Chapter Text
Stiles gets a cold brew with no ice so he can drink it as fast as humanly possible. He takes the lid off in the hallway and throws it in the trash, spills a little bit as he brings it up to his lips, and begins chugging it. Sip, after sip, after sip, right next to the water cooler, a big framed photograph of a coach he does not know the name of, from the 80’s, and it’s signed. If he admitted to any of these people that he does not have the entire list of former coaches memorized, they’d have him drawn and quartered.
He has been playing pretend since day fucking one. He loves football. He has always loved football. Football is life. He and Derek got together because he just loved football so much in high school. His favorite team has always been Green Bay. He is a groupie. Some people might know parts of the truth, but the truth is, everyone who he spent his Summer internship with did not make it. They went elsewhere, or they failed.
Stiles did not fail. An evil little voice in his head tells him it’s only because he sucks Derek off that he’s even standing in this particular hallway, but he has been trying to convince himself it’s just imposter syndrome talking, and he belongs here. Like, he lies to everyone else about how much he cares about or likes football so much, that now it’s starting to sink in, even when he just repeats it to himself in the mirror.
Everyone who knew that he barely had a passing interest in football up until three years ago is not in this building. It’s just him. He sucks his coffee down to the last drop, wipes some of it off his chin where it spilled, and dumps the empty cup into the trash. He runs his hand through his hair, adjusts his jacket, makes sure he looks as put together as he can possibly be, and he breathes. After ten extended seconds of just standing there, he forces himself to stop hesitating, and he turns the corner, down the hall, where there are camera crews and wires and people talking in low tones, and he keeps his chin up.
He moves into the main room, where a big guy is immediately checking the credentials Stiles has hanging around his neck. Gruffly determines him legitimate with a thrust of his head toward the chairs neatly lined up, and Stiles moves without looking around. He tries not to make eye contact with anyone, though several people stare. He can feel it out of the corner of his eye. He keeps his head down. He sits. He opens his tiny notebook and pretends to stare at his prepared questions, even though he has them memorized. Polite conversation is not fucking possible at these events, he has come to realize. Doesn’t matter what he has hanging around his neck. It doesn’t matter that he comes dressed better than most. It doesn’t matter that his hair is always done and he goes out of his way to look professional.
They do not take him seriously. It is becoming more and more apparent as the months go by that they never will, no matter what he does. This is a problem. He’s trying to pretend it isn’t. Just a little longer, and they’ll see I’m serious, he thinks. He may know it is not the truth.
More people come in and sit. A low thrum of conversation. Cameras being set up. Stiles keeps his eyes dead ahead on the empty table with the microphones and the big backdrop with the Jets logo printed over and over and over again, some logos from sponsors, usual nonsense. People come and sit around him and he doesn’t even look their way.
He has tried to be friendly. They look down their noses at him.
Finally, there’s movement up front, and Stiles sits up ram rod straight, taking in a deep breath. He reminds himself that as nervous as he is, most players fucking hate doing these bullshit Q&A press conferences, and they’re not having fun up there, either. Nobody here is having fun, unless there are some secret masochists in the audience. It feels perverse to Stiles that he got up at three in the morning to catch a plane to be here in New York, in his stupid monkey suit, feeling exhausted and miserable. He remembers thinking that journalism would be fun.
There’s three men sitting down at the table, and a cacophony of camera shutters clicking. Stiles sits and sighs, but he stays sitting up straight and he keeps his eyes dead ahead. The usual jackass that is tasked with getting on the microphone and explaining all condescending to a room full of journalists precisely how to be journalists does his spiel. Stiles rubs the back of his neck. He feels eyes boring into his skull. It makes his skin itch. He tries to ignore it.
Aaron Rodgers is sitting up there and he’s in a polo shirt, and he knows that everyone here is impressed to be in the same room with him, and he also knows that if Derek were here he’d be fucking geeking out, but Stiles can’t find it in himself to give a shit about this man. He looks like just a guy. Kind of an old guy, if he’s being honest – without the uniform making him look important, he just looks like a man that should be retired by now.
But he would never say that aloud. Especially not here.
They do a song and dance, oh how lucky we are to have the great and esteemed Aaron Rodgers to come and play for the New York Jets, how blessed, we love him, future hall of famer, and Stiles’ mind wanders, and he imagines that it’s Derek sitting up there, instead. Derek at nearly forty years old, still playing football, still sitting up there gobbling up praise and pretending to be humble, and it makes something ice cold and uncomfortable go down his spine.
Derek still playing football at forty is Stiles’ worst fucking nightmare. But sometimes, when he just glances at Aaron sitting up there, his dark hair and his serious face and his five o’clock shadow, he swears, he sees Derek’s mirror image.
Aaron Rodgers looks like Derek’s fucking dad. May he rot in hell.
They open up for questions and hands shoot up. Stiles raises his hand on instinct more than anything else, like hearing the moderator call for questions is Pavlov’s bell to him, after all these weeks of doing these press conferences leading up to the season starting.
It is a curse of his to bear that he nearly always gets chosen. Having a recognizable face makes him stand out from a sea of other hands, and they fucking pick him. Stiles swears, he hears groaning and sighing and eye rolling, feet shuffling, annoyance, eyes glaring at him like fucking lasers. But he stands up, and he just tries to look serious and like nothing anyone whispers about him behind his back bothers him.
Keeps him up at night, yes. Nobody here needs to know that.
He walks down the aisle of heated gazes and silence and he approaches the microphone, and he does the shit that Derek’s publicist has coached him to do. He smiles, like he just loves being here, and he makes direct fucking eye contact with Aaron. Who is just sitting there observing him, in this placid way that Stiles can tell is meant to impart total nonchalance, but is hiding moderate surprise and discomfort.
This is proven when Stiles opens his mouth to announce his name and affiliation, Stiles Stilinski, ESPN news, and Aaron laughs directly into the microphone and says, “I think we all know who you are.”
Stiles could fucking die in this moment, because everybody laughs. He plays like he’s in on the joke, oh, ha ha ha, yes, that’s me, Derek Hale’s dead weight, chuckling and shrugging his shoulders like it’s all just so charming and silly, it’s a small world, on and on. He lets the laughter die off and he chooses to not acknowledge that comment any further, straightening his shoulders and clearing his throat. He says, “first of all, congratulations.”
Aaron nods at him, in acceptance of this useless platitude. Stiles forces himself to not look like a kid who doesn’t know what he’s doing, so he does not even glance at his tiny little notebook, keeps his eyes right on Aaron’s, and he hopes he comes off as professional.
“…you’ve mentioned that you believe in the direction that Joe Douglas is taking the team, but what was it that really attracted you to choosing the New York Jets as the next time you would play for?”
Every time Stiles asks an actual fucking question and doesn’t just get up here and giggle and twirl his finger in his hair and go, “so, ummm, I fuck Derek Hale,” there’s a surprised silence that falls over the audience. It has been weeks. And still, people are shocked he’s an actual person with an actual job that he is actually working had at doing. Even Aaron blinks twice like what the fuck, as though he genuinely expected Stiles to come up here and bring up Derek Hale, Aaron Rodgers’ famed successor, just to make him uncomfortable.
There have been rumblings that Derek and Aaron do not get along.
Truth is, they have never met.
After five seconds of Aaron being weird and everyone in the room being weird because of the massive elephant standing here at the microphone, he collects himself. He’s had three times the years of PR training that Derek has, so he’s practiced and rehearsed and he does that thing that people always say that Aaron Rodgers does – he plays himself off as charming and affable and humble. “Well, they smoked us last year, so that was a good indication that they have a good team, here,” everyone laughs, what-ho, he’s so funny, and Stiles smiles in a way he hopes is not condescending. Aaron goes on about how he loves Joe’s coaching style, he’s played him a few times in what he refers to as “SanFran”, he met the manager in Green Bay and they became very close friends, so on and so forth, and Stiles stands there and nods along. He thinks to himself that he couldn’t care less. But he hopes that does not show on his face.
When his question has been answered, he moves to step away and the moderator moves to call someone else up. Aaron is lifting his glass of water to his mouth, and his eyes stay on Stiles.
Stiles can’t read the look. It feels charged in a way he can’t understand or explain, but Stiles just goes back to his seat, and he sits, and feels his neck turning red, luckily hidden underneath the collar of his shirt.
It burns. He feels like a little kid, because that’s how everybody around him treats him all the time.
The conference ends and Stiles cannot get his ass up out of that chair fast enough, zipping through the room and the sea of photographers and cameramen and wires like his very life depends on it. Out in the hallway, it feels cooler, less stuffy, and he breathes in a great big puff of air and a sigh of relief right after that. He notes that his hands are shaking where he’s holding his things and he stuffs them into his pockets and tries to just shake it off. He notes the clock on the wall, and there’s four hours until his flight back to Green Bay, so he needs to get going very soon.
When he imagined his life as a reporter, like a real one, he always thought the jetset life of constantly filtering through airports into different cities all the time sounded so exciting and romantic. Always on the go, always chasing after some new story, always searching, searching, going, going.
This isn’t how he pictured it. It feels like he strains himself thin and exhausts himself to just walk into a room and be laughed at, over and over again. Thinking of it that way he could almost scream at the top of his lungs, but he buries it deep, deeper still, and he tells himself this is entry level shit. He can work his way up. He can do something better if he just sticks with this slop for a little while longer. It won’t always be like this. People will stop laughing at him.
He's dying of thirst, so he hunts for a vending machine or a water fountain. These buildings are always like fucking mazes, impossible to navigate, filled with strangers who blink and stare at him as he goes past. When people recognize Derek, it’s always with delight and asking for pictures and you’re a legend you’re the best ever, on and on.
When people recognize Stiles, they just stare.
He finds a machine and sloppily stuffs two dollars in for a bottle of water, and as he’s standing there watching it slowly be pushed forward, fall down into the well, he feels a presence come up right beside him.
Against all fucking odds, it’s Aaron Rodgers. Stiles looks at him, and decides to say not a fucking word, bending down to retrieve his water bottle. They really do not have much to say to one another, he figures, and he intends on taking his water and hightailing it the fuck away from him, out of his way.
But instead, Aaron clears his throat. This is a fucking nightmare scenario, and Stiles backs two steps away on instinct. “Seems weird, like I know you,” he says to Stiles, and Stiles is like, what the fuck?
He can’t really say what the fuck to Aaron Rodgers, though. It would be rude. Stiles is a little prole trying to make a name for himself, and telling living legend players to fuck themselves is definitely not the route he wants to take. He clears his own throat, and opens his water bottle just for something to do with his hands. “Uh, well, it’s a little awkward. It definitely shouldn’t be, because I don’t know you, you don’t know me, but, uh, my boyfriend replaced you. So.”
Aaron smiles at him. It’s this smile that says, that was incredibly fucking rude but I’m going to play it off like it wasn’t, because I’m more mature than this little rat.
Well. He is more mature. He’s forty god damn years old.
“I mean,” Stiles waves his hand to correct himself, “…I just meant. It’s strange. Cosmic linking sort of a thing. Yeah.”
“I actually chose to leave Green Bay,” he corrects mildly. “Derek Hale is a great player. No animosity.”
Stiles stands there. He sips his water, then fiddles with the lid. In a split second decision, he chooses to be honest. “..really? Because you’re cornering me by the vending machines. Feels a bit like there’s bad blood.”
Aaron tosses his head side to side, like he’s weighing the options of what to say, and as he does, Stiles takes him in, really does, up close, for the first time. He is massive. Tall, broad, dark haired, just like Derek, and Stiles’ throat goes dry, because he can’t stop himself from comparing the two of them, and it’s not just him.
Nobody can stop comparing the two of them. It seems unfair, for the first time, now that Stiles is really standing here with him. They are two different men.
“Nobody likes it when a younger, better looking version of themselves comes out of thin air.”
Stiles looks at his feet. And he can’t believe it, but he feels badly for him. This man who people throw themselves at, people always laugh at his jokes, he gets paid millions of dollars a year to play this stupid fucking game, and Stiles is left feeling bad for him. It trips him up. He doesn’t know what to say to that.
He changes the subject. “Was there something specifically you wanted to say to me?” Stiles asks him, and Aaron puts his hands into his pockets.
Stiles has no idea what he is about to say. It could be anything. An insult sounds most likely out of any scenario, perhaps a homophobic one, even, because Aaron seems like a particular type of man who was raised in a particular type of environment, one that Stiles is intimately familiar with.
But, Aaron shrugs. He says, “I just wanted to say, in spite of all the bullshit and the talking heads pitting Derek and I against each other, I want to see him do well. He means a lot to people.”
Stiles blinks at him. He has no time to respond or say a single word, because just like that, Aaron turns and he goes, sweeping down the hallway all big and important, met with fanfare from the other people down the way, and Stiles watches him go, mouth opening and closing. It occurs to Stiles that Aaron really only meant to be nice, but he’s so much of a bumbling fuckwad who has been knocked around on the field too much that it came out all shitty, maybe because Stiles was on guard from the moment that they made eye contact. He barely said anything, but Stiles reads in between the lines.
What Aaron came over to say was, it really fucking sucks to see someone young and talented take my place on the team I played on for nineteen years, but in spite of all that, I hope he has a career just as successful as mine, because Derek Hale matters to people. Aaron doesn’t have the tools or the vocabulary to say what he means. Luckily, Stiles has met a lot of men like him. He fills in the blanks.
On the plane home, he sits and stares out the window, and he thinks that Derek Hale really does matter. And it’s so weird to think about that in a world-view sense, and not just a personal to Stiles sense. Derek Hale matters to Stiles because Derek loves him and Stiles loves him back and they share a life and a cat and an apartment and they tell each other everything and Stiles relies on him and Derek relies on him back.
But he also matters in a much more massive sense. He matters. People see him as inspirational. He defied the odds. He has sex with men and they still let him play. There are gay football fans, believe it or not, and they love him. He’s an icon. He matters. He fucking matters. This is what Aaron Rodgers had meant. Stiles feels oddly touched by the sentiment, as bungled as it was coming from him, and he watches the world go by down below from business class, and he breathes in deep.
The truth is, he hates his job with ESPN.
He fucking hates it.
But he cannot quit, because he feels like Derek would be disappointed.
He gets an Uber home from the airport, back to Derek’s fancy high rise apartment on the 13th floor, and he expects to unlock the door and find the apartment empty and still – Derek should still be at his little football Summer camp, training and doing drills and this that and the other thing.
Stiles pushes the door open, thumps his bag down on the ground, and is just bending down to greet the cat who comes running up to him with the bell on her collar jingling, when he’s tackled by big arms gripping him and picking him up. Stiles’ laugh is surprised and shocked, spilling out of his throat as he’s gathered up into Derek’s arm and squeezed, as if by a boa constrictor.
“What are you doing here?” Stiles asks first thing, even as Derek presses his face into Stiles’ neck and kisses him there, over and over, smells his hair, all the things he normally does when they haven’t seen each other for more than a day. “I thought you’d still be –“
“I got a half day,” he says, gripping Stiles tighter against his body. “And I missed you. Let me look at you,” he releases Stiles and puts him down, hands on Stiles’ shoulders, and he takes Stiles in, head to toe. Stiles still has on his silly little credentials badge from ESPN, and he feels like blushing and looking away, under Derek’s gaze, but instead, he stands there, and he meets his eyes, and he smiles. His cheeks go pink. He feels it.
It is different from the way his skin fills when other eyes look at him.
“You know when you wear your serious writer clothes it makes me fucking nuts.”
Stiles rolls his eyes. “I’m just trying to impart professionalism,” he shrugs out of Derek’s hands and shakes his head, arms folding over his chest defensively, “sadly, I don’t think it’s working.”
“What do you mean?”
Stiles imagines telling Derek that everybody always laughs at him, that no one will speak to him, that the other writers who have been doing this for years hate him because they weren’t fucking a football player and didn’t get the same leg up that Stiles has gotten, and he imagines that Derek would just deny, deny, deny. They don’t laugh at you. Nobody hates you. You’re just paranoid. You have anxiety. You’re not thinking clearly. You have imposter syndrome, but you’re a genius.
And Stiles just does not want to hear it, because none of it is fucking true. He shrugs his shoulders, and sighs, and he says, “oh, it’s just been a long fucking day. I missed you.”
“Well, I came home early,” Derek draws Stiles in closer, hands on his waist, and kisses him on the mouth, “and prepped dinner,” another kiss, “and did your laundry,” a third and final kiss, “so we can just spend time together.”
Stiles preens under the attention, gripping his fingers into Derek’s t-shirt and holding on tight. He lowers his neck and he says, into Derek’s chest, “…do you love me?”
“More than anything in the entire fucking world, yeah.” He always answers automatically, when Stiles asks him. And it always feels good, the way he says it.
He’s a world class charmer. Now, he has a team of people who teaches him how to be charming, just like Aaron Rodgers did.
And Stiles just doesn’t want to think about it right now. He does not want to think about the outside world, or his stupid fucking suits, or his ESPN staff writer’s badge, or the way they all look at him, or how Derek is a megastar and Stiles is his annoying little sidekick they all despise, or anything. Not a single fucking part of it. He wants to just come home to his normal life and his normal boyfriend and cook dinner with him and pretend they’re anybody else in the world.
Stiles does this often. He pretends.
He strips himself of the fucking suit in the bathroom and throws all the pieces of it down onto the ground like he’s mad about it, but Derek reads it as desperation to get naked, because he has a monkey brain, and that’s fine. They get into the shower together, and they don’t turn the bathroom lights, so it’s just the light coming in through the frosted windows. It makes everything look dull and muted, in the steam of the shower, and Stiles presses his face into Derek’s neck and he hides.
It feels so fucking good to press up against him and just hide. Derek holds him back. And he knows Stiles like the back of his hand, so his tone is puzzled and confused when he says, “…you okay?”
“Oh, I’m fine, just exhausted,” Stiles answers immediately. “They just ship me off wherever all the time. It feels like newbie fucking hazing. At least they put me in business class.”
“They should be putting you in first class.” Derek is always saying shit like this. Like Stiles is the most important person in the world, the smartest person ever, the biggest genius on staff, and how dare they not know that, how dare they don’t pay for his meals, how dare they don’t treat him like the star he is, on and on and on.
Sometimes, it makes Stiles feel good.
Other times, it makes Stiles feel like a fraud. He cannot explain that.
“Beggars cannot be choosers.”
“Who’s calling you a beggar?”
“Me. I have no by-line. They hate me. Whatever.”
Derek moves back, forces Stiles’ chin up, and gives him this furrowed brow look of concern. Stiles shifts his eyes away. “What are you talking about?”
“Just –“ it feels absurd to be having this conversation, naked in the shower with him, when they should just be fucking by now, but here they are, and they’re doing it. “…they haven’t even given me like an actual assignment. I just go out there and do the slave work. Ugh, god, I don’t want to come home and be that person who like complains about work all the time, I’m sorry –“
“It’s okay,” Derek says, and he still has that cautious tone of voice on. Like he’s talking to the Stiles he’s not as familiar with. “You always said you knew it would be really hard at first. Are you not –“
“I’m just so sleep deprived,” he insists this, again, and it is true, to an extent. He really has been getting shit for sleep, always flying somewhere new, always up too early, on and on. “I feel like a baby, complaining about the job I always wanted.”
“Ha, you’re no baby,” Derek shakes his head and smiles like it’s so amusing. “You work hard and you get paid shit, too.”
“Oh, I’m sure Mister million dollar contract does think my pay is shit,” Stiles snorts, can’t help himself, and Derek smiles and presses their foreheads together. Stiles closes his eyes and breathes in, smells Derek’s shampoo still washing out of his hair, and it’s so comforting to him, in the steam, close to him, he finally starts to relax. “And I missed you, too. It’s hard being away. It sucks worse than before.”
“Yeah,” Derek agrees solemnly, and then they kiss. It’s meant to just be gentle, at first, but Stiles makes it more aggressive, and more heated, and pointed, to let Derek know he wants to fool around and stop fucking talking about this, and Derek takes the hint instantly. It is not hard to get him going, especially when they’ve been apart for a few days, so it’s not a surprise when Derek is shoving his tongue down Stiles’ throat and pushing him up against the tiled wall of the shower, hands going under Stiles’ thighs, around his stomach, feeling his hips. Stiles closes his eyes and he lets Derek touch him wherever, because being touched by him makes his mind go all quiet, and he just focuses on Derek’s hands on him, feeling Derek’s skin, smelling him, being all over him.
Stiles is feeling co-dependent. He just wants Derek all the time. He just wants him fucking constantly. He wants Derek in the room to hold his hand and tell everyone to shut the fuck up and take Stiles seriously. He wanted Derek there in the hallway with Aaron to square his shoulders and say, hey man, leave him alone. He wants Derek to rip the cameras out of the hands of the paparazzi and smash them, like he did that time in New York when they were trying to grab lunch and one of them shouted something inflammatory just to get a rise out of him. He wants Derek there at work so people will fawn over him and listen to everything he says, and then Stiles won’t be the center of attention and ridicule anymore.
He knows it’s pathetic. He can’t help himself.
When he opens his eyes, Derek is looking right at him. Stiles touches his face. His firm jaw and his cheekbones and his stubble. Derek’s lips twitch, a slight smile, though his eyes are all hooded because he’s turned on. Stiles dips his hand low at the same time Derek does, and they grip each other, Derek’s hand on him, Stiles’ hand on him, looking one another in the eye. They stroke each other in tandem, slowly, eyes on each other’s faces. Stiles breathes. Derek breathes.
“Don’t make me come,” Derek murmurs this to Stiles, kissing him on the mouth, a quick peck, panting by his ear. “I want to fuck you so bad –“
“You always want to fuck me,” Stiles tells him, and Derek tries to laugh, but it’s cut off when Stiles twists his wrist and does that thing with his fingers in just the right spot that Derek likes. “You always want me, don’t you?”
“Yeah, yeah, I always want you,” he is near whispering. It makes Stiles fucking insane.
“I could make you come like this,” Stiles says to him, and Derek shakes his head, hand going unsteady on Stiles.
“As if you would,” Derek challenges him, and Stiles raises his eyebrows at him. “Like you would give up a chance to get fucked. Get real.”
“Fuck off,” Stiles laughs, and nudges him in the shoulder with his free hand. In the same second, he’s taking that same shoulder and pulling him back in closer, kissing him, open mouthed, hot and messy. Derek is still stroking him and Stiles moans into his mouth, another thing that makes Derek certifiably nuts, and Derek shuts the water off. He can’t take it anymore. He always says that Stiles should have a gold medal in cockteasing, that he was fucking good at it in high school when he would barely try because he hadn’t harnessed his own sexuality yet, and now, he’s a mastermind, is pure evil about it, loves to stroke Derek to just the point of orgasm just to watch him quiver and beg to fuck him.
Which is true. Stiles loves it when Derek wants him so bad he begs. It turns him on and it affirms how much Derek loves him and it make Stiles feel special. And lately, Stiles needs that. More than he ever has before. He needs to feel important. He needs someone to make him feel sexy and not awkward. He needs someone who would get down on their knees and beg for his attention, and Derek always obliges, so long as Stiles asks him to.
Outside the shower, neither of them bother toweling off. Feels like a waste of time. Derek takes Stiles all rough and handles him, the way he does, bruising his hips and his wrists, gripping and twisting him toward the door to the bedroom. Stiles laughs all insane, because he’s getting exactly what he wanted, and Derek is doing that thing he does where his eyes go all tunnel vision because all he can think about is getting inside of Stiles’ body, yesterday.
Abruptly, right outside the door to their bedroom, Derek pushes Stiles up against the wall and he attacks Stiles’ mouth with a big kiss. It surprises Stiles, enough that for just a split second, he remembers the bathroom at Don Hutson, and Miles Randall, and the feeling of foreign hands all over him and a strange mouth on his and he seizes up, going stiff and still and frozen.
Derek is so sex-driven that he does not notice. And Stiles lifts his hands to push him off, but Derek grips his wrists and holds him down. He thinks Stiles is playing around.
Stiles opens his eyes and he sees Derek, and his heart is pounding, but he focuses. He looks at Derek’s hair and his face, looks at Derek’s hairy chest, and looks around to see he is not at Don Hutson. Miles is not here. Nobody else is here. They’re in their shared special space and it’s fine, everything is fine, and Derek is kissing Stiles on the neck and sucking hickeys into his skin and he just breathes, in and out.
His heart races. He knows where he is. He focuses on Derek. He remembers that that was a long time ago. That was a long time ago. He has not seen Miles outside of pictures in months, and months, and months. They don’t mention his name or talk about him, not fucking ever. Nobody does. Not around Stiles. There’s a moratorium on Miles’ name in the locker room because Derek enforced that rule the second he was traded, and he’s god around there, so they all follow the rule religiously.
Derek picks Stiles up by his hips and pulls him into the bedroom all rough, and Stiles tries to just shake it all off, his memories, his trauma, all of it, and he laughs and wrings his arms around Derek’s neck. They’re both wet, damp from the shower, but Derek dumps him onto the unmade bed all the same, where he moistens the sheets, but neither of them care.
Stiles needs a fucking distraction. He puts his hands on Derek’s chest and he bites his lip and opens his legs as Derek gets in between them, and he says, “fuck me. I just need –“
“You just need my cock so bad, I know,” he finishes that sentence for Stiles, and Stiles snorts a laugh, shaking his head. Derek leans over Stiles’ body to get into the bedside table where there is a plethora of lube to choose from, flavored and what have you, picks a tube at random, spreads some onto two fingers. He lifts one of Stiles’ legs and goes for his entrance, and Stiles watches him.
Puts his hands on Derek’s body. Feels his chest. His abs, one by one. He is so in shape and perfect, like an airbrushed image from a magazine, and Stiles just feels him. He feels so firm and strong. He could hurt Stiles, but he never does, he hasn’t since high school, and Stiles focuses on that. Derek would never lift a hand to Stiles. Derek would never force him to do anything. Derek would never use his strength against Stiles, no matter what happened.
People threaten Stiles all the time. Stiles tries to ignore it. He shakes this off, too, and he says, “do you think about me like this when we’re not together?”
Derek meets his eyes, two fingers going in and out of Stiles’ body slowly. “Do I think about having sex with you when we’re not together? What kind of a question is that?”
Stiles focuses on Derek’s cock, hard and up. He swallows a lump in his throat. “I just like to hear about it, that’s all.”
“We can start sexting,” he says this way too eagerly, so eager that Stiles bursts out laughing into his hand, trying to stifle it. “Seriously. I’d die for naked pictures of you.”
“All right,” he says.
“Really? You’ll send me pictures?”
“Yeah,” he agrees, and then he smiles, all teeth. “If you beg me to, I will.”
Derek smiles back at him, adding in a third finger maybe just to make Stiles squirm, and it works. Stiles whines and bites his lip, twisting in the sheets. “You have way too much fun making me beg you for things, I think it’s a complex.”
“It’s because you beg spectacularly well and it makes me –“ he hesitates, for just a second, and then he plows forward anyway, and he says exactly what he wants to. “…it makes me feel really wanted. It’s nice to feel that way.”
Derek’s face sobers up a bit. He reads that Stiles means that, and he means it a lot, and he means it so deep to his core that he knows to take it seriously. He leans over Stiles and they kiss, quick movements of their lips together, and when they pull apart, Derek says, “there’s not a second of any day that goes by where I don’t fucking want you. And it’s not just about sex, baby. You know that. I tell you that all the time.”
Stiles is needy. He feels clingier than he ever has in his entire life, even back when Stiles was still in school and Derek was doing his first year and they were apart constantly. He feels like a little kid. He feels like he’s lost without Derek. He feels like the entire world is moving on without him and he’s still in homeroom in high school, this big loser with no friends, this fucking nerdy kid who can’t get his lines right.
“I just fucking need you,” Stiles tells him, putting both of his hands on Derek’s face and looking deep into his eyes. “You make me feel so safe.”
Derek kisses him, again. He guides himself to Stiles’ entrance, pushing Stiles’ legs back to help him get there, and once he’s in, head pressing and then gliding in with the help of the lube, Stiles grips his face hard, moaning loud, panting. “Beg me to move,” he says, and Derek ducks his head and he makes a sound like he can’t do that, he has to fuck Stiles now, can’t waste time, but Stiles presses him, and he does his big eyes. He makes them huge. He knows Derek can’t say no. He knows how to work him over. “Please? Beg.”
Derek’s body shudders, but he goes still. “Please let me move, baby. Please let me fuck you. Please, please, please –“
“Derek, that turns me on so fucking much,” he whines, and Derek is on the very edge of his self control, bottomed out with Stiles’ ankles in his hands, but he watches Stiles bite his lip and watch him right back, and it feels so insanely intimate and hot and close, Stiles could come. And he lets Derek know that by saying, “oh, fuck, I could come just from that –“, because he knows if Derek knows how much it gets Stiles off, he will keep doing it. “Don’t move, don’t move. Come on, beg harder.”
Derek’s chest moves up and down. He breathes hard. He is a world class fucking athlete, a god amongst men, but watching him utterly fall apart at the mercy of Stiles’ bizarre kink is far better than watching him play football. He has sweat on his brow, on his chest, and his hips make an abortive movement that nearly moves his cock a full inch inside of Stiles, but he stops himself at the last second. “Fuck, you’re insane –“ he pants, but he does as he’s asked, because he is nothing if not a slave to Stiles’ every whim. “…please let me fuck you, I’ll do anything, I’ll do anything, baby, please –“
“Anything?”
“Fuck. Yeah. Anything.”
Stiles touches the trail of hair that goes down to Derek’s crotch. As of late, Derek doesn’t do very much landscaping down there, so he’s hairy, and frankly, it turns Stiles on so fucking much. Hairy chest, hairy balls, hairy legs, hairy everything, big strong man style, 70’s porn style.
For all that Derek makes insane declarations whenever Stiles makes him beg for sex or blowjobs, Stiles never asks him for anything. Derek always says he’ll buy Stiles anything, take him anywhere, do anything, so long as Derek gets to fuck him, and Stiles could use that to his advantage and actually ask for things, but he doesn’t.
The only thing that Stiles wants is the knowledge that Derek wants him. That’s it. That’s all. He wants Derek’s love, Derek’s complete attention, Derek’s touch, Derek’s desire, all of it. No material thing compares.
“Fuck, I can’t, I can’t do it,” Derek whines, literally, and Stiles’ cock twitches on his stomach. “Oh, fuck, you’re torturing me –“
Stiles laughs. He can’t help himself. He really isn’t sadistic. “Okay, come on and fuck me –“
The words are not even fully out of Stiles’ mouth. They get cut off by Derek manhandling him again, twisting and turning his body around, so in milliseconds he’s off his back, and on all fours, hands and knees, blinking in surprise at their headboard, the pillows all mussed at the top of the bed. Derek fists his hand in Stiles’ hair, hard, so hard it hurts, forcing Stiles to arch his back as his neck is tilted backwards. Whenever Stiles teases Derek for too long, this is what he gets, and Stiles isn’t sure if Derek means for it to be him taking back the upper hand, like some weird and never ending battle for the power in the relationship, but it doesn’t matter.
Because Stiles is really only getting what he wants. Fucked hard. As hard as possible. Fucked so hard he can’t even barely breathe when Derek pushes himself in, no hesitation, and just pounds him. Derek’s balls slap hard against Stiles’ skin, the loudest sound in the room, over Derek’s heavy grunts and Stiles’ choked off whines. He can’t even make a sound. It’s more like hiccupping through every single thrust than it is moaning, really, body quaking and shaking, the bedframe banging the wall.
“You like that?” Derek asks him, though surely he knows he will not get a response. His free hand grips Stiles’ left ass cheek hard, and then slaps it, even harder, and Stiles cries out. He pauses the insane fucking for just a second, just long enough to push Stiles’ face down into the blankets hard, arching his back up even more, presenting himself for Derek just the way he likes it, and he says, “this is what you get when you fuck with me like that, baby.”
“I like it,” Stiles pants into the bed. “More, harder, please, come on –“
Derek does not need to be asked twice. He starts up again, just as hard as before, and Stiles’ entire body shakes with it. He hides his face in his arms and he just falls apart under Derek. All he can hear is their skin meeting, Derek’s heavy breathing, and his own breath being fucked out of him. All he can think about is Derek, and coming, and how good it feels, and that’s what he wanted.
The total silence of his own mind.
Derek finishes. He pulls out and comes on Stiles’ back, across his ass cheeks, his abused hole, and Stiles moans just at the thought of being marked like that by Derek. As his. And nobody else’s. “You look so good like this,” Derek comments all out of breath, the way he does after a good hard run, and Stiles is pleased that he can make sex as good of a workout for Derek as an actual workout. He fumbles his hand in between Stiles’ legs and finds his erection, still rock hard, and with Stiles still face down on his knees in the bed, he jerks him off. Stiles moves to gets back up onto all fours, but Derek pushes his head back down and Stiles’ moans are muffled by the bed again.
He’s merciless. Derek is stroking him so hard it almost hurts, fast and harsh, and Stiles curls his fingers hard into the sheets as he feels his orgasm building. He clutches and twists, writhing underneath Derek’s hand holding him down, and comes, loud, hard, half screaming, breathing loudly as Derek keeps stroking, and stroking, until every drop is out of him, until he’s begging him to stop, and Derek does. He stops, and flops down on the bed right next to Stiles, as Stiles turns over and gets onto his back, blinking at the ceiling.
“God, that was –“ he starts, putting his hand to his forehead, heart still pounding from the orgasm.
“Fuck, you make me insane,” Derek tells the ceiling. “Nobody can make me like that.”
“Yeah,” Stiles agrees, breathless.
“You turn me on so much.”
“Right back at you.”
“But you know, you’re sick,” he turns and faces Stiles directly, a lazy smile spreading across his face. “You’re, like, a freak. Where do you get off, controlling me like that?”
“Ha,” Stiles shakes his head, closing his eyes as he feels his heart slowing down. “I guess I am sick. I don’t know. You just have no idea what it does to me when you beg. And then when you…when you take control again? And just fuck me like that? Like you own me? It fucking makes me nuts.”
Derek watches his face, like he’s trying to read his mind. “I love you,” he decides to say, and Stiles turns, and he curls into Derek’s chest, and Derek holds him, the same way he always does, and Stiles could just fucking melt into him. The endorphins from the sex and the release make him feel so fucking safe and wrapped up here with him, it’s as though the outside world does not fucking exist. And Stiles needs that. He needs the outside world to disappear. He needs everyone to leave them alone.
“I love you so much, Derek,” Stiles whispers. “I wanna get married.”
“That’s only your ten thousandth very subtle hint that you want me to propose,” Derek says, though there’s humor in his tone, fingers stroking Stiles’ bare back slowly, up and down. It makes Stiles shiver.
Stiles sighs. “Well, you won’t do it, so.”
“Because if you see it coming it isn’t romantic. You need to forget about it, and then when you least expect it…”
“What if I just went rogue and proposed to you?”
“Don’t piss me off,” Derek flicks him on the shell of his ear, and Stiles flinches and then laughs. “That’s my thing, and you know it.”
Derek has made it abundantly clear that he is going to ask Stiles to marry him, and he drops hints all the time, constantly, enough to make Stiles fucking insane. He always says, when you least expect it, and yadda yadda yadda. It’s gotten to the point where every time Derek takes Stiles out even just for a sandwich at the place down the street, Stiles expects him to propose then and there. Derek insists it will surprise him. Like he already has the entire fucking thing planned out, or something, and that makes Stiles insane.
Derek knows it makes Stiles insane. That’s why he’s doing it. Because it triggers Stiles’ most base personality trait – the desire to know everything, all of the fucking time. Here’s a secret that Stiles can’t wheedle out of him, and it makes Stiles feel fucking feral. And that, in turn, makes Derek laugh. He’s a bad guy, you know? Like, pure evil.
Stiles strokes Derek’s chest and closes his eyes for a moment, basking in the post-orgasm glow and Derek’s company, and Derek doesn’t say anything else. Stiles feels his chest moving. He listens to his heartbeat. He thinks to himself he’s never been so close to anyone in his entire life. He wants to stay like this forever.
When he opens his eyes, he bites his lip. He says, “hey, uh, do you know who I was at a press conference for today?”
“Who?”
Stiles laughs, because he can’t help himself. “…Aaron Rodgers. The Jets.”
“No shit,” Derek whistles low, and he says, “fuck that asshole.”
“Whoa, I thought he was your idol?” Stiles sits up fully and appraises his face, watching his every movement and reaction so Stiles can study it.
Derek palms his forehead. He says, “was being the operative word. Now he’s the fuck who says I’m going to burn myself out young and retire at twenty-five.”
Stiles stares at him. He says, carefully, “…would that be so horrible?”
“What?” Derek is surprised by this, furrowing his brow, shaking his head against the pillow. “I turn twenty-five in a year. This is only my third professional year. Why the fuck would I retire? As if I’d ever burn out.”
“You know you make millions,” Stiles traces a design on Derek’s chest and watches his own finger move on his skin, so he won’t have to look Derek in the eyes. “…wouldn’t be so horrible to just take your money and fuck off young to live your life away from all this.”
Derek is quiet. Ten seconds. Maybe fifteen. Silence. He’s buffering, the way he does when he is choosing to be careful with his words instead of saying the very first thing that comes to his mind, which would likely be something shitty that would make Stiles upset. He takes his time. He thinks. The way he never used to.
When he speaks, his tone is very firm. “You know I’m living my dream.”
Stiles shakes his head. “Yeah, no, you’re right. I shouldn’t – sorry. That was stupid.”
“Where is this coming from?”
Where is this fucking coming from?
Stiles could laugh right in his face.
Instead, he smiles and he shakes his head. And he decides to change the subject. “Well, Aaron Rodgers didn’t say anything shitty to me about you today.”
This successfully derails Derek’s entire train of thought, like a baby having candy put in its face. He sits up, all the way, knocking Stiles off of him a bit. “You spoke to him directly?”
“Yeah. He cornered me.”
“He cornered you?” Derek repeats, mad, like he’s about to go batshit and try and fight a forty-year-old man, but Stiles rolls his eyes and corrects himself.
“We ran into each other in the hall, and he made a comment about how it’s uncomfortable to see me. Because. You know. I fuck Derek Hale, who according to popular opinion replaced him and is the new, shinier version of him.”
Derek snorts. “Oh, fuck him. I’m not the new him. Better than he ever fucking was.”
This is newfound resentment. Stiles remembers when he went to a house party at Isaac Lahey’s, and they had a printed out picture of Aaron Rodgers on top of their Christmas tree like he was a god to them all. Stiles remembers a big poster of Aaron Rodgers in Derek’s childhood bedroom. He was Derek’s inspiration. He used to make Derek work harder, so that Derek could be just like him.
Now, apparently, being just like Aaron Rodgers, renowned football fucking legend, isn’t good enough for him. He needs to be better. He has to be better.
“He said nice things about you,” Stiles pushes, trying to calm Derek down. “He told me he hopes you do well.”
“Backhanded fucking compliment. Baby, you don’t get how these men talk to and about each other,” he sits up all the way, swings his legs over the edge of the bed, and now he’s all mad. Stiles can tell from his puffed up chest, as he walks to his drawers and finds a t-shirt, pulling it on hard. “That guy is a fuck. Cornering you in a hallway and saying shit to you in the first place is a power move and he knew that, which is why he did it. He knew you’d tell me, and it would piss me off. He’s getting into my fucking head,” he points to his temple to reiterate this, and Stiles blinks at him, flabbergasted.
He repeats himself. “…I think he was just being –“
“Imagine him cornering Lisa in a hallway and saying all that shit he said to you,” Derek interrupts, waving his hands as if to set the scene. “It would be weird. Just because you’re a boy, it doesn’t make it any less weird. Cornering another player’s significant other in a hall and being condescending is weird.”
“I didn’t take it as –“
“Sweetheart,” Derek says this extra firm and hard, as if to wake Stiles up to reality. “He was messing with me. He despises me. I don’t blame him, because yeah, I did fucking replace him, and I play better than he ever did, even when he wasn’t a washed up old has-been. But pulling shit over on my boyfriend is low even for him. You know he’s a fucking homophobe,” he goes on, ranting and raving, and Stiles is just lying there in bed, like, holy shit.
He had no idea this would be activating the beast, but there the beast is, all fucking riled up like the mail man has come onto the front porch.
“Next time he corners you in a hallway, tell him to eat shit, or I’ll get into his fucking face. Old guy probably can’t even throw a proper fucking punch.”
“Jesus, Derek,” Stiles says, all aghast, but Derek does not care. He pulls on a pair of briefs, tight to his skin.
“These hall of fame assholes think they’re so much better than everyone. They’re gonna see,” he shakes his head, resolute, and Stiles blinks. “They’re all gonna see what it actually means to be fucking great. Nobody is better than me.”
Stiles has to concede to that point. “All right. I’m sorry, I had no idea you disliked him so much, now.”
“Don’t apologize,” he says, moving across the room to bend down and kiss Stiles on the cheek, holding onto his face as he pulls away and looks Stiles in the eye. “I’m sorry you constantly get put in the middle of pissing contests. Okay? What an asshole.”
“…I just thought he was your hero, or whatever.”
Derek smiles. It crinkles his eyes at the corners. “I don’t have a hero anymore,” he tells Stiles, dead serious. “I don’t need one. All the men in my life that I’ve looked up to have turned out to be shit. Lesson learned.”
Stiles feels uncomfortable with the line that this conversation is taking, so he tries to lighten the mood, smiling tightly and saying, “time to start looking up to women.”
“Exactly,” he agrees, grinning.
Stiles and Derek get dressed alongside one another, and go back out into the apartment where they begin to make dinner together, talking about work and Dimitri and how Isaac is doing on the 49’ers and how cool is it to play a game against an old friend and on and on, and as they sit down together on the patio outside that overlooks the water of Green Bay, Stiles thinks about everything that Derek had said.
He has nobody to look up to. Nobody is better than him. They’re all going to see what greatness really looks like. He is his own god. The words settle strangely inside of Stiles’ mind, like there’s something off about it, something sinister to the tone he had said those words in. He thinks about Derek always putting pictures of he and Stiles together or, sometimes, just Stiles alone, alongside his trophies and his winnings and his earnings. Like he can’t see things as anything but things that he has won, or earned. Stiles is a trophy. Their relationship is a thing he has won. Everything is something to be won. He keeps his one year sober coin in his pocket and at first, Stiles thought it was a reminder, to keep himself on the right path, but he catches Derek fiddling with it, toying with it, a shiny gold coin, another prize.
Stiles eats and he keeps it to himself. He keeps a lot of shit to himself.