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“And you throw your head back laughing like a little kid
I think it's strange that you think I'm funny 'cause he never did
I've been spending the last eight months
Thinking all love ever does is break and burn and end
But on a Wednesday in a cafe I watched it begin again”
Honestly, Derek should have expected it – nothing good comes on Wednesday. Sure, it’s true that the small café right behind the corner of his apartment block is usually quite packed, but the customers usually also find a way to consume their coffee in some corner, or decide to just have it on the go.
So no, Derek’s still going with the theory that the lithe man that just sat down in front of him did so because it’s Wednesday. Had it been Sunday, it wouldn’t have happened.
The thing is, Derek hates Wednesdays. First of all, it’s a day in the middle, not quite early week, not really weekend. Also, everything bad that ever happened to him, happened on Wednesdays. He’s quite sure he met Kate on a Wednesday, for example. Maybe it was also Wednesday when, in high school, he lost his first basketball game. Wednesday is also the day he came home only to find it burned down to ashes, along with almost everyone he ever loved. So no one can really blame him if, when the stranger sits down at his table, all he gets is a glare and a sigh.
After all, it is Wednesday.
The treatment doesn’t seem to have any effect on the man, however, if his friendly smile is anything to go by. There’s something sheepish in the way he sits, almost fidgeting while Derek tries to go back to his book, and soon an unknown voice is filling his ears.
“I’m sorry to disrupt you, man, it’s just so packed right now and isn’t it insane? Anyway I just wanted to have my coffee in peace, possibly sitting, and you know, figured since this seat wasn’t taken I could just sit!”
Derek doesn’t say that he, too, just wanted to have is coffee in peace, because he was raised better than that (it’s a near thing, though). He just stares at the man for a couple of seconds, then shrugs and goes back to his book. He doesn’t really remember where he was on the page, so he quietly tries to find the sign. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see how the smile on the man’s face seems to dim, making him think about clouds passing over the sun and obscuring it, but the man (and for some strange reason, Derek’s almost pissed he doesn’t know his name) apparently got the message. They sip their coffees in silence, the only sounds being the chitchat of the other clients around them.
Derek's almost completely gone back to his book – almost as in he's reading and he's just getting back into the story and relaxing once again, but then.
“I'm Stiles, by the way. So, you know, when you'll complain about the weird guy that couldn't shut up to save his life you'll know who you're talking about”, the stranger – Stiles – says. And Derek just sighs once again, looks up to meet warm brown eyes and red lips – probably a reaction dictated by being continuously bitten. He's smiling, though, and Derek is... confused, to say at least. Because, really, why is this man so determinate to talk with him?
Derek knows, objectively, that he's not the easiest man to get along with; he has mastered the capacity of showing none of his thoughts on his face in the years, and this usually makes his interlocutors uncomfortable; he's silent, doesn't speak much – not even when it'd be polite to; he is, in all honesty, a little bit of a jerk.
He also knows that he's easy on the eye, so people ignore his flawed personality more often than not just to (shamelessly) try and hit on him.
However, nobody has ever kept smiling at him for so long. Or, well, they did – but more of eyelashes-batting-flirty-smiling kind of simile. Not this blinding although embarrassed kind of smile. This friendly kind of smile.
So, yeah, he's rather confused, and it must show on his face going by the sheepish laugh that's escaping from Stiles.
(He doesn't even notice he has closed his book, his pointer finger keeping the page.)
“Man I should really –” “Derek”, they say, almost in unison, both looking at each other when realizing they've interrupted the other. Only when it's clear that Stiles isn't going to finish what he was saying and he's just going to look at him with this puppy like waiting expression Derek clears his throat and starts talking again.
“Derek. So you'll know who you're talking about when you'll be telling about the guy that was just trying to read”, he says, straight-faced and almost monotonously.
Kind of a jerk, yup.
But then the strangest thing happens – stranger than him sitting down in front of Derek, than him smiling so friendly. And Stiles is laughing, throwing his head back (like a little kid) in amusement. Derek just stares at him in bewilderment, not really knowing how to react.
“Oh my God, he talks! And also possesses sense of humor, who would have known.”
And Derek can just stare (again) while the smile on the lithe's man face becomes more relaxed, reaches his eyes. Stiles also seems to feel more comfortable sitting at the table, elbows now propped on the wooden surface, chin laying on his twined hands.
And then – then they just talk and talk and talk, and after the first stilted and clipped answers the bigger man seems to relax as well. He's talking more, smiling when he just can't avoid it anymore. He also laughs a couple of times, and in both occasions he fails to notice the way Stiles just seems to light up in utter contentment.
(His book lays forgotten, his first cup of coffee soon followed by more and more. Derek also forgets it's Wednesday until much later, when he's already home and in bed, looking up at the ceiling while rethinking about the afternoon that just went by.)
***
It’s Wednesday once again when they meet the next time, but now Derek can see how Stiles’ eyes light up when he spots him on the other side of the room, how he trots over with a steaming cup of coffee held in his hands. He sits down, and this time the fidgeting is close to non existent. He wears the same warm smile from the other time, and Derek can’t find it in himself to act like he is pissed off by his presence.
This time, Stiles wastes no time before starting to talk, soon engrossed in telling Derek everything that has happened to him in the last week since they saw each other. He seems perfectly fine with leading the conversation, not at all uneasy by the lack of comments on Derek’s side (he does however stop completely whenever Derek says something, paying him full attention).
Derek is once again baffled, but he’s slowly coming to understand that it is a recurrence in his interactions with the brunet. It’s also a positive kind of bafflement, so he isn’t going to complain this time.
***
(They never declare out loud, but Wednesday becomes the day they always meet up.)
***
Derek won’t ever admit it out loud, but he’s started to look forward Wednesdays.
He’s not sure when it happened, probably somewhere between Stiles laughing at his jokes or him telling Derek about his life and his friends, his father, the last professor that is far to demanding, but he went from dreading the day to kind of waiting all week for it to come. He knows it has something to do with the fact that increasingly more often he leaves their meetings with a warm feeling in his chest, but Derek really doesn’t want to think about it.
Because when he thinks about it he comes across closed off, an uncomfortable half way between shy and uneasy, and the looks that Stiles reserves him make him feel even worse.
After all, they’re tentative friends that exist only once a week for a couple of hours, and Derek knows his track record, so anything more than friends shouldn’t be appealing at all.
(He’s started repeating it to himself, lately, when he finds his thoughts drifting towards the younger man.)
***
It’s cold out, now, nearly winter time, and for the first time, Stiles leaves with him. It isn’t anything special, really, but at the same time it is. Because Derek can’t tell himself anymore that they’re acquaintances, that their relationship only exists inside the cozy coffee shop if they meet out of the four walls of the construction.
And when Stiles’ hand brushes against his while walking without hurry towards Derek’s car and Derek sees the little shy smile adorning the other man’s lips, he just knows that he should tell him about his past, tell him about all that happened to everyone he ever loved and how disastrous he just is at love. But then Stiles starts talking about how much he just loves winter and Christmas and how he and his father always watch the same old movies and cartoons together on Christmas Eve and he just forgets about it, forgets about the past and thinks only about the future for what is maybe the first time in months.
***
(Derek will, that very Eve, watch those films with the Stilinski men in a companionable silence, Stiles cuddled close to him.)