“Get out.”
Stiles didn’t know what to make of Derek’s tone. He’d normally take an opening like that as an invitation to banter but… there was something flat and cold about Derek’s tone. For the first time in a really long time, Stiles felt a touch of fear.
“Hey… sourwo–”
“Got out. Now.” Derek growled, his red alpha eyes almost like lasers. Stiles felt his heart start to race because he was pretty sure he’d never been more afraid of Derek than he was in this moment.
“But–”
Derek roared and it had Stiles turning and fleeing. Praying that Derek didn’t chase him and actually tear out his throat.
At lunch the next day, Stiles walked up to a table that totally had space for him, if the pack scooted over a little bit… no one did.
“Hey, guys? Can you move over a little?” Stiles asked and watched in surprise as the wolves startled. Allison smiled and Lydia’s eyes flicked to him, so that was normal.
The wolves did scoot over…
But like way over.
So far over that Scott was almost sitting in Jackson’s lap and neither was complaining.
Werewolves were so weird.
“So… was Derek still in a weird mood during the pack meeting yesterday? I showed up but he practically clawed my face off. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him like that,” Stiles sort of asked the table.
Allison replied, “I couldn’t go, so I don’t know.”
Which meant that Scott hadn’t gone either.
Erica, Boyd, and Isaac were ignoring him in a strange way… even before they’d been pack or friends, they hadn’t ignored him.
“Erica? Boyd? Isaac?” Stiles prompted.
Eventually Boyd spoke up, “Derek was fine.”
Which… okay. Seemed like it was only Stiles that had a problem. Or that everyone had a problem with Stiles.
Stiles cornered Scott after school, “Why is everyone being so weird?”
Scott scrunched his nose, “Are they?”
“You all are. Dude, you were practically in Jackson’s lap today. And you’ve been avoiding me,” Stiles pointed out.
“I have? I haven’t been trying to avoid you, sorry if it looked that way, bro,” Scott replied with an easy smile.
It relaxed something around Stiles’ heart because he doesn’t know what he would’ve done if Scott started being weird too.
For all that Scott had reassured him… it kept happening. Scott was always friendly and normal whenever Stiles pinned him down but otherwise… totally avoiding Stiles.
The other betas generally refused to engage with him.
Eventually he decided that Derek must’ve said something to the pack about pushing him out. It was the only thing that made sense.
It hurt because he thought they were past this… then again, Stiles had gotten hurt last week after disobeying one of Derek’s orders… so maybe Derek might be a wee bit justified but he’d already yelled at Stiles!
No reason to pull all of this.
Stiles wouldn’t stand for it.
He decided the best thing to do was lay an ambush for Derek at his loft. Stiles didn’t officially have a key but it was easy enough to break in.
He and Derek were going to talk this out.
After an hour of waiting and stewing in anger and hurt, he finally heard footsteps coming up the stairs.
Stiles stood, ready to engage, when his dad burst into the loft, gun drawn. Shouting before he realized it was Stiles, “Hands behind your head, you’re under arrest for breaking and entering!”
He froze.
His dad froze when he realized it was Stiles, “Son… why did you break into Derek Hale’s loft? Why do you do these things?”
“Da–”
His dad put up a hand, “Don’t speak. Put your hands behind your back. I need to read you your rights.”
Stiles sputtered because what?
And… his dad was 100% serious because when he didn’t move fast enough, his dad actually manhandled him a little to cuff Stiles, while reading his rights.
Contrary to popular belief, Stiles knew when to shut up. He didn’t say anything. He knew better than to talk to the cops without a lawyer.
Stiles didn’t miss the camaro as his dad stuffed him into the cruiser. Derek had called the cops on Stiles.
What the actual fuck?
Derek, the giant asshole, pressed charges. And because his dad had caught him red-handed, Stiles ended up having to do community service.
And now he had an arrest on his record. Sure, it was his juvenile record, but still!
Not cool.
It looked really bad for the sheriff’s son to get arrested.
His dad was massively disappointed and he was grounded for, like, ever.
“Scott, I need an explanation. You’re still being weird and Derek got me arrested. What the fuck is happening?” Stiles demanded as he stormed into Scott’s room.
“Stiles?” Scott’s voice was strangely suspicious as he turned towards the door.
“Yeah, man, who else?”
“I… think I understand now. I didn’t notice because it was school and there’s already so much–” Scott trailed off.
“So much…” Stiles flailed in impatience, trying to urge Scott to go on.
“And I think it’s because your scent is so familiar that I didn’t notice. But, um… I need to know, man. Tell me something only Stiles would know,” Scott asks, looking a little sheepish.
Stiles blinks at him, “Wait, you think I’m not the real Stiles?”
“Dude… your scent…” Scott helplessly says.
And it all finally clicks.
Ever since Deaton told Stiles he had a ‘spark’—whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean—he’d been exploring the possibility that he could do magic. And he could. His magic required two things: ingredients and belief.
A spark needed tinder, after all.
What he’d learned is that the materials he used could be flexible—so long as he believed—they’d do what he needed. It was a good thing because it meant he could avoid the more expensive components. Mostly he learned the lore of basic, easy to find herbs and rolled with it.
He’d learned that you didn’t need a lot of magic if you were creative and flexible with your thinking. And Stiles had those in abundance.
His latest creation was a paste he could use to block out his scent. Stiles had become… interested in such a thing when he’d learned about werewolves and chemosignals. When he realized that it was possible Derek didn’t like him because he could smell the stench of Stiles’ crush. Or whatever it is they could smell.
His ‘deodorizer’ worked really well. It was actually better for keeping his boy funk under control than anything he could buy at the store. He’d done a test by not using deodorant for a day and putting it on. It’d worked like, well, magic. He’d stunk and a little dab of his paste? Gone. His human nose couldn’t detect any lingering traces of his BO. Stiles was pretty proud of himself.
So, at least, he knew he didn’t stink. What he smelled like to a wolf nose? No fucking clue.
All in all, a job well done.
Apparently a job too well done. Stiles sighs and wipes the paste and deactivates it.
He can actually see all the tension leak out of Scott’s body.
“Oh, dude!” Scott sighs and jumps up to give Stiles a big best-bro hug. Stiles has missed these, “What the hell did you do to your scent?”
“It’s so embarrassing,” Stiles mumbles.
“Don’t tell me this is about your Derek Hale-boner,” Scott brutally says.
“See! This is why I did it! I knew you all could smell my feelings. What’s wrong with wanting a bit of olfactory privacy, huh?” Stiles demands.
“Wait, feelings?” Scott sounds aghast, “There are feelings!?”
Stiles pulls out of the hug and looks a Scott, “Yeah… isn’t that what we were talking about?”
“No! We were talking about your boner. The boner you have for Derek!” Scott wails.
“Stop saying boner! Can we not talk about my boner? Like, at all?”
“Well, we’re not talking about your feelings,” Scott counters.
“Wait, you’d rather talk about my boner than my feelings?” Stiles is incredulous and, god, he wishes he would stop saying boner.
“When it comes to Derek? Yes!” Scott shudders.
“Ugh, whatever, fine. If it makes you feel better… yes, I figured out how to block my scent because of my Derek Hale-boner,” Stiles rolls his eyes extra hard when he sees Scott slump in relief.
When did his life get so weird?
“Why? It’s not a big deal,” Scott wonders, “Lots of people get boners for Derek.”
“I have no doubt. This is why we need to talk about feelings! As my best friend, you’re obligated to do this,” Stiles says sternly.
“Ugh, fine. You know we can’t smell your Derek feelings, right?” Scott asks.
“But you can smell my boner?”
“Look. It’s not so cut and dry most of the time. But when Derek takes his shirt off and starts flexing and suddenly we can smell your boner? It’s not hard to put two and two together, okay? But feelings are a totally different thing. Sure… we can smell them but you realize people have a lot of feelings? Like all the time? It’s one of the things Derek taught us… Just because we can scent an emotion, it doesn’t mean we know why the person’s feeling it. Like… say you see some random person crying, do you know why they’re crying? No. All you know is that they’re crying. At least that’s how Derek explained it. So like, if you start smelling like feelings,” Scott says with disgust, “when Derek’s around, for all I know, you’re daydreaming about curly fries!”
“Huh. I do have some strong feelings about curly fries,” Stiles muses, “Shit, so I got arrested for nothing? Why didn’t anyone just say something?” Stiles is outraged.
“I didn’t notice! Not really,” Scott tries to defend himself.
“How could you not?”
“Whatever you did… it didn’t make you smell entirely different. You smelled like you but not you. It was only obvious when there’s only two of us, in my room, where everything is familiar. I think it was just different enough that it triggered my instincts without me knowing,” Scott’s face is scrunched adorably as he tries to explain.
“So that’s why you were fine when I was right in front of you? You could verify me with your other senses?”
“Yeah! I remember you asking why I was avoiding you and I wasn’t… not on purpose, anyway. But like… I’d find myself taking the long way to class without knowing why. I guess it was scenting you but not you and wanting to avoid it. It’s very confusing.”
“Fuck. I need to go talk to Derek,” Stiles groans because that sounds like a super fun conversation.
Stiles thinks this might be the first time he’s ever knocked on Derek’s door.
Derek yanks the door open and narrows his eyes, “Where have you been?”
“Dude, you literally had me arrested five days ago. I’m technically still grounded,” Stiles complains.
Derek’s eyes widen, “That was you?”
“Yeah… it’s kind of a long story… maybe we can talk about it inside?” Stiles asks hopefully.
Derek lets him into the loft and then just stands. Waiting for Stiles to explain.
“So… you know how I’ve been learning magic? Well, um, I came up with something to block my scent,” Stiles knows the lack of babbling is going to give him away.
“Why?” Derek looks puzzled.
“Um… I plead the fifth,” Stiles says. Derek’s eyebrows clearly convey their demand for further explanations, “Fine! I wanted a little olfactory privacy, okay? It’s not easy being a human surrounded by wolves who smell things I don’t want them to smell.”
Derek’s eyes narrow again, “So you’re keeping secrets from the pack? You stopped trusting us? Should I even trust you anymore?”
Stiles is indignant, “Of course, I do and you can! It’s not that big of a deal.”
“If it isn’t a big deal, why were you trying to hide it?”
“No, not that. This whole scent thing shouldn’t be this big of a deal,” Stiles grumps.
“It’s everything to us, Stiles. Just knowing that you purposefully created something to hide your scent because you want to keep secrets… How am I supposed to know that you won’t refine it so that you still smell like you but hide everything else? Why would you do this? After how hard it was to build trust? I trusted you, Stiles,” Derek says and he sounds more than a little sad.
“‘Trusted’… as in past tense? Just because I wanted some privacy?” Stiles feels like everything’s gone so far out of control.
“Privacy is different in packs, Stiles. All these years and you don’t understand how important scent is to us? Shouldn’t the past few weeks, at the very least, show you? I thought you were a changeling or something! I’ve been watching and waiting to kill you, in case you did something awful. I’ve been worried about you for weeks. What the fuck is so important that you’re willing to wreck our trust over? You should’ve just left the pack instead of making me worry,” Derek’s full-on glaring but Stiles feels warmth suffuse him.
“You were worried?” he asks.
“You’re pack. Obviously I was worried,” Derek growls.
It’s not quite what Stiles wants but given that he’d thought Derek was put off by the scent of his feelings, he supposes it’s enough.
“I… thought you didn’t like me. Because you could smell my feelings,” Stiles mumbles, feeling embarrassed.
“You’re a person! Obviously you have feelings, what does that matter?” Derek demands.
“I meant my feelings… for you.”
“Oh,” and there’s something soft in Derek’s voice that has Stiles looking up despite his embarrassment. There’s something even softer in Derek’s eyes that has him blushing for entirely different reasons, “I didn’t know and even if I didn’t feel the same, you’re pack and I wouldn’t have done anything to make you feel bad about it.”
Stiles breath catches because had Derek just…
And now Derek is doing some serious nuzzling at Stiles’ neck and, holy fuck, laying wet, sucking kisses and…