Work Text:
Stiles meets Scott on his first day at Argent, Hale & Whittemore.
Stiles survived four years of college and three years of law school, all of which were challenging, but he’s still nervous as hell, convinced his suit doesn’t fit properly, his tie is the wrong color, and moreover, that any second now he’s going to be told there was a terrible mistake and not only does he no longer have a job, but his law license is being revoked because clearly he shouldn’t have been allowed to have it in the first place.
Breathe, he tells himself.
After a brief, overwhelming orientation by a gorgeous paralegal he’s pretty sure is called Allison, Stiles finds himself sitting in a cubicle in a bullpen with twenty other associates and not sure what he’s supposed to do now. He sits at his new desk for ten minutes, randomly typing things into google, rearranging his stationery, occasionally stealing glances around the room and trying not to panic.
At this point, a dark-haired head pops over his cubicle wall.
“Hey, dude,” says the guy, “do you have any idea what we’re supposed to do?”
“Not a freaking clue, man,” Stiles replies, relieved to find he’s not alone. “You new too?”
The guy nods, and then sticks his hand over the flimsy wall separating their cubicles. “Scott McCall.”
Stiles shakes his hand and is just about to reply when a voice barks out,
“Stilinski, McCall, Lahey!”
He and Scott both whip around to see a guy dressed in a sharp suit and with more scruffy facial hair than Stiles thinks is strictly professional standing at the end of the bullpen, with a file in hand and a scowl on his face.
Scott and Stiles exchange glances and shoot to their feet, and Stiles sees another guy across the room do the same.
“Uh, yes?” Stiles calls out tentatively. The guy stares at him and Scott for a moment, and then, if possible, his scowl deepens.
“Follow me,” he orders, and then turns and stalks out of the room.
“Oh my god, are we already fired?” Scott says as they hurry after the man.
“Of course not,” Stiles replies bracingly.
They end up in an office on the next floor up which has Derek Hale, Junior Partner on the plaque next to the door, with the guy from across the room. They all shift awkwardly while the surly dude, presumably Derek Hale, stares at them, clearly sizing them up.
“I’m in charge of first year associates,” he says eventually, without any preamble. “You report to me, and I expect results. If you survive your first year here, you’ll be fine. If not, you’re never going to be a lawyer.”
He pauses, eyeing them all like this is exactly what he expects of them. Then he picks up three folders from his desk and hands one to each of them. “McCall, you’ll be on the Deaton case, with three other associates. You’ll find them in the library, ask Ms. Martin to get you up to speed. Lahey, you’ll be working with Finstock, he requested a first year. Stilinski, I need you to proof the Ramsey briefs and have them on my desk first thing tomorrow.”
It doesn’t seem like too hard a task, and Stiles is almost disappointed. He’d been expecting something a lot worse.
“If you’re smart,” Derek says, “work hard, and are very, very lucky, you might see the inside of a courtroom in six months.”
Stiles kind of wants to laugh, because the guy had these eyebrows and he’s glaring so seriously at them, like the future of the firm hangs on how well they proof these briefs, but the guy is also clearly ripped and didn’t look like he’d appreciate being laughed at, not to mention he’s Stiles’s boss. So instead he nods, stepping slightly behind Scott.
“Well?” Derek demands when they all remain there, staring at him. “Get out of here and get to work.”
*
It turns out that the folder Derek gave him contains a summary of the case and the court documents, as well as an access card and directions to the file room, where Stiles finds six boxes full of documents for him to go over in painstaking detail.
“Dude,” Scott says sympathetically. He followed Stiles in his quest for the file room (which isn’t so much a room as an entire floor), claiming it was something he ought to know how to find.
“Is there any chance I’ll finish this before tomorrow?” Stiles asks, opening the first box and pulling out a stack of files.
“Depends,” says Scott, flicking through the pages. “How necessary do you find, like, food and sleep?”
*
It takes a little time, but Stiles finds his feet and falls into a routine. It involves fourteen-hour workdays and more Red Bull than can really be good for him, but it’s manageable. Mostly.
Scott quickly becomes his best friend, for which Stiles is grateful both because he doesn't know a single person in New York apart from his landlord, and because he spends so much time working next to Scott that it would be a real pain in the ass if they didn't get along.
On the rare occasion that lunch can involve more than eating something at his desk while poring over pages of case notes, they sneak away from the office and eat hot dogs from street vendors. It feels like a tiny slice of rebellion every time.
It’s one such day when Scott sighs, and says,
“What do you think of Allison?”
“The paralegal?” Stiles asks around a mouthful of hot dog, mustard, and general deliciousness. He ponders the question. “She’s cool. Kind of intimidating, maybe. Cute?” he adds, because there’s no mistaking the dreamy look on Scott’s face.
“She’s perfect,” Scott says.
“So are you going to ask her out?”
Scott’s face falls, and he sighs again. “I can’t,” he says. “She wouldn’t date me. She’s been here three years and she’s a lot smarter than me and I’m a just a first-year associate.”
He looks forlorn in his puppy-dog kind of way, and it’s impossible not to feel sorry for him.
“You should do it anyway, man,” Stiles says bracingly. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
“Um, she’ll say no?”
“And how would that be any different from how you are now?”
Scott wrinkles his nose like he gets what Stiles is saying, but that doesn’t change how he feels. Stiles sighs.
“Just do it,” he says, licking his fingers and dumping the remains of his lunch in a trash can. “I’m pretty sure she likes you. She helped you out on that intellectual property case, and she didn’t even make you beg like she does all the other associates.”
He can practically see Scott’s ears perk up. “You really think so?” Scott asks earnestly.
Stiles slings an arm around his shoulder as they head back into the office. “I really think so.”
*
Three months and six days into the new job, Stiles’s computer crashes.
“Oh no no no no,” he breathes, tapping the keyboard frantically, staring with wide eyes at the blue screen. “Please, baby, no, don’t do this to me.” He tries stroking the screen, promising to take better care of her, but it remains resolutely blank.
“Why are you fondling your monitor?” Isaac leans over the front of Stiles’s cubicle, watching him curiously.
“She crapped out on me!” he says, glaring at it. “After all I’ve done for her! And I was in the middle of something for Derek and he’s probably going to kill me and eat my liver if I don’t get it done by the end of the day, because he needs it for court tomorrow, and now I’m fucked because I didn’t back everything up and - ”
“Stiles,” Isaac interrupts. “Breathe.”
Stiles pushes his chair back and tries to follow Isaac’s advice. It’s going to be fine. There is a solution to this problem, he just has to calm down and think rationally for a minute and it will all be fine, and even if he can’t get it fixed, he can just start again and ask Derek for a bit of extra time, which will also be fine because Derek is a kind and understanding boss who accepts that his associates are going to mess up sometimes and that’s okay.
He doesn’t realize he’s hyperventilating until Isaac rolls his eyes, pushes Stiles’s head so it’s resting between his knees, and reaches over for the phone on Stiles’s desk.
“Hey, IT, right?” he says after a moment, and Stiles straightens up and stares at him. “Yeah, I’ve got a problem with a computer on fourty-two, terminal - ” Isaac pauses and reads the number on the side of Stiles’s computer - “eight. Account name Stilinski.” There’s another pause, and then Isaac says, “Thanks, man,” and hangs up.
“See, why didn’t I think of that?” Stiles says wonderingly. Isaac is a genius.
“Because you were having a panic attack.”
“Well, yeah, but Derek is scary.”
Isaac shrugs. “He’s not that bad, if you do what he tells you to.”
Stiles shakes his head. “He hates me,” he insists.
“Why would he hate you?”
“Because he thinks I’m the one encouraging Scott to avoid him,” Stile says. “Which, okay, I am, but it’s Scott he should be pissed at!”
“He is pissed at Scott. Almost all the time,” Isaac points out.
“Yeah, but he also wants him to be his little protégé, so he still gives him good cases and lets him work on Derek’s pre-trial prep. Whereas I get to wade through six thousand pages of old court records and file subpoenas.”
“Would you rather be Derek’s protégé?”
Stiles ponders this for a moment. “Good point.”
“Stilinski?”
Stiles didn’t notice the guy approaching his cubicle, but now he looks over and blinks.
“Yes?” he says, and it wasn’t meant to be a question, it really wasn’t, but Stiles has this unfortunate habit of losing his usually incredibly witty way with words in the face of overwhelmingly hot people. It happened when he met Lydia Martin in his first week here, and it’s happening now.
“You sure about that?” the guy asks, coming around into his cubicle and setting down a laptop on his desk.
“Yeah, no, I’m definitely Stilinski. Stiles. Just Stiles is fine.”
“Sure,” the guy says with an easy smile. “You mind if I - ” he gestures to Stiles’s computer. And oh right, the guy’s from IT, that makes more sense than a random hot guy just coming up to Stiles’s cubicle to chat.
“Please, please do,” he says, standing up and pushing his chair slightly towards the guy. Isaac give him a look that Stiles can't quite interpret and melts away. The IT guy sits down and turns to the computer, hooking it up to his laptop and humming under his breath. Stiles, perching on the edge of his desk and watching proceedings, has a perfect view of his broad shoulders and his neck and the way his shoulders taper to a waist that looks pretty damn firm and if he stood up right now Stiles would have a perfect view of his ass, and he’s willing to bet a decent proportion of his pretty impressive salary that it’s a great one.
“Jesus, what did you do?” hot IT guy asks after a few minutes, and Stiles shakes himself out of his daze.
“Nothing! I was just working and she went nuts,” he says defensively.
“She?”
Stiles shrugs. “Don’t ask me, ask her.”
IT guys turns to look at him. “Were you looking at porn?” he asks, dead serious, and Stiles gapes.
“Of course not!” he protests, and then the guy starts laughing and turns back. Stiles, without thinking about it, punches him lightly on the shoulder.
“Jerk,” he says.
“Hey, I had to ask, you’d be amazed how often that’s the problem.”
“Oh yeah?” Stiles asks, interested. “What, you bust many senior partners looking at porn?”
“Oh, the stories I could tell you,” IT guy says, looking over his shoulder and grinning and Jesus fuck, he has these insane dimples that Stiles can’t decide if he’d rather poke or lick and he needs to halt this train of thought immediately before he ends up slapped with a sexual harassment suit.
“Come on, you can’t leave it there,” he says, pouting.
“I value my job, so I think I’ll have to.” IT guy leaves it there, and his attention is quickly absorbed by his work. Stiles is more than happy to just watch him while he does it, occasionally asking a question about what he’s doing, only to get him to talk.
“All done,” he says after fifteen minutes. “I restarted your computer, it should be okay now. Stay away from the porn,” he adds sternly, eyes twinkling.
“If I must,” Stiles replies, looking put upon, and the guy laughs.
“If you have any more problems,” he says, gathering up his laptop and vacating Stiles’s desk, “just call the IT extension and ask for Danny.”
“Danny presumably being you.”
The guy nods, smiles, and heads off out of the room. Stiles watches him go.
His ass is every bit as great as expected.
*
Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), Stiles doesn’t have a lot of time to think about Danny-from-IT and plot how to see him again. He barely has time to sleep, eat, or have anything resembling a life.
“They’re trying to weed out the weak ones,” he announces to Scott, when it reaches ten o’clock on a Friday night and they’re both still at their desks. “Survival of the fittest. This is just a blatant attempt to break the rookies. I mean, do you see any second or third years around?”
When Scott doesn’t reply, Stiles peers over to his desk and sees him out cold, face planted in a pile of paper, hand still curled around an energy drink.
“What d’ya think, Isaac?” Stiles calls out across the aisle. “Think we’re gonna survive?”
Isaac looks up at him, eyes red from lack of sleep, and blinks slowly. “I honestly don’t know,” he says.
The thing is, despite all of this, Stiles likes being a lawyer. Which, given how much time and money it took to get him here, is a bit of a relief. Sure, at the moment it’s hours and hours of reading, proofing, filing, and researching, but it’s worth it when he gets to see the end result. When he gets to go to court (it happened a lot sooner than he thought it would, given Derek’s ominous speech on their first day), or sit in on a meeting with incredibly influential people, or help fix a problem no one else was able to, he’s sure this is what he wants to do.
Scott, however, isn’t enjoying it nearly as much.
“I just need some experience,” he wails at Stiles another late night at work. “A few years at this firm and I can do whatever I want. I don’t need this.”
This being the fact that by (mostly accidentally) stumbling across a loophole in a contract that ended up making the firm seven million dollars, he’d caught Peter Hale’s attention, and ever since, the managing partner was treating Scott like his personal associate, monopolizing his time and taking it upon himself to mentor him.
Given that Derek (Peter Hale’s nephew, for God’s sake, and Stiles once made a too-loud remark about nepotism that landed him two entire weeks in the file room) has already decided, for some inexplicable reason, that Scott was going to be his associate, Scott spends an inordinate amount of time trying to keep up with nearly twice the amount of work as he should have to, trying to make them both happy.
And it doesn’t help that Scott hates Derek.
“He’s so creepy,” Scott complains. “He has completely unreasonable expectations and he just stands in the corner and watches to make sure we’re doing things right.”
He has a good point, Derek’s habit of standing in the corner of the associates’ bullpen and watching everyone is seriously unnerving.
Scott is, in Stiles’s opinion, not really cut out for corporate law. He’s too nice, for one, not nearly cutthroat enough. He cares way too much about the clients, as Derek discovered the first time he gave him a pro bono case to handle on his own.
It all makes sense when Scott explains that he just wants a few years experience at a top firm, so he can have his pick of where to go next.
“I'm not sure where I'll go next, exactly,” he says, one night when they’re hanging out at Stiles’s place, drinking too much beer and reveling in the fact that they don’t have to go to work tomorrow. “I want to work for, like, the Legal Aid Society or something. Help people who need it most but can’t afford it. But my advisor at school told me a couple of years at a top corporate firm would be invaluable, whatever I decided to do after. It just seemed like the right thing to do.”
Scott looks like he's not sure that's the case anymore, so Stiles hands him another beer and an Xbox controller and puts on Call of Duty.
“You'll kick ass, by the way,” he says fifteen minutes later, when they're both absorbed in the game. “Working for Legal Aid or wherever you want to go.”
“Thanks, dude,” Scott says, and Stiles can see him smiling out of the corner of his eye.
Let it not be said that Stiles isn't a good friend.
*
A week and a half after his computer crashed, it freezes (most likely because Stiles is trying to run eighteen programs at once), and Stiles is struck with a brilliant idea. Rather than restarting the computer like he normally would, he picks up the phone and dials 14.
“Hello, IT?” It doesn’t sound like Danny, but it’s hard to tell from just two words.
“Uh, yeah, hi, I’m on the fourty second floor, I need some help with my computer?”
“What’s the problem?” the voice asks, and yeah, it’s definitely not Danny.
“Dunno, it’s just won’t work,” he says vaguely. “Last time this guy Danny helped me out? He told me to ask for him if I had any trouble.”
“Please hold on a moment.” There’s a muffled sound, and then -
“Hello, this is Danny Mahealani speaking.”
Stiles takes note of the surname. Not that he plans to look him up on Facebook or anything.
“Um, hey Danny, it’s Stiles, from a few days ago?”
“Sure, Stiles, the porn guy,” Danny says immediately, voice warm and teasing and god it’s relieving that he remembers.
“That’s me,” Stiles says. “I don’t know what happened but I can’t get my computer to start.”
“Huh, there might be a residual problem from the other day,” Danny says. “I’ll be up in a few minutes.”
“Cool,” Stiles says, because “Awesome!” is probably a little overenthusiastic, and hangs up.
He hasn’t exactly got a plan for what he’s going to say when Danny shows up and discovers there’s absolutely nothing wrong with his computer, but Stiles isn’t afraid to wing it. He operates well under pressure.
Danny shows up ten minutes later, and Stiles blesses the laxness of the dress code for the IT department, because Danny’s light blue shirt’s top button is undone, and his sleeves are rolled up to his elbows. He has really nice forearms.
“Hey, Stiles,” he says, and Stiles nods at him.
“Hey, man, thanks for coming up,” he says, moving over so Danny can sit down at his computer.
“So what did you do this time?” Danny asks.
“I was just working and it froze up,” he says. “Didn’t want to risk fucking it up again, so I called you.” He looks as innocent as possible, but from the way Danny’s lips curl up just a fraction at the corner, he thinks maybe he didn’t quite succeed.
“Uh huh,” Danny says, and switches his computer off, and then on.
“Whoa, didn’t think of that,” Stiles says, and he can’t help but grin now. “You’re definitely an expert.”
Danny rolls his eyes and waits while the computer restarts. The welcome screen pops up and Stiles logs in without a problem. Danny snorts.
“All fixed,” he says. “Definitely needed all of my considerable skill for that one.”
Stiles smiles at him, a wide, shit-eating grin, and Danny, after trying to hold his face impassive for a moment, laughs.
“Idiot,” he calls over his shoulder as he leaves, and Stiles lets himself think it sounds a little fond.
*
“Told you she’d say yes,” Stiles says the next week, when Scott returns to his cubicle looking slightly dazed. Scott turns slowly to look at him.
“Oh my god, she said yes.” And now he looks like he’s freaking out. “She said yes, Stiles, now what am I supposed to do?”
“Uh, go out with her?”
Scott takes a deep breath. “Right. Yeah. Of course. I can totally do that.”
Stiles gets a hysterical phone call on Friday night.
“Did you know Allison’s last name is Argent?” Scott demands, his voice high-pitched with hysteria. Stiles can hear traffic in the background, and surmises that Scott’s just dropped Allison home from their date. “She’s Chris Argent’s daughter! I can’t date Chris Argent’s daughter!”
“Dude, I think you just did,” Stiles says, sipping his beer and muting the movie playing on his television.
“What am I supposed to do?! I’m pretty sure dating your boss’s daughter is number one on the list of things not to do if you want to have a successful career.”
“But you don’t want to have a successful career,” Stiles points out, and winces. “Wait, that didn’t sound right. I meant you don’t wanna at Argent, Hale & Whittemore forever, so it’s not like it’s gonna cramp your career forever.”
“But he’s going to find out and fire me,” Scott says. “And then probably kill me. Have you seen the pictures in his office? He has guns, Stiles. Lots of them.”
“Allison’s an adult, she can do what she wants,” Stiles tries next.
“YOU TELL HIM THAT.”
“Scott. Calm down. Breathe.” He can hear the sound of noisy breaths being drawn. “Look, you love Allison. You’re not going to stop dating her because of her father. So suck it up, and think about the fact that you just had a great date with her, and will continue to see her for the foreseeable future, okay? And when you want to leave the firm, I’m sure Peter will give you a good reference. It’ll all be fine.”
He hears Scott take a deep breath. “You’re right. You’re totally right, thanks man.”
“You’re welcome.”
*
Stiles continues to fabricate excuses for Danny to come see him whenever he has a spare moment, which usually works out to one or two times a week.
If Danny didn’t smile so much, didn’t occasionally tell him he was an awful human being, didn’t look so damn good in his stupid collared-shirt-and-no-tie combination, Stiles would stop doing it. But Danny does, and he continues to be the highlight of Stiles’s day when he shows up, and Stiles can’t help himself.
“Let me guess,” Danny says, hanging over the top of Stiles’s cubicle. “You can’t get your computer to connect to the printers.”
“Man, they should really consider giving you a raise or something,” Stiles says. “You’re a genius.”
Danny rolls his eyes. He doesn’t even bother bringing his laptop up anymore, since Stiles’s ‘problems’ rarely require more than a flick of a switch to fix. He shifts around into Stiles’s cubicle.
“‘kay, I’m going to teach you a very valuable lesson,” he says, and he leans right over Stiles, so he’s practically pressed up against his back. Stiles tries to breathe normally. “You see where it says connect to printer?” He clicks and icon and points to the option. “Just click that and, miracle of miracles, your computer will connect to the printer network.”
He stands back, which Stiles unreservedly objects to, and Stiles pastes a look of enlightenment on his face.
“You’re a good teacher, too,” he says. “Anything you can’t do?”
“Lick my own elbow.”
“Yeah, but no one can do that.”
Danny’s about to respond when Derek appears, drops a stack of folders on Stiles’s desk, frowns at Danny, then barks, “Scott, let’s go,” and stalks out. Scott collects his work and trails out after him, looking resigned.
“Weird guy,” Danny comments, still leaning against Stiles’s desk.
“You haven’t seen the half of it.”
“Hot, though,” Danny adds, and when Stiles chokes, he smirks and stands.
“See you later, Stiles,” he says, and Stiles just calls out “Yeah, sure,” at his retreating back.
Goddammit.
*
After six weeks of of Stiles calling IT on increasingly flimsy pretenses, Scott cracks.
“Stiles, just ask him out. Your weird mating dance is distracting.”
They’re in a bar near the office, winding down after another long week. Allison’s there too, although she ducked out to the bathroom five minutes ago and suddenly Stiles wishes she were back and distracting Scott.
“Ah, see, there’s a flaw in that plan,” Stiles says, putting his drink down. “If I ask him out, and he says no, he’ll stop coming to fix my computer.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your computer!”
“That’s entirely beside the point.”
“What is the point?”
“The point is that we have a nicely established rapport going. We have a routine. What’s the point of changing something that’s working?”
“Because you could change it to include sex?”
It’s a good point, an excellent point, like Scott knows Stiles has been jerking off more than he has since high school thinking about Danny and his stupid hands.
“What are you worried about?” Scott persists. “That he’s not into guys? I asked Allison, who said Lydia said that he’s gay. So what’s the problem?”
Stiles wrinkles his nose as he replays that in his mind. “How would Lydia know, anyway?” he asks.
“Because Lydia’s dating Jackson,” Allison says, dropping back into her seat next to Scott, who puts his arm around her. “You know, Whittemore? Daniel Whittemore’s son? Anyway, he’s Danny’s best friend, so it’s a totally legitimate source.”
Stiles digests this information. “This is a weirdly incestuous law firm,” he says after a moment.
“Amen,” Scott mutters under his breath. Despite his own firm belief to the contrary, he didn’t get fired when Chris found out about him dating Allison, but Chris had taken to staring at Scott pointedly whenever they were in the same vicinity. “Anyway,” Scott says, picking the subject up again, “you should just ask him out. He flirts just as much as you do whenever he sees you.”
“It’s true,” Allison says. “The two of you are kind of ridiculous. Just give it up and ask him out.”
Stiles doesn’t know what to say to that. Asking someone out isn’t something that usually freaks him out. He’s a fan of the bold gesture, and he’s the kind of person to wear his heart on his sleeve. But part of him still wants to hold back, and he’s not sure why.
“I don’t have time for a relationship,” he says, not untruthfully. “I work fourteen hour days. I’d be the worst boyfriend ever.”
“Allison and I make it work,” Scott argues. “You could, if you wanted to. Just go for it man, because pining is not a good look on you.”
“I’m not pining,” Stiles says, and it’s true, but it’s mostly because he doesn’t have time to. “I just - ” He sighs. “It’s still a new job, I’m already totally overwhelmed with it, and dating someone from work is almost always a bad idea - ” he ignores Scott’s protesting “hey!” and continues - “and I don’t know if I have the energy to put myself out there like that,” he concludes.
“You’re an idiot,” says a new voice, and the three of them glance up.
“Why, hello Lydia, how nice of you to join us,” Stiles says, as she sits down next to him and takes a sip of his beer.
“Seriously, Stiles, you’re an idiot. I hear there’s a hot new guy, Matt something-or-other, in the IT department, so if you want to make a move, do it soon before you miss your chance. Stop overthinking it.”
“Et tu, Lydia?” Stiles asks, looking wounded, but it’s mostly to cover up the squirm of something he feels at the idea of Danny and the new, hot IT guy together. “How come you didn’t tell me you were dating someone all those times I asked you out, anyway?” he adds in a blatant attempt to change the subject.
He fell for Lydia, hard, in his first month at the firm, until he realized that 1. she was never going to go out with him, and 2. he’s actually a little too intimidated by her to be able to date her anyway. They transitioned fairly easily into being friends after that, especially since she and Allison were good friends, and it was more or less impossible to find Scott without Allison these days.
“Because I didn’t want to date you, and I still wouldn’t have wanted to if I wasn’t already seeing someone.”
“Harsh. And there were so many negatives in that sentence I’m pretty sure you just said you did want to date me.”
This results in an argument about double negatives and the conversation drifts away from Stiles’s love life. It hovers in the back of Stiles’s mind, though, the nagging at the thought of missing his chance with Danny because he’s not willing to give it a shot. It won’t be the end of the world but, but. Stiles hates the idea of regrets.
He’ll do something about it, he decides, leaning against the bar as he collects the next round of drinks. He’ll give it a shot. Just as soon as he has a spare five minutes.
*
By Monday, Scott, who’d sniffed and sneezed his way through Friday drinks, is sick enough to skip work (which at Argent, Hale & Whittemore means he’s probably dying, so Stiles is going over to his place after work to make sure he’s still clinging to life) and Stiles has to fill in for him on one of Derek’s cases.
It’s his first time working with Derek personally, for all that Derek assigns almost all of his tasks. It’s not a particularly difficult case, a merger between two large hotel chains, but it involves a lot of financial minutiae, and it has to happen quickly, which keeps Stiles working late every night for a week. He finds it weirdly enjoyable; Derek, when he’s not busy trying to intimidate the associates, is actually an excellent lawyer. He’s sharp, he can think on his feet, and he’s got a well-hidden snarky sense of humor that Stiles appreciates. If he gets involved enough in his work, he forgets to be surly, and Stiles finds that they actually work well together.
On Friday, as a reward for his good work, Derek lets Stiles come to the final meeting between their client and her new business partner, after instructing him firmly to sit quietly and don’t say anything stupid. In fact, don’t say anything at all.
Stiles can’t quite manage total silence, but he keeps it light and professional. After the contracts are signed, and Alicia shakes Stiles’s hand, and Derek tells him gruffly “Good work,” he leaves the meeting room with a huge grin on his face. Sure, it wasn’t a glamorous, dramatic case, but he he enjoyed it; working to a tight deadline, successfully dealing with hard-headed, demanding people, fixing problems before Derek even noticed them. By the end he was basically running on adrenaline, and now it’s gone and Stiles feels somewhere between elated, relieved and disappointed.
It’s only three in the afternoon, but Derek told him he could go home early, so he picks up his bag, slings it over his shoulder, and salutes the jealous-looking associates on his way out.
He could get used to this.
Stiles waits for the elevator, tapping his foot and pondering all the things he could do with his free afternoon. He might even get a full night’s sleep, god.
The elevator dings, the doors slide open, and Stiles runs straight into Danny.
“Stiles,” Danny says, looking surprised. He steps back into the elevator. “Going somewhere?”
“Got the rest of the day off,” Stiles says happily.
“Impressive,” Danny says. “Do I want to know how much money you made the firm to get a whole afternoon off?”
“Fuckloads,” Stiles says. He generally tries not to swear in the office too much, because it’s “Unprofessional, Stiles, you need to stop acting like a frat boy” as Derek says, but he’s too tired and happy to control his tongue right now.
“Is that an exact amount?” Danny asks, and somehow they’ve ended up both standing in the elevator, and the door slide shut.
“It’s a very precise, lawyer-y term,” Stiles informs him. “You don’t learn about it until your third year of law school, it’s that big a deal.”
Danny snorts. “‘Lawyery’?
“Shut up,” Stiles says.
“Good comeback, I can see why you’re a lawyer.”
“Weren’t you getting off on fourty two?” Stiles asks snarkily. Danny shrugs, but he looks slightly embarrassed when he says,
“Haven’t seen you for a while.”
Stiles looks at him for a long moment, and thinks of all the reasons he decided he wasn’t going to make a move. And then he looks at Danny’s lips and thinks huh.
“If I’m way off base,” he says, taking a step forward, so there’s only a couple of inches between them, “don’t be mad, I’ve only had seven hours sleep this week.”
Stiles reaches up and slides his arm around the back of Danny’s neck and pulls him into a kiss. He keeps it pretty PG, just pressing his lips softly against Danny’s, his fingers sliding through the hair at the base of Danny’s neck.
When Stiles pulls back, Danny’s eyes flicker open and he smiles, then steps forward, pushing gently until Stiles’s back is against the elevator wall, Danny’s hand cupping his neck, his thumb brushing against Stiles’s jaw.
“Fucking finally,” he says, which Stiles would object to except that Danny then ducks his head and kisses Stiles properly, sucking his bottom lip between his own before sliding his tongue into Stiles’s mouth, his free hand curling at Stiles’s waist and god, Stiles just knew he’d be pushy underneath all that niceness. He gets his arms around Danny’s waist and neck and kisses back, way, way to dirtily given that they’re in the elevator at work.
Danny hums into his mouth when Stiles responds, when the elevator lurches to a stop and dings open.
A throat being cleared makes them spring apart, and there’s Peter Hale, looking amused. Before Stiles can say anything, he winks at them and reaches in, pressing the button to close the doors and stepping back.
“I’ll take the next one, boys,” he says as the doors close.
“Well that was - ”
“Kinda creepy?” Danny supplies, and they look at each other and simultaneously start laughing. Stiles resists the temptation to go back to kissing him, because he’s not sure he could stop, and they should really save that for when they’re not at work.
“What time do you finish?” he asks instead, pressing his palm against Danny’s chest. He meant to push him away, no, really, he did, but Danny’s chest is firm and muscular and instead he ends up stroking it. Stiles needs to see what it looks like sans shirt as soon as possible.
“About six, usually,” Danny says. “Dinner?”
“Read my mind, computer-boy,” Stiles says. “I’ll meet you here?”
The elevator reaches the bottom floor and Stiles steps out.
“Looking forward to it,” Danny says, and Stiles can’t help it, he braces his palm against the open door and leans in for one more kiss, laughing when Danny slips him some tongue just before he pulls back.
“Later,” he says.
“That better be a promise,” Danny says as the doors slide shut.
Oh, yeah. It totally is.