Work Text:
"I'm pretty sure it wasn't actually illegal," Stiles said, about forty-eight hours after he'd left Derek and Laura's apartment without saying any actual words to Derek about the probably-not-illegal act that had gone down on the couch.
Derek, who was in the middle of looking over Stiles's Spanish homework while the two of them sat on opposite sides of Derek and Laura's big kitchen table, looked up at Stiles. He held the pen still poised against the page, very obviously intending to get back to what he'd been doing when this interruption ended. Derek raised his eyebrows but still didn't say anything, though it was also pretty obvious that despite the context or lack of it, he knew what Stiles meant.
He hadn't said anything at the time, either. He'd let Stiles scramble away from him and watched him--just watched him, paying attention like he always did. To kind of a creepy and invasive extent, as it turned out, what with him having werewolf senses, but Stiles wasn't going to tell Derek not to pay attention to him. Or not to be quiet and let Stiles decide how to handle something. There had been a lot of that, in the month since they'd both come back to Beacon Hills, Stiles in possession of a lot of exciting new traumas while Derek was newly working through some of his old ones.
"Not, um..." Stiles waved vaguely in the direction of those traumas, and everything else that had happened during his three months in San Francisco when Derek had paid him really absurd amounts of money for sex, and a lot of other people had paid him more or less market rates. "Not all that stuff before, that was definitely illegal. But the other day, I, um. I'm pretty sure that was okay."
"Technically," Derek said, finally looking down again, writing down some note or correction on the page. "Because the laws in California defining unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor require actual intercourse. Penetration."
"Um," Stiles said, remembering all over again that he was not actually the only person in the room who ever had reason to look into whether someone had committed that exact crime against him. And the woman who'd done it to Derek had topped off the statutory rape by murdering his entire family, so.
So, no surprise that sex was kind of complicated for both of them, even if it had been just handjobs on the couch while kissing, both of them still practically fully clothed.
"Do you think that the technicalities of the law are what we have to worry about?" Derek asked, still in that mild voice, his hand holding the pen sliding down the page, his eyes darting over it as he checked.
"Well," Stiles said. "No. We have to worry about whether my dad decides to arrest you, but... he won't."
Because his dad knew that if he did, Stiles would leave again, because Stiles had already left once and lived without his dad for three entire months. Now he'd come back and nothing was like it used to be, though it was close enough sometimes that he could almost forget--and then he'd see his dad hesitating over telling him to do something, or carefully not asking questions about Derek, and he'd remember.
He'd broken what they used to have, the basically normal father-son unit they used to be, by running away. And his dad still loved him and Stiles still loved his dad, but whatever they were putting back together out of the broken pieces, it was never going to be exactly the same.
Case in point, his dad was never going to tell him he couldn't date a twenty-two-year-old werewolf who his dad knew, even if neither of them had ever said it in words, used to pay Stiles to have sex with him.
Stiles sighed and leaned his elbows on the table, slumping forward as he said, "The statute was just a lot easier to look up than... anything else."
Derek tilted his head, not meeting Stiles's eyes but letting him see the crooked little smile on his face, tapping the end of the pen gently against the page. "Yeah. I know that one, too."
Because, yeah, Derek's whole thing--being a werewolf whose werewolf family had been nearly wiped out by a werewolf hunter after she seduced Derek to get information from him--was actually maybe a lot more complicated than Stiles's worry about whether having sex with Derek a month after he said he didn't want to have sex again for a while, after three months of sex Derek paid him for, was a bad sign or maybe... maybe a good sign?
"The thing is, I..." Stiles looked down now too, keeping his eyes fixed on his finger as he traced the grain of the tabletop. "It was... I liked it. I think I... it was good, wasn't it? But that kind of freaked me out too."
It had felt really good. Hanging out with Derek seemed like the only part of Stiles's life that was mostly easy now--school, and Scott, and his dad, and juggling the various secrets he was keeping from various people, and his twice-weekly appointment to cry and talk about awful stuff with Carlos, also while keeping certain secrets... all of that sucked in various ways.
Derek knew all the secrets, though. Derek knew all the worst things about Stiles and also kind of dumb boring things about him, because Derek just kept paying attention to him, and Derek never made him talk about any of it. Possibly because Derek knew that Stiles would eventually start blurting things out without prompting. But Derek just... pulled him close and kept him warm and was a level of weird and fucked up that made Stiles feel okay about his own level of weird and fucked up.
So when a cuddling-and-kissing session had segued into grinding on each other and then unzipping and getting off together... it had only been more good. It had been easy and simple and nothing they had to talk about or think about, and it had felt so fucking good. Sex, orgasms, with Derek, that was... that was the best thing he'd felt in a really long time.
But then he'd started second-guessing himself, and couldn't tell if it felt like before in a good way or a bad way or if he just couldn't help mentally comparing it to before, or if there was just something wrong with him. Like, more than was already clearly wrong. So, yeah, he hadn't wanted to talk about it, and Derek had let him not talk about it, and now Stiles was trying to talk about it but he still had no idea what to say.
"I liked it," Derek said, after Stiles had been spiraling in his own head for a couple of minutes. "And it seemed like you liked it, at least while it was happening. That... doesn't mean you have to want to do it again, or anytime soon."
Stiles blew out a breath. "I don't want to... not do it again, that would suck. And saying we won't just feels like... a lie, or like... saying I'm gonna keep the air cast on my ankle for three weeks or something."
"So, a lie," Derek said dryly.
"Well, not a lie on purpose, at the time," Stiles said, waving his hands. "Because I know! Logically I know why it's a good idea, just... Then it's annoying and after a few days it's more annoying than it hurts, so..."
"So." Derek shrugged. "So, people make choices. Tradeoffs. Your ankle would heal eventually, one way or the other."
"Yeah," Stiles said, glancing up to meet Derek's eyes. Derek looked calm, and Stiles couldn't hear his heartbeat or smell his feelings or anything, so he didn't know how much of that was Derek being older and having perspective on this shit and how much was Derek having a really good poker face.
It was kind of comforting to imagine that Derek knew what he was talking about, so Stiles didn't ask.
"I just..." Stiles looked away again. "Saying we're definitely going to do it again feels... worse. Even though it's you and I know it'd be good, you wouldn't push anything, so I don't know why--"
"Why agreeing to have sex with me in advance feels like going back to the thing where we would negotiate sex acts in advance, with prices?" Derek asked, raising his eyebrows again.
"Fuck," Stiles muttered, putting his face in his hands. As soon as Derek said it, he knew that he had known that, that that was exactly what it felt like, but... he hadn't wanted to know that. He hadn't wanted to know that it could still feel like that when it wasn't like that anymore.
"It's been a month, Stiles," Derek said gently. "Maybe it feels like a long time, but... there's no deadline. You're going to keep getting further away from it and more able to tell what you want and how you feel. Five or six years from now..."
Stiles picked his head up to look at Derek, who shrugged and grimaced. He was six years on from his most horrendous traumas, and...
Well, so. Maybe Stiles would still be weird and fucked up six years from now; maybe Derek would still be weird and fucked up six years from now, when he was at the twelve-year mark. Maybe they'd both have accumulated a ton of other bad shit by then. Maybe they'd have broken up--
Stiles quashed that last thought, because it made him feel breathless and lost if he considered it for too long. He didn't know if that was a better reason to date someone than our traumas go well together, but if it was working for Derek then Stiles wasn't doing any harm, regardless of why he was here.
"Five or six years from now doesn't really help with today, though," Stiles said, slouching back in his chair and looking down at his hands. "Or... whenever we're on the couch together again."
Kissing was mostly a couch activity, or a standing-up activity. They very much did not ever kiss in either of their beds or in the Camaro, because that was... a whole other level that they were definitely not at yet. Stiles didn't feel even a little bit bad about drawing that line for the foreseeable future.
Derek nodded, looking down at Stiles's homework probably a lot more intently than his practice sentences on the perfect tense really required. "So what if we just... don't decide."
"Don't... decide," Stiles repeated, and he felt some tension unknot, some weight lift, as he realized that was an option.
Just because they'd done it once, that didn't mean that it was now something they absolutely had to talk about. Not talking about the important shit, or only talking about it indirectly, was sort of a hallmark of their relationship. They could just go with that. "Just... let stuff happen if it happens, you mean. Fly by the seat of our pants."
"You always struck me," Derek said solemnly, "as a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of boy."
Stiles put his head down and laughed, maybe a little harder than his boyfriend making a Pretty Woman joke deserved. By the time he managed to sit up and wipe his eyes, Derek had pushed his homework across the table, along with fresh paper for him to start over on.
Stiles heaved a dramatic sigh and grabbed his pen.
So they didn't talk about it, and a few more times over the next month, they got off together like they had the first time. On the couch, mostly clothed, kissing and touching and nothing beyond that.
Stiles got kind of wound up in his own head afterward, but he recognized the pattern now--even diagrammed it on one the worksheets Carlos had given him, although that particular worksheet stayed at home in his desk drawer. When he did this, it reminded him of that, and then he felt like this. Feeling like this was just an emotion, a chemical reaction, and would get less intense over time, because the feeling was about the thing that happened before, not the thing that was happening now. He just had to strategize how to deal with the feeling without letting it take over.
So he held ice cubes and focused on his senses and repeated memorized sentences until he remembered they were true, and he sat next to Derek and talked to him about their lives outside of having sex. He wasn't going to let his dumb trauma feelings push him away from Derek or make him forget that what he and Derek had now wasn't just the sex; it was about being friends, about being part of each other's lives. Occasional sex was a fun bonus. It was good.
It was working.
When Stiles pushed the envelope a little it wasn't like he even pushed it far. They'd been making out for a while and he was getting literally hot in an uncomfortable way, so he took off his flannel, leaving himself in a t-shirt that was worn thin and fit a lot tighter than it had when he was in sixth grade. He was straddling Derek's lap and had a great view of the way Derek's eyes went wide and pupils flared, the way his nose twitched. Even Stiles could catch the smell of himself right then; Derek had to be drowning in it.
Derek pulled him down for another kiss, hotter and hungrier, and Stiles grinned and wriggled closer so he could feel--yeah, Derek was definitely hard, and Stiles was too, and he liked where this was going. He rocked a little, enjoying the friction, and Derek's mouth slid from his as he moved.
"Stiles," Derek breathed, lips against Stiles's jaw, and Stiles tipped his head to the side, making an encouraging noise somewhere between a hum and a moan.
Derek nuzzled along Stiles's jaw and then dragged his lips down to Stiles's throat, licking and kissing--softly, nothing that would leave marks. His hands tightened on Stiles's hips, guiding him, and then Derek's teeth scraped lightly across Stiles's skin and Stiles shivered and whined. Derek huffed, almost a laugh, and did it again, and it felt--so good, but so much that Stiles felt it through his whole body.
His hips jerked in Derek's grip, chasing more sensation without consulting his brain, and Derek hummed happily against his skin and kept kissing and teasing at Stiles's throat. It was good, it was so good, it was sex, they were having sex right now and it was so, so good, it was--
Stiles didn't want to say no or stop but he could feel the fluttering edges of his own panic under the excitement and he wanted Derek to smell his scent turning to fear even less. He didn't even really think; he'd known for a long time what to say in this situation, and he hauled in a breath and blurted it out: "Laura."
Derek jerked in an entirely different way and his hands on Stiles's hips moved him back nearly to Derek's knees. Derek's eyes were wide, but after a quick glance at Stiles, he turned his head--looking not toward the door, but... east. Toward town; toward where Laura actually was right now.
"No," he said, a little dazed, and then, "I don't think--Stiles? She's listening. Did you... want to say something to her?"
Stiles blinked. He was feeling a little dislocated--he'd known it would work, but that had somehow still been more dramatic than he'd expected, and also--also Laura had heard him say her name and was listening to him now. He remembered the times she'd asked him if Derek was hurting him, if he needed her to keep Derek in line, and let out an incoherent yelp before he found words. "Nope! No, sorry, that was a complete sentence, I just--needed a timeout. Sorry, Laura, didn't mean to, um. Do you hear me any time I say your name?"
Derek was relaxing a little now, calming down from his own startle. "She says: it depends. She definitely hears when you say it like that, if you're within a few miles."
"That's... good to know. Um. Sorry again. That may have been weird. I--"
Derek was shaking his head, and squeezed firmly on Stiles's hips for emphasis. "She says, anytime. Just like calling her on the phone--do you want her to call, so you can actually hear her say this stuff?"
Stiles felt himself flush painfully at the idea of that, which was somehow even worse than knowing that Laura had heard him and was now focusing her senses on him and Derek and therefore knew what they were doing and--"No! Nope, I'm good, we're good, please, um, disregard. Everything."
Stiles plastered a hand over his own mouth to make himself stop and curled forward, hiding his face against Derek's shoulder.
"Yeah," Derek said, very soft. "Yeah, Laur, we're good. Thanks." He ran his hand up and down Stiles's back a few times, then said, "She's not listening anymore. If you want to talk about whatever just happened. Or not talk about it."
Stiles shook his head without lifting it away from Derek's nice warm shoulder. "I just--sorry, I don't even--I was starting to freak out? I don't know why, I--dammit."
His brain was starting to spiral--this was a Setback, they would have to be cautious, they would have to Talk, he'd ruined everything.
"Hey," Derek said, and took his hands off Stiles's hips to push him up so he could see Stiles's face. Stiles kept his eyes squeezed shut for a few seconds, but then he had to look, of course. He could never resist knowing.
Derek was just looking at him, calm and maybe a tiny bit amused. Not upset. Not guilty.
"It's okay," Derek said. "Shit happens. I know that. She knows that. I'm pretty sure you know that, when you're not busy freaking out. But it's just today. Next time will probably be fine. Or the time after, or sometime. This doesn't have to be a big deal."
A warm rush of gratitude ran through him--less toward Derek for being just as wise in the ways of being weird and fucked up as he generally was, but to the universe and every moment of his life that had brought him to this moment. To Derek. And it wasn't like he didn't know, even if he'd never said it, but somehow, right then, it was too much to keep inside, so he said, "Shit, I really love you."
Derek frowned a little, studying him intently, lips slightly parted, and then said, in a tone of actual wonder that stabbed right through Stiles's soul, "I believe you."
Stiles stared back for a few seconds, so filled with emotion he couldn't move or speak, could hardly breathe, and then he saw Derek wince and start to flush, and he realized what they'd each actually said. Stiles let out a crack of sound that resolved into laughter, and then he was flailing with it. Derek's grip was the only thing keeping him from falling off Derek and the couch and hitting some important body parts on the hard floor.
And then he stilled and had to stare again, because Derek was laughing too, laughing so hard tears were running down his face. Despite that--fucking werewolves--Derek had the coordination to lever Stiles closer to him again before he gasped out, "I also love you, apparently."
"Apparently," Stiles gasped, but he was grinning too hard to carry off the faux outrage. He was also grinning too hard to kiss Derek, who was still letting out little hiccups of laughter, but they made it work well enough. They were getting pretty good at that.