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John was finally on his way home after an extra long shift which he’d used to catch up on all the damn paperwork. Even after all this time on the job, he still had the nasty habit of pushing off his paperwork till there was a quite impressive mountain of it on his desk. He usually only noticed there was a problem with the mountain growing too big when some kid was brought in for a small misdemeanor and John had no way to glare the kid down from behind his desk because the paperwork was in the way. Yes, that’s how bad he let it get.
Over the course of the week he’d actually gotten it done, and now he’d put in a couple extra hours to file the last things and get his desk in perfect order again before the weekend. He was satisfied that he’d be able to start at a clean desk again come Monday. But John wasn’t as delusional to think that this order would last any longer than it had taken him to get rid of it. In a week, that desk would be littered with candy wrappers and stray papers again.
Anyway, that’s not what he should be thinking about now. Clean desk. Good thoughts. Weekend. An evening to spend with his son: watching the ballgame, lounging on the couch, enjoying a -hopefully not too healthy - home cooked meal. Friday nights were relaxing and stress free and he really deserved one.
He rounded the corner of the street and before he saw his house he had to do his best to evade the sudden group of kids running across the street. Well, kids, these guys were about Stiles’ age, maybe a little older. He seriously thought kids had given up playing around outside and on the street. If the group hadn’t seemed to be running away from him and shouting and pointing at his cruiser, he would have actually been happy to see some kids playing outside again. Clearly these little rascals weren’t up to a lot of good though.
Suddenly seeming to be able to feel the weight of his badge on his chest, he thought about chasing after them and finding out what exactly they’d done. Then again, how much trouble could a couple of kids really cause? His mind immediately provided him with a couple of examples of just how much trouble little kids could get into.
“Okay fine, so maybe it wasn’t very smart to climb on mister Whittemore’s car and I’m really sorry it got all scratched up but it was for a good cause, mom! There was a kitten in the tree and it wasn’t a good climbing tree at all, I had to use something to reach the lowest branches!”
“Mom, whatever miss McCall tells you, it can’t be breaking and entering when I didn’t break anything!”
“What? You don’t really believe I wanted to actually rob the bank, right, dad? I was just testing their security measures! I had a feeling about that new security guard they hired and I was right dad! He almost shot me! No good guy would pull his gun on a 10 year old! I’m sorry I upset you and wasted the time of the ambulance and fire department and… and the… Oh my god, dad, the F.B.I. is here! Can I go talk to them and ask them about their secret department that deals with all the alien stuff?”
“Why are you crying miss McCall? The doctor is fine. I mean, I feel bad for forgetting about leaving him in there for so long. But you always say that I need to take the time somewhere quiet to think about a problem. He needs to fix my mom and he hasn’t figured it out! So I put him in that janitor’s closet and locked him in because all he needs is to just think about it and then he’ll know how to fix it! He’s a doctor, miss McCall, he has to figure it out! I’m sorry I forgot about locking him in there and I’m sorry I made you cry…”
Okay, so John should really find out what those kids had done. He was about to drive after them instead of turning into his driveway when his eyes fell on one kid left… on his driveway. The kid looked absolutely terrified. Standing there frozen in the middle of John’s driveway holding a half-empty carton of eggs.
No. Seriously? This was supposed to be a relaxing friday night! There was not supposed to be any egging of his house going on! Which kid was even stupid enough to egg the sheriff’s house?
“What do you think you’re doing?” John asked and fixed his glare on the teenager as soon as he had climbed out of his cruiser. The kid opened his mouth but nothing came out. “I really hope there’s a better explanation for this than some stupid game you and your friends were playing.” Apart from a blush, there was still no reaction from the kid.
“Okay, start with your name, so I know who’ll be cleaning my porch.”
“D-Derek Hale, sir. I… I’m sorry… I…”
“Yes? I’m genuinely curious about your apology, you know, my son has gotten quite creative with them so I’ve got pretty high standards these days. So please, please continue, Derek.” He could practically hear the wheels in Derek’s head turning.
“Your son… I erm… I was trying to get back at him….?” Derek stammered.
“Oh boy, this sounds like a promising and convincing start to a very true story. I’m listening.” The sheriff answer was dripping with sarcasm which made Derek flinch a little bit.
“He was… mean to me.” This kid must be a pretty good kid usually, or good at not getting caught, because clearly he hadn’t gotten a lot of practice lying. “We fought? And he… he always talks so much. So I couldn’t get a word in… so I thought… this?”
“If you and Stiles had a fight there must have been a reason for that. What did you do to him?” John was seriously starting to lose his cool here.
“I didn’t do anything to him!” Well, that was certainly the first thing Derek said that he himself believed in. “He… he… he broke up with me. And I… I really like him but he just… texted me and he’s not answering his phone.”
What?
Well that was certainly some out of the box thinking. And Derek was even looking down about it all, for the first time his facial expression actually matched what he was saying.
*****
John found Stiles in his room, music undoubtedly blaring through his headphones and working on… something. The sheriff had long since stopped assuming his son was doing homework when he had 14 tabs of Wikipedia pages opened on one half of his screen and a word document on the other half. He’d taught himself that not asking or knowing about his son’s researching, would really help with his mental health.
He took a second to come up with a good opening line. He couldn’t make a statement that Stiles would just be able to flat out deny, and he couldn’t ask an obvious question either. So…. “Son, there’s a Derek Hale here to see you.” To the sheriff’s horror, his son went wide-eyed at the mention of the other teenager that was currently sulking in his front yard. Oh god, John was way too tired for this.
“What? Derek is here? Why is Derek here? Does he want to see me? Is he here for me? You’re sure it’s Derek Hale? Why would he suddenly show up here? What does that mean? Dad, what does it mean?! This is important!” Stiles looked somewhat frantic as he was pacing the room.
“Oh, I don’t know, son. Why don’t you tell me? What does ‘egging the house’ mean these days?” That made his son stop dead in his tracks.
“What? He was doing what? No, no, Derek’s a nice guy, he wouldn’t… what?” Well at least Stiles looked as confused as John was feeling.
“If you thought he was such a nice guy, then why did you break up with him?”
“Me? Break up with him? What? Have you seen the guy? As if I would willingly throw that out!” Fair point. But not really an explanation. This friday night was way more confusing than it had any right to be. “What the fuck?!” Stiles may be looking confused, but he also looked ready to give the kid in their frontyard some hell as he stormed downstairs.
*****
Derek thought he’d been scared before, but when he saw Stiles marching out of the house with that killer-look on his face, he finally understood what it meant to be really really terrified.
“What the fuck? Are you fucking serious right now? Egging my house? Explain! With words!” The sheriff kept standing on the porch to observe what was clearly going to be Derek’s last moment on this earth. Derek didn’t understand what Stiles thought was going on because why in god’s name was he so freaking angry at him.
Derek was painfully aware of the sheriff still standing there, somewhat within hearing distance, so he lowered his voice to a whisper. “Stiles, I… it was… it was a dare. Jackson dared me to do this and I -”
“You expect me to believe that? Jackson has got nothing to do with this!” Derek glanced nervously at the sheriff.
“Could you please just keep your voice dow-”
“Keep my voice down? Oh that’s rich! I’m not allowed to shout at the person who’s egging my house? What the fuck is wrong with you? Seriously!”
Well of course Derek knew this wasn’t a particularly good idea when he started doing it, but he never really considered getting caught. He thought he could get away with it and then swing by and heroically offer Stiles to help him clean the porch and it would be a cheesy story to tell the grand kids. About how Derek was so stupid to do truth or dare with the biggest jerks in the school and how dumb it was to go through with egging the sheriff’s house. How he hadn’t even thought about Stiles being the sheriff’s kid. But then it would all work out in the end because no one would find out and it would be great when Derek would sweep in and help Stiles out. They’d clean the eggs up and it would be the first time they got dirty together.
But this, Stiles actually catching Derek vandalizing his house, well he hadn’t counted on that. At all. And now oh god. how was he supposed to ever recover from this? He thought it had been going well with Stiles. Derek had actually managed to let his grades drop so badly in his senior year that he knew the principal couldn’t do anything but assign him the best tutor in school. “It’s a lucky coincidence all the classes your failing happen to be the ones Stiles is tutoring in. It’s always hard to schedule tutoring moments when a kid needs a couple of different tutors. With all their different class schedules and such.”
Yes, a lucky coincidence. He’d managed to steal away 6 hours a week with the cutest guy in school. Just by playing stupid in a couple of his classes. God it had been so worth it too, it had totally been worth all the disappointed looks his mom gave him, it had totally been worth almost getting thrown out of the team and it had even been worth Stiles’ initial assumption of Derek just being that stupid jock.
And they’d really clicked. The last couple of weeks were fun. Stiles and Derek joking around while getting work done, studying together regularly… And having Stiles explain everything to him like that had given Derek an excellent excuse to just stare at the most gorgeous face in Beacon Hills High for six hours a week. But now he’d probably screwed all of it up, just for a stupid dare.
“Look, I told your dad I did it because you broke up with me so he wouldn’t arrest me.” Derek rushed out in a hiss. “I’m sorry!”
“Me? I broke up with you? Oh fuck off!” But something in Stiles’ eyes changed and he lowered his voice so his dad wouldn’t be able to understand him “That is the single worst excuse ever, Derek, because people like me don’t break up with people like you!”
“I’m sorry! He said I had to be creative because he’s used to creative excuses from you… so if anything, this is your fau-”
“Don’t!” Stiles angrily poked the ridiculously firm chest in front of him, “Even if this was a dare, Hale, you don’t just go around egging people’s houses! Who even does that anymore aside from Justin Bieber? Get a normal hobby!”
“I’m sorry! I really am! I thought I’d just get it over with and clean it up before anyone noticed, but then your dad got home and he had handcuffs and a gun and he was going to arrest me and I suck at lying, okay! Just please, Stiles, please don’t let him arrest me!” And really, Stiles had never been able to fight off the magic of puppy-eye-pleas.
So he nodded but then proceeded to push Derek so hard he dropped the carton of eggs on the lawn. “Fine, you wanted some sort of domestic dispute, you will get one, Hale.”
“What?” Oh come on, Stiles was going to do this and Derek was too confused to give him anything decent to work with! He’d never be able to pull off the Oscar-worthy performance they needed to convince his dad if Derek wasn’t going to cooperate.
“You can’t fucking blame me for breaking up with you, Derek! We were never going to work out! You said it yourself!” It took a while for Derek to get with the program but when he finally did he pushed Stiles back.
“I never said that!” oh dear, Stiles really hoped that Derek didn’t have any dreams of becoming an actor...
“Fine! You implied it! Like you do with everything else! Because talking is actually way too much effort for Derek Hale!”
“I was trying! For you! And you don’t get to throw that in my face when you broke up with me through a text, Stiles! Coward!” Where was their drama teacher, because really this whole performance was worth an A+.
“What? I’d never do that…” Stiles whispered. “You can’t blame me for texting you when you made it so I couldn’t even look at you anymore! You were hanging out with Jackson all the time. Pretty, pretty Jackson! Co-captains of the lacrosse team and apparently just as close in the showers as on the field!” Derek looked genuinely disgusted at the mention of him and Jackson.
“What? No! Jackson and me? That’s why you broke up with me? Because you heard some sort of stupid lockerroom rumor?”
“Not just a rumor, Derek! You’re with him all the time!” If they could just make this last a little longer, Stiles was sure he could manage some fake tears. “You’re either training with him, playing a game together or you’re celebrating together after a game! And whenever we’re finally together for a little bit, you’re texting him! I’ve had enough of it, Derek!”
“I told you he’s just clingy! Ever since Danny changed schools he’s been lonely. If that’s all that this is about, Stiles, you could have just come to talk to me. I could have just told Jackson to back off or give me some space! You didn’t suddenly have to jump the gun and break up with me! We had something good going on and you’ve just thrown it away over that?”
“You never gave me any reason to suspect that you’d choose me over Jackson when it came down to it! You’re like… joined at the hip all the time! Some sort of creepily attractive and popular set of conjoined twin jocks! And I’m just… I’m just the nobody, which Jackson loves to remind me of by the way” Oh Stiles really shouldn’t have gone there, truth bombs ahead... “the nerd who has to sit alone at lunch because his boyfriend never even talks to him in school! I only ever see you when you need help with studying or for some… some quick make-out session in the janitor’s closet or the bathroom.” okay, so he kind of wished the last bit was true.
“What? I’d never make out with you in the bathroom! I mean… I have never.. we have never made out. In the bathroom.” Oh my god, Derek really was awful at this lying stuff, Stiles should put an end to this quickly before it all went to complete shit.
“Now you’re embarrassed about our make-out sessions no one knew about? I’m done being a dirty little secret, Derek! And you can find someone else to tutor you! I’m done!” Stiles turned around and planned on marching dramatically back to the house, but Derek grabbed his hand and held him back.
“You… you don’t mean that, right?”
“Yes I mean it! You are egging my house, Derek! Find some other tutor! Maybe you can even join Jackson in his tutoring sessions with Lydia.” He sneered.
“But… you’re the only one who can help me make sense of all the numbers!” Derek had practiced this lie enough for it to sound genuine by now. “I need you. I’ll never understand maths or chemistry or biology without you!”
Of course. Well that much Stiles knew. Derek needed his tutoring skills or he’d never be allowed to stay on the team. But for the last couple of weeks, Stiles had dared to hope that maybe they’d at least become friends. And maybe there’d been something more in the cards for them too.
Ha, that’ll serve Stiles right for getting his hopes up. As if Derek Hale - co-captain of the lacrosse team, hottest and cutest guy in school, somehow a straight A student for everything but maths, chem and bio - would ever be able to like silly spaz Stilinski like that. As if.
“You should have thought about that before you let Jackson get into your head and ruin my weekend! Do you have any idea how long it’s going to take me to clean that up?”
“Stiles! For god’s sake, would you just stop leaving? Let me talk!” Derek tightened his hold on Stiles’ hand. “God, you always do this! You always talk so much! You keep talking and talking and distracting me from what I really wanted to say and the next thing i know you’re already leaving and in the end I never get to say what I need to say! You tell me I don’t talk but that’s because you talk all the time! You always talk so much and I love that you do because I hate talking but… just let me… for once.” Derek took a deep breath.
“God, I can’t believe I’m doing this right after I egged your house. I’ve been trying to ask you something for weeks now but you were always talking and distracting me by sucking on your stupid pencils all the time. And you never even notice what you do to me and it’s ridiculous!”
“Distracting? I don’t suck on my pencils, Derek!”
“Then why do you keep putting them in your mouth? In your ridiculous mouth! And I know I’m not good with words so for a while I figured I might just get away with you know… doing something instead of saying something. But I can’t exactly sweep in and kiss you when there are always pencils in the way!” Derek had never seen Stiles look so shocked.
“Kiss m-”
“Would you shut up and let me talk? I just want to ask you out to prom but it’s impossible! Because you’re always droning on about numbers or about chemistry when all I want to do is ask if you feel the chemistry between us too. I know that’s cheesy, bu it’s true! And god, to hear you talk about biology and all the stupid horrible sexual puns you make and never letting me get a word in! All I wanted was to ask you to go to prom with me, I’ve been trying to do it for weeks!” There was a pause, but Stiles didn’t really know what to say to that, prom, really?
“Oh my god, now say something, Stiles! First I can’t shut you up and now you can’t answer me anymore?” Derek seriously couldn’t believe this was what his life had turned into.
“Prom?”
“Yes, prom, Stiles! The dance! Will you go with me?”
Stiles squinted at Derek and flailed his arms towards the porch where his dad was still standing, looking more confused every second. “You egged my house!”
“I told you it was a dare and I’m sorry!”
“I thought it was because my son broke up with you!” John called from the porch, clearly not happy about having been lied to, but he didn’t sound all that surprised about it.
“Dad, will you just stay out of this! Derek freaking Hale is asking me to prom!”
“He egged my house!” The sheriff shouted back.
“That’s what I said! Now would you just let me handle this?” Stiles didn’t wait for a response from the sheriff he just grabbed Derek by the collar and pushed him against the side of his jeep.
Really, Stiles was planning on giving a big speech about how awful Derek was, but dang, Derek letting himself be manhandled by Stiles was giving Stiles some new kind of rush. And the resulting sight of Derek against his jeep, being boxed in by Stiles’ own hands and arms… Stiles couldn’t even blame himself for giving in and finally smashing his lips against Derek’s.
And he really hopes that’s about when his dad went back inside, because what followed was a way too heated make-out session, way too heated for it to be allowed in any kind of public place. They were probably traumatizing all the neighbors.
Stiles finally pulled away and Derek looked like a dazed Greek God still leaning against Stiles’ baby blue jeep. He smirked, satisfied that he’d been able to make Derek freaking Hale look like that. Stiles poked a finger in Derek’s chest once more. “You are going to clean all of that up, Hale, and I’m going to need a better promposal than having my house egged. Got it?”
“So… is that a yes?”
“No, that’s a ‘try harder and I’ll see you on Monday’. Now get back to the kissing, you’re good at that.” Derek put his hands on Stiles’ hips and pulled him back in again.
“Are you sure about that? I think I could use some tutoring.”