#mostly it's about how i think werewolf hearing would upgrade the sibling-on-sibling crime possibilities in any given household

[aurevell]

Returning the Favor Sterek | 5k | T

Stiles pays a nighttime visit to his boyfriend in secret, or so he thinks. Unfortunately, the Hale family has keener ears than he realizes.

It’s late when Derek hears the noise at the side of the house. A creak of siding that cuts through the backdrop of cricket song. Just one lone sound, but there’s something cautious about it. Probing.

He lowers the book he’s reading, but no other sounds follow. Derek has been lying sprawled across his bed, drowsy and warm and comfortable, sweatpant-clad legs resting against the wall—but now that he’s conscious of the sound, his focus sharpening, he thinks he’s been hearing quiet noises grow nearer for some time without quite comprehending them. A wild animal outside, maybe, creeping slowly around the foundation of the house. Something large enough that the mulch in the flower bed crunches beneath its weight.

It’s not often that a solitary animal grows bold enough to venture this close to a werewolf pack—the scent always scares them off first. They don’t even get raccoons out here, especially not with the cold this time of year. It could always be their cousin Warren, who’s always thought it funny to startle his relatives with unexpected visits in the dead of night. Or any one of the nasty things in Uncle Peter’s wild stories, supernatural things that creep into the house come dark.

Derek glances at the window, book still resting on his chest, but the house is still.

Maybe it’s gone. That’s just as well: he’s too comfortable to drag himself over to the window to look.

And then another sound comes, an unmistakable creak. Heavy weight settling into place.

Downstairs, his mother sighs. “What was that?” she demands, her voice faint with distance. She and his dad are likely out on the porch swing at this time of evening, even though it’s nearly winter, lunatics that they are. “If Laura and Cora are at it again—”

“I’m sure they aren’t, Tal,” Derek’s father replies, sounding amused. “You put the fear of god in them.”

Mom scoffs. “If we have to repair another door, it’s coming out of their pockets.”

“Not everything is my fault, Mom,” Cora mutters pointedly from down the hall. There’s heavy metal coming from the vicinity of Laura’s bedroom, just low enough to be blasting from her headphones, and she doesn’t pipe up to defend herself.

The thing hasn’t gone away. Metal squeaks a moment later, and then the scrabbling returns, punctuated by a thump and a muffled grunt.

Annoyed, Derek tosses the book aside and clambers to his feet, crossing over to the window. When he hoists up the sash, letting the night chill waft in, he peers down into the dark and finds that the source is worse than anything he could have imagined.

It’s his boyfriend, scaling the side of the house like some deranged cat burglar.

Stiles is hanging onto the drainpipe, having managed to hoist himself several feet off the ground. He’s leaning against the metal awning over the kitchen window, one foot atop the shutter and the other scrabbling for purchase against the siding. At the clatter of Derek’s opening window, he looks up, startled, and nearly loses his balance.

“What are you doing here?” Derek hisses.

“Just returning the favor.” With a moment to catch himself against the awning, Stiles gets his bearing and grins. “What? Don’t make that face. C’mon, you can show up at all hours of the night, but turnabout isn’t fair play?”

With that, he sticks his tongue between his teeth, which he sometimes does unconsciously when something demands his full attention. And the perilous task of climbing should get his full attention, given how often he stumbles when both of his feet are on the ground. God, Derek is about to witness his idiot boyfriend fall to his death or something.

Stiles heaves himself mostly onto the awning, clawing for purchase with a grunt. When he reaches for the window, he loses his grip, nearly sliding backward onto the grass; in a flash of panic, Derek grabs him by his shirt and yanks him forward.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” he demands, aware of their volume and even more aware of their audience.

The awning rattles as Stiles draws up his long legs to slip inside the window feet first, ducking under the sash. He’s panting a little as he pulls himself upright, though he bats his eyes sweetly in the face of Derek’s scowl. “Oh, please. I knew you’d catch me. ‘My hero,’ and all that.”

“Should have let you fall and die,” Derek retorts, shutting the window.

“Probably. Oh man, that was so athletic. Sometimes, I amaze myself.”

Derek doesn’t have anything smart to say to that. He’s only half paying attention, too busy bracing for the discussion sure to follow.

He and Stiles may as well have stomped up and down the stairs blowing air horns as far as the rest of the house goes. Everyone will have heard. Derek is absolutely sure because you can hear a pin drop, like no one’s even moving, like everyone’s waiting with bated breath—either gleeful or judgmental or both—to hear what comes next. Even Laura’s deafening headphones have gone silent. Fuck.

Worst of all…Stiles doesn’t know any of this. He doesn’t yet know about the secret the Hale family hides, or how keenly they can hear, or that every word he says will be seized up and cheerfully dissected and gossiped about in real time.

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#sterek #sterek fic #mine #vaguely inspired by a tumblr post i have been unable to find after multiple searches in the month+ it took me to write this #i think it was a pic of two cats falling off a roof?? #and whoever posted it was basically like 'haha this is stiles-coded after he tries to climb derek's window and pulls derek down with him' #i'm pretty sure i even reblogged it and yet where is it?? #if you know what i'm talking about let me know lmao #anyway #this is only a little bit about stiles struggling through the window #mostly it's about how i think werewolf hearing would upgrade the sibling-on-sibling crime possibilities in any given household #and the fact that you could not get away with ANYTHING noisy without every other person in the house knowing about it #so having blabbermouth stiles stilinski pop into said household while being totally ignorant of the existence of werewolves... #let's just say 'poor derek' and leave it at that lmao