “Well. That covers all of the usual places for a mystery box to go.”
Scott ducks his head, and Stiles resists all urges to kiss him. It’s not the time, no matter how cute he looks all flustered like this.
Pickles, the black cat that Scott had found run over and half-dead last Halloween, yowls from her corner of the kitchen. Stiles side eyes her, they haven’t quite come to an understanding about who Scott belongs to yet, despite it having been almost a year since Scott had nursed the little menace back to health.
“So, what’s in this box?”
If anything, Scott seems even more flustered after that question.
“It’s just a box,” he lies, bald-faced without even trying to hide it. Stiles is Officially Invested in finding it now. Supper can wait.
They’re definitely ordering pizza.
“Okay, so we start with the closet. It’s possible it’s just on the floor.”
Scott shakes his head. “My closet floor isn’t covered in a pile of unwanted flannel.”
“Hey, hey, it’s wanted. Just. Not right now.”
Scott rolls his eyes but follows Stiles as he heads to Scott’s room to look for this mystery box. Scott’s closet floor is pristine. Stiles thinks he even vacuums it. His shelf is equally tidy, everything arranged neatly, even his old lacrosse gear. There isn’t even any dust.
No box.
Violet, Samson, Mildred, and Gravy, the four guinea pigs all chatter at them from their elaborate habitat. Their cage takes up more than half of Scott’s room, full of fun little tubes and wheels. It’s probably a good thing Scott doesn’t sleep here often.
His bed is neatly made enough it looks like a picture. And there isn’t even a speck of debris underneath it. There is Streusel, the nicest of the cats, with fluffy gray and white fur. He leans into Stiles’s hand for a quick scritch before Stiles comes up to find Scott shifting his weight from one foot to another.
“Okay, dude. What has got you so fussed about a box?”
“Nothing, it’s just a box.”
Stiles raises an eyebrow at another lie. Scott is actually pretty good at lying. Except when the lie is about protecting himself. Then he’s almost incapable of keeping up any deception.
“Did you look in my room?”
“Just your desk. I wouldn’t have left it there, though.”
“Uh-huh. Well. Why don’t we check?”
Scott follows again. Stiles’s room is less pristine and more- organized chaos. He can find anything (except when he can’t), but there aren’t any boxes in the closet, under the bed, the piles of flannel, the stack of books, or buried under the papers on the desk.
Scott shrugs. “Told you it wouldn’t be here.”
They check the living room. The bathroom. The jeep. No boxes.
They even check the doghouse where the old greyhound, Lily, spends most of her time. It’s impossible to say no whenever Scott comes home with another stray. Their home is like a microcosm of the pack, really. Scott taking in the otherwise abandoned.
Stiles might like Pickles better than most of the people Scott has adopted.
The cat yowls again as they re-enter the kitchen. Scott trudges behind him surrounded by an air of defeat. Stiles thinks he might be about to cry. About a box.
A black box about “yay big” Stiles realizes is between a mangy black cat’s paws. “That box?”
Scott perks up as Pickles bats at the box. Which flies open. A plain silver ring tumbles out, tinkling against the tile floor.
Stiles turns back to look at Scott.
“I…ah, uhm, this is not what I…”
“Is that an engagement ring?”
Scott takes a breath and squares his shoulders. Gets that same look on his face when he’s about to do something impossible. “Stiles. Will you marry me?”
The eight million thoughts running through Stiles’s head slow down as his heart pounds. Until he can only think of three things.
- Scott wants to marry him
- Scott mustered up the same kind of courage he uses to face his enemies to ask him.
- Scott doesn’t know that the answer is unequivocally, absolutely, always, and forever: yes.
Scott’s face is flushed again, his eyes are quivering. His shoulders are tense. Fuck.
“Yes!” Stiles manages to shout before Scott thinks that the answer ever could have been anything else.
Scott’s entire face changes- lights up from the inside. Sunshine streams from his smile as Stiles embraces him. He does cry, but Stiles might have a tear or two in his own eyes.
Pickles bats at the ring and Stiles lets go of Scott to pick it up before it can roll too far away. The cat hisses but backs off when Stiles doesn’t break eye contact.
“Yeah,” Stiles mutters, “mine.”
“Ah. Stiles?”
Scott is more relaxed, a playful smirk on his face. Stiles slips the ring onto his finger, knowing he’s probably sporting a goofy grin and not even caring.
“Are you fighting over me with a cat?”
“That cat tried to steal my engagement ring.” He glares at Pickles for good measure. She nonchalantly licks a paw.
Scott laughs until he’s doubled over. “Oh my god, you are.”
“You should know this was the worst proposal ever.”
Scott stands up. “You want me to take it back?”
“Nope. Too late. You can’t. We’re getting married whether you like it or not.”
“Just so you know, I do. Like it. A lot.”
Stiles grins. “Of course, you do, who wouldn’t want to marry me? I’m a helluva catch.”
Scott grabs his wrist. “The best. I love you. I had a whole speech. I was going to do it after family dinner next weekend.”
“On the full moon?”
“I thought you’d appreciate that.”
Stiles would have. But he appreciates this, too. He appreciates everything about Scott.
“Just so you really know,” he says, twisting the ring, “this was pretty perfect, too.”
Scott smiles. Pickles howls. Lily barks. Butterfly butts her head against Stiles’s calf. When Stiles orders the pizza, he even gets pineapple on Scott’s half. No one is one hundred percent perfect.
But Scott is pretty close.
