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It's those idyllic summer days in the middle of July, right out of a coming-of-age movie—all wide, impossibly bright blue expanse above glistening waters, they're glistening. Children squealing and charging around in the sand, old people holding hands, birds yelling, trees swaying, and Derek bodily removing Stiles from the dock and chucking him, squawking, into the lake like a sack of rocks. You know, the kind of days you see in commercials for Claritin.
The Hales were always particularly well-off, all old money, and when Derek's parents died, his uncle Peter got their life insurance money, their children, and all their property, including a vacation home up in Tahoe that's stood cold and empty for the last four years. Uncle Peter won't set foot in it; neither will Laura. Derek will. Way he figures it, his parents would be super pissed off no one goes to the damn thing anymore. It isn't like they died there, or anything, they died in a car crash in Reno. Going to Tahoe, from Las Vegas.
It was somebody's wedding, who knows. It was a long time ago.
Derek tells Stiles about it. In fact, he tells him everything, things hasn't even told Boyd. Tells him when and how it happened, tells him how fucking hard it was watching Laura spiral into depression, tells him how long Uncle Peter was in the hospital with amnesia, tells him how he'd let Kate fill him with alcohol and empty his wallet. And Stiles sits on the dock with him, lets Derek rub sunscreen into his back, and listens. Listens like a part of nature, moving with the story. Towards Derek when Derek has to clear his throat to sound unaffected, shoulders tensing when he hears something particularly upsetting, lying down on the dock and humming thoughtfully when Derek pauses. It's cathartic, and makes Derek think of accidentally confessing his love back in April, the shock that bloomed in Stiles' eyes—
Derek thinks a lot that summer, and Stiles seems to as well. That week, at Tahoe, with Stiles and no one else to answer to, Stiles bracketing him against the shitty bed in the property by the lake, the mattress that creaks like a caricature of a bed. They sneak out, even though there's no one to sneak from, at two o'clock in the morning to spread out on the dock, overlapping on each other, and stare at the sky and breathe each other in.
"It's a full moon," Stiles tells Derek, "and there are shooting st—look I saw one." There is a beat. "Shooting stars," he finishes, voice pointedly calm.
Derek snorts. There is a buoy a few yards into the water with a bell on it. Derek doesn't know what it's for, but it rings quietly now and again when the waves of the lake move slightly. "And you're saying this is cliché."
"It's totally—Der, it's like a recipe for a summer romance movie from the 80s. One cup of stargazing, a teaspoon of handholding—" Here he squeezes Derek's hand, waggles it around like compelling evidence, and Derek rolls his eyes. "All we need is, like, love confessions and kissing and we're golden, dude."
"Add in you giving me a friendship bracelet that I keep forever in a shoebox full of Polaroids," Derek says, and Stiles starts giggling, "and then I can tell this story to my grandchildren as I'm dying."
"One of them writes a book about it, and then it gets picked up and turned into a summer blockbuster," Stiles finishes. "Brilliant."
"And our tale lives on," Derek says. Stiles grins beatifically up at the sky. Turns his head to look back at Derek.
"They're not gonna be able to find an actor that has your eyes," Stiles says. "Challenge number one is finding actors that look like the people in the story, and they will inevitably fail. Does not bode well for the rest of the movie; I refuse to see it."
"I'm sure they'll find a way to cast someone with the profoundly rare hazel eyes," deadpans Derek, but Stiles shakes his head.
"Dude, no. They have this cool thing called a fucking mirror, might wanna Google that sometime."
Derek laughs incredulously. "Are you suggesting I don't know my own eye colour."
"Clearly you don't," Stiles snaps back. "They're not hazel. Hazel is, like, two colours, tops. Yours have like eighty-seven."
"That." Derek narrows aforementioned eyes. "That's not, no. Obviously your night vision leaves a lot to be desired."
"No, fuck you," he says. "I have spent several dedicated months admiring your stupid eyes, and there will never be anyone else on earth who has them unless you reproduce, and even th—don't shake your head at me, even then, they will pale in comparison."
"They're hazel."
"They're green, with blue, brown, yellow, and purple mixed in. They're practically tie-dye, babe."
"I don't have—" Derek is above this. He isn't going to say 'tie-dye eyes.' "You spend way too much time coming up with crazy things to tell me about my appearance," he says instead.
"Yeah, I definitely do," Stiles says. "I think I'm in love with you."
There is a long silence. It's almost awkward, except that Derek—he realises with a jolt—has never felt awkward around Stiles. They listen to the buoy. The water. Someone in a nearby condo sneezes loudly. Derek smirks, smothers a sudden bout of nervous laughter. "Me, too," he says. "I mean, with you."
"No, I got that, I didn't think that you, also, loved you," Stiles says. He props himself up over Derek and kisses him, and they don't have sex at all that night.