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One of the problems with living where Derek did was the abundance of coffee shops; not just in the sense that there was a Starbucks every few blocks, as was often the case in many places, but rather that every single parking lot seemed to have at least a drive-thru coffee stand. Derek continued to glower from a street corner as he tried to recall which of the three independent cafés Laura had mentioned in her text, along with: “his name is Sidney, he’ll be wearing a red shirt and not actively trying to ‘ruin your life,’ promise.” All in all, Derek felt like things were leading up to another disaster of a blind date.
He looked again between the painted window signs for “Cup of Joe,” “Cool Beans,” and “The Supreme Bean,” reaching abortively for his pocket before remembering that he’d left his phone at home to stave off a barrage of texts from both of his sisters for as long as possible. Though he wouldn’t have minded scrolling through the inevitable bickering in their group text if his “totally interesting this time, I swear!” date stood him up or turned out to be another guy who wanted to talk about his car for a half-hour–not necessarily because he wanted to show off his “sweet ride” (though that had happened before), but because he heard Derek was a mechanic and wanted to gauge his chances of getting work done for free. And that guy hadn’t even been the worst of Laura’s many blind date attempts.
Thus, Sidney in Red. Who, given how long Derek had been standing there trying to remember their designated meeting place, was likely already waiting for Derek inside one of three cafés that were all but sharing the same block. He eventually bit the wolfsbane bullet and went with Cool Beans since he was feeling like a froyo or a frappé that was sweet enough to make his mouth feel fuzzy–he’d also have an idea of how well they were going to get on if his date brought up how “brave” he was to be ordering something with so much sugar and calories in it (yet another date, though that one had been a former friend of Cora’s, and she’d even admitted she mostly just watched him work out in the gym and thought maybe he and Derek would have some “fun”).
Granted, not all of his sisters’ matchmaking attempts had been terrible—if anything, they were better than their mother’s idea of a potential mate (which was likely part of the problem: his sisters just wanted him to enjoy himself, whereas their mother and alpha wanted to find him a partner). He also hadn’t been on too many dates to count, and a couple of them had resulted in a string of dates or a tentative relationship. Derek was also reluctant to admit that the majority of Laura’s blind dates were typically better than the ones he asked out on his own, even if he still believed his love life should be his business and no one else’s (and that he had to stop drunkenly texting his sisters at two in the morning to lament over how he couldn’t sleep because he didn’t have anyone to “wrap around like a werekoala”).
He walked through the door of Cool Beans, the bells wrapped around the handle merrily announcing his arrival, and approached the counter with perhaps a little more focus than was necessary while he put off surveying the rest of the café for his prospective date. Regardless of whether he’d chosen the right location, Derek wanted the comfort of too many sugary syrups in a cup that was ready to go if he needed to walk out abruptly. There was only one other customer already at the counter and as she finished up her order, Derek gave the rest of the shop a cursory once-over.
His eyes passed over two other people wearing red—both female—before reaching a man sitting in a back corner of the room and scrolling through his phone. He was slouched over with both of his elbows braced on the table in front of him, his hands propped up and holding his phone in front of his squinting face. Derek absently noted some of his features—dark brown hair, pale skin, an upturned nose—before all of his attention was drawn to the way the other man was drinking his iced coffee—or attempting to.
With his focus glued to the screen in his hands, the man in the booth chased the straw around with his mouth, searching for it with his tongue before wrapping his lips around it and sucking, then releasing the straw only to repeat the entire process again. Derek realized his intended sweep of the café had turned into him outright staring when he heard a throat clearing from behind the counter, and before he could look away the other man’s attention was pulled from his phone as well, almost immediately noticing he was being watched. His eyebrows furrowed in confusion even as he proceeded to chase after his straw—this time while making eye contact—before he blessedly straightened, lowering his phone to the table, and Derek was both relieved and mildly distressed when his eyes finally fell on the red hoodie he was wearing.
When Derek spent a little too long dwelling on whether or not it would reflect badly on Laura if he skipped through the awkwardness of the “getting to know you” of a blind date and took a page out of Cora’s book instead, his date’s expression gradually slipped into one of discomfort. Derek attempted to reassure him with a smile before introducing himself, only to watch the other man’s lips tilt upward in response… and let loose a mouthful of coffee all over himself. His brown eyes widened in dismay before he looked down at the mess he’d made of his hoodie, and then he grabbed the lone, thin paper napkin waiting nearby on the table to dab at the wet splotch on his chest as he swore under his breath.
“What can I get started for you today?” The girl behind the counter was audibly reaching the end of her patience but still trying to maintain a degree of customer-friendly professionalism, and Derek already resolved to leave a generous tip. He turned towards her with what he hoped was an apologetic smile, intending to ask for more napkins for his date, only for his expression to slip into a frown of confusion when the barista muttered, “Oh my God,” barely making any effort to keep from being overheard even by human standards.
From his right, his blind date was in the middle of a mumbled tirade about staring directly into the sun. Derek’s attention was pulled helplessly back to him, if only for a moment, and he noted that there were now what looked like muffin crumbs scattered over the hoodie in addition to the coffee stains. After a few more valiant attempts to salvage his shirt, his date finally gave up and unzipped it, shrugging out of the long sleeves with a continued stream of disgruntled muttering.
Fearing that his date was close to giving up and walking out the door before Derek could even order his now very much-needed coffee, Derek turned back to the barista and blurted out his name and the tooth-rotting combination of flavored syrups he preferred in a frappé. His worry potentially made him seem slightly aggressive, though the barista may have just wanted to get the line moving again as quickly as possible as she motioned for the next customer nearly before he could even swipe his card. He left a particularly generous tip for her, both for holding up the line as well as for the substantial amount of napkins he grabbed from the dispenser further down the counter.
He hurried over to the other man’s table, worried that he was already texting Laura about their failure of a blind date before it had even officially started, and slid into the opposite booth. “I’m Derek,” he supplied helpfully, along with his handful of equally helpful napkins, smile back in place.
His date glanced up from his phone, then looked up again when he realized who’d joined him at the table, his eyebrows lifting curiously. “Uh… Stiles,” he said after a moment, his fingers hovering over his phone screen for a few seconds before setting it down on the table. He took the stack of napkins from Derek, flashing him a rueful grin in return. “Don’t know if there’s any saving this,” he said wryly as he reached behind him to pick up his hoodie, “but thanks for trying.”
“At least let me buy you another coffee,” Derek offered, noting how much of Stiles’s order was already finished after he’d delayed entering the shop for so long.
Stiles paused again before snorting, a half-smile playing at the corner of his mouth as if he was in on some private joke that Derek wasn’t getting. “You’re kind of intense,” he observed, using the napkins to dab at more of the coffee that had managed to drip from its initial point of contact. “You went from a blinding smile that woke me up better than—” he lifted up his half-empty plastic cup and shook it quickly from side to side in demonstration before setting it back down, “to ‘come with me if you want to live’ serious in, like, three seconds.”
Derek wasn’t given the opportunity to open his mouth before Stiles was barreling on, “Not that I’m complaining or anything because, believe me, I get it.” He dropped the used napkins on the end of the table and put his hand back on the cup. His thumb started pushing in against the soft plastic so it ‘clicked’ in and out, and after repeating the motion a few times, his eyebrow quirked to complement a wry smirk. “Case in point: you’re probably wondering what the hell you were thinking when you came over here.”
“Actually, I was just waiting on an answer about the coffee,” Derek corrected just as drily, his lips twitching in a smirk of his own when Stiles’s eyes widened momentarily in surprise.
The other man looked down at his cup, still intermittently fidgeting with the plastic side, then snorted before his gaze returned to Derek’s. “I’m pretty sure I don’t need another coffee, but if you want to go halfsies on another of those muffins, I will never turn down baked goods.”
“Good to know,” Derek said, relaxing now that it seemed less likely that his date would bail before his own order was even called.
“Well, now you have me at a disadvantage,” Stiles pointed out, pretending to frown. “You know one of my weaknesses, but I don’t know any of yours.”
Derek’s responding grin grew even wider at the uptick of Stiles’s heartbeat, accompanied by the scent of his attraction blending with the other smells of coffee and spice permeating the café. He was beginning to get an idea of why Stiles had seemed so stunned, and while he was no stranger to people noticing how he looked, he also didn’t mind Stiles looking. “I guess you’ll have to stick around for a little while, then,” he said lowly, leaning in as he rose from the table and getting another spike of interest for his trouble.
While his second attempt at ordering started out considerably easier, the other employee behind the counter called out his name for his first order, prompting the customary smile and “enjoy” from the barista at the till to sound a lot like, “I hope you choke.” Still, he was able to return triumphantly to the booth with his date’s muffin and an iced coffee sweet enough to ward off both of his thieving sisters from trying to steal “just a sip, Derek!” Though, depending on how the rest of the date went, Derek was ready to risk being absolutely loathed by the employees of Cool Beans for picking up something to-go for Laura as well.
“So, Derek Hale,” Stiles greeted somewhat pointedly when Derek returned. He waved the hand that wasn’t still holding his coffee and gestured toward himself when he said, “Stiles Stilinski.”
Derek frowned slightly as he took a sip from his drink, setting the muffin down on the center of the table. “My sister kept calling you—”
“Stiles,” the man in question insisted, his eyes narrowing dangerously as he reached out to bring the muffin closer to his side of the table. “If she’s been going around calling me anything but Stiles, then we are going to have words.”
“You have a problem with your name?” Derek asked, watching Stiles tear off a generous piece of pumpkin streusel muffin and shove it into his mouth.
“I haven’t gone by my legal name since before I was even in school,” Stiles went on before he’d even finished chewing properly, already picking apart another bite. “How does your sister even know it? I’ve been blocking out that atrocity on everything but my driver’s license since I was seventeen! I thought we were cool—is this whole thing some kind of set-up?” he demanded, leaning forward and eyeing Derek up and down with a calculating squint.
Derek blinked, a little stunned by the sudden shift in conversation, and voiced as much, “I thought it was turning out to be one of the better dates I’ve had in a while.”
It was Stiles’s turn to blink, pausing in devouring his half of the muffin. “Oh. I… yeah? I mean—” The tip of his tongue darted out to lick over his lips for any stray crumbs, and Derek followed the motion with his eyes, then watched as Stiles’s cheeks flushed when he noticed him staring. “So… uh… the good kind of set-up, then. Where I didn’t completely derail anything by freaking out on you for knowing my other name, because my name is Stiles. Stilinski.” A smaller version of his earlier playful smirk returned as he added, “Though, full disclosure, the impression I had of you in my head was a lot different from what I’ve witnessed so far.”
Derek snorted, leaning back into the booth as his grin made a tentative return. “I can imagine. She didn’t tell me much at all about you, though.”
Stiles actually threw his head back when he laughed, almost like a dramatic cartoon villain if not for the knowing smile on his face. “Well, then maybe I don’t have to worry as much about what she did tell you, besides the whole name thing.” His smile faded a little as he cleared his throat, the faintest trace of nervousness evident when he asked, “Now that you know more about what you’re getting yourself into, do you still want to go out on a date?”
“I thought we already were on a date,” Derek pointed out.
“Oh, no. No way was this our first date,” Stiles protested, waving his hand as if he was erasing their encounter. “This was just the build-up to you asking me out on our first date. We’ve already checked off most of the boxes on the romcom list and all we really need is some kind of misunderstanding for us to be a movie.”
Derek leaned forward, a smirk playing at the corner of his lips. “I’ve found it enjoyable to watch so far,” he said in a tone just shy of lilting—something Cora called his “flirty voice” (usually before heaving an exaggerated shudder because “no one should know their older brother’s moves, you asshole”).
Stiles made a valiant effort to appear unimpressed, even as a flush returned to his features and his scent infused warmly with pleasure. “Of course you have, dude; you haven’t ruined your favorite hoodie.”
Derek hummed, propping his chin on his hand and letting his half-lidded eyes trail over the other man for a second time since entering the café: he had more muscle definition evident in his arms alone than his hoodie had implied, and now Derek wanted to find out how many moles dotted his entire body. “Like I said, I’ve found it enjoyable to watch so far,” he repeated more significantly.
Stiles’s head angled downward when he chuckled this time, partially obscuring Derek’s view of his steadily growing blush. “So, what you’re saying is you ruined my hoodie on purpose.” His smile was lopsided as he leaned forward to bring himself closer to Derek. “You can make it up to me on our date.”
“I already bought you another muffin,” Derek argued, still smiling as he moved his arm just enough so his hand was barely touching Stiles’s. “And how was any of that my fault?”
Stiles scoffed, but kept his hand on the table even as his other hand pointed at Derek in accusation. “You smiled at me! I felt like I was staring at the surface of the sun! Like that!” Stiles gestured wildly at Derek’s widening grin with the hand that wasn’t still lined up with his. “It’s like something out of a Greek myth.”
Derek laughed, equally entranced by the way Stiles’s nose crinkled when he joined in with him; by the upward tilt of his mouth that seemed to invite Derek to share in some inside joke. He closed the last bit of distance between them that he could without rising from his seat and asked softly, “And what about what you were doing with that straw? I only smiled because you caught me staring.”
Stiles’s flush started to creep down toward his neck, but his scent wasn’t anything but pleased. “Huh,” he said simply, as if considering something, before smirking knowingly. “Well, now you’ll have to ask me out on a date so you can see what I can do with my mouth on purpose.”
Derek almost choked on an inhale, but just barely managed to keep his breathing relatively normal, swallowing and shifting so his pants weren’t fitting quite as uncomfortably. He didn’t bother debating anymore over how this already was a date, and instead asked, “How about we just start our first date now and I buy you a froyo?” He felt his own face heating up over how breathless he already sounded, then had to swallow again at the sight of Stiles licking his lips, no matter how pensive the motion was.
“I would love to, believe me, but…” Stiles drew his lower lip between his teeth, chewing on it for a moment. He sighed, running a hand through his hair, then explained somewhat sheepishly, “I’d rather our first actual date wasn’t orchestrated by your sister, y’know? The gloating alone is already going to be a pain in the ass—she’s been trying to fix us up for a while now.”
Derek rolled his eyes, silently cursing Laura as he nodded in understanding. “Right,” he agreed, sighing, “right. That’s… understandable.” He grinned ruefully as he eyed Stiles again. “She definitely wasn’t wrong about you, though. She’s definitely going to gloat either way. A lot. Fair warning and all that.”
Stiles snorted, but his smile was back. “As long as she wasn’t wrong.” After a pause, he brought his straw back to his lips and finished off the last of his drink, his eyebrow raised as his lips and tongue were much more involved in the process than they needed to be. Derek more or less forgot how to breathe until Stiles pulled back from the empty cup and straightened in the booth. “Just making sure you’ll want to use my number after I give it to you.”
“Your number…” Derek groaned, rubbing his forehead with his fingertips. “I left my phone at home.” He huffed in amusement at the sight of Stiles’s raised eyebrows. “I know, it’s practically unheard of. I’ll get your number from my sister. Though, now that you know what you’ll be in for, you’ll be able to pretend I never tried to text you.”
“Uh, no, I won’t; not unless I plan on avoiding your sister, too,” Stiles pointed out, still grinning. “Besides, this gives you a flaw: the Greek myth has been humanized. I don’t have to go home wondering if I imagined the whole thing—well, depending on how long it takes for you to text me, anyway.” He picked up his coffee-stained hoodie again and draped it lazily over the crook of his arm.
“Don’t forget the rest of your muffin.” Derek pushed said muffin closer to Stiles, who shook his head and started to slide out of the booth, grabbing his empty cup to throw away.
“Uh-uh, that’s your half of the muffin,” Stiles corrected as he stood up. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from your sister and Duran Duran, it’s how hungry the Hales are,” he teased quietly, actually winking before he left Derek sitting there in the booth and staring after his retreating back while he tried to recall if Laura had ever mentioned that “Sidney” knew about werewolves.
Derek only just remembered to take the rest of his order with him when he left Cool Beans, and only then because he could feel the poor, harried barista’s glaring resentment burning holes into the side of his face. By the time he was halfway back to his apartment, he made the decision to be cautiously optimistic and focus on how well his date had gone. When he finally managed to unlock his phone, he scrolled past the wall of expected texts from his sisters in their group chat and sent, “Date went surprisingly well. How does Stiles know about werewolves?”
All of his carefully curated optimism plummeted with Laura’s immediate response:
You’re Not My Real Mom: Sidney bawled me out because you never showed. I never told him what we are, and thank fuck for that—asshole’s been telling me how precious his time is for 20 min.
What the hell is a Stiles?
Derek ran a hand through his hair, too preoccupied with his growing sense of dread to answer. He started replaying the entire sequence of events, all the way back to when he’d evidently walked into the wrong coffee shop, to Stiles seeming to know who he was after the barista called out his last name, to how he’d implied he knew Derek and his sister were werewolves. The notion that Stiles might’ve been a hunter sprang to mind right as Laura asked the question herself, but he instantly quashed it: Stiles had tried to give him his number, hadn’t smelled at all like the usual wolfsbane-and-gunpowder scent that all hunters seemed to carry, and frankly, their date had gone so well that Derek simply didn’t want to think Stiles had been deceiving him. However, regardless of whether or not Stiles was a hunter, there still remained the problem that Laura didn’t know who the hell he was, and therefore couldn’t give Derek his number.
You Were Adopted: Stilinski?
Derek’s eyes widened as he zeroed in on Cora’s text. “Yes,” he typed and voiced aloud simultaneously, all but collapsing against his kitchen counter in relief.
You Were Adopted: So what you’re saying is you accidentally went on a date with Stiles. The guy I dated for like a week in junior year. Who Mom’s been trying to set you up with for months.
The amount of laughing emojis that followed Cora’s text was excessive and, frankly, unnecessary. But now that Cora brought it up, Derek vaguely recalled their mother occasionally mentioning “Sheriff Stilinski’s son” and how he was “back in the area,” and how it was a shame that he and Cora had never worked out. “Oh, fuck me,” Derek groaned, back to rubbing his forehead again as his phone alerted him to a separate text from his younger sister, flashing a phone number that was surrounded by even more laughing emojis.
You Were Adopted: You’re never gonna hear the end of Mom’s “there’s a right one for everyone” speech now. Sorry Der-Bear.
Before Derek could even so much as make a face at the group text, Laura was typing:
You’re Not My Real Mom: No.
You can’t date him.
WE won’t hear the end of it.
Derek will be Mom’s proof that our mates are out there too.
Derek swiped out of the group text with a particularly satisfied smirk on his face, relieved to know that he hadn’t been played by a hunter, and that his sisters would be bearing the brunt of their mother’s matchmaking fixation for at least the near future. The last message he saw before switching over to the text with Stiles’s number was Cora’s graphic threat of what she’d do to him if he went out on another date with Stiles. His smirk stayed in place as he sent a text to the unknown number, asking Stiles where he wanted to go for their next date and anticipating his response.
Stiles’s reply came before Derek even had time to set his phone down, saying that Derek should be the one to decide their first date since he was the one who asked him out. Also, your sister is violent af. I already knew this, but fucking hell is she creative with her threats. I thought I was on her good side. Is this a shovel talk? We haven’t even been on a date yet!
Derek smiled stupidly at his phone screen, ignoring continued text alerts from his sisters and eventually his mom in favor of settling into one of the kitchen chairs. He started typing a return text several times before deleting each attempt, wondering how Stiles knew about werewolves, or what exactly he’d heard about Derek prior to actually meeting him in the coffee shop, or what his actual first name was.
As if reading his mind (or at least watching the “typing” status start and stop repeatedly), Stiles suddenly surmised that Derek was either trying to figure out how long he’d known Cora was a werewolf, or having second thoughts about asking him out. Derek let out another huffing laugh, resolving to save most of his questions for when he could ask them in person, and instead felt his lips curl into another smirk as he tapped out, “Actually, I was thinking about how your favorite hoodie is red,” before assigning Stiles’s nickname in his contacts.
Red Riding Hoodie: Oh eat me Big Bad.
Derek’s grin was all teeth as he typed back, “You’ll have to wait until after our first date for that.”