Work Text:
“Jack Nicholson used to be a volunteer firefighter, right? So that scene in the Shining where he takes down the door? He kept doing it like, WAY too well, so they had to replace the prop door with a real one.” Stiles’ voice was a little muffled from the rearranged sitting area of the loft.
“Mmm hmm,” Derek rolled his eyes without looking back at his guest or the movie playing on the TV they’d made him purchase last month. He’d made way too much popcorn for only two people, but it was still early. “We’re not even watching The Shining.”
“It’s a fun fact, Derek. I know fun isn’t in your vocabulary—“
“Not tonight.”
“Hey!”
Where had Isaac put the popcorn salt? He scanned through his cabinets. In the time it took to locate a smaller bowl than the one he’d originally chosen and season the popcorn, he’d been forced to learn none of the actors in Carrie had been teenagers—can you believe it, Derek?— and that it only took 8 days to film The Blair Witch Project.
Which explained a lot, really.
“Do you want a soda while I’m in here? I’m not getting up again.” Across the loft the movie soundtrack swelled and then went eerily silent.
He braced himself for the inevitable.
Two screams rang out through the loft, one from the tv and one other from the blanket-ghost Stiles had made of himself almost as soon as he’d put the movie in 20 minutes ago.
Derek’s lips twitched. He crossed to the back of the couch to whip the blanket off Stiles’ head and toss it at one of the empty beanbags scattered around the room, waiting for occupants that evidently weren’t coming. “How are you that scared? You couldn’t even see the screen.” He leaped over the back of the couch without spilling a single kernel of popcorn from the bowl to Stiles’ grumbled, ‘show-off’.
Which was patently ridiculous.
The popcorn joined an untouched bowl of Halloween candy on the coffee table as Derek settled into the empty corner of the sofa with quirked an eyebrow. “Well?”
Stiles’ chewed on his lip, his fingers dancing spider-quick over the hem of his t-shirt, printed to look like some super hero’s costume top. He shot a compulsive look at the screen where the latest victim was running through the woods in her underwear for no narrative reason and shivered, “I’m a sympathetic screamer, ok? It’s not funny.” he mumbled.
“I thought you said you’d seen this before?” Derek asked, shoving a socked foot under Stiles’ thigh despite his weak attempt to bat him away, “I picked it because you said it was good.”
“It is!” He eeped, nearly falling off the couch at the latest in a series of predictable jump scares, “Damn it!”
Derek grinned when the popcorn kernel he flicked in his direction landed right between his eyes, “I can’t believe you’re scared of horror movies.”
“Ok, first, I can’t believe your face,” Stiles held up one finger, long and deceptively strong like the rest of him, then proceeded to emphasized his words by poking Derek in the knee with it, “Secondly, I am a connoisseur of the genre, ok?”
“You can’t be a connoisseur of the genre if you can’t watch it!”
“I listen! I have listened to all the classics: the Nightmare before Christmas, Rosemary’s Baby, Nightmare on Elm Street, Hocus Pocus, Friday the 13th—“
“Half of those aren’t even scary.” Derek’s lips twitched again. Stiles’ hair was mussed from the blanket, his eyes flashing the way they always did whenever he really got going.
One of Derek’s favorite looks on him.
Maybe Cora was right about his self-destructive tendencies because Derek compulsively shoved a sucker from the candy basket into Stiles hands amidst the most disturbing story about Candy Man and live bees, then had to subtly adjust himself when Stiles predictably managed to unwrap and pop it in his mouth without even pausing his rant, lips wrapped absently around the bright red ball of sugar for a moment before he rolled it into the corner of his mouth.
Fuck.
“And the set was REALLY haunted!” Derek had no idea what he was talking about anymore, eyes glued on Stiles’ lips. He pulled the candy out with a pop, waiving it around like the lunatic he was in an attempt to make some kind of point about Nosferatu. Derek leaned back so he didn’t take a cherry flavored confection to the eye, then it was his turn to shiver when Stiles shoved the sucker back in his mouth and sucked on it hard enough to hollow his cheeks.
Derek crossed his legs, “How is it you can taunt a real werewolf with you pinned to the wall, but the Sanderson sisters have you ready to hide under the bed?”
“Shut up! I’m not scared of the Sanderson sisters.” Stiles sputtered, “Were you listening at all?”
“Honestly? No,” he said, just to watch the way his eyes lit up with indignation.
“I hate you,” Stiles tried unsuccessfully to shove him off the couch, “Where is everyone else? I thought you said we were doing Halloween as pack movie night? There is movie,” he jabbed the sucker at the tv with one hand, “there is Halloween,” he gestured to the life-sized skeleton in a rubber mask he’d lugged all the way up from his jeep for whatever reason, “but I am not seeing a pack.”
That was a good question, “I asked Malia to text the group and—“
“You asked Malia, your cousin, who loses more phones than shoes?”
Derek frowned. “I lost the group chat when I had to replay my phone this morning, my third one this month, by the way.”
Water creatures in the preserve were hell on technology.
“—I’m up to 4!”
“It’s not a contest—”
“If it was, I’d be winning—losing? Oh man.”
“…As I was saying, I lost the group chat.”
“And you need someone to message it so you get it back? You’re such a luddite,” Stiles rolled his eyes. The way he contorted himself to dig in his pocket was obscene, but a moment later Derek’s cell vibrated. His brows went up. There was a heart emoji in the notification on the lock screen.
Stiles yelped, his cheeks going pink. Random emojis came rolling in along with asks from everyone else about tonight’s plans, and weren’t they supposed to be doing somethings? “I—I meant to hit the jack-o-lantern.”
Derek’s nose twitched.
Stiles’ blush extended down into collar. He looked up at Derek through his lashes.
How low did that flush go? Was the rest of him as mole-speckled as his cheeks?
“Did you?” Derek knelt up on the couch and began to creep forward over Stiles’ legs. The sex noises coming from the television speakers were undoubtedly heralding some poor teenagers’ messy demise, but Stiles’ eyes were locked on Derek’s face, no trace of the fear from earlier sparking in tawny gold eyes. A smirk teased at his lips even as he leaned away from Derek’s slow advance until he was sprawled out on his back against the cushions with the werewolf looming over him, caging him in with his body.
“Derek?”
“I’m protecting you from the monsters.” He let his eyes flash red, a hint of fang in his voice. His hands were lightly clawed when he reached up to cup a smooth cheek. The smell of arousal intensified. “You really ARE less scared of real-life monsters than movie ones.”
“Yeah, well. Hollywood horror rules,” he shrugged, “I figure if you bone the scary dude, the sex rule doesn’t count…so, you know…if you’re going to do the kissing thing…” Stiles’ eyes were wide, but the hands-on Derek’s shoulders were eager.
He was definitely going to do the kissing thing. He darted forward, predator quick.
Two phones vibrated across the coffee table, probably Lydia taking charge of movie night at her lake house, but Derek was more than happy with the turnout at his place.