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![It’s a miscarriage of justice, is what it is. Twenty-four hours picking trash up at the side of the road for a teeny little parking ticket.
Well, no, the first one was teeny - the last of the subsequent five resulted in the cop asking if it was some sort of attention-seeking thing and suggesting he join a community theatre group. Derek doesn’t even do a convincing job of acting like he can tolerate the general public at the best of times, so actively seeking out that sort of pastime would be kind of stupid. Whatever, it’s a moot point anyway - it’s not an attention-seeking thing.
He’s just always in a hurry, is all. Sometimes making it to call-backs on time without looking like he just rolled out of bed or came straight from some ridiculous party he was forced to attend by his agent-slash-sister can be difficult, and if he’s going to continue to make obscene amounts of money doing this modelling thing, he may as well get to his appointments promptly.
So the Camaro kind of gets abandoned here and there. It’s not like it’s ever for very long - and okay, yeah, there was that time he left her deposited diagonally on the kerb in front of the police department which was sort of inviting a ticket, but it’s not like it’s intentional. Except for.. okay, he’d been doing so well, but coming off of a weekend eating cereal in his underwear because the latest in a string of one-night-stands had laughed at the idea of going for breakfast together kind of made him a little irritable and careless.
Laura nicknamed it The Great Sadness - Chapter Six: Everybody Just Wants To Bang Me. It’s annoyingly apt. This is just the cherry on top of the shit sundae.
She calls him as he he’s getting out of the back of the mini bus, just to laugh down the phone.
“Don’t break a nail, sweetie,” she chirps, just as the coordinator makes grabby-hands at the phone, calling for him to hang up.
“Phones go in the bucket, cupcake!” he barks, shaking the neon-green plastic thing dangling from his fingers so it rattles, and several of the others wince. There are already six in there, and seriously? “You’ll get it back at the end of the day.”
He huffs and drops it in, about-turning to figure out who else drew the short straw and has to spend the next four days giving back to the community.
There are a couple of guys older than him discussing football, a too-made-up girl wrinkling her nose at her trash pick, a nervous-looking guy chewing on his shirt-sleeve and eyeing everyone like he’s about to be attacked, a bored-looking professional-type, and a guy not much younger than Derek, lamenting loudly at half a footlong sub nestled in the undergrowth.
“This is what’s wrong with America!” he gestures to the sandwich, “No appreciation for the finer things in life.”
“Like Quiznos?” Derek asks, raising a brow, because the guy’s acting like it’s some major crime against the culinary arts.
“Hell yeah, like Quiznos! I owe not flunking out of freshman year from starvation to their—” he turns, taking in Derek for the first time, and gapes momentarily,” … Cali…Chicken Club. Hey.”
“Hey yourself,” Derek responds, confused, because he wasn’t aware that his face caused people to trail off mid-sentence, but maybe the guy’s got an attention problem. He looks nothing like the men Derek sees on a daily basis through work, and there’s something oddly refreshing about it; he’s all pale skin, blotched cheeks and bed-head, and there’s a smart-assed look about him that suggests his mouth never stays motionless for long.
“So what are you in for, man?” the guy says, expression schooled into mischievous tick of the mouth, and huh, he’s actually kind of cute. In a just-past-juvenile-delinquent way.
“Stilinski! Quit cavorting with the newbies and make with the trash-stabbing!”
“That’s not a thing you should say in the midst of a bunch of convicts, Bobby,” the guy - Stilinski - retorts. Something tells Derek this guy’s no stranger to community service.
“It’s hardly maximum security - and for the last time, it’s Mr. Finstock!”
“Jeez, alright, don’t strain something. I was just being friendly.”
They’re herded away from the mini-bus and towards a dirt trail that signals the alternate entrance to a nature preserve - so it’s not actually picking up trash at the side of a freeway, like he thought.
“Alright, misdemeanants!” Finstock hollers, sounding like a drill sergeant on crack. “This week you will be benefiting the society you have so wronged by cleaning up the patch of used-condom-infested wilderness we are currently standing in. We’re working off of a buddy system here, so no wandering off alone, no slacking, and for the love of Tim Tebow, do not bother the wildlife.”
A look is fixed on Stilinski at that, and the guy squawks a ‘hey!’ indignantly.
“Otherwise I’ll be forced to suggest your skills would be better used cleaning out the cages at the animal shelter, ” he says over Stilinski’s protests. “And let me tell ya, you’ve never known real hell until you’ve mopped up the diahorrea of a lonely, rejected poodle.”
Derek mentally kicks himself for identifying with a fucking hypothetical abandoned dog, of all things. Jesus.
“I reserve the right to defend myself!” Stilinski says, kicking at a stray soda can, which flies off into the trees. “This is bullshit!”
“Aww, cry me a river, baby boy,” Finstock goads, before straightening back up. “Alright, pick your buddies, and lets move out!”
Since they’re standing mostly together, Derek shrugs at Stilinski and jerks his head towards the trail. He’s still in a sour mood because it’s 7am on a fucking Tuesday, but at the very least, it could be slightly more entertaining to be paired up with this guy.
“Stiles,” Stilinski says, shaking Derek’s hand and he frowns. New slang?
“What is?”
Stilinski hesitates. “What?”
“What’s styles?”
He gets an all-out belly laugh at that, free and loud, and the guy shakes his head. “No, my name is Stiles.”
[[MORE]]
“Seriously?” Derek says, and the guy nods. “Derek,” he supplies thoughtfully, remembering his manners and frowning at the name, because no way is that something somebody actually inflicted on their child.
Stiles watches Derek as they walk, turning away intermittently to pick his steps through the grass. It’s like he’s studying him, and starting to get irritating, and Derek’s about to ask about it when Stiles speaks.
“So, let me guess, Derek… Shoplifting?”
He fixes Stiles with an incredulous look, because the idea of stealing anything when he gets free shit to wear every time he has a job, or going hungry, when Laura raids and re-stocks his fridge with crimes against taste buds each week is sort of ridiculous.
“No.”
“Hmm… Solicitation?”
He raises his eyebrows, abashed. “Um… No.”
“Got caught with a little weed, did ya?”
Derek actually has to try not to laugh. “Nope.”
“Assault?”
“Jesus…no!” He glares back, slightly insulted.
“You kind of have the rage-brows, dude. DUI?”
Derek looks at him ruefully. “Nope, not enough of an asshole to get shitfaced and drive, fortunately.”
Stiles smiles, and it’s a strange, shy thing, not matching the loudmouthed image he’d been projecting up until now. It’s like he approves.
“Hmmm…” he raises an eyebrow. “Public Nudity?”
“Miraculously, I do manage to keep fully clothed most of the time.”
Stiles gives him a lingering look, and mutters, mostly to himself, “Shame.”
Derek has to blanch at the brazenness of it. “What?”
“Uh, nevermind,” he says, eyes widening. “Listen, I got a whole list of these, so you’re gonna have to point me in the right direction, here, or it could take all day.”
“Numerous parking violations,” Derek volunteers, looking appropriately ashamed, and Stiles winces.
“Yep, that’ll do it. Let me guess, you had a really great excuse for it.”
“Something like that. They kind of piled up on me, and…” Derek frowns, because it’s a pretty stupid reason to let himself get forced into this. “So, what about you?”
Stiles gives a secretive smirk. “That’s confidential information.”
“But I just—” Derek gapes and Stiles laughs as he trails on ahead.
“Nobody forced you, man,” is the smug retort as he trots on further. “Shit, easy as the last virgin on prom night,” he mutters, shaking his head, and Derek clenches his jaw as he speeds to catch up.
…
“Twenty-six!” Stiles hollers. “Jesus Christ, you think they had some kind of witchy moonlight orgy out here?
“I don’t think condoms are high on the list of required supplies for a ‘Witchy Moonlight Orgy’,” Derek replies, stabbing at a pair of destroyed pantyhose.
“Well shit, I didn’t realise you were the expert in that particular field… Oh my god, are those jorts?” He holds up strip of tattered denim on the end of his trash pick. “Classy.”
There’s a rustling in the shrubbery to their right, and Stiles stiffens. Derek takes a breath to question him about it - Is it a bear? Do they even have bears here? - but Stiles just bats the air in his direction with a finger pushed to his lips. There’s a beat of silence before a rabbit scampers in and out of view, and Stiles visibly relaxes.
“It’s okay,” he says, rearranging his grip on the pick and resuming work.
It’s Derek’s second day at this. They’ve covered hardly any ground in the last few hours since lunch, with Stiles stopping every few minutes to provide judgemental commentary on whatever they’ve found, or simply to belt out the chorus of whatever terrible pop song has been stuck in his head since morning.
Everything about him should rub Derek up the wrong way, in theory; he never shuts his mouth, even while humming; he does some sort of victory wiggle when he stumbles upon one of the rusty old bottle caps he seems to be collecting, and his hair alternates between being parted down to the side or thoroughly mussed depending on his level of concentration. His used-condom tally reached the thirties barely two hours into the first day before resetting this morning, and Derek has learned that it took a pair of lacy panties to inspire a blush on those pale cheeks, rather than the worrying amount of prophylactics.
Stiles managed to play it off, though, twirling the garment around on the end of a branch and speculating at their backstory, smirking lecherously at Derek.
His frame is wiry, yet strong, and Derek has caught himself staring more than once at the ripple of muscles across the guy’s deceptively wide shoulders. It’s ridiculous, because he’s been around near perfection almost daily for most of his working life, and okay, yeah, slept with a lot of people who fit into that category, but Stiles is… distracting.
And that’s even when he’s not inflicting those mis-representing doe-eyes at him. Little of what has come out of Stiles mouth could ever be considered naive or innocent.
“Are you sure the coast is clear? I hear rabbit-related maulings are on the rise this year.”
“Oh, he thinks he’s funny,” Stiles says to the thorn bush he’s wrestling his garbage bag out of. “Mr I-dont-speak-to-mortals finally grew a funny bone.”
Derek frowns. “I talked to you.”
“Yeah, like yesterday wasn’t akin to pulling teeth to get anything out of you. It’s cool, I get you have the whole tall, dark and mysterious thing happening here,” he says gesturing a hand over Derek’s form absently.
He knows it’s true - in fact, not being able to quite figure Stiles out had left him a little more taciturn than normal, prompting him to make an actual decision to talk a little more today. Stiles is like nobody he’s ever met.
“Says the guy who won’t tell me why the judge has him doing this,” Derek smirks, and Stiles matches it.
“Nice try, but I’ve never been before a judge in my life.”
“What?” Derek frowns, because there’s no way Stiles is here out of environmentally conscious reasons.
“Benefits of having a Dad who’s a cop,” he sighs. “Keeps my record clean, even when I pissed somebody off with a lawyer to rival Johnny Cochrane.”
“Yet, here you are,” Derek replies, completely lost.
“Which brings me to the downside - said father-of-mine promising said lawyer that he’ll see me punished on his own terms, thus keeping my little stunt off of a rap sheet and not jeopardising my chances of attending Berkeley.”
Derek smirks, impressed. “So that’s where you go to college?” he asks with interest. He doesn’t live too far from the campus himself, and he doesn’t think too hard about why that thought sends a hopeful thrum through his chest. It’s stupid - he’s known this guy not even two days.
“Yep - seemingly fucking up badly enough, at the end of the last summer before college, warrants any and all time not dedicated to wailing about maintaining my GPA to doing this.” He holds a fist aloft towards the trees, at whom, Derek has no idea. “Two years ago, Dad, gimme a break! I should be drunk on a beach somewhere right now.”
“Sounds harsh.”
“The crime did not merit the punishment,” he grumbles. “I should’ve taken the rap.”
“And you’re still not telling me what it was.”
Stiles gives him a wry grin. “Nope. I have to keep this air of irresistible mystery I’ve got going, or else you’ll lose interest.”
Derek can’t help but think how wrong he is.
…
“So what do you do for a living?” Stiles asks, absently picking at the skin of a satsuma as he speaks.
Derek smirks, “Maybe I want to keep something as a mystery,” he says.
It’s not strictly true; there’s a traitorous part of his brain - that sounds suspiciously like his father - which is a little embarrassed to admit that he gets paid to stand around looking pretty, when Stiles is attending freaking Berkeley.
“Hmm, well played, young grasshopper. But I’ll figure it out. I’ll wear you down with my wit and arsenal of persuasive tactics.”
“Like asking until I tell you?”
“It worked the first time,” he smirks, “And you’ve since volunteered a whole wealth of information I’m filing away for a later date.” Derek finds something new and fond rising in his chest at the idea that there will be ‘a later date’. Get a grip.
Yeah, well, good luck with that,” he says, before mentally adding and please don’t Google me. He’s strangely relieved he hasn’t told Stiles his last name yet.
…
“Sexy lawyer.”
“No.”
“Sexy bartender.”
“No.”
“Sexy pilot.”
“No.”
“No? Don’t have a ‘girl in every port’, so to speak?”
“Uh… It would be guy, and there isn’t any— No.”
The satisfied look reminds him that he’s just volunteered something else. Dammit.
He studies him more. “Lead singer of a sexy rock band?”
“I can’t even hum in tune.”
“Sexy gym instructor.”
“No.”
“Sexy pastry chef?”
“Not even close.”
“Porn star.”
“No.”
“Sexy…. English teacher.”
“No,” Derek huffs. “Why do most of these occupations begin with ‘sexy’?”
Stiles gives him a withering look, and Derek flushes all the way to the tips of his ears.
…
He’s averting his gaze from the - unfairly eye-catching - swell of ass-cheeks peeking out of the top of Stiles’ pants while he answers the call of nature, in a very gentlemanly way, and wondering if he can reshuffle the words so would you maybe like to have dinner with me some time if you wanted and you’re not busy or are seeing somebody in which case that’s totally fine I understand into something resembling smooth, when he hears a faint flapping in the distance.
“Holy fuck! Alert!” Stiles yells, zipping himself up with a wince and lunging for his trash pick. “Derek, get behind me! Not a drill!”
Derek’s beside him in an instant, heart hammering. “What the— Stiles, what is it?”
“Shh! Don’t make any sudden movements,” he hisses, holding the stick up like a bat. “He can smell your fear.”
Derek’s eyes widen. “Who can?” he asks, but Stiles is already picking his steps around the tree he was previously defacing, making SWAT team signals over his shoulder.
“Joseph,” he spits, with more acid than Derek has even heard Laura refer to Erica Reyes’ neckline. “So we meet again, old friend.”
He’s speaking to something beyond Derek’s line of vision, and it’s only when he hears the unmistakeable sound of a gobble, that he rounds the tree. Sure enough, poised in a fight stance like something from a mythological battle scene is a fifteen-pound, adult male turkey.
It looks pissed.
“Oh my god,” Derek groans, because really? Stiles is acting like it’s the final scene in a Quentin Tarrantino movie, and the turkey is responsible for the deaths of his entire family.
“I’ve done my homework, you diseased feather-puff,” Stiles says darkly, “You’re not going to get the jump on me again, not this time.”
“Stiles, it’s a turkey…”
“That’s what he wants you to think,” he says, eyes wild, and what the actual fuck. “‘Oh, sure, harmless little birdy, can’t hurt me!’ Wrong! Evil has a face, Derek, and it’s got a wattle.”
An ominous sound is coming from the turkey, almost Iike a purr, and Stiles stiffens.
“Shit!”
Before Derek can even think, the turkey is taking a run at them, full speed (which seems a lot faster when it’s coming towards you, and he lunges in front of Stiles.
The creature is relentless, attempting to round Derek to get at Stiles with an almost-shriek, when he swings the pick still in his hands in a wide arc, cutting off the trajectory in a single swoop.
Feathers fly, and the bird lets out an almighty squawk and goes flying sideways.
Stiles is already attempting to climb the pee-tree, yanking at Derek’s shirt while yelling “Watch out! He’s gonna keep coming!”
Derek makes himself as big as possible and acts, lunging at the attacking beast and dodging the wings to land hard punch, right in its down-covered breast, going right down with his own momentum.
The bird lets out a cut-off cry and falls to the ground, twitching for air.
“Holy shit!” Stiles yells, dropping to the detritus again, and coming to stand beside where Derek’s crouched over the bird - which is taking heaving breaths. “You punched a turkey in the throat! Did—did you kill him?”
Derek shakes his head, righting himself and brushing debris off of his pants. “No, it’s just stun—”
The sentence is cut off because - holy crap - yep, that’s Stiles tongue. In his mouth.
It takes a moment for him to react, so before the horrified and ashamed look on Stiles face can fully form, he weaves a hand around to the short hairs at the back of his neck and pulls, crashing their lips together again.
It’s awkward and probably tooth-chipping at first, but after a moment, Stiles lets out this ridiculously wrecked breath against Derek’s mouth, and then it’s all slow catches of lips, and the barest tease of tongue, and then Stiles is huffing out hot pants of air against his cheek as his hands grasp blindly for the belt loops of Derek’s pants, ushering them both to press up against the nearest tree.
Derek tears his mouth away, reluctantly, because he has to ask. “Joseph?”
Stiles frowns, catching his breath. “Joseph Gobbles. Make no mistake, man, that turkey is a fucking Nazi.” The smile falls off his face when Derek shift his weight, brushing their bodies together, and his eyes roll back in his head. “And… Yeah, you can quit talking now.”
…
Finstock, may have had to add an extra day to Derek’s community service, since - as he put it - ‘dry-humping Stilinski up against some poor unsuspecting Lodgepole Pine doesn’t count as giving back to the community’.
…
“So, in the very real possibility that you were high on something today, and will deny all knowledge of how we spent the afternoon, I’m thinking we need to exchange numbers,” Stiles says, twirling his phone through his fingers absently. “For posterity.”
Derek smiles, real and genuine, because holy fuck Stiles lips are still pink and bitten, and why the hell does Derek find the just-ravaged state of his hair so cute?
“I’m not going to forget, Stiles.”
“You say that now,” he grumps, thumbing at the phone’s lock screen. “There’s still plenty I don’t know about you… Like your last name, or what the hell you do for a living.”
Something catches Derek’s eye on the phone’s background, and his breath comes short, already feeling the heat of a blush rising to the surface. He’d know the picture anywhere - a nightmare of a job that had, thankfully, ended up paying off.
“And I’m sorry, but I think that’s a pretty reasonable question to ask—”
“Uh, Stiles?”
“I mean, for all I know, you could murder puppies for their coats and—”
“Stiles.”
“What?”
“Um, look at your phone.”
“My phone?”
“The, uh… The wallpaper?”
“That’s the Michael Kors Boxer-Brief guy,” Stiles says, confused. “I know, I know, creepy, but Lydia likes to change it to this picture because she lives to tease me over how obsessed I was with the campaign when it came out. Seriously, I almost crashed my jeep once because there was this billboard… ” He stops, sheepish. “Anyway, not important. What’s this got to do with—”
Derek gives him a loaded look, waiting a whole three seconds for the penny to drop.
“No way! This is what you do for a living? You’re a freaking underwear model?!” he all but squawks, and Derek has to slap a hand over his mouth as the rest of the people on the mini-bus are giving them odd looks.
“Keep it down,” he hisses, looking around.
“Oh my shit, this is— what campaigns have you done? I need to see this like, now!”
Derek shakes his head. “No, Stiles… You… That photo, on your phone?” he says, and Stiles looks at it again, then back to Derek, who chews on his lip and points to himself.
His face isn’t in the photo, since, after far too many shots, the creative director had claimed that having a facial expression ‘that looked like their underwear was creeping up his butt’ would not sell well - but his abs would do. Whatever, he still got paid for it.
“Fuck….off,” Stiles breathes, slumping in his chair and his eyes glaze over. “I made out with the Michael Kors Boxer-Brief guy. My life was saved by the Michael Kors Boxer-Brief Guy!”
“Otherwise known as Derek Hale, if you’re wondering,” Derek says, sounding a little grumpy, because now he’s seeing this all pan out the way his last six dates did.
Stiles looks properly ashamed, and he then leans in to brush a soft kiss against Derek’s lips, smiling.
“Of course, I’m sorry, it’s just… You really don’t want to know how many times I’ve— you know what, never mind!” he says brightly, and then looks at Derek, considering. “I guess, since you’ve bared your soul to me, you’ve earned the right to know what landed me in your company in the first place…”
He swipes through the camera roll on his phone and passes it over, just as the mini-bus reaches the meeting point where all their cars are - legally - parked. Derek takes it from him, frowning, and sees that it’s a picture of a car. Of silver-grey Porsche, in fact, the hood of which has been spray-painted with a two-foot wide depiction of a penis, which has been dressed in a scarf and sunglasses. It’s even got a shock of duck-butt hair on the top, and a speech-bubble that says ‘Hey ladies, I’m Jackson Dickmore!’
Derek finally gives in and breaks into laughter, seeing the slightly nervous expression on Stiles’ face melt into a smile.
“Whose car is this?” he manages to say, once he’s caught his breath.
“Just a complete dick I went to high school with. He dumped my friend in the most horrible way, and spent most of the four years acting like the second coming of Zack Morris, without the charm, so I kind of had to do something,” he shrugs, opening the door of the vehicle. “I was eighteen. Whatcha gonna do?”
“I don’t think I’m actually surprised,” Derek says, smirking fondly, because he’s learning that Stiles constantly exceeds sane expectations.
“Well, as long as you’re not disgusted or repulsed, that’ll work,” he replies, moving to take Derek’s hand. “Cause I’ve got plans for you, dude, and the first four include recreating your photo in as many shades as those underwear come in.”](http://24.media.tumblr.com/826c019ac0d7e87649984170a1cc6a9a/tumblr_mmrpiyHsug1s30jbho1_500.jpg)
It’s a miscarriage of justice, is what it is. Twenty-four hours picking trash up at the side of the road for a teeny little parking ticket.
Well, no, the first one was teeny - the last of the subsequent five resulted in the cop asking if it was some sort of attention-seeking thing and suggesting he join a community theatre group. Derek doesn’t even do a convincing job of acting like he can tolerate the general public at the best of times, so actively seeking out that sort of pastime would be kind of stupid. Whatever, it’s a moot point anyway - it’s not an attention-seeking thing.
He’s just always in a hurry, is all. Sometimes making it to call-backs on time without looking like he just rolled out of bed or came straight from some ridiculous party he was forced to attend by his agent-slash-sister can be difficult, and if he’s going to continue to make obscene amounts of money doing this modelling thing, he may as well get to his appointments promptly.
So the Camaro kind of gets abandoned here and there. It’s not like it’s ever for very long - and okay, yeah, there was that time he left her deposited diagonally on the kerb in front of the police department which was sort of inviting a ticket, but it’s not like it’s intentional. Except for.. okay, he’d been doing so well, but coming off of a weekend eating cereal in his underwear because the latest in a string of one-night-stands had laughed at the idea of going for breakfast together kind of made him a little irritable and careless.
Laura nicknamed it The Great Sadness - Chapter Six: Everybody Just Wants To Bang Me. It’s annoyingly apt. This is just the cherry on top of the shit sundae.
She calls him as he he’s getting out of the back of the mini bus, just to laugh down the phone.
“Don’t break a nail, sweetie,” she chirps, just as the coordinator makes grabby-hands at the phone, calling for him to hang up.
“Phones go in the bucket, cupcake!” he barks, shaking the neon-green plastic thing dangling from his fingers so it rattles, and several of the others wince. There are already six in there, and seriously? “You’ll get it back at the end of the day.”
He huffs and drops it in, about-turning to figure out who else drew the short straw and has to spend the next four days giving back to the community.
There are a couple of guys older than him discussing football, a too-made-up girl wrinkling her nose at her trash pick, a nervous-looking guy chewing on his shirt-sleeve and eyeing everyone like he’s about to be attacked, a bored-looking professional-type, and a guy not much younger than Derek, lamenting loudly at half a footlong sub nestled in the undergrowth.
“This is what’s wrong with America!” he gestures to the sandwich, “No appreciation for the finer things in life.”
“Like Quiznos?” Derek asks, raising a brow, because the guy’s acting like it’s some major crime against the culinary arts.
“Hell yeah, like Quiznos! I owe not flunking out of freshman year from starvation to their—” he turns, taking in Derek for the first time, and gapes momentarily,” … Cali…Chicken Club. Hey.”
“Hey yourself,” Derek responds, confused, because he wasn’t aware that his face caused people to trail off mid-sentence, but maybe the guy’s got an attention problem. He looks nothing like the men Derek sees on a daily basis through work, and there’s something oddly refreshing about it; he’s all pale skin, blotched cheeks and bed-head, and there’s a smart-assed look about him that suggests his mouth never stays motionless for long.
“So what are you in for, man?” the guy says, expression schooled into mischievous tick of the mouth, and huh, he’s actually kind of cute. In a just-past-juvenile-delinquent way.
“Stilinski! Quit cavorting with the newbies and make with the trash-stabbing!”
“That’s not a thing you should say in the midst of a bunch of convicts, Bobby,” the guy - Stilinski - retorts. Something tells Derek this guy’s no stranger to community service.
“It’s hardly maximum security - and for the last time, it’s Mr. Finstock!”
“Jeez, alright, don’t strain something. I was just being friendly.”
They’re herded away from the mini-bus and towards a dirt trail that signals the alternate entrance to a nature preserve - so it’s not actually picking up trash at the side of a freeway, like he thought.
“Alright, misdemeanants!” Finstock hollers, sounding like a drill sergeant on crack. “This week you will be benefiting the society you have so wronged by cleaning up the patch of used-condom-infested wilderness we are currently standing in. We’re working off of a buddy system here, so no wandering off alone, no slacking, and for the love of Tim Tebow, do not bother the wildlife.”
A look is fixed on Stilinski at that, and the guy squawks a ‘hey!’ indignantly.
“Otherwise I’ll be forced to suggest your skills would be better used cleaning out the cages at the animal shelter, ” he says over Stilinski’s protests. “And let me tell ya, you’ve never known real hell until you’ve mopped up the diahorrea of a lonely, rejected poodle.”
Derek mentally kicks himself for identifying with a fucking hypothetical abandoned dog, of all things. Jesus.
“I reserve the right to defend myself!” Stilinski says, kicking at a stray soda can, which flies off into the trees. “This is bullshit!”
“Aww, cry me a river, baby boy,” Finstock goads, before straightening back up. “Alright, pick your buddies, and lets move out!”
Since they’re standing mostly together, Derek shrugs at Stilinski and jerks his head towards the trail. He’s still in a sour mood because it’s 7am on a fucking Tuesday, but at the very least, it could be slightly more entertaining to be paired up with this guy.
“Stiles,” Stilinski says, shaking Derek’s hand and he frowns. New slang?
“What is?”
Stilinski hesitates. “What?”
“What’s styles?”
He gets an all-out belly laugh at that, free and loud, and the guy shakes his head. “No, my name is Stiles.”
“Seriously?” Derek says, and the guy nods. “Derek,” he supplies thoughtfully, remembering his manners and frowning at the name, because no way is that something somebody actually inflicted on their child.
Stiles watches Derek as they walk, turning away intermittently to pick his steps through the grass. It’s like he’s studying him, and starting to get irritating, and Derek’s about to ask about it when Stiles speaks.
“So, let me guess, Derek… Shoplifting?”
He fixes Stiles with an incredulous look, because the idea of stealing anything when he gets free shit to wear every time he has a job, or going hungry, when Laura raids and re-stocks his fridge with crimes against taste buds each week is sort of ridiculous.
“No.”
“Hmm… Solicitation?”
He raises his eyebrows, abashed. “Um… No.”
“Got caught with a little weed, did ya?”
Derek actually has to try not to laugh. “Nope.”
“Assault?”
“Jesus…no!” He glares back, slightly insulted.
“You kind of have the rage-brows, dude. DUI?”
Derek looks at him ruefully. “Nope, not enough of an asshole to get shitfaced and drive, fortunately.”
Stiles smiles, and it’s a strange, shy thing, not matching the loudmouthed image he’d been projecting up until now. It’s like he approves.
“Hmmm…” he raises an eyebrow. “Public Nudity?”
“Miraculously, I do manage to keep fully clothed most of the time.”
Stiles gives him a lingering look, and mutters, mostly to himself, “Shame.”
Derek has to blanch at the brazenness of it. “What?”
“Uh, nevermind,” he says, eyes widening. “Listen, I got a whole list of these, so you’re gonna have to point me in the right direction, here, or it could take all day.”
“Numerous parking violations,” Derek volunteers, looking appropriately ashamed, and Stiles winces.
“Yep, that’ll do it. Let me guess, you had a really great excuse for it.”
“Something like that. They kind of piled up on me, and…” Derek frowns, because it’s a pretty stupid reason to let himself get forced into this. “So, what about you?”
Stiles gives a secretive smirk. “That’s confidential information.”
“But I just—” Derek gapes and Stiles laughs as he trails on ahead.
“Nobody forced you, man,” is the smug retort as he trots on further. “Shit, easy as the last virgin on prom night,” he mutters, shaking his head, and Derek clenches his jaw as he speeds to catch up.
…
“Twenty-six!” Stiles hollers. “Jesus Christ, you think they had some kind of witchy moonlight orgy out here?
“I don’t think condoms are high on the list of required supplies for a ‘Witchy Moonlight Orgy’,” Derek replies, stabbing at a pair of destroyed pantyhose.
“Well shit, I didn’t realise you were the expert in that particular field… Oh my god, are those jorts?” He holds up strip of tattered denim on the end of his trash pick. “Classy.”
There’s a rustling in the shrubbery to their right, and Stiles stiffens. Derek takes a breath to question him about it - Is it a bear? Do they even have bears here? - but Stiles just bats the air in his direction with a finger pushed to his lips. There’s a beat of silence before a rabbit scampers in and out of view, and Stiles visibly relaxes.
“It’s okay,” he says, rearranging his grip on the pick and resuming work.
It’s Derek’s second day at this. They’ve covered hardly any ground in the last few hours since lunch, with Stiles stopping every few minutes to provide judgemental commentary on whatever they’ve found, or simply to belt out the chorus of whatever terrible pop song has been stuck in his head since morning.
Everything about him should rub Derek up the wrong way, in theory; he never shuts his mouth, even while humming; he does some sort of victory wiggle when he stumbles upon one of the rusty old bottle caps he seems to be collecting, and his hair alternates between being parted down to the side or thoroughly mussed depending on his level of concentration. His used-condom tally reached the thirties barely two hours into the first day before resetting this morning, and Derek has learned that it took a pair of lacy panties to inspire a blush on those pale cheeks, rather than the worrying amount of prophylactics.
Stiles managed to play it off, though, twirling the garment around on the end of a branch and speculating at their backstory, smirking lecherously at Derek.
His frame is wiry, yet strong, and Derek has caught himself staring more than once at the ripple of muscles across the guy’s deceptively wide shoulders. It’s ridiculous, because he’s been around near perfection almost daily for most of his working life, and okay, yeah, slept with a lot of people who fit into that category, but Stiles is… distracting.
And that’s even when he’s not inflicting those mis-representing doe-eyes at him. Little of what has come out of Stiles mouth could ever be considered naive or innocent.
“Are you sure the coast is clear? I hear rabbit-related maulings are on the rise this year.”
“Oh, he thinks he’s funny,” Stiles says to the thorn bush he’s wrestling his garbage bag out of. “Mr I-dont-speak-to-mortals finally grew a funny bone.”
Derek frowns. “I talked to you.”
“Yeah, like yesterday wasn’t akin to pulling teeth to get anything out of you. It’s cool, I get you have the whole tall, dark and mysterious thing happening here,” he says gesturing a hand over Derek’s form absently.
He knows it’s true - in fact, not being able to quite figure Stiles out had left him a little more taciturn than normal, prompting him to make an actual decision to talk a little more today. Stiles is like nobody he’s ever met.
“Says the guy who won’t tell me why the judge has him doing this,” Derek smirks, and Stiles matches it.
“Nice try, but I’ve never been before a judge in my life.”
“What?” Derek frowns, because there’s no way Stiles is here out of environmentally conscious reasons.
“Benefits of having a Dad who’s a cop,” he sighs. “Keeps my record clean, even when I pissed somebody off with a lawyer to rival Johnny Cochrane.”
“Yet, here you are,” Derek replies, completely lost.
“Which brings me to the downside - said father-of-mine promising said lawyer that he’ll see me punished on his own terms, thus keeping my little stunt off of a rap sheet and not jeopardising my chances of attending Berkeley.”
Derek smirks, impressed. “So that’s where you go to college?” he asks with interest. He doesn’t live too far from the campus himself, and he doesn’t think too hard about why that thought sends a hopeful thrum through his chest. It’s stupid - he’s known this guy not even two days.
“Yep - seemingly fucking up badly enough, at the end of the last summer before college, warrants any and all time not dedicated to wailing about maintaining my GPA to doing this.” He holds a fist aloft towards the trees, at whom, Derek has no idea. “Two years ago, Dad, gimme a break! I should be drunk on a beach somewhere right now.”
“Sounds harsh.”
“The crime did not merit the punishment,” he grumbles. “I should’ve taken the rap.”
“And you’re still not telling me what it was.”
Stiles gives him a wry grin. “Nope. I have to keep this air of irresistible mystery I’ve got going, or else you’ll lose interest.”
Derek can’t help but think how wrong he is.
…
“So what do you do for a living?” Stiles asks, absently picking at the skin of a satsuma as he speaks.
Derek smirks, “Maybe I want to keep something as a mystery,” he says.
It’s not strictly true; there’s a traitorous part of his brain - that sounds suspiciously like his father - which is a little embarrassed to admit that he gets paid to stand around looking pretty, when Stiles is attending freakingBerkeley.
“Hmm, well played, young grasshopper. But I’ll figure it out. I’ll wear you down with my wit and arsenal of persuasive tactics.”
“Like asking until I tell you?”
“It worked the first time,” he smirks, “And you’ve since volunteered a whole wealth of information I’m filing away for a later date.” Derek finds something new and fond rising in his chest at the idea that there will be ‘a later date’. Get a grip.
Yeah, well, good luck with that,” he says, before mentally adding and please don’t Google me. He’s strangely relieved he hasn’t told Stiles his last name yet.
…
“Sexy lawyer.”
“No.”
“Sexy bartender.”
“No.”
“Sexy pilot.”
“No.”
“No? Don’t have a ‘girl in every port’, so to speak?”
“Uh… It would be guy, and there isn’t any— No.”
The satisfied look reminds him that he’s just volunteered something else. Dammit.
He studies him more. “Lead singer of a sexy rock band?”
“I can’t even hum in tune.”
“Sexy gym instructor.”
“No.”
“Sexy pastry chef?”
“Not even close.”
“Porn star.”
“No.”
“Sexy…. English teacher.”
“No,” Derek huffs. “Why do most of these occupations begin with ‘sexy’?”
Stiles gives him a withering look, and Derek flushes all the way to the tips of his ears.
…
He’s averting his gaze from the - unfairly eye-catching - swell of ass-cheeks peeking out of the top of Stiles’ pants while he answers the call of nature, in a very gentlemanly way, and wondering if he can reshuffle the words so would you maybe like to have dinner with me some time if you wanted and you’re not busy or are seeing somebody in which case that’s totally fine I understand into something resembling smooth, when he hears a faint flapping in the distance.
“Holy fuck! Alert!” Stiles yells, zipping himself up with a wince and lunging for his trash pick. “Derek, get behind me! Not a drill!”
Derek’s beside him in an instant, heart hammering. “What the— Stiles, what is it?”
“Shh! Don’t make any sudden movements,” he hisses, holding the stick up like a bat. “He can smell your fear.”
Derek’s eyes widen. “Who can?” he asks, but Stiles is already picking his steps around the tree he was previously defacing, making SWAT team signals over his shoulder.
“Joseph,” he spits, with more acid than Derek has even heard Laura refer to Erica Reyes’ neckline. “So we meet again, old friend.”
He’s speaking to something beyond Derek’s line of vision, and it’s only when he hears the unmistakeable sound of a gobble, that he rounds the tree. Sure enough, poised in a fight stance like something from a mythological battle scene is a fifteen-pound, adult male turkey.
It looks pissed.
“Oh my god,” Derek groans, because really? Stiles is acting like it’s the final scene in a Quentin Tarrantino movie, and the turkey is responsible for the deaths of his entire family.
“I’ve done my homework, you diseased feather-puff,” Stiles says darkly, “You’re not going to get the jump on me again, not this time.”
“Stiles, it’s a turkey…”
“That’s what he wants you to think,” he says, eyes wild, and what the actual fuck. “‘Oh, sure, harmless little birdy, can’t hurt me!’ Wrong! Evil has a face, Derek, and it’s got a wattle.”
An ominous sound is coming from the turkey, almost Iike a purr, and Stiles stiffens.
“Shit!”
Before Derek can even think, the turkey is taking a run at them, full speed (which seems a lot faster when it’s coming towards you), and he lunges in front of Stiles.
The creature is relentless, attempting to round Derek to get at Stiles with an almost-shriek, when he swings the pick still in his hands in a wide arc, cutting off the trajectory in a single swoop.
Feathers fly, and the bird lets out an almighty squawk and goes flying sideways.
Stiles is already attempting to climb the pee-tree, yanking at Derek’s shirt while yelling “Watch out! He’s gonna keep coming!”
Derek makes himself as big as possible and acts, lunging at the attacking beast and dodging the wings to land hard punch, right in its down-covered breast, going right down with his own momentum.
The bird lets out a cut-off cry and falls to the ground, twitching for air.
“Holy shit!” Stiles yells, dropping to the detritus again, and coming to stand beside where Derek’s crouched over the bird - which is taking heaving breaths. “You punched a turkey in the throat!" He crouches closer. "Did—did you kill him?”
Derek shakes his head, righting himself and brushing debris off of his pants. “No, it’s just stun—”
The sentence is cut off because - holy crap - yep, that’s Stiles tongue. In his mouth.
It takes a moment for him to react, so before the horrified and ashamed look on Stiles face can fully form, he weaves a hand around to the short hairs at the back of his neck and pulls, crashing their lips together again.
It’s awkward and probably tooth-chipping at first, but after a moment, Stiles lets out this ridiculously wreckedbreath against Derek’s mouth, and then it’s all slow catches of lips, and the barest tease of tongue, and then Stiles is huffing out hot pants of air against his cheek as his hands grasp blindly for the belt loops of Derek’s pants, ushering them both to press up against the nearest tree.
Derek tears his mouth away, reluctantly, because he has to ask. “Joseph?”
Stiles frowns, catching his breath. “Joseph Gobbles. Make no mistake, man, that turkey is a fucking Nazi.” The smile falls off his face when Derek shift his weight, brushing their bodies together, and his eyes roll back in his head. “And… Yeah, you can quit talking now.”
…
Finstock, may have had to add an extra day to Derek’s community service, since - as he put it - ‘dry-humping Stilinski up against some poor unsuspecting Lodgepole Pine doesn’t count as giving back to the community’.
…
“So, in the very real possibility that you were high on something today, and will deny all knowledge of how we spent the afternoon, I’m thinking we need to exchange numbers,” Stiles says, twirling his phone through his fingers absently. “For posterity.”
Derek smiles, real and genuine, because holy fuck Stiles lips are still pink and bitten, and why the hell does Derek find the just-ravaged state of his hair so cute?
“I’m not going to forget, Stiles.”
“You say that now,” he grumps, thumbing at the phone’s lock screen. “There’s still plenty I don’t know about you… Like your last name, or what the hell you do for a living.”
Something catches Derek’s eye on the phone’s background, and his breath comes short, already feeling the heat of a blush rising to the surface. He’d know the picture anywhere - a nightmare of a job that had, thankfully, ended up paying off.
“And I’m sorry, but I think that’s a pretty reasonable question to ask—”
“Uh, Stiles?”
“I mean, for all I know, you could murder puppies for their coats and—”
“Stiles.”
“What?”
“Um, look at your phone.”
“My phone?”
“The, uh… The wallpaper?”
“That’s the Michael Kors Boxer-Brief guy,” Stiles says, confused. “I know, I know, creepy, but Lydia likes to change it to this picture because she lives to tease me over how obsessed I was with the campaign when it came out. Seriously, I almost crashed my jeep once because there was this billboard… ” He stops, sheepish. “Anyway, not important. What’s this got to do with—”
Derek gives him a loaded look, waiting a whole three seconds for the penny to drop.
“No way! This is what you do for a living? You’re a freaking underwear model?!” he all but squawks, and Derek has to slap a hand over his mouth as the rest of the people on the mini-bus are giving them odd looks.
“Keep it down,” he hisses, looking around.
“Oh my shit, this is— what campaigns have you done? I need to see this like, now!”
Derek shakes his head. “No, Stiles… You… That photo, on your phone?” he says, and Stiles looks at it again, then back to Derek, who chews on his lip and points to himself.
His face isn’t in the photo, since, after far too many shots, the creative director had claimed that having a facial expression ‘that looked like their underwear was creeping up his butt’ would not sell well - but his abs would do. Whatever, he still got paid for it.
“Fuck….off,” Stiles breathes, slumping in his chair and his eyes glaze over. “I made out with the Michael Kors Boxer-Brief guy. My life was saved by the Michael Kors Boxer-Brief Guy!”
“Otherwise known as Derek Hale, if you’re wondering,” Derek says, sounding a little grumpy, because now he’s seeing this all pan out the way his last six dates did.
Stiles looks properly ashamed, and he then leans in to brush a soft kiss against Derek’s lips, smiling.
“Of course, I’m sorry, it’s just… You really don’t want to know how many times I’ve— you know what, never mind!” he says brightly, and then looks at Derek, considering. “I guess, since you’ve bared your soul to me, you’ve earned the right to know what landed me in your company in the first place…”
He swipes through the camera roll on his phone and passes it over, just as the mini-bus reaches the meeting point where all their cars are - legally - parked. Derek takes it from him, frowning, and sees that it’s a picture of a car. Of silver-grey Porsche, in fact, the hood of which has been spray-painted with a two-foot wide depiction of a penis, which has been dressed in a scarf and sunglasses. It’s even got a shock of duck-butt hair on the top, and a speech-bubble that says ‘Hey ladies, I’m Jackson Dickmore!’
Derek finally gives in and breaks into laughter, seeing the slightly nervous expression on Stiles’ face melt into a smile.
“Whose car is this?” he manages to say, once he’s caught his breath.
“Just a complete dick I went to high school with. He dumped my friend in the most horrible way, and spent most of the four years acting like the second coming of Zack Morris, without the charm, so I kind of had to do something,” he shrugs, opening the door of the vehicle. “I was eighteen. Whatcha gonna do?”
“I don’t think I’m actually surprised,” Derek says, smirking fondly, because he’s learning that Stiles constantly exceeds sane expectations.
“Well, as long as you’re not disgusted or repulsed, that’ll work,” he replies, moving to take Derek’s hand. “Cause I’ve got plans for you, dude, and the first four include recreating your photo in as many shades as those underwear come in."