@jazzathebunny: Derek/Stiles The Sandlot AU. :)
Done for my anything crossover prompts! And I know this canon! So this would have been a fun AU if I had done sandlot canon stuff, but instead I wrote this:
It’s not the worst thing that could have happened.
“This is the worst thing that could have happened,” Scott says, moaning into his mitt.
Stiles nudges him in the side with the tip of his bat, because it really isn’t. They could’ve beaned Jackson in the face again—which would have been hilarious, obviously, but also a pain in the ass, since Jackson would’ve finally gone and cried to his dad about all many times Stiles tries to take his head off with a baseball. It’s not Stiles’s fault that Jackson’s head is so gigantically swollen with ego.
Jackson says, “You know the rules, Stilinski,” smirking at him with his arms crossed. They’re all gathered at the back of the makeshift dugout, staring at the six foot privacy fence. “You fouled.”
Fouled so bad the ball went back and to the side, sailing over into Old Man Hale’s yard.
Scott says, “Worst,” again, and then wraps his arms around Stiles from behind in a hug, burying his face in Stiles’s back. “I’m sorry, dude.”
No one has actually met Old Man Hale, but everyone has met his dog.
His wolf-thing. His slavering hell-beast that is fifty times bigger than any dog should be allowed to be, with huge, razor sharp teeth and a snarl that has legit made Greenberg wet himself before. Stiles swears he’s seen its eyes glow red, when he’s gotten too close to the fence. There’s an ever-widening hole, it looks like it’s been constantly clawed at, and everyone fears for the day when it breaks through and kills them all.
Not like that stops them from playing. They’ve only got six more months before they break up the sandlot for college, Stiles may hate Jackson with every last fiber of his being, but they’ve all been playing here way too long to give up this close to graduation—their unfriendly new neighbor is just going to have to suck it up, and then if the hell hound ever actually breaks through the old, rickety fence, they can just throw Jackson and maybe Greenberg at it and run.
Danny cups a hand over his eyes, looks up at the sky. "Maybe we should just call it a day.“
Stiles pshaws. They have at least an hour more of daylight, they’re on their last ball, and Stiles is totally going to go over and get it. He tugs at the bottom of his t-shirt and straightens his back. Totally. Right. He reaches back and pats Scott on the head before prying his arms off him and saying, “Tell my father I love him.”
Jared starts openly weeping, and Stiles winks at him and forces a casual saunter toward Old Man Hale’s yard.
Lydia, who’d been up till then doing a fine job of ignoring everyone’s existence in favor of her homework, finally looks up from her book and says, “Don’t be an idiot, Stiles, just go around to the front.”
“You want me to knock on Old Man Hale’s door?” Stiles says. That’s just asking to be hand fed to the dog-shaped monster; at least going over the fence holds a chance that no one will even know he was there.
Lydia makes a face at him. “Firstly, who is Old Man Hale?” she says, because apparently not everyone has been calling him that in their head, go figure. “Derek's—”
“Lyds,” Stiles says, grasping her hand and holding it up to his heart, “I’ll miss you most of all.”
She twists out of his grip and says, “For god’s sake, Stiles—”
But Stiles has stopped listening. The weathered gray planks of the Hale fence loom before him. He takes a deep breath and crouches down to look through the hole… and then falls back on his ass when the gray-green eye of the wolf hybrid—are those even legal? He needs to tell his dad—gazes unblinkingly back at him. A low, threatening growl vibrates through the wood and straight into his spine.
He whispers to himself, “My old foe, Hell Dog. We meet again,” and the growling suddenly stops. Huh. Stiles slowly creeps forward, hands and knees in the dirt, and cautiously peeks through.
The dog has retreated a few feet, so Stiles can see its full massive size. It’s facing the fence, though, and has their baseball clenched in its big teeth. Its tail thumps the ground once, twice, and it seems to be staring directly into Stiles’s soul. Its head cocks to the side, almost in question.
And, okay, maybe it wants to play? Stiles can play. Stiles can totally play and not get mauled and at the same time get their ball back. That’s absolutely doable.
This dog. This dog is the best dog. This dog is large and furry and can put his paws on Stiles’s shoulders and likes to rub his face into Stiles’ neck, and this dog loves Stiles more than any of his other friends and kind of still wants to kill Jackson. There is no greater dog than this dog in the entire world.
The dog likes leans into Stiles’s side and licks at his hands and worms close for head scratches, eyes closed in obvious bliss. Stiles is strongly considering stealing this dog from Old Man Hale, the only thing wrong with that is that Stiles doesn’t actually know his name. Stiles figures he can’t steal a dog and just give him a completely new name.
Also, the stealing part of that would probably be wrong, too. At least according to his dad.
“Get your dog out of the outfield,” Jackson yells across the lot at him. The dog has a tendency to catch any balls Stiles misses; Jackson likes to call that cheating, when clearly the dog is now an actual member of Stiles’s team.
“Dog, man,” Stiles says down to him, one hand buried in his scruff. “You keep doing you.”
Stiles meets Old Man Hale on a Tuesday. He knows it’s a Tuesday because he’s at the store, picking up their regular Tuesday rotisserie chicken from the deli, but that’s, like, literally all he remembers.
Name? Gone. Ability to speak? Lost to the dry swallow he manages when the vision of beauty and grace and firm arm muscles holds out a hand and says, “I don’t think we’ve met, even though you’ve managed to practically steal my dog. I’m Derek.”
Stiles blinks and shuts his gaping mouth and says, “Uhhhhhhhh,” and watches, helpless, as red crawls in from Old Man—oh god, not old man at all, Hot Man? Godlike? Human Sunbeam?—Hale’s ears to cover the tops of his cheeks, the parts that can actually be seen above what is, apparently, the perfect amount of face fur to make Stiles tingle in his pants. Jesus.
Hale’s eyes are an indescribable green, Stiles is caught off guard by how much he kind of wants to, uh, hug him? It would be weird to bury his hands in a stranger’s hair, right, and mouth-breathe into his temple?
Hale’s lips falls from friendly smile to near scowl the longer Stiles silently stares at him like an idiot—would it be weird to just kiss him?—and Stiles has to talk himself out of following pathetically after when Hale stalks away.
“I’m an embarrassment, Scotty.” They’re laying side-by-side in the sandlot, long after everyone else has left. Dog hadn’t been there for the game, because apparently Hale was so offended by him on the infamous Tuesday that he’s stopped letting his dog outside the yard to play.
“I still have trouble believing that you couldn’t talk to him,” Scott says.
Stiles flails a hand up in the air. “He has weird eyes!” And apparently is a Stiles magnet, like sharing his dog has given them some sort of cosmic bond that makes Stiles want to wrap his arms around him and eat noodles and waffles and chicken nuggets with him and cuddle up to him in ways that only very slightly have to do with sex. Is it a full moon soon? Full moons always get him itchy.
It may or may not have anything to do with the fact that his mother was a witch.
Scott clucks his tongue sadly and reaches over to blindly pat at his face.
Three things happen the week Stiles and his friends are set to graduate high school.
One) Dog saves him and Scott from another, infinitely more scary hell-beast in the middle of the preserve.
Two) He somehow, amazingly and ridiculously, sees Derek Hale in all his naked glory. That is a thing that happened, and is now burned into his brain as both a treasured memory and a nightmare, mostly due to:
Three) Scott gets bitten by a werewolf.
All those things actually happen on the same day, at practically the same time, and makes them late to graduation by such a large margin that they actually aren’t late so much as they miss the entire thing. Stiles’s dad is pissed.
He becomes less pissed as he helps them drag a bloody, unconscious Derek Hale—private bits haphazardly covered by Stiles’s flannel—into the back of the veterinary clinic.
Stiles has had the privilege of knowing that Deaton is magic since he was little because of his mom and his mom’s ‘friendly’ rivalry with him, and how they kind of hated each other.
Stiles’s mom was always a firm believer in helping wherever and whenever she could, and Deaton’s a cryptic asshole who always gives Stiles lollypops and tells him to meditate.
So, like, if anyone can patch Derek up, it’ll be him. If he feels like it.
Deaton gravely says, “It’s up to him now,” after wrapping some bandages around Derek’s middle, forcing murky liquid down his throat, and holding out the Dum-Dum jar for Stiles like it’s a habit.
Stiles carefully chooses a mystery flavor and wishes for blue raspberry.
Deaton gives him a withering look, like he knows exactly what Stiles is doing, and says, “That defeats the purpose, Mr. Stilinksi.”
Stiles shrugs. He’s had enough lectures from Deaton on balance to last a lifetime, he really doesn’t care that now one of the blue raspberry Dum-Dums will probably end up, like, as lemon or cherry; lollypops are the very least of his worries right now.
Right now, when his dog-turned-man is pale and corpse-like on the metal table and his best friend has a mysteriously disappearing wound on his side that Stiles suspects means something either really terrible or fantastic.
Scott sits in the corner of the room, staring down at his hands, and says, “Do you think Allison will break up with me now?”
Dog and Stiles have a little chat, days later, on the sidelines by home plate at the lot. Stiles sits in front of him, cross-legged in the dirt and dust, and says, “So,” and, “You’re a werewolf,” and also, “I guess I should stop calling you Dog.”
Derek bares his teeth but bumps his muzzle up under Stiles’s chin and then rests his head heavily on Stiles’s shoulder. His chuffing sigh tickles Stiles’s hair, so he guesses that means he’s forgiven.
Scott as a werewolf is the worst, but only because he keeps trying to kill Stiles. Stiles is annoying on his best days, but the fact that Scott wants to eat him almost all the time sort of gets him down. Then again, maybe Stiles is delicious.
There are other upsides, too. Like werewolves—awesome—and the fact that Jackson’s team can’t win at the sandlot anymore. It infuriates Jackson to the point that it’s completely and totally hilarious. He spits when he’s mad, and there’s this pulsing vein that ruins the usually perfect line of his humongous forehead.
“So Derek Hale named his dog Derek?” Jackson says, sneering down at Derek in full wolf.
Derek is letting Stiles rub his belly, and Stiles tries not to think of Derek as a naked man.
The one drawback of infuriating Jackson is that he gets even more bitter and mean than usual, and Lydia left for college early. They now have the entire summer spread out ahead of them with just Danny to hold back Jackson’s ingrained douchebag tendencies.
Scott says, “Ha ha,” nervously and Stiles shoots him a look. Scott is the least subtle person ever, if anyone is going to spill the werewolf beans, it’ll probably be him.
Derek barks and flips over onto his feet, shaking fur all over. He rubs his body along Stiles and then twines around Scott and then nearly knocks Jackson off his feet as he saunters off to piss on a bush.
Jackson shifts his narrowed gaze from Stiles to Scott to Derek and back again. He says, “You two are up to something.”
Scott lifts his hands up. “Us? No way,” he says, and Stiles just rolls his eyes.
Late summer, it’s easy to lose time. The night is hot and humid, crackling with the static of an oncoming storm just past sundown.
They’ve got ice cream, all of them lazy after a game, Jackson refusing to let anyone into his car until they’re finished. There’s a streetlight over one corner of the lot, moths flickering in and out of the shadows. There’s an electric hum or a bug zapper from Mr. Chattenham’s back porch, and the occasionally crunch of gravel as a car or two trundles by.
Derek licks at Stiles’s cone, getting strawberry all over his furry face.
Jackson wrinkles his nose. “That’s disgusting.”
“You’re disgusting,” Stiles says, and laughs when Derek disappears into the dark, slinks around them and steals a lick from Jackson’s cone too.
“Holy shit, gross,” Jackson says, and holds it out so Derek can wolf down the whole thing.
Visibly smug, Derek trots back through the loose circle of them and lies down at Stiles’s side.
The back of Stiles’s neck is hot, and he looks up to see a strike of lightning flash across the sky. A boom follows only a few beats behind. There’s a pressure behind his breastbone, and he rests his free hand in his lap, loosely open, and raises his knees to hide the fact that he’s glowing. Storms and him have always gotten along a little too well.
Derek noses into the valley his legs make, presses his snout right into the thrumming in his palm. He breathes out, once, and then shakes his head and sneezes hard enough that Stiles laughs again, curling over to bury his face in the fluff around Derek’s ears.
Magic, werewolves and witches means it’s only a matter of time before the sandlot is overrun by pixies.
And while Jackson can be as oblivious as the next egotistical douchebag, it’s hard to miss it when Danny takes out one of the viciously tiny gray bastards with his bat.
Jackson points an accusing finger at Scott and says, “Werewolf!” when a pixie bites at Scott’s bicep and his eyes start to glow and he loses his eyebrows, which Stiles will never stop thinking is hilarious, even in dire situations such as this. “I thought you were all on fucking steroids, are you fucking kidding me?”
Danny says, “Maybe not now, Jackson,” and takes out another pixie that was aiming for Jackson’s jugular.
And then Stiles’s big bad Alpha tears through the back of his fence with a roar that they probably heard three counties over, and Jackson yells, “Fucking Derek Hale!”
Stiles barely resists a snarky yes, please as he watches Derek rip apart the little bloodthirsty devils with his teeth.
After the Battle of the Sandlot, as Stiles likes to call it—which Jared and Greenberg have collectively stricken from their memory somehow, by sheer force of will—Jackson becomes even more unbearable and Danny starts pretending that everyone around him doesn’t exist.
And then he shows up at the lot in the middle of August and says, “I’m going to college, and I wish you well,” and hands Stiles a book of runes with an exaggerated grimace. "From my grandmother.“
"Awesome,” Stiles says, and flips the book around in his hands. Worn bound leather, pages smelling like sulfur. Stiles really hopes it isn’t evil, but he’ll probably use it either way.
Danny hugs Jackson and says, “Please don’t let him bite you,” like Jackson hasn’t been hounding Derek nearly every day for just that.
It doesn’t help that Derek has betas now, and that Erica was almost unanimously voted hottest member of the Sandlot Gang, and that Boyd is gigantic and can probably crush Jackson with his thumb.
Isaac wears scarves, even in the 90 degree weather, and Jackson apparently takes that as an affront to preppy assholes everywhere.
But Stiles has threatened Derek with hexes and an immediate halt to all belly rubs if he ever puts even one tooth on any part of Jackson’s body.
It only surprises him a little that Derek actually takes that warning to heart.
Stiles has thoroughly thought this through, the fact that he wants to take a gap year between high school and college, his decision made long before Old Man Hale became not old and also part dog.
His plan was to convince Deaton to not be an asshole for once and teach him some shit, and now it feels like that is doubly important. He has to save Derek from himself and Scott from everything else, apparently, since Scott can be a soft-hearted idiot and only ever wants to go after Stiles’s face when he’s a rage-monster. Even little tasty bunnies are safe from his wrath.
Allison decides to help too, because her extended family is psychotic and even her dad doesn’t want to see Scott split in half by crazy hunters.
Which are a thing, and it doesn’t surprise Stiles at all, because he’s seen every episode of Buffy and Supernatural.
Both Derek and his dad convince him to sign up for some classes at the community college with Scott, and it’s an agreeable compromise—one that apparently weirds Dad and Derek out, since they stare at each other with mutual grumpy scowls long enough for Stiles to get super uncomfortable.
It’s like Derek is silently daring his dad to stop him from being in Stiles’s life, and, ha ha, this kind of thing only really makes sense if they’re dating.
Which they aren’t. At all.
Even if Dog accidentally slipped him some tongue during an enthusiastic petting. There was the hunched back of shame, afterwards, and Stiles had to hug him for a full five minutes before Derek relaxed enough again to lick at his neck.
Finally, his dad turns to him and says, “No sleepovers until you’re eighteen,” which, holy crap, is he bright red? He’s pretty sure he’s flaming right now, wow, and also—holy crap, he’ll be eighteen in two months, this is amazing.
Derek has one eyebrow arched at him like an asshole. Is that an invitation? Stiles isn’t sure, he thinks he’s gonna need something a little more explicit.
Stiles practices meditation, because Deaton is still a jerk, even though he agreed to teach Stiles the ways of the druids and promised, kind of, not to be too much of a downer about balance and using the force.
He hangs out at the sandlot by himself, since Scott and the rest of the betas all take more classes than him, Jackson has thankfully left the state for the year, everyone else on their baseball teams either started college or jobs, and Jared and Greenberg peaced-out after deciding their entire gang was just a figment of their imagination. They’re probably going to need a lot of therapy.
Derek splits time between throwing his betas around and lounging half on top of Stiles in furry form, and Stiles isn’t exactly sure what he’s waiting for.
The night is sharp and cool for September. Stiles tosses a ball up and catches it, over and over, until he sees movement out of the corner of his eye and nearly takes off Derek’s head.
Derek catches the baseball one handed, directly in front of his face, and Stiles holds a palm to his rapidly beating heart.
“Crap,” he says, “learn to make noise like a normal human being, dude.”
Derek throws the ball over his shoulder and into his own backyard. He says, “I’m not a normal human being, Stiles,” and Stiles just shrugs.
“Normal as we get around here.” Stiles pats the ground next to him and waits for Derek to either morph full wolf or tell him to go home, it’s late, go to sleep.
Instead, Derek sits down. He leans back on his hands, wrist pressed up against the bare strip of skin on Stiles back between his jeans and his shirt.
He runs hot, and Stiles shivers.
The quiet makes Stiles shift restlessly, makes his palms glow. He presses them together, knowing that Derek will hear the excited crackle of his magic, even though he’s staring out across the lot.
Derek moves, tugs Stiles closer, all along his side, and they both just breathe.
Winter break, Jackson catches them making out after a ball went foul and Derek had strolled out of his house to help Stiles find it in the wilds of his backyard.
He yelps, a hand slapped over his face, and says, “My eyes are bleeding; Christ, get some pants on, Stilinski! For god’s sake, it’s nearly Christmas, have you no shame!”
Stiles can hear Erica cackling, there is no doubt in Stiles’s mind that her and Isaac put him up to this.
Jackson, eyes covered, says, “We’re in the middle of a fucking game, assholes,” and stumbles back over the still-ruined-by-pixies fence line making delightful retching noises.
Stiles nudges at Derek, says, “Duty calls, big guy,” and then regretfully follows Jackson to the sandlot—there’s a rustle behind him, an excited bark, and then Derek streaks by, a massive black wolf, the lost baseball in his mouth.
He drops it neatly in Lydia’s hand, ignores her grimace at the drool, and then rushes for the outfield.
