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lavenderek · 7 years

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Pls write about pining bestfriends Sterek. Please please please!

stiles dreams about him. he has dreams that center around entirely unrelated events, but derek is with him. he has dreams where derek is lost or in danger or taking off his shirt and pressing stiles against a wall. he has one particular dream that has him searching for derek through a very crowded space, the people getting closer and tighter together the farther he goes, until finally he finds derek and is pressed so close against him that he can’t move, and he is frantic wondering how he’s going to keep derek from noticing his hard-on, and he’s starting to lose his breath, and he wakes up having twisted himself onto his stomach with his face against a pillow and his arms trapped under himself. he has dreams in which derek leaves, in which derek comes back from a long absence, in which stiles leaves and no one notices but derek, in which he and derek have sex. and more often than not, he dreams that derek doesn’t want him.

of course he never mentions these dreams to derek. derek’s entire life has been pressure, someone pressuring him to do something, something pressuring him to do something else, and stiles emphatically will not pressure him to reassess his relationship with stiles unless and until he decides to of his own volition. (and besides. if derek turned him down, stiles is man enough to admit to himself that he honestly couldn’t take it.) he does, however, reach for his phone while he’s still reeling from whatever the latest torture it is that his brain has subjected him to, and typically he will find an article lydia has DMed him on twitter (always a fun and/or interesting article; god, but she gets him) and a text from derek. stiles is the only person derek texts - he doesn’t even really text cora - and if you think stiles doesn’t slow-boil himself in that fact constantly, every day of his life, you are wrong.

after work, stiles will sometimes go straight to derek’s apartment, where derek is never surprised to see him and for all his nasty attitude and dirty looks, stiles is always allowed inside. he goes to the couch and peruses what derek was doing before he showed up - an old, deckle-edged book with a fraying cover, or a documentary on the history of soda on tv, or an engine part on an old towel on the coffee table that derek is doing something to that involves a lot of black grease - and observes derek in his environment like attenborough or goodall. derek isn’t an avid cook because he doesn’t really like eating (”it’s a biological function”), but when he does make something (”i literally just threw everything in my fridge into a crockpot, stiles”) it’s amazing. derek enjoys reading (”stop touching my books”) and long walks (”did i invite you?”) and his cat (”if you keep picking her up, she’s going to scratch you, and you will deserve it”). derek doesn’t really like music (”oh... i guess i don’t. i never really thought about it”) and he always wears shoes and socks if he can, because he doesn’t like feet (”what? no”). derek is warm and smells good and on bad days, when stiles looks away from the game on tv and over at derek, one arm resting on the top of the couch, the desire to tip himself over and lean into him is strong enough that stiles feels it pulling sharply in his chest and the backs of his eyes. the longer this goes on, the lonelier stiles gets, and at night he starts bracketing himself into place in his bed with pillows: one on either side of him, so he can both hug something and get spooned. stiles never gets spooned anymore. he tries dating a few people in the hopes that he will end up getting spooned, and it never works out. it doesn’t help that stiles is in love with derek, a thing they always notice (which is disconcerting, considering derek never seems to).

lydia notices also, but she employs a policy of not asking about it: because she is busy and lacks the emotional capacity to take on stiles’ lovelorn misery, because stiles is an adult and doesn’t come whining to her for advice or sympathy, and because, frankly, it’s none of her business. derek and stiles interact so often that it’s hard not to acknowledge it, though, and lydia’s surprisingly bad at not acknowledging things when they’re right up in her grill. she points out that derek is the first person stiles talks to when he wakes up and the last person stiles talks to before he goes to sleep. she points out that he’s closer to derek than he is to scott (because he doesn’t generally have sex dreams about scott; if he did, he would contact scott about them immediately) and that he always finds one reason or another to not date anybody else. he’s busy, or he’s not “ready yet” (his last relationship that lasted longer than two months ended three years ago), or whatever and blah-blah, and she lays all of this out in a francesca’s, and he says, “fine. you got me. i love derek, and i’m not interested in anybody but derek, and i would rather live in petrified stasis than risk getting rejected by derek, because i love him. you got me. congratulations.” she hasn’t seen him looking so suddenly despondent in a long time, so she wordlessly selects a beaded pendant from a velvet display and lays it around his neck.

once, late at night, derek reaches over and takes stiles’ hand - not holding his hand, just looking at it, turning it palm up and looking at it, probably counting his fingers or something, stiles thinks. and derek traces his fingertip in stiles’ palm and says, “you have chains in your head line,” and stiles gets goose bumps. because derek knows a lot of things. they aren’t things that stiles thinks it’s normal to know. sometimes if they go to the drugstore to pick up stiles’ prescription and some pita chips, stiles will select a random vitamin supplement and feign curiosity and ask derek what it is, and derek almost always knows. “ginkgo?” he says irritably, distracted by the starter pack for alli. “it’s a tree. from china. you take it for dementia.” then he glances over at stiles. “you know that.” stiles does know that. he also knows it doesn’t work. stiles proffers another one. “that’s for cardiovascular disease, but don’t bother trying to buy it, because your dad is already on lipitor.” stiles puts it back. “stop dicking around so we can go. would you put that down? that’s for menopause. jesus christ.”

derek can pronounce stiles’ name. derek takes for-fucking-ever in the book store, to the point that stiles whines and complains whenever he suggests that they go to a book store, which, obviously, makes derek want to go to the book store even more. derek can do a pull-up as easily as stiles can pick up an empty gladware container. derek knows about seventy different uses for wolfsbane and is accustomed enough to its presence that he can and does go out to the preserve and wander around the skeleton of his house and thoughtfully pick a handful them like pollyanna. derek majored in history, and can sum up pretty much any historical event that took place before 1500. derek is so unused to receiving presents that when stiles brings him things he looks like he’s short-circuiting for a minute - so stiles starts doing it all the time. and he gets really good at it, too, books derek will enjoy having, movies derek hasn’t seen, a navajo horsehair pot (”you can see the influence from other traditions,” he tells stiles, smiling a little), nice socks. derek is fluent in 38 languages, including mandarin, old norse, and six dialects of spanish, but he never speaks them. one time they went to san francisco to see a night game between the mets (stiles) and the giants (derek) (they are both orange!), and someone tried to mug them, and pointed a gun at stiles, and derek broke his wrist, and knocked him back against a lamppost and caused permanent brain damage. he said he was just in a bad mood. the scene replays in stiles’ mind repeatedly, the exact moment he saw derek snap, which happened to be immediately after the gun was directed at stiles.

derek has become a slow and methodical person in general, and an impulsive and violent person about ten percent of the time, and both parts of derek leave stiles sparking with desire. he wants to be in derek’s bed. he wants to give derek intense pleasure and show him exactly how grateful he is to derek, both for rescuing him from muggers (as if stiles has never disarmed someone with a gun before) and for taking him out for greek food in the middle of the night. he wants to see every part of derek. he wants derek to hold him down. he wants to get on his knees and take in every inch of this relationship. he never wants to leave derek’s apartment, but he does, because he doesn’t want derek to get sick of him; and he goes home and takes long showers. he can’t think straight when he’s horny, and after he comes he nearly collapses under the weight of how alone he is once he’s left derek’s apartment. he realizes one day that derek never reciprocates his giftgiving and it starts to occur to him that he’s reading a lot into things that simply don’t have the meaning he’s assigning them. derek probably lashed out at the mugger out of instinct. he’s probably just appreciative of the historic value of the postcard of the bünting cloverleaf map stiles got him.

stiles stops sleeping again, because he can’t. he’s up all night thinking about derek and about being mugged and about derek and about sinking into a filmy ether and losing his autonomy and about derek and about train stations and about derek. and he is up all day because he has work and then he wants to be awake in case derek wants to take him someplace or sends him a text. he passes out on derek’s couch one afternoon. he was only asleep for an hour or two, but he wakes up and feels unreasonably stupid. there derek is, next to him, dicking around on his phone. stiles’ phone is on the coffee table, too, and stiles has had the screen timeout shut off for over a year because he has to set down his phone when he gets interrupted at work and he hated the way the apps refreshed when he got the thing unlocked; so there it is, with a wikipedia article open on the screen, and if derek snooped through his phone he would find, in stiles’ notes, stiles’ dream journal, many of which heavily involve derek; but the phone is untouched, the wikipedia article open right there on it, on the line stiles was reading before he set his phone down. derek wouldn’t look through stiles’ phone. stiles might look through derek’s phone, because stiles is a bad person with poor impulse control, and derek wouldn’t look through stiles’ phone, because derek is a good person who is, in general, not curious about anything that didn’t take place in antiquity. stiles can trust derek with anything: his life, his potted cactus, his privacy. in fact, derek takes better care of the cactus than stiles does. of stiles’ life, too. stiles sits up and looks at derek, sleepy-eyed. derek rests his phone on his knee and looks back. he asks, “when was the last time you slept?”

“about forty-five seconds ago,” stiles answers.

“you’re being deliberately obtuse,” says derek. “if you stopped taking your prazosin again - “

stiles thinks it’s as a result of his sleep deprivation that he kisses derek: it’s like, for a second, stiles forgot they don’t do this. the realization doesn’t hit him suddenly: like drinking a glass of juice, he takes it in pull by pull. this isn’t normal, he thinks, derek probably doesn’t want this, he thinks, but he decides he can put off the reaction a little longer. he pulls back finally and can’t figure out if derek was kissing him back or not. but based on the furrow in derek’s brow when stiles opens his eyes, stiles can guess he was not. “oh,” he says. “oh, shit. i’m sorry.”

“you’re sorry?” parrots derek hoarsely.

“i’m sorry,” stiles says again, body finally twitching into motion, “i’m sorry, i’m s - “ he runs out of panicked speech and snatches up his phone and trips toward the door. he’s so inept that derek catches him before he makes it to the door. “i’m going i’m going,” he’s saying, “you don’t have to - i know, i get it, you don’t need to - “

“i don’t need to what, stiles?” asks derek. stiles pulls once, and derek doesn’t budge. the guy punched through a car door once, stiles was there. through it. “kiss you back? take you to bed?”

“reject me,” says stiles in a whoosh. “you don’t have to. i can infer it.”

“infer this,” says derek, which is a stupid line, and he kisses stiles so deep stiles feels his whole essence spin - and he’s pretty sure it’s not the prazosin, which he did not, in fact, stop taking. stiles hums helplessly, hangs on derek’s forearms when derek cups his face. ostensibly, the kiss ends, but stiles hovers in that space for as long as he can. then he opens his eyes and blinks something out of his vision. “sorry,” says derek when stiles looks at him again.

“you’re sorry?” parrots stiles hoarsely.

“i didn’t mean,” says derek haltingly, “to make you think i would reject you.”

“you knew,” stiles realizes.

derek admits, “sort of.” he lets go of stiles’ face, but not in a way where he’s stepping back and relinquishing him. there’s something warm and inviting there. “i wasn’t sure. i didn’t - i wanted some time,” he finally says, “to... live in it.” stiles blinks stupidly at him. “am i making sense?”

“not really,” says stiles, “but i still get it.”

“i do need to, actually,” derek tells him.

“need to what.”

“kiss you back,” derek says. “take you to bed.”

“ohhh, please,” says stiles, melting into him, getting back into that kiss-zone where he’s pretty sure he will build a house and live forever. he can already feel derek hot against him, and he wants it even more, in places he’s never felt anything before. “i’m gonna say it later,” he adds, between kisses, in derek’s bedroom as derek undoes his belt, “i’m gonna say it when you least expect it.”

“okay,” says derek.

much, much later, in bed, holding him down, derek tells him, “i don’t know if i can say it. but i’ll think it.”

“okay,” says stiles.

then he takes derek in. it’s better than his dreams. he never wakes up.

#and the d?#is a m a z i n g #obama_it_is_law.gif #stilesderek #fic by betp #HEY btw sorry this was bizarre and too long and not what you had in mind #who is this even #haters

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