Archive of Our Own

“She’s Allison’s friend, I guess,” Scott says, sounding distracted. “Shoot, stupid, shoot!” There are video game noises in the background— stuff blowing up, mostly.

Stiles scoffs and repositions the phone between his shoulder and ear while he sniffs at the two t-shirts he just plucked off his floor. “Allison’s friend? Right, because that’s never gone horribly wrong before.”

There’s a beat of silence in which they’re both definitely thinking about Allison’s last ‘friend.’ His name was straight out of the High Order of Douche, and Lydia—bless her—had somehow managed to survive four minutes of conversation with him before she told him to turn the car around and take her home.

“She says it’s different this time, Stiles!” Scott insists. “Oh— no! No, crap!” More explosions.

“Look, dude, I’m sure she’s, like—” there’s not really a nice way of saying intolerable even if that’s the truest thing he could say, “—cool and all, but I’m really not interested in another blind date this year.”

Scott sighs and says, “Um,” and, god, that’s telling.

“’Um?’” Stiles asks, his tone sharpening. “What ‘um’, Scott? There is no ‘um.’ Tell me there’s no ‘um.’”

“Um,” Scott repeats. God dammit. “ImayhavetoldAllison—”

Stiles doesn’t have to hear the rest. He drops onto his bed with a miserable groan. “Scott, no, you didn’t—”

“I didn’t think you’d say no!” The explosion sounds from Scott’s end are gone, so it’s likely he’s put his game on pause. Stiles appreciates the gesture. Kinda. “You’re always talking about how ‘this is the year’ and stuff, so I didn’t think you’d say no!”

Scott kind of has him there. The romantic in Stiles has always enjoyed Valentine’s Day; on some level, he’s always harbored a strange hope that his life might secretly be a rom-com and that Valentine’s Day, for him, would one day mean a secret admirer or a funny mix up with flower orders leading to true love or something.

When it comes to February 14, “this is the year,” has been Stiles’s slogan for basically ever.

Not this year, though.

“I dunno,” he says on an exhale. He rubs miserably at his eyes with his free hand. “That thing with Aiden really messed me up, man.”

Scott’s silence says everything that anyone has ever said about Stiles’s ‘thing with Aiden’: “Really, Stiles? You fooled around for four months thinking you were pseudo-boyfriends while he was fooling around with half the people in your apartment complex and you called it quits three freaking months ago. Besides, he introduced himself to us as the Wolf. Sometimes he’d talk about himself in the third person! Shouldn’t you be over that already?”

All of that? Also true. And, for the record? Stiles’s friends kind of suck when it comes to the post-breakup shtick.

Scott finally says, “Okay. I’ll, uh, tell Allison. Maybe we can find someone else to stand in for you for this girl.”

“Wait,” Stiles says, feeling sick suddenly. “Does—does she expect me to be there?”

Scott’s silences really speak volumes.

“Allison might have already told her—” he starts.

“You,” Stiles cuts in venomously, pointing at the phone even though Scott sure as hell can’t see him. “You are going to owe me so much. I’m going to make you come to my house three nights a week to take my trash to the dumpster. I’m going to make you tell Allison about your brony phase. I’m going to make you renew your WoW subscription.”

Scott lets out miserable, choked noises at each of those threats, but he finally says, “… So, you’re going? On the date?”

“Yes, you dumbass,” Stiles snaps. “I’m going on this guaranteed-awful blind date with Allison’s friend because, unlike some people I know, I’m a decent person.”

Scott’s smart enough not to point out that no one in hell would consider Stiles a more decent person than Scott.

“What time do I need to pick her up?”

Scott throws out a handful of different times before saying, “You know, uh, nevermind. Don’t listen to me. I’ll just get Allison to text you.”

Stiles sighs and says, “Yeah, okay. Do that.”

Before they hang up, Scott—ever the optimist—says, “Hey, man, you never know! This could be the year!”

The next day, Lydia’s sporting a smug smirk in the food court of the mall.

“Shut up,” Stiles tells her when he sits down across from her when she crosses her legs with a little bounce and opens her mouth. “Not a word.”

“What are you going to wear?” she taunts, her smile very red, kicking at him. “For your hot date.”

“Nothing,” he deadpans. “I’m going to Naked Man her and see where it takes me.”

Lydia’s face screws up. “Let’s hope this girl sees the appeal of pop culture references.”

“Do you?” Stiles asks, already knowing the answer.

“Of course not. Don’t be stupid.” She brushes her bangs off her face carefully. “But there’s always a chance someone out there is just as strange and socially inept as you, right?”

Stiles scowls at her. “I only invited you to make sure I don’t try and wear brown shoes with a black belt to the ritziest restaurant this side of the Rockies. This whole criticism thing? Yeah, not really excited about it.”

“Sounds like a good way to sum up a lot of things in your life right now,” Lydia quips, and she’s smiling with teeth now.

“C’mon, Red,” Stiles says, leaning forward in his seat and resting his forearms on the table between them. “Help me make this not the most miserable night of my life?”

“How could anything ever top graduation night, though?” she replies, her tone saccharine.

Stiles can’t help it—he laughs.

“This is one of Allison’s friends, remember?”

“Oh. Right.”

They share an exasperated look for a moment which bleeds into matching grins. Then—

“Okay. Fine. Let’s go,” Lydia says, standing and ushering Stiles out of his seat. “If I stay in the mall too long, I’ll break out.”

“Side effect to sharing so much air with us commoners?” Stiles asks, resisting.

“Yes. Now move.”

The suit they find on the discount rack is red like a can of Coke. Stiles is torn between refusing on principle and going with it because he’s kind of a sucker for dressing for the occasion, and a red suit on Valentine’s Day? Can’t get much more appropriate than that. He can’t afford all three pieces, no matter how hard Lydia tries to convince him it’s worth it, so he leaves with just the vest and the pants.

He’s planning to go with a simple white button up to complete the image, but Lydia strong arms him into letting her get him a steel blue silk number instead.

Apparently it’s a fashionable combination or something. Stiles mostly thinks it’s trivial. Whatever. Lydia shoves it into his hands and says, “Happy Valentine’s Day to you. Try not to mess it up.”

Stiles says, “Lydia, who do you think you’re talking to? I got this.”

“What’s this?” Allison asks that night, running her hand along the suit bag hanging in Stiles’s front closet.

Stiles pins her with a Look. “For my date,” he says pointedly.

It’s not her fault, he knows; Scott should accept full blame for saying that Stiles had agreed to a date he’d never even been told about. But, still. It’s hard not to be a little bitter.

Allison looks at the bag with a small, considering frown. “Can I?” she asks, looking back at him, her hands over the zipper.

Stiles waves his beer at her. “Be my guest,” he says.

She unzips it and gasps a little. “It’s so Stiles.”

Stiles flushes at that—he can’t help it. It’s nice to be complimented, okay?

Then Allison ruins the feel-good vibe he has going when she says, “So, you seem pretty excited for Thursday night.”

She seems smug; it’s not a good look for her.

Stiles takes a swig of his beer and stalks into the kitchen to tell Scott to take out the trash.

Her name is Heather. She’s beautiful and she has a dimple and when Stiles buzzes her apartment at quarter-‘til eight, he’s actually feeling pretty confident. She compliments his suit like she’s in on the joke, and she has a flower in her hair. She picks something trendy and electronic on the radio for the ride into the city, which, yeah, could be better, but Stiles will take it. He’s feeling good for the first time since Scott told him this date was happening.

It’s inevitable, really, that it all goes to hell.

“I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz plays through the intercom. Stiles hates Jason Mraz. Four years ago, Scott decided to serenade Allison with a Jason Mraz song for Valentine’s Day, and he spent six weeks trying to teach himself basic as hell chord shapes and asking Stiles to listen every time he wanted to practice his routine. The “hard part,” he’d kept saying, was deciding whether or not Allison would prefer a sweet song or sexy song, and Scott had been determined to get it right.

It all came to a head when, on February 13, Allison had walked in on Scott, down on one knee, singing “Butterfly” to Stiles.

Stiles fucking hates Jason Mraz.

He stares at his phone at the bottom of the toilet bowl and thinks about the hysterical, crying girl he just abandoned in the dining room. He wonders how long it would take for anyone to notice if he drowned himself in the sink.

So, no, this is decided-fucking-ly not the year.

Heather kind of dissolved into a hot mess in the dining room ten minutes ago, but it’s not really her fault. When she’d mentioned having a bad ex, Stiles had seen it as an opportunity to bond, so he’d jumped at the chance to swap ex stories.

He hadn’t expected that her ex story would be the sort of drama soap operas pay people to write. Down to the ‘then he got my sister pregnant and now they’re getting married and I’m supposed to be the maid of honor’ of it all.

In related news, Stiles kinda-maybe hates Aiden less, which is... an interesting development.

There’s a knock on the bathroom door—the third time in the past fifteen minutes—and Stiles looks down at his phone in the toilet again and says, “We’re having technical difficulties—try again later!” because he has his shortcomings, yeah, but he’s still a pretty funny motherfucker.

 “Sir?” a voice comes through the door five minutes later when Stiles is elbow-deep in toilet water, fishing his phone out. He freezes.

“… Um… Yeah?”

“Your date just excused herself. She left a message for you.”

Stiles is tempted to brain himself on the toilet seat.

“… She did?”

“Yessir. Would you like me to repeat it?”

Stiles sighs. “Sure. Shoot.”

“She says she’s sorry, but she’s just not ready to see anyone new yet.”

“Right. Okay. Thanks.”

There’s a beat. Stiles waits it out, trying not to make any weird splashing noises. That could be, uh, difficult to explain.

“… Sir, is… is everything alright?”

“Yeah! Totally fine!” Stiles says, his voice breaking. His fucking life, really. His fucking life. “Just need uh, a few more minutes.”

Definitely not the year.

He buys a bottle of wine from his server because he feels bad leaving without getting something, and getting blackout drunk sounds pretty damn awesome. His sleeve is still soaked because no amount of bathroom paper towels could get all the toilet water out of the silk of his shirt. His ruined phone is in his pocket; he’s doing his best not to think about it.

Etta James is playing when Stiles slips out the front door of the restaurant, bashfully avoiding the questioning eyes of the host staff. His cheeks are flushed, and his throat is dry. It’s been a pretty shitty night.

Outside, the city is alive and loud.

The street lamps are sporting heart-shaped lights, alternating pink and white every block, and there are mobs of people hurrying along the sidewalks, some in pairs and others in proud-to-be-single groups. It’s unseasonably warm, which is good, because Stiles has a wet arm and a damp pocket, and there’s twenty blocks between the restaurant and the parking garage he paid fifteen bucks to keep his car for the night.

Fifteen dollars well spent, clearly.

He keeps his head down, like he thinks everyone in town will be able to tell by the flush on his cheeks that he just ruined some poor girl’s night, and that’s why he walks right past the tall-dark-handsome affair leaning against the red brick front wall of the restaurant.

“You’re trailing,” Tall-Dark-Handsome says, though, which gets Stiles’s attention.

Stiles stops, gets bumped around a bit by hurried pedestrians, and looks at Tall-Dark-Handsome questioningly.

“What?” he asks dumbly.

“Your shoe,” the guy says, gesturing with his cigarette at Stiles’s shiny black dress shoes.

Stiles looks down; he has a foot-long piece of toilet paper stuck to his heel. Because his life is a rom-com without the rom, apparently.

“God dammit,” he sighs, practically resigned to this awful night by this point, and he bends over and claws the piece off, balling it up and, in lieu of a trash can nearby, dropping it in his pocket with his ruined cell phone.

He eyes Tall-Dark-Handsome with consideration for a minute. The dude’s dressed in black slacks and a well-pressed white button-up; the restaurant logo is embroidered on his left breast with the words SOUS-CHEF printed underneath it. His nametag reads Derek in a looping, swirly font face. He doesn’t have a heart pinned to his tie like all the other restaurant staffers.

And Derek is looking back at Stiles, annoyed but expectant, his expression asking what the fuck Stiles is doing looking at him and what the fuck he could possibly want now.

Stiles gestures at the cigarette in Derek’s hand, “There any way I can bum one of those off of you?” he asks.

Derek picks his foot up and leans back against the wall some more, his expression changing as he sizes Stiles up. He takes a drag off his smoke and asks, “Bad date?”

Stiles scoffs and nods sharply. “The worst,” he says. “The absolute fuckin’ worst.”

Derek laughs through his nose and digs a pack of Marlboro blacks out of his pocket. He opens it and holds it out for Stiles to take one.

“Oh, god, thank you,” Stiles says, taking one and moving to Derek’s side to accept Derek’s lighter when he offers it. “You’re my hero.”

Derek’s quiet; it’s probably his thing, really. He looks like the non-communicative sort.

Stiles says, “I’m Stiles,” and offers his hand in greeting.

Derek puts his cigarette between his lips and takes Stiles’s hand in his. It’s warm and his fingers are thick, and Stiles finds it difficult not to let his mind run a little wild with that. Derek says, “Derek”, like it’s not right there on his nametag for the world to see.

 Stiles hurries to put his bummed cigarette in his mouth and ducks his head to get it lit so he doesn’t say something kind of creepy like I know.

He inhales and wills himself not to cough the smoke back up; it’s been a while since he’s smoked anything. Since college, probably. He settles back against wall and studies the cigarette between his fingers. There’s no real way to cough subtly, but he does his best.

Derek’s watching the couples and groups passing by with a scowl; sometimes rolling his eyes if they’re being gross enough. It’s a sentiment Stiles shares.

“So, what’d you do?” Derek asks him, though his eyes are following a girl wearing a headband with little hearts on the ends of two antennae. He looks perturbed.

“It was a blind date; I thought we could bond over stories about bad exes.”

Derek stares at him incredulously. “You—what?”

“I don’t do well under pressure,” Stiles rushes to say, eyes on the ground.

Derek falls into quiet chuckles, and he shakes his head piteously. “Wow,” he says, sounding honest-to-god impressed.

“Shut up,” Stiles mutters. “She was a mess.”

“I’m sure she was,” Derek says, his lips pursing into a tight smile. “You tried to talk about your exes on Valentine’s Day.”

“Shut up,” Stiles repeats animatedly, starting to gesture with the hand holding his wine. “You weren’t there, man! She was just, like, staring at me. Waiting. It was intimidating.”

“You’re, what,” Derek looks Stiles over once, and Stiles feels a shock of heat on the back of his neck, “twenty-three? I’m sure you could handle it.”

Stiles scrunches up his face and says, “Twenty-four. And, obviously, I couldn’t.”

Derek rolls his eyes and bites back a grin again.

He’s really, really, really attractive. It’s a little devastating.

Derek smokes the rest of his cigarette in silence until he drops the bud to the ground and stomps it out.

He hovers like maybe he’s not sure what to do or say, but he doesn’t seem to be in a rush to get back inside. If Stiles didn’t know any better, he’d say Derek’s lingering. He’s not so sure he doesn’t know better.

“Are you still on the clock?” Stiles asks, deciding to go for it. “I could probably use some help finishing this.” He holds out the bottle of wine. “And misery, company, all that jazz.”

Derek stares at the bottle of wine like he’s not really sure what to do with it. His eyes move from the bottle up to Stiles’s face, then back again. After what feels like forever, he shrugs and says, “I have to take care of a few things. Can you wait fifteen minutes?”

“I might be able to keep myself from getting drunk that long,” Stiles says loftily. “Maybe.”

Derek shakes his head and moves away, heading back into the restaurant.

Stiles bites his lip to keep himself from doing something embarrassing like whooping.

Misery loves company indeed.

Derek doesn’t have a full change of clothes after work. What he has is a black blazer which he slides over his shoulders that effectively hides the restaurant logo on his white button up.

Stiles has spent the last fifteen minutes freaking out over the fact that he invited a hot-like-burning stranger to split a bottle of wine with him on a miserable little whim, and the blazer ends up being the straw that short circuits the camel’s brain or something.

(He’d probably give a shit about mixing his metaphors if he were capable of basic thought—or, at least, something more coherent than Close your mouth, stupid, close your friggin’ mouth now.  He can’t, though, so mixed metaphors it is. )

“You—” (don’t say look good, don’t say look good) “—ready?”

Derek gives him a duh sort of look and rummages in his pants pockets for a minute before pulling out a cork screw.

“Do you just carry—”

“Borrowed it from the bar,” Derek says. “May or may not remember to give it back tomorrow night.”

He looks up at Stiles significantly then.

“I’m thinking probably not,” Stiles answers his indirectly asked question. “I don’t know about you, but I’d be alright forgetting the last,” he checks his watch for the theatrics of it, “oh, twelve hours or so, I’d say.”

Derek nods absently and works on the cork in the bottle. They share another look when the cork pops out—a silent you or me first.

Stiles says, “Go ahead,” and Derek takes a swig (Stiles not-so-discretely watches the bob of his Adam’s apple), and then they fall in step on the sidewalk. Stiles, without really meaning to, puts them on the path towards his car.

Derek passes him the bottle, and their fingers brush when Stiles takes it from him.

Most of his wine experience comes from sloppy college parties when they’d play a game of Slap the Bag with some Franzia, so Stiles’s palette is, uh, not exactly refined. The wine is a very dry red, he knows because the woman who sold it to him told him so, but he’s not totally sure what that means or how it translates into taste. Wine is wine and wine is alcohol and alcohol is nice. That’s what he knows.

They’re quiet for a long time; it occurs to Stiles that he knows nothing about Derek, and he’s not very good at small talk with strangers.

Derek seems content enough to take pulls off the wine while scowling at the sea of happy couples, though. It’s nice to not feel expected to maintain conversation for once, so Stiles turns his attention to the passing people, too.

“I’ve never understood the appeal,” Stiles says a few minutes later when they pass a girl holding a bouquet so large it completely obscures her face. “It’s just a stupid day—”

“Made by the card and chocolate companies,” Derek finishes with wry smirk. “The mantra of the single masses.”

Stiles scowls at him. “What, like you like this?” he asks, gesturing at the people passing them. They stop walking, turning to each other and forming a roadblock of sorts on the sidewalks. Other pedestrians pass them with nasty looks.

“No,” Derek says slowly. “I never said the single masses were wrong.”

He takes the wine from Stiles’s hand and smirks before throwing some more back.

Stiles can’t help it; he grins a little, too.

“It’s just stupid,” he says, getting animated again. “Why should we be expected to buy all this shit to show how much we give a crap about somebody else?”

Derek snorts. “You’re asking someone who works in a five-star restaurant,” he says. “I work to please people who think money buys happiness every damn day.”

“It’s so stupid!” Stiles pauses, then groans, bringing a hand to cover his face. “I literally sound like every single person who has ever complained about Valentine’s Day ever. I’m going to register an account on Reddit tonight because apparently that’s where I belong.”

Derek looks like the joke went over his head, but he puts his hands in his pants pockets and looks distractingly casual when he says, “It’s hard not to be spiteful as hell about it all.”

Stiles throws back some more wine. “I spent the better part of two decades waiting for Valentine’s Day to be something. I’m just done with it.”

“It’s not better,” Derek tells him tersely. “When it’s something. It’s not better.”

Stiles is quiet for a moment, trying to understand what Derek could mean by that. “What do you—”

Derek shrugs; he has nice shoulders. “Forget it.”

Stiles lets it go, but only by sheer force of will.

“I get what you mean about spite, though,” he says conspiratorially. “Just—all these people are buying into this stupid day, and it’s like—God, why are you all doing this?”

“The only reason the card and chocolate companies keep Valentine’s Day alive is because it’s a multi-million dollar industry,” Derek agrees, shaking his head and frowning deeply. “If they’d stop putting money into the system—”

“The system would collapse!” Stiles finishes with gusto right as a grumpy pedestrian bumps into him, propelling him a few steps forward and into Derek’s bubble. Derek doesn’t seem to mind, though; he plucks the bottle of wine from Stiles’s loose grip and takes a swig.

“Like this,” he says when he’s done while passing the bottle back to Stiles. He’s turning to gesture at the limo parked along the curb beside them. “This limo is probably a rental; some poor bastard probably dropped a few hundred dollars to have this for the night to impress his girl.”

Stiles whistles appreciatively, his hands coming up like he’s going to touch the car in front of him as he approaches it. It’s a Mercedes Benz model, long and white and a little retro. It’s nice, and Derek’s probably right about it being a rental.

He opens his mouth to say something biting about it, to say something witty or mocking, but a frazzled-looking man jumps out of the driver’s seat from the limo and comes around, his eyes huge and bug-like as he takes Derek and Stiles in.

“You two the, uh,” he glances at a card in his hand, “Deatons?”

Stiles and Derek look at each other quickly, their eyebrows raised. They’re both asking the same thing: Do we fuckin’ dare?

After a beat, Stiles, with a wicked grin growing on his face, says, “Yessir, that’s us.”

Hell fuckin’ yes they do.

The driver looks relieved; he visibly relaxes and says, “Alright, good. I was starting to worry I got the wrong address. Alright, you two, come on, let me—”

He slides along the side of the limo, and Stiles and Derek follow with a lot of confidence for two people trying to abscond with someone else’s rented limo. Stiles is careful—so careful—to not look over his shoulder at Derek. He’s sure if he does, he’s going to fall over laughing or he’s going to break character and something’s going to tip off this bug-eyed man to their little lie.

“Alrighty then,” the man says, throwing the door open and holding it for them. “Thank you for choosing LAX Limos Mister and Mister Deaton, my name is Bobby, and I’ll be your driver this evening. We’re running a little late, so if you’ll both get in already, we’ll get this show on the road.”

Stiles slides in immediately, adrenaline rushing in his veins.

Derek, however, apparently thinks he’s the funniest person on the face of the planet because he pauses and levels Bobby with a serious look. He says, “Thank you, Bobby. We’re looking forward to it,” with such somberness that Stiles can’t help but lose it. He’s a little tipsy already, pleasantly buzzed off the wine, and he doubles over, covering his mouth with his hands as he dissolves into laughs and badly-muffled snorts.

Derek keeps a straight face as he ducks his head and crawls in beside Stiles. Bobby closes the door behind them, and in the quiet of the limo, Stiles lets himself laugh loudly. Derek even chuckles a bit, throwing his head back against the leather seat and shaking his head from side to side like he can’t believe what they’re doing.

“Holy shit,” Stiles says reverently, sobering as soon as he hears Bobby’s door opening up front, beyond the divider. “I can’t believe we’re doing this, holy shit.”

“Shhh,” Derek hisses, putting a finger to his lips and gesturing at the partition. Stiles rolls his eyes.

The partition lowers and Bobby looks at them from his rearview mirror. “Alright, we’re about twenty-seven blocks away from Centennial Park, gentlemen. Should take us about half an hour.”

Derek nods like he knew that was where they were headed all along, and Stiles asks, “How do we open the sunroof?”

Bobby grins—and looks a little crazy when he does it, okay—and the glass over Stiles’s head glides open with a mechanical noise.

“Awesome,” he says, pumping his fist a little.

“Enjoy the ride,” Bobby says, and the partition closes again.

“You bet your ass I will,” Stiles says. When he tries to stand up, Derek grabs at him.

“Wait a block or two,” he says in a low voice. “If the guy who rented this walks out to see us driving away—”

“Oh, right.”

So, he waits. Derek throws back more of the wine, then slides along the leather to the mini bar towards the front of the car. There he finds a bottle of champagne and a fifth of iced Gentleman Jack both with stickers that read $35.

“Jackpot,” he says in a low voice.

Stiles ignores him in favor of inching upward towards the roof, a little nervous about putting his upper body out of a moving vehicle. Traffic’s bad enough that they’re not going terribly fast, but still. It’s the principle: hands in arms inside the carpet and all that jazz.

“Pass me that,” Stiles says, making a gimme gesture towards the wine bottle. “I need some liquid courage here.”

“For the lightning-fast speed we’re reaching here?” Derek asks, his eyebrows going up, and Stiles scrunches his face up.

“I don’t see you braving it,” he argues.

“That’s because I’m getting drunk,” Derek tells him flatly. He passes the wine bottle over, though.

Stiles snatches it with a huff and surges upward into the roar of the city outside.

He feels like Jack Dawson with the wind in his hair and the careless joy he’s suddenly feeling coming up from his feet. It’s a lot at once, so he ducks back inside after getting a good view of the world outside, of the plebeians walking past without stolen limos.

He gulps down some wine, winces, and says, “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

“So you’ve said,” Derek hums, breaking into the Jack.

“What’s that?” Stiles asks, moving over to where Derek’s sitting. Their thighs brush, and Stiles flinches back a bit so he’s not too obvious. “Gentleman Jack? Hell yes.”

“And Tattinger,” Derek says, raising the bottle of champagne and shaking it a little bit.

Stiles eyeballs the dredges of the wine he bought in the restaurant. “Gimme a minute and I’ll start on that.”

Derek snorts and reaches for a tumbler off the bar while Stiles takes another gulp of wine.

“Ooh, fancy,” Stiles says appraisingly, eyeing the glass in Derek’s hand as he pours the Jack into it.

“You don’t drink Jack out of the bottle.”

“You do if you’re hoping to be messy drunk by ten o’clock.”

“Maybe if I were already messy drunk.”

“Suit yourself,” Stiles says, finishing off the red and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. The bottle goes on the ground and he leans over Derek, careful not to touch even in his happy-buzzed haze while he grabs for the champagne. “Yo, Bobby!”

The partition slides open, and Bobby says, “What can I do for you?”

“How far out are we?”

“About eleven more blocks, sir.”

“Cool,” Stiles says. “That’s all.”

The partition slides closed again.

“I still can’t believe we’re doing this,” Stiles repeats, taking the champagne and leaning back. “I feel, like, empowered. And awesome. And stuff.”

“And stuff,” Derek repeats, teasing. “You should work for Hallmark.”

Stiles sputters, gaping at Derek with something like fury, “You mean the system.”

“You shouldn’t deny the world your talent,” Derek says somberly, maintaining eye contact with Stiles even as he raises his glass to take another sip of his whiskey.

Stiles snorts.

“Shut up, I’m getting drunk over here,” he says. “Where’s that stupid bottle opener you had earlier? Pass that over here, thief.”

Derek narrows his eyes but he shuffles to pull the corkscrew out of his pocket. Their fingers brush when Stiles takes it.

Centennial Park isn’t really dressed up for the occasion; the front gates have a couple of heart lights to match the city’s theme, but inside everything is pretty much same-old-same-old. The limo drops them off in front of the big fountain with the naked statues ‘peeing’ into the pool below for the Deaton’s scheduled half hour walk, then it disappears.

The park might not be dressed up, but it’s packed. Stiles doesn’t frequent the park because it’s the sort of place kids and joggers like to go, and he is neither of those things, but Derek looks pretty at home as they take a stroll around the fountain, the bottle of Jack in his pocket and the tumbler nowhere to be seen since it’s not exactly conducive to the two of them getting publicly intoxicated in a subtle way.

They settle on the marble base of the fountain, the both of them just barely far gone enough to not mind the spray of water against their sides. They turn their knees towards each other, and Stiles leans back on his palms at studies Derek with a curious eye.

He’s got an artful five o’clock shadow thing going on, and Stiles has never been a big fan of facial hair, but Derek’s making a pretty good case for it. There’s something about Derek that makes him seem big and imposing, but here, curved in front of the fountain, Stiles can’t help but notice how lean he actually is.

He’s got questions, okay. Questions he’s pretty sure will only be answered if he gets Derek a little bit naked. Or very naked, he’s not really picky.

“Okay, okay,” he says, stumbling over his words a little bit.

“You don’t need any more of this,” Derek says when Stiles reaches for the Jack in Derek’s pocket. “You’re going to fall in and drown.”

Stiles wants to argue with that, but he feels a little dizzy, so maybe it’s a good time to let Derek boss him around.

“Okay, though,” he tries again. “I have a question. It’s really, really important.”

“You’re really, really drunk,” Derek says.

“Shut up,” Stiles says, flushing. “You are, too. You’re totally drunk.”

He squints at Derek, but, honestly, he can’t really tell if Derek’s drunk; he thinks Derek’s drunk. Derek’s definitely matched Stiles drink for drink at this point, but it’s hard to say for sure when Stiles feels as drunk as he is.

“No, but, I have a question,” Stiles says again. “An important question.”

Derek sighs and drags his hands over his thighs. “Fine. What is it?”

“Would you rather,” Stiles starts, then snorts. He repeats himself. “Would you rather have a dragon or be a dragon?”

Derek blinks at him a few times, clearly confused. After a while, he says, carefully, “Be a dragon.” He nods, then, like he’s satisfied with his decision.

“No, dude!” Stiles cries. “Have a dragon! You could ride it!”

“Having a dragon doesn’t mean it’s tame, though,” Derek argues. “What if you have it but it, like, wants to eat you?”

Stiles frowns and falls quiet. “No,” he says, looking dazed. “No, that’s not—that’s not how it would work.”

“It could be.”

“Nope. Dragon would be tame. You could ride it. Like a horse.”

“I don’t like horses,” Derek says. He’s definitely drunk.

“Well, like—not like a horse. Like a—like a fire-breathing horse. That flies.”

“… I’d still rather be a dragon.”

“Okay, fine, fine,” Stiles says, putting his hands up and waving them like he can wave that discussion away. “I have another one. A better one. Would you have a penis that sheds its skin every day like a snake or one that makes noise like a rainstick every time you moved.”

Derek gives Stiles a perturbed look like why does this happen inside your head, but he considers it and says, “Rainsticks are cool,” with a little grin.

Stiles cackles and almost loses his balance; Derek puts a hand on his thigh and settles him, then takes it away. “Yes!” Stiles cries, not even registering the fact that he almost fell in. “Yes, that would be so badass! Besides, cleanup could be really awkward the other way.”

Derek takes out the Jack from his jacket pocket and unscrews the cap. He takes a sip with a small smile.

“Okay, another one,” Stiles says, trying to think of something to say. “Would. You. Raaather,” he taps his fingers on his thigh, trying to will a thought to come. Something tricky. Something really tough. “Oh! Yes! Would you rather have to watch your parents having sex every day for the rest of your life—and you totally have to watch—” Derek makes a horrified face, and Stiles laughs and says no, no, no, wait to keep him from speaking, “—or join them once to make it stop.”

Derek takes a long, long time to answer. Finally, he says, looking extremely uncomfortable, “Join them once.” He looks at Stiles, suddenly, like he’s embarrassed.

Stiles nods like he agrees, but he realizes suddenly—out of nowhere—that he doesn’t.

If he had to watch his parents having sex every day, he’d get to see his mom.

It’s like a kick in the balls, and he watches Derek gulping the Jack down with a little bit of envy. Derek must be drunk enough to forget that he told Stiles not to have anymore, though, because he holds it out to Stiles, and Stiles takes it with enthusiasm.

“Assuming you can’t kill yourself,” Derek starts, his voice rough from the alcohol, “would you rather look like Jar Jar Binks or talk like Jar Jar Binks.”

Stiles looks at him sharply, his mouth working wildly though he can’t seem to make any words come out. Finally, with a sour look, he says, “I don’t want to play this game anymore.”

Derek laughs loudly enough to distract the blonde girl and the black boy who are busy getting engaged fifteen feet away. He throws his head back and the sound is beautiful and Stiles can see a flush rising under Derek’s skin and he wants to taste it.

He leans in without meaning to, happily drunk and swaying into the pull of Derek’s raw sex appeal. Before he can do anything stupid, though, there’s a honk, and they turn to see the limo they jacked waiting for them a few yards away.

“Shall we?” Derek says grandly, standing and offering his hand to Stiles in a joking gesture.

“Oh, yes, darling,” Stiles says, batting his eyelashes as best he can. He takes Derek’s hand and stands, stumbling a little bit. The world spins. “Oh, shit. I might need to back off the sauce for a bit.”

“Let’s finish of the Jack first and take the champagne for the road later,” Derek suggests.

“It’s like you’re in my brain, man,” Stiles marvels, and they’re both laughing when they crawl back into the limo.

“So,” Stiles slurs, glancing sidelong at Derek, “you’re a chef, right?”

Derek looks up from reading the label on the champagne, his brow furrowed. “…Yes?”

“What’s that, like, like? No—like—what do you do?”

“Mostly I just cook stuff,” Derek says flatly. His cheeks are flushed a little from the alcohol, and it’s a good look for him. A, like, really good look for him.

Stiles scowls. “Really? I didn’t fuckin’ realize. ‘Mostly just cook stuff’ thank you, douchebag. I figured that much.”

Derek scowls right back. “What about you? What do you do?”

“Video game testing,” Stiles says simply. “You know, like,” he turns his fingers at Derek like they’re guns and says, “pew, pew!”

Derek snorts.

“I wanna, like, uh, make them,” Stiles says, and he’s starting to fall over a little, exhausted by the effort of trying to keep himself up. “Wanna make video games. I took, like, trih—trihguh—tr— trigonometry in college and everything.”

“What the fuck does that have to do with video games?”

“It’s engineering, Derek. You have to take trighuh-stuff for engineering. I’m an engineer.”

“You get paid to play video games and complain when they’re too hard for you to beat; that doesn’t sound like engineering.”

Stiles scowls at him and tries to stretch his legs out far enough to kick Derek in his stupid kneecap or something. “It’s a work in progress,” he argues, feeling grumpy.

“Right,” Derek says, but there’s no heat there. He puts the champagne back in the bucket of ice on the mini bar.

They really are spectacularly drunk. Stiles keeps trying but can’t read the hands on his watch; when he looks at them, they multiply, and it makes him dizzy. He knows, logically, that it’s time to stop, time to enjoy his drunk and not push his luck to the point of vomiting all over the place, but he misses drinking with Derek. His fingers twitch against the leather seat and he blinks long and slow, trying to recall the warmth of Derek’s fingers against his when they passed the wine bottle back and forward earlier.

A silence stretches between them; the ride is smooth, and, in the quiet, they can hear Bobby singing along to ‘80s hair metal in the front seat.

“I was seeing someone a while back,” Stiles confesses when the silence gets to be too much, when he feels too far away, like an unmoored boat drifting off. He’s carefully avoiding Derek’s gaze and squinting at the roof of the limo like it’s going to tell him why he thought seeing Aiden was ever a good idea in the first place. He’s still really, really drunk, and maybe that’s why he feels like sharing with the class. “I thought it was, like, exclusive. He never got the memo.”

If Derek’s surprised by the he, he doesn’t show it.

He says, “My last— I—she broke up with me in a text message and our apartment was completely empty when I got home—even my stuff was gone.”

Stiles groans sympathetically. “People suck,” he bites out.

Derek makes a strangled noise of agreement, but then he narrows his eyes at Stiles and raises an accusing finger to point at him. “You just tried to bond over exes twice on the same Valentine’s Day. Your game is absolute shit.”

Stiles’s hands go wild when he reaches up defensively, ready to explain himself. “Hey, man. It totally worked on you, didn’t it? That’s a fifty percent success rate there.”

Derek shakes his head and rolls his eyes. His exasperation is starting to look a lot like something else, but Stiles is too drunk to consider it, too silly to stop and think about it. He just laughs, unable to help himself. Life is funny and Derek’s funny, and it feels good just to laugh.

The limo pulls to a stop outside of an ice skating rink.

Ten minutes later, Stiles says, “I’m too drunk for this,” with absolute seriousness while staring at his unlaced ice skates like the puzzle they are.

“You’re fine,” Derek says, and he bumps their shoulders together. Stiles snorts.

“I’m drunk,” he whines. “Really drunk. Astronomically drunk. Drunk, drunk, drunk.”

“Shh,” Derek hisses, turning his head towards Stiles’s ear and leaning close. “That soccer mom looks like her head’s going to explode if you say ‘drunk’ one more time.”

“Good, that’s one less of them making my life hell at rush hour. Soccer moms are single-handedly to blame for mini-vans, you know. I hate mini-vans.”

Derek purses his lips because he totally wants to laugh; even drunk-Stiles knows that expression.

“Tie your laces there, Cinderella. I want to get out on the rink.”

“We’re going to die because we’re drunk,” Stiles insists. He keeps saying the word drunk. He should stop doing that. Maybe he will if it stops being funny. “And hey!  I’d like to see Cinderella try to tie up these bad boys.”

Derek scowls at him; Stiles worries at his skate laces to get away from the heat in that stare.

“Okay, I’m good,” he says after a few minutes. “Help me up so we can do this. This terrible, terrible idea.”

Derek’s hand is warm; he pulls Stiles to his feet with ease, and they wobble on unsteady feet over to the rink. A gaggle of giggling teenagers almost mows them over, but Stiles gets a good hand on the half-wall, and Derek gets a good hand on Stiles, so they make it through—barely.

“I’m too drunk for this,” Stiles says again, leaning back into Derek’s grip. “Tell Lydia I love her. Tell Scott and Allison that this is their fault.”

“Shut up and skate, Stiles,” Derek says, pushing him out onto the rink.

Stiles catches himself at the last possible moment before collapsing onto the ice. “Jesus!” he snaps, looking over his shoulder towards Derek. “Warn a guy.”

But Derek’s hand is around Stiles’s elbow, yanking him upright.

“How are you not falling over right now?” Stiles asks, shamelessly leaning into Derek’s grip. “I feel like I’m gonna die. Or barf.”

Derek just looks at him like it should be obvious that he’s got a liver of steel. Stiles resents that; if Derek’s liver is made of steel, then Stiles’s is totally, like, adamantium.

“Shut up and help me skate,” he says, moving his legs in graceless baby steps. He feels like a newborn deer or something. A fawn.

“You look ridiculous,” Derek tells him, but he doesn’t let go of Stiles’s arm as he eases them into longer strides.

“Your mom’s ridiculous,” Stiles mutters weakly. “Whoa, god, slow down before I really do yak all over the place.”

Derek sighs dramatically. “You are so bossy.”

“I know what I want, that’s all,” Stiles says firmly.

Derek’s quiet for a long time, but his arm stays on Stiles as he pulls them both along through the sea of couples moving around them. People are laughing and kissing and being sick with affection for one another, and Stiles is doing is best to stay bitter and strong in the midst of it all.

Mostly he just feels achingly lonely, though.

Twenty-four years of wanting and not a real Valentine’s Date for a single one of them, he thinks bitterly.

After a few laps, he can’t stand to look at the people around them and he can’t look at the ice under his feet anymore without getting dangerously dizzy, so he turns his head towards Derek. Derek’s already watching Stiles, though,  and there’s a moment—just a moment— right when their eyes meet where Stiles feels himself doing that swaying thing, like he’s falling into Derek all over again. Like at the park earlier, on the fountain.

“You—damn—stop that,” he splutters, stopping himself short. Derek looks confused and a little pissy, but Stiles doesn’t have the mind to express to him the devastating effects of Derek’s good looks. He pushes Derek away a little, though his hands aren’t really his own in his drunkenness. They don’t listen correctly, and his fingers catch on the lapel of Derek’s blazer and don’t seem to want to move after that.

He tries to skate away to get his hands off Derek; he gets three feet, maybe, before falling on his ass.

Derek laughs and skates right on bye. Stiles flips him the bird behind his stupid, well-shaped ass.

Stiles has a headache when he crawls into the limo after skating. He can still feel the weight and shape of the skates pinching his feet, and he kicks off his dress shoes as soon as he’s inside the car. Derek gives him a puzzled look which Stiles answers with a shrug.

He scowls down at his watch and realizes, with relief, that he can read it again. It’s almost midnight, so he and Derek have been on some stranger’s date night for three hours now.

“How much longer,” he asks, and his throat feels dry and scratchy. He stops and coughs and says, “Shit, are there any water bottles over there?”

Derek shrugs and leans—his body stretching over the leather of the seats sinuously—to open the mini-fridge by the mini-bar. He pulls out two water bottles with the rental company’s logo, and he tosses one to Stiles.

Stiles dodges just in time to keep it from hitting his head.

“Fuck you very much,” he grumbles, and he breaks into the water almost violently. “Shit, yes,” he gasps when he pulls off, and Derek’s head snaps in his direction at the sound of it.

Stiles wipes his mouth off with the back of his hand and tries again: “How much longer do you think this dude planned to be out?” He gestures at the limo and clarifies, “The guy whose limo we stole, I mean.”

“I got that, thanks,” Derek says dryly. “I don’t know. It’d probably be weird to ask Bobby about it, so I figure we can just ride it out until it’s over?”

Stiles nods. He’s still drunk, but he’s coming down from it slowly but surely, and he’s starting to notice the little things like the way Derek’s thigh feels against his own and the fact that they’re sitting next to each other in the limo now with almost no space between them.

Stiles digs into his pocket and pulls out his phone, frowning at it.

“What?” Derek asks, and Stiles glances at him.

“I dropped it in the toilet at your restaurant. On my date.”

Derek laughs sharply, sounding surprised. Stiles frowns.

“I wanted to ask you for your phone number,” he admits, feeling stupid as soon as the words are out of his mouth. “Because you’re pretty cool, I guess.”

“Pretty cool, you guess,” Derek repeats flatly. “Hallmark weeps every day you’re not working for them.”

“Shut up,” Stiles says without any heat. “I’m too drunk for your bullshit.”

“You say ‘drunk’ more than any drunk person I’ve ever been drunk with.”

“You just said it, like, four times in a row!”

They glower at each other for a beat, but as drunk as Stiles is, he’s not quite drunk enough to ignore, anymore, the way that Derek’s eyes keep dropping to Stiles’s lips.

Stiles knows—he knows, okay—what attraction looks like.

He could do it, too. He could take that look and run with it, lean into Derek’s space some more and slot their mouths together. Derek’s breath smells like whiskey and his clothes smell like the wood-burning grill from the restaurant; he’s gorgeous in a way no one who’s ever wanted to kiss Stiles has been, and Stiles has spent the better part of the night wondering what Derek would look like naked.

He could do it; lean in and take the reins here, kiss Derek stupid and stop dancing around it. He could do it.

He doesn’t do it, though. The limo stops, and the moment passes.

Derek says, “You can always give me your work number, if you have one of those,” as Bobby tells them they’ve arrived at Peter’s Late-Nite Jazz Bar. “I could call you there.”

“Yeah,” Stiles breathes.

Stiles has suspected for a few hours that they’ve been following a date itinerary for a middle-aged couple, but the fact that their last stop is a jazz bar kind of solidifies that. It’s on the wrong end of the city from where Stiles’s car is parked, so he’s hoping to at least get a ride back to where they started after this, but the bar has a cool vibe.

The room is bullet-shaped with a band in the back and a bar running along the west wall, outlined in purple and blue neons. There are a dozen little round tables with candles for centerpieces towards the front of the room, and there are twice as many booths across the room from the bar.

The band is a four piece ensemble, and the bass line getting hit is sick. Stiles drops himself into a booth and looks up at the stage with something like reverence while Derek hits up the bar.

He comes back with two cups of coffee and sits next to Stiles to watch the band with him. Stiles falls on the mug Derek sat in front of him, giving absolutely no fucks when the coffee scalds his tongue. It tastes like heaven.

“Did you—” he starts, and Derek puts an unopened bottle of water in front of him. “God, thank you. Now all I need is bacon, and I’ll be able to fight this hangover off before it ever arrives.”

Derek huffs and takes a sip of his coffee.

They share a companionable silence for a long time, watching as the girl playing the upright bass takes a solo. The room is full of whistles and claps for her, and, the longer Stiles sits there, the more smoke he sees rise up into the air.

Derek breaks out his cigarettes and offers one to Stiles, Stiles looks down at them blankly for a minute, blinking, before shrugging.

“You sure?” he asks, though he’s already got a finger on the box.

Derek levels him with a serious would I have asked you if I wasn’t look, and Stiles takes a cigarette with a scoff.

“Thanks,” he says; Derek bumps their shoulders together again. This time, he holds the lighter while Stiles lights up, his gaze lingering even after Stiles has pulled away.

“This guy kind of had the right idea, didn’t he?” Stiles asks, leaning back in the booth. “The park, the ice rink, now this?”

“It’s been alright,” Derek agrees. “It would be pretty shitty with bad company, though.”

Stiles flushes; he can feel Derek’s sidelong glance.

“Yeah,” he agrees in a quiet voice. “Pretty shitty indeed. The booze helped, too.”

Derek leans forward, putting his elbows on the table, and he holds the cigarette to his lips and echoes, “The booze helped.”

“I’m still pretty drunk.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because it’s true.”

“Drink your coffee, then.”

Stiles does. The alternative is saying something dumb like it really gets me going when you tell me what to do, and he may be drunk, but he hasn’t been that drunk since the park a couple of hours ago. The coffee isn’t very good—it’s bitter as hell, even with three packs of sugar that Derek swears he requested. But it’s nice, anyway; it takes away some of the fuzziness lining Stiles’s world.

The band gets to a slower number, and there are a few couples dancing at the foot of the stage, their hands intertwined and their heads bowed close together.

“They’re everywhere,” Stiles grumbles into his coffee, and Derek shoots him a look over his shoulder.

“Who are?”

Stiles motions with his cigarette at the dancing couples. “They are.”

“Oh,” Derek says with a little laugh. “Right.”

“I hate Valentine’s Day,” Stiles says, feeling too much like the same person he was on the sidewalk hours ago. “It’s impossible not to feel lonely if you’re single on Valentine’s Day.”

Derek stamps out his cigarette and leans back. “Are you lonely?” he asks.

“You’re not?” Stiles asks in a quiet voice, keeping his eyes away from Derek’s.

Derek just shrugs. His knee bumps against Stiles’s under the booth, and they’re quiet again.

“How long do you think they planned to stay here?” Stiles asks after the band finishes another song, over the applause from the front of the room.

“Probably not long,” Derek says, glancing at the clock over the bar. “It’s not even Valentine’s Day anymore, technically.”

“It’s Valentine’s Day until I go to sleep and wake up,” Stiles grumbles.

“Do you want something to eat?” Derek asks him. “There’s probably not bacon here, but maybe something fried?”

Stiles considers it for a full twenty seconds, tilting his head from side to side as he weighs the pros and cons. “… No. I’m still not sure I won’t barf it all back up.”

“We still have that champagne in the limo, too,” Derek reminds him.

“Oh, god. Don’t remind me. That one’s definitely coming home with me, but I’m not breaking into it for a few days at least.”

“You could call up your date and try and make things right with her.”

“My date?” Stiles asks, confused. He turns his head to squint at Derek in the dark of the room. His mouth works, but he still has his cigarette in hand, and it’s burned so low that it catches his knuckle. “Shit!” he yelps, his hand jerking towards the ashtray immediately.

“Here,” Derek says in a low voice, taking Stiles’s hand in his.

His fingers are warm; does that mean Stiles’s hand is cold? It doesn’t feel cold; it feels normal. It still feels like it’s not really his hand, too, like at the ice rink, because when Stiles tries to make it pull out of Derek’s grip—tries to spare his pride—his hand stays put.

Derek’s a little clumsy, now, and it’s the first that Stiles has seen of his drunkenness in a good hour or so, but he puts the bottled water against Stiles’s knuckle and holds it there, scowling at Stiles’s hand like he can stare the hurt away.

“I’m really okay,” Stiles says, but he doesn’t even try to move his hand.

Derek’s eyes find Stiles’s slowly, and, in the low lighting of the bar, his expression looks stormy.

“You—” (Wanna get out of here? Because you should totally be naked the next time you look at me like this.) “—alright? Derek?”

Derek pulls away, and his hand drops to Stiles’s thigh. Stiles shivers.

It’d be easy to pull away at this point; he and Derek have been moving into each other bit by bit for the past three hours, since Derek spoke to Stiles on the sidewalk just after nine. It’d be easy to maintain that, to say we’re too drunk for this and do the responsible thing. Stiles’s head still hurts; his mouth is starting to taste like ass between the coffee and the wine and the Jack he’s had tonight. Derek wants to call him—he said it as much earlier in the limo—so they could probably meet up another time, sober, and pick up wherever it is they leave off.

It’d be easy to do the responsible thing, Stiles knows. If he were more sober, if Derek weren’t so devastatingly attractive, if it weren’t fucking Valentine’s Day, Stiles could probably do the responsible thing here.

Stiles doesn’t do the responsible thing here.

“I don’t give a shit about my date,” he admits in a low voice. “Not Heather, anyway.”

Derek’s thumb moves back and forward in a little semicircle on Stiles’s thigh. “You had a date other than Heather?” he asks, playing coy.

“Totally,” Stiles says, grinning. He feels sloppy still, and he’s vaguely aware that the sleeve of his shirt is wet and one of the buttons on his vest got knocked loose while he was falling all over the ice rink, but he feels brave and powerful too, and that’s nice. “Total babe, too. He works at this restaurant downtown as a sous-chef and drinks like a fish. Ten out of ten, would get sloppy drunk with him again.”

Derek’s expression changes to something predatory, and he’s leaning into Stiles’s space again.

“Really,” he says flatly, and Stiles bites his lip and sways into him again, again, again like he has been all damn night.

“Yeah,” he says, “he’s kind of an asshole, too, which—for the record? Totally my type.”

It shouldn’t be a surprise, but Stiles still gasps like he isn’t expecting it when Derek launches forward and kisses the hell out of him.

They’re frazzled when they crawl back into the limo. Stiles’s hands are a little clammy, and his lips feel swollen. Derek’s rocking a pretty big red mark on the side of his neck, and his hair is fucked to hell, and his eyes are dark and stay on Stiles even when Stiles looks away, suddenly shy.

Bobby closes the door behind them, and the atmosphere in the limo is tense for a few minutes.

Stiles opens his mouth to say something, but he can’t think of anything.

He mostly just wants to make out with Derek some more, but he’s not really sure how to initiate that, and the back of a limo feels a lot more intimate (and suggestive) than a booth in a jazz bar. Just because he is tipsy and silly and totally willing to debauch the hell out of Derek doesn’t mean that Derek’s necessarily on the same page.

Stiles doesn’t want to push it. He’s got tact sometimes, okay?

Derek looks like he wants to say something, too. They look at each other for what feels like forever before Derek puts his hand around Stiles’s bicep.

Stiles has got so much pent up sexual desire he’s basically vibrating at this point, so, hell yes he goes when Derek pulls him in.

Derek tastes like cigarettes and Jack, and Stiles wants to kiss him until all of that fades away and just leaves Derek. He’s got a sneaking suspicion that Derek might even let him do it.

He bites at Derek’s bottom lip and sucks it apologetically, and Derek makes a broken sound and yanks Stiles closer, turning his body until Stiles is forced to throw a leg over Derek’s hips and hold on. He winds up straddling Derek, his head dangerously close to the roof of the car, with Derek’s warm hands working their way up Stiles’s untucked steel blue shirt.

“Who wears a red suit,” Derek says, pulling away just enough to speak, his lips still brushing against Stiles’s. Stiles fists his hands in Derek’s hair and pulls him back, wants to kiss him until he’s dizzy.

“Shut up, shut up,” he says in between peppering kisses. Derek’s lips curl into something smug, and he settles a big hand on Stiles’s hip and pulls the other around to unbutton Stiles’s vest.

“It’s so fucking campy,” Derek continues, and Stiles huffs, annoyed that Derek keeps pulling away to be insulting. He kisses along Derek’s jaw, nipping at his stubble like he’s got something against it (which: hell no, he is so on board with the stubble; he’s officially a convert for the stubble). “You looked ridiculous in your stupid red suit.”

“Caught your eye, didn’t I?” Stiles taunts, and Derek kisses him quiet again and again, the hand on Stiles’s hip moving in slow circles, impossible to ignore. Stiles rolls his hips down, unable to control himself, and laughs. “Among other things.”

They kiss until Stiles really is dizzy with it, still too tipsy to be graceful as he cups Derek’s head and tilts his head back to kiss his neck, to worry at the hickey Stiles started in the bar. Derek’s mostly quiet, though he keeps making these broken noises when Stiles drags his teeth here or there, when he uses his tongue to soothe the angry lines he draws on Derek’s skin.

They kiss until Derek tries to do the same, and Stiles throws his head back and brains himself on the roof of the limo. A stunned silence settles over them, Derek looking at Stiles with owlish, apologetic eyes, and Stiles trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

He collapses on Derek in a laughing fit, and Derek laughs, too, his arms going around Stiles and just holding while Stiles buries his face in Derek’s shoulder and shakes with it, with the strange happiness blossoming up in his chest.

This is how it starts, he knows. He’s dangerously aware that this is going to hurt when he wakes up tomorrow or the next day or three weeks from now or three months from now or next year and he doesn’t have Derek like this, warm and pliable underneath him.

Stiles falls quickly, and he tends to sink his teeth in and hold fast. It’s never been good for him before. It wasn’t good in high school, with Lydia, and it wasn’t good in college with Harley and Isaac, and it wasn’t good with Aiden.

He doesn’t want to hope that, maybe, it could be good with Derek—not when they’ve been drunk most of the night, and their kisses are still uncoordinated and, fuck, Stiles doesn’t even know Derek’s last name. But he’s a romantic at heart, so he hopes anyway.

When he sobers up, he says, “C’mon, you have to try this,” and he gets to his legs shakily and gestures to the sun roof.

“No,” Derek says emphatically. “No way. Do I look like a seventeen year old girl going to prom to you?”

“You’re pretty enough,” Stiles taunts him, and Derek scowls. “C’mon, we can shout obscenities at the couples still out on the streets.”

He pulls at Derek’s hand, and Derek, bless him, goes.

The city is loud and colorful and they shout things like, “Everyone dies alone!” and “The system fucking sucks!” and “Valentine’s Day blows!” as loudly as they can at the world around them. They both have an arm outside of the limo, and they use it to flip the bird at people who try and insult them back, but if they are busy holding hands with the other two, like they’re just as sappy as the rest of the people they’re bitching at—

Well, that’s their business.

Bobby drops them off at the end of their stolen date exactly where he picked them up, and Stiles and Derek fall out of the limo laughing and touching, Stiles’s hand on Derek’s neck and Derek turning his head into the touch, an arm looped around Stiles’s waist. They’re a little wild between the buzz they’re still running on and the delight of this new and warm thing between them, so they go aimlessly down the sidewalk, laughing and touching—always touching.

The city is still awake; it’s loud and alive most nights, but it takes on a whole new attitude on holidays. The novelty shops on the street are still playing classic love songs, the hearts in their windows still lit up and their bars still open. Stiles can hear someone singing “I Will Always Love You”in the karaoke bar a block and a half behind them, and their pitch is pretty good even if their vibrato sounds forced.

“You know the thing I’m most upset about?” he says after the go a few yards in silence, and Derek looks at him, clearly not sure what to say. “I really wanted to try the red velvet cake at your restaurant.”

Derek colors significantly at that, and that’s interesting.

“I hear it’s the best in the world,” Stiles continues because if Derek will let Stiles give him a hickey the size of Rhode Island, surely it’s okay if Stiles compliments his restaurant's desserts.

“It’s mine,” Derek says, and Stiles can see that even his ears are red.

“Yours?” Stiles asks, still feeling a little foggy.

“Mine,” Derek repeats. “Like—that recipe? That’s mine. I made it.”

It takes a minute for Stiles to catch that, to put together what that means, but when he does, he throws his head back and laughs, delighted. “Oh my god, you have to make that for me someday, man.”

“… Yeah?”

“Duh. I don’t give a shit if you don’t wanna take your work home with you. I have had vivid fantasies about trying that cake.”

“Fantasies,” Derek echoes, sounding dazed. “You’ve had fantasies about cake.”

“About red velvet cake,” Stiles corrects. “Yours, apparently.”

Derek shrugs off his teasing literally, trying halfheartedly to break away from Stiles. Stiles laughs and lets him, but as soon as he lets go, Derek gets shouldered by a prick in a suit that looks about as expensive as Stiles’s car.

"Watch it, buddy," Prick snaps, rounding on Derek. "This is Hugo Boss."

“I see that,” Derek musing, looking Prick over once, slowly. “You are definitely the best-dressed tool on the street tonight.”

Prick laughs, like it’s strange and hilarious that someone’s trying to insult him. “Want to say that again?” he challenges.

Derek purses his lips and smiles ruefully. “Stupid and aggressive,” he turns his attention to the girl over Prick’s shoulder and says, “You really picked a winner, here.”

Stiles wants to laugh, but he has the sense to pull Derek back right as Prick throws a punch; Prick looks (predictably) furious at having been embarrassed in front of his girlfriend, and he’s definitely gearing up to try and punch Derek again. She, however, looks mildly bored-- like she sees this shit every day. Maybe she does.

“Hey, hey,” Stiles says, trying to intervene. He’s not drunk anymore, but he definitely doesn’t have the coherency to be handling a streetfight. “It’s okay—we’re, we’re cool right. Let’s just go.”

“You,” Prick addresses Stiles with an angry finger, “shut up and walk away.”

Derek, clearly with a death wish (or a broken nose wish at least), shoves Prick backwards and says with eerie calm, “Take your own advice, asshole.”

Derek clearly didn’t anticipate Prick’s foot getting caught on an air grate, though; he goes down gracelessly, his face meeting the concrete with a sickening crunch, and Derek’s eyes go wide and surprised like he has no clue what the hell to do next.

There’s a stunned moment amongst all four of them—Derek, Stiles, Prick, and Prick’s girlfriend—while they try to comprehend what just happened.

“Derek—” Stiles hisses, “we need to get the fuck out of here. Now. Let’s go.”

Derek takes Stiles’s hand in his tightly and, just as Prick is getting his wits about him again, rubbing the blood off from under his nose, they take off across the street, cutting in front of all the traffic. Horns sound out around them, and Stiles has a moment of fanboy delight when he actually gets to hit the hood of a car and shout, “I’m walking here!”

Derek laughs. He gets the reference.

Stiles thinks again: this is probably going to end really, really badly.

They keep running once they get across the streets, the sound of angry drivers shouting after them, Stiles looking over his shoulder every few steps to see if Prick is chasing after them, and the classic Valentine’s Day song L.O.V.E. coming from all the novelty shops and bars they pass, like all of them have synched up just for this moment, each bar playing a different version that bleeds right into the next as Stiles and Derek run by.

Derek’s hand is warm and tight around Stiles’s. They run until they can’t run anymore, until their chests are tight and they’re gasping for breaths. They run until they can’t make themselves run anymore, and then they fall into each other and, relieved and amped up and wired with the spirit of Valentine’s Day rebellion, they laugh.

“This is me,” Derek says, stopping in front of a ritzy place and pointing at the doorman who nods at him. Stiles smiles and waves, but the doorman straight up ignores him, so Stiles’s look turns sour.

Derek laughs and puts an arm around Stiles’s shoulders, pulling him close and pressing his lips to Stiles’s cheekbone, just below Stiles’s eye. It’s painfully sweet, and Stiles feels like he did when they were running through traffic again, his chest tightening.

“This was—cool,” Stiles says, and Derek laughs sharply.

“Cool,” he agrees, his hand cupping the back of Stiles’s neck. He’s hovering a little, moving closer to Stiles in fractions.

“I, um, if you still want my work number—” Stiles starts, stumbling over his words even though he feels more and more sober every minute, “—I don’t have a pen or anything but, if you do—”

“I have one upstairs,” Derek says, and his mouth is on Stiles’s jaw, his teeth scraping just so. “If you want to come up with me.”

Stiles’s brain goes into an automatic restart at that—that’s the only plausible explanation he has for why it takes so long for him to reply. He just sits there, feeling Derek nuzzle at his jaw, working his mouth open and closed around words he can’t seem to make come out.

“Hmm?” Derek asks, his lips vibrating against Stiles’s cheek. Stiles can feel his smirk.

He says, “Oh, shut up,” with exhausted fondness, and he twines his fingers through Derek’s dark hair and sighs. “Do you really think I’m that easy?”

“Hoping,” Derek says, pulling back to look at Stiles.

Stiles considers him. “I’ve never gotten laid on Valentine’s Day,” he says thoughtfully.

Derek rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling, and he’s flushing as he laces his fingers with Stiles’s and pulls him past the doorman.

It’s close to two in the morning when Derek opens the door to his apartment and Stiles practically tackles him across the threshold of his apartment. He has a moment, with his arms wrapped around Derek’s front and his chin hooked over Derek’s shoulders, to appreciate that Derek’s apartment is a tribute to modern décor in shades of black and white. Everything is very… sterile looking.

“Nice place,” he remarks dryly. “I’d love to meet the robot living he—”

Derek turns and kisses him quiet, so there’s no décor commentary after that. Derek’s got a vision, apparently, because he backs Stiles up several steps, pushes the door shut with his hand, and backs Stiles up against it all in the span of a few seconds.

Stiles claws at Derek’s blazer, stumbling over his words as he says, “Off, off—get this off,” over and over. Derek’s not listening to him, though, because he’s pushing Stiles’s vest off and kissing along Stiles’s face and neck, anything he can get close to.

And Stiles—Stiles is happy just to take it like this. He’s kind of a mess under Derek’s hands, trembling when Derek puts his mouth to that sensitive spot just under Stiles’s ear and sucks.

“Jesus,” he groans.

“I want to touch you everywhere,” Derek confesses fervently, and it’s so gut-punchingly honest that Stiles can’t help but choke a little. He pulls his shirt over his head almost like an afterthought.

“Yes,” he says when he can get the words out. “Yes, yes. That is—yes. I am, like, so on board with that.”

Derek chuckles against cheek, and that’s a little devastating just like everything else.

“But first,” Stiles bites out, fisting his fingers in Derek’s blazer, “take this off.”

Derek pulls away with a huff and slides out of his blazer. “Satisfied?” he asks, raising his eyebrows.

“Getting there.”

They fall into each other again, kissing, and Stiles arches up and raises his legs to hook them over Derek’s hips. Derek’s hands are there, on the back of Stiles’s thighs, catching Stiles’s weight.

“Put your arms around my neck,” Derek says into Stiles’s mouth, and Stiles laughs.

“Oh my god, you’re joking.” But he throws his arms around Derek’s neck anyway, and he bites his lip when Derek swings him away from the door and stumbles, trying to balance Stiles’s weight, through the apartment. His lips don’t leave Stiles’s for long, and he’s whispering promises that Stiles is only half catching.

“Where—”

“Bedroom.”

“I thought I was just coming up for a pen,” Stiles teases coyly.

Derek curses when he trips through his door, and, for a terrible moment, Stiles braces himself for impact; Derek catches himself, though, and they make it to the bed.

Stiles hits the mattress with a bounce and he looks up at Derek, wide-eyed, “I almost died,” he said. “You almost killed me trying to show off. You had better be the best lay.”

“I thought I was just getting you a pen,” Derek taunts, but he’s unbuttoning his shirt and pulling it over his head.

“Yeah, I strip every time I need to find a pen, too,” Stiles throws back, but he dissolves into peals of laughter when Derek drops down on him, knocking the wind from both their lungs. “Oof—what the fuck do you weigh.”

Derek kisses him quiet; this is a recurring theme.

Stiles still has the buzz of alcohol going in the back of his mind. Not enough to make him stupid—not even enough to justify half of the noises he’s making while Derek kisses his way down Stiles’s chest—but enough to make him brave. Enough for him to say, “I want—”

(to suck you off, to get my hands on you, to fuck you senseless, to kiss you until I die)

“—you. Now. And maybe again later. Twice.”

Derek snorts. “Bossy. So fucking bossy.” He slips between Stiles’s legs easily, and Stiles falls open for him, rolling his hips up against Derek’s.

“Why am I still wearing clothes?” he moans, but Derek’s three steps ahead of him, tearing at Stiles’s belt. “Thank fuck,” he hisses, pushing his pants down. He can hear a few seams popping, but, really, when was he going to wear a red suit ever again?

Derek rears back on his knees and works his own pants off, and it’s the most frenzied, practically-violent striptease that Stiles has ever seen. When he falls back onto Stiles, he inches down slowly, his mouth going everywhere. Stiles wriggles, ticklish, when Derek kisses the slope of his waist, a few inches below his arm pit.

“Stop that,” he gasps, arching up, and Derek gets a hand under his ass and grabs. “Oh my god, fuck me. I’m going to die.”

“Don’t,” Derek says quickly, nipping at Stiles’s hipbone.

“Yeah, because I actually thought I was gonna—” Stiles cuts himself off with a ragged moan when Derek kisses his dick through his boxers.  “No—no—I want, I want—” He’s scrambling at Derek’s shoulders, urging him back up, and Derek goes, surging up to kiss Stiles hard enough that their teeth knock.

Stiles paws at Derek’s briefs and sighs into Derek’s mouth when he gets a hand around his cock.

“Hell yea,” he says appreciatively, grinning when he hears Derek swear under his breath.

“Stiles, I –” Derek rocks into Stiles’s touch. It’s animal is what it is, the shifting of Derek’s muscles and the roll of his hips and the way he keeps looking at Stiles like he’s something to be devoured.

Stiles squawks when Derek gets his hand around Stiles’s dick and squeezes.

“I want—” Stiles says again, pushing Derek back and moving over him,  dropping kisses on Derek’s thighs as he crawls forward on his hands and knees. He licks tentatively at the crease between Derek’s thigh and groin, and Derek jerks away violently.

“Holy fu—” he keens, and Stiles takes that as a green light to put his mouth on Derek, to hold Derek’s hips down against the mattress wrap his lips around the head of Derek’s dick tentatively.

Derek fists his fingers in Stiles’s hair but doesn’t try to move his head; if anything, he’s perfectly still, his head thrown back and his muscles coiled unspeakably tight. His skin tastes like salt and sex on Stiles’s tongue, and it’s a taste that Stiles wants to memorize. He moves his mouth tentatively and brings a hand up to grasp Derek’s cock around the base, to make up the difference between what Stiles can fit in his mouth and what he’s not quite comfortable taking yet.

“Stiles, wait—Jesus,” Stiles pulls off and stares up at Derek with half-lidded eyes. His face feels flushed, and his lips are wet and swollen.

“Wha?” he asks dumbly, but Derek is pulling him up, up, up for another kiss. He makes hungry noises into Stiles’s mouth and wraps a warm hand around the back of Stiles’s head to keep him close.

They roll their hips together and sometimes they try to say things like fuck, yes and you feel so good, you look so good but their mouths are sex stupid so it comes out like a jumbled mess. They paw at each other, desperate and frenzied and uncoordinated in their arousal and what little is left of their alcohol buzz.

Derek’s skin is hot under Stiles’s hands, and he’s soft in unexpected ways; he jerks when Stiles brushes over his nipples, and his eyes get impossibly dark when Stiles reaches down and touches himself.

“Derek,” Stiles moans, desperate for some sort of release. He feels torn in ten different directions, wanting every part of Derek in a different way and not knowing where to begin.

“Shh,” Derek quiets him. He wraps his arms around Stiles and turns him gently until they’re curled together, Stiles’s back against Derek’s front, their bodies sweat-sticky and rocking against one another. “We’ve got time,” Derek murmurs into Stiles’s neck. “Just—slow—slow down.”

Stiles brings a hand up to grip at Derek’s hand against the base of his throat. He swallows dryly and nods, melting against Derek’s chest and sighing when he feels Derek mold against his back.

There’s a moment when Derek pulls away, his body twisting back just a little, but it’s just for a moment. He comes back and peppers kisses along the curve of Stiles’s shoulder and slides four slick fingers between Stiles’s thighs. Stiles groans.

“Yes, yes, yes, like this,” he says ardently, rocking his hips back and opening his thighs just enough for Derek’s hand to slip further up, for him to rub lotion against Stiles’s balls gently. “Yes,” he gasps, shuddering, and Derek is there suddenly, his cock replacing his hand, slick and hard and fuck.

Stiles is helpless to do anything other but arch back and paw at Derek’s head, to arch into the kisses Derek is dropping on his neck and shoulder. It’s slow, the way Derek takes him apart in long pushes between Stiles’s thigh. His hand is on Stiles’s hips, urging him back and forward in insistent jerks, his fingers digging into the skin there a little more with each press.

“You—feel—perfect,” Derek grits out. “Perfect. Goddamn.”

Stiles gets a hand around himself, and it takes three, four, five jerks before that’s it—game over, he’s coming in hot spurts over his hand and onto Derek’s nice sheets. Derek groans and follows him, choking a little as he comes between Stiles’s thighs.

The come down slowly, too. Stiles catches his breath and turns over in Derek’s arms. Derek’s hair has fallen in his face just a bit, and there’s sweat along his hairline and over his lip. They’re both trembling.

“How about that pen?” Stiles asks, and Derek laughs breathlessly, shoving at him halfheartedly.

They fall asleep like that, curled together, sweaty and satiated.

Stiles can feel the sun on his face, and that’s how he knows he’s not in his bed. He took a lot of care when he moved into his apartment to choose the bedroom that would bring in the least sunlight, and, even then, he purposefully positioned his bed away from the window so he wouldn’t have to deal with this shit.

 His mouth tastes like ass, too. Or maybe sauerkraut. Close enough.

He wants to roll over and bury himself in blankets and sweet, sweet darkness to will the headache he’s rocking away and never think of it again. He has to piss like a motherfucker, but there’s something that keeps him still, keeps him quiet even as he wants to rage against the morning.

The bed he’s in smells like sex, and everything comes rushing back to him in flashes.

The crash is inevitable, really. He spent the night with a gorgeous, Valentine’s-hating stranger with stupid front teeth and ears that stick out too damn much and god dammit if it hadn’t been the best night Stiles has had in a long, long time.

He lies there, in a near-stranger’s bed, and wonders how long he can delay the inevitable.

This is Derek’s place, and he’ll probably want Stiles out pretty soon. Stiles had been present and accounted for the whole time they were fooling around, and he’d thought Derek had been, too, but there hadn’t been any promise in what they’d done—no guarantee of anything after the morning after.

Stiles had known, too. He’d known this was going to end badly.

Not that its ended badly yet because he’s lying deathly still in Derek’s bed and willing the sun to go away and never come back, and he figures if he does this long enough, Derek might just let him stick around.

Which—okay, that’s just pathetic.

He’s just thinking about putting his big boy pants on by rolling out of bed and putting his actual pants on when he smells the coffee. If heaven and joy and unicorns got together and made a smell, it would be coffee, and that’s not when Stiles has a hangover, so. He can’t help but moan when he smells it and turn his body towards it like an unopened sunflower.

He cracks an eye open when he feels the bed shift under someone else’s weight, and Derek’s looking back at him. He’s rocking bedhead and a pair of pink boxer briefs, and the look of him is just—no, it’s too early for him. Stiles turns his eyes instead to the mug Derek’s offering him.

“Thanks,” Stiles says gruffly, sitting up and accepting it. He feels dizzy and gross, definitely sloppy in the wake of the previous night.

Derek’s quiet, and he drinks his coffee with both eyes on Stiles. It’s—unsettling.

“I’ll be out of here ASAP,” Stiles assures him even though it kind of feels like he’s hitting himself in the chest with a sledgehammer. Cool is better than needy, right? Needy might get the boy at the end of the rom-com, but only after, like, two solid hours of secondhand embarrassment. Stiles is not that leading man, okay.

Derek looks uncomfortable suddenly, and he shifts so both of his legs are on the bed, his body angled towards Stiles’s. “You don’t… you don’t have to go,” he says, and his voice is rough and low, too.

Stiles takes a second to process that, not sure if what Derek’s just told him is permission to hope.

He says, “I—I can?”

And Derek nods.

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” Derek admits after a few seconds of silence. “I wasn’t lying when I said my ex took everything when she left. But—you…”

“Me?” Stiles asks, willing his voice not to break.

“You can stay, if you want.”

Stiles feels like his heart is in his throat; what’s the protocol for this? For trying a relationship on for size with a guy he just met the day before, with a guy he got devastatingly drunk with and had frenzied, animalistic sex with afterwards?

“We should get coffee,” Stiles says slowly, setting his mug down on the bedside table. “Like—go out. Get some.”

“Coffee,” Derek answers flatly. “It’s two in the afternoon, and you want to get coffee.”

“Coffee’s an all-day kind of drink, dude,” Stiles insists. “And we should go get some. On a date.”

“On a date,” Derek repeats, looking like Stiles just gave him whiplash. He looks tense and anxious for a long moment, but he sets his coffee down, too, and says, “Coffee. Alright. We can do that.”

Stiles grins and falls back against the mattress, and Derek goes with him. Stiles gets his fingers in Derek’s hair, and Derek puts his mouth to Stiles’s shoulder. They cling.

It’s a Friday morning and Stiles is probably going to have to come up with a really good reason for why he didn’t go into work today, but Derek is warm and they curl together so easily that it’s hard to worry about anything in the world.

And, any minute now, they’re going to roll out of bed and start the day.

The romantic comedy might be over, but their relationship—

Well, that’s just beginning.