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Big Days
It’s an impulse, really. And probably a pretty stupid one, though not the stupidest one Stiles has ever had. That’s a tough list to crack, and there’s no way this is stupider than that time he jumped off the roof with an umbrella because he thought it would work like a parachute.
Spoiler alert: it did not. Don’t try that shit at home, kids.
But the thing is, whether it was a stupid impulse or not, Stiles knows it was still the right thing to do.
Sure, asking Broody McWerewolf to spend Thanksgiving with him and his dad – the county Sheriff – seems like he’s just asking for something to go pear-shaped, but it’s Thanksgiving, and even though it’s mostly a shit holiday, nobody should have to spend it alone just because no one offered. Everyone should have the option to spend it with someone who likes them if that’s something they want.
And shocker of shockers: despite Stiles’ past behavior and his snark, despite Derek’s constant growly face and his lurking and his general fondness for shoving Stiles into walls, Stiles does actually like Derek. God knows the guy doesn’t make it easy on him, but he does. And watching Derek watch everyone else talk about their holiday plans at the meeting today while he kept quiet in the corner, coiling up a rope, just made Stiles feel like his stomach wanted to rebel and leap out of his body or something.
So he did the only absolutely stupid and yet somehow still sensible thing he could have done in this situation and waited until everybody left the meeting, then invited Derek to Thanksgiving. At his house. With his dad. The Sheriff. Who once arrested him. Because of Stiles.
Oh yeah. This is going to turn out great.
“What?”
“You know…turkey…stuffing…cranberry sauce…mashed potatoes…pumpkin pie.”
Derek gives Stiles one of his affronted, irritated sighs, eyes rolling impatiently toward the sun. “I know what people eat at Thanksgiving, Stiles.”
“Well, you seemed a little lost there.”
“Stiles.”
“Derek.”
Stiles slips his hands into his pockets, rocks on his heels.
Derek looks at him a while before he finally shakes his head like he doesn’t know what to do with Stiles. But his shoulders loosen. “Why are you inviting me to Thanksgiving?”
“Because somebody should?”
His nostrils flare and he clenches his jaw, stares Stiles down as he immediately closes himself off and growls out, “I don’t need a pity invite. Go home.”
Stiles groans, follows after Derek when he stalks away. Why does he have to make everything so damn hard?
“It’s not a pity invite, okay? I want you there.”
“Yeah Stiles?” he bites out mockingly. “Your dad’s okay with you inviting an accused murderer to spend dinner with him?”
Stiles winces. “I apologized for that, right?”
Derek raises two very unimpressed eyebrows.
Maybe he didn’t apologize for that.
“But it’s not a pity invite, huh?”
Stiles shakes his head. “No, it’s not.”
“Then why? Why do you want me there?”
“Because your only family is MIA right now, and because it’s a Big Day,” he says, matter-of-fact, curling in his shoulders. “And Big Days suck for people like you and me.”
See, what you learn when life steals someone from you is that eventually you get over the little days. You forget them. It’s easy, actually…easier than you thought it could ever be when you were standing at the edge of an open grave watching your mom’s casket be lowered into the ground. It’s a little soul-crushing, but the little days, the everyday stuff…it just sort of fades together until you can barely remember what it felt like when your mom dropped you off at school or how she liked her toast. But the Big Days – your birthday, their birthday, Christmas…Thanksgiving – those don’t go away. There aren’t enough of them for the memories to fade. So every time a Big Day comes around you get the joy of revisiting all the traditions you never get to do again with someone you loved, who for a while was basically your entire world.
And it sucks balls.
But having someone else you can spend it with who gets it, someone who knows to turn the volume on the TV up a little higher to drown out the extra stuff in your head, who laughs just loud enough and long enough to cover the silence, that makes it okay. Not great, but okay. And on a Big Day, that’s pretty good.
“Look, if you don’t want to come, that’s okay. No pressure. But if you want to eat some good food and don’t mind watching football all day, then stop on by. Breakfast is served when the parade starts, dinner is at three. We’ll have lots of desserts. And I swear my dad won’t give you the third degree or anything.”
When Derek doesn’t respond, just furrows his eyebrows – eyes darting between Stiles’, mouth set in a line – Stiles backs away with a nod and an awkward wave of the hand before shoving his hands in his pockets and heading out, back to his car.
Now all Stiles has to do is tell his dad he invited Derek Hale to spend Thanksgiving with them. That should go over well.
Stiles has no idea if it would’ve gone over well because Stiles does not tell his dad that he invited Derek Hale to spend Thanksgiving with them.
It isn’t intentional. He meant to, but they didn’t really see each other all week because his dad was working doubles and Harris gave Stiles detention for…actually he still has no idea why he got detention. Then there was homework and lacrosse and pack meetings and also a poltergeist showed up? (Because, you know…why not, right?) And man, was that a mess.
So yeah, he totally meant to tell his dad, he just…forgot. Got distracted by other shit. Until this morning anyway, when he woke up and went downstairs to pull the turkey out of the fridge and start breakfast and, as he cracked eggs into a bowl and let his mind wander, realized he hadn’t done a super important thing and mentioned that a formerly accused murderer might be spending Thanksgiving with them.
Oops?
“Uhhhhh…soooooo…”
“Oh God,” his dad says on a heavy sigh, setting the orange juice carton on the container with a thud. “What did you do this time?”
“Nothing!” Stiles says and then, realizing that’s not exactly true, winces and follows that with, “Nothing bad?”
“Stiles…”
“I might have invited someone to spend Thanksgiving with us.”
He lifts one eyebrow. “You might have?”
“Yeah, no. I absolutely did.”
He may as well own up to it. Besides he’s not sorry he did, he’s just sorry he has to have this decidedly awkward conversation.
“Okay…” John says slowly. “And do I know this person?”
“You do.” Stiles nods back, slowly. “Sort of.”
“Sort of.” His hand grasps the edge of the counter as he says, with a saintly patience born only out of years of being Stiles’ dad, “Does this person have a name?”
“They do.”
“Excellent. And their name would be…?”
“Derek Hale?”
He blinks. “Derek Hale. The guy you once accused of murder.”
“I think we can both agree that wasn’t my best moment.”
“No kidding.”
Stiles sighs. “His sister is dead, dad. His family is dead…aside from one eccentric uncle who just pops into Derek’s life whenever the spirit moves him or whatever. So…he basically has no one. And he may have the social skills of a preschooler, but he’s actually a pretty okay guy. Plus, I figure I kind of owe him for that whole…accusing him of murder thing.”
“And you decided the best way to pay him back was with Thanksgiving dinner?”
“Hey…you make an amazing turkey. Don’t shortchange yourself. And my mashed potatoes are nothing to sniff at either.”
“Stiles-”
“He’s alone, dad. And it’s Thanksgiving. It’s just…a not so great day to be alone.”
His dad gets that. If anyone gets that, it’s him.
“Besides, I just sort of floated the offer out there. There’s no guarantee he’s even going to show up. He probably won’t. He didn’t exactly seem jazzed by the invite.”
Derek hasn’t mentioned it since, didn’t even really look Stiles’ way at their last couple meetings. As far as Stiles is concerned, that’s pretty much thanks but no thanks body language.
His dad deflates with a heavy sigh which Stiles knows is the sign he’s given in. Stiles would count that as a victory, but this isn’t really one of those fist pump situations. More a mildly ambivalent yay.
“And should I ask how it is you know that he’s actually a ‘pretty okay guy’?”
Right. He’d forgotten that might be a thing that his dad might have questions about, since strictly speaking, his teenage kid doesn’t really have any reason to be spending time with Derek, a grown man.
Shit.
“Well-”
The doorbell rings and Stiles nearly falls to his knees and send up a prayer to the heavens.
Saved by the bell.
“I’d better get that!” he chirps, practically vaulting over the countertop to get past his dad and to the front door, skidding in his socks on the hardwood floor and bouncing his hip off the back of the couch. “It’s probably Mrs. Wong from down the street, bringing us our yearly cookies,” he calls out. “Don’t want to keep her waiting!”
He yanks open the front door with a grin.
It’s not Mrs. Wong. It’s Derek.
“Nice pajamas,” he says wryly, and Stiles looks down at the dancing turkeys on his pants.
They’re contextually appropriate, okay? Also crazy comfortable, but getting threadbare. This might be the last year for the Thanksgiving PJs. Their swan song. Or turkey song?
Whatever.
“You’re here,” he says, because apparently that’s all his brain can come up with.
Derek shifts and looks up and over Stiles’ shoulder, frowning, shoulders tense and drawn together. “You invited me.”
And yeah, he did, but even though he did, even though he knew there was a possibility that he’d open the door to this exact same picture – to Derek standing on his porch in nicer than normal clothes waiting to come inside like some sort of suitor vying for Stiles hand, a six pack of beer in one hand, a plastic grocery bag in the other – it’s still supremely fucking weird.
Plus, the body language. Remember the body language.
“Yeah, I did. I’m just…” Look, if Derek can put himself out there and step into an admittedly weird situation, then the least Stiles can do is meet him half way. “I’m glad you decided to come.”
On his way home after the meeting last week, Stiles got this terrible image in his head that he couldn’t seem to shake for the rest of the night: Derek on Thanksgiving alone, huddled up in some corner of the burnt Hale house, eating a deli sandwich and reading and pretending like if he concentrates hard enough on the words in front of him, that he can hold back the tide of memories that taunt him with phantom voices that used to be real.
Sometimes on Big Days Stiles can hear the sound of his mom’s laugh coming from the kitchen, can see her ghost putting a turkey on the table or pulling things out of her stocking or blowing out the candles on her cake. It sucks every time. But Derek? He has to hear a dozen laughs in a dozen different voices. He has to see a dozen ghosts putting a dozen turkeys on a dozen tables. And he has to do it in the place they were murdered. That sucks worse.
Stiles’ stomach turns and he rubs an absentminded hand across it, underneath his t-shirt.
Derek’s eyes clock to Stiles’ hand then back up to his face. His shoulders lose their tension but his eyes get more intense and Stiles suddenly realizes that yeah…they’re still standing outside on the porch in silence and this is super weird and not exactly hospitable and he should probably let Derek in the house?
Stiles plucks at Derek’s shirt with a couple fingers, guides him into the house, and Stiles is surprised when he goes willingly, when he doesn’t shove Stiles’ hand off his shirt with one of his own.
“Dad,” Stiles says as he shuts the front door behind them and Derek steps up next to him like they’re some sort of strange united front. “You remember Derek Hale?”
“I think so,” John says, a professional smile on the tip of his lips.
Derek takes a step forward, holds out the six pack of glass bottles in their cardboard carrier. “For you.”
John takes it, lifts impressed eyebrows. “This is my favorite brand. And they’re ice cold.”
He shoots Stiles a look but Stiles just holds up a couple of hands because nope, he didn’t have anything to do with that. Derek just has manners. Although he clearly did a little subtle stalking to figure out his dad’s favorite brand to prove he has manners (Stiles knows he’s never mentioned that to Derek before), but whatever. Semantics. And it’s the thought that counts. The adorable, stalker-y thought.
“Thank you for inviting me,” he says with awkward, stilted words.
John nods. “I hope you brought your appetite. We always make way too much food.”
“Yeah,” Stiles says. “Be prepared for leftovers too, because you’re definitely taking some home with you. That for me?” he asks, pointing at the plastic bag.
When he reaches for it Derek pulls it back, out of reach. He lifts an eyebrow. “Why would this be for you?”
“Uhhhh…because you already gave my dad his gift?”
“Right. Because he’s the host.”
“And I am the junior host. Ergo, that must be for me.” He makes grabby hands at the bag. “So give it here.”
John huffs a breath, shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Derek. I swear his mother and I did try to instill manners in him. They don’t appear to have stuck.”
Stiles gives a little affronted noise and his dad just lifts his eyebrows pointedly as if to say and which one of us is acting like a three year old right now?
Alright, fine. He has a point. Thanksgiving is not about presents. Thanksgiving is about giant-ass balloons and turkey printed pajamas and awkwardly sharing a shit-ton of food with your Sheriff dad and your werewolf Alpha. Today’s Thanksgiving, anyway.
But the thing is? His dad is also totally wrong. He’s missing the point, and he’s missing it because he doesn’t see Stiles interact with Derek on an almost daily basis. He doesn’t know this is how they talk to each other, the game they play. He doesn’t know that Stiles annoys the shit out of Derek because just about everything in their lives these days is intense and they need a little levity to break things up or they’ll all go insane. He doesn’t see how good it is for Derek, how it makes him unclench and unwind.
So he lets his dad have this one. Because he is sort of right, even if he also isn’t right at all, and because Stiles has no idea how he’d frame his argument anyway, not without having to drop the W-Bomb all over their living room.
Stiles steps back from Derek and rocks back on his heels, gestures to the kitchen. “I’m gonna go finish breakfast and get the turkey in. Take a seat…parade’s about to start.”
He grabs the remote on his way past them and turns the TV on, tossing it down on the couch. His dad reaches out and gives his shoulder a squeeze as he passes.
Stiles pulls the croissants out of the oven, sets them on top of the stove next to the breakfast casserole, slides the turkey in, shuts the oven door with his foot.
“It is for you.”
Stiles looks up at Derek, standing awkward and rigid on the other side of the counter, plastic bag in his hand. He still has his jacket on, and he’s standing there looking like if he moves, if he even so much as disturbs the air around him, it’ll startle him. He looks out of place, lost. Which is weird, considering how not out of place he always manages to look when he crawls through Stiles’ bedroom window looking for research or help or whatever the hell else he deems essential at eleven o’clock on a school night.
He sets the bag on the counter, watches Stiles’ face as he says, “Sort of. It’s for all of us. It’s not…” Stiles reaches for the bag but before he can reach inside, Derek blurts out, “It’s just ice cream.”
Stiles reaches into the bag.
Vanilla. Of course. Bless him.
Stiles needs to introduce him to the wonders of additional flavors someday. That ice cream shop downtown makes an amazing peppermint hot chocolate one.
Derek is a little pink cheeked, shoulders curling in when he says, “We used to…when we…”
He trails off and Stiles lifts his eyebrows in encouragement, the ice cream carton freezing his fingertips.
Derek stares at the carton in Stiles’ hands for a while before he finally says, on a quiet exhale, as if frustrated with himself, “On Thanksgiving we always had milkshakes after dinner. We’d take vanilla ice cream and mix it with slices of Peter’s homemade pumpkin pie and make-”
“Pumpkin pie milkshakes.”
Derek looks up at him and Stiles almost takes a step back at the naked openness on Derek’s face.
A moment later he tries to shake it off, says, “It’s nothing.”
God, what an idiot. This isn’t nothing. This is so not nothing. Stiles wasn’t even sure he was going to show up and instead he brought beer for his dad and he’s standing awkwardly in Stiles’ kitchen and he brought a Hale family tradition to share with Stiles and his dad. This is the best damn carton of vanilla ice cream in the world.
Also Stiles really, really wants to just wrap Derek up in a blanket and cuddle the hell out of him for the rest of the day.
“We don’t have to have them, but-”
“Uhhhh, no dude. We totally do. They sound awesome,” he says, clutching the carton to his chest and turning away, as if afraid Derek will try to take the carton back, snatch it out of his hands along with his words.
Derek shakes his head, gives a little twitch of the lips, and Stiles stows the ice cream away in the freezer, pulls some plates out of the cabinet.
“So Peter makes pumpkin pie, huh?”
“Yeah. A really good one, actually. He roasts the pumpkin, makes the crust from scratch.”
“Huh,” Stiles says. “A creeper who bakes. Who knew?”
“He knits too.”
Stiles slaps the spatula down on the counter. “Shut up.”
Derek nods, the tiniest of smiles breaking through on his face. “He made me a hat one year for Christmas.”
“Oh my God,” Stiles says softly, his head tipping back. “Did it have a pom-pom? I bet it had a pom-pom.”
“He made Laura a scarf.”
That’s it – Stiles is buying him a shitload of yarn for Christmas. He has a 50% off coupon from Michael’s, and that thing is not going to waste.
“Can I help?”
He gestures to the food and the plates and Stiles slides over, makes room for him.
“Yeah. Want to start filling the plates?”
Derek nods and sidles up next to Stiles, bumping his shoulder with his own, leaning up against him when he reaches across Stiles for the cut up fruit, comfortable now in the kitchen. Like he’s been here before, like they’ve done this before.
John is sitting in his chair so Stiles and Derek take the couch, setting their plates down on the coffee table, leaning forward to eat. On TV the first marching band of the morning is stopping in front of Macy’s at Herald Square and doing their thing, playing a marching band version of a trilogy of Beatles tunes mashed together and Stiles cuts into his casserole with the side of his fork. His elbow brushes Derek’s arm.
“Okay,” Stiles says, swallowing. “I’m calling it. It’s Charlie Brown this year.”
“What?” John exclaims, shakes his head. “No way.”
Derek lifts his eyebrows at Stiles in inquiry and Stiles says, “Every year we try to determine which balloon is most likely to be released into the wild by its handlers.”
“And every year we disagree.”
Stiles hums, spears a piece of melon. “It’s totally Charlie Brown, old man.”
“What’s your justification?”
“He’s holding a kite.” Stiles waits a beat and then says, with as much gravitas as he can muster, “Symbolism.”
“No way. Sorry, kid. It’s the Grinch.”
Stiles lets out a laugh as his dad takes a swig from his juice glass. “If it’s not Charlie Brown, it’s definitely not the Grinch.”
“Please. His whole MO is centered around causing mischief and mayhem!”
Stiles scoffs. “By the end of the movie his heart grows three times larger and he’s Mr. Softy Pants. All of his handlers are probably Cindy Lou Who clones.”
His dad finally concedes that with a nod and says, “Well, it’s definitely not any of the stars.”
“No, and not the Pillsbury Doughboy either, despite its striking similarities to the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.”
John nods at that too, picks up his croissant.
Stiles sits back, slouching down against the back of the couch with his juice glass resting on his stomach now that he’s done with his breakfast, watches as Spongebob goes flying by on TV. Nah. Not Spongebob either.
“Laura and I went to the parade when we were living in New York,” Derek says, looking down at his plate, focused on scooping up the last of his casserole.
Stiles catches his dad’s eye behind Derek’s back, sees his own feelings mirrored back at him with furrowed eyebrows and a downturned mouth.
“And how was it son?”
Derek looks up at that, sets his fork down on his plate. “Busy. Cold. Watching it on TV is better.” He leans back against the sofa next to Stiles, his arm nudging Stiles’.
“No crowds?” Stiles asks.
“No almond croissants either,” Derek says, glancing briefly over at Stiles.
They’re all quiet after that, and at one point Stiles looks over at his dad and discovers he’s being watched, John’s glass of juice resting on his knee.
Stiles looks away.
“By the way, the answer is clearly Ronald McDonald,” Derek says. “There’s nothing creepier than a six story tall clown getting free from his bindings, and anyone who wants to handle a giant clown balloon is clearly a little off themselves.”
Stiles lets out a long groan. Of course. So obvious.
“I think we have to concede the win to Derek this year, son. Give him his award,” he says, and raises his glass to Derek. “Nicely done.”
“There’s an award?” he asks as Stiles pulls himself up off the couch and wanders over to the bookshelf where he grabs the waiting piece of paper, scribbles in a few words, and slips it into the frame he got at the Dollar Store.
“Of course there’s an award,” Stiles says derisively. “We take this seriously.”
He flips the frame around, holds it out in both hands.
This Award certifies that
Derek Hale
is hereby and forthwith the
World’s Greatest Judge of Balloon Character
Dated this 22nd day of November
Signed: Anthony Frederick Sarg
“You now have official bragging rights for the rest of the year.”
Derek looks up, lifts an eyebrow. “Anthony Frederick Sarg?”
“The guy who invented the balloons for the parade, Derek.” He claps his hands. “Keep up.”
John snorts into the lip of his glass.
“In that case…I’m honored?”
“As you should be,” Stiles says primly.
“And I look forward to beating you again next year.”
John full on laughs at that, and Derek is grinning up at Stiles like he’s a dog that’s managed a particularly difficult trick – heh – and Stiles is so thrown by that, he only has it in him to object half-heartedly.
All bluster, no bite. That’s how his mom used to phrase it.
The dog show comes on and Stiles clears their plates, goes upstairs to change out of the PJs. When he comes back downstairs Derek is elbow deep in a sink of soapy water, sleeves pushed way up his arms, the dishwasher humming along next to him.
“Thanks, but you don’t have to do that.”
Derek just shrugs, goes back to slowly scrubbing the large baking dish, and Stiles gets the impression that he likes it, that he finds it soothing or calming or relaxing. Meditative, maybe. From the other room they can hear the whistle of a referee and the sounds of cheering fans, so his dad must have switched over from the dog show. Stiles pulls up a playlist on his phone and sets the volume on low, setting it off to the side as he gets to work peeling potatoes.
“You don’t spend Thanksgiving with Scott and his mom.”
Stiles glances over. “Scott has a pretty huge extended family actually? So he’s never in town for the big days. He always goes to his abuela’s in Bakersfield. Everyone in his family does. She makes these amazing tamales, and she makes Scott help.”
The one time he tagged along with Scott to see her – not on Thanksgiving, because there’s no way he could ever do that to his dad – she made Stiles help too, rapping his knuckles with the back of a wooden spoon every time he got distracted or did something wrong and then immediately running a soothing hand through his hair afterward as she spoke to him in rapid fire Spanish he couldn’t understand and Scott was no help with.
It had given him whiplash, and made him wish he was at home with his dad instead.
“You don’t have any extended family?”
He unplugs the sink and they watch as it empties, soapy water sliding down the drain.
“My grandparents died when I was a younger, so it’s just me and my dad now.”
Even when his mom was alive there weren’t many of them, just a handful of Stilinskis and a handful of his mom’s side, the Krakowskis. Too few to lose even one. But his mom died anyway, and then after that both sets of grandparents. Now there are no more Krakowskis and just two Stilinskis.
Life sucks like that. But he doesn’t have to tell Derek that. Derek knows.
Derek steps over to Stiles’ other side and without a word, starts taking the peeled potatoes and chopping them into large chunks, dropping them into a waiting pot, his shoulder brushing against Stiles’ as he chops.
Stiles doesn’t tell him he doesn’t have to. He gets why Derek’s sticking around in the kitchen with him instead of sitting awkwardly and rigidly on the couch in the family room near the guy he barely knows who carries a gun every day and has the power to ruin his life. It’s not, you know, rocket science.
“I used to help my mom in the kitchen,” Stiles says. And then he starts telling him other things too, mostly about his mom. He doesn’t say he misses her, but he’s sure Derek gets that from the way his voice gets raspy a few times, from the way certain stories are hard to get through. After a particularly difficult one he looks over and finds Derek watching him in a way Stiles is sure he’s never looked at him before and Stiles holds his gaze for a moment before it gets to be too much and he looks away.
“My dad’s the one who used to do all the cooking,” Derek says after a while, a little hesitantly, like he wants to give Stiles something in return for opening up to him but he’s not sure if he wants to at the same time.
Stiles glances back over at Derek, at his deft hands as he chops celery for Stiles’ stuffing.
“Thanksgiving was his favorite. I used to help him in the kitchen.”
Like Stiles helped his mom.
“Laura and Cora hated it – they thought it was a chore. But I loved it, doing what my dad did. My dad wasn’t-” He cuts off, hands stilling on the cutting board as his eyes flick toward the family room, waiting a beat before he starts speaking again, before his hands resume chopping. “My dad wasn’t like the rest of us.”
So, not a werewolf then. Stiles had wondered. But then Stiles has wondered a lot of things about Derek Hale. Dude isn’t exactly an open book.
Not that he blames him.
“But I liked that about him. And he loved cooking for everyone, for the whole…family.” He stumbles over the last word and in his stumble Stiles hears the word he wanted to say instead. Pack. “He liked providing for us. He was…he was just as important to the stability of the family as my mom was.”
“Partners,” Stiles says softly, and Derek nods at him.
It was like that with his parents too. Partners always, in everything.
It’s a shame, really, that Stiles never got to see Derek before. It’s a shame he never saw him in his natural habitat – safe and happy, his whole safe, happy family around him.
At some point his dad wanders in and shoos them out of the way to check on the bird and then stays in the kitchen with them when he’s done, helping them chop and mix and get everything ready, stealing sips of beer in between toasting almonds and chopping pecans, occasionally wandering back into the living room for a moment or two to check the score of the game or yell at a bad call. He offers Derek a beer that Derek declines, opting instead to take sips here and there from Stiles’ iced tea. Every time he does, Stiles’ eyes are drawn to his Adam’s apple, bobbing away under the long line of Derek’s throat.
Derek is a lot more tense now that his dad is in the kitchen but his dad doesn’t seem to notice and Stiles pretends he doesn’t notice so eventually Derek loosens up a bit, though his eyes continue to flick to John on occasion, watching him like he’s keeping his eye on an erratic predator.
When all the prep work is done Stiles sets the timer and they migrate back out to the living room with a bowl of nuts and a dish of black olives to pick at until dinner is ready, and Stiles slouches down into the couch and props his feet up on the coffee table and halfheartedly watches two teams he doesn’t care about try to murder each other on a muddy, rainy field as he sticks black olives over all of his fingertips, wiggling his fingers.
“Oh, come on!” John calls out. “That was pass interference!”
“Didn’t they change that rule about pushing off against a defender this year?” Stiles asks lazily, pulling one of the olives off of his finger with his teeth, and John grunts in response.
Stiles doesn’t know how to interpret that. Was that a no? Was that a maybe? Was that a yes, Stiles, you’re absolutely correct and I now see the error in my impassioned response?
Got to be the last one, right?
John takes a pull of his beer and glances over at the couch. “Do you like football, Derek?”
There’s a beat of silence and then Derek says, “No, not really.”
Stiles barks out a laugh that he hears his dad echo.
Amazing.
“Not really trying to get on the old man’s good side, are you?”
“Good man,” John says, saluting him with his beer. “Never pretend to be someone you’re not.”
“Even to the county Sheriff?” Stiles asks.
“Especially to the county Sheriff.” The timer Stiles set on the coffee table goes off, and John asks, “That for you or me kid?”
“Both of us,” he says, righting himself off the couch with a groan.
His dad follows him into the kitchen to baste the bird one more time and Stiles throws the sides into the oven and the toaster oven, pulls out plates and resets the timer.
“I really wasn’t happy you invited him,” his dad says and Stiles freezes, his stomach dropping, his eyes straying toward the direction of the couch in the other room, hidden by walls, where he knows Derek is sitting, hearing them.
“Dad-”
John holds up a hand, shakes his head. “He doesn’t make a very good first impression.”
Stiles almost laughs at that because no, he really really doesn’t.
“It’s a good thing he makes an excellent second one,” he says, pulls another beer out of the fridge, pops the top with a bottle opener, and strides out of the kitchen, leaving Stiles to stare after him in his wake.
When dinner is finally ready his dad carves the turkey and Stiles dishes out plates, and the eat in front of the TV while a different football game plays, Stiles sitting on the floor with his legs crossed in front of the coffee table. When his mom was alive they never would’ve eaten this way, but the first Thanksgiving after she died they tried to eat at the dining room table and found they couldn’t – it was just too much – so they made this their tradition instead, and it works. Makes some of the holiday ghosts seem to fade, anyway. The ones that remember elaborate centerpieces and hand tracing turkeys and nice china.
Like usual his dad’s turkey is the star of the show, something Stiles immediately praises him for that Derek backs up with a few sincere compliments of his own, then follows that by getting up to get seconds and then, when that doesn’t do it for him, thirds.
Werewolf metabolisms.
Stiles himself is done after seconds, and he climbs up onto the couch after and slouches down into the back, his hands resting on his belly. After Derek finishes his plate he sits back against the couch, next to Stiles. Derek is warm, and the house is warm because there’s a fire going and because they’ve been cooking all day. Plus the TV is set just low enough not to be a distraction, and his belly is full, and with all of that added up together, Stiles drifts off to sleep pretty quickly.
When he wakes up there’s a blanket draped over him, a different football game has started, and Derek is missing, along with their empty plates.
“Have a nice nap?”
Stiles blinks, looks over at his dad, gives him a jerky nod. He did, actually. “How long was I out?”
“About thirty minutes.”
“Where’s Derek?”
He jerks his head toward the right. “Kitchen.”
Stiles gives him another jerky nod and swings the blanket off his lap, stretching as he makes his way into the kitchen and finds Derek boxing up leftovers and sliding them into the fridge, another sink full of soapy water behind him, dish rack already set up as the dishwasher hums away again. He’s moving through the motions like he’s done this before, like this is what he always does: his predetermined holiday job. Dad is in charge of the meat, Stiles is in charge of all the other dishes, and Derek is in charge of clean up.
Stiles doesn’t hate it.
“You got started without me.”
Derek turns. “You cooked. You shouldn’t have to clean up too.”
“You helped,” Stiles points out, but Derek is unmoved. “Fine. I’ll just go bring the tree and the ornaments in from the garage.”
“You put your Christmas tree up on Thanksgiving?” he asks, like somehow that’s an absurd thing to do. They don’t – Stiles always puts it up the next day when his dad is at work, because decorating the tree is a hard thing, something his parents always did together and now something his dad can’t really do without remembering what he doesn’t have any more. When they can, they try to spare each other from each other’s hard things, the ones that have his mom’s scent all over them.
“No. I put it up the day after while I eat a giant turkey sandwich made out of the leftovers. I’m just bringing in the boxes today.”
“You want help?” Derek asks, because he’s a big, strong, muscle-y werewolf who can probably carry all the boxes at once and Stiles is a much scrawnier human who’ll have to make three trips.
“Nah,” he says, waving him off as he crouches down to put on his shoes. “I got it.”
He turns the back porch light on and skirts around the back of the house to the garage that holds sporting equipment and holiday stuff and tools and stuff they probably meant to get rid of ages ago and which, to Stiles’ knowledge, has never once actually housed a car.
This is California. In California you use your garage for storage and park your cars in your driveway. Like men.
He finds the first couple of tubs, pulls them down from their rack and makes his way back to the house, stacked tubs obscuring his vision. He nudges the cracked back door open with his hip, goes to shut it with his foot and stops when he hears the bone-rattling roar coming from the family room. He drops the tubs on the kitchen floor and runs into the other room to find Derek crouched over a man on the floor, his hands pinning the man down, his face shifted, fangs out, inches from the man’s face.
Shit.
Derek roars again and the man starts freaking out, and Stiles goes to take a step forward when he hears his dad say Derek’s name, when he watches him take a step closer.
It’s then that Stiles keys in to the full scene in front of him: the lamp knocked over next to his dad’s chair, the knife lying on the floor next to the man’s outstretched hand, the line of red at his dad’s neck.
“Derek,” his dad says again, takes another step closer, and Stiles can see the handcuffs in his hands, ready to be slapped on. “Let me take over.”
When Derek doesn’t move, doesn’t shift back, Stiles goes to take a step closer. He stops when his dad says calmly, “Stiles, call the station.”
“Dad, I-”
“Stiles. Call the station.”
Stiles skirts around them and finds his cell phone sitting on the coffee table, and he picks it up and calls the station as the man on the floor finally finds his voice and starts screaming.
“What the hell are you? What the hell are you?”
Stiles steps away from them a little further, tells the officer on call that his dad is requesting a unit to come by, that they’ve had an intruder, but the intruder is currently subdued, keying his voice up when the man’s screams continue, when they grow in volume.
“What the hell are you?”
When Stiles turns around he sees his dad slapping cuffs on the guy, Derek backed away against a wall as he stares down at the man, his mouth parted. The man keeps screaming even though Derek has shifted back, even though he looks as human as can be.
Stiles walks over to him, stands so close his arm is pressed up against Derek’s. Derek barely even registers his presence.
“Shut. Up,” his dad says, crouched down and face close to the man’s. “You’re giving me a headache.”
“What the hell is he?” he asks for the millionth time, eyes wide as he struggles against the handcuffs, now on his stomach, face pressed to the floor. “Some kind of freak? Some kind of monster?”
“What did you take?”
“What?” the man spits out, confused.
“What did you take?” his dad asks again patiently. Stiles doesn’t know how he can do that. How he can be calm with someone who’s just tried to kill him in his own home. “What are you on?”
“What are you talking about?” he shouts, his anger taking over for his fear. “I’m not on anything, asshole!”
“I’m not so sure I believe you, Gary.”
So his dad knows this guy. Someone he arrested maybe? A past collar with a grudge?
“I’m not!”
His dad gives him a nod, but it’s a cop nod.
“I’m not! You saw his face! He’s a monster!”
John leans in and says seriously, his voice low, “The only monster here is you.”
When the knock comes at the door, Stiles rushes over and pulls it open, letting in Deputy Parrish and Deputy Orosco then stands off to the side and watches as they take over and get the suspect – Gary – outside and into their patrol car.
“Sheriff…we’re going to need to take statements from the three of you.”
“We’ll be right behind you.”
The ride to the station in his dad’s patrol car is mostly silent, interspersed with a comment here or there from his dad about what they can expect when they make it to the station. Stiles bounces his leg and looks through the protective barrier dividing Stiles from his dad, his eyes keying to the sharp line of blood on his neck. His stomach turns and he looks away, back out the car window.
Stiles’ interview doesn’t take very long – he didn’t witness most of it – so he’s excused pretty quickly to wait in the bullpen and stare at the closed doors of his dad’s and Derek’s interview rooms, impatiently waiting for them to appear, wincing at Tara’s sad excuse for a Thanksgiving dinner sitting on her desk.
Maybe he’ll send an extra sandwich with his dad to work tomorrow for her.
Derek appears first, shaking Deputy Parrish’s hand in the doorway. But he looks grave and serious while he does it, so Stiles doesn’t know what to make of that. Derek isn’t exactly the easiest guy to read on the best of days, much less a whopper like today.
“You okay?” Stiles asks when Derek makes his way over, stops in front of the desk Stiles is perched on.
Derek stares down at him. “I’m fine.”
“Good,” Stiles says, nodding to himself. “Good. Because that was pretty insane.”
“I’m fine, Stiles.”
“Right. Okay. Good,” he says, still nodding, then abruptly stands, throws his arms around Derek and tucks his face into Derek’s neck, nose pressed to his skin.
“Stiles-”
“You saved my dad’s life, Derek,” he says, words muffled by the skin of Derek’s neck. He knows Derek can hear him anyway.
For one long moment Stiles thinks this is going to be one of those awkward one-sided hugs and then finally Derek’s arms come up, wrap around him tightly like a band, hold Stiles to him. He presses his cheek to Stiles’ head, Stiles’ hands curling in Derek’s jacket.
He doesn’t know how long they’ve been standing there like that when a throat is loudly cleared in front of them and they pull away from each other to find Stiles’ dad watching them. Stiles looks away, wipes at his eyes with a few quick swipes of the hand.
“You ready to go?”
They both nod, follow him back out to the patrol car where Stiles, once again, gets relegated to the back.
It’s fine. Derek’s already done his share of riding in the back of patrol cars.
Unlike before, they’re barely out of the parking lot when John says, “So you’re a…?”
“Werewolf,” Derek says quietly. Stiles leans forward in his seat, hooks a finger in the grid dividing them.
“Werewolf,” John repeats. “Okay.” There’s a pause and then he asks, “How long have you been a werewolf?”
“My entire life.”
“You were born one.”
“Yes.”
Another long pause. Stiles forces himself to stay quiet in the backseat. This is Derek’s story to tell, not his.
“And your family?”
“Most of them were werewolves too, yes.”
He nods. “And how long has my kid known?”
It’s Derek who pauses this time. Stiles looks down at his feet, winces.
“A while. Since just after I came back to town.”
“And how many times has he been in danger because of it?”
Stiles’ head snaps up. “Dad!”
“Stiles,” his dad says, looking at him through the rear view mirror and Stiles sits back, crosses his arms over his chest, stares his dad down through the mirror. “You’re my kid. This is a perfectly valid question.”
“You’re interrogating him! You’re treating him like everyone else does, like Gary did,” he says dismissively.
“And how is that? Like the adult werewolf who clearly spends a lot of time with my son?”
“Stiles-” Derek says, turning back to look over his shoulder.
“Like a monster!” Stiles says, exploding forward in his seat, fingers grabbing onto the grid between them. “He’s not a monster! He’s like the furthest thing possible from a monster! All he wants to do is live in peace, and nobody will let him.”
“Being a part of his life puts you in danger.”
In the front passenger seat Derek’s head bows, his hands clench at his thighs.
“Do you know how many times Derek’s told me to leave? To run? To get away while he faces the Big Bad alone? Like a million,” Stiles says. “He’s stupidly self-sacrificial like that. But I care about him. I’m not going to leave him to fend for himself. I may not have a lot going for me, but I’m going to use whatever meager blessings I’ve got to keep him safe. I’m not going to run away. I’m going to stay and fight, next to Derek. Because that’s what you do when someone you care about is in danger. You taught me that.”
The cruiser comes to a screeching halt in the middle of the empty street and Stiles falls back against the hard plastic seat and watches his dad warily in the front, feels his breathing start to regulate now that the fight has left him.
His dad keeps two clenched hands on the steering wheel, stares forward. Stiles’ eyes skitter to Derek, find him looking down at the dash.
John reaches down to the gear shift and puts the car in park, takes his hands off the steering wheel and slowly turns to look at Stiles. Stiles swallows. In the front seat, Derek keeps his head down.
“You’re right, Stiles,” he says and nods, maybe more to himself than to Stiles. “You’re absolutely right.”
Then he turns, puts the car in drive, and takes them home.
Because the patrol car has no handles on the inside of the back seat, Stiles has to wait for his dad to make it around the car and open the back door for him. The moment he does he yanks Stiles up and out of the car and into his arms, holds on tight.
“I’d prefer fewer bruises on you.”
“Me too,” Stiles says into his shoulder, holding him back just as tight. “Tell Jackson to stop hitting me so hard in lacrosse practice.”
He doesn’t say tell all the betas to stop hitting me so hard at pack meetings too. His dad doesn’t need to hear that. Besides, they’ll learn their strength eventually. Probably.
His dad huffs a laugh and they pull back from each other, his dad resting a hand on Stiles’ shoulder. He gives it a fatherly pat then looks up and over Stiles’ shoulder and says, “Heading out already?”
Stiles turns, finds Derek standing by the Camaro with his keys in his hands, looking anywhere but at them.
“I’ve imposed long enough. Thanksgiving is a family day.”
His dad hums in agreement. “And the day’s not over yet. You haven’t made us your pumpkin pie milkshakes yet.”
Stiles slips his hands into his pockets. “Day’s not over until pie happens, dude.”
“And Miracle on 34th Street,” his dad adds helpfully.
“And Miracle on 34th Street,” Stiles repeats, giving his dad a nod in thanks that his dad returns. “Even though dad always falls asleep before it’s over.”
“Come back inside with us son,” John says sincerely, all playfulness leaving him once he sees Derek hold his ground. “You only have friends here.”
His dad walks over and slips inside the house, leaving the door open behind him, but Stiles stays where he is, holding his breath as he watches Derek, waits for him to make his move.
Finally he does, takes a step forward toward the house and away from his car with tense shoulders, and Stiles lets out that breath and walks over to him, falls in step with him. Inside they get to work righting things in silence – picking up the lamp off the floor, straightening a rug, bringing in the rest of the Christmas tubs and the fake pre-lit tree from the garage and stacking them in the family room behind the couch. Derek starts making their pumpkin pie milkshakes and Stiles fusses over the cut on his dad’s neck, and his dad asks some more questions – friendlier this time, asking Derek’s permission before he begins, telling him that if there’s something he doesn’t want to answer, then that’s fine.
Stiles doesn’t think Derek holds back much, but he’s subdued in a resigned kind of way. Like this is something he just needs to get through and then he can leave. Which sucks.
Fucking Gary. Everything was going so well.
Derek finishes up the milkshakes with a dollop of whipped cream on top, sprinkling that with shards of pie crust and sprinkles of pumpkin pie spice, and sets one down in front of each of them, eyes focused on the counter between them.
“You know, Derek…I owe you an apology.”
Derek looks up. “You don’t owe me anything.”
“No. I do,” he says, and sighs. “I made a big deal about you putting my son in danger, when I’m the one who put him in danger tonight. I’m the one who’s put him in danger every day of his life.”
“Dad-”
He holds up a hand at Stiles, but stays focused on Derek. “Stiles didn’t choose to be the son of a Sheriff. You didn’t choose to be a werewolf. As far as I can see, I’m the only one here who chose their life. I’m sorry. For a minute there I didn’t do a very good job remembering that. And if the way you reacted to me being attacked is anything close to how you’d react if Stiles was attacked, then I know he’s as safe as he can be. As safe as anyone can be, anyway.” He leans forward, takes a sip of the milkshake, makes a pleased noise. “And this is one hell of a milkshake.”
Stiles leans forward, takes a sip of his own, then takes another much, much longer sip. “Yeah it is.”
Derek ducks his head, pleased. “Peter makes his pie with this nut crumble on top, so when we used to make the shakes with his pie-”
“There’d be like little nut crumble clusters in it?” Derek nods and Stiles moans, takes another sip from his shake, the straw sticking out of the corner of his mouth. “You think he’d make one just because?”
“If you asked? He might.”
John taps the counter. “I’ll put the movie in. You want to grab the rest of the desserts?”
Stiles gives him a salute, fills three plates with slices of apple pie, with candy bar cheesecake, with slices of his mom’s special recipe coconut cake that Derek helps him carry into the living room. They made too many desserts – they always do, but they’re the one holdover from before his mom died, and they just can’t bring themselves to eliminate one. She loved all of them. It’s all good. Like every other year Stiles will foist the majority of the leftovers on his dad’s deputies to keep his dad from binging on them at 1 AM when he gets off shift anyway. Or maybe he’ll foist them on the pack this year instead. All those teenage werewolf metabolisms.
Derek eats slowly and makes little appreciative noises as he does, and Stiles finds his eyes constantly shifting from the movie to Derek, cataloguing the way he sounds when he’s genuinely enjoying something. He wants to keep that for later.
Predictably his dad falls asleep about thirty minutes into the movie and starts lightly snoring, head tipped away from them, and he and Derek share a huff of a laugh, a pair of tentative smiles when it starts. Derek still has a few bites left of his coconut cake but Stiles is done, and he leans back into the couch, into Derek. Derek pauses a moment, fork halfway to his mouth, then relaxes, leans into Stiles to encourage the contact. Just to test the limits, Stiles puts a hand on Derek’s thigh, rests it there like he does it all the time.
Derek rubs a cheek against Stiles’ hair.
Stiles restlessly plucks at the too tight fabric of Derek’s jeans and Derek finishes the final few bites of his cake, sets his plate down on the coffee table, and licks his lips to rid them of any residual frosting.
Stiles wants to lick his lips for him.
His dad snorts in his sleep and they share another laugh as Stiles rights himself off the couch, as he wakes his dad up and reminds him he has to be up early for a shift tomorrow.
John yawns and heads off to bed with a stretch, climbing the stairs slowly and wishing them goodnight, pausing briefly to also wish them a Happy Thanksgiving.
“And Stiles?”
“Yeah dad?”
“Try to remember it’s Thanksgiving and be respectful of the holiday, okay?”
Stiles furrows his eyebrows. “Okay?”
“That means keep all contact between you and your werewolf boyfriend above the waist, okay?”
Stiles sputters. “Dad, that’s not-”
“Above the waist, Stiles! Above the waist,” he says, disappearing around the corner and down the hall.
Stiles blinks. “How do I explain to him that I don’t actually have a werewolf boyfriend?”
“Do you want one?”
“Oh my God.” Stiles spins around and walks over, drops back down on the couch next to Derek. “Are you smooth? Have you been smooth this whole time and I didn’t know it?”
“Maybe,” Derek says.
Stiles narrows his eyes at him, eyes flicking back and forth over Derek’s placid face before he says, “No, you’re not. You’re still the same pseudo-growly, softy of a dork who-”
The kiss is firm, determined if Stiles had to call it anything. Derek knows what he wants, and he knows what to do, and the fact that what he wants is Stiles and what he wants to do is kiss Stiles has Stiles’ head spinning.
That’s not even to mention the kiss itself. The kiss is warm and firm and Derek’s lips are soft and his hand is gentle on Stiles’ face and Stiles nibbles on Derek’s bottom lip, leans into the kiss and tries to match Derek.
Derek lies down on the couch and takes Stiles with him, and they kiss off and on through the rest of the movie, stopping at one longer interval so Stiles can grab seconds on desserts. He bugs Derek to make him another milkshake and Derek complies with an indulgent eye roll, taking sips from it when they’re back on the couch, Derek lying back against the arm, Stiles sitting next to Derek’s hip.
“Thanks for coming today. You made it…” Stiles trails off as he sticks his fork in his cake and pulls off a bite.
This is his first admission that this was as much about him as it was about Derek, and it feels weighty. Serious, in a way he usually isn’t. But he thinks Derek should have this. He thinks he should know, in case he had any doubts.
“It was better with you here. Easier.”
“Thanks for inviting me,” he says softly, rising and stealing another kiss from Stiles. When he pulls back he licks his lips. “Mmm. Coconut.”
Stiles laughs, and that makes Derek smile, easy grin lighting up his face in a way it never does. In a way it never can, when they spend so much time fighting for their lives.
“It was better with you too. Thanks.”
That deserves another kiss so Stiles grants him one, pulling back and looking over when the music stops on the TV and the DVD reverts back to the main menu.
“I guess that’s my cue,” Derek says. “Thanksgiving’s officially over now.”
Stiles stands, takes their plates into the kitchen and grabs a set of containers, finishes filling the last one with desserts before he hands them off to Derek and follows him to the front door, waiting inside the house when Derek steps outside onto the porch, turns around.
“Next year Peter’s invited too.”
“For his pie?”
“Because he’s your family.” Stiles pauses, adds, “And because there’s something there, something better than what we give him credit for.”
“You’d be the first person to think better of him in a while.”
“Someone should.”
Derek nods, gives him a wry smile. “I’ll let him know he’s invited next year.”
“As long as he brings pie. No admittance without pie.”
“Duly noted.”
Derek steals one more kiss then backs off with a smile, turns and walks down the porch steps.
They don’t usually do the say what they’re thankful for thing, not anymore. That used to be one of his mom’s things, and it felt hard to be thankful after she died. But Stiles thinks he might bring it back this year, because he knows exactly what he’s thankful for: himself.
Himself and his stupid, crazy impulses.