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Allison doesn’t say no.
And, well, Stiles thinks that a vague, slightly non clear dismissal gives him more than enough room to wiggle and nag and be as obnoxious as he feels he can be without being a jerk about it to convince her.
In the end he doesn’t quite need it.
In the end, there’s a big gaping hole on his left shoulder, and blood spilling between his fingers when he tries to stop the hemorrhage, until she finds him and gasps, eyes dark and round and scared shitless, and she takes over, throwing her new and fancy crossbow to the ground and taking over the task.
She presses her ruthless long, dexterous fingers to his wound, and says, “okay. Okay, Stiles. I’ll train you, I promise. Just… just don’t pass out on me.”
The point is that Stiles gets Allison to agree to training sessions.
(By almost dying at her feet, but still. It counts.)
When his shoulder gets better, he shows up at Allison's place with a doctor's certificate of physical fitness, two hot beverages, and a solid, “you promised”.
Allison rolls her eyes at him but lets him in anyway.
On week one they focus on his foot work, on his balance, on his stamina.
(Stiles has never paid so much attention to his feet or run so fucking much in his entire life.)
On week two they keep working on that, and also start with self defense.
“You hold yourself like this, and cover yourself with this hand- this hand, Stiles, and dodge to the other side.” Allison instructs, showing him how it's done before having him try it and knocking him out cold.
Allison knocks him out cold a few times and knocks him on his ass countless more (when Stiles stops biting the dust on his own by tripping over his own damn feet, that is), in fact.
Anyway, Stiles starts feeling like they are heading somewhere and Allison feels that working with him is somehow liberating.
Stiles tells her, “that's because you like having a free pass to beat me up.”
It's mostly humorous, but Allison doesn't deny it.
Stiles has no qualms in admitting to being a highly frustrating and sporadically shitty human being so he doesn't resent her.
Plus, this will probably help in getting them to know each other better, beyond the 'best bro's girlfriend' and 'boyfriend's best bro' categories that they'd previously shoved each other in, and that can only be good for them. He feels like it's going to help them in getting over certain personal hangups and be better friends to each other.
“Derek doesn't like that we hang together so much.” Stiles says on the third week, nose scrunched up and eyes narrowed in concentration as he successfully dodges one of Allison's fists.
It's generally how they start conversations nowadays, on either non sequitours or random stuff that they haven't gotten to express to anyone else. Which is how Stiles ends up knowing way more about bra fittings and archery mechanics than he'd ever thought he'd know.
“Derek can throw himself off a cliff.” She replies, seizing him.
“I thought we were done with that?”
“Oh, that's teenage speech. Don't worry. Just a little wanting to stick it to the man and to rebel to the authorities.”
“Yes, that and...?”
“That and he can fall off a cliff for acting like such an asshole to us all the time.”
“Okay.” He accepts, making Allison lose her balance by grabbing her foot where it's going to collide with his stomach from a kick that's maybe the tiniest bit harder than strictly necessary, and that's that.
Allison lands on her hands and kicks his feet from under him.
“You're too easy, Stiles.”
“That's what she said.”
That makes Allison laugh, which in turn makes him laugh.
By week four Allison beams proudly at him one out of three times he tries something new.
It's progress.
By week six Stiles can manage to stay on his feet for half their mock fights.
And he makes Allison break a sweat three times.
One day in week six Allison drops to the floor and says, “I can't believe him.”
Stiles has three options, but he goes with, “Scott?”
“He's unbelievable.” She huffs, lifting her jeans' leg up and unstrapping a knife that's lithe and sleekly dangerous looking and resting right above her ankle (and in this kind of moments is where a judgmental voice sounds inside his head going all look at your life, look at your choices, at the fact that this kind of thing doesn't even faze him anymore.) “Today he almost bit Rodriguez's head off for talking to me. He was asking to compare English lit notes with me.”
“Full moon?” He tries out of solidarity and fidelity towards his best friend, but Allison's glare makes him hurriedly agree with her, “He's acting like a controlling asshole.”
“I know.”
After that she just stays there, sitting on the grass, getting her trousers dirty, recklessly toying with her knife. He sits next to her, sensing that they're not going to get much training done, and they share a comfortable silence for the fifteen or so minutes that it takes Scott to start sending her grovelling texts.
As he looks at the messages Scott is sending her over her shoulder, he comes to the realization that Allison is now his bro, too. Not in the loosest way it might've been before by association, but by her own merits and winning personality.
“Dude, you probably shouldn't text him that.” He tells her as he fights the urge to snatch the phone out of her hands.
“Why?” She asks, all doe eyes and lip biting.
“Because you're letting him off the hook way too easy. And I get that it's really hard to be, like, stern with Scott because he's totally awesome and the best. Believe me, I know this, I realized this when we were six and he shared his chocolate chip cookies with me. But this one time it's really important that he actually listens to you.”
He feels like this might be some kind of growth thing for him.
Right on the two months mark Derek shows up.
With no explanation whatsoever. He just looms in the treeline near them as they do their thing.
… For a definition of 'doing their thing' that includes huddling together and exchanging telepathic messages via their raised eyebrows and tight lipped grimaces.
It isn't very productive.
“I thought you were training.” Derek says after ten tense minutes.
“We are,” Allison defends, “right now I'm teaching Stiles all about wild predators.”
Stiles has to bite his lip to keep himself from bursting into laughter.
“Hilarious.” Derek deadpans.
“I know.” Allison responds.
And, well, Stiles won't take responsibility for the ensuing fist bumping. It's really not his fault that Allison's such an unbridled BAMF.
Derek keeps showing up, after that. Sometimes he's in what Stiles has come to call 'their'
field before either of them arrive, sometimes he shows up when they're in the middle of their session.
It never fails to throw him off his game.
Not that he'll think much about why that happens. Just the same way he hadn't thought about why Derek expressing negativity towards their arrangement had somehow stuck with him enough to mention it to Allison.
Just like that.
“So what's your angle?” He asks one day when Allison's been held up in school.
“What's my what?”
“You heard me, your angle. What are you expecting to accomplish by showing up here all the time?”
“I'm supervising.”
The funny thing is:
There's no funny thing. Yet one corner of Derek´s mouth is twitching as if he were trying to hide the fact that he is amused.
“You just want to watch Allison kick the shit out of me.” He realizes, in bemusement.
At that exact moment, Allison comes out from the (relative) thick of the trees, cheerfully exclaiming, “Today we are working on your archery skills. Don't worry, I brought the first aid kit and I have Scott on speed dial.”
The other corner of Derek's mouth starts twitching too.
“Dude.”
By week two of their third month, shit turns officially bizarre.
One day Derek tells Allison, “there's no way he's ready for that; he's not light enough on his feet.” after watching her throw him on his ass for like an hour. And Allison's eyes come alive with this intense, scary-as-fuck fire before her delicate eyebrows furrow and she says, “oh, you're right.”
It's the worst thing that could happen to Stiles, because that seems to break the invisible ice barrier between the two of them and after that they spend two more hours talking martial arts and self defense and fucking tactics and strategies and training regimes and every single one of Stiles' failings and shortcomings in excruciating detail.
Stiles groans.
Allison shushes him, and keeps talking.
Derek smirks at him.
Stiles flips him the bird.
And doesn't feel all of thirteen (or suddenly flustered). At all.
The day after that, Derek shows up in sweatpants.
Sweatpants.
“Don't you have anything else to do, man? Or anywhere else to be?” Stiles complains, trying to avert his gaze from Derek's hips (and junk, honestly).
“He's my new co-coach.” Allison announces then, as she puts her hair up in a messy ponytail.
Stiles is immediately demoting her from the bro status.
Right after Derek's done stretching.
When he tears his eyes away from Derek's frankly impressive ass, Allison's looking at him with a disgustingly smug expression.
So, okay, maybe not demoting her after all.
By the fourth month mark, Stiles has reached the peak of sexual frustration.
And has also gone a few miles in terms of accepting that he has a thing. For Derek. A crush-shaped thing.
At first it's really fucking preposterous because it's Derek. Then, it's pretty fucking inconvenient because their relationship has suddenly become so fucking physical with all the demonstrations and mock fights that it's killing him (hence the sexual frustration), and he's pretty fucking sure that Derek can tell which is the most humiliating prospect ever.
Which transforms the situation into absolutely fucking pathetic, because if Derek hasn't brought it up yet? It's probably because he's exercising a new-found sympathy or even because it makes him uncomfortable enough without having to point it out.
And that's how everything turns downright sad.
Which finally concludes in:
“I hate you so much,” he moans, collapsing on the grass, “so so much. I was doing so good with denial. Denial and I had such a beautiful relationship. We had a ten year plan.”
“Okay.” Allison says, softly. “No more whiskey for you.”
“Whiskey is my friend.” Stiles declares. “Unlike you.”
Allison takes away the bottle from his weak fingers and places it beside her, before lying down next to him.
He puts his cheek on her nice smelling hair and mumbles, “that's a lie, you're a great friend and I suck. Sorry.”
“Oh, Stiles.”
Maybe after that she holds his hand and lets him cry all over her pretty hair. Maybe she hugs him and rubs his back as he sobs like a little thirteen year old with a broken heart. Maybe she stays there with him until the sun starts coming up and making his head hurt. Maybe all of that happens and it's extremely pitiful, but Allison is a total babe and doesn't talk once about it to anyone.
Not even to Scott, who looks at them with this hilariously betrayed gleam in his eyes when the three of them hang out together the following day, going all “you got drunk without me?”, and “Stiles, I'm your best friend.”. To which Allison answers with, “Stiles is allowed to have more than one best friend, plus you always get mopey when we drink.”
And, well, if Stiles hadn't started to look at her like a sister on the past months and wasn't so head-over-heels for the most unattainable guy ever, he'd probably be drawing hearts with her name inside them and strangely fitting arrows going through them by this point.
He makes do with the highest of fives.
A few days after that and despite getting detention for something completely not his fault he gets to their field and there's only Derek waiting for him, in his life ruining sweatpants and fit tank top and ugly overly worn sneakers (Stiles knows he can buy new ones. He's seen Derek's closet, his car, and his ridiculous sheets).
“Allison?” He asks in as much of a level voice as he can manage with Derek looking so effortlessly hot in front of him, forgoing pleasantries because Derek knows him enough to not expect them and not be mortally offended when he skips them, being at least as much of a jerk as he is (he tramples any traitorous and childish hope climbing through him at the thought that they are compatible).
“She had things to do,” he starts, voice weirdly raspy. “With her dad.”
He's about to ask him if he's okay when Derek blurts out, “I like you.”
“You... Okay?” He sits down, the world suddenly not making even a shred of sense. “What exactly are we talking about here? Because you're not making any sense, man, like at all.”
“I... ” Derek clears his throat, fixes his eyes on Stiles' fingers first, where they are nervously tearing out grass, and then he focuses on Stiles' eyes and, grimacing a little, carries on, “I like you. There's not much else to say, Stiles. I like you, so I'm here because I like you-- and because you're you and you have the obnoxious habit of getting involved in situations where you're in way over your head and I want to lower the chances of you winding up dead as much as I can.”
“You suck at this.” Stiles croaks out. “So much. You're like a train wreck in slow-mo.”
“I'm much worse than a train-wreck,” Derek corrects, “I'm-- there's-- You shouldn't be with someone like me, but I still like you.”
“Okay.” Stiles says, and then, feeling courageous, “for the record? I like you too. And I'm also a train wreck. And an asshole.”
Derek nods, “I know.”
Stiles is about to get a little outraged (for the sake of being on safe ground, really), when it dawns on him, “you knew? About my... about the liking you thing?”
“Not until today.” Derek offers, sitting down on the grass close to him in what's probably the most relaxed position that Stiles has seen him in. “Allison told me that. Got really upset about me giving you 'all these mixed signals' and 'running hot and cold' and, at some point I lost her? But I gathered that you liked me. And then she basically threatened to flay me alive if I didn't fix this.”
“Yeah, she's badass like that.”
Derek glares at him.
“...I don't think she'll go through with it, if it's any consolation?”
Derek rolls his eyes at him in exasperation. And Stiles has got it so bad, even that makes him feel fond of Derek, and all warm and gooey inside. It's like a disease. He tries to rein his ridiculousness in, before speaking:
“Well,” he staggers a few seconds over his wording, “the facts are: you like me, I like you. We are very much on the same page as to how we like each other. And even though we know this could very well be a disastrous idea we can't help what we want.”
“Yes,” Derek agrees, eyes on him and intense enough to give Stiles goosebumps. “Those seem to be the facts.”
“Okay,” Stiles mutters, then. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
Stiles nods, and gets to his knees. He stays still for a bit, voices “I'm going to do a thing, now. You can stop me if this thing makes you uncomfortable.”
And just like that he's awkwardly crawling over to Derek until they are only a few inches apart and he can feel Derek's hot breath on his skin and he wants so much his belly is aching, cramping with it.
“Tell me to stop,” he reminds Derek almost in a whisper, before brushing their lips together.
But Derek doesn't, he just opens up to him, pliant and almost vulnerable, kissing him slow and tender in a way that Stiles has imagined a thousand times (because he's a teenager and he's getting to the point where he honestly believes he's imagined everything in relation to sex), but never actually expected.
He wraps his arms around Derek's neck, and Derek puts his hands on Stiles' hips and--
Well, he doesn't tell Stiles to stop.
When he gets home that night (later than expected, with his lips swollen and his chest expanding and contracting and doing weird things he can't categorize) and checks his phone, there's a text message from Allison waiting for him:
u can start worshipping me right about now :)
To which he replies:
u'r my favorite
And then he gets a text from Scott:
no :(
And it makes him laugh more than it probably should, but he doesn't give a damn. He just lies down on his bed with his phone and laughs.
And when Scott calls him five minutes later, he's still snickering, euphoric.
(By month five all of Stiles' efforts and hard work pay off when he manages to knock out the baddie of the week that tries to kidnap him all on his own.)