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“Ugh,” Derek said and let himself fall into the nearest staff room chair, clutching his coffee mug tightly and trying to inhale as much of the scent as possible. Truth be told, the smell was the only good thing about the coffee – if something as atrocious as this shit could even be considered coffee – apart from the nice and very much needed side-effect of keeping him marginally more awake.
“I’m not moving ever again,” he declared loudly although he was speaking to thin air, hunched in his seat and trying to ignore the pounding headache he’d nursed – ha – for several hours. His shift had ended four hours ago and yet he was still here, because Jackson – fucking Jackson, as always, he hated Jackson, that unreliable bastard – had called in sick and there’d been no one else to cover for him. Twelve hours in a hospital was too much to cope with. He didn’t get paid enough for this. Fuck, doctors complained all the time about shitty working hours, but at least they got paid three times the salary that Derek received and usually didn’t have put up with elderly ladies talking their ears off for hours on end and then bad-touching them.
At this point, he didn’t even care that the hard wooden backrest dug into his ribs and that his ass hurt as soon as it so much touched the chair. It was as if chairs in the staff room were specifically designed to torture nurses in order to force them to keep running around checking on the patients. He was so done with everything and he’s never been so glad to know that if he got through this day, he’d have an entire week off.
Then, of course, because the universe didn’t ever see it fit to give Derek his much deserved break, the abhorrently shrill sound of a patient abusing the bell above the bed reverberated in the air.
“No,” he said.
Someone started giggling to his left. He turned his head to glare at his sister, who was, as always, tragically unaffected by his look. “You look as miserable as a cat left out in heavy rain,” Laura told him cheerfully. She took far too much pleasure from seeing him suffer. “It’s kind of ridiculously endearing.”
“Then why don’t you go check on that patient for me?”
Laura glanced at the board and grinned when she was which room’s light was on. “Nope.”
He hadn’t had much hope to begin with, because his sister was an evil, evil person, but he still wanted to die from disappointment. Derek dropped his head, covering it with his hands. “Who is it?” he asked. “Oh God, it’s Mrs Halloway again, isn’t it?”
Laura burst out laughing.
“Shut up.”
“I will never not find it funny that you are scared of a five foot tall, harmless, eighty-year old hypochondriac.”
“Harmless?” Derek repeated incredulously.
“She’s eighty, Derek, half your size and half your weight. Nothing to be afraid of.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Derek lamented. “She doesn’t touch your ass and make lewd comments that mentally scar you every time you enter the room.”
“I know.” Laura was still giggling. “I’m starting to think she’s not actually a hypochondriac but only comes here as an excuse to ogle you and get new material to spin tales of her young, raggedly handsome lover at the next coffee klatsch.”
“Oh my God!” One of these days, Derek was going to rip the skin off his face. It would be less painful than listening to the devil in persona that was his sister.
“Remind me to thank her before she’s discharged,” Laura said, sipping her coffee. “I’ve never been more entertained by the look of sheer horror and discomfort on your face.”
“I hate you,” Derek grumbled.
“No you don’t,” Laura replied easily. “And just FYI, it’s not Mrs Halloway.”
“It’s not?” Derek peeked through his fingers, suddenly vaguely hopeful only to feel something clench deep in his gut when he saw the room number. “No,” he said resolutely. “No, absolutely not.”
“You are such a drama queen.”
“Please, can you just go?”
“It’s cute that you still think I’d ever cave to your puppy eyes,” Laura said.
“I’ll do chores for a week,” Derek offered. “I’ll even go into the store and buy you new tampons.”
Laura tilted her head. “Tempting,” she admitted, “if only for the chance to see your constipated face. But sadly for you, not tempting enough.” She thrashed her coffee and clapped him on the back. “Don’t be a wuss, Derek.”
He really didn’t know why he’d ever thought it would be a good idea to work at the same station as Laura did. Derek heaved a sigh, stood up and slowly made his way to room 214, all the while muttering ‘I love my job, I love my job’ under his breath. Unfortunately, the mantra didn’t help convince himself of that.
It wasn’t that he hated the kid in room 214 or anything. He didn’t even creep him out like Mrs Halloway did, but Jesus, the boy wouldn’t give him a break, and frankly, nothing was more annoying than being called into a room at least twice per hour to find out nothing was wrong and the patient was asking for something that either a) wasn’t Derek’s problem or b) Stiles could’ve easily done himself. Also, just like with a lot of the old ladies lying here, who were glad when they had someone to converse with, once he entered the room he wouldn’t be able to leave for another ten minutes because Stiles. Just. Wouldn’t. Stop. Talking.
It didn’t help that Derek would sometimes find himself watching the movement of Stiles’ lips in a rapture or caught his brain going on a tangent that involved Stiles’ mouth doing much less innocent things. He wasn’t ashamed to admit that he thought Stiles was attractive. You’d have to be blind, or maybe a misandrist, to not acknowledge that he was good-looking, even if it was more in a cute-boyish way and not in a male-model type way. He was, however, slightly ashamed that someone who was barely even legal managed to get a rise out of him so often with so little effort, and that Derek repeatedly thought of more and more creative ways to get Stiles to shut up. Ways that had nothing to do with punching him in the face, as he usually wished he could do with patients who were a royal pain in his ass.
To be completely honest, it annoyed him more that he wasn’t as annoyed as he should be by Stiles’ frequent ridiculous requests and vaguely appalling attempts at conversation.
Derek knocked twice just to be polite – as if there was such a thing as privacy in a hospital - and then entered.
Stiles was lying on the bed, twiddling his thumbs and staring at the ceiling with an unmistakably bored expression. He startled a little when Derek opened the door and his face – there was no other word for it – lit up when he saw Derek.
Derek refused to admit that it was cute. Stiles was probably just thrilled he got to annoy him some more anyway.
“Hey,” Stiles said excitedly, sitting up quickly. “I thought you’d left already. Didn’t your shift end, like, three hours ago?”
“Four,” Derek corrected gruffly, wondering idly why Stiles had his working hours memorised. Then again, he would have to. A reliable source had told him that Stiles only ever called for the nurses as often as he did when...well, when Derek was on shift. That he was a perfectly well-behaved and low-maintenance patient when Derek wasn’t around. He begged to differ, but well, not everyone was the elected victim of Stiles’ hyperactive phases. It was like the kid had made it his mission to make Derek’s life his personal hell.
“Is that even legal?” Stiles wondered out loud. “For you to work such long shifts, I mean?”
“I’m not going to cut you open, so you don’t have to worry about me accidentally killing you due to extreme fatigue.”
“Good to know, but I wasn’t so much worried about me as rather about your health. I don’t know if anyone told you, but dark circles under the eyes aren’t actually fashionable this season.”
Derek raised his eyebrows. “I might not be so tired if you didn’t have me chasing up and down the floor for no reason all the damn time,” he pointed out testily. “If you called me here to ask me to ‘close the curtain just a little bit’ I might strangle you.”
Stiles blushed a furious red, bit his lips and looked down at his fingers that were currently worrying some stray threads of his bed sheets. “Huh,” he thought. Maybe he should’ve called Stiles out on his shit earlier; he might’ve saved himself a lot of trouble.
“Uh, no,” Stiles said. “Actually, just, uh, the saline solution....”
Derek looked at the IV drip, which was, indeed, empty. “I’ll get you a new one,” he said and upon watching Stiles twitch uncomfortably, he added, “Do you need me to get you some more painkillers as well?”
Stiles had managed to break his leg quite spectacularly in four different places during a lacrosse game, apparently, as Stiles had admitted, ‘without external influences’, which basically meant that no one had rammed into him, he’d just been too uncoordinated to walk across a flat surface. Derek hadn’t been surprised to hear that after seeing the way Stiles flailed his way through every conversation.
Stiles grimaced. “I’d love that,” he admitted, “but Dr Deaton told me I mustn’t take any more before my final surgery tomorrow.”
“I didn’t know it had been rescheduled.” Derek hooked up the IV. “You’ll be released earlier too, I guess?”
“Yeah.” Stiles looked disappointed. Dejected, even. Who looked disappointed when someone told them they could get out of the hospital early? No one liked being in a hospital. Well, no one beside Mrs Halloway, but that was an entirely different story. “I bet you’re glad that I’ll be out of your hair soon.”
“You have no idea,” Derek muttered under his breath.
He hadn’t intended for Stiles to hear it – despite everything that Laura claimed, he wasn’t actually an asshole and knew how to be polite – but apparently he hadn’t been quiet enough, judging by the way Stiles tensed.
“Look,” Stiles said, “I know you hate me. That’s okay. Well, it’s not, actually, but so what. I guess I wanna say thanks? Cause I know your holidays start tomorrow and I probably won’t see you again, so, uh, thanks for still being nicer to me than Jackson or Boyd? Kind of, at least? I mean, I know I should’ve caught the clue earlier and stuff, so I’m sorry, but Laura said...anyway I’m gonna miss your grumpy face.”
Derek stared. “You-“ he started, then cut himself off, because he was seriously beginning to suspect there he was missing big parts of the conversation and wasn’t following at all. “Uh. What?”
Stiles coughed. “Just pretend I never said anything so I can leave with at least parts of my dignity still intact.”
“I’m not sure you ever had any dignity to begin with,” Derek replied automatically. He frowned, his mind still stuck on what Stiles had said. “What makes you think I hate you?”
Stiles looked like he wanted to hide under the covers, which was an image that Derek couldn’t easily wrap his mind around. If there was one thing Stiles had never been, it was shy and self-conscious. “You look like you want to murder me every time you walk into the room?” he answered hesitantly.
“I kind of do when you call just to have me pick up your cell phone from the floor although you easily could’ve reached it yourself,” Derek said.
“Yeah, I figured.”
“Then why do you keep ringing?” Derek asked. “Why are you actively trying to rile me up?”
“It’s not my fault you’re ridiculously hot when you glower, or, well, when you do anything, really,” Stiles said and then clapped his hand over his mouth. “Oh my God, forget I ever said that.”
“You – I...what?” Derek’s mind was reeling.
“You didn’t know?” Stiles gaped. “How could you not know? Derek, I called you in here and made you puff up the pillows just so that I could see your stupid biceps flex under your shirt. I threw random things to the ground to watch your ass when you bent over to pick them up. I tried to ask you out over horrible canteen food. I really wasn’t subtle. But I get it, you’re not interested.”
Derek remembered that particular conversation. He didn’t really remember Stiles directly asking him out, but in hindsight, he had dropped a number of suggestive remarks that could’ve been interpreted as a failed attempt at asking someone on a date.
So Stiles was attracted to him and didn’t just call him all the time to piss him off. That...made a disturbing amount of sense. Jesus, Stiles was totally a younger version of Mrs Halloway.
Stiles was definitely beet red by now. “Also, I was bored and you were the only one who’d bother to talk back? Oh God, I’m just gonna point out that you probably also took a Doctor’s oath to not harm anyone. I’m gonna be gone when you come back and you’ll never see me again and I’m going to pretend I didn’t completely humiliate myself back there.”
“Stiles,” Derek said, pinching the bridge of his nose, “I don’t hate you.”
Stiles froze. “Um,” he said. “Okay?”
“You’re the most annoying little shit I’ve ever met,” Derek continued. Stiles shrunk under the covers. “It’s a good thing you’re pretty enough to make up for it, because sometimes I definitely want to punch you.” In your face, with my mouth, he added silently. Repeatedly.
“Um,” Stiles said intelligently. He sounded a bit like a broken record. “I’m getting mixed signals here, I think.”
Derek grinned. “Friday,” he told him. Four days after being discharged should be enough time for Stiles to mentally and physically prepare him for this and also be able to walk on crutches without being whammied with pain meds. “Mac Andrew’s diner. I’ll pick you up at six. You’re paying after the excruciatingly severe mental anguish you’ve caused me during this week.”
Stiles sputtered. “What?”
Derek ignored him in favour of looking at his beeping pager. Laura was calling him, so he turned around to walk out of the room. He’d almost reached the door when Stiles cried out, “but I’ll still be wearing a cast on Friday, how are we supposed to have devastatingly hot sex when I’m basically incapacitated?”
“Be creative,” Derek advised him. “I’m sure we can think of something.” He stopped once more with his hand on the door handle. “Don’t let my sister catch you jerking off in the hospital bed.”
He was still laughing about the strangled noise Stiles made when he pulled the door shut behind him.