Archive of Our Own

Going to college was, for Stiles, like living the best dream he had ever had. He was surrounded by like-minded people, and was no longer the outcast dork who sat on the bench during practices, but was instead the hilarious cut-up everyone wanted to have at their parties. He made dozens of friends the first year, hung on to about half of them for the next year, and then somehow became the go-to campus fun maker. He just knew how to do it, knew how to get a party to take off, to get people who didn't know each other to start talking, and also how to get both women and men loosened up enough to take their clothes off in his room. He didn't have a roommate his third year, thank all the gods both living and dead, so he no longer had to work quite so hard to maintain his winning seduction streak (He hadn't been turned down yet, which after his dire high school years had been quite the reversal. Scotty hadn't really believed him, but after visiting a few times over the years, began to bow down before him with a "we're not worthy" whenever he led another willing soul through his door.)

And he had thought himself the luckiest man in all of space and time until the day he was sitting on his narrow (much trafficked) bed, staring at a crying brunette with his jaw hanging open. "You can't be," he said.

She gave him a narrow eyed look. "No birth control is one hundred percent," she said.

"I know that!" he shouted, winced at his volume, and said, quieter, "I know that. Jesus. You're sure?"

"Yes." The tone of her voice had changed to something low and dangerous. "And it's definitely yours. You're the only one I've been with."

"In the past few months," said Stiles. "The only one in the past few months, you mean, right?"

"No," she said.

Stiles dropped his head in his hands. "Jesus." It wasn't like he had forgotten her. She had been gorgeous and sweet and really into him at that sorority party Lydia had talked him into going to, and he had had a good time. But he'd had no idea that she was a virgin, nor that he might have to have the talk he was currently having with anyone. He was seriously considering handing in his bisexual card. At least he couldn't get a boy pregnant.

"What do you want to do?" he said, when he could finally raise his head out of his hands.

Her surprised look at his question made him almost angry. What kind of monster did she think he was?

"Um, I can't get an abortion," she said.

"Why not? Never mind," said Stiles, raising his hands in surrender when he saw her face harden. "So, no abortion."

"But my parents would murder me if I don't get my degree," she said, sounding hopeless. "It's bad enough I got pregnant."

"Yeah, sorry about that," said Stiles to her brief glare. Stupid condom-defying sperm.

"So I'm going to put it up for adoption."

Stiles was nodding along, now, as she laid out her detailed plans for the 34 weeks to come, how she was consulting with an adoption agency, nod nod nod, how she was going to give birth in the university hospital in July, nod nod nod, how she wouldn't have to miss any school at all and then the baby would go to a loving family, nod nod shake shake shake.

"Wait," said Stiles. "What about me?"

"What about you?" she said. "You're not going to have to do a thing. I told you. I'm putting it up for adoption."

"Yeah, well, what. about. me?" he said again. "I don't like the idea of my kid going off to live in someone else's house, ya know? What if they're, I don't know, Republicans, or, like, Mormons or something? What if they like Marvel more than DC? Vanilla more than chocolate? No, no kid of mine will be subject to that kind of travesty."

The girl wrinkled her nose, looking offended. Oh shit. He hoped she wasn't a Marvel fan. "You mean you want to keep it?"

"Yeah? I mean, I think so?" Stiles started rubbing at his neck. Holy shit. He really was thinking so. "I have to talk to my dad, first. But, yeah, I think I really do." He stared at his hands on his knees. Shit. He was going to be a dad. Maybe. "I really do." He hoped the Stilinski family stubbornness wasn't a dominant trait, but he had a feeling it was. "Don't sign any papers or anything until I get back from Thanksgiving," he said.

"All right," she said, sounding extremely doubtful. He couldn't really blame her.

Once the girl had left his room, after he had put every possible contact number, email, and address he could think of into her phone, he proceeded to get absolutely shit-faced all by himself on a bottle of berry Absolut someone had left in his mini fridge, drunk dialed Jackson, Greenberg, and Coach Finstock purely to hang up on them and laugh into his pillow for no reason, and then he booked an earlier flight home for Thanksgiving. He was going to need all the time possible to hash things out with his dad, and to cry himself out on Scotty's shoulder. He was going to be a dad.

"Holy Mary Mother of God," he said, channelling the Goonies. "Someone needs to stop me."

His dad picked him up at the little podunk airport nearest their town in a squad car, which Stiles knew he only did so he could leave it in the Arrivals lane without any worries that it would be towed, thereby proving to him that his Sheriff dad was a criminal at heart. Stiles hugged him tight, squeezing his eyes shut when he almost lost it right there at the freaking baggage claim in front of a lady with pink hair and a Pomeranian. Seriously, it smelled like jet fuel and Cinnabon. He needed to get home before the dam of his poorly restrained emotions burst.

"You all right, kid?" said Dad, pulling away and looking into his face with his concerned eyebrows on. Stiles just knocked him on the shoulder with his fist.

"Just miss you, you know," he said, ducking to throw his bag into the trunk and walking around to the passenger door.

"Sure," said Dad, sounding not at all sure. "Missed you, too."

"Yeah," said Stiles, nervously glancing at his dad once he was behind the steering wheel and they were on the road. He hoped that would hold once he broke the news.

An hour later and they were sacked out on the sofa with the remains of a pizza between them and an episode of Deep Space Nine playing on the tv.

"I never got why they replaced Dax," his dad was saying. "I mean, I like Ezri as much as the next guy, but, man, Jadzia." Dad gave a low whistle.

"Gross, knock it off, dude, I don't need to think about your old man libido," said Stiles. "Besides, the only character with any sex appeal on this show is Gul Dukat before he went completely evil and crazy."

Dad side-eyed him with extreme prejudice. "Uhuh."

"Don't look at me like that! I like the neck ridges," said Stiles. He played with the empty Coke can he was holding. "So, I need to tell you something."

"Ah, here it comes."

"What?!"

"I knew there had to be something. What is it, unpaid parking tickets? Some kind of disgusting prank? Please tell me it isn't a DUI."

"What are you talking about?"

"You mean you don't need me to smooth over anything legal for you?" said his dad.

"No?"

"Well, I mean, it was the most logical--"

"I got somebody pregnant."

Stiles had closed his eyes, but the silence continued for so long that he finally cracked one open. The Sheriff was staring at him with his mouth hanging open.

"You got somebody pregnant," he said finally. The shock on his face was very unflattering.

"Yes? That happens sometimes when a boy and a girl have sex." Stiles was starting to feel a little insulted.

Dad was shaking his head. "No. No, it only happens when a boy and a girl have unprotected sex," he said finally, and Stiles could hear the anger, and hurt, and fear underlying that sentence.

"No, Dad, no, whatever you're thinking isn't true. I don't have unprotected sex."

"But then how--"

"No birth control is one hundred percent," he said, with a shrug. "And we just happened to fall into the unlucky few percent where it failed. I swear."

"Soooo," said his dad, leaning back into the sofa. "She keeping it?"

"Not...exactly."

"Stiles," said Dad, in that tone of voice that Stiles had heard so, so, so many times in his life. Pretty much whenever he had done something that required an explanation of some kind, in fact. And here he was, having to explain.

"Dad," he said back, just as he always did. His dad didn't bother with a response, just a pointed glare.

"She wants to give it up for adoption. I want to adopt it. I mean, I want to keep it. With me. You know. Be its dad." Stiles flinched. He was an adult, goddamnit. "I want to keep the baby."

Dad blinked at him, and let out a huge sigh. "That is...Stiles, you have to know how hard that's gonna be."

"I know."

"I mean, your education. Your career."

"I know, Dad."

"How are you going to--"

"I was hoping to get a little help? From my dad? Maybe?" said Stiles. He slumped back into the sofa, and crinkled the soda can between his hands, rolling it around and around between them. "I can move back here, go to the community college and complete my undergrad, work from home until the kid is older, maybe go back to get my Master's once everything's settled down. It'll be fine. I know I can do it." He rolled the can a few more times, liking the feel of the crinkling aluminum between his palms. "I know I can." He finally got up the courage to look over at his dad, who he was surprised to find staring at him with liquid eyes.

"I know you can, too," he said, his voice husky with emotion.

"Screw you, don't make me cry, you menace," said Stiles, wiping at his mysteriously wet eyes. Suddenly he was being crushed in a hug by 180 pounds of soggy middle aged cop. Stiles slapped his dad on the back as he was slowly compacted by his arms. "How's it feel to be a Grandpa before you hit 50?"

"Jesus, shut up, you're the menace you menace," said Dad, sitting back with a laugh and wiping his eyes with his sleeve. "When's the baby due?"

"July 10th," said Stiles, smiling.

"July? I'm gonna be an uncle in July?" said Scott, his eyes huge and shining.

Stiles couldn't have kept hold of his secret much longer, so when Thanksgiving dinner rolled around, he basically announced it at the dinner table at Scott's house, where he and Melissa and Stiles and his Dad had settled down for their huge shared meal. Melissa had just grabbed an enormous dollop of mashed potatoes, which landed half on the tablecloth at his declaration, and Scott atomized an entire lungful of iced tea over the table, thankfully only really soaking the candied yams, which Stiles didn't like anyway. "You're gonna be a father," said Melissa, and man, Stiles was really beginning to get insulted at the way the adults in his life were reacting to this news. Scott was very Scott about it, which is to say he stood up and ran around the table and tackled Stiles in a huge bear hug and lifted him up like he weighed, well, as much as a baby, and had since been daydreaming about all the cool things they would teach Stiles' kid when it grew up.

"Dude, I am going to be the best uncle," said Scott, his eyes starry and his gaze unfocussed.

"You totally are," said Stiles.

"You both can clean up this mess," said Melissa, looking pointedly at the trashed table covered in dishes. "Noah and I are going to retire into the living room with cigars and brandy and have a little discussion."

"That's code for wine and pie and, well, the discussion part is definitely happening," said Dad. He and Melissa departed the room making eyes at each other, and not the fun kind of eyes where you think maybe your best friend is going to become your brother because your Dad and his mom are holding hands and laughing together and getting married and living together in separate beds forever and ever, but the kind of eyes that say "Are you crazy? Your son isn't mature enough to be a parent" and "I know, but you try to talk him out of something once he's gotten his mind set on it." Stiles sighed.

"Dude. An uncle." Scott was piling plates up in his arms, his eyes still far away and delighted.

"Yeah," said Stiles, smiling at him sadly. "Uncle Scott."

The congratulations/recriminations started rolling in soon after. Lydia shrieked at him for an hour the next morning, before he'd even gotten his coffee. She lambasted him about birth control, and about abortion, and about adoption, and about the likelihood that he would be a shitty parent since he was so young. She wielded statistics at him like a cudgel, until he finally just said, "I'm doing this, Lydia. Get used to it." After which she started listing all the things he needed to do in the first six months, and the first year, and the first five years of the kid's life. He was pretty sure she was about to start talking about college prep classes if he didn't get her off the phone, but she eventually wound down with "I'll help you out any way I can." Which she didn't have to say, but which he was very glad to hear.

She had heard the news from Scott, who had also told Allison and Kira, which meant he got congratulatory texts from both of them before he even got off the phone with Lydia. Scott must have been texting everyone they knew because he also got a very disgruntled voicemail from Jackson, which said simply, "I know you called me and hung up the other day, Stilinski, what were you, drunk? You know I have your number in my phone. Anyway, congrats on the brat, I guess." And a text from Isaac later on that said "Thought you knew how to use a condom. Aren't you supposed to be a genius?" which was, honestly, nicer than he had come to expect from the moody jerk.

The waitress at the diner gave him a free piece of pie when he and his dad went out on his final day of break, and gave him a fond, sympathetic look. Before that, a lady standing out in front of the laundromat had patted him on the shoulder, and earlier Mr. Gorski had turned off his everpresent leaf blower and given him a sad salute. "Did someone put up a flyer on a bulletin board somewhere?" said Stiles.

"I might have told Donna at the precinct," said Dad, his tone sheepish.

"Dad, you didn't." Stiles gaped at him. Donna was as good as a full page ad in the Times, a radio jingle, and a pop-up ad on a cooking website.

"What, I can't be proud of my son?" he said. Stiles felt his heart lurch. He crammed his mouth full of pie before he could burst into loud sobs.

"No," he said, his voice obscured by pecans and tears.

His return to school was anti-climactic, really. He didn't avoid Tracy, the mother of his child (dear God), but they didn't hang out. He did go to all of her appointments with her, which meant he had to manfully rein in his tears when the sonogram technician pointed out his baby on the screen. He thought he would be above it all, like it wouldn't affect him, but something about seeing that little blob floating there in black and white made something in him seize up, like a muscle spasm but in his soul. Like, that was a little Stilinski in there.

"Is it a boy or a girl?" he said, his voice husky with this emotion he couldn't name. Fear? Love?

"Oh, it might be too early to tell," said the technician. "Do you want to know, if I can spot it?"

"Yes," said Stiles, at exactly the same moment that Tracy said "No."

He looked at her. She shrugged. "I don't want to get too attached. She can tell just you if you want."

"No," he said, sobering up at the thought. He was already attached, but he wasn't going to force Tracy to do anything she didn't want to. Anything other than carry a baby to term. Jesus. "No, that's okay. It can be a surprise." He felt a little heartsick, but kept himself from sounding disappointed through sheer force of will. "I'll find out on it's birthday."

"Okay, good," said Tracy, turning her head away from the screen. Stiles had the tech print out extra copies of the picture, though. He was going to make sure that Grandpa and Uncle each had one for their fridge.

He stuck his own up on the mini-fridge in his room later, rubbing a finger along the outline of what was shaping up to be his nose. "See you soon, little boy or girl," he said.

He continued to be the life of the party, but his new status as "The guy who knocked up the girl at a one night stand" had made him anathema to all other women on campus, which was just fine by him. It didn't have any affect on the male population's libidos, so he just hit up anything with a penis that seemed interested. He didn't really get why everyone wasn't bisexual. Just increased the potential pool, in his opinion, and since he was girl-poison, boys were the only possible solution to his frustration. So he partied, and he studied, and he planned for his transfer to the community college for the final year of his studies. He was getting his Computer Science degree, with an Anthropology minor, and packed in twice the classes his final semester, just so he could get everything mostly completed before he had to deal with middle of the night bottle feedings and diapers and all that jazz. He researched every stage of pregnancy and watched way too many videos of women giving birth. He knew that because he had gotten a cease-and-desist text from Scott when he had sent one too many along with the addendum "Fascinating!"

The text had read "Pls stop sending me these. I have seen too much strange cooch. I may never want to have sex again." Which was ridiculous. He couldn't help it that women were incredible baby-making machines. He was just enthusiastic.

He called Lydia when Scott tapped out, and talked her ear off about the origins of formula and the history of childbirth and did she watch Call the Midwife, and to listen to her rant about childbirth in the fifties and how midwives had been pushed out by male gynecologists and about how women had been giving birth through all human history but only recently had it been commoditized to be a business run by men. He nodded and agreed and sympathized and kept sending her childbirth videos. He loved Lydia. Stupid Scott.

The end of school came and went. Everybody left except for him and Tracy, essentially, and he was run ragged by her with all of her demands. She didn't really get weird cravings, but she would call him to pick food up for her at odd hours, which he did gladly. She was giving him the gift of life! It was his responsibility! So he would run to In N Out, or Arby's, or the gelato place, sometimes at four in the afternoon, sometimes at midnight. He took her to the last month of weekly appointments, watching her haul herself out of the waiting room chair with a groan, declining his help.

She was due on the 10th, and they saw the doctor on the 3rd, and she said that the baby could come at any time and Stiles FREAKED THE FUCK OUT. He took Tracy back to her dorm room and managed to get himself to his own room and then had a complete, wheezing panic attack on his bed.

"Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ," he said. He had never been religious. It was almost like a chant to keep him from freaking the fuck out, just a name. Could have been any name. Any name with the same number of syllables. Hey, Derek Hale had the same number of syllables. Felt the same in his mind, too. "Derek Hale," he said out loud. Hey. That worked. "Derek," he said on the inhale. "Hale," he said on the exhale, blowing air out with a sigh. He continued saying Derek Hale's name on the inhales and exhales for a long time, until his breathing evened out and he no longer felt like he was dying.

"Derek Hale," he said, one last time for good measure.

Oh yeah. About Derek.

It wasn't like Derek Hale was the reason Stiles figured out he was bisexual. Okay, no, it totally was like that, because he was absolutely the reason Stiles figured out he was bisexual. The eldest Hale brother had been a senior when Stiles and Scott were freshmen, and watching him stalk around the halls of BHHS had been like a gift from the Gods. Stiles knew his crush on Lydia wouldn't get him anywhere, since she had settled on Jackson (even though he was a complete asshole. Or maybe because?), and he and Lydia had at least become friends over the years of being the two in competition for the top spots in every class. But that one year of Derek Hale had nearly tipped him right over into being Gay with a capital G, even before that had happened.

Derek Hale was captain of the swim team and the baseball team. Derek Hale got excellent grades and had a new girl hanging off his arm every year. Derek Hale wore a leather jacket and drove a Camaro.

Derek Hale also lost his parents in a car accident the summer after he graduated.

So Stiles knew Derek the way he knew a celebrity, by name and reputation. After the crash, Derek and the other Hale siblings had sort of pulled back from Beacon Hills. The youngest daughter, Cora, was in Stiles' grade, and she graduated with them but he was kind of confused as to how, since he never had any classes with her. Derek had disappeared for a few years and then shown up in the town's gym when Stiles had been trying to find Scott one day the summer after his freshman year of college. Scott was trying to bulk up for some reason, so he was spending every day he had free from his job at the vet's office in the gym, and Stiles had spotted Derek's glower from across the room. He wouldn't say he heard angels singing, but there had definitely been a heavenly choir. From his groin. Scott had dragged him away saying "No, Stiles, don't antagonize the psychopathic guy with arms bigger than my head."

"What? I mean, no, shut up, I wasn't saying anything," he said once they were outside.

"No, but you were staring. Don't stare at Derek. He doesn't like it."

"How would you know if you never ask him?" said Stiles, feeling like his logic was unassailable. He glanced in through the front windows of the gym to see Derek glaring at him through the glass, his mouth a grim line. Stiles felt his heart pound. He gave him a sunny grin, just to see what would happen. If anything, the mouth got grimmer. Stiles gave him a wink just before they were out of sight.

"Man, Derek Hale only got hotter while he was away," he said, as Scott dragged him down the street.

"No. Bad Stiles," said Scott, whacking him on the back of the head.

"I hate your summer job," said Stiles.

So Stiles spent pretty much every day in the summer sauntering past the gym to see if he could spot Mr. Angry Eyes again. And he did! Not every time, but occasionally he saw him in there, lifting weights or spotting other aggressively muscled dudes, or one memorable time sucking a smoothie through a straw. And each time, Stiles would send him a smile or a wink. He wasn't even sure Derek knew his name.

The summer following sophomore year he did the same thing, when he wasn't working on the computers in the Sheriff's office. His dad had insisted he needed a summer job, and then mentioned that they needed to backlog a bunch of old files into the new computer system, and wouldn't his genius son like to do that instead of flipping burgers? And so that's what he was doing, wrangling a new but still ancient Windows system into submission and scanning in case files from the 80s. This meant he didn't have nearly enough time to seduce Derek Hale through a window (shut up, Scott, of course it's working) but the paycheck he put into his bank account every two weeks was a little bit of consolation.

And then Derek walked into the Sheriff's office one Saturday. Stiles had been underneath the front desk cursing at the stupid computer tower that had its usb ports in an incredibly inaccessible location, and when he emerged, bonking his head and swearing from underneath, his face sweaty and his hair insane, there he was. Derek Hale. Leaning on the counter and looking down at him very unimpressed.

"Uh," said Stiles. "Hi?"

Derek continued to stare at him.

"I'm not, I mean, I don't usually work the front, I mean, Donna!" Stiles called out, his voice cracking. He winced and looked over at Derek, who was smirking. Goddamnit. He was Stiles Stilinski, the Party Guy slash King of Pickups at his college. He could speak to one Greek god of a man standing at a desk for chrissakes.

"So I'm Stiles," he said, finally, when the silence continued past the point of comfort. Who was Stiles kidding. There was never any comfort.

"Yes, I know," said Derek. Stiles froze. His voice was like smooth caramel, a little higher than he was expecting what with all the glowering. And, he knew?

"Uh, I didn't know that you knew, you know?" He winced again. "You were a senior when I was a freshman."

"Cora was in your grade."

"Right. Cora. How is ol' Cora these days?"

"Fine."

Right. This was going so well. Finally Donna bustled back from her extremely long bathroom break and greeted Derek and sent him through to talk with one of the officers when he told her he was there to discuss a permit he needed for his property all while Stiles stood there and tried not to stare at his first male crush like a creeper. As Derek was passing the desk, he turned back to Stiles.

"See you around, Stiles," he said. And he smiled. And winked. And was gone through the flappy door thing.

Stiles stared at his retreating back and then collapsed on the office chair behind him, which sent him careening into the wall. "Holy crap. Derek Hale knows my name," he said wheezily.

"Of course he does, dear," said Donna, patting him on the shoulder. "Now get your cute buns back to work."

"Boundaries, Donna! Boundaries!" said Stiles, glaring at her but getting back to work nonetheless. Derek. Hale.

All of this is just to say that Stiles hadn't thought about the fact that Derek Hale might not know he was going to be stuck out of town for a while, and that when he returned to Beacon Hills he wouldn't have a lot of time to seduce him through the gym window because he would have a baby, and also, he would have a baby. But Stiles tried not to think about that and went to sleep dreaming of stern hazel eyes and a frown and muscles carved out of marble.

He woke up on the 4th of July at 5:32 in the morning to his phone buzzing off the night stand. "Yeah," he said as soon as he managed to hit answer.
"It's happening. I'm going to the hospital now."

"Right. Okay. Thanks for calling." Stiles hung up the phone. Nice of her to call. He closed his eyes.

Shit. He opened his eyes as his body sprang out of bed like one of those jack-in-the-box things that scared the crap out of him when he was little, not that he would have told anyone that. "Shit!" he said out loud. He texted Tracy back to tell her not to worry, that he was coming as soon as he could, that he would call the doctor and the hospital and everything. He got a return text not ten seconds later. "Already done. Just be there before it comes out." He realized that Tracy wasn't exactly his biggest fan, what with his super sperm tunneling their way through the condom and into her womb, but she could be a little nicer. Then he remembered the many, many videos of what had looked like extremely painful body rearrangement as women shoved entire people out through their vaginas and decided he could forgive her for being a little short with him.

He called his dad right away. "Dad," he said, feeling all the breath leaving his body, and unable to get out a single other word, which should maybe worry him but was really only the result of him hyperventilating.

"Stiles? You okay, kid?"

When Stiles could produce nothing but wooshing air, his dad became his very favorite person on earth when he said "Oh, is it time? I'll be in the car as soon as I can, bud. What is it, a six hour drive? Hang in there. Get her some ice chips. Everything will be okay."

Stiles managed to make some kind of affirmative sound because his dad hung up on him with an "I love you" and an exasperated sigh. Stiles stared at the phone. Tracy had texted him "Five minutes." Five minutes?

"Five minutes between contractions, you idiot," Stiles said out loud as he was throwing clothes on and racing out the door. He was pretty sure he broke some kind of land speed record running to his Jeep, but tried to follow all traffic laws as he drove to the hospital maternity wing, because he could just imagine his dad's sarcasm if he managed to get a speeding ticket on his child's birthday. "Shit. My child's birthday is today," he said out loud as he was pulling into a parking space, and he had to lean his head on the steering wheel for a moment. Just a moment, though, because then he whipped around to check that he had the infant seat installed, check, the diaper bag, check. He had done everything that could be done a month previously, making Tracy roll her eyes at him at the first doctor's appointment he had driven her to after he had done it, but boy was he happy he had prepared everything already because he didn't think his mind could connect two dots in a Highlights magazine right now. He stumbled out of the jeep and tore open the back door, grabbing the bag and unhooking the carrier seat and sprinting through the doors of the maternity ward.

A bored receptionist nurse person thingy eyed him as he panted up to the front desk. "Name?" she said.

"Stiles. My name is Stiles. You probably mean the mother's name, right? Right. Sorry. Tracy Shore?" He fidgeted as she typed. "I bet you've seen every kind of expectant dad, though, right? I'm probably not half as weird as some of the dudes rolling in here at 6 a.m. on the 4th of July. Crap, it's the 4th of July! My kid is gonna be Yankee Doodle Dandy! Oh man, am I ever not patriotic enough to have a 4th of July baby. I am not naming him George or Thomas or Ben or any of that garbage, no way."

"Room 218," said the bored receptionist chick, although now she had a bit of a smile.

"I made you smile! Yes! Stilinski, you still got it." He watched the smile fall off her face. "Oh! No, I'm not hitting on you, don't worry, that would be really tasteless seeing as how my child is being born in room 218. Although the mother and I are not together. Just here to pick up the kid. See? Kid stuff." He hoisted the bag and fled through the door the, now frowning, receptionist was indicating.

He puffed up a flight of stairs and down a hallway to see an older couple in the hallway outside room 218. Tracy's parents. Shit. "Hi, I'm Stiles," he said, with a little wave.

They both looked at him with loathing. Which, okay, he could understand that. He plopped down in a chair a few away from them and set down the carrier in the chair next to him. Silence fell like a hammer. Stiles fidgeted, making his chair squeak.

"I think she wants you to go in," said the man, nothing but contempt in his voice.

"Oh. Right," said Stiles, and then stood up, wiping his hands on his pants. Should he take the stuff in, or leave it in the hallway? He glanced at the bag and the seat, and then over at Tracy's parents. The woman rolled her eyes.

"Oh for heaven's sake, no one's going to steal it. Just go in."

"Right," said Stiles, and fled in ignominy through the door.

Inside, Tracy was propped on pillows and sucking on ice water through a straw, while a young woman was arranging a strap across her belly under her gown. Fetal monitor, that's what it was called. The sound of the baby's heartbeat suddenly filled the room. Stiles stepped forward, his jaw dropping open. Tracy eyed him sourly.

"I assume you met my parents," she said as the nurse adjusted the volume and finished futzing with the monitor and left the room.

"Yeah. I mean, not officially, I didn't, like shake their hands or anything."

"No, they won't shake your hand, they hate you for defiling their sweet virginal daughter." Tracy rolled her eyes at that.

"Well, I kind of did defile their sweet virginal daughter."

"I mean, kinda," said Tracy, huffing a laugh. "Anyway, don't worry about them. They are okay with you taking the baby and everything. They're just here to drive me home after."

"Okay." And it was, he guessed, okay. He hadn't even thought about her parents maybe wanting to keep the baby. "They don't want to be grandparents?"

"Are you kidding? My mom is still talking about having a second child," said Tracy, laughing. "I bet she will, now, to show me up."

"You and her not get along?"

"Oh, we're all right. But I just keep living down to her expectations," said Tracy, gesturing at the baby bump currently on display.

Stiles huffed a laugh. Yeah, Tracy was pretty funny. In other circumstances, maybe they could have been something. "Hey, d'you ever think we could've--"

"God no," said Tracy. "I didn't realize how much you talk when we got together at that party."

"Ah." Ah. Stiles nodded his head sadly. Well. "So is it okay that I'm in here? For the main event, I mean?"

"Yeah," said Tracy, waving airily, but grimacing as something beeped on the machine. At Stiles' alarmed look she shook her head. "Just a contraction. You can stay. Gonna be your baby anyway."

About five hours later, the "just a contraction"s were still happening, and Tracy was a sweaty mess who looked about two seconds from murdering Stiles. "You can only stay if you Stop. Talking." she said.

His dad showed up an hour after that, poking his head in to say hi and retreating when Tracy started bellowing for the epidural. She had a mouth on her.

And eleven hours after that, things really started to happen.

Stiles was asleep. He wasn't proud of it, but he had been sitting in this leatherette armchair now for like seventeen hours of labor, and Tracy had gone quiet after the epidural and fallen asleep herself, and the contractions had slowed to a dull roar, and the baby's heartbeat was a quiet shushing in the background, and his dad had brought him a cheeseburger which he had eaten in guilty bites in the bathroom so he wouldn't make Tracy even more angry, and things were dark and still. But suddenly the room was full of people, including Tracy's parents and a guy pushing one of those transparent infant beds you see in the movies and Tracy was crying and they were disassembling the bed right in front of her so her entire undercarriage was on display for the whole room and Stiles watched with his mouth hanging open as the nurse squeezed her hand and the doctor told her to push and then suddenly her vagina, the vagina he had stuck his penis in for god's sake, was full of a round thing covered in hair, and then there was a head, and then there was an arm, and then there was an entire baby being pulled right out of her and dumped into blue towelling. Stiles couldn't hear anything over the roaring in his ears for a minute, when suddenly he realized that the roaring was a baby crying, and one of the many people in the room came up to him and clapped a hand on his shoulder and said, "Congrats, Dad, she’s a girl. Do you want to come see her?"

Stiles walked over where a small crowd of people were surrounding a screaming red flailing thing with a full head of dark hair plastered to her skull with white mucus. He was shoved closer to the front as the man in charge did some inexplicable things, including pricking the baby's heel with a pin which she did not like at all, and measuring her head and her length and plopping her on a scale they had magicked out of the wall. Stiles stood still, his mouth still open, watching as the baby was swaddled in a soft white blanket with blue and pink stripes and a yellow hat was pulled down over her sticky looking and slightly pointy head. And then someone was pushing her into his arms.

He stared down at her. His baby. His daughter. He laughed, terrified. "Holy shit," he murmured. Someone had just handed him a baby. That he had to take care of. Forever. He felt like Roy Scheider on the deck of the Orca, watching Jaws swim by. "We're gonna need a bigger boat," he said to the scrunched up face of his daughter. She had quieted when he took her, which he hoped was a good sign of things to come.

Tracy didn't want to even look at the baby, so Stiles was left alone in the armchair after the doctor completed the delivery (Stiles didn't watch the placenta come out, figuring he had seen enough of Tracy and wanting to give her a little bit of privacy) and they got Tracy cleaned up. She was already standing up and moving around, although she didn't come near Stiles where he sat with the baby, just talked to her parents in low voices. Eventually, she came about halfway across the room.

"I signed the paperwork, already," she said. "The baby's all yours."

"Thank you," said Stiles, and felt like his voice wouldn't work. He couldn't stop staring at the tiny person in his arms. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it. Really, don't," said Tracy, and then she walked out of the room.

As soon as Tracy and her parents left, Stiles heard the sound of throat clearing. He looked up to see his dad, looking dishevelled but radiant, standing in the doorway. "Dad, come meet her," said Stiles when he got his voice working again. His dad nearly teleported across the room, he moved so fast, and then Stiles was handing over the bundled newborn into his arms.

"Holy shit, kid," he said, his voice hushed and reverent. "They gave you a baby."

"Right?? Like, a whole human person," said Stiles, his laugh on the verge of hysterical. "Someone should call the cops! Oh wait."

Dad smirked at him. "You have a name picked out yet?"

"I was thinking Zoe Claudia," said Stiles. He had been thinking all day, and those were what stuck. "After the two most bad-ass ladies I know."

"Your mom would have loved that," said his dad. "Zoe, though? Who's...Waaaaaait. Firefly, right?"

"God, I love that I have managed to corrupt you so thoroughly," said Stiles.

"It's perfect," said his dad. "Hello, Zoe Claudia Stilinski. Welcome to the world."

"Crap, what time is it? When is her birthday? Is she a Yankee Doodle Dandy or what?" Stiles whipped his head around to look for a clock.

"She was born at 12:11 a.m., son," said Dad, still gazing down at Zoe like she was the most beautiful thing in the world, which made sense because she was. "Just missed it."

"You mean she was born on the 5th of July?" said Stiles, his jaw dropping at the affront. "That just sounds stupid."

"Don't ever tell her that," said his dad.

"I won't," said Stiles, gazing down at Zoe. "I won't."

Even though Tracy had moved rooms as soon as she could after the birth, they left Stiles and the baby in the room for the rest of the night, insisting that they needed to monitor things for a few hours to make sure she was all right, which was fine by Stiles. Except that Zoe almost immediately began screaming. He ran out in the hallway and launched a "Help!" at the nurse at the desk there. She shooed him back in the room and brought back a warm bottle of formula so he could feed the extremely angry baby he was suddenly holding. It took him a bit to get the nipple of the bottle in her mouth correctly, which was incredibly frustrating since he kind of assumed babies just "got it" when it came to their own basic needs, but evidently they had to be trained up just like anyone for anything. Ridiculous really. But eventually she was thoroughly latched on and emptying the bottle. Once it was dry, the nurse scooped her up and showed him how to delicately burp her without getting spit up all down his back, which resulted in the most amazing manly burp out of the tiny thing he could imagine and made him laugh out loud.

"She gets that from me," said his dad proudly.

After that she fell asleep, so he fell asleep after laying her gingerly in the bassinet in their room, only to have her wake him again two hours later screaming. As the nurse handed him another bottle and he managed to get it into her mouth within five tries, he gave her a high five on her tiny balled up fist.

"Way to go, Zo," he said. "We'll get this 'Keep the baby alive' thing under control, no problem."

After that she seemed to be alert so the nurse decided he should watch her get her first bath. Which she screamed through the entirety of. Seriously, loud piercing screams and shaking fists and her entire body gone flaming red with rage. "Jesus, Zoe," said Stiles as he delicately swabbed her flushed chest with a wet washcloth. "It's a bath. I thought they were supposed to be calming."

Afterwards, she was entirely screamed out and fell asleep in his dad's arms this time. Dad looked over at him dazed. "Well, this will certainly be...something," he said.

"Yeah," said Stiles, stifling a yawn. "I didn't realize that Jack Jack's flamey power was something I could expect in an infant. Learn something new every day."

At his dad's confused look Stiles called up the clip he was talking about, and then they spent the next few minutes laughing and watching Jack Jack terrorize his babysitter. Stiles was wiping tears out of his eyes when the doctor came in to tell them they could take the baby home now.

Stiles stared at him, then stared at his dad, then stared at Zoe. "Shit. I, yeah, I guess we take her home now."

"She's yours, son," said his dad quietly, standing and rocking back and forth with Zoe in his arms. "She's all yours."

Stiles wrangled her weirdly floppy but heavy body into a onesie and a sleeper and tucked her into the carrier seat, dithering over the belts to make sure they were snug but not too snug, while his dad pulled the car up to the doors. He had driven to Stile's dorm and taken an Uber to the hospital so they could ride together in the jeep. Once she was settled into the car, Stiles sat next to her and they drove back to the dorm so he could pick up his stuff. They had decided to leave Roscoe in the dorm lot until a later time when they could pick it up, and were going to drive directly back to Beacon Hills in the squad car that day. A day which was slowly dawning, the day after the 4th so every road and sidewalk was covered in spent bottle rockets and charred paper.

After he transferred over the car seat gasket, Stiles settled in the back with Zoe and stared at her some more. "You sure I can do this, dad?" he said, looking up and catching his eyes in the rear view mirror as they pulled out onto the highway.

"Absolutely. And I'll tell you a secret about being a Dad."

"Yeah?"

"Nobody, and I mean nobody, knows what they're doing at first. Nobody. You just...do one thing. And then, you do the next thing. Until you wake up one day and they're 18 and they don't need you anymore."

"I still need you, though," said Stiles. "I still need you."

"Naaah," said Dad. "You just think you do. Just wait. You'll figure it out."

"Hopefully before she turns 18," said Stiles.

Dad laughed. "Yeah, hopefully before then."

The drive home was relatively uneventful. Stiles had bought a bottle warmer for use in a car, so when Zoe started screaming after about an hour and a half he groggily warmed up a bottle of premixed formula that he had gotten just for the trip (it was so expensive, jeez, you'd think water added to powder wouldn't be so expensive) and fed her right there. This time she took the nipple no problem, and he nearly fell asleep before she finished. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to burp her when she was belted in, but his dad pulled into a rest area and he got her out. He managed to get a burp out without having to change his tshirt, and he wrestled her into a dry diaper as well. He was a little anxious that the meconium diaper would appear during the trip, but so far it had only been pee. The pictures he had seen of "baby's first poop" were utterly terrifying. "Just keep it in until we hit Grandpa's house, okay, Zo?" he said as he finished worming her arms and legs back into her sleeper, which was way harder than it ought to be. Oh well. Eventually he'd get the hang of it.

"Keep what in?" said his dad, just back from the restroom.

"That horrid green-black sludge that babies poop the first time."

"Oh yeah," said his dad, his face going slack with horrified remembrance. "You'll get that diaper, son."

"Yeah yeah," said Stiles.

The rest of the journey was utterly quiet, Zoe falling asleep quickly and Stiles following her. He didn't wake until the door was opening on an oppressively hot afternoon and his dad was shaking him. "Kid, we're here," he said.

Home. Beacon Hills. Stiles blinked sleepily out at the little house he and his dad had lived in alone for so long. He dragged the carrier out of the car and took Zoe inside, stopping just past the door to look around.

He had been here at Christmas time, but something was odd about the place now. "What did you do? Something's different," said Stiles, blinking around at the familiar-and-yet-not surroundings.

"Well. Had to baby-proof, didn't I," said his dad. And that was it. The hall table was gone, replaced with a higher shelf for keys, the bookshelves had locked doors on the lower shelves, the glass-topped coffee table was completely gone, replaced with an oval one with no sharp corners. Stiles walked slowly into the kitchen to see all the lower cabinets with new child locks on them, and everything was sparkling clean. He felt his throat closing up. "You didn't have to do this, Dad. She won't be able to crawl for a while."

"Had to be done sometime," said Dad gruffly. Stiles knew that voice. That was his "I refuse to cry" voice. Stiles just slapped him on the shoulder and continued upstairs to his room.

He had ordered a bunch of baby stuff on line to be shipped here, but when he got into his room, which looked much the same as when he left it, nothing was there. "Dad, where's all the stuff?"

"What stuff?" said Dad.

"The stuff I ordered...wait a minute," he said, noticing his dad's faux innocent posture. "What did you do."

"Nothing! Absolutely nothing. Well. Something. Okay, absolutely something. And you can change everything around if you want, nothing is set in stone." His dad had kept talking as he led him down the hallway to the office at the end, the one that had been filled with file boxes and exercise equipment. He opened the door and stepped aside.

Stiles walked in. It was...perfect. The walls had been painted a creamy yellow, and someone had hand painted a dotted line that meandered around to a cheerful bee just over the crib. Oh yeah, the crib was assembled and the bed was made up and there was a stuffed bee and a penguin and a mobile hung over top with cartoony bugs dangling from it and there was a dresser with a changing pad and even a plush looking green velvet rocking chair. Stiles gaped. "You did all this?"

"Well, I had a little help from Melissa. I think she caught baby fever."

"You both did, you baby-crazy fool," said Stiles with a laugh. He set down the carrier, Zoe still sleeping and collapsed down onto the chair. It was, indeed, incredibly comfortable. "I can't believe this. I mean, I can because you're awesome, but I can't believe we're home and she has a room and this is really real and oh my god we have a baby now." Stiles put his face in his hands and blew out a breath. "Can post-partum depression happen to guys too? Because I am feeling hella overwhelmed right now."

"You're just tired. Look, I'll take her and give her the next bottle, you go get some rest in your room," said Dad. "I'll wake you up for dinner. Or if the meconium poop comes. You can handle that shit yourself. Literally."

"Ugh, you're the worst, go away!" said Stiles through his fingers. "But seriously thank you and I love you and I can't believe you did this. Although we need a stuffed shark."

"A shark?"

"She's my little apex predator," said Stiles, putting his hands down on the arms of the chair and staring his dad down. "There will be no survivors."

"Alrighty then," said Dad. He only gave Stiles the mildest of confused looks. Stiles had trained him over the years, after all, to go with the flow of the vagaries of his brain. Stiles levered himself up and managed to get over to his own room and collapse onto his bed. He didn't even get his shoes off before sleep pulled him down.

Two weeks later and Stiles wasn't convinced he was truly going to sleep ever again in his entire life. Zoe had screamed bloody murder whenever he tried to put her to bed in the nursery, so she essentially slept in his bed every night, for a given amount of sleeping. That is, not nearly enough. He would close his eyes, his palm resting on her belly, only to jerk awake to her screaming again after what felt like 30 seconds, but which his bleary eyes on the clock told him had been two hours. Then he picked her up, stumbled to the kitchen, warmed a bottle, fed it to her, burped her (he was currently standing at only 50% clean t-shirts after burping, beaten soundly by his dad who managed to magic gas out of her without ever needing more than a new burp rag) and changed her if she needed it. The changing pad in the nursery almost never saw action, and in fact, the only piece of furniture in there that Stiles used was the chair, when he would collapse with her on his chest in desperate hope that this time, this time, she would sleep in the crib.

Scott and Melissa had come over at some point in that time, Melissa to coo over Zoe and handle her like a pro, Scott to pound Stiles on the back and tear up and skitter away at the first sign of a diaper change. Stiles wasn't really clear when they left, because he fell asleep, but he thinks he might have told them to come back and kill him if he turned zombie and started rampaging through town looking for brains. Melissa had just patted him sympathetically on the shoulder and said "This too shall pass."

"This too shall pass," repeated Stiles to Zoe, as he prepared to change yet another poopie diaper. He had set up a changing pad on the coffee table so he could catch up on some tv while he dozed with the baby, and had just opened the diaper and reached for a wipe when a stray fart from Zoe sent poop literally all the way from the coffee table to the sofa. Stiles looked down. Poop. On the sofa. He started laughing, holding her down with one hand as he stared. "Points for distance, Zo," he said, halfway to hysterical.

"You okay there, son?" said his dad, just coming into the room. It was the morning following a night shift, so he'd be up for a while before he crashed, and he still had on his uniform.

"I really don't know," said Stiles between crazed giggles. "Ask me again when I've had more than 30 minutes sleep." He stared at the poop. "My child could be a competitive pooper. Travel the world. She could wow the Easter European judges, and you know how strict those guys are with Americans."

"Sure," said his dad. "I think maybe you should go take a nap? I'll take Zoe for a while." His voice had that "talking to surly drunks" timbre to it. Stiles giggled again.

"I think I need to buy more diapers," said Stiles, looking at the one in his hand.

"Great!" said his dad, louder than he probably meant to, because he immediately winced. "Go put on some clean clothes and go to the store."

Stiles nodded, before methodically cleaning the baby and the couch and his pants (whoops) and getting Zoe back to baby standard and handing her off to his dad and stumbling into some clean sweats and grabbing his keys and getting into the car and by the time he realized he was out, he was already walking into the supermarket. No baby, he thought, I am out. He giggled again, strolling down the diaper aisle.

Just as he was wrestling the package of diapers onto the conveyor at the checkout, throwing on a couple of packages of Twizzlers to tide him over, he looked up into the eyes of none other than Derek Hale. Derek freaking Hale, just casually loading a pile of green vegetables and a giant canister of protein powder onto the belt behind the diapers. His eyes flickered from the diapers up to Stiles.

"Um," said Stiles. He really hadn't had enough sleep to deal with this right now. "Hi."

"Hi," said Derek, his brows quirking. "You have company?"

"Uh, sort of?" said Stiles, looking from the diapers back to Derek's eyes. His luminous green-grey-blue eyes that caught the flourescent lights like an angel's. He shook his head. "If by company you mean my own baby, since that's a thing that's happened. Yeah." He shrugged his shoulders. The checkout girl was ringing his purchases but he caught the moment his statement hit Derek, because his eyebrows hit his hairline.

"You have a baby," said Derek.

"Yep."

"Your own baby?"

"Well, I didn't steal her, if that's what you mean," said Stiles.

"No, I didn't...." Derek still looked extremely shocked. And again, Stiles felt weirdly insulted. What was with everyone and their judgement?

"Anyway, it was nice chatting with you," said Stiles, feeling his face heat as he turned away to shoulder the package of diapers. He should have known this would happen. So much for seducing Derek Hale through a window. He'd be lucky to get a cordial handshake out of the guy now. "Got to get home. To my baby. Which I now have."

Without looking back, he practically ran out the door of the shop to his car. As he was closing up the back after loading in the diapers he turned and flailed an elbow into the rear window of his car with a "Whoa!" Derek was standing right next to him. "Jesus, make some noise next time."

"Sorry. Just, you forgot these," said Derek, and held out the two packages of Twizzlers Stiles had left at the checkout. Stiles looked down at them, blinking.

"Oh. Thanks," he said.

"No worries. And, uh, Stiles?"

"Yeah?" he said, looking back up into those eyes again.

"Congratulations," said Derek, and smiled.

It wasn't until he was nearly back home that Stiles stopped smiling back, the grin having taken over his face like a rash. Maybe a baby wouldn't be the end of his seduction streak. "Still got it, Stilinski," he muttered to himself.

A month went by. Then two. Stiles really felt like he was getting a handle on this baby thing, even if he felt like he would never, ever get enough sleep. Scott came over when he could, to hold the baby and watch bad tv with Stiles and tell him about all the insane maladies that people's pets were getting in Beacon Hills. And then there was Zoe, who he couldn't get enough of staring at. She was just so beautiful. He never thought other people's babies were beautiful, but seriously, look at her. Zoe had perfect black hair that curled just enough, and wide, enormous eyes that were an indeterminate color that Melissa reassured him would change as she grew until they settled into her adult color, and she had his snubbed nose and a perfect little bow mouth. She was still basically a lump on a blanket at the moment, since she didn't talk or move around or do anything really except stare around and absorb. He got a giant stuffed shark from Ikea and put it next to her and took a picture when she turned 1 month old, and again when she turned 2 months old, and he couldn't even believe how much bigger she had gotten.

Then Scott went back to school, and Stiles felt that feeling come back, that "I've destroyed my life and now I have a kid and I'm going to destroy her life too" feeling. He wasn't supposed to start at the community college until after Christmas, and he had basically no energy to do anything but take care of Zoe. He knew it was bad when his dad came home from a shift to find him in the exact place on the couch he had been lying when he had left.

His dad stared down at him over the back of the couch. "Out. You're going out," said his dad.

"Can't. Tired." Stiles rubbed a hand over his hair, which he immediately regretted since it had been a minute since he had showered. Zoe was lying on the floor, naturally, staring up at the toys hanging over her on the play mat with one entire fist crammed in her mouth. She made a humming noise around her fist.

"See, Zoe agrees. Stiles. Get up, go have a shower, and get out of the house before you turn into one of those guys in the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Stiles."

Stiles peered at his dad over the back of the sofa. Dad was leaning over on his hands, his face the exact amount of exasperated he had been when Stiles was 12 and had eaten an entire pizza and drank an entire 2 liter and had been sick all over the floor. "You're comparing me to cursed souls on a ship of the dead."

"Yes."

"Because I haven't left the house."

"You haven’t even left the couch."

"Dad, I have a kid!" he said, his voice rising against his will. "She needs me. I can't just traipse out to a club whenever I feel like it!"

"I'm here! I can take care of her for one evening! Please, for the love of God, Stiles. Get out of here before you become attached to the furniture."

Stiles stared at him. He meant this. "All right. Fine. I'll go. But I won't enjoy it."

"Just as long as you go."

He went. First he stood in the shower for a really, really long time. Showers. Truly incredible experiences, really. Then he put clothes on that didn't smell like spit up and Sudocream. Then he exited the house by way of the window because he wasn't sure if he could leave through the front door past the living room and see his baby lying there on the floor. He'd probably just plop himself right back down on the couch. He texted his Dad what he was doing and simply received a "Good. Have fun." back, which was heartening as well as a little bit disappointing. Couldn't even sneak out of the house without getting enthusiastic approval from the old man.

He got himself behind the wheel of Roscoe and stared blankly out the front windshield for a minute. He actually had no idea what day of the week it even was, and dragged his phone out of the pocket of his jeans to check. Friday. Ah. So Jungle would be hopping. Did he want to go somewhere hopping? Kind of? He wasn't actually old enough to drink legally yet, but he did still have that fake i.d., and since his dad was Sheriff he was hoping people would turn a blind eye.

"Jungle it is," he said under his breath, and peeled out of the driveway in a bit of a daze.

The bouncer let him in after a cursory glance at his card and Stiles slunk to the bar. It was a bit early yet, so the dance floor was not quite as full as it could get. He slumped onto a stool and ordered a beer from the not terribly harried bartender, who gave him a once over with a critical eye. The guy was tall and lean and dark haired and handsome, but he actually winced as he looked at Stiles in the face.

"Rough day?" he said as he slid over the tall frosted glass.

"Rough month. Rough two months," said Stiles.

"I hear ya." The bartender winked at him with a smirk and moved across to other customers. Stiles watched him go, and had to laugh at himself. There was no way that guy could possibly guess why Stiles had had a rough two months. He looked down at himself. He was 20 years old, wearing a Batman t-shirt under a grey flannel, and from what his mirror had told him before he left the house, rings under his eyes like a 45 year old divorcee with three kids. How could he relate to anyone here anymore? He was a young, somewhat hip bisexual with no romantic ties who could be sowing his wild oats, and instead was raising an infant as though he had any idea what it meant to be a father. He thumped his forehead down on the bar. "God, kill me," he said, although he felt kind of guilty about that because he didn't want to orphan his baby, not really. He just wanted...he didn't even know what he wanted.

"Don't think God's in the business of murder," came a voice to his left. Stiles peeled his forehead off the bar and looked up into the glorious hazel eyes of Derek Hale.

"I think a shit ton of Old Testament folks would beg to disagree," he said, blinking in astonishment. Was Derek Hale really sitting next to him at the gay bar?

"Well I suppose, but you look less like an infidel and more like a guy who really really needs another drink."

Stiles looked in surprise at his beer. Which was empty. "Yeah, probably."

Derek did one of those incredibly sexy hand gestures at the bartender which indicated that he wanted two more of whatever Stiles had been drinking, and then slid onto the stool next to him. Stiles squinted at him in distrust.

"Is there some reason you've decided to drink with me?" he said. He wasn't even sure what it was he was implying, just that he could not figure this guy out.

"You look like you could use a friend," said Derek.

"A friend?"

"Well, yeah." He shifted and looked suddenly uncomfortable, and avoided Stiles' eyes. And Stiles realized that Derek, beautiful perfect Derek with the great GPA and the gorgeous girlfriends and the body coveted by gods, was a bit of a dork.

"Oh my god you like me," Stiles said, and then winced. "I just mean, I haven't chased you away with my freshman year acne and my weird through-the-window flirting and my purchase of the jumbo pack of diapers."

Derek smirked over at him, and grabbed the glass the bartender had just deposited in front of him. "No. You haven't chased me away. I am curious about the kid, though."

Stiles groaned and thumped his head back on the bar. "Of course you are. Believe me, the story is way less interesting than you think."

"You knocked up your girlfriend and she left you with the baby and now you're a single dad?"

"That's...almost right, actually. But anyway, now I have a two and a half month old at home and a dad who wants me to get out before I become fused to the furniture and a severe itch for some good old fashioned dangerous liaisons. Bless me, Glenn Close."

Derek peered at him sideways. "Dangerous what?"

"You know, liaisons. Dalliances. Unions of a sexual nature. I'm horny, is what I'm talking about, and having spent the entire last two months glued to the sofa and beholden to the whims of a tiny peeing, pooping, eating, screaming emperor with no conversational skills whatsoever, my ability to find said liaisons has atrophied so much that I am afraid that I will never get laid again."

Derek had begun staring at him halfway through this speech, and at the end of it let out a startled bark of a laugh that made Stiles own mouth twitch up at the corners. "I see," he said, carefully placing his glass back down on the coaster. "And do you have a preference as to the gender of this so-called liaison?"

The walk (he used this term very loosely) back to his car took a lot longer than usual since he wanted to get his hands and his mouth on as much of Derek as he could without actually getting naked in the parking lot. He vaguely heard a wolf whistle as his back thunked up against the metal of his Jeep, Derek plastered against his front, his tongue in Stiles mouth and his hand on his ass. "I can't take you back to my place," gasped Stiles as Derek did something truly filthy to his earlobe.

"Mine is just around the corner," grumbled Derek, before he went back to his, now life-altering, work.

"Great. Great," said Stiles, gasping again as that tongue of his found a spot on his neck that he hadn't even realized was an erogenous zone. "How we getting there?"

"Isn't this your car?" said Derek, pulling away in puzzlement.

"Yeah, of course, yeah," said Stiles, not wanting to say that Derek had managed to divert so much of his blood away from his brain that he was incapable of driving. "I, I just--"

"We could take mine," said Derek, who had pulled down the neck of his shirt and was sucking on Stiles collarbone now, but gestured across the parking lot. And there it was.

"The Camaro?" squeaked Stiles.

Every wet dream he had ever had as a Ninth grader came flooding back to Stiles as he settled in the luxurious leather seat of the sleek black car Derek eventually led him to. It roared out of the parking lot and down a number of streets that Stiles couldn't even remember because Derek's hand never left his inseam. They stumbled out and up the stairs of Derek's apartment building, and once through the door, Derek backed him up against it and peeled him out of his flannel and his Batman t-shirt.

"Do you do this often?" Stiles managed to get out. Derek was kissing his neck and opening his fly, all before Stiles had even managed to get his shirt off.

"Not really."

"Yeah, me neither," Stiles lied. He didn't even know why. Derek obviously wasn't shy about going for it, why would he care that Stiles was essentially a big ol' slut at school, a big enough slut that he had impregnated a girl without even really catching her last name. He finally grabbed the hem of Derek's sinfully tight black t shirt and pulled it off over his head revealing the most amazing body Stiles had ever seen. "Jesus," he said on a sigh, and ran his hands over Derek's sides. "You should be on a pedestal in Florence."

"Shut up," said Derek, and did just that with his tongue in Stiles' mouth. Stiles could only moan in argument.

And then Stiles' phone rang. Dammit. They both froze as it rang again. Stiles pushed Derek away just enough to get his hand in the pocket of his (uncomfortably tight) jeans. "Shit," he said as he saw his dad's number and answered. "What's up?" He tried to sound unconcerned.

"Hey, Stiles, I know I basically forced you out of the house, but I am going to have to ask you to come home." This speech was accompanied by the wailing of a very angry baby. "She just won't stop crying. I've tried everything."

Stiles thunked his head back against the door, wincing in literal and figurative pain. "Yeah, of course, okay, yup, be right there," said Stiles and hung up. He looked at Derek, who still had his hands on Stiles' hips, and was looking at him in worry.

"Everything okay?" he said.

"Sure, yeah, everything's good, just, my daughter is the tiniest, wiliest cock block in Beacon Hills," said Stiles. "So I'm gonna have to go." He closed his eyes as he said this. He was never getting laid ever again.

To his surprise, a soft kiss landed on his lips. He opened his eyes to see Derek looking at him from very close up with a smile. "No worries. Rain check."

"Rain check," said Stiles. He collected his shirts and reassembled himself, and Derek drove him back to the parking lot where he had left Roscoe. They sat quietly for a moment in the Camaro.

"My life is kind of a mess right now," said Stiles finally, "but I'd like to try this again sometime. If you're willing."

"Sure," said Derek. He pulled out his phone and handed it to Stiles. "Give me your number."

Stiles did, and then got into his car and drove home and took Zoe from his frantic dad's arms and she immediately quieted, of course, and he slumped onto the sofa and rubbed her back and sniffed her sweet, sweaty head and sighed.

"I'm sorry, Stiles, I don't know why she wouldn't settle," said his dad.

"It's okay," said Stiles. "I wasn't doing anything important, anyway." He kissed her silky hair and closed his eyes.

The text noise roused him suddenly and he pulled out his phone. "Hey. Had a good time tonight. Hope we can meet up again soon." He smiled at it. And then laughed out loud when another came right on the heels of that one. "This is Derek btw."

"What a dork," he said under his breath.

It was another two weeks before he got up the gumption to even consider texting Derek with what was essentially a booty call. But Zoe was doing well, had had a good checkup with her pediatrician (a young guy that seemed barely older than Stiles but who was nonjudgmental about his parental status and a delight to watch with Zoe) and was sleeping almost entirely through the night, leaving him free from 8 o'clock on most of the time. He cleared it with his dad that Friday, and went to sit in Roscoe in the driveway to text Derek.

"You busy? I finally have a moment to relax."

The reply came not ten seconds later. "Jungle? Or do you want to come to my place?" Stiles knew it was only his imagination that put the emphasis on the second choice.

"Text me your address and I'll be right over," he finally replied. It was, after all, what he actually wanted. He didn't have the time or the energy to be anything but direct.

The address was promptly sent and he navigated his way over, his nerves ratcheting the closer he got. What if Derek hadn't really meant what he said? What if that night was all drunken mistake and he would regret Stiles in the harsh light of day/sobriety? Stiles shut down the Jeep in a parking spot across the street and gazed up at Derek's building. It was actually kind of cool, a warehouse that had been converted over into loft apartments. He hadn't gotten a good look at it the last time he was here, but he did now. He wondered, belatedly, just how it was Derek made money. He hadn't really had a chance to ask, last time.

He ascended the stairs and knocked on the door, finally, after spending way too long second guessing every single decision in his life that had led to that moment. The door swung open after a dozen heartbeats that he could feel in his ears, revealing Derek, gorgeous Derek, looking flushed and a bit sweaty. Stiles blinked.

"You okay? I interrupt a workout or something?" he said.

"No, no, it's, I'm fine, you're not interrupting," said Derek all in a rush. Stiles stepped inside and could smell the tell tale odor of an overfull vacuum bag. Oh. Panic cleaning. He tried to hide his smile at the thought of Derek panicking over Stiles coming over. Derek had closed the door and was leaning back against it.

"I'm glad you could come over," he said, and Stiles smiled sunnily at him.

"Well Zoe has decided that nights are really best spent sleeping, which hopefully means that mmmmph," he managed to get out, before Derek was suddenly all over him and backing him into the large open space of his apartment.

Stiles wasn't complaining, but he did want to at least get a look at the place before..."Wow, are those windows ever tall. Who cleans those?" he got out, as Derek was stripping him efficiently of his carefully selected outfit and pushing him towards a bed at the far side of the lofted space.

"No idea," murmured Derek, who was running his hands down Stiles' sides and licking under his ear. Stiles squeaked. "Is this a problem?" said Derek, pulling back for a moment to look at him in consternation.

"No, no problem at all." Stiles squeaked again as Derek went straight for his fly.

"Been thinking about you all week. You drove me crazy last summer, walking past the gym windows in these. Fucking. Jeans." Derek punctuated each word with a yank on said jeans until Stiles felt them slip down his ass to his knees before he was falling backwards onto an extremely soft duvet.

"You were watching me through the window?" Stiles said teasingly.

"Of course," said Derek, who was doing his best to divest himself of his own clothes as efficiently as possible. Stiles propped himself on his elbows to enjoy the view, and wondered just what he'd done in a previous life to warrant such a treat as having a half-naked Derek Hale hot for him. He pushed his jeans the rest of the way off and scooted back just as Derek was crawling his way up the bed. Their lips met once again and Derek lowered his body onto Stiles and they both let out matching groans as their skin finally touched.

"Jesus, it's been too long," said Stiles.

"Longer for me, I bet," said Derek, in between wet, fervent kisses that only ratcheted the heat between them higher and higher.

"You? Can't imagine you wouldn't be drowning in offers," said Stiles as Derek made his way down his chest.

Derek didn't say anything to this, just slipped his hand into Stiles boxer briefs and rendered him temporarily incapable of words. "Do you want to talk or do you want to do this?" he said, giving Stiles a long, hot stroke.

"No talk necessary," gasped Stiles. "Please continue, good sir."

Derek chuckled, and did.

Stiles spent the entire next day whistling, which caused his dad to yell at him more than once, but which he, seriously, could not stop doing.

"Would you like to wear a sandwich board instead?" his dad said, after the fourth time he told him to stop. "Maybe hire a town crier with a megaphone? Saying something like, 'Stiles Stilinski got laid last night and is happy about it'?"

"I did and I am and you can't stop me," said Stiles, before singing the entirety of Bohemian Rhapsody to a background of his dad's increasingly frustrated groans. Zoe liked it, at least. She had finally started to smile at him, real smiles that were obviously not gas or something else, and when he hit a particularly high note on "For me!" she let out a happy giggly screech. Stiles stopped, finally, and stared down at her, grinning.

"Did you hear that?" he yelled at the Sheriff. "Zoe thinks I'm amazing!"

His dad had walked in at the sound and was staring down at her just like Stiles was. "Do it again," he said, so Stiles once again sung the "devil put aside for me" bit and just as he hit the high note, Zoe once again erupted into screeches. They both started laughing and jumping around, and she kept doing it, Dad only belatedly getting out his phone to take a video as Stiles sung again, which he then posted on every social media site he used. I.e. Facebook. Stiles just rolled his eyes and texted it to all of his friends with the description "My daughter thinks I'm HILARIOUS." His friends all responded like, well, his friends. Scott with one of those animated gif reactions and an "Awwww!", Jackson with a "You wish, Stilinski." Allison with "Your daughter looks just like you!" And Lydia with "So who's the mysterious number belong to?"

Shit. What did she mean? Oh, crap. Stiles looked through the people he had sent it to, and, whoops, he had texted the video to Derek. He hoped this didn't completely ruin his chances at a second round with the guy, especially with Lydia the freaking Bloodhound on the case. He hoped she would let it go, and decided to ignore her text in the group and responded with a blanket smiley emoji for everyone.

It didn't work. His phone rang, it actually rang. Stiles answered.

"Who's the mystery person?" said Lydia without actually voicing any kind of greeting.

"Hello there, Lydia, old friend o' mine, nice to hear from you, how are you this fine day?"

"Don't start with me, Stilinski," she said, peeved. "So, who is it?"

"Just somebody, okay, quit grilling me."

"It isn't the baby mama, is it?"

"Of course not!"

"Then who?"

Stiles gusted out a sigh. "Just somebody who will probably never contact me again if you keep pushing."

"A hook-up, then? Man or woman? Has to be somebody in Beacon Hills, since you currently live there with a baby-shaped anchor."

"Hey! Don't call Zoe an anchor."

"I'm not trying to be rude, just realistic. So who is it? I'm guessing a man, since you probably are a bit gun-shy around girls right now for obvious reasons...."

"Lydia, stop."

"No, I bet I can figure this out relatively quickly. Hmm, all of your friends are gone off to college, leaving only the losers and the people who returned home with their tails between their legs because, really, Beacon Hills? Only a beacon for meth-heads and lumberjacks."

"Lydia, seriously, you can't just--"

"Oh my god I know who it is!" she shrieked. "You didn't. You did, didn't you?"

"Did what?" Stiles closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose, seeing the inevitable as it rolled down the slope at him.

"Not what, who. Holy Shit. You landed Derek Hale." The triumphant silence was probably answer enough, but Stiles tried anyway.

"No, what? Of course not, pshaw." Jesus. Those acting classes did not do a thing.

"Is that really the best you can do? Wow. So. Tell me everything." He could practically hear the hormones over the phone.

"What? No! I don't kiss and tell."

"Stiles, you big liar, I've heard about every single kiss from the moment you started. So spill."

"He's..." Stiles didn't know how to continue. They'd only hooked up the once so far, but it felt loaded somehow. Important. "I don't really want to tell, how about that?" he said finally.

"Oh, shit, Stiles. You really like him, don't you."

"No! I mean, of course I like him, but I don't, I mean, we just spent the one night--"

"So you spent the night?" Lydia's voice curled up at the corners like a Cheshire grin.

And he had. He didn't usually. But after two rounds of an orgasm each, he was too tired to move, and Derek had pulled the covers over them both, and Stiles snuggled in with a sigh. The next morning, Derek even made coffee, although his breakfast consisted of a horrid green sludge he called a smoothie which Stiles noped out of and left, after giving and receiving an additional hot-as-hell kiss that almost sent them back to the bed before Stiles remembered his baby waiting at home. "Yeah," he said, feeling defeated.

"Shit," said Lydia, quieter now. "Stiles Stilinski, are you catching feelings for this man?"

"Maybe?" He scrubbed his hand through his hair and watched Zoe yank at the elastic legs of the giraffe hanging over her. "I mean, it's too early to tell. But he's really nice? And did I mention hot? Because the boy is hot as fuck."

"I have eyes," she said dryly. "Does he like babies? Because that might be a deal breaker right there. Considering you have one."

"Oh do I? Gee, I never noticed, thank god you're here," replied Stiles. But then he thought about it a moment. Shit. Did he like babies? He looked down at the message string to see if Derek had replied, but nothing. Then he realized he might not want to reply on a group message, and Stiles navigated to his other messages. There. A message from Derek.

"He texted me about the video," he said, looking down at the terse reply.

"And? What did he say?"

"He said 'Cute.' With a period at the end."

"Woof."

"What does that mean?" said Stiles, staring down at the five character text with dread. "Does he mean to sound so...aggressive? Or is he just that awkward? I mean, he is really an incredible dork. So it could just mean that he doesn't know what to say when the guy he's hooked up with once has sent him a video of the guy's baby being cute and went with the most obvious. Or it could mean 'Never text me again, you deranged lunatic'. Or it could mean he does think she's cute and he is just aggressive by nature, which is the most logical answer but not the one my brain is going to latch onto. I mean, you know my brain, it's extremely good at disaster scenarios. Remember fifth grade? Remember the nightmarish week leading up to my first date with Rebecca? Remember Prom?"

"Stiles. Breathe," said Lydia, breaking into his increasingly breathless rant. "I think you need to quit hyperventilating, text him back, and stop worrying."

"Really? Think that'll work?"

"Work for what exactly? And no, I just need to get off the phone."

And then she hung up. "Bye," said Stiles into dead air. "Have a good one, Lyds. Thanks for listening." He went back to the text string with Derek. There it was, just after the texts leading to their night together, the word "Cute." Period.

And then Zoe shrieked again and Stiles looked over at her sweet face and melted down to the floor to pick her up in his arms, holding her cradled between them with her head in his hands. She cooed at him.

"Yeah, you're right. Doesn't matter," he said, and then started singing again, to her audible delight. He just barely caught the groan coming from his dad's direction. "Now there's two of you!" Dad yelled from the kitchen.

"Damn right," Stiles yelled back. "Two happy Stilinskis." He smiled down at his daughter. Everything was going to be just fine.

Everything was going to hell in a snot-filled handbasket. Stiles had somehow caught a cold and was trying everything to keep from passing it on to Zoe. He bought surgical masks and had hand sanitizer stashed in every room of the house. So far it seemed to work, although Zoe didn't like when he wore the masks around her and kept kicking them off his face when he gave her a diaper change. His dad had just rolled his eyes the first time he had seen him with one on and said "Kids get sick, sometimes, Stiles. Best to just get it over with."

"I know that! Intellectually!" he said, waving his arms around. "I just don't get it emotionally, you know what I mean?"

"Yeah, I know," said Dad, with a too knowing look. He handed Stiles a bag from the drug store, which was full of baby medicine and a humidifier and a horrifying thing called a nasal aspirator kit, since babies can't blow their noses and so can't breathe if they get stuffed up and Stiles needed to sit down for a moment. Dad put a hand on his shoulder.

"It’ll be okay, Stiles. Really. Kids get sick every day."

Stiles nodded, feeling a coughing jag coming on. He carefully avoided spraying his disgusting germs into the air and sank back onto the sofa. "Ugh. I hate this."

"Take her outside, or something," said Dad. "Walk her around the park, get some fresh air."

So that's what he did. Stiles was pushing Zoe in her stroller around the nearby park, and she was gazing up at the sky with her wide brown eyes (they were definitely brown, now, honey brown like his) and chewing on her monkey. It was getting swiftly cooler, so Stiles was in a jacket and a scarf, and had put Zoe in her first thermal sleeper and tucked a blanket around her. He found a bench with a view of the pond and pulled the carrier seat out of the top of the stroller, arranging it next to him so that Zoe could see the view too. She hummed as he did this. "Yeah, I guess it is pretty nice," he said, as if in answer.

"So this is the baby," came a voice from behind him. Stiles stood and whirled on the spot, his hands up in a kind of vaguely kung foo-ey way, like he'd be any use in a fight. It was Derek.

"Oh," he said, dropping his hands and straightening, embarrassed. "Sorry, you startled me."

Derek was smirking at him, his hands shoved in the pockets of his black leather bomber. "I could tell." He came around the front of the bench and crouched down in front of Zoe's seat, and looked at her with a weird expression on his face.

"Zoe, Derek, Derek, Zoe," said Stiles, gesturing between them. Zoe hummed again around her mouthful of rubber monkey. Derek reached out a finger which she grasped obligingly.

"Nice to meet you," he said formally, shaking her tiny fist. Stiles tried desperately not to die.

"So whatchya up to?" he squeaked out, before settling back down on the bench. Derek stood and sat on his other side, his thigh warm against Stiles'.

"Not much," he said, verbose as ever.

"I should warn you I'm getting over a cold," said Stiles, and Derek leaned away to look at him critically. "What?"

"You do look a bit...ragged."

"Oh great, that's a polite way of saying 'terrible'," said Stiles with a laugh.

Derek shook his head. "No, you look great," he said, and then blushed right to the tips of his ears and cleared his throat. Stiles felt incredibly charmed, but tried to quash the surge of emotion before he died again. "I just mean, you always look great, you just look like you could use a nap."

"I could, in fact, use a nap," said Stiles. "But my dad suggested some fresh air. I've been worrying about Zoe, you know. Catching my cold."

Derek shrugged, looking out at the pond. "Kids get sick."

"Yeah, that's what my dad says," said Stiles, feeling annoyed suddenly.

"My parents caught everything we did, when my sisters and I were little," said Derek. "Usually they were sicker for longer. Kids heal quick."

"I suppose so," said Stiles, and held his breath. He hadn't heard anything about Derek's family since they started talking. New information made him feel like...like Oliver Twist being given another bowl of mush. Not enough, but at least there was more.

They sat silently for a moment, until Derek's hand slid out of his pocket and ran along Stiles' thigh, making him suck in a quick breath.

"I had fun the other night," said Derek.

"Yeah me too," breathed Stiles. He glanced over at Derek just as he was looking back. Their eyes caught and Stiles felt like somebody had just seized him by the spleen. He leaned forward and their mouths met, softly, sweetly, until it suddenly was neither soft nor sweet and Derek's hand was in his hair and his was sweeping up Derek's inseam. Horrifyingly, Stiles realized, mid-kiss, that he needed to...he pushed against Derek's chest and leaned over to sneeze into his elbow.

"Oh my god I am so sorry," he said, digging a tissue out of the bottom of the stroller. "I warned you, and now you're probably going to get my cold."

"No worries. I don't get sick easily," said Derek, smiling at him now. Stiles would get a thousand colds if it meant Derek would keep looking at him like that. Jesus. Derek's eyes flickered to Zoe's carrier. "She's looking a little pink, is she okay?"

Stiles flicked a glance at Zoe, but she looked all right to him. "Sure, probably just the fresh air." But then he looked more closely. Her eyes were a bit glassy. He put a hand to her cheek. She felt hot. "Oh, shit," he said.

"Do you want me to take you somewhere?" said Derek, as Stiles crammed the seat back into the stroller and tucked Zoe's blanket tightly around her.

"Yeah, yes, um, that would be great," said Stiles. "No! No, what am I thinking. I need to get her home and call her doctor and you don't have the car seat thingy and I really need to go. Bye!" he called out over his shoulder as he raced the stroller back through the park. He looked back once to see Derek watching him, standing next to the bench, his hands stuffed back in his pockets.

Stiles made it home and put Zoe's carrier directly into Roscoe and peeled out as he called the doctor's office. They amazingly had an opening with Zoe's pediatrician, Dr. Chan, and Stiles started breathing normally, finally, just as they pulled into the parking lot. He carried Zoe in, and exchanged distracted greetings with the receptionist as he sat in the primary colored waiting room. There was one other family there, a mother with a three year old who was trying valiantly to make the beads on the abacus go flying off at escape velocity, and Stiles shielded Zoe's head with his hand just in case he succeeded.

"Come here often?" said Stiles weakly when the mother gave him a polite smile. "That was a joke, in case it wasn't clear. I tend to default to terrible pick up lines when I am out of my mind with worry, which I am, because this is the first time she's been sick, and I really don't know what to do with myself."

The woman actually smiled wider. "It'll be okay. The first time is always the worst."

"The worst in what way? How worst?" said Stiles, suddenly frantic. He looked down at Zoe but she still just looked normal, pink-cheeked but fine. But then the nurse came and showed him to one of the tiny exam rooms.

He sat down on the chair and leaned Zoe against his chest, clutching her and growing steadily more agitated. How long was this going to take? And was she getting warmer?
She was. As he sat there and sat there, her temp seemed to climb exponentially. He was actually sweating wherever he was touching her. He turned her around to make sure she was okay, but as soon as he looked at her face he knew something was wrong. Her honey brown eyes weren't just glassy, they were blank like no one was home, and her mouth was doing the weird trembly thing she sometimes did when she fell asleep with a bottle in her mouth.

"Zoe?" he said sharply, giving her a tiny wiggle with his knee. She didn't look at him. "Oh my god. Oh my god." The room tilted, his vision tunnelled as he stared at his daughter, his beautiful amazing daughter who was definitely not okay. He suddenly jolted into motion and stood, ripping the door open and nearly plowing down Dr. Chan in the hallway, standing there with a chart in his hand.

"Doctor," gasped Stiles, and pushed Zoe toward his startled face. Dr. Chan put the chart down and took her, giving her a searching look, eyes widening, and was suddenly pelting down the hallway, calling to the nurses as he went, disappearing around a corner. Stiles watched him go, feeling like he weighed a thousand pounds, his heart beating so hard he couldn't even hear the words the concerned nurse was saying to him when she took his arm gently and led him down after them.

Once they got around the corner into a larger exam room, Stiles could hear Zoe wailing. He exhaled a relieved sigh that felt like every bit of air he had ever breathed in his life. She was lying on the exam bed with Dr. Chan hovering over her, stethoscope to her chest, and then the doctor was giving Stiles a broad grin.

"She's all right, don't worry. She was having a febrile seizure."

"A seizure?" said Stiles, feeling that breath leave him again.

"Perfectly normal. It happens with quick body temperature fluctuations in some children. You'll have to keep an eye on her any time she gets a fever in the future. But she's fine."

"Fine," said Stiles, watching the doctor pick her back up and hand her to him. He clutched her tight to his chest. "She's fine."

"I mean, she does have a fever, but we'll get you some baby Ibuprofen. Just keep her on the medicine to regulate her temp, switching out between that and Tylenol if it climbs too high between safe doses. But yes. She's fine other than that."

Stiles suddenly felt very wobbly, and barely noticed as Dr. Chan guided him into a chair. He closed his eyes and hugged his daughter, who didn't even complain when they gave her some of the medicine. She was an unnaturally warm bundle, but she was his, and he was never ever letting go of her ever again.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, but he ignored it. Nobody else mattered at the moment. She was fine. She was completely fine.

That evening Stiles had to aspirate Zoe's nose as she screamed, which he decided was the worst thing he had ever done in his life, and he hoped to never have to do it again, but knew he'd need to again and again, and decided that being a parent was cruel and unusual. He was basically torturing his own child so she could breath. "This sucks. Literally and figuratively," he said to his dad, who was hovering over them both after Stiles description of his harrowing afternoon at the doctor's office.

"Yeah, I don't think I ever had to do that," Dad said. "Your mom usually took care of all this stuff." He said that with a sad smile, and Stiles bonked him in the shoulder with his head.

"Well, you always say that I take after her," said Stiles. "I guess I'm a mom, now, just like her. Good bits and bad bits alike."

"More good bits than bad, all told," said his dad, stroking a finger along Zoe's cheek once she had quieted. Stiles could only nod.

He took her to bed with him that night, and spent the entire time jerking awake any time she made a noise. But she already seemed better by the next morning, even though Stiles felt like he'd been tumble dried, dizzy and dehydrated and sleep deprived.

"How are you smiling right now?" said Stiles grumpily as he fed Zoe her breakfast bottle. She just continued to feed, but her mouth curved up at the corners as she stared at him, and she cooed around the nipple.

"Stop it. Stop being cute. I mean it," he said, as she kept cooing. Goddamn kid. He loved her so goddamn much.

He realized at some point that day that he had never checked the text he had gotten when he was at the doctor's office. It was Derek. "Hope the baby's okay. Text me when you get a chance." Stiles stared at it. Did he really have the energy for this? For having a fling slash relationship when he had to take care of his daughter? With a guy who didn't seem to remember her name? He stared at the message for a long moment, but couldn't decide what to do. Zoe made a distressed noise from her bouncy chair and Stiles put the phone away to go and get her out. He'd think about it and decide later. Things were too chaotic right now.

"God I am so bored," he said out loud, staring at Zoe as she chewed on a plastic baby iphone Lydia had sent her ("a phone, Lyds?" "You have to get her started early. The future comes at you fast, babe.") Zoe didn't reply, because she was four and a half months old. Hence the boredom.

"You could always get in touch with that guy you met," called out Dad from the kitchen. The smell of pie wafted through the house. They were getting ready to go over to Melissa and Scott's house for Thanksgiving. "You haven't really taken advantage of your live-in babysitter to go out with him. What happened with that?"

"Nothing," called out Stiles. He meant that literally. He had essentially ghosted Derek ever since Zoe had been sick. He just couldn't wrap his mind around the fact that he had been making out with him in the park while his daughter was getting a fever. A fever which sent her into a seizure. And yes, it was less "making out" than "briefly kissing", and a febrile seizure was about as benign as a seizure could get, but still. The principle of the thing. He had texted back to let Derek know that she was fine, but had ignored his follow up texts completely. So completely that Stiles was a little embarrassed. He'd seen a few notifications go by, but hadn't actually checked to see how many times Derek had texted him in the last couple weeks.

"You should call him."

"It's the 21st century, Dad, people don't call people."

"Jesus Christ. Text him, then." The Sheriff came in the living room with a pie in each hand. "You ready to go?"

"Yep," said Stiles, buckling Zoe into her carrier and booping her nose with her monkey to make her screech. "All set to visit Uncle Scott and Nana Melissa."

"Melissa and I are not getting married," said Dad with a deep sigh. "Quit hinting."

"I'm just saying. You were both born in the 1900s. You have so much in common."

"Let it go, Stiles. And you were born in 1995."

Melissa met them at the door with a big smile and practically wrenched Zoe right out of Stiles' arms. "You guys know where to go and what to do. I'm going to go commune with my proxy grandchild." Stiles winked at his dad after she said that, a big exaggerated wink like Betty Boop. Dad shoved him inside with a "Watch it, kid."

"You know it's only a matter of time," Stiles sing-songed.

Dinner was as amazing as ever, and Stiles enjoyed watching Scott dandle Zoe on his knee. He grew more comfortable with her as the day progressed, and he walked her around the yard after dinner, her back to his chest, pointing out bugs and flowers to her squealing excitement. Stiles and Melissa were standing on the porch watching them.

"He's gonna have a bruised abdomen after this," said Stiles to Melissa. "She kicks a lot when she's happy."

"Good thing his mom's an ER nurse, then," said Melissa, watching them with a huge smile. "Stiles," she said, suddenly serious, turning to him and putting a hand on his arm, "I just want you to know that I'm so proud of you."

"Aw, shucks," he said, swiping through the air and making a face.

"I'm serious," she said, clasping him more strongly. "You don't need to brush it off with a joke. When you told us last year, I was...well, let's just say that I had some very strong words for your father. That I thought you were making a huge mistake."

Stiles swallowed, his throat thick. "I had a feeling something like that had gone down."

"And I was wrong." She stared him down, her liquid brown eyes searching his so deeply he felt like closing them in embarrassment. "You're an amazing dad, and Zoe is..." she stopped, turning back to watch Scott dangle her toes in the grass. "Zoe is a gift. I'm glad you accepted it."

"I am too," he said, voice husky. He cleared it. "Thanks."

"You're very welcome," she said. She gave him a brisk hug and then tugged him down to sit on the porch steps. "Now tell me about this guy."

"What guy?" said Scott from across the yard. Dammit. He always did have ridiculously good hearing at the worst times.

"Noah told me there was a guy," called out Melissa. Stiles turned to stare down his dad who had just returned to the porch with two beers, one of which he handed to Melissa with a sheepish look in his direction.

"Dad," said Stiles.

"Stiles," said Dad.

Stiles raised one eyebrow.

"Fine. Fine! I might have let it spill the other night after I posted that video. Melissa is like a CIA operative, you know that."

Yes. He did in fact know that. She might even be worse than Lydia.

"I only told her that you had met the guy twice and seemed to really like him. I don't even know who it is!"

Scott had wandered over, Zoe still held in front of him, her legs swinging into his stomach. His face was a bit pained. Stiles knew it. "Stiles? You met somebody?" he said. Oh. Oh no. That was emotional pain.

"It's really not a big deal," said Stiles, looking down at his shoes, suddenly embarrassed. "We just hooked up at Jungle, and then met a couple weeks later. And then at the park."

"Three dates seems like a relatively big deal," said Dad.

"They weren't dates! Seriously. And I haven't texted him back since...."

The silence after that was loaded with judginess. "Stiles. Please tell me you haven't ghosted him because Zoe got sick," said his dad.

"No! I haven't ghosted him! And quit using teen lingo, it's sad."

"So you've spoken to him?"

"No?"

Scott sat cross legged in the grass, Zoe plopped in the circle of his legs like a tiny wiggly Buddha statue. "So you have plans to see him again?"

"Not really?"

"Stiles!" said Melissa. "You have ghosted him. Do you not like him or something?"

"Oh, I like him a lot." A lot a lot. "I just...I can't be distracted right now. Zoe needs me."

"Zoe has a grandpa and a step-in grandma that would be happy to babysit anytime," said Melissa. "Stiles, you need to have your own life, too."

"I mean, yeah, I guess," said Stiles.

"I don't guess, I know," said his dad. "She's fine, Stiles. She's happy and healthy and you can go out with the guy if you want to."

"And you can tell us who it is if you want to, too," said Scott. "Is it Blaine over at the pet store?"

"Who? And no, I can't tell you who it is."

"Why not?"

"Because you are never going to believe me, and then you will think I made it up, and then you will stop being my best friend and go back to smashing my popsicle stick creations in art class."

"That was in the fourth grade, Stiles, get over it," said Scott. Suddenly his eyes widened in shock. "Oh my god I know who it is no way," he said all in one breath.

"Scott," said Stiles menacingly.

"That actually worked? That ridiculous 'seduce a man through a window with my creepily powerful wiles' scheme actually worked?"

"Okay, now you have to tell us," said Melissa.

"The white whale. Derek Hale," breathed Scott.

The silence after that was not so much loaded as "double gunned Mexican standoff at high noon" tense. Stiles turned to his dad.

"Yep. Derek," he said, to his dad's purpling face.

So, see, the other thing about Derek Hale. The other thing...yeah. The other thing.

After Derek Hale graduated, but before his parents died tragically in a car accident, he had a, hmmm, colorful relationship with the law. The Camaro was seen racing through neighborhoods at breakneck speeds at all hours of the day and night. Derek was spotted with booze, marijuana, and possibly Ecstasy, although Stiles never heard all the details of that. Derek was caught shoplifting on more than one occasion, and on one very memorable night, shoplifting while drunk and in the company of a woman who all witnesses described as "probably a hooker." And the Sheriff had to deal with all of this while at the same time fending off Derek's parents who were both very successful lawyers of the bloodthirsty variety, and who had way more money than was probably good for them. So. Derek got away with nearly everything short of murder, which he had thankfully never been accused of. Then his parents died, he moved away, and that was the end of his rap sheet. At least, Stiles hoped it was.

"He's changed? At least I think so?"

"You asking me or telling me," said his dad.

"Telling! Telling. Seriously. I mean, it's been forever since then."

"Five years."

"Five years is, like, fifty years when you're a teenager!" Stiles looked at Scott for support, but he just shrugged.

"I mean, he seems fine at the gym. A little grumpy, maybe."

"Wow, thanks for the endorsement." Stiles slumped over onto his knees.

"What can I say, Stiles? I don't know the guy. You're the one who's slept with him."

Stiles glared at Scott. Like, his dad knew that, intellectually, but emotionally....

"Oh my god, you slept with Derek fucking Hale," growled his dad.

"Jesus, Dad, language," said Stiles. "And you knew that already."

Dad was pacing the porch now, his hand running through his hair. "That was before, when I thought it was some, you know, nice young man with a job."

"Some nice young man with a job? That I picked up at the gay bar? How would you even know? And Derek has a job!"

"Does he?"

Shit, did he? Stiles realized he didn't actually know. Scott saved him.

"He works at the gym," said Scott. "He's part time as a trainer while he works on his sport's therapy degree."

"See?" said Stiles, pointing at Scott. "Model citizen."

"Model citizen my ass," said the Sheriff, crossing his arms and glaring at Stiles. "Never mind. No way are you letting that jerkwad anywhere near my granddaughter."

"Jerkwad? I take it back. Curse all you want, if that's the alternative." Stiles stood up and planted himself in front of his dad. "And you don't have any say in who I see, remember? We had that whole talk last year."

They had. And his dad had agreed to stay out of his personal life. Stiles watched as his dad deflated from his impression of an irate pufferfish. "Yeah, yeah, I know. Doesn't mean I have to like him."

"Well, I mean, I'm not even seeing him anymore, really," said Stiles. He didn't know why saying it out loud made him feel about ten times worse than a moment before, but it did.

"That's true," said Dad, who looked about a hundred times happier than a moment before, his face lighting up with thankful glee. "That's true. Well. Plenty more fish in the sea. I'm sure you'll meet someone else soon enough. Who's this Blaine you were talking about, Scott?"

Stiles tuned them out as they blathered on about his romantic life as though it were a thing he was going to participate in. He was not. He was going to raise his daughter and die as whatever the male version of an old maid is. He was not interested in anyone, at all.

He had a terrible feeling that he was actually not interested in anyone who was not Derek Hale.

Stiles was taking a walk down the Beacon Hills main street, pushing Zoe in her stroller, in the week just before Christmas. It was cold, or at least as cold as it got in this part of California, so he'd bundled her up pretty good, and she was wearing the ridiculous bobble hat that Lydia had knitted for her. Lydia had told Stiles it was the only thing she was ever going to knit, ever, so he had better let Zoe live in that thing so it was in every picture. He was doing his best. The streets were cheery with Christmas lights, and even without snow he was feeling that holiday spirit buoying him as he window shopped. He still needed something for Melissa, but he was done getting gifts for the rest of his friends and his dad. He decided to let his dad get stuff for Zoe, since he was going to anyway and their house was really small and anything he got in addition to the small mountain of wrapped gifts piling up next to their Christmas tree was like paprika on a devilled egg, i.e. unnoticeable.

"I think I might be hungry," muttered Stiles under his breath as he peered into a shop declaring itself "Beacon Hills' Best Gift Emporium!" I'll be the judge of that, thought Stiles.

"There's a kiosk selling hot chocolate and churros around the corner," came a voice from just behind him. Stiles nearly conked his forehead on the shop window and let out a perfectly manly squeak which made Zoe giggle.

"Dammit, Hale, do you sneak up on everyone or are you just using that perfectly terrifying ability to send me to an early grave?" gasped Stiles as he pressed his hand to his heart.

"Sorry," said Derek, smirking. His mouth quickly smoothed to a flat line. "You haven't been replying to my texts," he said. Stiles turned away from him to continue perusing the gifts at Beacon Hills self-expressed best emporium for such.

"Oh, I've just been, uh, really busy. You know," he said, waving at Zoe and feeling extra guilty at using her as an excuse when she was actually a model baby and he had two older people ready and willing to provide him with babysitting time. "Holidays," he added, like that meant anything.

"Sure. Lots of family, I'm guessing?" said Derek.

"Oh no, not really," said Stiles, and then realized he should have lied about that if he wanted his claim of "no time" to stick. "I mean, it's just me and my dad, and Scott and his mom."

"Ah," said Derek. Stiles watched as he stared at his shoes for a long moment. "Stiles, uh, I feel like I should apologize?" He said it like a question.

Huh. Interesting. Stiles looked at him and propped a hip against the stroller to keep it in place, crossing his arms. "For what?" he said, just to make Derek squirm.

Squirm he did. "Um, well, obviously, I've offended you in some way, or, I don't know, you didn't enjoy yourself at my place, or something." Derek ran a hand through his hair and squinted down the street. "I mean, I did, if you were wondering. Enjoy myself. I mean, I said so, when we met at the park."

"Yeah," said Stiles. "You did."

"Then, I guess I'm sorry for that? Was I too forward?" Derek was looking at him in confusion now. Stiles decided to put him out of his misery.

"I told you I had a good time. It's not that. I just..." Stiles looked down at Zoe, who was chewing on a rubber ring and gazing at the lights above the window. "I just don't think I have the emotional energy for a fling right now. Not with someone who isn't that crazy about kids."

Derek gave him a strange look. "Why do you think I don't like kids?" he said, and to his credit he sounded honestly baffled.

"I never said that," said Stiles. "But you just...reacted weirdly when I sent you that video. And then you didn't use her name when you asked about her. So I extrapolated, I guess." Stiles shrugged. "It's okay. Not everybody likes babies." He gave Derek a smile and started pushing Zoe's stroller away from the emporium, which seemed to be an emporium for useless crap but he guessed advertising it as "Beacon Hills' Best Useless Crap Emporium!" wouldn't drum up much business. He was maybe ten feet away when Derek suddenly spoke up behind him.

"I had a baby sister," he said, the words sounding wrenched out of him, rough with grief. Stiles turned in shock and looked back to where Derek still stood, under the lights of the Emporium, hands in pockets, astonishing eyes staring at him, wide and sad. "She died, too. In the accident."

Stiles felt like all the air had been punched from his lungs at once. "How old?"

Derek hunched over a little, eyes dropping. "Six months."

"Jesus." Stiles turned to look back at Zoe, who would be six months old in a couple of weeks. "Jesus," he said again. "Derek, I'm so sorry."

"Yeah," said Derek. "Me too." Stiles turned the stroller back around and walked back to where Derek stood, hunched and miserable. He clicked the brake on the stroller and leaned over to wrap him in a hug.

"What was her name?" Stiles mumbled into his neck.

"Megan."

Stiles hugged a little harder at that. "I get it," he said quietly. "You don't have to, to kill yourself trying to be normal." Derek suddenly hugged him back, his strong arms so tight around him he could barely breathe. "But don't kill me either, please," gasped Stiles. Derek released him with a huff.

"Sorry."

"Stop saying sorry. You don't have anything to apologize for. I was being a dick. Do you wanna go get dinner tonight?"

Derek was blinking at him in astonishment. "What?"

"Dinner? The evening meal? Usually consumed between the hours of six and nine, unless you're in Spain, where those crazy mothereffers close everything until nine which is just absolutely ridiculous when you're trying to sightsee...."

"Yes, Stiles," interrupted Derek, "Yes, I'll have dinner with you. Before nine." He rubbed his hand through his hair again, and muttered, "Talking to you is like getting whiplash over and over again."

Stiles decide to ignore the addendum. "Awesome." He suddenly couldn't stop smiling. "But first, churros."

Derek rolled his eyes. "You really like to eat, don't you?"

"Dude, you have no idea."

They strolled along the lit street. They consumed churros and hot chocolate. They made their way to the diner where Stiles plopped Zoe's carrier seat into a high chair and they ordered burgers and fries and Zoe slurped down her bottle and entertained them with coos and laughs until Stiles thought his heart might burst. Derek was hilariously solemn with the baby, letting her clutch his finger and wave it around with a high pitched giggle like she was the world's tiniest conductor. Stiles took her out of the seat when they were done eating and sat her on his lap and let her bang on the table and disrupt the sugar packets, all the while talking and watching Derek watching him with his soft, luminous eyes. Stiles was gone. This was it. This was going to kill him before he turned twenty one, this stupid tender feeling being pulled out of him against his will. He liked Derek Hale, like, a lot.

Derek was settling the tab at the counter while Stiles bopped Zoe around to the Christmas carols playing over the staticky loudspeaker over the register. The lady working the till, a dishwater blonde that always called Stiles "Hon" and had worked here since the dawn of time gave Stiles a grin and wink as Derek turned away to stuff his wallet back in his pocket.

"Nice catch," she whispered.

"I know," he said back, winking back at her. She laughed her smoker's laugh and handed him a lollipop from the fishbowl on the counter, which he immediately unwrapped and popped into his mouth. Derek turned around and blinked at him in surprise.

"How old are you?" he said, and he sounded a little worried.

"Oh knock it off, I'm of age. I've just been coming here a long time. Still a kid in the hearts of the public." He fluttered his eyelashes at Derek, who surprised him by leaning in and taking Zoe right out of his arms and swooping her over to her carrier seat. She let out a shriek of delight.

"You have a ridiculous dad," he said to her as he strapped her in. Expertly, Stiles noted. He sighed and shared a dreamy look with the cashier.

"Envious?" he said under his breath.

"Green with it," she said, propping her chin in her hand and gazing at Derek's behind.

"Hey, watch it," said Stiles, putting his hand over her eyes. She laughed and smacked him and went towards another customer gesturing from down the counter a ways. Stiles twirled the lolly in his mouth and watched Derek heft the carrier in his hand like it weighed nothing and hold open the door for him as they left.

When they were once more back on the street, and Zoe was snug and nearly asleep in her stroller, Derek turned to Stiles and moved a bit closer. Stiles felt his breath hitch, which was ludicrous. He'd literally had this man's dick in his mouth at one point. He shouldn't be getting butterflies from proximity.

"So, do you promise to reply to my texts now?" said Derek.

"What, one date and all is forgiven?" teased Stiles.

"Um, I thought so, yes?" said Derek, sounding flustered and hopeful at the same time.

"Well you're right," said Stiles, "Not that there was anything to forgive anyway, just my usual brand of overthinking and neurotic anxiety trying to ruin any chance I have of deepening a relationship. Not that this has to be a relationship. I mean, we've been on one date, way to get ahead of yourself, Stilinski. Jesus, shut up already--"

A broad warm palm pushed against his mouth. Stiles felt the unbelievably childish impulse to lick it but restrained himself. “Agreed," said Derek.

"What?" said Stiles, intelligently, muffled against Derek's palm. Just a little taste. His tongue inched toward the skin in front of it.

"Shut up," said Derek, and then his palm was replaced with his mouth and Stiles melted into a swift, warm kiss that left his knees shaky. "I'll see you later, Stilinski."

Stiles watched him walk away, the lights catching in the dark whorls of his hair. "See you," he said. Shit. So much for not falling for Derek Hale. His dad was going to kill him.

Scott decided to have a big Christmas party on the 23rd, since all of their friends were going to be in town for the holidays, and everyone wanted to meet Zoe and there was no way Stiles could focus on preparing his and his dad's house for that many people when they had a baby in residence. He tried to talk Scott out of it, knowing that he was busy, too, what with Vet school and the newly re-opened possible romance between him and Allison, but he was adamant.

"No, man, let me do this for you. Okay?" Scott was really, really good with pleading, his big puppy eyes practically dripping with implicit hurt feelings if Stiles should refuse.

"Fine," grumbled Stiles. "But try to keep it simple."

So, that request fell on deaf ears, apparently, thought Stiles, as he and his dad and Zoe approached the front stoop of Melissa's house. It looked like a Christmas store had exploded in the front yard. Zoe gazed around in wonder at the numerous (11? No, 12 inflatables, Scott was insane) decorations cluttering the walk. Once inside the door, they were greeted with more of the same, plus an already tipsy Melissa who had gotten into the eggnog a bit early.

A distant shriek was all the warning Stiles got before a redheaded whirlwind slammed into him and squeezed the breath from his body.

"Good to see you, Lydia," he managed to squeeze out despite his constricted airways.

"You absolute bastard," she said, finally releasing him. "Why didn't you invite me over earlier? Haven't even met this gorgeous lady yet," she said, crouching down to make faces at a delighted Zoe, swiftly unbuckling her from her carrier to clutch her tightly in her arms.

"You've been busy," said Stiles hotly. "You were the one complaining about your course load..."

"Oh, relax, Stilinski, all is forgiven," said Lydia, beaming at Zoe and swinging her around to balance her on her hip. Stiles was briefly envious. He didn't have much of a hip to do that with. Women and their child-bearing bodies. Lydia grabbed his hand and towed him into the brightly lit holiday chaos with a grin. "Let's party," she said.

It was delightful, of course. Scott and Melissa had gone all out on the buffet spread, and there was the dangerous eggnog and mulled wine and some kind of rum punch that Stiles felt tipsy after merely smelling. In addition to Lydia, Allison was there, and a bunch of other friends from school, and even Jackson was there, broodily holding up a wall with a drink hanging from his hand like he was a holiday fashion spread. The Sheriff had brought some of his favorite coworkers along, including a deputy who was trying his best to monopolize Lydia's time when she wasn't showing Zoe around to all and sundry. He was almost succeeding, and Stiles wished him godspeed. Lydia was difficult but worth it.

Zoe was being passed from person to person like a particularly adorable virus, and enjoying it immensely. Jackson even took a turn holding her, during which she gazed into his eyes with alarming intensity. "Quit flirting with my daughter," Stiles yelled at him. Jackson merely gave him the finger and made Zoe laugh by tossing her toward the ceiling and catching her expertly. Stiles pushed down his anxious feelings. Jackson was still as athletic as ever, so nothing to worry about. He wasn't going to drop Stiles’ precious daughter on the floor. He would never.

"Stop sweating," said Stiles' dad into his ear. "She's fine."

Stiles turned to him gratefully, "Oh I know, Jackson couldn't drop a lacrosse stick if you paid him, he won't...." He stopped. There was a tall blonde man just past his dad's shoulder.

"Ah, Stiles, have you met Blaine?" said his dad in a too jovial tone of voice. He slapped the blonde man on the shoulder and beamed at Stiles.

Stiles glared at his dad. "Blaine. From the pet store," he said. He wasn't sure what his voice was doing but from the flinch on the man's face he guessed it was something cold and pissed off.

"Uh, yep! Got it in one!" said the man, Blaine, also too jovial. He thrust out a hand in Stiles' direction. Stiles took it and plastered a smile to his face. Blaine from the pet store was strikingly handsome and tall and had an ear full of silver hoops and was wearing a Christmas sweater that looked entirely too familiar.

"Is that the Eye of Sauron?" said Stiles, pointing at a repeating design at the hem.

"Yeah," said Blaine from the pet store, running a hand sheepishly through his hair and looking down at the sweater. "My mom made this for me. Scott saw me wearing it the other day and insisted I wear it to the party." He smiled, looking up at Stiles through his lashes. Stiles clamped down on the part of him that was softening toward this interloper and thinking he had nice eyes.

"Well. It's. Very nice," he said. He stopped himself from launching into a passionate conversation with a guy he just met about the Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion and looked around, desperately searching for someone else he could talk to that wasn't a guy literally brought to this party for him to date.

His eyes landed on Derek fucking Hale, just entering the room and standing hunched in the archway under some mistletoe. "Oh shit," said Stiles.

"Pardon?" said Blaine from the pet store.

"It was very nice to, I'm sorry, I have to," stammered Stiles and fled the scene of the crime, practically feeling his dad's eyes boring into his back. He pushed through the people that seemed adamant on blocking his every step through the suddenly too crowded room, did they really know this many people? Until finally he was next to Derek, whose gaze had followed him the entire time.

"You're here, why are you here? I can't believe you're here," said Stiles.

"You're babbling. And very handsome," said Derek, blatantly giving Stiles a once over. Stiles shouted internally at his spine to keep it from melting. "And you invited me, remember?"

"You're standing under the mistletoe," said Stiles like a complete and utter idiot.

"You're also standing under the mistletoe," said Derek, stepping forward a little. Oh no. No no no. This was a terrible....

Stiles accepted the kiss with every semblance of cool neutrality while inside he was screaming. His dad was right over there. With a man he brought for Stiles. While Stiles was kissing Derek fucking Hale.

"You okay?" said Derek, leaning out of the kiss with his eyebrows akimbo, if one could do that with eyebrows.

"Fine? Great? Why do you ask?" said Stiles, while at the same time herding Derek with little shooing gestures across the room towards the, relatively safe, buffet table.

"Stiles!" said a sharp voice. He closed his eyes and turned.

"Yes, Lydia?" he said.

She stood there, hands on hips, looking at Derek with vicious glee. Derek actually took a step back. "Introduce me to your friend?" she said, putting a lascivious emphasis on the last word.

"Derek Hale, Lydia Martin, Lydia Martin, Derek Hale," said Stiles without taking a breath. He saw his dad approaching over Lydia's shoulder. The Sheriff's face was reddening as he stomped closer with Blaine helplessly pulled along in his wake. Stiles almost felt bad for the guy, until he went back to feeling bad for himself.

"Oh, I know who you are," she said, making Stiles want to scream and ask her why she insisted on the introduction, but she continued, "What are your intentions with our Stiles?"

Stiles gaped at her. "Excuse me?"

"Stiles, there you are," said Scott, materializing on the other side of Derek and stuffing an entire devilled egg in his mouth. "Hi Derek," he said, although it sounded more like "Hi Dick" around the egg, which Stiles was too frazzled to appreciate at the moment.

"Stiles!" his dad barked, and Stiles jumped. "Would you like to tell me why this, this, this person is at our Christmas party?" he said, pointing aggressively at Derek.

"Should I go?" said Blaine from the pet store. Scott patted him on the shoulder and handed him a devilled egg.

"So? Anything to say for yourself Hale?" said Lydia.

"Stiles, I think Zoe just had a major blow out," said Melissa, appearing on Derek's other side. "Pretty sure she has poop in her hair. Could you point me to the diaper bag?"

"Stiles, answer me!" roared his dad.

The Christmas music took that moment to go silent. Stiles looked around at everyone looking at him, and then at his daughter, who looked absolutely delighted to have poop in her hair. He ran his hand through his own, and took a deep breath. One thing at a time. He looked at Blaine.

"I'm sorry, Blaine from the pet store, you don't have to go, but I'm not interested in going out with you, man, sorry if my dad or Scott implied otherwise." Blaine nodded glumly but shrugged his shoulders and wandered away towards where Jackson was once again photogenically draped against the wall. "Lydia, his intentions are that he likes me, I think, and I like him, and we are seeing each other and it's been going really well and he does like kids, that was just a misunderstanding on my part." She backed up and folded her arms with smug satisfaction. Which...."Dad, he's here because I asked him to come because I'm falling for him and thought you might like to get to know him as a non-juvenile delinquent repeat offender before we get any further into this thing." The Sheriff shrank a little bit at that, his eyes wide and surprised at Stiles' declaration. "Derek, I hope I haven't totally scared you off with my absolutely insane friends and family." He looked over to see only amusement and affection in Derek's eyes, and he smiled at him. "And Melissa, the diaper bag is by the front door, but I can do it, sounds like something Zoe's dad should take care of." Stiles scooped Zoe out of Melissa's arms and went to find the diaper bag before walking down the hall to the bathroom, closing the door just as Feliz Navidad started blaring out of every portable speaker. The sound was muffled by the door, thank god. He hated that fucking song.

He had just managed to get Zoe completely undressed and in the tub so he could wash poop off her back and, yes, out of her hair, when someone knocked tentatively.

"Naked poop monster in here, but enter if you're unafraid," Stiles called out. Zoe giggled at that.

Whoever entered stayed silent until suddenly someone was kneeling next to him and handing him a Solo cup, empty of beer. Derek. “To rinse off the poop,” he said.

Stiles stared at him, at his ridiculous eyes and ridiculous hair and ridiculous, glorious cheekbones. “You seriously brought me a cup. To rinse off the poop.”

“Well. Yeah,” said Derek, taking the cup back and scooping up some water from the bath into it and holding it out. Stiles could not believe this, could not believe that the GQ model he had inexplicably landed was helping him clean up his daughter after a diaper blow out.

“Are you actually for real, or did I dream you up in a lab at some point?” Stiles took the cup and poured the water carefully over Zoe’s head, tilting her back to keep it out of her eyes. She giggled at him, trying to grab the cup.

“Don’t think so,” said Derek, before taking the cup from Stiles and filling it again, this time from the tap. “So it isn’t contaminated,” he said, when Stiles eyed him.

Stiles stared at him again, shaking his head. “You’re gonna make me like Beacon Hills. Aren’t you,” he said, continuing to rinse off Zoe’s hair and make faces at her to make her giggle some more.

“Well, we do have the state’s largest California Sycamore tree,” said Derek, getting up to fetch a towel which he then arranged on the floor between himself and Stiles. Stiles lifted a squirming Zoe out of the bath and deposited her on it, giving her a brisk rub and re-diapering her as swiftly as he could.

“Really. The largest sycamore,” he said, looking up under his lashes at Derek where he sat on his heels, hands on knees, looking down at Zoe with a strange smile on his face.

“Yeah. In case, you know, you ever wondered.”

“You are such a dork.” Stiles shook his head. He could not believe he was falling in love with this guy. Where would all of his amazing pick-up ability go? “Hand me the diaper bag, would you? Naked baby needs a new oufit.”

The party felt so much less fraught now that Stiles had cleared the air a bit, literally and figuratively. Zoe fell asleep cradled on Derek’s impressive shoulder, which caused Stiles’ Dad to actually look at him like he wasn’t on the FBI’s most wanted poster, and Stiles to nearly burst from restrained affection or possibly indigestion (Scott had been very generous with the devilled eggs). Blaine and Jackson wandered off somewhere only to return wearing matching hickies which made Lydia laugh like a hyena on meth. Scott and Allison snuggled up on the couch and started singing Christmas carols badly until Melissa came over and single-voicedly made them sound like they had some talent. Dad’s new Deputy managed to get Lydia to give him her number. And Stiles spent a ridiculous amount of time with his arm around Derek Hale’s waist. All in all, not a bad party.

Fifth of July, Six Months Later

“Hale! Goddamnit, Hale! Where are those hamburgers!”

“Coming, sir!” came Derek’s voice through the screen door from the kitchen. Stiles just laughed at his dad.

“Quit yelling at him, you grill tyrant!” he shouted, from where he sat next to Scott on the porch steps.

Dad just grumbled under his breath, something about ungrateful children. Stiles chuckled and took a long pull from his beer. Zoe’s first birthday party was going great so far, despite the heat. Thank god for a middle-aged man’s love of grilling.

“Papa! Papa!” shrieked Zoe from somewhere behind him, and suddenly his soggy daughter slammed into his back, laughing and clutching his face with wet hands. He knew the water table was a good idea, because it felt amazing. It was too goddamned hot. He pulled her up and over his shoulder upside down as she laughed until he had her belly totally at his mercy, raspberrying to his hearts content.

“Papaaa!” she wailed. “No!” She scrambled to her feet in front of him and tugged down her shirt, patting her belly gently. “No beddy.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, no more kisses for your belly.” He patted her belly as well, and she beamed down at his hand. He felt his heart explode into chunks. What a ridiculous kid. “But you know who would like kisses on his belly?” he whispered into her ear. She shook her dark curly head. “Uncle Scott.”

“Unta!” shrieked Zoe, climbing over Stiles and tackling Scott with her wet hands and landing sloppy, spit-filled kisses onto his stomach as he glared at Stiles whilst trying to keep from laughing.

“Give up, Scotty-boy,” said Stiles. “Let the monster mark you as her own.” He stood and left his best friend ruthlessly behind, but only because his incredibly hot boyfriend was standing next to his dad at the grill, looking like he’d lost a bet.

As Stiles came close he realized it was because his dad was expounding on exactly the right method for perfect burgers every time, and Stiles knew that Derek would rather pound red hot nails into his arm than work a grill. He looked at Stiles with pleading eyes, and Stiles decided to take pity on him.

“All right, Grampa, let the nice boy go,” said Stiles, dragging Derek away.

“You’ll thank me some day! This advice is gold!” yelled Dad as they escaped.

“Oh my god, thank you,” said Derek under his breath, as he stumbled after Stiles. They stopped in the shady lea of the porch, and Stiles wrapped his arm around him, looking out over the yard. It was full of their friends, Derek’s from the gym, and Stiles’ from his new classes at the college, and there were even a few little kids sprinkled in, enjoying the bouncy castle and the water table. Stiles had managed to succeed in outlawing any patriotic crap, since he was determined that Zoe would have a birthday separate from Independence Day if it killed him. Unless she wanted to watch Independence Day, but it was years too early for that. Maybe someday. He hoped.

Melissa was now captive to Dad’s tirade about grilling, but she didn’t look mad about it, laughing bright and wide at something he said. Zoe was still shrieking at Scott, but that was because he was jumping around with her in his arms like he was a bouncy castle. Stiles watched them, dropping his head to Derek’s shoulder.

“Can’t believe it’s been a year, already,” said Stiles. “When does adulthood kick in, anyway? I still feel like a know-nothing kid. Would have thought having a kid would fix that.”

“Naah. Adulthood’s like an ever-moving target, I think. You never really feel like you get there. And then you die.”

“Wow. Cheery.”

Derek shrugged. “You don’t love me because of my charming disposition.”

“You got that right. I love you for your abs. And your ass. And your arms. Wow, those all start with A! And your Arresting Allure, your Altogether Astounding Artisinal Anger! Your Able-bodied Antipathy to Alarm! Your, uh, Agonizing and Athletic Amorous Actions! Your—”

“Stiles, please stop—”

“—Avuncular, um, Adeptness!”

“Adeptness? Is that even a word?”

“Absolutely!”

Derek rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Thank you. For that alliterative listing of my strengths, I guess?”

“Anytime.” Stiles grinned. He was a genius.

“Jesus Christ. I’m beginning to wonder why it is I love you.”

Stiles wrapped his arms around Derek’s neck and dragged him close. “You don’t have to wonder about that, you know,” he said, nosing behind his ear. “I know you only love me for my daughter.”

“You got that right,” said Derek. And, speak of the devil, Zoe ran suddenly into both of their legs, gazing up at them with her mouth open, her cheeks red, her four new teeth bright in the sunshine. “Papa! Pa!” she said, and held her arms up. Stiles and Derek both obligingly took an arm and swung her up into their combined embrace.

“Pa!” she said, clutching at Derek. “Pa, doe Dapa!” she said, squeezing his face until his lips were pursed like a fish.

“Guess we’ll go see Grampa,” garbled Derek through his squashed face before landing a wet kiss on Zoe’s smile to her audible delight, eyes twinkling at Stiles. Jesus. He loved him so much. Any man who could understand Zoe when she spoke, that was the man Stiles knew he never wanted to lose.

“Go see Grampa,” said Stiles, smiling back. Derek started walking back to the grill carrying Zoe as she patted him on top of the head like a good horsey. Oh, shit, he just thought of another....

“Affectionate to the Adolescent and Aged!” he yelled at Derek’s back. Derek returned him a middle finger behind Zoe’s head. Oh yeah. Life was good.