“Are you really going to kill me off?” Derek crossed his arms. “I can’t believe this.”
“After everything he’s been through?” Stiles went on. He crossed his arms as well and stood next to his husband with a matching expression of disbelief. “Why can’t it be Isaac?”
Isaac spun around in the kitchen to send a glare at Stiles. He gave him a sarcastic smirk before he reached for the handle on the refrigerator. “Didn’t I go through enough in my life?”
“Did you lose most of your family?”
“I lost my entire family.”
Stiles scoffed under his breath. “You’re not Derek.”
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
(Please also check out the sun collection of this one as I’d forgotten I had pre-made a collection ages ago and some fics got posted there. My apologies for any confusion!)
Derek Hale has been teaching fourth graders for about seven years now—six of which he's spent pining for one of the other fourth grade teachers. Not Ms. Blake, no, she had creepily tried getting Derek into her bed instead of a movie theater like he imagined when he heard the word "date."
No, Derek liked Mr. Stilinski—Mr. S as the kids called him. And no, not the town's Sheriff Mr. Noah Stilinski, but Stiles Stilinski, local menace and teasing master.
On a daily basis, Stiles managed to mold the minds of tomorrow using unorthodox methods, stain some part of his outfit at least once before the end of the school day, and hypnotize Derek even further with quick quips and liquid-amber eyes.
It took a special group of eight- and nine-year-old children for buried infatuations to come to light.
It started off with a seemingly-innocent question from one of Derek's wards during recess.
Isaac Lahey tended to not get along with the other kids—especially that Whittmore boy, he was a particularly nasty one—so the curly-haired cherub usually spent allotted recess time talking to Derek. Sometimes, when Stiles wasn't busy, he would join the two in riveting conversation by the picnic tables.
It was one day like so in early October when Isaac looked up with bright blue eyes and asked innocently, "Are you and Mr. S dating?"
Derek felt his neck grow hot as he gaped at the young boy. He didn't know how to answer, but Stiles apparently did. Without missing a beat the flirt shook his head and replied, "Nope. Mr. Hale hasn't asked me out yet."
Isaac turned accusingly towards him, affronted, and demanded, "Why not?"
"Yeah," Stiles chuckled, amber eyes twinkling with mischief, "why not?"
The teacher floundered for a response. The best he could manage was, "Rejection feels terrible."
Tiny sapphire irises flickered between the two, Isaac's math homework laying abandoned on gray plastic. "He wouldn't reject you," the boy claimed.
Stiles nodded seriously, confirming, "I wouldn't reject you."
Derek glared at the other adult. Stiles certainly wasn't helping the conversation by repeating everything Isaac thought of as easy as breathing.
Fiddling with a stray eraser, Derek stared at splintered wood, mumbled, "How was I supposed to know that."
Stiles snorted. "Dude," he huffed, "you have a major advantage in the 'knowing things' department."
As if to prove his point, Stiles flicked his hands up to his crown and made his fingers dip once in a synchronized wave, face scrunched in a mock-growl.
Derek's confusion shifted to bewilderment as he understood that Stiles understood. Mystified, the werewolf started, "How did you..."
"You aren't exactly subtle," Stiles smirked, crossing his arms as he raised a brow to the child beside them.
Isaac nodded knowingly, "Ms. Argent's bunny hates you."
With Derek's brain still fried from the knowledge that his unrequited crush A) wouldn't physically crush him and B) wasn't so unrequited—Stiles had to take matters into his own hands.
Quite literally.
"So," he smiled, cupping Derek's hand on the table gently, fiddling with his pinky, "how about that date?"
The werewolf nodded, wordless excitement bubbling to the surface. Derek properly intertwined their fingers and brushed their ankles together. "That sounds amazing," he smiled back.
Isaac smiled wider until his grin matched his teachers' in vibrancy. "Now are you and Mr. S dating?"
They sat at the table and Stiles recounted the evening’s events. Derek was focused on Stiles too much to eat. His waffles were getting soggy with syrup. Stiles was getting to the end and Derek still hadn’t eaten. He shook his head.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“What? So you could feel it too?”
“So you wouldn’t feel it alone.”
“I didn’t think it was worth it.”
“If you started praying, you had to have been terrified. I’ve never heard you pray.”
“It wasn’t really praying, I was talking to my mom. I was hoping she would protect me.”
Derek plugged in the vacuum and attached the hose. He waved it over every inch of the carpet in that corner. He branched out towards the television and the chair. He moved as far as the cord would allow. Derek removed the dust bag from the vacuum and rifled through the contents.
“Did you find it?”
Derek looked in the bag with his eyebrows drawn together. “Not yet.”
Stiles’ expression changed from a downturned mouth and a crease in his forehead to a raised eyebrow. “So it just disappeared?”
Derek sighed. “It couldn’t have. Things don’t just disappear. It has to be on the floor. Maybe it bounced off of something and we didn’t see where it went.” He looked at Stiles. “We’re going to find it. We’ll move all the furniture. Things don’t drop out of existence, it’s around here somewhere.”
“She’s laughing at our fear,” Peter said. “Who wants to bet she’s already possessed?”
“So the power went out. So what? You’re all freaking out over nothing. It’s a doll. It’s also Halloween. You’re psyching yourselves out.”
“Then why not play it safe and get rid of it?” Lydia suggested. “We’ve seen Stiles possessed and it wasn’t pretty. Do you want to run that risk again?”
Peter looked at his daughter with disappointment. “If you wanted a doll, I’ll take you to Toys R Us. You can have whatever doll you want in the store. That thing is gross.”
“That thing,” Isaac said, “is not coming in the house. Fuck that.”
Malia blinked and shut the car door harshly. “What’s wrong with her?”
“You realize that doll is creepy, right?” Derek inquired.
“She has a name.”
“Wonderful,” Cora deadpanned. “So you want to be murdered by your doll in the middle of the night?”
