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“Please.”
Stiles stands there chewing on his pretty crimson lips, pleading.
Derek isn't fully clued in yet, but honestly, the kid is kind of vaguely breaking his heart.
“Please, Derek, I'm sorry about this, but can you just please—just don't say anything, okay? And just—let me?”
Stiles had texted Derek earlier, at 3.17am, presumably just before he’d set off from his house to drive his jeep to the loft.
Derek had been lying awake in bed, unable to sleep.
His messages read:
dude i rlly need to come over. that ok? <
And:
ill let myself in if thats cool? <
And after a few moments, in quick succession one after the other, and before Derek had a chance to respond:
and i rlly need u to just like. not get out of bed. presuming yr already in bed <
all shall be revealed <
lol i don't know why i put that <
and obvs tell me if any of this is not ok. ok? <
as if you wouldn't lol <
#sourwolf <
and yeah i know im being a weirdo but thats why you like me <
And then, a few seconds later:
right? <
Derek had stared at the flurry of messages for a minute or so, then texted back:
> Okay, weirdo.
About ten minutes later, Stiles had let himself into the building.
Derek listened to the kid muttering away to himself as he rode the old service elevator—except it wasn't really himself he was talking to.
“God, I hope I'm not wrong about this. Like, I think we're, like, close enough now? For this not to be weird? I mean, at least I hope that's true. That you think that too. I'm just—I'm so fucking tired, man; I have got to get me some sleep. Anyways, just—don't get up out of bed, okay? Or, like, can you get into bed if you're not already? Sorry, I know I texted you this already, I just really need you to trust me.”
A pause.
“You do know you can trust me—right, big guy?”
Derek's trust of Stiles was implicit.
When the steel door had unlocked and slid open, Derek smelled fresh, mostly unscented shower gel over the base notes of Stiles's own cinnamon scent that were mixed with the very definite chemo-signals which indicated fear, restlessness, apprehension—and the strongest of them all; hope.
“—let me?”
Here and now, Derek still doesn't know what the kid needs.
Let him what?
He doesn't have any more time to wonder about it, though, because Stiles is now taking off his sneakers and pants and is slowly, very slowly—as if giving Derek the chance to protest—climbing into bed next to Derek.
Stiles is in Derek's loft in the small hours, in Derek's bed and fully under Derek's covers, with Derek wearing only his grey tank and black boxer-briefs and a probably terrified look on his face.
He silently thanks the universe for the cover of night.
“Like, you should obviously say something if this is completely heinous or whatever, but otherwise just—let me do this?”
All Derek can think is shit, he's freezing while going into some sort of dumbstruck shock, because Stiles is now wrapping his entire sinewy, beautiful body around the entirety of Derek's.
“This okay?” Stiles asks, the air around them spiking with the smell of his anxiety as he Big-Spoons Derek like some human-shaped octopus, skinny but strong limbs astonishingly everywhere.
And he sounds so unsure, and so small, and Derek can't bear it.
Not giving the stoic part of his brain any opportunity to talk him out of doing this, he clumsily takes ahold of Stiles's wrist from where the kid has draped one of his long arms around Derek's midriff, and hangs on firmly but as gently as he can as he manoeuvres them both around in the bed so that Stiles is now the Little Spoon.
“This okay?” he asks gingerly, mirroring Stiles' words because his own are failing him.
Thankfully, Stiles says, “Yeah. Even better,” his anxiety melting away into something much more pleasing; something that smells like a combination of relief and comfort.
Derek breathes out the word, “Good,” and feels a little dizzy and a lot amazed and kind of like his heart is beating wildly in his throat.
The only reason he knows it isn't is because Stiles says, “I can feel your heart thumping away in your chest, man. But I, uh—I don't have wolfy senses, so I can't tell if it's good thumping or bad thumping.”
Then he promptly stops breathing—and Derek thinks of baited breath, and The Merchant of Venice, and feels a little hysterical.
He's having to resist the desperate, learnt urge to run away from this.
Mentally shaking himself, he thinks after so many years fighting monsters together, maybe we can team up against this one, too?
He gives himself a moment to ride out the panic, then screws his eyes shut and—praying to nobody in particular that he doesn't fuck this up—whispers, “Good thumping,” into the shell of Stiles's ear.
Stiles shivers and exhales, breathing normally again now, but doesn't say anything else. For once, he doesn't need to; he just needs to sleep.
And as the kid settles into Derek's bed, and Derek's embrace, and hopefully Derek's life, he smells like a heady mix of serene and content and promise—and also, wonderfully, just like Derek, now.
Derek is a strange combination of relaxed and freaking the fuckout, because that's just the way he's made. His brain won't stop whirring at a speed of a million miles an hour as he lies deathly calm and worrys about everything and nothing all at once.
Before he can bite into his lip to not make an idiot of himself, he's blurting out, “Cora says I sometimes dream-talk about Cajun Gumbo recipes.”
Stiles's just sighs, then hums quietly, his breathing having already evened out to almost the point of sleep.
Just when Derek thinks he's not going to get any sort of real answer, Stiles mumbles, “Okay, weirdo,” on an exhale, and then he's gone, drifting off into somewhere close to unconsciousness.
Derek settles, then, and smiles into the nighttime thinking that maybe, finally, he might get a good night's sleep, too.