Archive of Our Own

Derek was not a planner.

That wasn’t to say that he couldn’t plan – after all, he had a photography studio to run, dozens of appointments to schedule (especially during the magazine’s peak editions) and wayward uncles to wrangle back into place. A difficult enough task to do without a secretary of his own, and yet his daily planner was so meticulously organized, the chairmen of Staples and Office Depot would probably cling to each other and weep tears of pride.

However.

There was honestly so much planning that Derek could do before his brain decided to simply give up the ghost. He wasn’t overly-imaginative (which, yes, it was entirely different from having an artistic eye, so sue him), and trying to come up with ideas, when prompted, was hard. He preferred ideas to come to him, which often did at the most inopportune times. Part of this was why he kept a notepad and pen in the vanity drawer beside the toilet (which Laura still hasn’t stopped ribbing him for). But coming up with something there and then? Easier said than done.

Laura’s husband, Steven, had won holiday vouchers in his firm’s prize-pool for a beach resort on the coast. Laura, with her infinite wisdom and ‘tight discount game’ (where does she even come up with these phrases? Jesus), had researched the resort and discovered that they could cash in their tickets and upgrade to a beachside bungalow if they came with a group of people. Stiles had been running himself ragged lately with his research for the upcoming book, and Derek had his new studio to keep setting up, while simultaneously continuing to be the full-time photographer for NECKZ n’ THROATS, so it seemed logical to suggest that they all holiday together. He didn’t see the problem – four days on the coast in beautiful seaside houses at a fraction of the usual price. He and Stiles would be housed separate to his sister, of course. He’d lived with her long enough as a child, and was definitely not up for reliving those experiences.

And also because of Gloria – Steven and Laura’s beautiful eighteen-month-old baby girl. And perhaps Derek was biased, being her uncle and all, but there wasn’t a more perfect child in the entire universe. Which was all the more reason to keep her out of the house while he and Stiles relaxed.

The past two weeks had been so strenuous on them both. With one of Stiles’ chapter deadlines due and Derek pulling extra hours for a special magazine spread, their schedules had clashed terribly and they’d both been too exhausted for anything more than brief make-out sessions. Derek wasn’t sure that, at this retreat, they’d be able to keep their hands off one another after they’d managed a good night of sleep, and there was no way he was subjecting his beloved niece to the sight of accidental dry-humping when he couldn’t keep his urges to himself.

He had plans for this retreat, too. He and Stiles had been with each other for over two and a half years, and living in Derek's apartment for most of that time. Their time together had been stupidly perfect, and the happiest Derek had ever been, and he knows, deep down in his soul, in his very wolf, that Stiles is it, he’s the one, he’s his mate. So whilst Stiles happily chatted away as he packed beach towels, swimsuits and suntan lotion, Derek surreptitiously tucked the little velvet box in one of his camera bag’s many pockets.

The plan was simple, but then again, this was them, and they didn’t do colossal declarations of devotion, or enormously romantic displays of affection. He and Stiles were down-to-earth and unpretentious in their love for one another, which is why this would work. He’d even gotten the green light from Laura, of all people, who was ridiculous in her ideas of romance and all things gooey. Laura had booked a table for the five of them at a really nice restaurant about halfway through their retreat – afterwards, he and Stiles could walk back to their chalet via the beach (a short, fifteen-minute amble, according to Google Maps), and Derek would get down on bended knee and produce the ring, and hopefully spend the rest of the holiday celebrating (with any luck in bed). It was no muss, no fuss, a fool-proof plan that was so uncomplicated, it couldn’t possibly go wrong.

Of course, because this was Derek and, for some reason, Karma has decided to pay him back for doing something horrible in a previous life (like murdering a truckload of kittens) and shit all over his existence, his plan couldn’t go right, either.

It started on their very first evening at the resort, after they’d dropped their bags off in the rooms. Or, to be more precise, the dinner table at the resort’s restaurant, where the five of them were seated around the dinner table (Gloria happily seated in the provided high chair, conscientiously trying to spoon mashed potatoes into her tiny mouth). They’d shared two bottles of wine, specially infused with wolfsbane so that they could feel its effects, and polished off their appetizers and entrées.

Oh, and Steven had started swelling like a balloon.

“I couldn’t smell peanuts in the spring rolls!” Laura screeched hysterically, as Steven flailed like a demented puppet and turned a magnificent shade of puce, trying (and failing) to inject him in the leg with his EpiPen.

“They must have used peanut oil to fry them in,” Stiles cried, who grasped Gloria’s high-chair in both hands and pulled her out of the way of her panicking father, who narrowly avoided falling over it and took out a passing waiter with an elbow. Gloria, for the most part, seemed unperturbed by the ensuing frenzy, instead focusing her attention on pressing a very meticulous, tiny hand-print of puréed apple onto the paper placemat.

“The ambulance is on the way!” a very spooked young waitress called out, taking refuge from Steven’s floundering under a dessert cart. In a feat of gymnastics borne of years of tag-team teasing and sibling tormenting, Derek shot out a leg and managed to catch his brother-in-law around the ankles, sending him careening face-first into the neighbouring table. Laura leapt onto his back and straddled him like a bronco, pulled the grey cap off with her teeth and stabbed it down onto him. Steven twisted under her at the last second, however, and instead of injecting the needle into the outer thigh, the shot landed square on his right buttock cheek. Steven reared back, let out a garbled howl, and slumped immobile back onto the table, face-down into the spaghetti marinara of the middle-aged lady occupying it.

“Talk about an eventful evening,” Laura sighed despondently, massaging her husband’s backside to work the medicine in. When the ambulance arrives a few minutes later, Laura tosses her keys at Derek and tells him where they’ve kept Gloria’s diaper bag, mini-suitcase with her books and toys, and Flanglefluff, the blanket she absolutely, positively cannot go to sleep without. Steven’s taken away on a stretcher, and Laura follows behind, leaving Stiles blinking owlishly with his arms still wrapped protectively around Gloria (who now has methodically painted her face with apple mush, Braveheart-style), and Derek feeling his plan die a brutal, final death.

The thing is. 

The thing is.

Derek can’t possibly fault anybody for this sudden unforeseen turn of events (except, perhaps, the idiotic chef, who Derek swear he’ll track down and eviscerate). Steven has to be kept in hospital for a period of two to three days, since the amount of wolfsbane in his system from the wine seemed to aggravate his anaphylaxis. Laura is busy running around and sorting out hospital paperwork, tending to her ailing husband and making sure the restaurant is thoroughly terrified of their (eventual) combined wraths. And that leaves him and Stiles to look after Gloria. 

Now, Derek had absolutely no qualms whatsoever about looking after his baby niece, who is in every essence a perfect little cherub. She’s a quiet, happy baby, content to play with her dolly and Ninja Turtle, or watch the Care Bear movie for the twenty-thousandth time without uttering a peep. Derek is positive that she inherited this pleasant, tranquil, pleasant nature from him, because Steven’s a boisterous lumberjack of a man if he ever met one, and Laura (while okay most of the time) was sheer devil spawn when they were growing up. Gloria is a charming, angelic little thing, all soft, round edges and big hazel eyes and blonde, curly hair. She shows up all the other babies Derek sees, who seem to make it their life missions to out-scream and out-holler one another. Derek and Stiles love spending time with her, babysitting her for evenings and going out with the extended family to ball games and picnics. 

The thing is. Derek had a plan, which involved alone-time with Stiles, and strolls along the beach, and proposing. Not that he probably couldn’t do it without his niece there, but he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t tackle Stiles down to the first available surface and go to town on him. His plan included multiple days spent in bed, making love and ignoring Stiles’ self-proclaimed ‘hilarious’ commentary. To his dying day, he will never admit to finding Stiles’ dorkiness adorable, though he absolutely draws the line at trying to improve Stiles’ abysmal pillow talk – ‘frick-fracking’ should never, ever be used in context. Ever. And it’s beyond difficult to be around Stiles at this time, because it feels like it’s been almost forever since they’ve been able to leisurely touch each other, have time off to spend doing nothing, but in each other’s company. Combined with the fact that Derek finds everything about Stiles attractive, and he means everything, which is a real problem. He’s seen the guy get off a beanbag chair, for crying out loud, and still wanted to hump him senseless after. They’re piled on the couch watching ‘The Princess and The Frog’ on their room’s television, the little cub of a girl curled under Stiles’ chin while she watched the animated movie, entranced, while Stiles hummed along, softly.

The real danger is how Stiles gets around baby Gloria, which just makes everything even worse. Because Derek is a werewolf with a mate (hopefully soon to be legal on paper as well), and his nesting instincts were strong enough to begin with. Stiles seems to love children, always cooing and pressing his face against windows when he spots a baby, making funny faces at chubby-faced children in strollers as they walk past. Derek’s wolf is almost rabid at the thought of a family with Stiles. He hasn’t lost control of his instincts in bed yet, even if all his impulses are screaming at him to knot his mate, fill him with seed and hold him down, claim him, stuff him with pups. The conversation about the whole knotting thing has never really come up between them – Derek isn’t particularly keen to let his boyfriend know about freaky werewolf mating habits, lest he make a run for the hills, and besides, it’s not like knotting him is going to make Stiles magically grow a uterus and carry their child.

Shit. Now all Derek could think about was mounting Stiles, which is super awkward, considering they’re watching a children’s movie and the alligator is being terrifically irksome, not to mention their niece is right there. And Derek doesn’t want to scar her for life, he can’t possibly have the loss of her innocence on his conscience. Stiles is just sitting there, maddeningly perfect while he cradles Gloria and tries (and fails) not to get emotional over a firefly, and Derek wants this for himself, he wants this for life. Stiles holding a small child with Hale-coloured eyes is almost as sexy as that time Stiles decided to wear Derek’s leather jacket – and only Derek’s jacket. And that was saying something, because they’d spent a lot of time getting the most out of their newly-discovered semi-clothed kink, and the material from that weekend had made a sizeable deposit into his spank-bank.

So instead of acting out on his base instincts and pinning Stiles down to the couch cushions (or the floor, or against the kitchenette bench), Derek does the next most sensible thing. He stands up and tears himself away from the happy little scene of devoted domesticity, goes to the refrigerator and sticks his head in the vegetable crisper to cool off. He also grabs a beer while he’s there, because he might just be able to keep his hands to himself if he’s holding something.

And no, he can’t hold onto his dick either. Gloria’s a werewolf, and he doesn’t want to chance anything that’ll make Laura look at him funny. (he wants to keep his testicles attached, thank you very much)

Their first two days of the holiday end up being fraught with danger. Probably because Gloria makes Shirley Temple look like a troll, and this somehow makes her public property for strangers to coo at her and try pinch her cheeks, or poke her tummy. And while she’s an angel sent down from heaven to show the rest of humanity’s children how they should behave, there’s only so much patience a child under two can muster before the tears start.

“I don’t care if I’m a puny human with blunt canines,” Stiles mutters darkly, spooning damp sand into her castle-shaped bucket at the beach. “If one more stranger tries to so much as lay a finger on her again, I’m going to rip their throats out. With my teeth.”

“That’s very admirable of you,” Derek remarked, smoothing back one of her little wayward curls. They’ve already gone swimming (or paddling in the shallow waters, to be more precise) and are currently seated under a rented beach umbrella, their packed lunches devoured and a sandcastle under construction.

“Don’t think I don’t mean it,” Stiles groused in return, “I’m so sick of – oh honey, no, seashells aren’t for eating,” he gently pried a shell out of the baby’s fingers, and replaced it deftly with her plastic shovel so quickly she didn’t have time to notice and pout. “But anyway, I’m sick of the looks, too. If it’s not people trying to prod her like a pot roast, it’s people looking at you.”

“What about me?” he asked, feeling slightly offended.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed,” Stiles scoffed, waving a hand impatiently. “I’ve seen the way women look at you when you’re holding Bubby, like you’re a gigantic, hunky slab of meat they can’t wait to get their seasoning all over.”

“That is possibly the least attractive metaphor I have ever heard in my life. I feel thoroughly objectified.” 

“And so you should,” his boyfriend replied, “After all, I’m the only one around here who’s allowed to objectify my great, big hunk of a man. But then again, I don’t blame them – a handsome, muscular gentleman holding an adorable little baby girl? Too swoon-worthy for anyone to resist.” 

“You’re ridiculous,” Derek mumbled back, if only to hide the pleased, embarrassed grin.

“You mean you’re ridiculous, with your chiselled jawline and your affinity for adhering to the Golden Ratio,” Stiles smiled, a small, pleased upturn of the lips that never failed to send shivers down Derek’s spine, and his scent spiked into that citrusy, heady aroma of arousal. “Pair that with a teeny toddler, and it’s a recipe for heartbreak on all fronts.”

“You mean heartbreak for everyone but yourself,” he chuckled, and they leaned closed, smiling goofily as they brought their lips togeth– 

“Unca Dewwy?” Gloria gabbled curiously, sticking a pudgy fist into the pile of sand vaguely resembling a sand edifice.

“Who wants to go swimming again?” Stiles said way too cheerily, picking her up and swinging her in the air towards the water. Which was probably good timing, because Derek could tell they were about three nanoseconds away from jumping each other’s bones.

He desperately hoped her parents would come back, and soon. Otherwise he was going to find a way of ejecting himself from the earth to end this suffering.

There was a little playground in the resort, a simple sandpit with swings and other equipment. Gloria’s found herself a little friend, a dark-haired little boy, and together they’re laughing and tottering around the play area. Derek and Stiles enjoyed a much-needed rest on the benches overlooking the area. For some reason, Derek’s precious little niece had been especially mischievous, and it had taken a toll on both of them.

“I think I’m getting old,” Stiles sighed, arms lax and loose against the park bench, his shoulder leaning heavily against Derek’s. “Kinds never used to tire me out when I was in high school. And I managed a baker’s dozen back when I volunteered in high-school at camp.”

“You haven’t been looking after one around the clock, or on the tail end of one of your deadlines.”

“That’s true,” he acquiesced. He turned around and gave Derek a long, intense look. “I’m going to be frank here – I love spending time with her, really, I do, but after this is over, I’m going to need at least a couple of months’ holiday from seeing her.”

“Thank Christ,” Derek replied, heaving a relieved sigh, “I felt like a total douchebag thinking about it. Is it natural to love a child and then, after days of exposure, want nothing more to do with them?”

“Pretty sure it’s natural,” Stiles replied offhandedly, keeping his sights on Gloria and her friend (who were now playing hopscotch). “I’m almost definite that my dad felt that way whenever I took a sick day off school. One time I had a really bad virus, and I thank whoever was listening to my prayers that I got better when I did, because I’m pretty sure he was ready to smother me with my own pillow by the end of it.”

“She’s not even that bad a kid,” Derek mused, “She’s so well-behaved it hurts.”

“Just think of it as practice for later,” Stiles smiled indulgently, and oh, Derek’s belly did a sort of flip-flop somersault. Maybe he wasn’t the only one thinking about a future with tiny, padding feet. “Though now that we’ve had the trial-run, I think I’d be happy to hold off for a little while – you know, savour the idea of sleeping in for a couple of years more. You know. Have you all to myself for a little while longer.”

“Yeah?” he croaked, feeling a lump in his throat. Stiles merely threaded their fingers together and gave his hand a little squeeze, smiling so brightly that Derek was sure he’d go blind soon.

“Yeah,” Stiles replied, leaving it at that.

They’d spent three days looking after Gloria, and Derek was this close to weeping with joy, because Laura called him a few hours ago and told him Steven was being discharged from the hospital that night, the entirety of the wolfsbane flushed out of his system and his allergies cleared. He supposed that he should be celebrating his brother-in-law’s recovery more than anything, but if he’s being really honest with himself, he just wants Gloria out of their hair once and for all.

They’d gone to the park, and the zoo, which was an uncomfortable, hot bus-ride that took entirely too long, and Derek wholeheartedly blamed that little bitch of a pig on television (Petra? Pepper? Whatever her name is, she’s bacon), because of course Gloria is just like Laura, and once something gets in her head, it’s in there for good. His niece’s unquenchable thirst for seeing animals up close had been slaked practically the instant they’d stepped foot into the Zoo grounds, but Derek was as stubborn as the Hales came, and he’d be damned if they didn’t make a day of it, regardless of the pervasive smell of animals and faeces and stale candy. 

Alright, so the otter pond was pretty awesome. And Stiles had worn a red shirt, so he was practically swathed in butterflies when they meandered into the humid butterfly house. Derek may have sneaked a few photos on his camera of his boyfriend looking like a Disney princess, which were utterly precious and adorable.

(“Shut your mouth, Hale, I am a sparkly anime magical girl, and don’t you forget that,” he’d sniffed primly. ‘Ah yes’, he’d thought, seeing Stiles looking ridiculous and covered in the colourful insects, twirling with his niece and almost flailing into a hydrangea, ‘this is where I have laid my affections.’)

And there’d been kissing, of course there’d been kissing, there hadn’t been a day where he hadn’t kissed Stiles since they’d moved in together, but they had to keep it at just that. It was difficult enough to watch the Care Bears again, or to steal just a little affection when she’d been put down to sleep, but there was only so much they could do before their pheromones saturated the place. Combined with the fact that she shared their bed and slept between them during the night (of course their bungalow didn’t have a spare cot, and of course she had to start missing her parent almost immediately), yeah, there wasn’t much ‘special time’ between them on this holiday, not at all.

And Derek – well, he was getting exhausted from being on constant lookout for a romantic scenario, any romantic scenario in which he could get down on bended knee and finally pop the damn question and get on with his life. Because he was sure that Stiles would say yes – well, he was 99.99% sure, anyhow. And he knew that they weren’t a romantic couple, not by any stretch, but he felt it was important to make some sort of deal out of this. Alas, there were none to be had, and the little velvet box kept shuttling between his camera case and burning a hole in his pocket, looking for an opportunity that never came around. He was going to ask Stiles to spend the rest of his life with him, to share tax documents and bank accounts and a mortgage, this was a Big Deal. Asking him from across a laminate table while Gloria dug into her Happy Meal somehow didn’t have quite the same punch to it as he wanted. Stiles had talked about children. It was a miracle in itself that the park bench had come away unscathed.

Laura finally, blessedly returned, Steven behind her and looking as good as new, if somewhat sheepish. Stiles was busy in the other room, packing away Gloria’s things, and Steven made himself useful by going to check on her, sleeping in the other room. Laura took the opportunity to pull Derek down into an affectionate nuzzle, winding her arms around his neck. Her clothes were rumpled, and she was looking tired and a little worse for wear, but nothing that a good snooze wouldn’t fix.

“You have no idea how many brownie-points you just scored with Steven and I,” she murmured, attempting to squeeze the life out of him (or perhaps just snap one of his vertebrae with her freaky Alpha strength). She deftly moved her elbow a fraction, and shifted the embrace into more of a headlock position. “So how did it go?” she asked, both of them keeping an ear out for Stiles. He was still in the other room, humming to himself as he packed away Gloria’s toys into her suitcase.

“It didn’t go,” Derek mumbled, feeling downtrodden. “It just never seemed like the right time to ask, or the right location.”

“Was it because of Gloria?” Laura asked worriedly, letting him go and leaning an arm against the kitchen benchtop.

“Not really,” he replied, scrubbing a hand down his face. “It was sort of – well, kind of, but it’s not like we didn’t enjoy spending time with her.”

“You just felt too awkward to go any further, in case she sensed you guys frick-fracking, right?”

“Oh my god, you and Stiles have got to stop spending time around one another!” Derek cringed.

“It’s not my fault that he comes up with really good one-liners, Der,” Laura rolled her eyes, rifling into a pocket before pulling out a slip of paper and handing it to him. “Anyway, I thought something like this might happen to my giant goober of a brother – so I came up with a contingency plan.”

“What’s this?”

“Tickets to a Justin Bieber concert,” she intoned, arching a brow. “What does it look like, dilweed? A dinner reservation for the two of you for tonight. Think of it as a thank-you present for looking after Bubby.”

“I’m almost certain you didn’t buy these for us,” Derek remarked, tucking the slip of paper into his jeans pocket nevertheless.

“Technically it was a reservation for Steven and I,” she admitted, shrugging her shoulders unrepentantly at being found out, “You know – try and get some down-time away from the kid and have a romantic soirée. We’d planned to ask you and Stiles to babysit for the night, but,” she cast a critical eye over Derek’s untidy hair and the stains on his shirt from their eventful breakfast, “You two have spent way too much time looking after our child. And with the whole plan not working out, you know, best laid plans of mice and men, etcetera.”

“She was fine.”

“Of course she was. She takes after Steven that way. If she took after me, you two would probably be dead. Now,” she continued matter-of-factly, ignoring the colour draining from Derek’s face at the thought, “Here’s what we’re going to do.” She leaned closer, whispering conspiratorially, “Steven and I are going to finally have our holiday together with our baby girl, and spend the last two days of our vacation holed up in our bungalow, puppy-piling, bonding, and catching a whole lot of naps. You and Stiles, in the meantime, are going to have this amazing dinner which was really expensive, by the way, and you’re going to enjoy it, and then at the end of it you’re going to propose, and it’s going to be sparkly unicorn tears and rose petals everywhere.”

“O-kay,” he dragged out the ‘o’, feeling it was safer to agree with her at this point in time, especially when her nails were perched on the back of his neck.

“Good. And then when Stiles says yes– ”

“If he says yes,” Derek corrected, because none of his plans had worked out so far, and he was now pathologically apprehensive of putting all his eggs in one basket. Holy hell, he hadn’t even told Stiles about knotting yet – he should probably get around to telling him soon.

“When he says yes,” Laura prodded him pointedly in the chest, “You guys are gonna shack up in your separate chalet, and I don’t want to see hair nor hide of you two until we have to check out. Capiche?”

“Ten-four.”

“What are you guys conspiring about, out here?” Stiles asked, stepping out from the room with Gloria’s little pink suitcase in hand. “Derek, your eyebrows look shadier than usual.”

“He’s just suffering a mild case of constipation, it’s all good,” Laura replied, waiting until Stiles’ back was turned before grinning and giving her brother two enthusiastic thumbs-up. Derek didn’t return them.

Derek didn’t really know what to expect from the dinner reservations Laura made. Living with her for so long had taught him to expect the unexpected, that her thought process ran less linear and more along the lines of, say, ‘demented supervillain’. In short, Derek is still only half-grateful that Laura chose a calming profession in floristry, because he isn’t sure she wouldn’t go all ‘Petshop of Horrors’ on her rude customers. So any good deed she decides to bestow upon her siblings (Derek included) always has to be approached with caution, lest it come back to bite him in the backside.

So when he decided to surprise Stiles with the dinner, he was surprising himself just as much. They dressed semi-casually, because it was still a beach resort, and neither of them expected anything more than a booth at one of those average restaurants in the main compound. The waiter seemed extremely pleasant when Derek announced his name and the reservation booked under it, but instead of leading them through the throng of people inside, he gestured them to follow him, and walked out the French doors of the restaurant, outside.

They didn’t get a booth, or a table inside, at all. What the got was one of those freaking tables set up by the beach, with a path leading to it outlined with rose petals and tealight candles, far away from the restaurant, and large torches buried in the sand surrounding it.

It looked like something out of those travel brochures for those stupidly expensive resorts – the ones that always have a picture of a woman facedown on a massage tables with rocks on her back, and where a couple are always smiling goofily out into the sunset. There was a linen tablecloth contrasting-coloured placemats and napkins, and flowers on the table. There seemed to be a set menu, too, which avoided the whole ‘sitting awkwardly in silence while they try decide what to eat’ scenario.

“Wow, okay,” Stiles breathed, being seated down and looking flabbergasted. “This is… wow. There seem to be way more forks than appropriate on my setting. Are you missing any forks? Oh, you have a ton, too. Alright then.” He reached out to fiddle with the stem of his glass, but then seemed to realize that it was crystal, rather than your average wineglass, and jerked his hand back. Derek watched his face intently, keeping all his senses trained on him alone. He exuded a nervous embarrassment, with a mottled blush suffusing his cheeks, but Derek could sense he was feeling exceedingly contented. This made him feel enormously satisfied, that he could please his mate in such a way, but at the same time he felt horrendously guilty that it hadn’t been him to organise it to begin with.

“Laura set this up for us,” he blurted out loud, startling the waiter who was draping the napkin across his lap. Stiles merely chuckled in response, fiddling with the edge of his own napkin.

“I sort of figured that,” he replied, “Since, you know. This kind of huge thing isn’t really ‘us’.”

“Did you want it to be?” Derek asked, feeling under pressure as his fingertips dug into the linen cover of the table. Oh god – had he not been romantic enough in the two-plus years they’d had together? Should he rethink the entire proposal thing?

“No,” Stiles replied with certainty, reaching out and brushing fingertips over Derek’s knuckles. He relaxed immediately, letting go of his death grip on the fabric. “I think you’re probably freaking out that we’re not doing ‘couply’ things, but we do, all the time. We’re just more chilled out about it.”

“We don’t really,” Derek admitted, now feeling lousy. Fuck, why did he think this was a good idea in the first place?

“Excuse you, but we totally do,” Stiles disagreed, flashing the waiter a smile as he brought their entrées out. “We go out to dinner. We watch movies at home and eat junk food. You let me read books on the couch with my feet in your lap. And you go with me to every single exhibit I want to go to. And that’s more than enough for me. You don’t have to pretend you’re something you’re not, or to do things you don’t feel comfortable doing. What we’ve got going on now is good. It’s more than good, it’s pretty fucking fantastic.” He speared a dumpling-looking thing and popped it into his mouth, as if punctuating his point, and Derek felt his chest go that weird, gooey, fluttery way it did whenever Stiles said mushy, embarrassing things.

“You’re such a dork,” he grinned, his voice heavy with fondness.

“Yeah, but you love it, wolfman.”

“I can’t believe you were worried about telling me about the knotting, of all things!” Stiles cackled, bracing his hands on the table and attempting to get his stomach to stop hurting while simultaneously trying not to collapse back into helpless giggles into his crème caramel. “Dude, you know Scott and I have been friends for years, right? We navigated the whole ‘werewolf puberty’ thing, right? I always thought you were going to tell me sooner or later – I just didn’t think you were planning to soften the blow with a lavish dinner situation.”

“I didn’t think it was appropriate to bring it up in social situations,” Derek groused, his ears feeling hot, “And I was waiting for the right time to tell you, but it never came up.”

“Which begs the question – how come you waited so long to tell me? It’s not like it’s affecting our relationship.”

“It is,” Derek spoke through gritted teeth, “Because I had to keep holding myself back until I told you.”

Stiles’ spoon slipped from his fingers and clattered noisily against the plate. “Oh,” he said simply, turning a ridiculously charming shade of crimson. And the sudden spike of arousal that permeated the light sea breeze between then. “I just thought – maybe you didn’t – because we hadn’t –”

“I wanted to,” Derek said quickly, his eyes intense as he grasped Stiles’ hand in his own. “You don’t know how much I’ve wanted to. Every single time, and I had to hold myself back –”

“You never had to,” Stiles mumbled, though his hand never shifted from Derek’s hold. “I wouldn’t have cared. I would be fine with it. More than – fine… Why did you hold back?” he tapered off.

“You know werewolves don’t just knot any partner they’re with, right? They only knot their mate. And they mate for life.”

“I kind of figured that, what with Scott and Allison, and how they’re basically a fairy-tale couple. But then you and I- oh. Ohhhh…”

“Yeah,” Derek nodded, unable to keep the unbearably tender smile from his face. “I was sure practically from the first day I met you.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the little velvet box that he’d been carting around all holiday. “I just wanted you to be sure you’d be happy with me.”

“You – you are unbearable,” Stiles breathed, his beautiful, amber eyes wide in realisation as Derek opened the lid. Derek could hear his heart beating as fast as a hummingbird, echoing his own. “Utterly ridiculous. So – so – ”

“I must have done something right, if you don’t have anything to say,” he smirked. “So, what do you think? Feel like being stuck with the same SourPatch for eternity? It’s also for tax purposes, if you need convincing.” 

He didn’t get a proper reply, what with Stiles launching himself across the table and almost knocking him off his chair, but by the feverish press of Stiles’ lips all over his face and the continuous mutterings of ‘-stupid, perfect, romantic jerk’, he sort of got the idea.