the_water_clock: abstract painting (Untitled 1958 Coffee and Cinnamon)
the_water_clock ([personal profile] the_water_clock) wrote2012-12-27 11:00 pm

FIC: The Only One That's Ever Known How (Derek/Stiles, PG-13)

Author: Clio
Title: The Only One That's Ever Known How
Pairing: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Just because Derek is very patiently waiting doesn't mean he can't court with housewares in the meantime.
Warning: (skip) None! Some housewares porn.
Length: 1900 words
Notes: Derek's POV on Scott McCall Is an Awesome Friend and Do You Want It On Your Biscuits, Baby? Prompted by Katemonster giving me literal puppy dog eyes when I said I should write more second base fic, which this is. Title from "The Waiting" by Tom Petty. Thanks to [personal profile] verity, as usual, for giving this the once-over.




Derek was waiting. He knew that eighteen was an arbitrary number decided on by some people in Sacramento before he was even born, that it wasn't like Stiles was going to magically become a better decision maker on April 9th than he'd been on April 8th. But it made Derek feel better about their situation, and less like certain other people. If it didn't go well, Stiles had already been accepted to college, and if it was really a mess he only had to put up with Derek for two months and then he could go on a convenient summer trip or something. There were a lot of exits.

Also Stiles's father was in law enforcement.

But a few weeks before his birthday, Stiles started leaving presents of baked goods on Derek's porch. Derek couldn't remember the last time someone had baked something for him.

So when Stiles decided to have a pizza party, Derek got into the Camaro on a Tuesday morning and went to Macy's. He was wandering around, probably looking lost and ridiculous, when a woman in a green apron that said "The Cellar" came up to him. Derek was irrationally irritated that the kitchen section was still called The Cellar even though it was on the second floor; in Macy's Herald Square it was actually in the basement, down a century-old wooden elevator.

"Can I help you?" she asked, and Derek decided to fake it.

He smiled broadly, the charming smile that Stiles hated. "Yeah, yeah, so, a friend of mine, he bakes things. We're going to have a party at my place and he wants to make pizza, so I need some pans and whatever you make dough with, like, a mixer or something?"

The woman cocked her head, and Derek knew she could smell the commission, but he didn't care. It would be worth whatever upselling she did to have someone walk him through this minefield of a housewares department. "Is this … a special friend?" she asked, sounding like she hoped the answer would be yes.

Derek glanced off to the side, trying to look sheepish. "Maybe?" he said. "He made me biscuits."

She raised her eyebrows. "Let me show you the Kitchen-Aid," she said. "The dough hook comes standard, but there are several attachments you might be interested in."

The model on display was deep blue and chrome, and shone in the fluorescent light. It looked serious, the kind of thing people got as a wedding present. Derek didn't remember ever having seen one in the Stilinski kitchen. "What kind of attachments?" he asked.

"Men seem to like the meat grinder," she said, and picked one up to affix it to the front of the machine. "You can use it to make your own sausage."

"Huh," Derek said. "Does it come in black?"

By the time he left he had not only the mixer and meat grinder, but also a pizza stone, a peel, something she called a bench scraper but which to Derek just looked like a piece of plastic, a pizza wheel, a guard with a funnel for pouring things into the bowl, a spray bottle for the oven, and some kind of fancy olive oil that was on special. He was pretty sure that Stiles would make fun of him for buying all this, but he didn't care, so long as Stiles baked things in the house from now on, instead of bringing them over.

And anyway, he'd said no to the pasta maker attachment.




Stiles didn't make fun of him at all, as it turned out. He caressed the mixer like a lover, and then proceeded to use the hell out of it. They made a ham and onion pizza just for them.

That night Derek dreamt of Stiles in his kitchen wearing nothing but an apron, and he was laughing. "I'm not sure this is hygienic, Derek," he said, and crawled across the flour-strewn countertop to kiss him.

When he woke up he could still feel Stiles's lips against his own.




Later Derek couldn't remember how they started kissing except that the party was mostly over and Stiles was ready and Derek was tired of waiting and they were in the kitchen.

He did remember the two of them turning out the lights and stumbling up the stairs, pushing their jeans off and slipping between the covers together. Stiles wasn't drunk anymore but he was sleepy, coming down from his alcohol and sugar-fueled birthday high, and his movements were sluggish. But once they were in bed his kisses were strong, insistent, and his hands—hands that Derek had been transfixed by, when they were cooking the day before—were moving quickly all over Derek's body, getting to know it, and felt as good as he'd imagined they would.

Derek's mouth moved along Stiles's jaw and down to the neck that Derek had also admittedly been obsessed with for a while now. Now that Stiles's mouth was unoccupied he was talking, and the sound of his voice grounded Derek, soothed out the nagging jitters of whether this was okay.

"Is it wrong to say, yay?" Stiles muttered. "Because that's most of what I want to say, just 'yay' and 'oh fuck keep doing that' and 'thank you for your patience.'"

Derek looked up. "You can say whatever you want," he said, then went back to running his tongue along Stiles's collar bone.

"Okay," Stiles said, his hands moving down to Derek's waist, "how about get this out of the way so I can finally get my hands on you." He wasn't going below the belt, but rather pushing up Derek's shirt, sliding his fingers across Derek's stomach. "Oh my god, it's like you're not even—" and then he broke off, laughing.

Derek's head popped up, worried he'd done something stupid, but one look at Stiles's face and he knew there was no malice there. "What?" he asked.

Stiles turned to him. "I was going to say, 'it's like you're not even human' but that's the thing—you're not." He smiled.

"I'm not," Derek said, shaking his head.

"So take your shirt off," Stiles replied. "Since you did it all the time before I could touch you."

Derek sat up and pulled his off, then said, "Only if I can take off yours," he said. "And you don't do it all the time."

"Yeah, well, there's a reason," Stiles said nervously. "I am human, and scrawny on top of that."

"I don't care," Derek said, distracting Stiles with a kiss while he pushed Stiles's shirt up and eventually off. And then they were making out, hands sliding over skin and muscle and bone. Stiles didn't say anything after that.

It was kind of nice, holding back; Derek realized he'd never gone slow, never stopped at second base. He twisted his body to keep his cock away from Stiles, not let their legs entwine. Stiles had broad shoulders and a solid rib cage but not much muscle, and he felt both strong and fragile in Derek's arms, something easily damaged but hard to break.

Stiles's lips stopped moving and Derek pulled back, worried that Stiles had fallen asleep on him, but he was just smiling, staring up at the ceiling. Derek's hand was still on his chest and Stiles put his own on top of it.

"I'm so happy right now," Stiles said. "I just want to hold on to it."

Derek lay his head down next to Stiles and kissed his shoulder. "Yeah," he said, and they fell asleep shortly after that.




The next morning Stiles was still there, curled up next to him, which was reassuring. Derek felt restless but didn't want to wake anyone so he slipped out of bed and flung on a pair of jogging shorts. He was tying his shoes when Stiles woke up, with the same smile he'd had the night before.

"Good morning," Stiles said, his voice deep and raspy. His hair was sleep-mussed, or maybe that was from Derek's fingers and yeah, he really needed to go for a run.

"I'm going to … " and he trailed off because that was obvious. "Wanna go to the diner when I get back?" he asked.

"Yep, I'll just be here, chillin'," Stiles said. "Chillin' like a villain!"

Derek shook his head. "Villains don't chill, Stiles. Go make some coffee."

The run didn't get Stiles out of his head, which wasn't that unusual these days. What was unusual was coming back to Stiles sitting on the porch with Scott, and realizing he'd probably been the subject of conversation. Derek went up to his bedroom as quickly as possible and sat down on his bed, panicking a little. He'd known that the rest of the pack would find out, but he hadn't really thought about it and now he felt like an idiot. He had no fucking clue what he was doing.

But hey, he told Stiles to make coffee and he'd made coffee. Stiles had just told Derek to take a shower, so maybe he should do that.

Not three seconds after he'd stepped under the spray, he heard the bathroom door open and close—Stiles, of course, and Derek wasn't sure how to play this.

"I brought you some coffee," Stiles said.

Derek poked his head around the curtain. "Um, thanks?"

"So," Stiles said, his eyes a little shifty, "wanna share?"

"The coffee?"

He sighed. "The shower."

"I don't—"

"Dude, I was so out of it last night, I didn't even get to see you naked, or get to come, or see your O-face, or any of it and like, we spent the night together in an actual bed so, I'm just saying that you should—you should let me into the shower."

Derek sighed. He'd been waiting a long time, not just for Stiles, but for all of it, so why not. There would be hand jobs, Stiles would be happy, Derek could stop worrying about the erection he'd had vaguely since the night before, everyone wins. Derek didn't have a lot of everyone wins scenarios in his life these days.

"Okay," Derek said.

At the diner, Derek sat across from Stiles on the window end of the booth and extra table the pack squished around and tried to be understated with the footsie. But later, when they were climbing into the Camaro, Boyd turned to him and said, "Son, you are not subtle."

Derek smiled, putting on his sunglasses, and realized he didn't care how much the pack teased him, because he had Stiles and Stiles had him and they'd waited long enough.




They were talking on the phone every night now. They practically had before so that wasn't new, though the length of the conversations was, as well as the places they drifted off to, though Derek drew the line at phone sex. Scott came by to give him a best friend talk that was a lot less scary than he was expecting.

On Tuesday night Stiles was talking up the next Avengers movie so Derek said, "We could see that. On Saturday, I mean."

"Yeah?" Stiles asked.

"Yeah and then we could go to Applebee's or something."

"Applebee's?"

"Is there something wrong with that?" Derek asked, feeling suddenly defensive.

"No, just—I never would have pictured you there."

"We went when I was a kid," Derek said. "I like their ribs. And I know how you feel about fries."

"Fries are important," Stiles said. "But yeah, I'd like that. I'd like that a lot."

Derek could almost hear Stiles smiling, and that alone was worth the wait.