Chapter Text
Stiles oversleeps. It’s closer to lunchtime than it is to breakfast when she manages to drag herself out of bed. Last night was quite possibly the best night of sleep she’s ever had. She was too exhausted to stay up thinking all night but relaxed enough that she slept deeply and without dreams.
Apparently she also slept through the entire pack coming to her room. When Stiles opens the door, there is an entire mound of stuff blocking the doorway. The bigger items are easily identifiable: a desk, a chair, a rolled up rug, and a cork board, but it seems like a random assortment of items. It’s…well it certainly looks like it’s meant for her, perhaps to help personalize the room.
A closer look identifies some of the smaller items in the pile: a mug, a board game, a stack of books that are dog-eared and worn in a way that she recognizes means that they are favorites. There’s even a heavy quilt draped over the chair that is embedded with Isaac’s scent.
It’s too early for Stiles to try to figure out what’s happening in her doorway. She carefully squeezes past the haphazard pile and drags herself down the hall to the bathroom. The house is quiet and Stiles doesn’t run into anyone else vying for the bathroom as she brushes her teeth. It appears that everyone has long since left for the day.
Stiles makes her way downstairs to the kitchen, where she can hear someone moving. She squints against the mid-morning sun streaming through the window in the kitchen, opening one eye to see Derek standing at the stove in plaid pajama pants and a sleep-worn gray shirt.
“Morning, Stiles! Come eat.”
Stiles plods into the kitchen and drops into one of the chairs at the island. She props her chin up with her hand, content to watch Derek in his natural habitat. He turns his back to her and goes back to making pancakes.
He seems to be inexplicable making them one at a time in a frying pan. There’s a stack of golden, perfect pancakes at his elbow so he must have been working for a while. The pile of dishes in the sink and drying rack suggests this isn’t the first round of pancakes either.
Every so often Derek will reach for more batter or flip the pancake with a deft flick of his wrist and the muscles in his back ripple beneath the thin fabric of what must be his favorite sleep shirt. It feels oddly intimate, like Stiles is intruding on something just by sitting at the island and watching the Alpha make pancakes in his pajamas.
It feels…domestic. A werewolf making pancakes. For his mate. For her.
She’s too sleepy to overthink it right now, to ruin it like she usually does by tearing it apart again and again in her mind to find the catch like a dog worrying at a bone.
She snorts, amused by her own metaphor. Derek looks over his shoulder and breaks into a fanged smile before going back to his pancake.
“Coffee?” he asks.
“Please,” Stiles croaks. Derek chuckles and moves to the coffee maker. Stiles should probably pay attention to which buttons to press and where the coffee is stored by she finds herself focused on Derek instead.
He looks….at ease. His shoulders are relaxed instead of tensed by his ears. His body language is open and completely self-assured in the center of his territory. Stiles hadn’t realize how tense he had been all along until seeing him now without that weight on his shoulder.
He looks younger. More vulnerable maybe.
It’s odd to think of an Alpha as vulnerable, but he seems so human right now. He’s not what she expected. None of this is. For one thing, the pack house isn’t the cold industrial space she always pictured. Instead, it’s a home.
The kitchen is the heart of that home. It has quickly become Stiles’ new favorite place and not just because the fridge and the pantry are completely overflowing with food. It’s the atmosphere that Stiles really like, the homeyness of it.
The refrigerator is completely covered in magnets and pictures and notes. She’s fairly certain she spies a few report cards somewhere in the middle of the mess, which is funny considering there are no minors in the pack. There’s a vase of sunflowers on the counter and a drying rack full of mismatched mugs from breakfast. It looks like every pack member has their own personal mug and Stiles is fairly confident she could match them all to their owner if pressed. Lydia’s is the glossy blood-red one, Peter’s is the geometric black one—
“Here.” Derek places a mug full of coffee in front of her, grinning with amusement at her grogginess. “Maybe you’ll be up to talking once you’ve finished your coffee.”
Stiles huffs to keep face but she curls both hands around the mug and pulls it closer to her. The coffee’s light brown color suggests that Derek has already added cream and sugar like she likes. More surprising than that is the mug itself. It’s dark blue on the outside with a light blue interior and a small chip on the handle. Stiles would bet her life that it’s Derek’s mug.
She loves it.
The kitchen is cozy and warm and calm and she is content to sip her coffee and yawn and rub sleep out of her eyes while Derek cooks. Stiles could almost fall back asleep in the quiet bustle and calm homeyness of the kitchen. It smells like coffee and pancakes and melted butter with a subtle spiced element that is Derek’s scent.
She lays her head on the counter instead, one arm thrown protectively around the mug. She runs the fingernail of her thumb over the chip. She gets why Derek likes this one. He likes the imperfectness of it. Stiles does too. She likes the pack house with its wobbly chairs and scratched tables and chipped mugs. It’s so alive, so cluttered and messy and lived in.
“Don’t fall asleep on me, your breakfast is ready,” Derek says.
He sets a ridiculously full plate of pancakes in front of her, already topped with a pat of butter. He also sets down a fork and a bottle of syrup, the good kind that’s full of corn syrup and absolutely terrible for anyone’s health.
Stiles immediately drowns her pancakes in it, trying not to think about how high-fructose corn syrup leads to an increased risk of Alzheimer’s. She doesn’t want to ruin a nice morning. And besides, Derek is drinking orange juice straight from the jug so there are clearly more concerning issues at the moment.
Derek stands across from where she’s sitting at the island, balancing his own plate in one hand and holding his fork in the other. He doesn’t look up from his own plate but his scent is pleased as Stiles cuts into the stack of pancakes he’s placed in front of her.
The pancakes are annoyingly good. They’re thick and fluffy and the coffee is just the right temperature with just enough milk and sugar. It’s lovely, the whole morning.
They eat in a comfortable silence.
Once Stiles has declined seconds and drained her cup of coffee, Derek ferries the dirty dishes to the sink. When he turns around, Stiles can already see the pack Alpha coming back by the way he squares his shoulders.
“I want to talk.”
Selfishly she wishes that they could just leave the morning as it is. “You weren’t kidding around about the coffee, I guess,” Stiles says.
Derek refuses to take the bait. Instead, he drifts back to stand in front of the island. “Last night, you said you had never had a bond before. I just want to say that you don’t owe me anything, not as a mate or an alpha or any of it. You have options. I can help you find another pack or you could live in the city as a human if you want. We’ll always be here for you but you don’t have to stay. It’s — I don't want you to think this will be like living with the Hunters all over again.”
Stiles knows exactly what he’s referring to. Loyalty and unquestioning obedience, that is what she was planning to offer Derek. Perfect omega submission in return for just a little peace and protection. And Derek, who's offered her everything he has, wants none of that from her. In fact, he outright dislikes her obedience and submission. Just as well, Stiles was never really that good at being that sort of omega.
“I won't lie, it's a big change for me. But I don’t want any other pack. I want this,” she gestures broadly at the kitchen, “here, with your pack. I want you.”
Derek watches her carefully, still fighting to keep a neutral expression. “You don’t have to bond with anyone you don’t want to. You don’t have to be my mate to stay, Stiles.”
Stiles shakes her head in exasperation, trying to find the words. “I know that, you idiot. You'd set yourself on fire to keep your pack warm. Honestly, it's a miracle you've lasted this long without me. You need me. I -- I'm choosing to need you.”
Derek can’t quite keep from smiling at that, his shoulders slumping in relief.
“And speaking of staying, there seems to be the contents of small U-Haul trailer outside my bedroom. Know anything about that?”
Derek huffs a laugh. “Welcome presents from the pack. Apparently everyone but me was certain that you’d choose to stay. They all pitched in a few things. You can get rid of any of it that you don’t want, but it’s all yours to use. We want you to have somewhere that belongs to you.”
Stiles thinks briefly of her ragged cot with the Hunters and her flat nest made of nothing but her own dirty laundry. If Derek thinks she'll get rid of any of it at all he’s mistaken. Stiles is horribly selfish, more like a dragon than a Spark. She has a half a mind to hoard the whole pack house away into her room until it all becomes hers, down to the very last werewolf. She'll settle for a place among their pack.
She smiles back. “Well if I’m officially moving in, I need a moving man to help bring in all my things.”
All the remaining tension in Derek’s frame loosens at her easy agreement and he barks a laugh. Still, she’s slightly surprised when Derek not only helps her but insists that she sit on the bed and direct him as he does all the heavy lifting. She even makes him move the desk to three different spots, just to see if it will irritate him. He doesn’t even twitch.
Slowly, the room starts to come together. It’s looks like it’s actually someone’s bedroom now instead of a drab gray box.
The desk and chair go up against one wall with the cork board on the wall above it. The rug goes down, soft and warm and a pop of green against the hardwood floor. She organizes the books and boardgames on the desk and drapes the yellow starburst quilt over the foot her bed.
Derek makes excuses about needed to go back down stairs and do the dishes. It’s a poorly disguised attempt to let her settle into her new room by herself. He rejects her offer to help but does promise to take her personal mug, which is white and delightfully textured with beading, to the kitchen to join the rest of the collection.
In return, Stiles promises him that she’ll actually rest and recuperate. Once he’s left, she pulls the quilt over her shoulders and chooses a book at random, retreating back to the bed with her loot.
She’s got a lot of catching up to do.