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Derek isn’t great at poetry.
Sure, he can muddle through. He’s been writing for pretty much a decade now, even if he took a couple (maybe 3) “gap years” before actually finding a college. Poetry is just not as easy as fiction prose is for him, doesn’t come to him like dialogue or metaphors or descriptions do in the middle of the night, so insistently that he has to get up and write them down. He’s got to think about poetry, has to concentrate on it, and maybe that’s a good thing.
Or it would be if he could hear one single thing the professor is saying. Unfortunately, the girl who has sat beside him since the beginning of the semester seems to think that English 288: Experiments in Writing - Introductory Poetry Lab is her god-given opportunity to talk to Derek about her disaster of a love life. So instead of listening to anything about Fatimah Asghar and gathering any kind of insight for Derek’s final portfolio, all he takes away from this class is that Charlotte has had yet another awful date with yet another awful human being.
It had started out, Derek thinks, as a pretty blatant crush on him. He’s used to that, though - which may sound vain, and probably is, but it’s also the bane of his existence sometimes - and when he point-blank told Charlotte in the third class that he was not interested in a date with her, she actually took it well and stopped hitting on him. Unfortunately, she’s also taken it to mean that Derek would instead like to hear about the latest catastrophic date she went on instead.
Case in point: they’re supposed to be going over analysis of “If They Should Come for Us,” and then discussing their thoughts about Asghar’s other work in the readings. Instead, Derek’s been a very passive participant in a one-sided discussion about all the sins that Frankie the Frat Boy committed when he took Charlotte to Red Lobster on Friday. Which probably means that Derek won’t get to talk about “Pluto Shits on the Universe.”
God damn it, Derek likes “Pluto Shits on the Universe,” he was looking forward to this class on the syllabus.
“You’d think that dating would get easier after you can legally drink,” Charlotte says, completely oblivious to the fact that Derek really doesn’t care. “And the bar at Red Lobster isn’t bad, and the place is certainly fancy enough, but the fact that Frankie thought I was going to go dutch was just insulting .” Derek actually can’t help snorting at that. It’s actually the most he’s contributed to one of Charlotte’s date stories in a couple classes, and it grabs her attention. “What?”
He’s tried being nice, he really has, and he’s gone straight through ‘nice, active listening’ and into ‘oh god, I will pay you to stop talking about this.’ Now he’s careening into the cement barrier that is ‘asshole,’ and he knows it. “Red Lobster is not exactly fine dining.”
“It’s a seafood restaurant,” Charlotte says, narrowing her eyes.
“So is Long John Silver’s,” Derek points out. “Red Lobster isn’t fancy. If you can wear jeans and still get a table, it’s not fancy. Now, if you’d gone somewhere like Bay Grill downtown, that’s fancy.”
“Right.” Charlotte draws the word out, clearly annoyed, and Derek hopes with everything that he has that this means she’ll leave him alone so he can actually focus during this class. “Is that where you went on your last date?”
It’s actually where Laura went for her birthday dinner a couple of months ago, but Derek can’t say that without admitting that he’s never actually been on an honest-to-god date. “Yeah. There was a dress code, no prices on the menu. That’s fine dining.”
“Wow,” she says. “Lucky girl, you pull out all the stops, don’t you?”
“Guy,” Derek corrects without thinking. Then his brain catches up to his mouth, and he feels his cheeks heat.
He’s told a grand total of three people that he’s not sure what his sexuality is, but it’s certainly not straight . Laura, after the whole slept-with-Kate-and-now-she-thinks-we’re-married fiasco, had been the first. Boyd was the second, courtesy of a drunken heart-to-heart a year ago that neither of them talk about, ever, because now they know too much about each other. And accidentally Scott, his roommate, who is probably the most trustworthy person Derek’s ever met and responded with, “Oh, cool, man,” and then carried on like Derek hadn’t mentioned it in the first place.
Now he’s told Charlotte, so it’s pretty safe to assume the entire campus will know by the end of the day.
“Lucky guy, then,” Charlotte says, and sounds positively gleeful , which is not where Derek wanted this conversation to head at all. This is spiralling wildly out of control. There’s literally no way to save this. “So who was the guy? Maybe I know him.”
“I doubt you know him,” Derek tries.
“Well, try me anyway. I tell you all about my dates, I want to know what guy took you on such a nice one, Derek!” Charlotte looks much like Derek imagines a shark would if it smelled blood in the water, eyebrows raised and a sharp smile on her face. He wonders if she has some idea that he’s lying through his teeth here. “Come on, Derek, what guy took you on such an impressive date?”
There’s a split-second where Derek desperately tries to remember some generic name, but then his brain does some weird word association between ‘date’ and ‘guy.’ “Stiles,” he blurts out, the image of his roommate’s unfairly attractive best friend bouncing into his brain.
Oh shit, oh no, literally everyone on campus knows Stiles. Derek’s going to have to transfer to a school in another state. Maybe even another country.
“Stiles? Really ?” Charlotte’s lost the shark smile and looks just… honestly shocked. Impressed? “ Stiles took you to Bay Grill on a date?”
In for a penny, Derek thinks a little desperately. There’s really no way to walk away from this and save his dignity, so he might as well just gun it and hope for the best. “I took him,” Derek says. “I mean, technically, of course, we took each other. But I asked and I paid.”
“He’s just so private about his dating life.” Charlotte’s pulling out her phone. Why is Charlotte pulling out her phone? “I keep asking him about it in POLI 208, but he never actually gives me any details . Now, since I’m already in the know, I bet he’ll cave.”
“Who are you texting?” Derek tries very hard not to sound as alarmed as he feels.
Charlotte moves like a viper, quick and deadly, and Derek doesn’t even know what’s happened until he hears the camera shutter sound on the phone. “Stiles, of course.”
Oh, of course. God, forget another country, Derek’s going to have to transfer to another planet.
He tries to come up with something to say, anything at all, but just as he’s about to manage something along the lines of saying it was a joke, class wraps up. Charlotte bounces away, giving Derek a little finger wave, and vanishes along with any hope Derek has of even trying to save this.
Derek hides in his bedroom for the rest of the afternoon. He considers asking Scott for Stiles’ number, but then he has no idea what he would even say to try and explain this without sounding insane. So he defaults to his usual plan of “ignore it, and maybe it will go away.”
The awful thing part of this, the part that’s got Derek’s stomach tying itself in knots, is the fact that he would very much like to take Stiles to the Bay Grill sometime, or to a movie, or even one of the weird plays they’re always putting on at the art campus. He’s got a massive, huge crush on Stiles, and has from pretty much the second time that Stiles had come around looking for Scott. Every time Stiles crashes on their couch, Derek fights the urge to offer to let Stiles sleep with him instead. Now, he’s probably shot any chance of that in the foot, never mind that it’s already been a year and a half and he still hasn’t worked up the courage to ask in the first place.
Embarrassing doesn’t even begin to cover it.
So when he hears the front door open and Stiles’ voice in the living room, Derek seriously considers going out the window and down the fire escape. He’s sure that Charlotte’s texted Stiles by now, and Stiles has no doubt responded with the horrible truth that Derek made that date up. Derek really won’t pass that poetry lab now, because he will never be able to go back. He won’t get his degree, he’ll have to move to somewhere like Iceland and change his name, learn how to herd sheep in a tiny village and never, ever speak to Stiles or Charlotte again.
“So, I got an interesting text today,” Stiles says from the door that Derek apparently didn’t hear open.
It’s too late for the fire escape, but Derek glares at the window like this whole thing is its fault anyway. He doesn’t say anything - what can he say? “I made up a fake date with you so that I wouldn’t have to tell Charlotte I’ve never been on a date, sorry, could you go along with it? ” He can’t imagine that would go over well.
“I have to agree, Derek, I’m a lucky, lucky man for you to take me to the Bay Grill, of all places, for our first date.” Stiles sounds amused, even if Derek doesn’t look at him. “And I told Charlotte that it was, of course, the best date of my life, and I just happened to have a picture of their swordfish steaks from when I was there for Lydia’s birthday, so I sent her that as proof.”
Derek turns his desk chair just slightly, manages to drag his eyes up to where Stiles is leaning against the doorframe with a grin on his face. “You… went along with it?”
Stiles shrugs. “Yeah,” he says. He pulls one hand out of his pocket, reaches up to scratch his neck in that way he does when he’s nervous or self-conscious about something. “I mean, I know how Charlotte can get. Like, we have POLI 208 together, and I have no idea what she’s doing in that class in the first place because she has no idea about even the basics of politics, so I don’t know how she thought she’d be any good at environmental politics and policy. Besides, I’m kind of hoping that she’ll take this as a good time to stop asking me out every other week.” He stops, makes a little face at himself. “Sorry, rambling. You know how I am.”
“It’s fine, I like it when you talk.” God damn , Derek can’t get a grip on his mouth today. He flushes, he knows he does, can feel it in his cheeks and in the tips of his ears.
There’s a smile on Stiles’ face though, one of those small, genuine ones that he wears when he’s comfortable and doesn’t have to put on that sarcastic asshole mask that he relies on so much. His hand drops from his neck, his tongue darts out to wet his lips just barely, and then he steps into Derek’s room. “I like it that you let me talk,” he says. “Not a lot of people just… let me talk.” He reaches, fiddles with the knob on the door to Derek’s bedroom, but he doesn’t close it and leave. “So, I, uh. I told Charlotte that we only went this past weekend so that I didn’t have to come up with, like, a sordid break-up story for what I had already called ‘the best date of my entire life.’”
“You didn’t have to do that.” Derek is already relaxing a little bit though - it looks like he may actually get to stay at this school and keep seeing Stiles on a regular basis. “Talk me up, like that, I mean.”
“Derek, I guarantee that if we went on a date, even if, like, the car broke down halfway there and we had to walk a mile in the rain to sit at a McDonald’s or something, it would still be the best date of my entire life.” Stiles is rubbing his neck again, and his cheeks are definitely pink. He’s looking at a point slightly to the left of Derek instead of at Derek directly. “It would have to be. It’d be a date with you.”
There are a lot of things Derek wants to say. Unfortunately, his brain-to-mouth filter is still acting up, and what he ends up saying is, “I’ve never been on a date.” Stiles looks at him, then, directly instead of at that point behind him, and Derek just… doesn’t shut up. Keeps plowing forward, even as he looks away from Stiles because he’s too awkward to look at Stiles’ face through this. “I mean, that’s why I lied to Charlotte. I mean, I’ve slept with people, but I’ve never actually gone on a date. So I lied because never having been on an actual date at my age is pretty embarrassing. And then she asked who I was on a date with , and your name slipped out. Because I’d really like to go on a date with you.”
Stiles doesn’t say anything. Then, out of the corner of his eye, Derek sees Stiles move, hears the quiet click of his bedroom door closing. “So what I’m hearing is,” Stiles says, and Derek turns his head so fast he feels a little dizzy from it. “What I’m hearing is that you have no baseline for comparison, and therefore, walking a mile in the rain would also be the best date ever for you. Which means that, thanks to all the idiots you had to have turned down, I am somehow in your league.”
There’s a genuine grin on Stiles’ face, and he’s taking a seat on the edge of Derek’s bed just like he always does when he comes into Derek’s room. His eyes are bright and warm, and Derek might have to actually thank Charlotte or something for this.
“If we could avoid the mile walk in the rain, I’d appreciate it,” Derek manages to get out, and even manages to sound halfway-normal when he says it. He clears his throat, shy smile playing around his lips. “Well, we can’t go to the Bay Grill if we’ve already gone.”
“Oh, obviously,” Stiles agrees. “I was thinking for our second date, we could just Netflix and chill right here. Third date could be in a couple hours at the Arby’s down the road, once we’ve caught up with Great British Baking Show. Fourth date, coffee shop before my 9 am in the morning?”
Damn it, Derek really is going to have to thank Charlotte for this. “So when you texted Charlotte, what was the best part of the ‘best date of your life’ that never actually happened?”
Predictably, Stiles waggles his eyebrows in that dramatically suggestive way that he follows up dirty jokes with. “I didn’t elaborate. Told her I wasn’t the kind to kiss and tell. Hey, on the subject of that conversation, can I get a different photo of you than the one she sent for when I ask for your number? Not that ‘surprised and alarmed’ Derek isn’t sexy, but I think I’d prefer ‘comfortable and cuddly’ Derek instead. Or ‘shirtless Derek’ but I really think that’s, like, at least a third date kind of picture.”
Derek stands from his desk chair and makes his way over to settle onto the bed beside Stiles, heart kicking up and cheeks heating for like the millionth time today when Stiles immediately cuddles up to him and reaches for the remote.
“I thought the third date was Arby’s,” Derek says, can’t hide how ridiculously pleased he is at how this has ended up turning out. “I’m not taking off my shirt at Arby’s. We bump the coffee date back to the fifth date, we can talk about shirtless for the fourth date.”
“I’ll take that deal.” Stiles practically pulls Derek down, manhandling him into his preferred cuddling position, and clicks Derek’s Netflix over to the Great British Baking Show. “I want you to know, though, that I’m telling literally everyone I know about our first date that never happened. I’m gonna build this up. It’ll be legendary. People are going to be so jealous at how well you treated me.”
“I think they should be jealous of me,” Derek mumbles, mostly to the fabric of Stiles’ shirt where he’s pretty much just sprawled across Stiles’ chest.
“Oh my god, Derek.” Stiles’ voice comes out a little choked. “Don’t say things like that, I can’t compete with that level of sappiness. Okay, listen, if we make it six months, you have to actually take me to the Bay Grill.”
Oh, they’ll make it six months, Derek thinks as he feels Stiles’ fingers start to play with his hair. He’s already planning the dinner.