Adrift

Title: Adrift
Author: Claire Watson
Series: Create Your Own Bingo stage one
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Genre: Isolated/Trapped
Relationship(s): Stiles Stilinski/Derek Hale
Content Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Author Notes: I’m sorry I didn’t do justice to this story, life got in the way and I ran out of time before I could do everything I wanted. The full idea got sacrificed for finishing the bingo ☹
I really need to manage my time better.
Beta: Grammarly
Word Count: 3,832
Summary: A simple trip to return the boat they’d been using goes wrong, but Stiles and Derek make the best of it.

---

Stiles blamed Scott for this whole thing.

Scott with his stupid pack-bonding plans, and his stupid boat rental, and his stupid desire to spend the day in the cabin with Kira celebrating their engagement and his stupid puppy-dog eyes that made Stiles agree to go with Derek to return the stupid boat, despite not even liking boats or knowing anything at all about them except that they were stupid shark magnets.

Stiles also secretly blamed Laura Hale, who he had discovered was the babysitter responsible for exposing him to the movie Jaws while at an impressionable age and therefore guaranteeing his fear of the ocean for life.

Unfortunately, she was dead and, therefore, not around for Stiles to rail against.

“Kira is the one with the licence,” Stiles pointed out yet again as he and Derek stacked their bags in the cabin. “She also signed the agreement. Surely it’s illegal for us to be out on the water without her?”

“The Australian guy who owns the company knows her dad,” Scott said impatiently. “He said that it’s not ideal, but that he’ll look the other way as long as you go straight there.”

“I don’t know why we have to do it this way,” Stiles grumbled. “Derek and I could just find a different motel to stay in, and we could all fly to Honolulu tomorrow.”

“We’ve gone through this. The company needs the boat back today. Just get on the boat, you’ll be there in a few hours.” Scott gave Scott his best pleading look, the one Stiles had never been able to say no to. “Kira and I just want some time completely to ourselves. Think of it as an engagement present.”

“I want it on the record that I’m doing this under duress.”

“Yes,” Scott said, rolling his eyes. “I think we all comprehend that much.”

v^v^v

At least it was a nice boat. There was a small onboard cabin with a couple of narrow benches that apparently folded out into a small double bed and a table that could fold up out of the way. A couple of cupboards and a small gas-powered cooking element were there too, but when they hired the boat, they’d opted to not cook on board so there was no gas canister.

Since their trip was short, they didn’t bother bringing food with them aside from the usual emergency snacks—because Derek was a worrier and refused to go without them—and the junk food Stiles had stashed away in his bag.

It wasn’t like two of them were needed to run the boat, after all, and he needed something to do.

He stayed in the cabin while Derek took them out of the docking area; he didn’t want to distract him at the wrong moment and cause a crash, and keeping his mouth shut around Derek was always a crapshoot. He just made it so easy.

As soon as the boat picked up speed, he went out on deck.

“Are you sure you know where we’re going?” Stiles asked, shading his eyes and trying to figure out how Derek knew what direction to steer in.

“I don’t need to,” Derek replied. “There’s a chartplotter for navigation. You input your required destination, and it calculates your current position and then directs you how to get there while avoiding any known hazards.”

“So, GPS for boats.”

Derek removed his sunglasses and rolled his eyes. “Yes, GPS for boats. How did you not know about it? It’s been in use all week.”

“I don’t like boats,” Stiles said for maybe the thousandth time. “I don’t like being on the ocean. I don’t want to learn all about how to use one, and then have Scott rope me into playing ferryman for him. Did you not notice I’ve avoided every single one of the optional boat trips while we’ve been here?”

“I was liaising with the Mahelanis,” Derek reminded him.

Stiles scowled. “That’s right, you got to get out of all of this enforced togetherness and didn’t even have the grace to let me come along with you.”

Derek raised his eyebrows. “You’re not the most diplomatic of people, Stiles. We were hoping for an exchange, not to alienate them for all time.”

That stung. “I’ll have you know I can be very diplomatic!” Stiles insisted.

“Right.” Derek didn’t sound convinced. “And that’s why we nearly had a pack war with the Jettan Pack last year? Because of your stellar diplomatic skills?”

“It isn’t my fault that their emissary was a lying, cheating, no good embezzler! They should be grateful that I pointed it out before he drained the pack bank accounts dry!”

“And the Shasta Coven?”

“If they didn’t want me to expose them as drug dealers, they shouldn’t have been selling to impressionable kids! If they hadn’t been involved in illegal acts that threatened the wellbeing of their community, then that would never have happened!”

“Then there was that pod of selkie…”

Stiles threw up his hands. “They were killing people! Why are you trying to make out that these situations were my fault? They were all criminals! Are we supposed to just ignore crime now? Do you want to stand aside and let hundreds of kids become addicted to magic crack so that a bunch of lazy-ass assholes can skip out of going to work like everyone else?”

“I’m just saying that you’re like a crime-sniffing bloodhound,” Derek said, sounding annoyingly reasonable. “It was important to Danny that we established a civil connection to his relatives, and that might not have happened if you’d walked in and somehow intuited that the Matriarch was running a brothel or that the family house was the headquarters for organised crime.”

Stiles sniffed. “It’s alright for you,” he said, returning to the boat thing since it seemed Derek wasn’t ready to listen to reason about his awesome diplomatic skills. “Werewolves don’t get seasick.”

“They can,” Derek corrected, “just not very often.” He smirked. “And not born werewolves, naturally.”

“I hate you all,” Stiles grumbled. “I’m going to get a drink. You want one?”

“Water.” Derek replaced his sunglasses and turned back to monitoring their direction.

Stiles went below and fossicked around, returning with bottled water for Derek, a coke for himself, and a bag of Doritos from his stash to share.

They sat in companionable silence for the next half an hour, as Stiles worked through some thoughts about ways to set notification wards further outside the official pack boundaries so they could have some forewarning of incoming issues.

He was brought out of his reverie by increasing levels of nausea. On opening his eyes, Stiles first noticed that the previously blue sky had turned to an alarmingly threatening dark grey.

“Whoa,” he said, “that came up quickly. Looks like we’re going to get some rain.” The water had also grown choppy; the previously almost calm ocean was churning about, and it was undoubtedly a significant contributor to Stiles’ feelings of unwellness.

Derek frowned. “This storm wasn’t on any of the predictions; maybe we should turn back.”

Stiles glanced around at the open water. There was no land in sight. “Is there a closer port nearer to our destination? Because that seems like a better idea to me.”

“Here, watch over the steering so I can look at other options.”

Stiles raised his hands in a warding motion. “No way, dude. I said I didn’t want to learn any of the driving stuff, and I meant it.” Lightning flashed as if to punctuate his words, quickly followed several seconds later by the rumbling of thunder.

Derek took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “I can’t do both!”

“Then don’t,” Stiles replied. “You could always stop the boat while you plan the route.”

“Fine,” Derek gritted out between clenched teeth. “What are you going to do to help this situation?”

Stiles shrugged. “I’m going to meditate.” At Derek’s unimpressed look, he spread his hands in a gesture of innocence. “You said it yourself, there was nothing on the radar. If I open myself up, I should be able to tell if this is a magical attack.”

“Fine.”

Stiles settled himself as comfortably as possible on the rubber mat covering the deck, given the water spray constantly hitting his face and the increased pitching of the boat, which added to his motion sickness.

It was no good. Just as he decided to pack it in, there was a flash of lightning so bright he wanted to blink when he already had his eyes closed, followed by a crackle, a fizt noise, and the sound of Derek swearing. The clap of thunder came less than a second later, drowning out all other sound.

Stiles struggled to his feet, his hands tight on the rail, and stared at Derek, standing over the now-smoking navigation equipment.

As Derek raised his eyes to meet Stiles’ gaze, water started gushing down from the sky like someone had turned on a tap.

For fucks sake.

v^v^v

Getting into the cabin meant they were no longer pelted by the rain still pouring down, but it did nothing to fix their already wet state.

On top of that, Stiles could no longer hold onto the contents of his stomach.

When it was all done and the dry heaves had stopped, Stiles went to his backpack and pulled out his phone. No network available. He looked up at Derek, who looked unfairly handsome even when soaked and uncomfortable. “So, give it to me straight, Sourwolf. Are we as screwed as I think we are?”

Derek sighed, rubbing a hand over his wet hair, leaving it sticking out in all directions. “The chartplotter is dead. I’m less sure about the engine; just as I started to ease back on the throttle, it made some funny noises, so I turned it off. I suppose we’ll find out when we turn it back on again, but I don’t think we should attempt it while the rain is still coming down like this.”

“Let’s plan for a worst case scenario,” Stiles said, wishing that tossing his cookies had stopped the nausea. Unfortunately, it was still there, and almost worse for the empty stomach. “If the GPS and the engine are dead, and we can’t get a phone signal, what are our options?”

“We’re somewhere between islands,” Derek said, “provided we’re not blown off course too far, a search team should be able to find us.”

Stiles pointed out the unpleasant truth. “If they’re looking for us. Unless Kira’s dad’s friend calls Scott to ask where we are, no-one will know we’re missing.”

“The boat was supposed to be back today,” Derek pointed out. “He’ll probably call Scott when we haven’t turned up by four pm.”

“It’s currently just after ten thirty in the morning. How long after reporting a boat missing does it take before they start a search?”

Derek shrugged.

“Ugh. So, if they wait for 24 hours, we’ve got a day and a half, minimum, before we can possibly be found.”

“We may float close enough to one of the islands to be able to see it,” Derek offered.

Stiles threw him a dirty look. “I never knew you were such an optimist.”

Derek shrugged again. “Just laying out the possibilities.”

Stiles shoved his bucket at him. “Take care of this, would you? It’s not helping me think.”

Derek grimaced, but pulled on an oilskin raincoat and went back into the rain without protest. No doubt he wanted to remove it from the close confines of the cabin even more than Stiles did.

The five minutes he was gone felt like an eternity. Stiles immediately imagined a rogue wave crashing into Derek and knocking him overboard, leaving him alone on a boat in the ocean to fend for himself against any man-eating sharks that might come along.

It was not a happy daydream.

The moment Derek came back inside, Stiles was in his face.

“If we get attacked by man-eating sharks, and you have to fight them, you’ll definitely win, won’t you?” Stiles asked. He didn’t want Derek to die defending him from sharks.

Derek’s sigh was long-suffering. “We’re not going to be attacked by man-eating sharks. We’re not going to be attacked by sharks, period.”

“You don’t know that, Derek.” Stiles grabbed hold of the edge of the oilskin to help him keep his balance. “They could be hunting us right now!”

Derek dropped the bucket and put his hands over Stiles’. “I promise I will murder any sharks that try to eat you.” He frowned, his hands tightening. “You really feel sick.”

Stiles rolled his eyes. “Nice deduction Sherlock. What gave it away?”

Derek’s frown turned into an expression of concentration. “Does this help?”

Stiles blinked. The nausea was growing perceptibly better. “That’s amazing. Are you doing the werewolf pain drain on me?” A glance down showed the darker veins that indicated yes, Derek was doing the werewolf pain drain.

In less than a minute, Stiles’ nausea was completely gone. He collapsed against Derek in relief.

“You don’t even know how much better that feels,” he said into Derek’s neck, which immediately grew tense. Stiles lifted his head, drawing back. “Sorry, dude; I know the neck is a vulnerable spot for werewolves.”

Derek’s ears turned pink and his eyes dropped. “It’s fine, it’s just a bit sensitive.”

Stiles blinked, wondering if he’d heard that right. A werewolf offering access to their neck was a big deal, usually only happening when an alpha demanded submission or when courting a mate.

While Stiles’ crush on Derek was of long standing—when a drop-dead gorgeous hunk keeps saving your life, it’s hard not to become infatuated—Stiles had never seriously considered that Derek might return his feelings.

He was suddenly all too aware that he’d not long ago been using the bucket Derek just dropped and that his breath was probably ranker than Greenburg’s socks, especially to a werewolf’s sensitive nose.

“I have to brush my teeth,” Stiles blurted, releasing the oilskin and turning to where his gear was stacked. Thankfully he’d left his things on top so he could easily access his snacks.

As he dug down to where he’d left his toothbrush, he wondered if he was reading too much into the situation. Maybe Derek hadn’t meant anything by what he said, maybe he was setting himself up for humiliation like he had so many times in the past. What if he made a move and was cruelly rejected and then had to spend days on a boat alone with Derek in the immediate aftermath?

On the other hand, that could be good. Neither of them would be able to run away and hide; they’d have to confront the awkward situation and move through it.

v^v^v

Mouth all minty fresh, Stiles wondered how to approach things. Should he just throw himself at Derek and hope that worked, or try to have an adult conversation about it first?

Just throwing himself at things had been his modus operandi for most of his life, with mixed levels of success. Derek was important, though. If this went wrong, it wouldn’t just be a prospective relationship on the line but the rest of their friendship, too. He had no doubts they could eventually get past it, but there was no need to make it more difficult than it had to be.

With that in mind, he found the peanut butter cups he’d put aside for an emergency. He sat on one of the benches and invitingly patted the seat next to him. “Come on, Sourwolf, sit. You need to be close to provide your awesome werewolfy magic because I’m already starting to feel sick again.”

When Derek sat down, Stiles offered him a peanut butter cup.

Derek’s eyebrows flew to his hairline. “It must be serious; I’ve only ever seen you share your Reese’s with your father.”

“It’s a sign of pure devotion,” Stiles said, uncomfortably aware of how his heart was thundering in his chest. “I used to share them with Scott, until that time he hung up on me when we were stuck in the swimming pool.”

Derek’s eyebrows stayed high, but his mouth slowly curved into a smile. “Is that right?” He accepted the treat and bit into it. He also covered Stiles’ hand with his own and started doing the werewolf magic again.

Stiles watched, mesmerised as Derek ate his offering. When it was gone, the only sign of its existence a faint smudge of chocolate at the corner of Derek’s mouth, Stiles cleared his throat to speak.

“So,” he said hesitantly, “I’ve, uh, kind of had this thing for you for years now. It’s not a casual type of feeling, more the ‘till death do us part’ kind of feeling. If you don’t feel the same way, that’s fine, I just thought maybe it was the right time to…let you know where things stand with me.”

Derek’s hand tightened on Stiles’. “I’ve had feelings for you, too. They’re also of the ‘till death do us part’ variety, and while I knew that you were attracted to me, I wasn’t sure that your feelings were the same, so I never said anything.”

Stiles pushed aside the peanut butter cup he hadn’t even picked up yet and placed his hand over Derek’s. “Do you think we’re ready to do this then? See where this goes?”

Derek’s smile was small but real. “Yes.” He splayed his fingers open and let Stiles lace their fingers together.

Stiles heaved a massive sigh of relief. “And hey, one bonus is that we already know each other’s irritating habits! I’m not going to fall out of love with you when I find out that you have a meltdown if someone leaves dirty dishes in the sink without rinsing them first.”

“And I won’t leave you when I realise that your interest in crime and criminals never turns off and that you’ll likely spend the rest of your life going from uncovering one crime to another.”

Stiles used the index finger on his free hand to trace patterns over Derek’s wrist. “Do you love me enough to let me drive your car?” They both knew which car he was talking about. Derek didn’t mind who drove his people mover, but no-one but him or Cora had ever driven the Mustang.

“Do you love me enough to give me the second peanut butter cup?” Derek asked, the corner of his mouth still curved in a smile.

Stiles glanced over at where it lay on the table, still in the wrapper. He didn’t have any more of them stashed away; once that one was gone, he’d have to wait until they were found before he could get more. “I might be willing to trade it for a kiss.”

“You don’t need to do that, kisses are free.” Derek proved it, kissing Stiles slowly and thoroughly.

Stiles participated enthusiastically, delighted he’d had the foresight to brush his teeth.

When it was over, they were both slightly breathless, and Derek’s pupils had blown wide.

“I don’t care anymore,” Stiles said, entranced. “Have it. Have all my candy, if you want.”

Derek laughed. “Now I know it’s true love.”

As wonderful as kissing Derek had been, this wasn’t the most comfortable location for making out. In fact, the only thing the boat had going for it in that regard was that they were alone and wouldn’t have to put up with other people intruding on them.

Stiles sighed. “I really wish we’d had this revelation somewhere with a comfortable bed. This place isn’t particularly conducive to sexytimes.”

Derek shrugged. “Then we won’t have sex here.” He eased out from behind the tiny table, bringing their joined hands with them. “We can make a game out of it, if you like. We can make out as much as we like, but no sex, no orgasms, until we have access to a proper bed.”

Stiles felt his blood heat further. “Deal,” he said. “Unless we still haven’t been rescued in three days, because at that point it will stop being fun and start being hella scary and, at that point, I won’t care about a bed.”

“Deal,” Derek agreed. “Now come on, the rain has stopped. We should see what the situation is on deck.”

“You check out on deck, I’ll go through all the cupboards down here,” Stiles countered. “Once we know where we stand we can decide our strategy, and once that’s done there won’t be anything to distract us from…other things.”

Derek nodded. “You’ll have to let go of my hand, though.”

“Don’t want to,” Stiles whined, gripping tighter.

“It’s your plan.”

“I know, doesn’t mean I have to like it.” With a sigh, Stiles released Derek and shuffled out from under the table. “Alright then, no more standing around. Mush!”

v^v^v

Stiles found the shortwave radio in a small cupboard attached to the emergency food supply. “Eureka!” he cried, pulling it out and setting it on the tiny table. It wasn’t the same as the receiver he’d used for years to listen in to the BHSD frequencies, but he figured it couldn’t be that much different.

“Derek!” he yelled, returning to the cupboard to see if there were instructions, “I found a radio!” He pulled out a small booklet wrapped in several layers of sealed plastic. “And instructions!”

His hands were almost shaking with excitement as he carefully extracted it.

Derek came in, stopping to hang his coat back up. “The storm has passed, and the sea is starting to calm. It hasn’t been long enough for us to be blown far, so we must still be relatively close to land.”

“You know what this means, right?” Stiles said, pulling the last layer of plastic off the notebook. “If we can get through to the coastguard, we could be back tonight!”

Derek’s smile made Stiles’ knees go weak. “We still have to wait to be picked up. Why don’t you work on getting that thing working, while I think up ways to pass the time?”

Stiles groaned. “Not helpful, Sourwolf. I don’t want to try and talk with the coastguard while I’ve got a boner.”

“They won’t know. Now hurry up, the sooner that gets done, the sooner we can get started.”

Stiles had never been more motivated in his life.