Chapter Text
Derek loves his job as one of the main features at the Galleria dell'Accademia. He's met so many interesting people from all over the world who admire his proportions and appreciate his timeless beauty.
This decade has treated Derek especially well. There was that brief stint he served as one of the top trending hashtags on Instagram, and then there was that one time when a curator's sulky pubescent kid plopped down right next to him, and he got to watch the entirety of Dark Night Rises.
The adoration of this generation of fans is invigorating, a feeling that lends Derek a certain confidence that really comes through in his posing.
Everything has been going pretty great recently with the exception of Peter who comes by every so often to annoy Derek.
"Why the stony expression?" Peter asks wearing infuriating smirk No. 5. "If you smiled, you could be as popular as La Joconde."
"Go away, Peter," Derek grits out. Because he's not going to take advice from a piece with no integrity and even less artistry.
A century ago, some important museum figurehead called Peter a "transcendent work of art" and of course he'd let it get to his head. The smug bastard.
He hears Boyd's heavy footfalls approaching. Peter flutters away.
Boyd is the handsome security officer who speaks Italian with an American accent. Sometimes when there are a lot of visitors, Boyd will wander over to Derek and stand with him in silent solidarity. Derek met his girlfriend once. In another life, she could have sat in the foreground of a painting.
Scott, a member of the restoration team, comes to visit Derek one day. A gangly awkward youth trails behind him. Scott refers to the boy as "Stiles".
When they get up close to him, the boy reaches out as if to touch him.
"Look at those toes, Scott," he exclaims, "absolutely adorable!"
Adorable? His toes are very dignified, thank you very much.
"Don't touch the statue, Bro." Scott warns. "I'm serious, dude. David is a cultural asset. Anything happens to him; you're basically dead."
Stiles comes back to the museum again a number of times, always with a sketchbook in hand.
He talks to Derek. Other patrons give him furtive, judgmental looks when he does, but he either doesn't notice or doesn't care very much. Derek likes that about him.
Derek learns things about Stiles. He's an exchange student from the States. He's studying art history, but is thinking about going into illustration. His father is the Sheriff of his hometown Beacon Hills. He knows the loss of a loved one.
Derek starts noticing other things about Stiles, too. His dark doe eyes, his cute moles, his pink rosebud mouth.
"I can hear you pining from all the way over here," Laura shouts, rattling about in her frame down the corridor. "You better not fall in love again. Remember the Kate episode?"
"That was half a century ago, Laura!" Yes, Derek remembers the attempted heist very well. A Flemish landscape on loan from the Louvre took the brunt of the collateral damage, and Derek swears he lost a little definition in his obliques over the whole ordeal.
Stiles is different, though. Kate was worldly, experienced, self-aware. Stiles looks at the world with fresh eyes, full of curiosity and wonder. He reminds him a little bit of Michelangelo, whom Derek recalls fondly.
Stiles is special, and for the very first time, Derek feels like there's more to life than existing as a breathtaking masterpiece of gleaming white marble.