Chapter Text
Even as friends, Stiles had occasionally dragged Derek out with the other members of their labs for dinner or drinks. They would laugh, share stories about their families, argue about new journal articles, as well as gossip generally. Had anyone heard about what happened in such and such a lab? Did everyone watch the landing of the mars rover? Had they seen the images of the storm front coming in?
Since news of their … relationship … had spread, people – Stiles' friends Derek supposed – had started actively asking Derek to come along. Would mention that Stiles had already agreed. They all seemed to assume that if Stiles was coming, Derek would as well.
Derek was willing to admit that their assumptions might just be reasonable. He never did say no.
Which was why Derek was sitting in a dingy wooden booth, twisting a bottle of beer between his hands. Stiles was next to him, leaning against him and laughing at something someone across the table had said about the most recent of James Cameron’s dives. Derek had stopped paying attention to the conversation, lost instead in how Stiles felt pressed against his side.
Leaving the bar, Stiles wove slightly as they walked, listed to the side and leaned against Derek as he told him some convoluted story about a sixth grade science project gone wrong. Something about propane torches and the speed of ignition.
Derek guided Stiles back to Derek's apartment, helped him out of his jacket at the door. He knelt to remove Stiles' shoes when Stiles almost lost his balance hopping on one foot as he attempted to do it himself. Stiles laughed as Derek pulled off his shoes one after the other, put his hand on Derek’s head, fingers in his hair to keep himself upright.
Derek got him to brush his teeth. Stiles insisted in return that Derek brush his teeth as well, because he had "to take care of Derek and Derek had to take care of him. They took care of each other. Did Derek see that?"
Derek maneuvered Stiles into his bedroom and pushed him down onto the bed. Tossed some of his old pajamas at him and told him to put them on. Stiles sat, leaning back on his arms and pouted at Derek, told him that moving was just too hard.
Stiles insisted that if Derek was going to be such a stickler about the whole appropriate nighttime wear, then Derek could damn well help him with his shirt, and proceeded to let his body flop back onto Derek’s bed and slump into the duvets.
But Stiles watched Derek closely, a small smile on his lips as Derek peeled him loose from his clothes, working Stiles’ limp arms out of his sleeves and lifting him to tug them over his head. He heard Stiles gasp slightly as Derek unbuttoned his pants and slid them down. He giggled when Derek pushed his feet into the warm cotton pajama bottoms. Laughed out right when Derek’s fingers skated across Stiles’ sides as he tugged down the t-shirt. Chortled when he saw that Derek had just put him in his old, well-worn Wonder Woman shirt. Told Derek how wonderful he was. Derek smiled back, shook his head.
But Derek wondered.
Considered what it would be like to kiss Stiles, really kiss him, as he rolled him over and tucked him under the covers, climbed in after him. Thought about the possibility of actually touching Stiles with intent as Stiles curled into his side and began to snore softly. Stiles always snored when he’d had something to drink.
In the morning, Derek woke up to Stiles in his kitchen. He was working at the table while he waited for Derek, pancake batter prepped and at the side of the stove, apple juice on the table.
Stiles looked up from his computer, from where he had pushed his own plate over. With a grin that said he really wasn’t sorry, Stiles apologized for drinking just a bit too much the night before. Derek grunted and joined him, poured himself a cup of tea from the pot already steeped on the table. Clutched the cup in his hands.
Stiles pushed a plate of cut fruit over to him and stood up. Lit the stove and hummed as he beat the batter again, waiting for the coconut fat to sizzle. He was still in the pajamas Derek had insisted on the night before, pants sitting low on Stiles’ hips, t-shirt hanging slightly loose even as the stylized ‘W’ swept across his chest.
Derek powered up his own computer and stared at the screen as the smell of hot fat began to permeate the air. He looked up at Stiles, watched him doing a little dance next to the stove to whatever song was running through his head. He tried to get some work done as Stiles fried the pancakes, placed a stack of cakes that might have been representative of four-leaf clovers on the table between them. Derek felt justified in his opinion when Stiles told Derek that he had earned them. That they were because Stiles was just so damned lucky to have him.
Stiles poured maple syrup across his own stack and went back to his computer. Derek watched him jab at his food, make imprecise cuts through multiple pancakes at a time and take too large of bites as he read through … whatever. Likely his daily dose of journal articles.
It didn’t take long before Stiles looked up at him, grinned, and told Derek to just bloody well fucking let whatever it was on his tongue out of his mouth, else he wasn’t going to get any work done and Stiles could just feel burn scars forming on his face from the force of Derek's gaze.
So Derek asked. Suggested that they could. Well. Given how with their arrangement they weren’t seeing other people. Did Stiles ever consider just, adding more benefits to their friendship?
Stiles narrowed his eyes and looked at Derek, studied his face. Derek stared right back. He was never one to question himself, just everyone else.
“You know,” Stiles finally said, tapping his finger against the table. “A rose by any other name.” He looked at the finger and wrinkled his nose, licked the syrup off the side of his hand, sucked it off his finger. “And you, I am betting,” he indicating his hand “are just as sweet.”
Derek raised his eyebrows and Stiles grinned at him again, showing all of his teeth. “Did you want to try it out? See if we mix? Or did you want to think about it some more? ‘cause I’m game if you are.”
Derek didn’t see the point in waiting. Not when Stiles looked so ridiculous in his t-shirt.
-----
After that it was easy to just add sex to the general pattern of their interactions. Derek would close up his computers bid his graduate students goodnight and then check to see if Stiles was still in the building. If he was, Derek would take him home.
It wasn’t actually all that different from their patterns before they started regularly sleeping together. But, increasingly and more often than not, Stiles was still in his office when Derek appeared at his door.
Except for Fridays, because Fridays were the day Stiles collected him, took him out for “fun food with friends.”
And Tuesday lunch, which somehow had become a faculty lunch at the taco joint Stiles loved Claiming that their salsa was heavenly.
It was a little weird, in Derek's opinion, because he was relatively sure that Tuesday lunch had started with just the two of them. He mentioned as much to Erica and she informed him that he would have to suck it up. He got enough alone time with Stiles off campus. The rest of them wanted a slice of their time as well.
As it was, the group rotated and fluctuated a bit, depending on deadlines and who was in country, but Stiles and Derek sat at the core. Derek got the strangest feeling that their colleagues considered him their friend. Not just a respected, if somewhat taciturn colleague.
But, the point was, that Stiles was no longer just showing up, which he certainly still did on occasion. Derek was actively, interestedly taking him home five nights in seven. And Stiles was enthusiastically coming. In as many different meanings of the word as there were. Derek thought Stiles would have appreciated his pun.
Derek didn’t particularly enjoy those two nights in the week. Even if the greater half of the time Stiles appeared at his door in the course of the evening. Even so, Derek decidedly preferred it when Stiles was there. Or at the least, that he knew Stiles would be there.
Which was how Derek came to the conclusion that he would really just prefer it if Stiles moved in. He thought Stiles agreed. All of his evidence supported him.
Stiles' own apartment was particularly damning evidence. It was the same hovel Stiles had moved into ‘temporarily’ when he’d first gotten the job and still firmly believed that they would be firing him within days. Or, even more likely, that the university would tell Stiles it was a terrible, horrible, no good, practical joke.
Derek had tried to convince Stiles to move once. In that he’d said “you could move”. Stiles had just laughed. Told him it wasn’t worth the bother, that he was rarely there anyhow.Derek could readily admit that was true (and considered the fact more evidence).
When he had moved to the area, Stiles had selected an apartment that was only two blocks from Derek’s. Said that he wanted to be close to the only person he knew in the city. From the first, Stiles had spent more time in Derek's living room than at his own place. Within days of moving into his own apartment, he had just started showing up. First, it was with bags of groceries and comments about not having enough pots and pans just yet. But, Stiles kept appearing long after that excuse had sailed. He would show up and Derek would yank the door open without a word and the two would wander back into the living room.
After they had started regularly sleeping together, Derek had tried to stay at Stiles’ place twice. Had in fact been the one who suggested it. There had been no food in the refrigerator and all signs in the bedroom suggested that Stiles was using it as a large, walk in closet. Even the coffee machine had had a layer of dust.
Derek's own apartment did not have layers of dust, and Derek would swear he had not been the one to dust in months. But, he did keep it tidy with the exception of those spots Stiles had long since claimed. Those spots had stacks of papers and haphazard assortments of odds and ends. An extensive collection of highlighters that were decidedly not Derek’s was spread around the entire space, providing unexpected splashes of color in various drawers and behind many a book.
Derek started looking over his apartment, wondering if changes would actually have to be made. He worried if it was big enough, if Stiles liked it. But then Stiles had been the one to pick the color for the living room when Derek had repainted the previous year. Had directed Derek in rearranging the furniture to ensure a decent flow of energy and had gifted him most of the art that hung on the walls.
Granted, the giant Wonder Woman print was not one that Derek would have picked himself, but Stiles had shown up with it framed and a smirk across his face within a week of that morning with the pancakes. Derek had raised an eyebrow, but gotten out a hammer and nails as Stiles had made noises about proximity to the couch and the sweep of the room.
In the end, Derek settled with saying "I don't know if you need your own designated office space" while they were working together in bed, computers opened on their laps.
Stiles stopped whatever game he was furiously playing in lieu of grading to look at Derek. “I have one of those on campus. I don’t need one here. If I did, then we’d have to move. Which we can consider someday, but I don't feel like going through that just now. But, I can start bringing the rest of my things over next weekend." He went back to his game and Derek felt curiously smug.
Derek ended up carrying most of Stiles things up for him over the following two weeks. Derek had arms, Stiles informed him. “Nonna had said so and Nonna is always right.” Stiles delegated himself the task of calling his landlord to break the lease.
-----
Derek thought it was all going rather well until his mother started asking about when they were going to move in together. Pointed out that it had been three years. Three years Derek! She told him that for people who claimed to be so environmentally minded, they seemed to be overlooking the fact that the most efficient way of cutting down on their carbon footprint was to move in together.
Derek changed the subject.
She called Stiles instead. Derek could hear them chatter from where he stood in the kitchen throwing pasta into some boiling water. He listened to them talking about the “future” as Stiles knit, his feet up on the coffee table, grinning over at Derek now and again.
Derek looked around the apartment, felt rather self-satisfied as he took in Nonna’s afghan spread across the back of the couch and the shelves organized into sections of science and fiction, with Derek's classics intermixed with Stiles' graphic novels and comics (Stiles swore there was a difference and Dani fervently agreed).
That evening, after dinner, Stiles sat him down on the couch with hands folded in his lap and told Derek very solemnly that they should think about moving in together. Pointed out how much money they could save on rent. Informed Derek with a twinkle in his eye that he thought – just maybe – Stiles had Derek’s family’s approval.
Now, did Derek think that he could actually talk to his family for once and tell them that they were already living together? Had been for months? Stiles understood that Derek didn’t like labels, found them grossly misleading and terrible imprecise, but Stiles thought that Derek could admit at least this much to his family.
-----
Derek took Stiles out to his favorite restaurant and pushed a wrapped package across the table.
Stiles looked at it warily, picked it up, turned it over in his hands and demanded to know what was going on.
Derek knew he looked self-conscious, felt the spots of color appear on his cheeks and chose to look at the ceiling instead of Stiles' suspicious glare. It was actually a really well designed ceiling. The carved lamps giving a rather warm look.
Derek emptied his water. Waited for the waiter to refill his glass and then told Stiles that in all the nine years since they had met in Mexico, he realized he had never once managed to remember Stiles birthday. He thought that maybe they could agree that Derek could just take him out at some point over the year. To commemorate it. Because, it wasn’t that Derek didn’t care. He did. He just got wrapped up in work.
Stiles grinned at him across the table. Told him that he was a genius. That, as per usual, Stiles would be fine with it as long as he got to do the same. Stiles would add it to their relationship agreement. He then raised a glass to their "mutual appreciation of each others' births."
That night, Stiles took Derek home and blew his mind.
-----
Dani wanted to know when their anniversary was. Seemed to think that it was strange that they had been together for ages but had never mentioned it. Stiles told her that dates were meaningless, what mattered was whether they were happy in the moment.
Derek thought about that one for hours. When he had reached his own conclusions, he called out to Stiles and waited for him to appear out of the bedroom, laptop under his arm. “Is there anything that you want to change about all of this?” Derek gestured between the two of them.
Stiles threw himself on the couch, set his laptop down on the coffee table. “No, I’m good. You?”
“It’s good.” Derek answered. He took Stiles’ hand in his and they stared for a moment at the wall. Wonder Woman smiled benevolently at them from her protective stance on the wall.
Stiles sighed. “We are planning on sticking this out, aren’t we.” It wasn’t a question. “This is a relationship.”
Derek snorted. “You said it yourself – that it doesn’t really matter what we call it.”
“When did I say that?”
“The morning after I undressed you for the first time.”
“Ah. Right.” Stiles nodded. “The day I made you pancakes and you seduced me with the power of suggestion." Stiles pulled his hand from Derek's grasp and tucked Derek's arm around himself. "I was right you know. You are terribly sweet.”