Hero (Sterek)

Chapter 5

The Scott Incident made Stiles forget about The Derek Incident until sometime around three a.m. as he was lying awake in bed thinking about all the embarrassing things he'd done when he was thirteen. One train of thought led to another and then The Derek Incident exploded in his memory, making him sit up and toss his sheets aside.

"Jesus fucking Christ Almighty on a grilled cheese sandwich." He clutched his head and stared at his carpet. "Oh my holy fucking God. This cannot be happening." This is literally the most embarrassing thing to happen to me in the history of embarrassing things and I have a lot of embarrassing things on my record. It wasn't even the fact that he'd said that kind of thing to a guy. Stiles knew that he was probably bisexual—so that wasn't the issue. But it was actually the fact that he SAID IT TO DEREK OH GOD. All his insides were keyboard smashing and rolling on the floor with embarrassment, but on the outside he almost didn't dare to breathe.

It made Stiles really think. Did he say that just because of the simple fact that Derek was attractive and then turned into a sun when he smiled or did he say that because he was attracted to Derek who turned him on when he smiled? Most of his feelings toward Derek had been one of two choices thus far: fear or fear. But Derek hadn't of late exuded the dangerous air of loathing and murder whenever he was around Stiles. It was mostly annoyance and amusement. Stiles in turn learned to not be as afraid of Derek, and when that happened he'd begun to have fun—to flirt with him. And he couldn't believe it—but he could almost swear to it—that Derek had been flirting back.

Stiles' mind shut down right there at that thought. No. Nope. No way. On a scale of 1 to 10, Derek was a 4845969 and Stiles was a -2. And if the math was impossible, so was the flirting. So it had to just be banter—just witty, innocent banter between almost-not-really frenemies.

Yeah, banter that results in eye sex and stepping a little too close in the personal bubble zone. Stiles smacked his face. Mind out of the gutter. He couldn't be attracted to Derek. The guy probably had a sniffer on him that could sense attraction from Sweden. And that was probably where Stiles was going to have to move if he wanted to maintain any shred of dignity. He'd have to learn Swedish. He could probably do it—if Lydia could learn archaic Latin, he could definitely learn Swedish. Was he really considering moving to Sweden?

Moreover, Stiles couldn't be attracted to Derek because then he'd know for sure that he had a problem crushing on people completely out of his league. He'd been in love with Lydia since the third grade and was only now beginning to let her go. She belonged with Jackson. It was just the way it worked. Hierarchy and all that. So Stiles knew he couldn't just switch to another equally unattainable target—didn't he learn his lesson?

And he wasn't going to get in to the fact that Derek was a creeper and Brooder McBrooderson on his best days. Sure, underneath all the dark, mysterious, badass-in-a-bad way exterior Derek might have some semblance of a personality that didn't involve being emo. Hell, he might even enjoy things like joy and laughter and happiness. But from what Stiles could see, he and Derek were polar opposites on the spectrum of humanity. Other than the fact that they both suffered familial loss, he couldn't think of anything that they had in common. It just didn't add up.

Stiles stayed in the crouched position on his bed for what seemed like hours until he finally had the power to move his limbs and lie back down. From there he fell asleep and let his dreams torment him instead.

He was awoken by a rapping on his chamber... nevermor—mind! Mind. Never mind! Someone was rapping on his window in a that's-so-not-a-raven way. In fact, Stiles' delirious mind was fairly sure it was a certain wolfy fist rapping for entrance. He pulled off his sheets and shuffled over to his window...and stopped.

What am I doing? His mind was waking up to reality. His heart was speeding up like they were running ten miles this early. His hands were fidgeting by the curtains.