It definitely isn't half two in the AM's or anything.

Disclaimer: it's pretty clear I don't own teen wolf, yo

It starts with Scott, which is why Stiles doesn't notice anything out of the ordinary straight away. He wakes up with his best friend in his bed, snuggled up to him, back to back the same way they used to sleep when they were kids, having sleepovers. They had grown out of it by the time they were about fourteen, and besides from the night his dad had found out about the supernatural world, they haven't ended up like this for years.

But see, the thing is, Stiles is warm and he feels safe for the first time since the nogitsune, and so he wriggles slightly to maximise the contact between their bare backs, and goes back to sleep. When he wakes up again, Scott is grinning at him from next to him, and Stiles can't quite help but smile back. It's nothing like his old smile, the innocent grin full of joy and hope and naivete is long gone, but it isn't like the fake one the nogitsune plastered across his face, or the approximation of happiness that he had given his dad when they had been reunited after his de-possession. It's a genuine smile, and he feels like maybe he's balancing on the first stepping stone with a chance of getting to the other side of the river, for the first time in a long time.

"'Sup, Scotty?" He mumbles, still heavy from sleep. He tangles their feet together under the covers, and something calms in his chest as Scott's face relaxes into peaceful lines immediately. It's something he seems to find solace in, as an alpha; the tactility of his pack reminds him that they're all alive and well.

"Morning, sleepyhead." Scott quirks the corner of his mouth at him cheerfully. "You owe me breakfast.

"Scott." Stiles turns his face into his pillow in mock sulkiness, grinning into it so Scott doesn't see, even though he's probably listening to his heartbeat anyway. "You broke in, you owe me breakfast, dude." He peeks at Scott from under his lashes. Scott has the same cheeky grin he always had right before...

He shrieks as Scott jabs him in the ribs with deft fingers, and Stiles squirms as he tickles him.

"No, stop it, Scott!" He pants out between breathless laughs. Scott lifts his hands, and makes a face of surrender.

"Truce?" He offers. Stiles squints at him.

They fall off the bed when Stiles launches his counter attack. Stiles does end up making breakfast.

A few days later, Stiles wakes up with Isaac coiled up under his chin, more like a cat than a werewolf, to be honest. He figures that the other boy has just had a nightmare, and is looking for some comfort, so he just buries his face in his curls and grips him a little tighter around the waist.

He can still grab a couple more hours sleep before they have to get to school.

He makes Isaac pancakes when they get up, and lets the taller boy sling a casual arm around his shoulders when they walk into school, even if people do give him weird looks in english class, and mutter under their breath about 'not knowing Stilinksi and Lahey were dating'.

He just ignores it, and focuses on bullshitting about the book they're reading. His essay is going to rock.

He doesn't complain when Isaac comes back a handful more times over the next week, or when it becomes a common theme after a month that he spends at least one night a week curled up in a tight ball under Stiles' chin.

After Erica and Boyd sneak through his window one Sunday night, he gets a bit suspicious. But they're warm, like two space heaters, and he feels kind of like a kid, sandwiched between their chests, in a good way. Their linked hands rest on his hip all night, and he wakes up with a mouthful of Erica's hair. She laughs at him as he spits it out, making an expression of disgust as he does. Boyd's rumbling laugh vibrates pleasantly against his back and he swears playfully at the werewolves, threatening to withhold breakfast if they don't stop laughing at his pain.

They don't stop laughing.

He doesn't withhold breakfast.

They flank him as they walk into school, and the three of them meet Isaac at his locker like everything is normal.

Malia ends up spooning him one Thursday night, after he's just spent half the evening swearing at his math homework. It isn't that he doesn't understand it, it's that he hates math with a passion hotter than the fire of a thousand suns. So he scowls his way through it and hates every second, going to bed early with a headache the size of Jupiter.

The problem, of course, is that he can't sleep. At all. He's tense, and even jacking off doesn't help relax him. That's his last resort, usually. So he lies awake, mentally burning every sheet of math he's ever seen, and fumes about it.

So, consequently, he's still awake when Malia crawls through his window at two AM. He hadn't immediately gone back to his usual sleeping pattern after they'd broken up, but he'd managed it eventually. It had taken him a while to get used to sleeping without the familiar line of warmth along his back, however.

Malia clambers into his bed, sliding under the covers neatly, and folds herself into his back. He falls asleep with her hot breath puffing in his ear, her arm firmly locked around his middle.

She demands waffles with cream when she wakes up and prods him into consciousness, steals one of his shirts, and wears it to school with no regard for the thriving rumour mill in Beacon Hills High.

Stiles has never been more proud of her.

Allison throws pebbles at his window one February night, motioning with her hands to open the door. He descends the stairs in the dark, even though his dad is on nights again, and lets her in. She stomps the snow from her boots and smiles sweetly as he locks up again.

"Hey." He greets her. She pecks him on the cheek and tows him upstairs by his wrist.

"What..?" He's almost stopped protesting the intrusions, because he doesn't mind them, and he actually finds it increasingly difficult to fall asleep alone these days.

"C'mon, Stiles." Allison shucks her jeans and slings them over his chair along wither her jacket, and lets him wrap himself around her for the night.

She takes him for breakfast in the morning, at the diner his mom and dad met in. He tries to pay but she tells him its her treat. He knows that the women in his life are not to be argued with, and lets his slide, already planning another trip where he's the one paying, to say thank you.

Stiles smiles at her as she drives him to school, and they tumble out in the parking lot and get drawn into a bear hug by Scott.

The gaps between visits from pack members have shortened considerably, and barely a night is left where he is on his own. Lydia and Kira let themselves in with the spare key after one of these nights, and Stiles is gritty eyed and has a headache, because he didn't sleep a wink last night, plagued by nightmares and missing the warmth of a bedmate. They twine around him comfortingly, and he falls into unconsciousness within minutes.

He buys them dinner to say thank you. The waiter looks at them oddly, but Stiles just grins and wraps an arm around each of the girls and squeezes.

"Thanks." He tells them.

Jackson comes alone.

It's a surprise to Stiles, who still half believes that the other teenager hates him, but he doesn't say anything, just watches as Jackson strips to his boxers and folds his clothes neatly. Lifting a corner of the duvet in invitation, he smiles as the werewolf drapes himself over Stiles' stomach and shoulder like a clingy teddy bear, and snuffles into his skin. His feet are freezing where they press into his calves, and Stiles tells him this, phrasing it in a way that he hopes doesn't sound like he's telling Jackson to leave.

"Lydia makes me wear socks to bed." He replies, sounding less aloof and more disgruntled.

Stiles laughs and tightens the arm around Jackson's shoulders.

"No socks." He promises. Jackson responds with a soft snore.

Stiles gets a solid eight hours.

He comes back from lacrosse practice in April to find Cora sitting on his bed. He squeaks and drops his bag, and just about manages to catch her when she launches herself at him for a hug.

"You were in South America." His voice is muffled by her hair, which is longer, and tied in a plait, which hangs over her shoulder and is the reason she nearly misses his sentence.

"Flew back. Missed you guys."

"You came here first?"

"Nah, saw Derek last night when I got in. He told me to come and see you." She sounds happy, he realises. He makes veggie lasagne when she complains about jetlag and starvation, with a hopeful gleam in her eyes. She eats half of it on her own, and he grins and lets his dad have ice cream for dessert.

She sleeps with her knees practically in front of her chest, and he finds he doesn't mind her knees pressing against the small of his back.

She kicks in her sleep.

He doesn't really mind that either, even though his back is bruised for a week.

Liam sneaks in the week that Cora leaves for South America, pushes freezing fingers against his stomach and falls asleep in seconds, snoring endearingly into the pillow. Stiles is used to werewolves in his bed, by now, and pulls the younger boy closer, vowing to make him crepes in the morning. He sticks to his word, and is rewarded with the bright smile the kid throws him as he mumbles something about crepes being his favourite breakfast food.

Stiles lets his dad have three crepes without fruit before he starts enforcing healthy breakfast rules.

He drives Liam to school and drops him off at biology for first period, claps him the shoulder, and tells him he'll see him at lunch.

The kid dimples.

By August, there is a steady rotation of the pack in his bed, and there is never a night that he's left alone. His dad has given every single member a key to the house, so they don't freak out the neighbours by climbing the side of the house every time they want in.

But something doesn't sit right with Stiles.

Derek hasn't been by once.

He thought he was pack, he thought he counted, he thought Derek cared.

The thing is, he doesn't think he's wrong. Derek keeps his favourite candy in the loft, even though he hates it, and he buys snacks for him for movie nights, and argues about who would win in a fight between Black Widow and Batman with Scott(clearly Natasha, duh Scott) and helps him with his history homework because he was a history major in college oh my god.

So he knows Derek doesn't hate him any more, even if his eyebrows don't appear to have received that message, but he can't fathom why Derek lacks the compulsion to sneak into his bed at night like the rest of the pack.

And Scott admitted it is a compulsion, the need to make sure the human members of the pack are okay, especially the more vulnerable members(read: Stiles after the nogitsune).

So does that mean he's ignoring his instincts, or he doesn't have the same compulsion because he doesn't see Stiles as pack?

Stiles is going in circles. He doesn't want to go and confront Derek about it, so he spends a Call of Duty Bro Day bitching to Scott about it.

Scott laughs in his face and says he'll talk to Derek.

He evidently does, because one evening Derek climbs through his window looking sheepish.

"Hey."

"'Sup, sourwolf."

"Scott says you're mad at me?"

Stiles sighs loudly. Apparently Scott didn't talk to him. He stirred.

"No, I'm not mad." Derek's hurt expression doesn't lessen, so Stiles scrambles for the words to explain. "I'm...confused? Yeah. That'd be about the size of it." Derek furrows his brow.

"About what?" Stiles chews his lip as he thinks.

"Well, the pack are in and out of here all the time, you know. And they spend the night a lot. There isn't a single night I'm left alone any more." He thinks for a moment. "They keep me company, you know, all of them, I think they have a schedule or something? And even Jackson comes here. But you...don't."

"You're mad because I don't cuddle you at night?" Derek's bunny teeth bites into his lip gently.

"Not mad. Confused. I'm pack, right?"

"Yeah." Derek looks adorably earnest, and Stiles kind of wants to kiss him, not that that's anything new.

"So why don't you treat me like pack, Der?" Stiles asks, all in a rush. He didn't realise that he was hurt until now, but he is. He's hurt by the fact that Derek's not treating him like pack.

"I'm sorry." Derek is right in front of him now. "I'm sorry, Stiles. I've not been treating you like pack, you're right." He crouches down so he can see Stiles' face properly.

"Why?" Stiles feels a little like something precious is happening, so he sticks with his tiny question, rather than rambling.

"I..." Derek swallows, takes a breath, lets it out through his nose. "I guess...I thought you wouldn't want me there? Because you don't like me the way I wish you did." Derek is using his words for once, apparently, and he briefly thinks that Cora is going to go apeshit when he tells her. Happy apeshit.

"How do you wish I liked you, Derek?" His voice is soft.

"The way I like you." Derek's ears have gone pink, but he's powering through the embarrassment manfully.

"And how is that?" Stiles knows he's being obnoxious, forcing Derek to say it, but his fingertips are tingling and his cheeks are heated and this could be amazing but he needs to know, okay?

"I like you. Like like." Derek looks strangely confident now, Stiles thinks to himself, and god if it isn't a good look on him. Stiles grins.

"I'm gonna kiss you now." He announces. Derek is already leaning in, so he does the same, and then they're kissing and wow.

"I like like you too, man." Stiles says against Derek's lips. And then they're kissing again, and needless to say, he imagines Derek will be in his bed all the time now, and he doesn't think all of it will be sleeping.

The pack still drop by now and then, but the visits dwindle after they catch Derek and Stiles having sex.

A lot of sex.

Stiles sleeps like a baby now.