mad_madam_m

Originally posted to Tumblr here.

Okay so I’ve been drinking wine all night and binge-watching The Great British Baking Show, and I remembered that I’ve been meaning to not!fic about the pack going to one of those wine and painting places.

Really, it’s just Team Human that’s going to go—Stiles, Allison, Lydia (she’s honorary Team Human), and Danny—because they’re the only ones who are going to enjoy the wine and they’re not going to be overwhelmed by the smell of acrylic paint and the loud music. But Scott makes horrible puppy dog eyes when he finds out they want to go and Erica practically begs to be included as well and that means Boyd and Isaac are going to want to go, so Derek throws up his hands and buys everybody a seat and calls it a “pack bonding exercise.”

They get there and they take up almost an entire table all by themselves, and the rest of the pack swaps the paper plate name badges around until they’re sitting in the order they want to sit in, and this means that Derek and Stiles end up sitting next to each other at the very end of the table. Stiles snarks that he’s surprised Derek wants to paint something with colors other than black and Derek snarks that Stiles is already halfway through a glass of wine the size of his head, and then the instructor gets up and starts talking and it’s time to start painting.

Stiles is, unsurprisingly, a faster painter, covering his canvas in black almost as fast as the instructor is. He’s fantastic with blending the paint together to make it like the moon fades seamlessly into the night sky.

Derek’s a lot more meticulous. He’s slower and much more concerned with getting his outlines absolutely precise. The detail he manages to get with the smaller brushes is frankly astonishing, as far as Stiles is concerned.

(Stiles also happens to hear, more than once, Derek singing quietly along to whatever song happens to be playing over the loudspeakers when the instructor isn’t talking. His personal favorite is when he hears Derek singing “Don’t Stop Me Now.”)

It’s just as noisy as Derek expected it to be, and he really doesn’t like the smell of the paint that much, but what he smells from his pack is pure happiness and joy. Scott’s got a streak of blue paint on his cheek that might have been put there deliberately. Allison is almost through her first glass of wine and is laughing at something on Lydia’s canvas. Boyd, Erica, and Isaac all seem to be collaborating on one giant painting instead of following along with what the master painting is. Danny is well into his second glass of wine and playing Pokemon Go while he’s waiting for his paint to dry, pausing occasionally to assure Jackson he’s doing a good job. Even Cora, who likes to pretend she’s too cool for this kind of stuff, is getting into it.

And Stiles is sitting right by him, the tip of his tongue peeking out of his mouth as he very carefully paints a lake monster climbing up onto the dock behind the two figures sitting at the edge, a glass of wine between them.

Honestly, it’s a better pack bonding exercise than Derek ever expected it to be.

Everybody is thrilled with their paintings when they’re done, and they’re splitting up to head home when Stiles taps Derek on the shoulder and holds out his painting.

Derek is not drunk, but he has been filtering out ridiculous levels of noise all night, so he blames that for why he sits there for a minute and finally says, “What?”

Stiles shakes the painting. “Here, big guy. I made it for you. Used lots of pretty colors and everything. That’s supposed to be us at the edge of the dock.”

“You painted us getting attacked by a lake monster,” Derek points out.

“No, we’re totally going to take it out!” Stiles argues. “Besides, you have to admit, that’s probably how a night on the lake would end for us.”

Derek snorts. Stiles isn’t wrong.

Without thinking too hard about it, he hands his painting to Stiles. “Here.”

Stiles blinks at it. “For me?”

Derek shrugs. “You should have one, too. Without the lake monster.”

Stiles breaks out into a gigantic grin that is likely at least 50% the wine he’s had and 100% guaranteed to make Derek’s heart do somersaults. “Thanks, Derek.”

“Anytime,” Derek says, and prays it’s dark enough outside that no one can see that he’s blushing.

(He hangs Stiles’s painting in his bedroom and ignores every lewd comment Erica makes about it. He feels more than vindicated when he visits Stiles’s apartment and sees the painting he drew hanging right above Stiles’s bed.)

Another Tumblr not!fic, this one inspired by an ask rather than me just rambling. Originally posted here.