Chapter Text
Derek Hale has a lot of time for Vernon Boyd. He thinks Vernon Boyd might be the one person on the planet that Derek can honestly - albeit uncomfortably - admit that he genuinely likes.
When Derek first saw Boyd’s name on one of the thirty-odd applications he’d received in answer to the ad he’d posted, it had made no impression on him. None of them had, really. So he’d done the dumbest thing and invited them all for an interview and, jesus, did he regret that as soon as the first interviewee opened the door and caught the small bell hanging in the doorway. Derek took one look at the beaming smile on the girl’s face and wondered how rude it would be to abruptly cancel every single interview he’d arranged, or if he’d be better off just faking his own death and fleeing the country. Suddenly the fact that he couldn’t restock the shelves or go out for lunch or go to the toilet or have any semblance of a social life due to being the one and only staff member in the bookstore didn’t seem all that troublesome, and he figured he didn’t need a social life anyway because, let’s face it, he wasn’t an ideal candidate for anyone’s version of a friend.
His head had been propped on his fist, his elbow leaning on the counter, when the door opened for the eighteenth time and the bell tinkled mockingly and he closed his eyes and took a calming breath in preparation for the standard oh, wow, this place is so quaint and wholesome! or some other variation of it that every other interviewee had felt compelled to gush upon entry. But it didn’t come. There had been a couple of shy interviewees who seemed to choke on some words until Derek lost patience and took charge, so he hadn’t been completely surprised by the silence that followed the soft click of the door closing again. In fact, he took advantage of it as it lingered on for a few moments, using the blissfully empty seconds to prepare himself for more uncomfortable squirming as the interviewee stumbled their way through completely conspicuous grovelling in the hopes that Derek would be flattered into a job offer.
Finally, he had stood up straight and braced his free hand on the edge of the counter while the other stayed splayed across the open book on the chipped wooden surface - he was long past the point of slotting in a bookmark and placing the book to the side until the interview was done. His eyes found Boyd’s and they watched each other silently for a beat, each sizing the other up. The young man - in his early twenties, if Derek remembered right - was tall and well-built, wearing a dark top with a black leather jacket, dark jeans, and black boots. There was something strong in the set of his brows, something calm in his dark eyes, something subdued in the line of his mouth, and Derek frowned lightly at the way his shoulders relaxed in response, his chin lifting curiously.
“Vernon Boyd?” he checked.
“Just Boyd,” Boyd had replied. His voice was flat - not bored or rude, just simple and understated.
“What made you apply for the position?” Derek asked. He’d given up on small talk to ease into the interview process after the second candidate - not that he’d really given it much of a go in the first place.
Boyd tucked a hand into the pocket of his jeans. “I’m studying English Literature and I need the cash.”
Derek tilted his head in a fair enough sort of way. “You saw the offered hours?” Boyd nodded in response. Derek was beginning to wonder if he was dreaming. “When could you start?”
“As soon as you need me,” Boyd answered simply, shrugging a shoulder.
Derek had never made such a swift and painless decision as that one. “Alright. Tomorrow. 9am.”
Boyd gave him a firm nod, the corner of his mouth pulling into his cheek, and clasped Derek’s hand for a firm shake when he offered it. As soon as Boyd left the store, Derek had pulled his laptop across the counter and sent out an email to the remaining seven interviewees to explain that the position had been filled. Boyd showed up at 8.55am the next day, carrying a takeaway cup of coffee in each hand, and Derek might have swooned if he was the type of person inclined to behave in such a way.
Over the year and a half that Boyd has worked for Derek, he has increased the younger’s hours to basically full-time, though assuring Boyd he could do his college work or play solitaire all day for all Derek cared, as long as he was available to the customers who were intent on taking full advantage of their help. Derek has found a new kind of pleasure in being able to leave the store in Boyd’s hands for half an hour, or an afternoon, or an entire day, just so he can go out for a walk or a drive or sit in his apartment in his sweats and a tank top without feeling guilty about missing out on sales. Boyd seems to be a little more adept at the whole customer-service-schtick than Derek is, and slightly less intimidating than Derek, too, and Derek has developed a comfortable - if a little surprising - level of trust in the younger man.
Besides, Boyd is like Derek. He doesn’t mind that Derek doesn’t want to chat about inane things, or that Derek prefers to communicate via facial expressions, or that Derek is perfectly comfortable to let an entire morning go past with just a few grunted words, if any. In fact, Boyd seems to actually share in these traits, and the two of them have managed to make their relationship the easiest, least demanding, most comfortable back-and-forth that Derek has possibly ever had with anyone. He’s pretty sure that he started sleeping easier as soon as Boyd signed the employee contract Derek made up out of sheer guesswork. He’s never explicitly said any of this to Boyd, but he thinks the ripped piece of paper with a generous figure scribbled onto it and the firm hand he clasped on Boyd’s shoulder for a moment had told the younger man all he needed to know about how much Derek valued his work and, okay, yes, fine, his company.
So, yeah, Derek Hale has a lot of time for Vernon Boyd.
Which is the only reason why, when he realises it’s 1.13pm in the afternoon and he hasn’t heard the bell tinkle to signal Boyd’s departure for the lunch-run, and he spots Boyd hunched over the counter with a concentrated frown on his face as he glares at the sheets of paper scattered across the surface, Derek snatches his leather jacket from the coat rack behind the counter and walks silently to the door, patting his back pocket to make sure his wallet is tucked safely in his jeans.
“Deaton’s place,” Boyd’s voice says from the counter. “It’s further away, but the paninis are better.”
Derek resists the urge to roll his eyes - the most animated he’s ever seen Boyd was in a situation similar to this, when he’d decided to go to a nearby coffee shop to get their lunch, and his employee had unwrapped his panini and instantly lifted his head to level Derek with the most unimpressed glare Derek had ever seen before he’d even taken a single bite. Derek would never admit it, but he had silently agreed with the implied this isn’t even half as good as Deaton’s paninis, and your laziness has ruined my lunch from Boyd. The younger man had taken it upon himself to do the lunch-run basically every day, riding the bus over to his favoured coffee shop and bringing the panini bags and two coffee cups all the way back to the bookstore for him and Derek to enjoy in companionable silence, and he never once complained and never once brought Derek anything that wasn’t delicious or perfectly balanced for his taste buds.
Derek Hale has a lot of time for Vernon Boyd, and Boyd is clearly neck-deep in college work, and that is the only reason why Derek gets in his Camaro, retrieves his sunglasses from the inner pocket of his jacket to block out the sun, and drives fifteen minutes across town to find a space near the coffee shop that his employee holds in such high regards.
However, Derek’s compliance wavers when he peers out of his window up at the board naming the coffee shop Deaton’s Dream Beans - because, seriously? Dream beans? - and it practically downright shatters when he walks into the place, slipping his sunglasses off his face and hooking one of the legs over the collar of his Henley, and his eyes quickly skim over the sheer multitude of bodies mulling around.
The coffee shop is a comfortable size, with an open space with couches at the entrance and a counter with stools lined up against the large window. Then the walkspace narrows where the main counter emerges from the right-hand wall, with a few two-seater tables along the left wall, before it opens up again into a larger, deeper space up the back of the shop. The furniture is all mismatched and minimalistic, with local artwork lining the walls and plants dotted around the floor and multiple surfaces. In fact, there’s a long shelf along the left wall that has nothing but plant after plant after plant, long and drooping and tall and twirling to the point that it’s almost overwhelming the wooden panels. The counter itself is probably half the length of the shop, the side closest to the door introducing a few different muffins and cakes, before showcasing some knick-knacks available for purchase from local craftspeople, and then there’s fresh sandwiches, a selection of chips and sweets, some juices, more craft pieces for sale, and finally the till area. Behind the counter, the entire wall is taken up by a multitude of machines for making coffee and soup and subs and paninis, and they gleam enticingly as Derek’s eyes slide over them all.
What he doesn’t see, however, is anyone manning any of the stations behind the counter or the till itself. There are a decent number of customers lounging on the couches and stools, and a couple on the two-seater tables beside the counter, but Derek’s scowl is drawn to the other side of the counter, towards the open back of the shop, where there appears to be a small crowd gathered. He ignores the soft, calm bass thudding throughout the shop to try and focus in on whatever’s being said down at the gathering of people, because it seems as though their attention is centred on two young men - one leaning against the far-end of the counter, the other sat on the top of the backboard of a cushioned bench, his feet planted right where customers should be sitting.
“-have something that they’ll never have,” the young man leaning on the counter is saying in a voice so compassionate and earnest it instantly triggers Derek’s I want to be the furthest away from this that I can possibly be instincts.
But he walks closer to them - because he’s realised the two young men have maroon aprons tied around their necks and waists, and they’re the only staff members he can see, and he needs to order lunch for himself and Boyd because he has a lot of time for Boyd and the guy deserves lunch from his favourite place for being the best investment Derek’s ever made. The guy leaning on the counter has a head of neatly-styled brown hair and tanned skin, broad shoulders and muscled arms fitted inside a long-sleeved tee, his back facing Derek. The other guy, perched to the right of his colleague, has dark hair much more ruffled and untamed than the other’s, his skin pale and smooth with a few moles dotted randomly like someone’s flicked a paintbrush at him, brown eyes narrowed seriously, eyebrows twisting upwards, a nearby light catching the edge of his cheekbone and glinting on his tongue when it swipes across his pink lips. His body is leaner than his colleague’s, but what Derek can see of his forearms and hands exposed by his rolled-up sleeves look strong and capable, if a little twitchy.
“Loyalty,” the pale guy proclaims, continuing whatever speech the tanned one was in the middle of. His voice is low and a little rough, and every feature of his face seems to assist in the making and delivering of the words - so much so that Derek can’t decide which feature to focus on. “Friendship. Family .”
Derek’s eyebrows scrunch with confusion at the somber atmosphere around the crowd, the grim enthusiasm in the young men’s voices. The more time he spends in this place with the ridiculous name and the overabundance of customers and the bizarre behaviour of the staff, the more he begins to doubt that Boyd did actually mean this coffee shop. The thought of Boyd frequenting a place called Deaton’s Dream Beans is enough to turn Derek’s world upside down as it is, never mind whatever the hell’s going on inside the place.
“Argent is all about the numbers. All he cares about is making enough money in a day to keep his family’s reputation afloat. Deaton’s is more than that,” the tanned guy says.
“You want a place to satisfy your daily caffeine fix, somewhere to buy food with enough calories to keep your body goin’ until your next meal,” the pale one continues, and Derek gets the impression that the two of them perhaps work with the same brain, their transitions are so seamless, “then you can go to Argent.”
“But if you want something more, something better,” the tanned one says, leaning forward off the edge of the counter as his voice smoothly adopts an almost inspirational tone, “something that doesn’t just fulfill a basic need, but actually offers heart and joy and leaves you with a warmth that settles so deep in your bones it becomes a part of you-”
“Then you come to Deaton’s,” the pale guy finishes, with the air of a leader delivering something profoundly invigorating to an army of warriors facing down an impossible threat. He sniffs and sits up straight on the bench, lightly punching a fist into his hand as his lips purse emotionally. “You come to Deaton’s Dream Beans,” he says, his voice cracking.
Derek is beyond baffled, at this point. And he doesn’t care to find out what the hell the idiots are talking about. But he is also a little concerned that his stomach is going to growl with hunger - because the smell of the two paninis Boyd brings into the bookstore is mouthwatering enough, never mind actually standing in the coffee shop utterly encompassed by the scent - and all he can do is stand there until one of the guys notices him (whatever speech they’re in the middle of is definitely ridiculous, but Derek had tried to clear his throat to get their attention and hadn’t been able to make a sound, weirdly, or move at all, to be honest, except to look a little closer at the pale one).
Someone in the crowd scoffs and a chair scrapes across the floor as a young blonde woman pushes to her feet, rolling her eyes. Derek’s relief when he spots the maroon apron on her as she slips between the crowd towards the counter is surely palpable.
“Why are you idiots wasting a speech on people you are literally paying to be here?” she snarks, shoving the tanned employee to the side so she can lift the wooden flap to go behind the counter.
Derek sees the tanned guy’s face now, all crooked jaw and warm eyes and dark eyebrows that are crumpled in something that might be betrayal as he watches the blonde. The pale employee’s mouth opens and closes, brows furrowed confusedly, eyes narrowed and searching the empty space at his feet as if it’ll give him a good comeback.
“Wait, people are getting paid?” a tall, curly-headed young man asks with a soft frown, eyeing the tanned employee. “Am I getting paid?”
The tanned employee turns to the pale one with a lost expression, and the latter’s face slackens with irritation. “You get $13 an hour, Isaac,” he says pointedly.
Isaac narrows his eyes, glancing between the two as he crosses his arms. “This is my day off.”
“Yeah, and you’re a vital member of the resistance, alright?” the pale employee explodes quietly, an arm flailing emphatically. “What did I just say about loyalty? Demanding payment for the defense of your own workplace doesn’t exactly convey loyalty, Isaac. Where’s your patriotism? Your sense of duty?”
“In my wallet,” Isaac replies easily. “Where’s yours?”
“In your- what- are you serious-” the pale employee splutters indignantly, his entire face contorting in an admittedly impressive effort to convey just how utterly offended he is by Isaac's lack of blind loyalty.
“Alright, it’s fine, calm down,” the tanned employee says soothingly, holding a placating hand out towards the pale guy - whose eyes widen even more dramatically as he hisses calm down?! back at his colleague - “What matters is he’s here. We’re all here. We need all the bodies we can get, right? Strength in numbers?”
The pale guy turns his head to the side and presses his lips together, nose scrunching angrily, shaking his head as if he can’t believe the audacity of this Isaac guy. He throws a couple of reluctant glances at the tanned employee, and then opens his mouth to let out a heavy sigh, and finally nods concedingly. “Yeah. Right.”
The blonde employee finally turns away from the scene, smirking to herself, and her gaze lands on Derek, who is hovering a couple steps from the counter, an expression of confusion-bordering-on-repulsion tightening his forehead and twisting his mouth. He quirks an eyebrow at her to try and convey just how unimpressed he is with having to have waited so long to be noticed and served, even though he honestly got so caught up in being completely bewildered by the other employees that he forgot what he was there for - but nobody needs to know that. Ever.
“What’re you here for?” she asks him, quirking her own eyebrow, and he thinks that this young woman might be the only thing that makes sense about Boyd’s preference for the coffee shop, because she seems as inept at polite customer service as Derek and Boyd are.
But he isn’t quite certain that she’s worth tolerating the rest of the place, employees included, when the pale guy takes notice of her diverted attention and blinks a little stupidly at Derek, craning his neck to see him better. “Wait, who are you? I don’t remember hiring you. I’d definitely remember if I did. You’re fired, anyway. Nobody’s gonna believe someone like you is gonna walk into that cesspit. You’re way too attractive.”
“You’re one of the actors?” the blonde woman asks flatly, eyeing him up and down.
“No,” Derek grunts, throwing the pale guy a short glare before stepping closer to the counter and retrieving his wallet to make it clear why he’s there.
“Oh my god, Scott, are you seeing this guy?”
Derek ignores the attempt at a hushed exclamation by the pale employee to his tanned colleague, and instead lists off the paninis he knows Boyd usually gets for the two of them. “And a couple coffees. To go.”
The blonde woman doesn’t move to prepare his order, and he frowns at her. She tilts her head, looking more closely at his face and attire, and then crosses her arms. “You’re Derek, aren’t you?”
Derek ignores the continued voice from beyond the counter (“Scott, his name is Derek. Write that down. Actually, don’t. I don’t trust you to get it right.”) and focuses on the only member of staff in the place who is anywhere close to potentially serving him.
“Boyd?” Derek questions, reading the tag naming her Erica and saving the information for when he inevitably complains to Boyd about this entire ordeal.
(“It’s a pretty simple name, Stiles. I don’t know how I could mess that up.”)
Erica nods, so Derek nods, and then she smirks and finally moves to make his order.
(“Forgive me for feeling a little dubious about your abilities when I’ve literally watched you misspell your own name on multiple occasions.”)
Derek pulls his phone out of his pocket and opens the news app - because he refuses to engage in any manner with social media and he really needs something to distract his attention from the ridiculous chattering going on at the end of the counter - and turns his back to the crowd of people, whoever they are, to face towards the front of the shop where he desperately wants to escape out of.
Someone makes a sound like they’re choking on air, and Derek prays to any and all deities that there’s not going to be a near-death experience delaying his order any further.
“Jesus christ, Scott, his ass-” the pale guy - Stiles, Derek’s mind supplies, despite his innate refusal to familiarise himself with any of that chaos - hisses loudly. Derek’s back tenses.
“Alright,” Scott says over the top of his colleague. “We’ve gotten a little off-track, here. Maybe we should go over the plan, since we’re paying per thirty-minutes.”
“You guys really aren’t inspiring much confidence.”
“Shut up, Isaac,” Stiles snaps. “This is step one of twenty-six in our plan to take Argent down and it’s a frickin’ great plan, alright? So shut your mouth and show some damn respect.”
“For who? You? I’ve got more respect for the dog that pisses in my stairwell every morning,” Isaac retorts.
“You know what, Lahey-”
“Oh my god, would you two stop?” Scott cuts in, exasperated.
“-you are ruining the mood, here, alright? You’re putting a real damper on our battle speech and I’m gonna fill your morning coffee with salt and I’m gonna-”
“Stiles, we’re supposed to be inspiring these people,” Scott complains.
“Dude, you don’t need to inspire us. You just need to pay us,” someone comments.
“God damnit, this is not how this is supposed to go!” Stiles protests loudly.
“Your paninis will be ready in a minute,” Erica comments as she slides two take-away cups of coffee across the counter. Derek notices a red lipstick stain on one of the cups. Erica smirks her red lips at him when she notices him noticing. “Inside joke with Boyd,” is all she says to explain. Derek doesn’t really care.
“Scott, Stiles,” a calm, collected voice cuts through the indignant babbling pouring out of Stiles’ mouth and Scott’s exhausted attempts to deflate the aggravation. Derek risks a glance over his shoulder and finds everyone’s attention on a bald man, probably mid-to-late-30s, wearing a maroon shirt and a fondly-tired smile on his face. “Might I enquire as to the reason behind this gathering of people? I certainly hope they’re customers.”
Stiles scrambles off the bench to stand next to Scott, sharing a startled look with his colleague. “Uh, in a way, yes. They are customers.”
The man lifts his eyebrows, maintaining the smile, and obviously awaits an explanation.
“Alright, so, uh, we’re devoted to Deaton’s, you know that, right?” Stiles rushes out, his shoulder blades shifting erratically under his t-shirt as he presumably gestures with his hands, hidden from Derek’s view. “We are completely and irrefutably indebted to your generosity and wisdom, and we are dedicated to ensuring the prosperity of your business at whatever cost, including emotional trauma, bodily harm, criminal activity-”
“Dude,” Scott interrupts pointedly.
“Right, no. You’re right,” Stiles laughs forcibly. “I’m being dramatic. We’d never do anything illegal with you knowing.”
“Or at all,” Scott adds nervously.
“Ha! Yeah, exactly, of course, yeah. You’ve taught us better than-”
“We’re gonna destroy Argent and his business,” Isaac says, loud and flat and bored.
“Oh, eat a bag of dicks, Isaac,” Stiles snaps, infuriated.
“Boys,” the man says firmly, shutting the three of them up. “What are these people doing here?”
“Uh, we were gonna pay them to go into Argent’s place and make a bunch of complaints,” Scott finally reveals.
And, honestly, Derek has never in his life seen anything like this place and its unbelievably ridiculous staff.
“I see,” the man responds, exasperated.
“It’s step one of the big plan,” Stiles rushes to defend the situation. “Step one of twenty-six. Step One: A is for Actors. It’s revolutionary, boss, I swear to god. We stayed up three nights in a row-”
“Your big plan is to go through the alphabet and come up with twenty-six individual plans to damage another local business just because they are also a coffee shop, even though our business doesn’t suffer because of them and is, in fact, performing better than it did last year?”
“Well, y’know,” Stiles stutters, massaging his shoulder as he glances at Scott. “They’re evil. And sometimes you gotta act preemptively in war.”
“This isn’t a war, gentlemen. And Argent isn’t evil. And you aren’t the commanders of some army; you’re a couple of baristas trying and failing to sell a ridiculous concept to a group of people who are only here because you offered them money.”
Stiles scoffs, glancing at Scott again as his chin pulls into his neck, his mouth twisting into a lopsided smirk. “Jeez, boss, tell us what you really think,” he mutters.
“You should probably head out if you want these to still have some heat left in them by the time you reach your bookstore,” Erica’s voice snaps Derek’s attention back to the reason behind his presence in this parody of a coffee shop. She cocks her head at him, her arms folded above the neat gathering of Derek’s order on the counter - and he does not want to think about how long it’s been ready without his noticing. “Unless you’re enjoying the show too much?”
Derek scowls, tosses a couple of bills onto the counter, and snatches the coffee and paninis out from under Erica’s taunting smirk so he can storm out of the coffee shop without a backwards glance.
When he returns to the blissful silence of his bookstore, his body deflates with relief.
Boyd glances up at him as he accepts the coffee cup with the lipstick stain and the paper bag with his panini, and his eyebrows twitch into a frown. “What?” he asks.
Derek works his jaw for a moment and tries to figure out how to express himself. “That place,” he says, frowning at the stack of books on the counter waiting to be reshelved. “Those people,” he adds, trailing off.
Boyd nods understandingly. “But the coffee, and the food,” he reasons. And when he lifts his cup to his mouth and spots the lipstick stain, his face simultaneously softens and tenses, and, honestly, Derek doesn’t want to know what the hell’s going on there, either.
Derek Hale has a lot of time for Vernon Boyd - but one trip to retrieve Boyd’s favourite lunch has shaken Derek to his core, and he’s reconsidering what lengths he’ll go to to help his employee.