Chapter Text
Epilogue
Stiles is on the floor in his living room, elbows resting on the coffee table, pouring over Blackman et al's chapter on reaction kinetics and scribbling notes that he's gonna be hard pressed to decipher later, when his nose picks up the scent and his heart flips in his chest.
It's the smell of dough hitting hot oil. Lazy Sunday mornings. Soft smiles and sweetly sung song lyrics and happiness born of deep contentedness. It reminds him so completely of his mother that the room around him disappears and in its place is the kitchen, so much bigger and warmer when he was young, Stiles sitting atop a stool at the bench while his mother hums and sings and sways her way around the space between the bench and the stove top, frying the paczkis and scooping them out, filling them with jam, dusting them - and the bench top, and sometimes Stiles himself - in a thunderstorm of powdered sugar.
Stiles lets the memory wrap around him, close and comfortable, and then opens his eyes and sinks back into the present.
It shouldn’t be a surprise. Derek has been making a habit of spending time at casa Stilinski, along with the rest of the pack, and it isn't unusual to find him grumbling his way around the kitchen.
Sometimes it's to cook dinner for the pack, others it's to commandeer the island bench for spreading out maps or sorting through incoming ingredients from Deaton for adding to Stiles budding collection.
On one memorable occasion Stiles had caught him putting together a pot of tea using loose leaves from a beat up old tin on the shelf above the kettle. Stiles still hasn’t recovered from the sight of his boyfriend (boyfriend? Still feels weird to say) looking so soft in a grey knit cardigan and using an honest to god tea cosy…
In fact Stiles has been using that particular image for spank bank material for a week now…
But today...
Today Stiles finds Derek leaning over a pot of hot oil, measuring out balls of dough and dropping them into the pot using an ice cream scoop. The intense concentration on his face is offset by the loose set of his shoulders and the light in his eyes.
And when Derek turns to acknowledge Stiles his smile freezes half way to forming, caught by the stillness in Stiles stance, and the wide eyed shock of his expression.
'Stiles?' Derek's voice is pitched low and careful, 'is everything okay?'
'Derek, what are you doing?' It's a stupid question, because it's obvious - from the batter in his bowl, to the piping bag full of jam on the bench, to the powdered sugar sitting open in its container, a cup and a sieve lying right beside it - that Derek is making doughnuts.
Polish doughnuts.
'Oh,' Derek's gaze turns from Stiles, to the pot and back to Stiles again, and there’s a sour note of tension in the air. 'I'm so sorry, I thought...' Derek's face falls, the loose set of his shoulders creeping back up into something high and tense.
Stiles takes a step into the kitchen, 'You're making paczkis?'
'Yeah, I... found this-' Derek's eyes glance to the open notebook on the counter.
It's a recipe journal that has been sitting untouched on the shelves in the kitchen, next to an old barbequing cookbook and a bunch of gardening magazines from years ago, that neither Stiles nor his father had ever had the heart to sort through or get rid of.
It had been left to exist in a state of suspended animation like so many of his mothers things, collecting dust and losing relevance in the face of her son and husband's reluctance to visit those memories.
Derek looks back to Stiles, apprehension growing, ‘-I recognised Claudia’s handwriting…’
Stiles takes another step forward, and another, manoeuvring gently around the bench to brush his fingers across the artful flowing grace of his mothers beautiful handwriting.
‘You're making mama's paczkis,' Stiles looks up at Derek, and something in his expression must be accurately reflecting the overwhelming combination of wonder, joy and surprise he’s feeling because Derek's smile starts to make a return.
Home-family-love, home-family-love is rolling through the bond at Stiles core on repeat.
Derek’s smile is tentative and questioning at first, but grows wider and brighter as Stiles closes the distance between them, his own smile curling on his lips, tugging up into his cheeks as he wraps his arms around Derek and reaches his body around him to peer over at the balls of dough as the oil fries them, turning them a delicious golden brown, bubbling and fluffing at the surface.
Derek lets out a noise somewhere between a sigh and a laugh and untangles himself just enough from Stiles grip to grab the slotted spoon and fish them out of the oil before they burn, and rest them on a bed of paper towel to drain and cool.
'How... how did you know? To look in that book?' Stiles still has his arms around Derek, who smacks his hand away gently when he moves to touch the bowl of paczkis.
'I think it’s been… well it’s like the book’s been glowing,’ Derek says with a hushed sort of reverence, ‘And I didn’t even mean to, but then suddenly it was in my hand and it just... it sort of fell open at this page,' Derek looks away and shrugs his shoulders, 'Seemed like she- Like I should make them.' Derek looks back at Stiles, stares down into his eyes, 'It just felt right.'
Stiles can’t help but reach up to press a kiss into Derek's lips, soft and sweet and gentle.
Derek answers it with a kiss of his own, opening into Stiles mouth with a little more heat and dragging him in close, before pulling away reluctantly. He falls forward to rest his forehead against Stiles, nuzzling his nose into Stiles' cheek and trailing that touch around to Stiles' jawline and up behind his ear. He leaves a kiss at Stiles' pulse point before loosening his hold.
'You're distracting me,' he says, voice low and warm.
'Sorry,' Stiles lies.
'Sure you are,' Derek smiles, ‘Sit down and be useful' Derek points the spoon in his hand towards the bench and directs Stiles to get started on the filling.
Stiles eyes sweep across the arrangement of cooling racks, plates, the piping bag with the narrow steel nozzle, and is hit with such a wave of nostalgia he blinks back tears before nodding his head and takes a seat at the counter.
‘Thank you,' he says, words reaching Derek’s ears despite their whisper.
Derek lets Stiles have the moment to himself and turns back to his task at the stove without fuss, perking his ears up at something he hears outside before scooping the next batch of dough into the oil.
Stiles arranges the cooked doughnuts onto the cooling racks and then grabs up the piping bag, twisting off the end to close the bag and doing his best not to squirt jam all over the counter.
He’s gently pressing the tip in to squeeze the filling into the centre of a paczki when he hears his dad's cruiser pull up in the driveway and has a moment of panic. His dad might not be ready for this…. His dad still can’t open the third draw in the bathroom cupboard without breaking down… There’s makeup so out of date in that drawer it's probably breeding its own bacterial colonies.
Stiles remains frozen as Noah comes in through the front door and moves around the living room to put his service gun and his badge into the lock box.
‘Guys why does it smell like a carnival in-' He stops dead in the kitchen doorway ‘-here...' trailing off to silence as he takes in the scene in front of him.
‘Dad,' Stiles hops up off his stool to reach out his hand to his Dad, 'Derek found mama's recipe.'
And Noah is stuck, face slack with shock and the swift slap of grief - and if that’s what Stiles face had looked like when he walked into the kitchen earlier, no wonder Derek had been worried - but he rouses when Stiles wraps a hand around his upper arm and pulls him gently into the room.
Derek curses and turns quickly back to scoop out the next batch before they can burn, and Noah blinks, letting the sound ground him here in the present.
He breathes deeply through his nose, and his eyes fall closed as the smell really hits him. When he opens them they’re wet with unshed tears, but when he looks down at Stiles he’s smiling. And Stiles watches his dad pull the pieces of himself back together, into that tightly woven casing that he uses to present to the world. He rolls his shoulders, straightens them, lifts his chin, smiles high enough that it reaches his eyes and steps forward to clap Derek on the shoulder.
‘Smells good, kid,' he says to Derek, and then points at Stiles, 'You might want to keep an eye on this one,' reaches over to pinch Stiles at the waist, grabbing nothing but skin, 'like a bottomless pit, my kid, no idea where it goes.'
'Bullshit,' Stiles skirts away from his dad and bristles at the accusation even as he laughs, 'I eat a completely normal amount. If anyone needs to be watched it's you, Daddio.'
Noah shakes his head, ‘Your mother was the same.’
Stiles feels that like a tug at his core. His dad so very rarely talks about his mom…
‘She would eat enough for three people and still always looked like you could knock her over with a feather.’
Noah’s gaze turns wistful just long enough that Stiles starts to fidget, and then his focus snaps back to his son.
'Let me get changed, I'll be back in a minute,' Noah backs out of the room and calls back as he reaches the stairs, ‘Keep an eye on him, Derek.’
Derek tracks Noah as he heads up the stairs and then turns back to Stiles with his eyebrows raised in question.
It takes him a minute to form the words to go with them though.
‘Was this a really terrible idea?’
‘No, babe,’ Stiles jumps over to put his arms around Derek again, smiling at the way his cheeks blush so beautifully pink when Stiles calls him babe, ‘It was a good idea.’ Stiles hugs him tighter and digs his chin into Derek’s shoulder, ‘A really really good idea.’
Derek leans his head to rest on Stiles as he breathes out a sigh of relief, turning into Stiles to hug him back, and then press a kiss to his temple, once, twice, three times, before turning back to the stove and grumbling ‘okay, get back to work,’ with a gentle elbow to Stiles ribs.
Stiles might not ever get over how good it feels to have Derek like this. His grumpy wolf, with his soft kisses and warm affection, all the dichotomy of a guy who makes stoicism look downright bubbly, with a leather fetish and a permanent scowl, but drinks tea from a pot and will tuck Stiles so tightly into the curve of his body when they lie on the couch to watch the great british bake off, it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
He gets a little lost in that feeling as he sits back at the counter and picks back up his piping bag and a now cool enough doughnut to fill.
He probably honestly needs to check and make sure they taste okay, right? He should break one open and take a quick bite just to be-
‘Hey!’
Stiles jumps before he can get the fried dough into his mouth, and when he looks up, Derek is giving him the fiercest eyebrows he can manage.
It’s pretty cute.
‘Oops!’ Stiles says with a shrug, popping the dough into his mouth and licking the jam off his fingers, ‘that one slipped!’
Derek actually growls, which would be way scarier if he wasn’t also wearing Noah’s ‘Daddio of the Patio,’ apron and brandishing a slotted spoon like a weapon.
Stiles just smiles his sweetest smile, the one that uses his dimples to their best advantage, and internally fist pumps when Derek has to turn away to hide his smile.
A song he's been listening to lately is stuck in his head, and he's humming the melody - singing the words to the chorus softly and to himself, as he gets to work on the rest of the paczkis. He can feel the rest of the pack as they make their way to the house on the promise of baked goods, can feel his dad coming back downstairs with a spring in his step and love in his heart.
He can feel the light of his mom, the glow of the leftover pieces of her that still fill the house, in her journals and her wards, the scents and the sounds. The pieces that live inside him, deep in his chest, at his core, where all the bonds rest, warm and calm and thick with love.
It's everything he's ever wanted.
And he gets to keep it.
He hopes.
He believes.