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Stiles' room was like Stiles' head: slightly messy and very random. He had the Black Tentacle Monster of Death that he'd drawn when he was eight years old hanging on his wall, his mom's old vinyl albums stashed under his bed, a rarely (okay, never) used surfboard balancing against the wall, and some way overdue library books on his shelves – so overdue that whenever Stiles saw Mrs. Breecher from the South Shore Library he sprinted in the opposite direction. Stiles loved these things, these objets d'art that belonged to him: the stolen ones, the inherited ones, the never-returned ones, the created ones. They were all little markers of where he'd been and who he was.
Except for the fucking skateboard. Stiles hated that skateboard, and it was not a part of Stiles' life; indeed, it was excommunicated for the unpardonable sin of cock-blocking him into a pain-ridden oblivion.
"This is not funny," said Stiles, wincing as he massaged his back.
Sitting on the bed next to a prone Stiles, Derek continued glowering.
"I wish you would stop freakin' laughing." Stiles tried to glower back, but he couldn't get his face to participate when his spine felt like it was going to pop out of his back.
"I'm not," said Derek. Even after two months of this whatever-it-was that they had going on together, he still sounded like it was the biggest chore in the world to say anything non-essential to Stiles. (Which was kind of disappointing. Stiles had been hoping for dirty talk.)
"Dude, I can hear your laughter." Stiles sighed at Derek's look of glowering confusion. "In my head. Obviously."
At that, Derek relaxed a little. Stiles didn't know why; obviously a good not-boyfriend would have been cradling Stiles and soothing his brow with a caring, rough hand, asking him where it hurt and gently massaging the area, maybe brushing kisses over the terrible wound and talking about how precious and angelic Stiles was –
"Do you really want me to," Derek's eyebrow spasmed in what Stiles had long ago identified as extreme pain, "'cradle' you?"
"I, what, no," said Stiles quickly, realizing he’d been talking aloud. "Of course not, never. Just, you know. Ramblings of the horrendously injured and maimed for life, no biggie."
Derek's eyes dropped to half-mast. Stiles swallowed and winced again as his back twinged.
With no more dallying, Derek started stripping.
The first reaction Stiles had to this was, naturally, an overwhelming sense of glee. Sure, he’d seen Derek shirtless before; hell, the whole city had seen Derek shirtless before. But this was the first time it’d happened within reach of a bed, and his abs were just as sculpted as Stiles remembered them being from all the nights he’d seen them highlighted by the moon while he was terrified out of his mind. Unable to fight his body’s urges, he swooned a little towards Derek. His back abruptly protested this move.
Well, shit. There went that plan. Stiles scrunched up his face in agony, but Derek just continued toeing off his shoes.
Maybe lying splayed out on his bed and with a mien of awful suffering on his face wasn’t enough, and Stiles needed to actually say something?
"Uh, I'm pretty sure that my back is actually broken right now. Or like, really close to broken, close enough that any vigorous activity might send it over the edge, and I do want to have lots of hot sex with you, I really do, but maybe we could have that sex when I'm not so close to becoming paralyzed for life?"
Derek looked down at Stiles like Stiles was a slightly slow squirrel. Which was to say, with a look of hungry pity.
"I am not," said Derek decisively, tossing his shoes in the corner of Stiles' room, "going to mate you when you're injured." Then, obviously under the impression that he’d used up his word quota for the day, he slipped into the side of Stiles' bed and wrapped an arm around Stiles' middle.
For the first time, Derek’s face was within kissing distance yet they weren’t kissing or threatening each other. Ugh, Derek's face.
"Really?" Stiles twisted a little in Derek's grip. "Are you sure you can resist this animal magnetism?"
Derek stared steadily at Stiles.
"I think I can control myself," he finally said, droll.
"Whatever –" started Stiles, but then he felt a hand, Derek's hand, massaging his back right at the sorest spot. "Ow, fuck!"
"There?" asked Derek, eyebrows doing that curve-uppy thing that meant 'smug'.
"Yes, asshole, there, ow ow!" Stiles buried his head farther into the pillow, ending up even closer to Derek. They were probably breathing the exact same air, now. If Stiles didn't want this to turn into his forty-first case of blue balls since he and Derek had started this thing, though, he was going to have to not think about how Derek smelled, how Derek's bare chest was a handspan away, or that Derek had used the word "mating" which should have been kind of gross but instead made Stiles shiver all over down to his toes –
"Stiles," said Derek, eyes shutting lazily and hand kneading Stiles' back. Woah, was he actually massaging? "I know it's difficult, but please shut-up."
"But I didn't say anything," replied Stiles, for once genuinely stumped. One of Derek's eyes flicked open, finding Stiles' gaze easily.
"I can hear you," said Derek, mouth quirking and eye closing again. "In my head."
Stiles stared at Derek for a moment, all pain momentarily forgotten.
"Your derivative manipulation, no, not even that, just plain copying of my humor? It’s disgusting. Let's agree to leave that part of this relationship to me, okay?"
This time both of Derek’s eyes eyes flicked open, and his grip on Stiles’ back sharpened, nails lengthening. Stiles inhaled sharply from the hint of danger at his spine and the embarrassment of letting the r-word slip. Thankfully all Derek did was edge in closer, putting his nose at Stiles’ hairline. “I’ll leave the humor to you if you leave the walking, talking, and breathing to me.”
Stiles huffed out a disbelieving laugh.
“I can walk fine. That skateboard jumped out at me. You saw it.”
“From behind your desk?” A vein in Derek’s neck twitched.
“It always did hate me,” said Stiles, earnest. “In fact –”
Three light knocks on the door interrupted Stiles.
“Stiles?” came his dad’s voice, questioning. “You home?”
Stiles face switched from teasing to manic terror in record time. Urging Derek off the bed with windmilling hands, his own pain became immediately secondary to the situation. His dad would feel so disappointed if he caught Derek in Stiles’ room … again.
“How could you not hear him?” said Stiles, hissing into Derek’s ear as Derek tried to untangle himself from the sheets.
“I was busy,” Derek replied in an even lower tone, flush taking over his face. Rolling his eyes, Stiles angled his face to the door, preparing a lie.
“Just a sec, dad, I’m naked!”
They were so close to victory, so close to Derek making it out the window (albeit shirtless) that their utter failure shocked them both. After he hopped out of the bed, Derek slipped –
– on the evil, excommunicated-from-Stiles’-life-forever skateboard. And of course Derek crashed and burned all over the floor and didn’t save himself with his super freaky werewolf powers. Of course, because that was what Stiles’ life had been reduced to: being cockblocked by inanimate objects.
“Stiles!” His dad’s voice was louder now. The door knob jiggled. “Are you okay? I’m coming in!”
Which was how his dad found a half-naked Derek Hale rolling around on the floor of his only son’s bedroom, Derek gripping his back and looking capable of murder. This was, to be fair, not very far from the status quo anyway.
“Uh,” said Stiles, looking on with horror from the bed. “I can explain.”
(A few hours later Stiles threw the skateboard out of his room, taking a vicious satisfaction in the way that it hit every stair on its way down to the first floor.
Unseen by Stiles, his dad stood up from his chair at the kitchen table and walked over to the poor, unloved thing huddled at the bottom of the stairs. He picked it up and patted it gently, smiling.
“Good boy,” he said to the skateboard. “Good boy.”)