To Build a Home

Chapter 15

“Someone had a little fun tonight,” Lydia commented with a smirk as Stiles pulled his wallet out to pay her, her hand running playfully through his messy brown hair.

“Maybe more than a little,” Stiles laughed, top teeth pulling across his bottom lip. He flipped through a small stack of bills and handed them over to Lydia.

“Keep it,” she insisted, pushing Stiles’ hand back.

“You just babysat and put to bed a toddler hyped up on breathing meds and prednisone. There’s no way I’m letting you walk out of here with anything less than fifty bucks,” Stiles asserted, though it was more jovial than anything else.

“It’s fine,” she shrugged, adjusting her purse on her shoulder. “Besides, it’s obvious that you and Derek spent a good portion of your evening worrying about Isaac.”

Stiles tilted his head sideways for a moment, bills frozen in his hand, eyes narrowing as he wondered how she knew.

“Derek barely said goodnight to me before racing upstairs to check on the little guy,” she smiled, voice soft. “I do a lot of babysitting; I know these things.”

“And I know that you deserve to get paid for your time, even if Isaac was a sweet little angel.”

“Which he was,” Lydia assured him. “So keep your money. We’ll do lunch, soon. Your treat.” She gave Stiles a peck on his cheek and a little wave before placing her hand on the doorknob.

“Lydia,” Stiles exhaled, fatigue hitting him as he let his hand with the money in it drop to his side. “Please? Just take it?”

“Later, Stilinski,” she quipped as she flipped her hair and rolled her eyes, sound of her heels padding down the steps distinct in Stiles’ mind as he closed and locked the front door.

x

“I really wish I was up for round two but I’m so exhausted that I’m not sure I can even get myself undressed,” Stiles mumbled from his place atop the comforter, belly down and feet hanging off of the bed.

“That’s my job anyway,” Derek whispered as he pushed half of his hand beneath the waistline of Stiles’ jeans.

“Mmm. Maybe I can just lay here and you can have your way with me.”

“That’s more like it,” Derek said, voice deepening.

A single cough came through the baby monitor, the two pausing and listening for a moment more before continuing.

“Are you gonna do that thing I like?” Stiles mumbled sleepily. “I know you were too busy with other stuff in the Camaro-”

Isaac’s cough picked up and continued on. Derek pulled his hand away from Stiles’ pants with a sigh. “I’ll go,” he offered, giving his husband a quick peck before heading down the hallway.

x

“False alarm,” Derek explained when he returned nearly five minutes later, relieved that the toddler was just suffering from a case of dry mouth, throat included, no doubt a side effect of one of his medications.

“I figured,” Stiles said, knowing that Isaac hadn’t sounded congested or wheezy.

“Where were we?” Derek whispered as he put his hand back between Stiles’ pale skin and the waistband of his boxers.

“I might fall asleep on you,” Stiles warned, welcoming Derek’s hand by turning over onto his side.

“I think I can change that,” Derek whispered into his ear before he pulled at the ends of Stiles’ jeans and boxers and inched them down his legs.

x

“I’m afraid to leave you again.” Derek’s voice was low as Stiles took the ramp from the Long Beach Freeway to the airport, cold January rain making it difficult to see the moon from the passenger seat. He could hear Isaac’s wheezy but even snores as he slept in his car seat, sound comforting in a way that he couldn’t explain.

“I can handle Isaac for two days on my own,” Stiles assured him.

“It’s not Isaac I’m worried about.”

The sentence threw Stiles off for a moment; all he could do was lean his left elbow against the window and sigh. He knew Derek was referring to his mid-night attacks, a combination of anxiety and asthma that would wake him from the deepest sleep and leave him feeling like an elephant was sitting on his chest. Derek wasn’t stupid; he knew Stiles was sneaking in treatments while he was at the gym or running errands, had seen the open plastic nebules that had held the medicine at the bottom of the garbage can in their bathroom.

“I haven’t even needed you the past few times it’s happened,” Stiles reasoned. “It’s gotten better.”

“Because you’ve been doing treatments behind my back.”

“That’s,” he started, voice filling with sarcasm and wit to try and override the truth in Derek’s statement, but all he could finish with was a bland, “…not entirely false.”

“The more I travel, the harder all of this gets. Leaving you and Isaac, trying not to worry that something will happen and I won’t be home to fix it? That is going to occupy me until I walk in the door on Thursday. I just…need you to keep your meds up, okay? At least until I get back.”

“Sure,” Stiles mumbled, but it wasn’t reassuring enough for Derek.

“I really don’t want that 4AM phone call, Stiles. Please. Just do this, for me?”

“I haven’t even been to the hospital for my asthma since we first started dating,” Stiles explained, starting to get annoyed that this was still the topic of conversation. “I think you’re letting your imagination run wild and it’s making you anxious.”

Derek wanted to reply with a statement about how he didn’t need an imagination to remember the painful gasps and blue tint on Stiles’ lips that day he found out about Stiles’ asthma or how he’d needed two back-to-back breathing treatments at Isaac’s bedside in the PICU to get rid of his wheezing, but he held back because he didn’t want to fight before he got on the five-hour plane ride to New York. “I’m not getting out of this car until you promise me,” he stated sternly once Stiles had pulled up to the Kiss and Fly lane.

“Say hi to Scott, Allison, and Tessa for me,” he said as he put the car in park and popped the trunk so that Derek could get his suitcase.

“Stiles,” Derek warned, voice rising, hand resting on the door handle.

“Text me when you land.”

“Not leaving until you give me your word.”

“Fine,” Stiles said, lifting his hand like he was giving an oath. “I solemnly swear to keep up my meds. Happy?”

Derek didn’t like Stiles’ sarcastic tone, but a glance at his watch told him he’d have to take it.

“I love you,” he said before kissing Stiles and leaning back to give one to Isaac, too. Seconds later he was out of the car, pulling his suitcase from the trunk in the rain and wheeling it into the terminal.