Sterek one shots

Six Letter Word for Romance

By: TroubleIWant

Warning: there's smut somewhere in the middle

***

Stiles comes back to Beacon Hills with low expectations. College is great and all, but after a year of it he's burnt out, homesick, and single. Honestly, all he wants for the next few months is to reconnect with friends, spend time with his dad, eat some home cooking, and maybe go to the movies a couple times. But even that is too much to expect, because Beacon Hills is a shitty hellmouth of a hometown.

"Oh, come on," Stiles whines. "Seriously?"

"Yeah, dude," Scott says. Isacc and Derek are backing him up, and look significantly less regretful than the Alpha. "Deaton thinks maybe it's a witch thing? We don't know exactly, but it's clearly going for guys under thirty with Polish heritage. I promise we're going to figure it out, but in the meantime..."

In the meantime Stiles can't be trusted to protect himself, is the upshot; he's in too much danger without any supernatural powers. Finding someone to stay with him wouldn't usually be a problem, except that Scott is going on vacation with Isaac and his mom, Erica and Boyd stayed in Davis this summer to do couple-y things, and Allison is still in France. The Sheriff isn't an option, either. He might be able to fend off whatever supernatural nasty they're up against, but he'd eventually have to clock in for his actual job and leave Stiles alone.

Stiles is just starting to think he'll have to flee back to Berkeley and somehow un-sublet his apartment when Isaac pensively offers, "Derek is around. Like, all the time."

"Wait a minute, Stiles doesn't..." Derek says at the same time that Stiles says, "I'm not sure that I really..."

Their protests go unheard. Scott has a big goofy grin on his face, and he says over both of them, "Great idea, Isaac. Derek could take a witch on as well as any of us. This is perfect!"

And just like that, it's agreed: He and Mr. Sourwolf need to be roomies for the foreseeable future. Stiles can only hope that said foreseeable future isn't going to end abruptly when one of them finally snaps and murders the other for like, eating too loudly or something.

Because here's the thing: strained friendship, he and Derek can do. They can have one another's back in a fight, they can banter over pack dinner, and even exchange a few funny texts while Stiles is away. But living together? There is no way this ends well.

***

Stiles drops his bag in the hallway and takes in Derek's new apartment. It seems nice, if minimalist. Good light, feels like there's air conditioning.

"I am not changing anything about my routine because of this." Derek snaps. "I like living alone." He glares at Stiles like he might challenge this fact.

Which, haha, not likely. "Jeeze," Stiles says. "You can keep doing whatever creepy werewolf things you need to do. Trust me when I say I will not interfere."

Derek, true to his word, goes about his life exactly as if Stiles wasn't there, to the point of not making eye contact even when they're in the same room. But if you made a venn diagram of what Stiles was expecting (shirtless workouts, glowering sessions in front of the mirror, eating raw steaks, more glowering) and what living with Derek is actually like, it would resemble the diagram of things Stiles has imagined doing in bed and things he has actually done. Which is to say, there would be two circles with a small sliver of overlap that would be "eating steak" in the first example and "masturbation" in the second.

These are the things Stiles learns about Derek's home life over the next week:

Derek's design sense is minimalist but expensive. Feet are NOT allowed on the couch, as made clear by the tick in Derek's right eye whenever Stiles does it.