Chapter Text
After three years, Stiles has worked out a system.
He’s back in university housing for his senior year—as an RA this time, which has allowed him to keep a few grand from his scholarship in his bank account—and since it’s only two weeks into the quarter, he’s pretty flush with cash from his financial aid disbursement. But where his classmates have spent every day for the last few weeks going out for drinks or taking advantage of the many food delivery services that circle the university, Stiles is standing in the pasta aisle of the grocery store trying to decide between two brands of cheap spaghetti sauce.
His friends can tease him all they want for declining invites; they’ll be the same ones begging him to share the wealth once they get into December and Stiles has enough money to order in every night while he’s studying for finals instead of having to take breaks for ramen.
It’s late enough that reading labels and the small print on the price per unit signs is starting to make him squint, and he’s still trying to decide if the trade off of less sodium is worth a price increase when he hears footsteps behind him and a familiar voice call out, “Stiles, sweetheart, is that you?”
The sight of Talia Hale has always made him stand up a little straighter—even when she’s leaning on a squeaking shopping cart, blue jeans covered in mud, hair damp from being caught out in the late September rainstorm. He puts the more expensive jar back onto the shelf and turns back in time to lean in when her hand comes up to cup his cheek.
“Hey, Mama Hale,” he says, grinning when her thumb sweeps across his cheekbone and down his jawline until her hand is resting on his neck. Up close he can see the goosebumps that run up her arms; the climate control in the store had clearly not caught up to the rain that had started to fall earlier. Stiles had been slightly chilled the entire time he’d been shopping thanks to the ice cold air blasting from overhead with a jacket on, so he can imagine that walking around in a damp t-shirt wouldn’t be comfortable. He wrestles his jacket off along with the flannel he has underneath, drops the jacket and the cheap spaghetti sauce into his basket, and pushes the flannel shirt into her hands.
“Aren’t you just the sweetest,” she says, and he pulls his jacket back on as she does the same with his shirt but with infinitely more grace. “You remind me more and more of your father every day.”
“He’ll be horrified to hear that,” Stiles says, and she laughs.
“With a few key differences,” she amends. The way her eyes crinkle at the corners reminds him of Derek, and he loses a few seconds conjuring up the image of Derek’s face in his mind—at least how he looked nine years ago, the last time Stiles had seen him. “I’m glad I ran into you,” she adds, and he drags himself back to the present. “You’ve usually called by now. Are you not planning on coming to the farm?”
“No, definitely, I’m definitely—if you still have room for me?” he says, grimacing. Working at Hale Farms is the highlight of his fall, not to mention his main source of income for the first half of the school year. He'd meant to call, but some of the freshmen on his floor are at his door day and night with their ridiculous problems and constant questions, which is why he’s doing his grocery shopping at a stupidly late hour—he couldn’t even leave the apartment building at a decent time unless he had class.
“I was going to see if you’d be interested in being the manager,” Talia says. She glances down at his mostly-empty shopping basket and makes a disapproving sound before scooping it up and setting it in her own cart. “Laura’s just been put on bed rest so you can call her if you need anything, but I think at this point you could probably run the place on your own.”
Stiles narrows his eyes slightly when she makes a face and starts reshelving the sauce he’d put into his basket and picks up a few jars that are well out of his price range, but doesn’t say anything. They call her Mama Hale for a reason; her generosity, even back in Beacon Hills, had been well-known. “Cora doesn’t want the job?”
“Cora wasn’t offered the job,” Talia says. She starts to push her cart down the aisle and Stiles follows. “I’d like people to come back next year and I’m afraid we’d have no visitors left if I allowed her to run the place.”
It’s a fair assessment of Cora’s customer service skills. Stiles had once seen her throw a pumpkin at a customer’s car after they’d made a comment about her looks, and she hadn’t even been dealing with them at the time. He’s pretty sure that putting Cora in charge would result in the local police coming out at least once a week. “Yeah, I’ll do it if we can work around my RA schedule,” he says, and Talia reaches over and pats his arm before steering the cart around the corner.
“Of course,” she says. She nudges his arm gently before pointing at a bag of rice near his elbow and he grabs it as they walk by. “You worked at a coffee bar last year, didn’t you? Tell me what you think about adding one into the barn. What would we need?”
He had worked at the coffee bar on the bottom floor of his building last year, though how she knows that is beyond him because he’d started after the farm closed for the season and he hasn’t seen the Hales since. Laura is the only one he talks to outside of work, which is really just exchanging a handful of brief text messages over the year, and he’s certain he didn’t mention it. He also gets the distinct feeling that Talia already knows exactly what she would need to put in a coffee bar, but it’s a conversation that carries them throughout the store and by the time they’re up at the registers and she’s paying for both their groceries, Stiles has successfully convinced her to buy a mini-donut machine as well.
The rain is still pouring down outside, smacking against the parking lot like tiny drum beats, and they pause at the doors for just a moment before making a run for it. He follows her to her truck and ushers her inside the cab the second she unlocks it, shoulders hunched and hood pulled up while he quickly transfers her shopping bags into the small backseat.
“Keep it,” he says when she starts pulling off the flannel he’d given her, and she opens the driver’s door wider to pull him close and kiss his forehead.
“Come for dinner on Thursday,” she says, and the corner of her eyes crinkle again when she smiles at him. “Derek’s back home. He’s looking forward to seeing you.”
The closer the time on his phone ticks towards 6:00pm, the more resigned Stiles feels. Hayden is still sitting in one of the chairs he’d set up in his small living room, tears streaming down her face while she recounts what happened in her chemistry class, and at a quarter till he finally picks up his phone and sends a quick text to Cora to tell her he won’t be able to make dinner.
Hayden doesn’t seem to notice when he keeps his phone in his hand and waits for Cora’s response, which is a quick “okay, loser,” followed by “Mom says tomorrow at noon. Come to the barn.” He texts back confirmation and puts his phone back down, keeps half his mind on Hayden’s story while he lets himself consider what Derek is like now.
Back when they all lived in Beacon Hills, Stiles had been friendly enough with Cora that he’d been over at the Hale House at least once a month since they’d met in fourth grade. They’re still not particularly close friends—he’s closer with Laura now, despite the five year age gap, thanks to spending long hours with her every weekend during the fall months—but it’s Derek that Stiles had been a little starstruck by. Derek, who was too cool to hang out with them in middle school but never complained when they’d take over the living room with movies he claimed he wasn’t interested in but watched anyway; Derek, who tried to teach Stiles how to do a lay-up so he didn’t look like an idiot in gym and helped him memorize Spanish vocabulary; Derek, who once let Stiles press himself against his side one Thanksgiving when his dad had been called into work and he could still feel the sharp pain of missing his mom over everything else.
He hasn’t seen Derek in nearly a decade; the Hale family had left Beacon Hills quickly and silently when Stiles and Cora were in eighth grade, and despite trying to find them on social media a few times, he’d given up by the end of his freshman year. Then he’d gone up north for college, out of California but not too far away from his dad, and had applied at Hale Farms simply because of the name. He’d been surprised to see Laura practically fall out of the small office attached to the barn and grab onto him after the look of shock wore off her face, and she’d hired him on the spot.
He’s spent the last three years working in the gift shop from October to the end of December—ringing up pumpkins and selling Halloween themed junk at first, pulling everything down the morning of November 1st and spending a week turning the place into a Christmas wonderland while Robert and some of the farm hands hauled the best trees from the u-cut lot over in front of the shop for the people who just wanted to tie one on the top of their car and go. Laura’s managed the place since he started and Cora’s around some weekends, but Derek’s been at school and working in Ohio since Stiles started. He’s had a handful of conversations with him when Laura would call, but the last time they’d spoken had been when Stiles was helping with the farmer’s market and spent his spring break selling overpriced organic berries bright and early each morning.
When Hayden finally leaves—and Stiles sincerely hopes that she’ll come to see him less often once she starts her counseling sessions that he’d helped her set up, because he’s not sure how much more of this he can take—he spends all of two minutes considering whether forty-five minutes is too late to show up for dinner when Liam walks in his open door, soaking wet.
“Uh,” he says, looking shell-shocked, “the sink’s broken.”
Stiles is really starting to wonder if the room and board is worth it.
He knows enough to get the water shut off but that’s where his handyman skills begin and end, so he calls maintenance and gets started on the laborious clean-up process, drenching himself in the process. When he finally tosses the last of the rags into the washer and makes his way back to his room just in time to see someone knocking on his door, he sincerely thinks about running away before he squares his shoulders and calls out a greeting.
“Hey man, sorry—” is as far as he gets before the guy turns around, and Stiles falters slightly in his step because holy shit. It’s definitely not a resident—he would have swapped floors immediately if he was, because Stiles can’t date his charges—but the residents are the only ones who have a reason to be knocking on his door.
“It’s okay,” the guy says, and Stiles really does stop in his tracks at that, because he takes in the Hale Farms branded tote bag hanging off the guy’s arm at the same time he speaks, and there is no way that’s Derek Hale in front of him.
No possible way.
Except it sounds just like Derek, and when he opens his mouth Stiles can see the same bunny teeth that Laura used to tease him about until he turned red-faced and stomped off, and then he says, “Mom felt bad that you missed dinner so I said I’d bring leftovers,” and Stiles just about swoons.
He’s so fucking screwed.
Five minutes out from the farm, Stiles snaps. “I called you for encouragement, asshole, not so you could make fun of me.”
Scott doesn’t sound very contrite when he says, “Sorry, bro. Just funny that you turned back into Lydia-era Stiles the second you saw him.”
“He’s hot,” Stiles laments, resisting the urge to beat his head against his steering wheel. He flicks the Jeep’s signal for the road to the farm and slows down around the turn, tires crunching on the gravel that always kicks out onto the pavement. “He’s hot and perfect and—”
“No,” Scott interrupts. He sounds like he’d just bopped Stiles on the nose with a newspaper, firm and direct. “You’re not doing that.”
“I’m not—”
“Tell me one bad thing about him,” Scott says, and Stiles sighs, loud and noisy and exasperated. He must really sound bad if Scott’s reverting to Lydia-era tactics to get Stiles to think a little more critically, but he has to admit that they’d worked once, so maybe they’ll work again. Still, he doesn’t like to bend that easily.
“It was an exaggeration, that’s all,” he tries, but the silence on the other end of the line stretches out and he sighs explosively once more and caves. “Fine. His face doesn’t ever show what he’s thinking. It’s annoying.”
“Good,” Scott says, and Stiles rolls his eyes. “Don’t put him on a pedestal, Stiles, a relationship won’t—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he interrupts, taking a hand off the wheel to slash it wildly through the air, like it would block the very idea from entering his mind. “I said he’s hot, not that I was already drawing up wedding plans—although the farm is really nice and last year someone got married just after the new year and they used all the trees no one had bought in the decorations and—”
“Stiles.”
“No wedding plans!” he says, glancing in the rearview mirror and slowing down to ease the Jeep onto the turn-off for the farm, tires bouncing on the dirt road. “I was saying he’s hot, it’s not like I like him or anything.”
There’s a loaded pause on Scott’s end before he says, slowly, “But you do like him. Not like—I know you didn’t crush on him or anything, but you liked him and he seemed to like you, so if you think he’s hot, why not ask him out?”
“Because my default state is crushing anxiety and self-doubt,” Stiles says, “which as my best friend of a decade and a half you should know. And I work here, Scotty, so it’ll get real uncomfortable real quick if he says no.”
“So ask him out on your last day,” Scott says, and Stiles knows he’s lost him when he adds, “isn’t that like, Christmas Eve? Dude, that’s so romantic—”
“Gotta go,” Stiles says, and the barn the Hales use as a gift shop comes into view just then so it’s not even a lie, and he doesn’t feel bad hanging up without another word. He takes advantage of being the only one around and leaves the Jeep parked haphazardly in a spot right by the door and hops out, grabbing onto the door when his foot skids on loose gravel to keep his balance.
Laura’s sitting loosely cross-legged in a papasan chair behind a new wooden counter, and after Stiles’ heart recovers from the shock of flipping on the lights and seeing her there, he raises an eyebrow. “Thought you were on bed rest,” he says, running a hand over the smooth stained wood before hopping up on it and sliding across to drop down next to her.
“If I have to stare at my own ceiling for one more minute I’ll rip someone’s throat out,” she says, sweetly, and he leans away from her and laughs when she motions for him to come closer.
“Make it the intestines, we can use them for decoration in the haunted corn maze,” he suggests, finally leaning down and hugging her. Her arms wrap around his neck tightly, cold fingertips sweeping across his skin when she pulls away.
“I knew there was a reason you were my favorite,” she says, and motions to the counter. “Like it? Derek made it. Mom’s got him in the shop putting together the counter for the coffee bar now—she wanted it done by the time you got here but he’s a fussy perfectionist.” Her lips curve into a wicked grin, and once again Stiles is glad that he had grown up as an only child.
“It looks great,” he says. It’s certainly better than the old dining room table they had been using. He opens up drawers at random and snatches up the new pack of his favorite pens in the top one, holding them to his chest. “Laura, you love me.”
She snorts. “Those are from Mom. And she told me to tell you that they’re upgrading the system—figures, the one year I won’t be using it—but the tablets are being delivered tomorrow so today we’re just setting up everyone’s schedules and gossiping.”
“Gossip away,” he says. He digs the—slightly melted—Snickers bar out of his front pocket and tosses it to her, because a fed Laura is a happy Laura, and he’s pretty sure that’s especially true now that she’s pregnant.
“And here I thought you were happy to see me,” she says, and Stiles waits out her unruly laughter with an unamused look. When she settles down she finally pulls a stack of post-its and a notebook from seemingly out of nowhere and pats the very edge of her chair. “Come on, let’s get this done and I can tell you about Cora getting banned from Greek row.”
“Did she outdrink the frat boys again?” he asks, ignoring the sliver of chair offered in favor of sinking down onto the ground, legs kicked out.
They gossip while they build the schedule for the month, like Stiles knew they would—Laura loves to know everything about everyone, even the people she’s never met—and when they’re finished, he sits up on the counter next to the built-in scale and lets his legs swing free while Laura goes over everything he’ll need to know to run the place on his own, which really isn’t much after working there for three seasons. When he goes to say goodbye, ready to get back and definitely ready to pick up a bag of burgers on the way home to scarf down, she stops him when he’s a foot from the door.
“Aren’t you going to come say goodbye?”
He swings around and narrows his eyes. “I said goodbye,” he says slowly.
“To the baby, you doofus,” she says, rolling her eyes. “She should know Uncle Stiles’ voice.”
“Pregnancy has made you weird,” he says, because he’s nowhere near close enough to the Hales to be uncle anything. “Bye, baby?”
“Get over here,” Laura demands, and because he has common sense and the desire to keep all his body parts, he goes. She yanks on his hand as soon as he’s within grabbing distance and presses it against her bump. “Now you can say goodbye.”
“Bye,” he says, trying to pull away as her fingers tighten on his wrist. He gives her a bewildered look but before he can say anything the barn door creaks and starts rolling open, and Laura pulls her hand away and smiles at him.
“Oh, look, Derek’s here,” she says brightly. “Maybe you could help him with the counter before you go?”
One look at Derek’s cold-flushed cheeks and slightly wind-blown hair and Stiles feels his heart start to beat double time. “Sure,” he says, straightening up. He hadn’t talked much to Derek the day before, but he also has no clue what to say with Laura around. “It look looks great, dude.”
Derek scowls, and Stiles can’t help but glance at Laura, who’s still grinning widely. “Poor social skills,” she whispers loudly to him. “You don’t remember that from—”
“Laura,” Derek says, and it sounds more like a plea than annoyance.
“Right, right, no embarrassing my baby brother,” Laura says. “Actually, Stiles, do you want to stay for dinner? I’m craving pizza. I can have it delivered while you two set the bar up, Mom’s got the machines and everything in the house. You like pepperoni, don’t you? Go help Derek and I’ll order it.”
It sounds more like an order than a question, so he just shrugs—she’s not looking at him anymore, anyway—and moves to help Derek carry the heavy countertop across the barn, which he nearly drops as soon as he picks up one end. “Jesus, how’d you get this here on your own?” he asks, grunting when it knocks against his thighs.
“He works out,” Laura calls, and Stiles would laugh at the death glare Derek shoots her way if he had enough air in his lungs to do so.
“Something I clearly need to do,” he jokes after they’ve gotten it up on the support beams and Derek single-handedly adjusts it. “I thought I was fine after helping all the freshmen with their boxes during move-in but they obviously weren’t giving me the heavy ones.”
Derek cracks just enough of a smile that Stiles lets his gaze linger a little too long on the curve of his mouth. “You did fine,” he says, tapping his knuckles against the countertop. “It’s solid cedar, heavier than whatever you were moving in.”
Out of the corner of his eye he can see Laura open her mouth but whatever she has to say is cut off by Talia coming through the still open doors, pulling a wagon loaded down with boxes behind her. He doesn’t know how she always seems to know what’s going on, but she merely gives him a small smile before turning towards Laura and raising an eyebrow. “Did you finish telling Stiles about the changes this year or have you been too busy torturing your brother?”
“That one,” Laura says, looking entirely unphased as she taps at her phone. “Stiles is staying for dinner, we still have time to talk about it.”
There aren’t that many changes; nothing he can’t roll with, and he’s looking forward to night events that Talia tells him about while they unpack an espresso machine and his coveted donut machine. “Robert and Derek designed the corn maze this year,” she says, picking a piece out of the box and eyeing it critically before she shrugs and hands it to him. “Superheros, I believe?”
“The Avengers, Mom, not just any superheroes,” Laura says, and there’s something smug in her tone that makes Stiles look over his shoulder at her curiously. “Not that we could outright say that, but it’s close enough that people will know and we’ll avoid legal trouble. I know you prefer Batman, Stiles, but—”
“Derek, would you and Stiles please go up to the house and bring back everything we got at the supply store the other day?” Talia interrupts, and Stiles just catches the warning look she sends Laura. “We might as well set this all up completely so we’re sure we have everything we need for next week.”
“Sure,” he says, dropping the part he was holding with a clatter and then wincing, patting the new counter gently. “Uh, sorry, didn’t mean to scratch it all up right away.” The smile Talia gives him is soft as she squeezes his elbow, but it’s Derek’s expression that Stiles looks for, relieved to see that the deep frown that’s been on his face since he entered the barn hasn’t gotten worse. He refocuses on Talia while she details everything she wants them to bring back, then trips over the corner of the discarded espresso machine box on the way out and feels his cheeks burn when Derek turns in time to catch him by the waist with surprisingly gentle hands.
Derek’s hands are back on him a moment later when he veers left out of the barn, heading up the well-worn path to the Hale House. He doesn’t say anything, just steers Stiles by the shoulders the other way and around the building, nodding with his chin when the old farm truck comes into view.
“Dude,” he says, mentally berating himself when he remembers Derek’s reaction earlier, “this thing actually runs?”
“Does now,” Derek says. Stiles scrambles up in the cab after Derek opens the passenger door for him and disappears around the back, grabbing for the seatbelt and then letting go in order to lean his upper body back out the open door and peer down the side of the truck. The truck’s been around as long as Stiles has—it sits outside the barn door during October, the bed filled with a variety of pumpkins, the perfect backdrop for photos if he’s to believe the thousands of parents and wanna-be social media influencers that come through the shop. But it’s never looked this good; gone are the weathered, splintered boards that run along the truck bed, the rusted metal of the cab. The new boards are thick and stained a golden espresso brown, and he can see through the slats enough to tell that the bed has been meticulously cleaned of dirt and debris. The cab still sports the chipped red paint Stiles has grown used to seeing but it’s free of rust, and he’s just reaching out to run his fingers across it when the driver’s door opens. “I’m taking it to get painted tomorrow.”
“It looks great,” he says, tipping himself fully back into the cab and pulling the door shut. The inside has also been overhauled; he looks intently at the radio and the dashboard so he doesn’t spend too much time watching the way Derek’s fingers wrap around the stick shift, sliding a little closer on the bench seat than strictly necessary. “How long did it take?”
“Most of the summer,” Derek says.
Stiles lets silence fall between them for approximately ten seconds before he feels the pressing need to start filling it; it’s not until they’re walking into the house and he brings up Laura that Derek snorts out a breath of laughter and responds again. “Mom told her we’d only help her if she was actually going to stay on bed rest,” he says, opening the door and waving Stiles through first. “Cora’s conveniently decided she’s too busy with school to come back and visit until the baby’s born.”
Stiles grins, rolling his eyes at the ceiling as he makes his way towards the garage where Talia had stored the boxes. Cora’s at one of the local universities; close enough to come home on weekends if she wanted to, far enough away that she could reasonably get out of it. “Might get us more sales if she stays away,” he muses, and Derek barks out a laugh.
“I was worried about her access to hot coffee,” he admits. His hand presses against Stiles’ lower back when he squeezes past him in the hallway and Stiles tries not to stumble into the wall when goosebumps race up his arm. “I’ve heard some stories.”
He follows Derek into the garage, trailing his fingers over the shelves filled with boxes and storage containers as Derek presses his palm to the opener and the rumble of the door fills the room. “Too bad you weren’t here to see some of them,” he says, hopping down the stairs and grabbing one of the boxes emblazoned with the local restaurant supply store’s logo, walking backwards out to the truck. “I think my favorite was when this dude was being an asshole to impress his girlfriend and insisted we let him buy one of the Jack O’Lanterns and Cora, somehow, managed to get a rat inside. It wiggled out the mouth and ran up the guy’s arm—fucking priceless. He dropped the whole thing on the ground and knocked into three shelves while he was screaming.”
Derek shakes his head but Stiles can see the grin at the corner of his mouth as he bends at the knees and scoops up two of the heavy boxes easily as Stiles sets his own relatively light box in the truck. “I’m not as confrontational as Cora,” he says after a moment, “and if you ask Laura, I’m not nearly as much fun as she is. But … I hope it’s not too bad for you this year—with me. Without them.”
Stiles watches the flex of his biceps as he lowers the boxes carefully into the bed of the truck, takes in the smear of dirt that’s left behind on his forehead when he reaches up and brushes his hair back, an action that’s so familiar to him from watching Derek play basketball in his driveway as a teenager on a person now so unknown. He leans against the tailgate, metal sunwarm against his thin t-shirt, and grins. “I never liked your sisters much, anyway,” he says, and tries not to let his heart beat too wildly when he catches the soft smile Derek aims at the ground as he turns to get more boxes.
“Do you know what a bed is, Laura?”
He twists the bottle to start the milk frother as soon as Laura opens her mouth to respond, giving her a confused look and pointing to his ears in faux-helplessness. He keeps it going longer than necessary, the machine providing pleasant white-noise as he taps the portafilter against the palm of his hand and looks out across the barn at where the last of the merchandise is being set on tables just an hour before the farm officially opens for the season.
Laura’s arm darts out in front of where he’s tamping the grounds and the frother stops. “I want donuts,” she says, giving a significant glance to the counter behind him where the machine is set up. “I can’t believe you gave the first ones to Derek. We’ve worked together for three years, does that mean nothing to you?”
He can feel his cheeks start to burn, but he makes a show of rolling his eyes. “Derek happened to be in here when they came out,” he says, locking the portafilter into the machine and starting to pull the shot, voice raised a little to be heard over the noise. Laura doesn’t look fooled when he glances up at her from under his lashes; if anything, she gets a sharper look on her face.
“And the coffee?” she asks, eyebrow raised. “You already made one for yourself, so who’s this one for?”
“You?” he tries, and fails to stop himself from glancing at the cardboard cup where he’d scrawled Derek’s name. “Any requests?”
“For you to learn to lie better,” she says sweetly, and tosses something over the counter, no doubt accidentally-on-purpose hitting him in the legs with it as it tumbles to the floor. “Put that under the counter. It’s for Wreck.”
He unlocks the portafilter and dumps the grounds, looking down at the dog bed he’d originally thought was a pillow with a frown. “Rex?”
“Wreck,” she corrects, then winces and leans over, hands gripping the countertop so hard he can see her knuckles start to turn white. “It’s fine, just—Braxton-Hicks.”
“Okay,” he says slowly, nudging the bed into place with his foot as he swaps out Derek’s cup for a new one and turns to grab the whole milk from the fridge. “Just don’t have a baby here, I’m a comms major, I can’t help you. You guys finally got a dog?”
“He’s a stray,” Laura says with a tiny grunt before she straightens up and takes a deep breath. “And if you don’t want me to have the baby here, you better hurry up with the donuts.”
He rolls his eyes but does kick it up a notch, pouring the milk into the jug even as he stretches to flip the donut machine on, steaming enough for both cups at the same time. “Still into hazelnut?”
“Always,” Laura says, sniffing deeply then brightening. “Are you making me hot chocolate?”
‘I’m making your disgusting hazelnut marshmallow drink caffeine-free, yes,” he says. “It’s barely tolerable with the coffee, your teeth will probably fall right out without it.”
“You love me,” she says, fingers tapping on the countertop. “You know, Derek loves pumpkin. In case you weren’t sure about the coffee. And that extends to everything. Fall’s his favorite time of year.”
“I was going to make a pumpkin spice,” he lies, already wondering if it would be overkill to add an option for pumpkin donuts on top of the apple cider version he’d spent four days trying to get right. “So, what kind of dog should I be on the lookout for?”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” Laura says, making grabby hands when Stiles lifts the spoon out of her cup and reaches for the whipped cream to top it off. “He’s big, black, and very needy. He doesn’t like a lot of people, but I have a feeling he’ll be just fine with you.”
He passes the drink over to her. “A feeling, huh,” he says, picking up the pumpkin syrup and going back to Derek’s drink.
“Call it a hunch,” she says, grinning. “I’m going to get Derek to drive me back to the house. You want me to bring that out for him?” He hesitates, which he clearly shouldn’t have done, because her grin spreads wider. “Oh ho, or does this need to be personally delivered? Are you thinking about doing a heart in the foam? I wondered, yesterday, but—”
“No donuts for you,” he says, trying and failing to not feel flustered with her teasing, and then her words from a few days prior come back to him in a flash and he fumbles with the syrup before setting it down with a thump. “Is that why you called me Uncle Stiles? How did you even—look, Laura, please,” he begs, abandoning the drink completely to turn the full force of whatever puppy eyes he’d learned from Scott onto her, “please don’t make it awkward, I can be cool around him.”
Laura’s mouth opens and closes a few times before she finally twists it like she’s keeping herself from saying something and nods. “Stiles, you’re awkward around everyone,” she says, and it’s not like he can argue with that but it sounds like a capitulation so he nods back, relieved, and picks up the cup again. “I won’t say anything about your little crush on him,” she continues, “but I will keep annoying him about his little crush on you.”
He drops the jug of steamed milk too close to the cup in surprise, knocking it over and sending a stream of espresso and milk down the counter. “Son of a—that’s not funny,” he says, scowling, yanking one of the clean rags off the stack and dropping it onto the mess. “Can you just go?”
“When my donuts are done,” she says, and “I wasn’t trying to be funny, you know.”
He turns around the scoops the freshly fried, piping hot donuts out of the oil, liberally shakes the cinnamon and sugar on top of them and folds the brown paper bag top down. “Here,” he says, tossing it onto the counter in front of her. “Bye.”
“Stiles,” she complains, and he ignores her, wiping up the rest of the mess and throwing the rag towards the small sink before starting to make the drink over again. She says his name once more, dragging out the sound, and he finally rolls his eyes and looks over at her after he’s finished pulling another shot. “Come on, you know I wouldn’t joke about that—okay, I wouldn’t joke about that to you, I would absolutely do it to Derek.” He picks up the pumpkin syrup and she grabs his wrist. “And, uh—he kinda hates pumpkin.”
“You just told me—”
“Yes, because he’s my little brother and I like to make him suffer,” Laura says, “and it was going to be hilarious to watch him pretend to enjoy something he hated in the name of love, but that was before I realized that you actually like him.”
“It’s just a stupid—it’s nothing,” he says, swapping the pumpkin syrup for dark chocolate, until his brain catches up with everything she’s been saying. Laura is absolutely the sister who would tease Derek mercilessly if his feelings weren’t reciprocated, but now that he’s removed from his immediate reaction, he doesn’t believe she’d do the same to him. Laura might be insufferable and annoying at times, but she’s never been cruel and he doesn’t believe she’s about to start.
He’s still processing what that means in regards to Derek’s feelings when she pushes herself up off the counter and puts both of her hands on her lower back, groaning. “I’m going back to the house before I get roped into helping customers,” she says. “I’ll send Derek in to pick the drink up. And Stiles … just—pay attention. He’s pretty easy to read once you know what to look for.”
Stiles has a list, for all the good it’s doing him. It’s three pages of ripped notebook paper, covered in doodles and little reminders to himself because thoughts pop up in his head and leave just as quickly, and 27 bullet-points of observations he has made about Derek in the last two weeks. Most of them mean nothing, like how his name sounds soft and important coming from Derek’s mouth, or can be easily explained by basic human decency and kindness, like how he always smiles when Stiles has a drink waiting for him when he walks into the barn. But there are some things that can’t be explained by anything other than the idea that Laura was telling the truth, because Derek avoids being touched by everyone except his family but will lean into Stiles’ space easily, and it only took a few days for Stiles to realize that whenever Derek walks in the door, his gaze inevitably goes towards the coffee bar first.
It was the talking, though, that convinced him. Derek initiates conversation with him—awkwardly, for the most part, like the time he walked up to the counter and said, “It was my grandfather’s,” and it took a good three minutes before Stiles realized he’d been talking about the restored truck—and tries to respond to all of Stiles’ ridiculous conversations, even if sometimes those conversations leave him looking a little bewildered.
Like now.
“It was his duty as the sheriff,” Stiles explains, tapping the glass into the shaker he keeps around especially for Derek and lifting it up to shake the syrup and espresso together. The ice clinks together as he works it vigorously, and he can’t help but smile a little at the way Derek’s cheeks have turned pink in the cold weather. It’s taken two weeks worth of trials, but he’s finally made a drink Derek actually likes, and although he thinks he’s crazy for wanting an iced coffee when the temperature is in the mid-40’s, he’ll happily put in the extra work. “He had the right to appoint a surrogate executioner but he felt like he had to see it through. Hey, did you know he started out as a teacher at a school for the blind?”
Derek’s eyes track the movement of his arm for a few seconds. “I didn’t learn that in any of my agriculture classes, no,” he says, the corner of his lips quirking up. “Presidential history wasn’t on the syllabus.”
He rolls his eyes and sets the shaker down, twisting off the top before pulling a clear cup off the stack and scooping it half full of ice. He strains the espresso mixture into it, fills it three-quarters of the way up with milk, and doesn’t bother with a lid or straw when he hands it over to Derek, knowing that he won’t leave the barn before the drink is done. This, too, is something he’s learned—that Derek prefers to lean against the counter and drink his coffee while Stiles works, glowering at the farm guests like they’ve personally offended him whenever they interrupt to order a drink.
Stiles, God help him, finds it endearing.
“You could read a book, Derek,” he teases, crossing his arms over his chest to ward off the slight chill in the air. The barn is heated and he’s typically moving enough that he stays warm, but the doors stay open during the day and eventually, the cold starts to seep into his bones.
“I’m open to your recommendations,” Derek says, and Stiles leans into him a little, seeking out the warmth emanating from him. “But, to answer your original question—no, Stephen is not my middle name.” Stiles grins and looks over at him, holding the gaze from Derek’s hazel eyes just a little too long. The silence settles over them, and anticipation sparks in his chest when Derek’s eyes drop to his mouth. “Stiles—”
There’s a burst of laughter from the front of the barn and a childish shriek for hot chocolate; Stiles startles and curses, arms slipping and elbow banging off the counter behind him. Derek’s expression is frustrated as they turn to face each other, and Stiles opens his mouth to make a joke about his inability to not injure himself every other day and ends up blurting out, “I haven’t been through the maze yet.” Derek looks up at him, brow furrowed in confusion, but still there, still so close that it pushes him to add, fingers twisting together, squeezing in time to the beat of his heart in his throat, “if you wanted to go tonight—Laura said you worked really hard on it and I want to see it before it’s too muddle and trampled.”
“There’s no night maze tonight,” Derek says, quiet and unsure. “It would be—”
“Just us,” Stiles says, just as Derek finishes with “—better to wait if—”
He’s gripping his hands together so tightly he can feel his pulse beat in his fingertips. “Unless—”
“Yes,” Derek says. Stiles thinks he only starts feeling his fingers again because Derek pulls them apart one by one, gently rubbing Stiles’ hands between his own. “Can I make you dinner after?”
He forgets to answer for a moment, distracted by the way the dancing light from the battery-operated Jack O'Lanterns up on the shelf turn the tips of Derek’s beard silver, and his hand is halfway across the distance between them to see if it’s as soft as it looks when there’s a small crash that rips his attention back to the counter. There’s a child standing there, busily picking up all the cinnamon-flavored mints that Stiles had filled a bowl with earlier, looking sheepish as she darts glances at him, so he smiles at her and turns to grab the ones that had fallen onto the floor.
Derek leaves as he’s taking her order, one hand squeezing Stiles’ shoulder gently, thumb running up along his neck in a way that makes him shiver. It’s the type of contact that he swears he can still feel on his skin hours later as he’s wiping the machines down while the last guests check out, wagon loaded down with pumpkins up at the front of the barn, shooting anxious glances up at the clock every ten seconds.
The moment they’re out the door and he’s assured the high schoolers who work on the weekends that he has no trouble shutting the place down himself, he whips out his phone and calls Scott. He’s been texting him on and off when things would slow down, but words on a screen pale in comparison to hearing his best friend’s voice.
It’s a sentiment he immediately takes back when Scott answers by loudly singing a wedding march in his ear before he breaks into laughter. “Aww, come on, I’m proud of you,” he says when Stiles starts calling him names under his breath. “And he said yes, so what are you doing calling me?”
“Trying not to work myself up before he gets here,” Stiles admits, putting the call on speakerphone so he can count the cash in the drawers. The motion light clicks on outside and he waits a few seconds, but no footsteps sound and no one appears, so he chalks it up to a squirrel and continues. “I don’t know what I was thinking—it’s pitch black outside, I didn’t bring a coat, and I’m still trying to figure out if it’s a date because he asked if he could cook after and that’s a date, right, but he lives with his family and Laura’s been texting me every six minutes because she’s actually doing the bed-rest thing now so if she knows we’re in the house she’s going to want us to hang with her because she’s been bored, but maybe it’s just a thing, like, you know, Mama Hale always wants to take care of everyone too, she just sent—”
“Breathe,” Scott interrupts, and Stiles flips off the phone even though he can’t see it and continues.
“—Emma and Adam home with huge containers of this soup she made just because so what if this is just Derek being the same way and—”
“Stiles, can you just—”
“—Laura was wrong and I’m looking at everything wrong—”
“Stiles!” Scott yells, and he falls silent, the soft crunch of dollar bills in his hand startling him away from passing one to the other automatically, the count long-lost. “Rein it in, dude. I’m sure Derek’s got flashlights, there’s probably a jacket buried somewhere in the back of the Jeep, and no one asks if they can make you dinner if it’s not a date. Don’t freak out, but I think he like-likes you.”
“Asshole,” Stiles mutters. He shuffles all the bills back into his left hand and starts again, thumbing them over and actually counting this time. “You know I over-think things.”
“It’s a first date, bro, you gotta cool it a little. Just let it evolve naturally, no pressure—”
“This is sounding startlingly familiar,” Stiles says, eyebrow raised and tapping the total into his phone, “sort of like the speech I’ve given you before every first date you’ve ever had.”
“There’s a reason I know it so well,” Scott laughs. “Seriously, though. It’s just Derek. Remember how mad he used to get when Laura would call him Bugs, and he’d kind of, like, growl at her? You’re gonna be scared of going on a date with that guy?”
The memory comes to him at once; Derek’s red cheeks and mullish expression, arms crossed angrily on the couch whenever Bugs Bunny would show up on the screen and Laura would coo and say “you could be twins, look—” until Derek would snap at her with his teeth and Talia would appear like she could sense imminent bloodshed. Stiles had been fascinated with the Hale sibling dynamic, but Cora would just roll her eyes and turn the television up with a huff whenever Derek and Laura started bickering.
“Guess not,” he says; the motion light clicks on again, and this time, Stiles hears footsteps. “I gotta go, Scott, I’ll call you later.” He hangs up before Scott says something Derek might be able to overhear and adds up the total in the drawer, double-checking against the numbers on the screen that it’s correct before dropping it all in a bank bag just as Derek walks in.
They don’t talk much; Stiles tries to focus on counting the money in the other register while Derek walks around and switches off all the electric candles and extinguishes the cinnamon-scented candles that are burning with a frown and a pinch of his fingers. It’s not until Stiles turns to grab the cups of hot apple cider he’d made from the coffee bar that Derek catches his wrist and pulls him in.
“I wanted to make sure we were on the same page,” he says, voice a low murmur in the still of the evening, his eyes looking almost golden in the glow of the last candle. “Laura said—well, it doesn’t matter—this is a date?”
The realization that Derek’s nervous—the way his eyes flicker down to the floor, the shift of his weight from foot to foot—does more to calm Stiles than anything Scott had said. “Yeah,” he says, twisting his wrist and moving his hand until it catches Derek’s, fingers threading together easily, “it’s a date.”