Work Text:
The first thing Derek notices is the smell. It's enticing enough to make him turn his head away from his conversation, head spinning, trying to process the unworldly scent. He's dazed for a moment, like he's been smacked right across the face, and then he sees the source of his distraction in the near distance.
Just a speck at first, until he draws close enough to see it's a youth that too closely resembles a nymph to be considered human, kneeling in the creek as he wrings out wet clothing and hastily tosses them into a tub.
Derek stands there at the mouth of the pond, where the brook meets the waterhole, head tilted up the slope of the hill, just gaping at the beautiful boy as the fading tangerine daylight casts its dusky, fleeting shine from between all the large trees, setting everything aglow. The rays of orange sunshine make eerie shadows across the scattering of lodges, but in his thin, white dress, the boy's silhouette remains luminous and incandescent, emphasizing the unsullied radiance of his milky skin and delicate form. Lashes, nearly golden against the slowly setting sun, fan across his flushed cheeks, and his eyes, Derek swears they really are golden—
Suddenly the boy stiffens and stands straight, brows drawing together. Derek doesn't blink until the boy has turned and stomped off, tub balanced on his head as he bounces up the trail, back to his cottage.
Derek, like a moron, continues to stand there until the sun has set and the drums in the village square echo through the night. He trudges up the trail and comes to a stop in front of the boy's house, then turns on his heel, ambles up the steps and into the cabin opposite.
Derek greets his father with a new book. "From the eastern village," he says. "For your collection." His father runs his hand over the cover.
"Don't tell me this was the only reason you were gone for so long?" the older man laughs. Derek lowers his head in shame. His father smiles wistfully and opens his arms. "Welcome home, son."
Derek arrives at the celebration of the returning warriors later in the evening, after he's caught up at length with his old man. He joins his comrades as they eat and drink, boasting tales of their ventures as the music and dancers entertain through the night.
Derek doesn't fail to notice how the boy from the river is in attendance. Derek also doesn't fail to notice how the boy is wearing a customary dancer's skirt. The last thing Derek notices is that he's not the only one noticing.
"Who is that?" one of the drunken warriors asks, practically shouting.
"I heard he's from the northern village, the one that iced over in the winter," answers another warrior.
The boy gets dragged into the circle of dancers around the great fire and a new rhythm starts up, slow and sensuous. Derek definitely can't look away. His fingers ache to just reach out and touch, but before Derek can even take a step forward, someone else is grabbing the boy by the waist. Someone else is lifting him in the air, dancing at his side, grinding up behind him. Derek bristles and chugs the liquid in his cup.
Many drinks and acts of brawn later, Derek stumbles home, falls into a deep sleep, and dreams of strange shadows and orange dusks. He most certainly does not dream of fair skin and golden eyes.
Derek wakes to the smell of hot cakes and syrup, and something even sweeter under all that. His nose leads him to the kitchen, where his father is seated at the table, book in hand, as someone shuffles around in front of the hearth. "Derek," his father greets. "Good morning. Stiles has made us some breakfast. Why don't you take a seat?" Derek can only stare as the boy pours their cups with juice and settles in, like he's done it a thousand times before, and Derek only feels ecstatic at that thought, of having this boy—Stiles—be what he wakes up to every morning until the end of days.
Before he can take his last bite, there's a banging of the front door and then a scuffle of feet against the floorboards before four jostling bodies pour into the kitchen.
"Holy shit," Isaac breathes. Behind him, Boyd and the twins echo their awe. There's a mad scramble back to the door as Derek lurches away from the table, glaring daggers.
He turns before leaving and says, "Thank you for the breakfast." And after another moment, "It was good." Outside, Derek shifts into his war form, bones creaking as his body collapses and transforms, taking on new skin. He ignores the snorts and snickers of the pack as they race out of the village to hunt down the night's meal.
Derek doesn't dance with Stiles that night, either.
The blazing sun, surprisingly enough, isn't what startles him awake, but the sudden shadow blocking it. Derek blinks the dreariness out of his eyes and comes face to face with Stiles.
"I've made you something. To help with the head pain," he says, holding out a cup of what looks like water, but gives off an atrocious smell that can only mean it's not. Derek sits up on the lawn and takes the cup, chugging it.
Before returning inside, Stiles turns to Derek and says, "You shouldn't drink so much." Derek lays there in the grass long after Stiles has left.
He drinks less that night. Enough to loosen up, but not tip him over.
The next night he has only a cup.
They still don't dance.
They're supposed to be fishing, but for some reason Derek is the only one doing any of the work. Isaac and the rest are just leaning against each other, barely pretending to stab anything that moves.
He can't help but look up after a minute, to find Stiles hopping from rock to rock on the other side of the shore, clay pot balanced on his head with all the grace of a swan. The boy bends to fill the pot with water and when he seems satisfied with the amount, returns it to sit on the top of his head, and he goes bouncing on back across the rocks to the village.
Derek spears the water. He takes a breath and retrieves the gaff, netting the three fish on the spearhead and glancing back to tell everyone off if they're not going to help, when he catches sight of Stiles at the edge of the village trail, pot still on his head, as red rises on his cheeks. The boy quickly spins around and dashes away.
Derek doesn't tell anyone off, just grins like an idiot as the pack loudly argues over who the boy was blushing for.
"Are you fucking kidding me," Boyd says flatly.
Stiles isn't talking to himself, as Derek originally thought, but to a chubby baby with an equally chubby fist in its mouth, sitting on the grassy bank a few feet away. The baby is gazing at the boy with a rapt attention that surpasses even Derek's moonstruck gaze. Derek doesn't blame the tiny thing.
"Does he even realize? With the cooking and cleaning andandand—now this fucking baby?" Isaac fumes.
Said baby waves its fist in the air, and Stiles bends to haul him onto a hip. The baby babbles something and Stiles nods his head with complete seriousness, as if everything out of its mouth is perfectly sensible and coherent. Then the kid starts mouthing at Stiles' nipple through his dress and everyone goes dead silent.
"I'm going to wife him so hard," Ethan announces, and they all break out into argument over who has the best chance at mating the boy in the river.
Derek has to kick the pack out of the house nearly eight times during the two weeks of Stiles taking care of the baby. All eight of those times he has to leave with them. He doesn't know how much more of Stiles gently rocking the baby to sleep in his arms, singing those sweet lullabies, he can take. The carnal and animal in him, all they want is what Stiles is giving, when it's not even Derek's to take.
Derek sometimes wonders why his father has Stiles come by the house. He was fine before Stiles came around. He's still fine.
Derek scolds himself for thinking that way once he remembers how Stiles and his old man love to sit by the hearth and read for hours without tiring.
Derek picks up a book now and then and sits with his father.
Derek learns that the silence isn't just silence when it's spent like this.
Derek dances with Stiles.
As soon as the drum starts, before anyone can even think of getting to the boy, Derek is there, a light hand on Stiles' waist. The dancers move around them, circling the fire, and Derek waits, looking down at Stiles' face, the drums heavy in his ears as the shadows move across the boy's lustrous skin, eyes dark beneath the night sky in contrast to his moonlit cheeks. Then there are fingers covering Derek's as Stiles presses closer, brings Derek's hands down on him more firmly.
And they dance.
Like the tides and the moon, they move with each other, pulling, drawing so near, but never close enough. Derek has his heart in his throat, hands moving on skin he never thought he'd be able to touch like this, and Stiles is looking at him like Derek has given him life. The drums speed up and Stiles is spinning, spinning, spinning, until Derek lifts him at the waist, the song ending with one last bang, and the only thing keeping Stiles from falling is Derek.
The warrior slowly sets Stiles back on his feet, hands still on the boy's hips. Stiles doesn't attempt to move out of his grasp.
Derek bids the boy goodnight at his door, and doesn't sleep a wink.
Stiles stays over longer when he visits Derek's father. He still cooks and tidies up and keeps the old man happy. But he lingers.
Derek is in the pond, scrubbing away dirt and grime. It's late, well past sundown, and nearly everyone is asleep in bed, except, of course, Stiles. The boy wanders down the trail, bare feet sinking into the pale sand as he drifts closer. Derek is tense as he stares across the dark water at Stiles, so starkly pale against the shadows of night. The moonlight only emphasizes every feature of the boy's willowy form.
Then, Derek can only gape as Stiles sheds his white shift, letting it slide off his body like a curtain being drawn back to uncover the light of the full moon. Stiles steps away from the dry sand and into the cool water, his creamy skin disappearing into the depths of the ink-like darkness of the waterhole. He turns away from Derek and begins washing.
Derek doesn't move. He's paralyzed with uncertainty until Stiles glances coyly over his shoulder in a gesture that can't be taken as anything other than an invitation. He draws near, heart thumping away, and places a hand on Stiles' shoulder. The boy turns, peeking up at Derek from under dark, wet lashes. Derek wastes no more time before he's tipping Stiles' chin up and brushing their lips together in a sweet kiss that quickly turns hungry and hurried. Stiles grasps at Derek's broad shoulders, tilting his face upwards, trying to press in further, yearning to steal Derek's very breath.
Derek just might let him.
Stiles barely goes home to his own cottage anymore.
He stays after cooking and cleaning and let's Derek chase him around the house until he's a giggling, gasping mess. Derek likes to corner him up against the walls, kissing the breath out of him, rubbing his scent all over the boy until he reeks of Derek, his skin flushed red and raw from the burn of the wolf's beard. Derek's father always wears a crooked grin when he hears Derek's heavy footfalls against the floorboards, trying to catch up to Stiles as the boy dashes down the halls.
Sometimes Stiles spends all his time reading, curled up on the rug, scratching behind Derek's ears as he lays against the wolf in his war form. Derek's father smiles crookedly then, too.
"You don't drink much anymore," Stiles mentions one morning, sitting on the table in his kitchen. Derek looks up, and a blush blooms on Stiles' face, breath coming faster, spreading his knees, sliding the hem of his dress slowly up his thighs. Derek's kissing him before anything more can be revealed.
Rough, calloused hands—warrior's hands—push the rest of the dress up, pulling Stiles' thighs around his waist, pressing the boy against him with one large hand on the lowest part of his back. Derek ravages Stiles' mouth, and Stiles gasps into it, his voice pitched higher than usual when he breathes, "I-I've never-I don-How do I-"
"Do not worry, little one," Derek rasps, scratching his beard against the soft skin of Stiles' neck, running his hot hands up and down the boy's sides, squeezing his little breasts. "I will take care of you." And with that, Derek kneels before Stiles and puts his mouth where no one has ever been before.
Stiles cries out, hand gripping Derek's hair as the warrior lavishes his aching wetness, burying his tongue inside, feasting like Stiles is his first meal after nearly starving to death. Derek curls his hands around Stiles' quivering thighs and parts them further, baring Stiles even more, sliding in a finger, working Stiles in a place that makes him wail in absolute pleasure. "Derek, Derek—oh—please, need—inside—inside me, Derek, please."
Derek shoots upright, gathering Stiles and laying him out on the kitchen floor. Stiles gets one look at his big, angry erection before it's sliding inside the boy, where he's so wet, pulsing and hot and perfect.
Derek goes slower this time, thrusting with power, angling at that sacred place in Stiles where the boy is opening for him, where he is young and ready and waiting to be filled. Stiles looks up at him, mouth rosy and wet, blush spreading past his clavicle. Derek mouths at his neck, leaving behind trails of discolored skin along the boy's throat, across collarbone, all over his soft chest. "I will give you children, Stiles. And you will feed them, from here-" he softly kneads Stiles' breasts "-and we will raise them together, to be good wolves," Derek promises, holding Stiles close, inhaling at the boy's jawline, increasing his thrusts, picking up his pace. "And I will take care of you and our children, I swear this," Derek says, pounding Stiles with quick, sharp plunges into his throbbing womb. Stiles wraps an arm around Derek's shoulder, places a hand on Derek's face, breath catching. "I will protect you always, provide for you always, love you—always, Stiles."
With one last thrust, Derek crushes his lips to Stiles', burying himself so deep within the boy, watching him shake apart, back bending, hips rolling to meet Derek's, and he comes with a great, heaving sob.
The sunlight slants through the kitchen window, seemingly setting the honey-colored floorboards aflame, and as Derek catches his breath, he swears he can see a glowing halo resting upon the crown of Stiles' head.
In the summer, Derek and Stiles are mated in the village square.
They dance.
Isaac cries.
In the fall, Derek begins construction on a new cottage.
The following spring, Stiles stands in the brook in the same white dress he's glad he can fit into again. This time, the baby on his hip is the first of the many children Derek promised him.
Derek comes splashing into the water, his son shrieking in glee. He puts one arm around his mate, one arm around his child.
They dance.
Derek's father sits out on his porch, book in his lap, grinning.
He turns the page.