They fuck in the backseat of the jeep, rolling around, sticking to the fabric with sweaty skin. Stiles comes out on top and is riding Derek, hard, reseating Derek's cock with every roll of his hips. Derek groans, reaching out to help but mostly taking the time to swat at Stiles's ass and to grab it, pushing deeper into him, then resting his hands on the spread of Stiles's thighs.

They fuck hard like that and come harder together, their mouths meeting sometimes, crying out because there's no one else to hear them on the lonely road at night.

Stiles drops down panting - Derek is like six lacrosse games at once - and curls up against him, spent. Derek flexes all the muscles in his long proud body after he pulls out, then hooks an arm around Stiles's shoulder. The time has passed for this part to be weird, any weirder than the rest of it, so they make themselves fit on the seat for a while.

Stiles rests against Derek's chest, then eases his head into the crook of his neck. Derek ruffles his hair absently, which means he's hoping for a nap. They lie in companionable silence, half-dozing, and when Stiles's phone buzzes in his pocket he lets it buzz and buzz.

Derek still has his fingers in Stiles's hair, carding them through lazily, and there's nothing to hear except the solid thud of Derek's heart under his ear until there's the unmistakable sound of branches snapping from somewhere outside the jeep, somewhere much too close nearby. Somewhere practically on top of them the way Stiles is on top of Derek Hale.

Then there's Scott's voice, shouting with totally unnecessary volume, sounding totally unnecessarily panicked: "Stiles! Stiles, are you in there?"

Stiles jumps about four feet, and underneath him Derek is already sitting up. They look at each other. Stiles looks at his own extreme state of fucked-out nakedness and squeaks about it, scrambling into his shorts and shirt and tossing the tangled mess of black jeans at Derek.

Scott's shadow passes over the window. Stiles can't get to Derek's shirt from where it's resting on the dash, where he'd thrown it a touch melodramatically a little over an hour ago. At the time that had seemed like a great idea, a lot of flair in the movement, but now he could kick himself and kind of tries to.

He glances at Derek again. Derek doesn't say I-told-you-so but his face is saying it enough, all drawn up in smug, exquisite lines. Derek doesn't look worried and strung out the way Stiles knows he looks, Derek just pulls on his pants one leg at a time, pulling his zipper up slowly like they have all the time in the world, like he's unconcerned that the pronounced ridges of muscle comprising his abs and arms are bared for all the world and Scott McCall to see.

Derek has every right to say If you'd told him from the first this wouldn't feel like shit hitting the fan, this wouldn't feel like secrets, but Derek only stares levelly back and nods, once. It's an encouraging sort of nod, and though it's the tiniest tilt of Derek's dark head it warms Stiles from the bottom up.

"Okay," Stiles says. "Yeah. No time like the present, I guess." He takes a deep breath, considers the handle a while, then opens the door and flings himself outside.

Scott is three feet from the jeep and stops to gape at him. "What the hell, man? You said you'd help with my lab report. I waited in the library after practice for -" Scott slows down, taking in Stiles's rather tousled state, the staticky friction in his hair from Derek's hands, the fact that his t-shirt is inside out and had recently been a balled-up pillow under Derek's head. "Are you okay? I've been calling for ages. Why didn't you pick up?"

"Ha," says Stiles. "Pot, kettle, black, you are the worst person at phones in the history of ever, etcetera," says Stiles, coughing and slouching and scuffing a line in the dirt of the road with his toe. His toes without shoes or socks.

Scott won't stop staring, and then Scott blinks hard and tilts his head almost sideways, and there goes Scott's nose, nostrils flaring, they're completely fucking busted now, the wolf is out of the bag.

Scott's eyes are narrowed. "Stiles. Why do you smell like-"

It's a sentence Scott McCall has not been primed or in a position to form before: Tell me, bro, why do you smell like Derek Hale and fucking?

They'd been careful until now. Stiles took a lot of showers and loaded up on scented bodywashes and musky creams. They snuck around, did in the backseat and in his room at night, or in the varied rooms of Derek's big spooky house, or in the dustiest stacks of the town library where no one ever went, or up against a good-looking tree in the woods, or or or.

Stiles hadn't had something that was only just his, for himself alone, in a long time, in ever, and he wanted to keep it that way for as long as he could. All it would take was one word from Scott, however well-intentioned, to bring his father crashing down on them; and whatever Scott knew Allison knew, and whatever Allison knew Lydia would make it her place to discover, and Lydia would tell Jackson, and Jackson would tell his father and the mayor and the school assembly and FOX News.

Stiles opens his mouth to say something, what he's not quite sure, but he can tell this isn't the prime time to try a lie. Scott has a well-built detector for Stiles's bullshit because they usually engaged in the best bullshittery together, and no one is better at calling him out.

He'd told himself it wasn't lying, precisely, not to tell Scott about Derek; it was not telling. It was selective answering and carefully measured-out sentences. Like, for example, Scott would say, "Dude, you look like shit. Did you sleep at all? Don't tell me you read that whole stupid Washington Square book for English. God, I was bored out of my mind."

"I read most of it," Stiles said in a carefully measured-out way, not lying. "Who doesn't enjoy a fine romp about marriage contracts?" He didn't say, Yeah, I'm looking a bit peaky because Derek Hale bent me over on my hands and knees in my room and fucked me rough and raw and I have the rug-burns to prove it, and then we slept together in my bed and in the morning right before school he fucked me twice, twice, Scott, did you even know that was possible? Curated truths weren't the same as lies.

Stiles keeps looking at Scott, trying to decide what to try, but in the end he doesn't have to. The door slams, and Derek comes around from the far side of the jeep. His jeans are slung low at the hips like he'd purposefully not hitched them up, the rest of him still bared and glistening here and there, and he walks with a steady, straight-backed gait, smooth and sure.

Cool as a cucumber, Derek paces past them, reaches into the open passenger's side window and retrieves his shirt. Stiles and Scott have stopped staring at each other and are staring at him kinda slack-jawed, Scott because Derek has emerged sans clothing from his best friend's car and you didn't have to have werewolf senses to smell the sex on him or see it, and Scott has werewolf senses. Stiles's mouth has opened a little because Derek looks so good leaning half-naked into his jeep Stiles would be on his knees in the road if Scott weren't -

Scott says, "What."

Stiles steals a half a glance. It's worse than he thought, Scott's eyes are going back and forth between him and Derek, his cheeks flush with color, and he looks like all the bad, wrong things, betrayed and pissy and confused and hurt and oh god Derek was right, this is so much worse than telling Scott about it from the beginning. He'd never kept a secret this big from Scott in his life and part of him had known it was wrong, and now it's exploding everywhere.

Derek yanks the t-shirt down, and then he steps back over to stand near Stiles. They don't look at each other, but the addition of Derek close by makes Stiles lift his chin. They don't touch, but he knows Derek is warm and solid and strong behind him, Derek standing just close enough for the positioning to be important.

That makes Scott's jaw sag even further. "What the hell is going on?"

"We were going to tell you," Stiles says, kind of desperately. This all feels like a very special Lifetime movie and their dialogue practically as overwrought. "I mean, I was. Don't blame Derek, I asked him to hold off. He was all 'there shall be no secrets betwixt the pack' and stuff, it was me, I didn't know how to tell you, man, I wanted to tell you, I was going to tell you, I have, like, a Powerpoint presentation about it all made up-"

Scott's regard turning completely away hurts more than the wounded, incredulous eyeballing. He's bright red to the tips of his ears, and his hands are balled up tight into fists. "Tell me what the hell you were going to tell me, then," Scott says. He's not looking at Stiles anymore, so Derek's the one who answers.

"That we're paired," says Derek, calmly and decisively, from over Stiles's shoulder.

Okay so Stiles maybe would have said We're hooking up or even yeah we're kinda having mind-blowing sex on a regular basis or maybe Derek Hale sleeps most nights in my room now, surprise, but he hasn't heard those words before, the words Derek uses, and he wouldn't have said that.

Still, what Derek says slips down his spine and sparks a furnace low in his belly, and Stiles stands without moving between the two people who mean the most to him in the world besides his dad and the two most dangerous people he knows, and he doesn't move.

There's some kind of werewolf thing going on between Derek and Scott because while their faces don't shift they both pull themselves up to their full heights and square their shoulders like this is going to be a fine game of lacrosse.

They stare fiercely, unblinking, and to Derek's credit he doesn't pull the red-eyes-alpha-thing, because Scott is really not in the mood, and Stiles doesn't think that would have ended well for any of them.

After long seconds of interconnected staring Scott finally backs off, the first to drop his gaze; Stiles can feel Derek holding ground behind him, tall and looming over him, moved somehow a lot closer than where he'd been.

Scott looks away, at the ground, the jeep, anything but them, and then he pulls the hood of his sweatshirt down over his eyes and retreats, heading for the trees. Stiles doesn't want to use to word slink but that's how Scott moves away, proverbial tail tucked.

When he's far enough away Stiles spins on Derek, breathless about it. "What was that? What did you do?"

"Unfortunate but necessary," says Derek, looking him over from crown to toe, as though to assess how Stiles has come through it. "He was challenging me - not for you, but because of you. I didn't want to make this more difficult than it had to be but some actions have consequences. If I hadn't stared him down he might've run wild with it. We're too close to the next moon."

Stiles presses his lips into a tight line, trying not to look as worried as he feels, which is a fuckton. He has about seventy billion questions that crowd his throat and he doesn't know how to pick. So instead he says, "I should-"

"Yeah," Derek agrees, looking relieved that they're not doing Q&A time. "You should go after him. It's fine." He reaches out and then he's slipping his hand into Stiles's front pocket, fingers lingering before fishing out his keys. "I'll take the jeep back for you."

It's an easily done exchange, they understand each other, and all Stiles wants to do is plaster himself against Derek and go back to where they'd been in the car before Scott's arrival. But he can't, and Derek is being as accommodating as a Derek can be, and his eyes are sort of lit-up and burning when they look at him.

This is a game-changer for them, Scott knowing. Sure they'd talked about it before but here it is happening, and Stiles's heart has migrated up to the vicinity of his jugular. He wants to say a lot of things, a laundry-list of things, but instead he says, "Thanks," and he leans into Derek when he takes the keys.

He leans further to peck Derek maybe on the cheek because it's awfully nice for him to drive the car back and all, and he gets Derek's mouth instead, the ready involvement of his teeth and tongue. They kiss pressed together against the jeep, Stiles crowding Derek in against sanded metal like he's been thinking about on repeat for a while.

Derek licks up into his mouth, and Derek's arms come up around him and hold, so that Scott gets a ten-minute headstart that kicks Stiles in the ass after he finally breaks away and races to catch up.

Scott is, like, power speed-walking, but he hasn't dropped into his beastie knuckle-run so Stiles knows at least a part of Scott wants him to catch up. When he does, half-bent at the waist and panting and poking at the cramp in his side, Scott pauses breaking his way through the foliage. Stiles drags himself the remaining yards and manages to fall in line beside him.

"Hey," says Stiles. It's kind of lame but has a friendly ring.

Scott says, "Do you really not trust me that much? Did you think I would tell?"

Now that it's just the two of them it's weird but they're also the same as they've always been and there's no holding back. They'd never really had secrets between them before and this was the chamber of secrets with basilisks lurking. "I don't know what's worse. Maybe help me decide, Stiles."

Scott jerks to a stop on their non-path through the woods, jabbing a finger toward Stiles, but Stiles is glad enough for the rest and that Scott's talking at least (talking at him, but still, marked improvement). Scott says, "A, my best friend doesn't tell me he's having sex for the first time in his life. Violating all sworn sleepover oaths and summer camp pacts."

Scott's finger jabs, punctuatingly. "B, my best friend is having sex with one of the only people who can control me and the only person who tries to control me on a daily basis. C, my best friend in the universe thinks I'm maybe, like, a homophobe or something, or untrustworthy, or maybe just stupid, after everything we've been through-"

Stiles makes his hands move and makes kind of a flailing, supplicant motion. "Scott, no, it wasn't like that at all. I'm sorry. Dude, you have no idea, you have no idea how much I've wanted to talk to you about this, how much I wanted to tell you. I didn't know how, I swear to god, I was scared. After everything with you and Derek-"

Scott clenches his teeth. "Couldn't bring yourself to talk about your secret forbidden trysts with the freaky psycho alpha werewolf who attempts to ruin my life every week," Scott snaps. "Yeah, that sounds healthy. Maybe see that for what it is, Stiles, and-"

"Not fair," Stiles protests, because he and Derek are something unexpected and hard to pin down, but they aren't wrong, they've tested enough for that. Nobody's perfect and certainly Scott isn't, so for the first time since Scott charged in Stiles feels indignant. "Says the guy mooning after a girl whose only life's meaning is to hunt him down and mount him on the wall. Sure, let's talk healthy." He and Scott are nearly squared off now the way Scott and Derek had been only Stiles can't do the whole wolfy-growly-nail-growy shebang.

Scott can't challenge him physically, that's even less fair, so he resorts to other tactics. "He's using you," Scott says with a frown. "Using you to get at the rest of us. Ever think of that?" It's meant to hurt, and does, a little, only Stiles had. Stiles had thought about that a lot at first.

It seemed completely improbable that Derek would be interested in him outside of some sort of scheme, that Derek would be backing him against the wall and putting his big hands on Stiles and pressing their mouths together without some sort of ulterior motive behind it. But Derek had set out to convince him otherwise, and so much time and shared space had passed between them it would have been an awful waste of it by now if Derek had some kind of cunning plan in play.

"He's not like that," Stiles insists, and it's a statement with a few levels that Scott doesn't look inclined to unpack. "You know he isn't. I didn't expect this, Scott, but I won't give it up, not for you or anyone." He's glad Derek isn't here for this, to hear this, or to see Scott's incredulous face.

Scott surprises him by laughing. "Guess that's good to hear," he says. "That's real good for you, man. You don't have any idea what you're into, do you? Do you. Maybe it's better that you're so dumb about it." Another aimed-for blow, and Scott sneers, like he knows so much, like he's so much wiser because he gets to run howling at the moon.

"Derek says you're paired," Scott says. "I saw the look on your face. You have no idea."

Welp, this conversation has turned. Stiles's throat is dry and he tries to make it swallow and he says, "I-"

Scott is looking too close. "You have no idea," he repeats. "He won't let you go, now. Not unless someone takes you from him or he dies. And he's an alpha. Stiles. Jesus Christ, you are the most clueless bastard on the planet. If you'd only talked to me, you extreme complete assface."

The term of endearment sorta calms Stiles down while he tries to process the rest of what Scott is saying, swallowing slowly after it. "I know what I'm doing. Most of the time. You gotta trust me on this, okay?"

Stiles can't tell Scott all of it: can't tell Scott what it's been like to know Derek will be meeting him after practice, or that Derek will be climbing through the window late at night after everyone's asleep, silent as a shadow until they're together on the bed.

He can't tell Scott about all the hours he and Derek spend exploring each other in the backseat of the jeep, or on it, or in the mossy grass by whatever roadside they've commandeered. He can't exactly tell Scott about how Derek takes the edges off him, makes him centered and happy and into something more than himself.

He doesn't tell Scott that when Derek stays over, they've moved to sleeping with Derek wrapped and tucked around him, both bodies molded against the other turned sideways. Scott couldn't quite understand about the way Derek sleeps with his lips pressed to the nape of Stiles's neck, but Stiles tells him some of it, until Scott's face softens up and his fingers stop making frustrated fists.

"I really hope that's true," Scott says. "Seems to me nobody knows what they're doing around Derek, but I'll put faith in your special, special bond." He shakes his head, overgrown brown hair flying. "From here on in, you tell me everything, or I tell your dad."

Stiles sucks in a breath and slits his eyes trying to stare Scott down like Stiles is a competent creature of the forest too but he ends up saying, "Okay, okay, I swear. But I'm warning you, there'll be graphic content. Don't forget you asked for it."

Scott shakes his head again, wet-dog-like and disbelieving. "Christ. How long has this been going on?"

Stiles thinks the shade of pink he turns is a rather flattering one, all things considering. "A month or so," he says, after a beat, after several beats, as Scott's wide eyes widen. "Maybe more like two. Two months. Three? Three would be the accurate count."

"Three months?" Scott boggles at him, the only appropriate use of the word "boggle" outside of the popular word-game.

"Erm," says Stiles. "Edging closer to four."

"Four-"

"Gonna tell you everything that happens from now on, bestie," Stiles sings out, stopping him. "We'll have coffee klatsches, and tea times, and drink those lattes with the charming foam pictures, and-"

"Stiles," says Scott. He looks like he's not capable of sorting through emotions for much longer, or of furthering the conversation without yelling again. "I gotta - I gotta think this out a while, man. I'm happy for you and all, this is...cool, I guess, all right, if I try to consider, but I-"

"You'd rather be at Allison's right now," Stiles finishes.

"I'd rather be at Allison's right now," finishes Scott. "But we'll, like, catch up on this, again, I guess, like, soon."

"Yes indeedly," Stiles says, agreeing, nodding like that's that, gentleman-like, and then that's that because Scott is loping off through the underbrush, this time with his back bent and crouched low. It only takes a moment, and then Stiles is alone in the woods.

"Oh, rock," says Stiles to the friendly one beside him, then flops down with his back to it and stays sitting alone in the quiet for a while to consider everything and nothing. Finally he gets up and picks his way out of the treeline. It's a long way back to his house but eventually he refinds the track of the jeep Derek had been sure to lay into the clay and follows it through the hills and down and back home.

Back home, Derek is waiting. He sits on Stiles's bed with its messy sheets, ankles tucked one over the other in black leather boots, reading a thick old-looking book propped up. But his eyes have snapped to the door long before Stiles comes in, so that they catch him first thing.

Stiles looks back, struck by the intensity of Derek's gaze as always, and he tries to sum up the talk with Scott with a thin-lipped smile and a little sigh of suffering.

"Think he's a work in progress," says Stiles. He strips off his sweaty clothes and toes out of his shoes with Derek watching him do it, then stumbles towards the bed. He crawls across it to Derek, slipping under the arm already lifted to receive him. "He doesn't hate me, or you, I think, but it'll take a while. I messed up," Stiles admits. "You were right. We should've told him."

Derek shrugs, the motion shifting Stiles above him. "Can't be undone," he says. His fingers stroke at the base of Stiles's spine, then move up along the prominent joints, touching each in order.

"You did well," Derek says, and Stiles can't say how much of him needs to hear that, so he burrows further against Derek soundlessly. He has his face pressed to Derek's neck and Derek's chin fits just so over the top of his head. "You were brave. I know this wasn't an easy thing."

Stiles stays silent for once because it wasn't, no, it was really, really stupidly hard, and he'd like to avoid having such a confrontation about his sex life with anyone ever again. On the other hand, Derek has never called him brave before, no one calls Stiles brave except his dad although he tries to be. Now Derek has said it, and it shivers up his skin alongside Derek's fingers, and it feels so ridiculously fucking good to be back with him that it demands evaluation. Maybe with an intense course of psychoanalysis.

Then Stiles says in a rush, "Thanks. I - I didn't think you'd be there, when Scott found out about - us, when I imagined it, but I'm glad you were. How you were."

Derek grunts a noise of pleased assent, and Stiles says, worrying his lower lip between his teeth, "What you said-"

Derek's hands slide around his biceps, and he lifts Stiles easily, bringing him up from where he'd been leaning until they're face-to-face. "I meant it," Derek interrupts, voice low but steady, his water-color eyes open and clear. "Scott told you what that means?"

"Scott told me something," Stiles admits, half a mutter, back to shading a truly lovely shade of pink with Derek looking at him like this and Stiles's heart residing in his throat now maybe for good.

Derek shakes his head. "Scott's knowledge is incomplete; he is still only beginning to discover all that it means to be one of us. His ideas are undeveloped, crude, and we are not always like that, Stiles." He's towing Stiles in closer as he speaks. "It's true that I would fight for you with great ferocity," says Derek. "It's true that any creature with the capacity to look for it will see that you're marked as mine. To interfere with you is a challenge to me that will be met. But I won't -" Derek's mouth makes a line; his brows knit together, as he takes a moment considering how to say it. "I won't keep you against your will. I won't, Stiles. I never will. You're young, and you'll change your mind a lot, and you'll change it about me."

"I do," Stiles agrees. It's really hard to speak over the incessant pounding of his pulse. "I mean, I change my mind about my favorite way to have sex with you, like, hourly. I'm so changeable."

Derek's rare grins are the best kind, but this one vanishes too fast under the weight of concerned eyebrows. "I don't expect it of you," he says. "But for me, acknowledging this means I won't be with anyone else." Stiles feels his own eyebrows rising to match Derek's, but Derek doesn't blink. "Werewolves are different in this, too," he explains. One day that will be the title of Stiles's memoir: Werewolves Are Different In This, Too: My Life And Times. "When we - when we choose someone," and Stiles thinks, Oh my god, he wants to say mate, but he thinks that would freak me out, oh my god oh my GOD, "We choose them until -"

"Until they aren't," Stiles finishes. He won't let you go now, not unless someone takes you from him or he dies. He can see why Scott's concerned, Scott has the right, and Stiles knows he should be freaked the fuck out, but he isn't, not really.

It has been good with Derek, weird but good, four months was an infinite span of time, in high-school years they were practically married; but they didn't talk very much about what they were and what it meant, even though a while ago it had become something more than just fucking, had become lying curled up together in the jeep with Derek's fingers in his hair.

Now Stiles is on him again, naked, back to where they'd started hours before, before Scott found them and made them call themselves what they were. "I'm glad," Stiles tells Derek. "That we're - us. I can't rip out any throats with my teeth, but I'd, totally, um, mess up anyone messing with you. Any day. Bring it on." He shows spirit fingers. Derek is quiet beneath him, but he relents into a grin again as he rolls his eyes. All the magnificent planes of his body are there for the touching, his shirt riding up to reveal not enough of his more-than-six-pack.

"I don't want anyone else," Stiles says, for the record. "I don't see myself wanting. I mean, have you seen you?"

Derek is, like, smirking happily, which is kind of wondrous, and Stiles has to lean in and kiss him, has to know what that tastes like. Their lips meet and then their tongues do, and it's gentler than usual, without any clashing of teeth. Derek starts to scratch lines down his back halfway through it, pushing up with his lower body, grinding his insistent erection against Stiles's hip.

"Clothes bad," says Stiles, moving away reluctantly, so that he can tug at Derek's shirt and undo the snap on his jeans.

"You could do me tonight," says Derek. "If you wanted."

That isn't a sequence that Stiles is familiar with at all, and his brain stutters over and around it, then takes a dashing leap backwards to revisit. He knows his eyes are wide and his tongue is just sort of poking through his lips, lolling, and isn't that an attractive face to show when Derek Hale casually offers to let you fuck him.

Actually it isn't casual, because when Stiles has to blink, eyes dry from holding them open, he refocuses and reevaluates and Derek's expression is a lot of things, guarded and curious and the ever-present hot as fucking unholy hell, but there's nothing in it that's casual, or about the way he says it.

"Could-" Stiles starts, because some sort of answer is definitely on demand here. "I?"

Derek cants his head into a little nod. His hair is so dark as to be almost blue-black, and his eyes are exceptionally bright below; his dangerous mouth is parted and his chin is a perfect triangle. The stubble along his jawline is best when dragged over Stiles's naked, sweaty skin.

Such as his skin is at present. Derek repeats, "If you wanted to."

"Derek," says Stiles, so that he doesn't say Oh, my god, oh my sweet lord in heaven and all the saints and angels and the prophets and the animals on Noah's ark. "Yes. Yeah. Let's. That? Right. I do. I mean. I want to. I want to do that to you. With you! I would like, very much, to do that."

Derek quirks one side of his mouth but doesn't say anything to such an eloquent declaration of intent, luckily just puts up his arms so Stiles can pull off his shirt and puts up his hips so that the pants follow. Stiles scoots down the bed to yank Derek's boots free, then is entirely rid of the jeans, and Derek is sprawled the length of his sheets like a heroic statue that's somehow breathing.

His skin is darkly tanned gold, and he tucks his hands behind his head so all the big muscles shift and ripple along his body in a wave. His dick is a hard prominent line straining toward his belly; when he shifts his legs on the bed so that his knees are up, the rounded curve of Derek's ass makes Stiles bite his lip until he feels pain, actual biting pain.

So he stops and sits back on his heels by Derek's knees. He doesn't know what to do and he's about fifteen seconds away from, if not quite a full-on panic attack, than a full-on crisis of confidence, because of course he knows what to do sort of, he's been watching porn since he was old enough to hide internet history and Derek has fucked him...dozens upon dozens of times come to think, wow, that's pretty remarkable, but they hadn't done this. Hadn't done more than a finger in Derek from time to time to make him howl when he came, usually when Stiles's lips were stretched all the way around his pulsing cock, that's when he'd slip one in and -

Fingers. Right, fingers. Fingers are the way to start. The lube is in the night table, and he snags it, glad at least his hands aren't shaking the way he wants to let them. Derek is watching him, and when Stiles squeezes wetness into his palm and moves closer, reaching tentatively, Derek shakes his head.

Fuck. Shit. Fuck. Messing up already. He's going to fuck up the fucking and Derek'll never want to do it like this again, which is fine, as long as he doesn't leave, or laugh at him, not that Stiles would blame him, because it was tricky enough with Derek at first; but this, this is something else, this is on Stiles to show him that he can, how much he wants to, and so of course he's freaking all the way out and back again.

Derek is still shaking his head. "You don't need to do that, Stiles," he says. His silk-and-sandpaper voice isn't disapproving, fuck, he's practically smiling about it, looking smug. Derek has a secret: "I got myself ready while I was waiting for you."

Okay, fuck.

Okay, fucking fuck fuck fuck. It's in his head before Derek finishes his sentence: Derek lying with his jeans pushed down over his thighs, working fingers deep into his ass, opening himself up for Stiles. Panting on the bed, Derek's eyes would have been shut, doing that to himself, knowing as he did what he'd offer later to Stiles and that Stiles would say yes Stiles would say oh hell fucking yes and they'd be here -

They'd be here, exactly at this juncture. Derek with his knees up, and Stiles with his dick so hard he's going to embarrass himself regardless because he feels like he'll last all of two seconds if he can even get it to work.

"Oh my god," he says, this time out loud. "Derek, my god." He takes a deep breath, then he uses the lube he'd squeezed out to slick up his dick. His dick is as long and excited as the rest of him, and though Derek's been pleased enough with it before, they've never been quite so intimately acquainted.

Stiles reaches out with both hands and draws Derek's knees down, apart. He shifts to slide between them, coming to rest against Derek, putting a hand to either side of Derek's head. He can't believe he's up here but he is, and Derek ready for the taking quickly numbers amongst the most spectacular sights he's ever seen.

The muscles flex along Derek's thighs. "Like this, Stiles?" he asks. His eyes are electric. "You want me like this?"

"Yes," says Stiles. "Yeah. Like that."

He lets his body weight shift onto Derek, covering him, bringing them skin to skin; and when he does that he ducks down and kisses him. Derek's lips are soft and parted, until the lower is caged by Stiles's teeth. They're being a lot gentler than usual, going slow with each other, taking their time.

Stiles tangles a hand in Derek's hair and rocks against him, all of his body a drawn-out bow of anticipation. He kisses Derek deep, presses his head back into the pillow, shows and lets his tongue tell Derek how much he appreciates him like this.

Derek kisses back, keeping his eyes open; keen, seeing everything, they rarely close. Stiles has to breathe long before Derek does so he breaks free, sliding his mouth wetly down to lick and suck at Derek's collarbone while he takes in enough air to steady shaky nerves. He wants to make this good, needs to make this as good for Derek as Derek's made him feel, but if he starts over-thinking he'll do himself in.

Instead Stiles thinks about what makes it good, and he does that.

"I want you so much, you have no idea," Stiles tells Derek's eyes. "I think about this, sometimes. You'd be underneath me just like this." He nips a zigzag line up the column of Derek's throat and back to his lips, tiny, biting kisses that only just don't break the skin. One hand is still caught in the wilds of Derek's hair and he shifts the other under his ass, cupping those perfect cheeks to bring Derek in closer.

He starts to line them up, his own paler limbs using all their lacrosse-built strength to keep himself up over Derek. He keeps talking because he can't not and at this point Derek is more than used to it. Stiles talks himself through it. "I didn't think that you, uh-"

He can't resist, his hand on the half-globe of Derek's asscheek is so close, he has to slip a finger into him, has to feel Derek's preparation for himself. Inside Derek's hot tight heat and indeed well-lubed, slick, Stiles's finger disappearing to the knuckle without even trying. Derek's head goes back, his neck drawing a taut line down his torso; he closes his eyes and opens them and looks at Stiles. Stiles does the same thing, blinking heavily about it to keep himself from gleeful shrieking.

Derek says, "I haven't, in a while." His thighs spread wider, then his ankles come around Stiles's lower back, until Stiles is wearing a fabulous belt of Derek's legs. Derek's shoulders lift, a shrug: "I'm an alpha, Stiles, but I was a beta all my life before." Derek isn't fully smiling, but his eyes are. "I'm versatile."

Stiles thinks about that a little - hadn't really thought about it before, but it was true enough. Derek did his duty and tried to rebuild and reform a pack, but he hadn't sought the job, had been doing god-knows-what in the interim years until he came back to Beacon Hills. His sister had been the true alpha, had either been rightly born to it or better-suited or wanted it more.

Some people desired alphadom, like Peter, who while batshit insane at least wore the superiority with a swagger. Derek never did unless he had to. Never really liked to. He was an alpha reluctantly, and he was showing Stiles that it didn't get to define every part of him. Derek's will was always in play.

Derek's will tonight was to open himself up for Stiles and to be lying open-eyed under him, wrapped around Stiles as Stiles bends to fit him. Stiles takes his finger out of Derek and grips the base of his cock, fingers curling close to trap the blood there, and he's never been so achingly turned-on or ready.

Derek is still watching him, and Stiles is thinking about all the best ways Derek has made him feel, all the things Derek has done to him. He guides himself into Derek, pushing until the head of his cock is in; and that, just that, is the best thing that's happened to Stiles's cock in the history of time, or at least since Derek first put his mouth on him.

Derek lifts his hips and grinds up and back, and Stiles moans before he can contemplate not moaning and Derek is taking more and more. Derek's done a good job, is all slicked up and loosened to let him in, but Stiles would have known it had been a while even if Derek hadn't said.

Underneath his own Derek's body is willing and ridiculously able, but it's slow going at first. That's just fine with Stiles, he's fine with staying just like this with his dick sinking into Derek by degrees while Derek's widening pupils color his eyes black with blue rims. Stiles could stay like this pretty much for forever.

Stiles is still thinking about how Derek does this, what Derek does to him, so he keeps pressing in after they breathe about it a space, and then he sits up a little, sliding his hands around to lock over Derek's hips. The jutted vee of Derek's hipbones looks carved by a master in marble, and Derek's abdomen is tight with effort and reaction.

"Good, that's good," he says. "Stiles," he says. "Give me more," he says.

Stiles doesn't need to be told at all, let alone twice, so he holds onto Derek and thrusts firmly in. Finally he makes it to the hilt, and they're both sweating, and Stiles thinks that if he dies now at least he'll die happily, and really, how many people can say that? Derek said that's good and Stiles in order and that's all that matters.

Derek has his teeth set on his lip, looking like he wants to bite something, looking like he does when the moon's about to seize him; then he arcs his powerful body up and is taking every bit of Stiles in, and they stay like that, just exactly like that, Stile somehow meeting Derek's eyes although he knows his own must look shocky.

The first time they'd done this Derek had tried to be careful with him, had tried to ease the way; there'd been a lot of rending of clothes but not of Stiles. Stiles finds he wants to return the favor, wants to start off slow and thinking about it, wonders if anyone's ever been gentle with Derek like this before.

They do a lot of fucking and rutting and most of the time it's sweaty and messy and rough, and it's always good, it's always so fucking good, it was so good even that first time and they haven't been able to stop. Every now and then Derek will slow them down, though, draw them out, draw Stiles's arms up to be fastened above his head; Derek will slow down, and taste him at the neck, where his skin is salty with sweat.

Stiles likes that best, so now he leans in replicate it, nosing Derek's throat, letting his tongue flick out to touch his pulsepoint. Derek's heart is beating hard, and Stiles doesn't need to be a werewolf to know.

He may be an amateur here but he's seen enough of porn and Derek and romantic dramas, so he makes himself pull halfway out of Derek, waits for Derek to readjust and Derek's eyes to find him, then rocks back in. Again, again. It feels so good that once he's started he can't stop, he can't stop, Derek is gripping tighter with every thrust, taking him.

Stiles thinks about what Derek does to him and he lets his hips roll in minute circles before slamming home. The noise Derek makes could almost be surprised, but he bites it off between his teeth, which snap. His hands seize on Stiles, one on his ass, one slipping around his neck, and he pulls them closer, pulls Stiles all the way in.

"Derek." Stiles murmurs his name and other syllables against his ear, grazing the sensitive lobe with his tongue. He can slide easily into him now and his balls slap Derek's ass as he drives himself forward. Stiles is getting pushier about it as his confidence grows. He's rocking them back and forth across the bed and pretty soon Derek's head will be knocking against the headboard if he keeps at this pace.

Stiles wants to tell Derek something about how he looks, but he's not a poet or a painter or a singer or a dancer or a quilter, can't artistically express the heart-stopping sight that is Derek getting fucked by him. And lo, the demi-god was laid by the chalky-faced mortal, and it 'twas good, the bards would sing.

"You're perfect," Stiles says, accidentally outloud. His mouth may be idiotic but his dick at least is holding up, and as the surety grows between them he's thrusting harder and harder, nailing Derek to the mattress. Derek rises to meet him every time and they start to move like they were made to do this, like they were.

Somehow Derek manages a laugh. "You more than anyone know that's not true," he says. "But I'll take the compliment on behalf of my fragile ego."

"Ha," pants Stiles, because Derek is many things, a myriad of things, a pantheon, but fragile isn't amongst them. Frenzied, maybe, and frenetic, and fucking gorgeous, other f-words, but never fragile. Resilient, always, like the way he took all that Stiles could give him and returned it with change. "I cannot tell a lie. Smell me, baby. It's true."

Derek actually does a little exploratory sniff, and his expression softens further. Sweat doesn't lie. To Stiles, Derek is perfect.

"You're a fool," Derek says, affectionately. "But I'll take you anyway."

"I thought you were in the process of that," says Stiles. He leans back and comes almost completely out of Derek, then reseats himself before Derek can get a breath in. "I thought we were doing that."

"Stiles-"

And his name is enough; there's no more talking for a long space. Stiles covers Derek's mouth with his hand and then his lips. His body's getting a mind of its own about this now and what it wants to do is fuck Derek fast and hard, to stretch him out and tease him just right and make him feel the friction of relentless cock. He wants to deep-dick Derek until Derek growls and groans about it and says his name again.

He sets out to do that, moving a hand from gripping Derek's hip to gripping his cock. Derek hisses and jerks into his touch, flexing all around Stiles, and Stiles keeps their momentum going. He could gold-medal in knowing how to handle Derek's cock so that part's easy.

It's harder to find and keep a rhythm and not just thrust erratically or spend himself all at once, but one time he hits deep and Derek doesn't growl, no, not yet, but it's a prelude to a growl. Stiles readjusts his angle and watches Derek's face and finds the spot again on his next thrust, and then he does it again, and again.

After that there's no way else he could possibly fuck him than exactly like this, with Derek squirming and also pressing back, bearing down for more; and with the rhythm discovered they clutch at each other everywhere and seem to know just how to move together. They've done this so often and never at all, and they ride each other, testing out all of their reversals.

Stiles won't stop fisting Derek's cock to match his movement and Derek is staring up at him with his head mashed into the pillow, hair going everywhere haphazardly like spilled black ink. Stiles considers what Derek sees: knows how flushed his skin is, how the lanky lengths of his body are gathered with tension and arousal and red from Derek's fingernails, which love to scratch.

His hair and eyes are almond-colored and his eyes must be incandescent with his body's activity. Stiles is better known for his funny faces than his masks, and there's no hiding the range of emotion from Derek, not when Derek wants to see it. So Stiles makes extraordinary expressions for Derek's benefit, and they slide and strain and push and pull and move at last as one, two made one, coming to that long before they come.

Because somehow Stiles has held out even though he could've gone off first when Derek said You could do me tonight if you wanted and a half a dozen times thereafter and especially when he'd first entered Derek, it all could've ended there, but he's kept himself together by his teeth and toes and occasionally thoughts of football and zero-zero professional soccer games. He's done remarkably well, he thinks, doing Derek the ways he himself liked best and uncovering the ways that Derek prefers.

Derek's dick is hard in his hand, ready to shoot too, maybe Stiles could make him do it if he tightens his hold; but before he can try Derek says, "I want you to come in me like this. Stiles. Want to feel you deep like this," and no one should be allowed to say stuff like that aloud, least of all Derek Hale, but he says it with heat, and no one on Earth or sentient alien planets, let alone Stiles Stilinski, could refuse such a request.

After Derek asks for it he doesn't have to hold back and it doesn't take much at all, just a few more long strokes into Derek, and he's coming much too hard held in tight with the skin of Derek's shoulder between his teeth. He tries to draw it out as long as he can, but he's shuddering, shaking, the world bleeding out to color, his voice crying out. Stiles holds onto Derek while he comes, wracked with it, rubbing his cheek to the roughness on Derek's.

He doesn't forget Derek though, never forgets Derek, and his hand and fingers are tugging and twisting at him as he moves, so that on Stiles's last thrust Derek comes with him, full-on growling now, god bless him, spurting across their shiny-slick bodies.

Stiles comes harder then or maybe even again, watching that, burying himself as deep in Derek as there is to go. Derek lets the wave of his body crest, then draws himself tighter around Stiles, all of Derek secured around him; and Stiles thinks, no, this now would be the time to die, if he ever has to, and he understands why the French call coming la petit mort, the little death, in a way he had never understood in French class.

Somewhere nearby and very, very far away his phone chirps with a text message. Stiles ignores it, shows Derek that he can be old-school, doesn't respond to the chime and instead keeps his cheek flush to the stubble on Derek's jaw and breathes in and out until he can breathe normally again. They're running with sweat, slick and salty with it, Derek's tongue sneaking out sideways to taste.

After a long time of lying together still locked Derek palms his hand from Stiles's shoulder down his back. "Maybe you better get that," he says. "Going by the situation earlier."

"One more minute," says Stiles. Before he can bring himself to pull out of Derek he makes himself remember every taste and smell and touch and sight about this, makes himself record the exact pitch at which Derek's speaking.

Only once all the senses are burned into his brain does Stiles reach for his dick, his eyes snapped to Derek's face as he pulls down and out. Derek could stay hard in him longer after fucking, and though Stiles is jealous it isn't the time to bring that up, not with the way Derek has to make his lower body into an accommodating curve, not the way his fingers close tight over Stiles's arm and grip there as he moves free.

Derek lies still, breathing shallowly, and Stiles puts a hand in his hair, mussing the damp dark strands like Derek never lets him do except post-coital, so he always does. Derek raises an eyebrow meant to convey that he is long-suffering while Stiles gropes around for his phone in the pile of clothes by the foot of the bed. He finds it and flicks on the screen.

Sorry for being a big dick, Scott has written. Even if that's now your thing.

Stiles laughs aloud. I love you too, he types back. Dick.

He tosses the phone aside and flops back down next to Derek. Knows he's grinning hugely.

"What?" Derek asks.

"Scott sends kisses," Stiles says. "I think everything's gonna be good."

Derek purses his lips, caution in the lines around his mouth. Derek is a the-glass-is-shattered kind of pessimist, waiting for the next shoe to fall, predicting the worst, even worse about it than Stiles is, so Stiles moves back in to lie naked against him before Derek can start listing all the things they have to worry about.

Derek's skin is warm and still sticky in some places. Stiles slides an arm across Derek's belly and hooks in tight. He thinks about saying a lot of things he'll say later: I can't believe I fucked you; you were incredible; that wasn't, like, a one-time deal, was it; I want your honest opinion here but come on I was pretty awesome wasn't I; I don't want anyone else and I never will.

Instead he says to Derek, "We're good."

Derek tilts until their foreheads touch. He looks at Stiles looking back. "Yeah," he agrees before he kisses Stiles. "We are."

They fall asleep together the way they've come to, all entangled; only tonight it is Stiles who is wrapped and tucked around Derek, his lips pressed to the nape of Derek's neck.