It’s just past five in the morning and Stiles is barely awake, wearing only sleep pants that hang low below his pregnant belly, and he can’t get the damned brand new jar of decaf coffee open. But he has a neighbor, and he’s too tired to think that waking someone else up at this hour might not be the best (or politest) of ideas.
Derek swallows, watching Stiles mull over the paperwork. “Are you sure about this?”
“Absolutely,” Stiles says, licking his lips. He signs with a flourish and pushes the contract back at Derek.
Derek knows every word of the contract by heart, but his heart stutters anyways when a sentence jumps out at him. The client acknowledges that any bond created during the heat session is temporary.
It isn’t fair that Stiles needs to work Christmas, when his dad is on the other side of the country. Or that his really hot, next door neighbour is around for the holidays as well. Or that there’s a power outage that makes things even worse. Or better.
Derek had started reading the column by accident. Really, reading strangers’ questions about knotting and heat had never really appealed to him. However, at that point in time, he was a little desperate.
And he was right: most of the questions submitted by anonymous readers didn’t appeal to him. The answers, though, did.
(Or: In which Stiles writes an advice column about knotting and Derek is smitten. Also they’re neighbors.)
Stiles and Derek have been close friends since the Hale siblings moved in next door after their parents’ death. But Derek’s in the popular group, he’s a star baseball player, and he dates popular Pep Squad captain Jennifer Blake. Stiles doesn’t have any of that, just his skateboard and a hopeless crush on Derek (oh yeah, and his Vote Lydia Martin Prom Queen button). As prom and the baseball state championship grow closer, Stiles and Derek start rekindling their friendship.
Derek is a sleepwalker who keeps wandering into his downstairs neighbour’s bedroom.
Stiles is pretty sure the hot guy from the park is going to kill him in his sleep. He knows he shouldn’t have been so obvious about objectifying the guy’s really fine ass.
Too bad it turns out Derek is easier to get along with when he’s sleeping.
“I’ll pay you,” Derek says, and that… that has Stiles interested. Alf’s Antique’s may be a great job, but it’s not a high-paying job, and half of Stiles’s tuition is coming from financial aid, so…
“How much,” Stiles asks, “are we talking here? Because I know your family, dude. And it’ll be kind of awkward after.“
“My family thinks you’re some sort of fucking gift to the world,” Derek seethes, like he’s jealous, “they’ll probably be pissed at me when we break it off, so don’t worry about that. Five hundred bucks.”
“A thousand,” Stiles says, because screw ethics. Also, the Hale family is loaded. Derek can deal.
Stiles has mixed feelings about his new apartment building. On the one hand, his flatmate’s gone MIA, the amount of junk mail he gets is ridiculous, and his neighbours are maybe-possibly-probably killers.
But on the other hand, there’s Miguel—perfect, beautiful Miguel.
Stiles’ favourite porn star, Derek Hale, moves into his apartment block and there are inappropriate facial jokes, broken bones, and a staggering amount of threats in a tiny elevator.
“Can I buy you breakfast?” Derek blurted, then cringed. Where exactly had that come from? He couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d asked somebody out. Not that he was asking Stiles out. Just for breakfast. And – he was pathetic.
Stiles blinked, honey-whiskey-golden eyes huge in the dim light. “What?”
“I woke up you up at two in the morning,” Derek said, more slowly. “I – you know, food?”
“Oh.” Stiles shook his head. “I have to get up at five and I stayed up stupid late as it is. I’m gonna be a mess tomorrow already and–”
“Nobody gives a fuck, Romeo,” somebody shouted from outside and Stiles jerked so hard he cracked his head on Derek’s windowsill.
Or: The one where Stiles is a cop and Derek doesn’t sleep.
The boys watch as Stiles drops his half eaten donut on the ground, flails for a second before glancing all around as if checking to make sure no one’s watching – and then scoops the glazed treat right back up and takes another bite, albeit with a guilty expression on his face.
In which Stiles Stilinski has a little too much to drink, and steals a baby goat.
THIS IS POSSIBLY THE BEST THING TO HAVE EVER HAPPENED ON A THURSDAY. Lissa wrote me a story! About a baby goat! It’s the cutest, most fantastic story about a baby goat ever to be written.
This fic desperately needs to be read by everybody right now immediately
Okay, so he’s woken up in Derek’s bed: not confusing. They’d had sex: again, not confusing. Derek still being there: not that confusing, it is his apartment. Derek holding Stiles tight like he’s something precious: CONFUSING.
It’s not like he expected to be kicked out at first light, but this is – they hadn’t even talked about what they were to each other before this. Stiles doesn’t need a definition, not really; his life is a stitched together tapestry of things that never quite make sense, but he feels like he and Derek need something to help them along. That maybe he and Derek both deserve more than guesswork.
Derek’s not even awake yet, his arms wrapped around Stiles so tightly that Stiles is kind of amazed he can breathe. There’s a tickle at the back of Stiles’ neck where Derek’s breath hits his skin, and Stiles can feel the rise and fall of Derek’s chest as he breathes steadily. It’s comforting in ways Stiles didn’t know it could be.
“Beacon Hills Crisis Center. This is Stiles. How can I help you?”
No one answered; a shuddering breath skittered across the line.
“Hello?” Stiles frowned, mashing the volume button with his thumb. It was already maxed out. “Hello?”
He definitely heard breathing that time, a sharp, sudden inhale. Whoever it was still wasn’t saying anything and Stiles ground annoyance between his teeth.
“Look, if this is Mr. Stankowski, you are still not permitted within two hundred yard of a school for good reason. I’m not explaining that again because, seriously, I’m right in your preference range and it freaks me out.”
A beat passed, then another. “This was such a bad idea.”
Stiles jolted upright, knocking his knee into the desk and hissing at the pain now radiating in his kneecap. That voice – gruff, masculine, nearly a growl – was sure as shit not the neighborhood pedophile.
Can I watch a great film knowing the actresses in it were terrorized and mistreated the entire time? Can I watch a football game knowing that the players are getting brain injuries right before my eyes? Can I listen to my favorite albums anymore knowing that the singers were all beating their wives in between studio sessions? Can I eat at the new fancy taco place knowing when the building that used to be there got bulldozed eight families got kicked out of their homes so they could be replaced with condos and a chain restaurant? Can I wear the affordable clothes I bought downtown that were probably assembled in a sweatshop with child labor? Can I eat quinoa?
Can I eat this burger? Can I drink this bottled water? Can I buy a car and drive to work because I’m sick of taking an hour each way on the subway? Whose bones do I stand on? Whose bones am I standing on right now?
On one hand, it’s a privilege to be able to choose to acknowledge these horrors or not–we’re going to acknowledge that privilege. On the other hand, I once attended a lecture by the explorerer-conservationist Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s daughter and son and they had a lot of opinions about what we could do to help the environment and the ocean and I talked about how in my country, we have to drink bottled water, because it’s a desert and there’s only salt water all around, but we’re contributing to pollution and all of these things…
And she looked at me and told me not to fall into the trap of “activist guilt.” I couldn’t remember the exact words, but, it was the first time I’d heard the term and it took a weight off my shoulders.
We do what we can. It’s so much better than giving up entirely or not doing anything at all because we can’t do it perfectly. It doesn’t benefit anyone in the end if we just sit around feeling guilty about every little thing in life. I’d just joined tumblr back then (haha, so like, eight or nine years ago at this point?), I was being exposed to way more than I’d ever been before (I was previously just into feminism and animal rights/wildlife conservation/environmentalism since I was a kid), and it was weighing on me.
As long as humans are humans and living flawed lives, many consumed by greed, there will not be anything in this world untouched by evil.
I usually avoid stuff that says it was made in China or other cheap looking knockoffs, out of fear of them being made in sweatshops (now, I know even a lot of big brands use those…), it’s exhausting. Then, I read something about how people who actually lived and worked in those would still buy this cheap stuff and how this shocked the foreigner reporting on it, but they just looked confused like, it’s what they can afford and them avoiding consuming it isn’t going to change the whole system from the ground-up.
… it went on about how “money talks” and choosing where to put your money still feeds the whole capitalist system and is nearly a way of comforting yourself, but you not buying doesn’t mean everyone else isn’t. What needs to be tackled is at a much higher level than any of us can reach.
Of course, I’d still, given the choice, give my money to companies I agree with and I’ll boycott what I know to support awful stuff, but I also feel no superiority over this and know now it’s not as black and white or easy as I thought it was.
This is the same reason that moral purity “you can’t enjoy [x] because it’s Problematic ™” is such nonsense, because nothing is pure. There’s something bad about everything if you dig deep enough. As long as we lived in flawed human societies we’ve got to make the best of what they offer us. If you have the choice and means, please, do support those who do good, but also, don’t beat yourself up over not living up to an unattainable ideal.
No one can. You’ll just make yourself so miserable, you either burn up and stop fighting entirely or you’ll make yourself a non-productive, depressed heap just out of a bleeding heart left unchecked. You can’t make a change to this world if you refuse to engage in it.
shealwaysreads 