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Derek Hale is a creature of habit.
For six mornings every week (except Saturdays—Laura forces him to take Saturdays off, saying she doesn’t need an actual automaton for a brother) at four thirty sharp, he would emerge from his and Laura’s apartment conveniently situated right on the second story over their little café, freshly showered and dressed in his customary black t-shirt and jeans combo, and trudge down the backstairs to the shop.
The Triskelion is a fairly simple and what most people would call “quaint” little coffeehouse, which Laura half coerced Derek into co-owning with her last summer. The interior of the shop is a mish-mash of different styles, with cozy vintage furniture mixed with the occasional minimalist pieces which Laura bought off her artist friends, hardwood counters, stainless steel cabinets, and sleek, high end coffee machines and top quality equipments; it’s all dark muted colors, clean lines and metallic sheen, interspersed with splashes of color from Laura’s oils and watercolors hanging on the walls. Everything is arranged according to Laura’s artistic taste and Derek’s exact specifications.
Derek enjoys his set of shop-opening duties. It’s an established routine which he has gradually perfected over the past year; during those bleak months in limbo while he drowned in mindless anger and the feelings of utter helplessness and desolation, with nothing to hold on to except what little stability these little morning sessions in the kitchen gave him; and those weeks of indecision while he made up his mind about culinary school, before he sent out his applications; and the anxiety now of waiting to hear back from his prospective schools. He has it down to a science now. Almost without having to think about it, he unlocks the doors, draws up the blinds, opens the windows, starts coffee for himself (a double shot of espresso—triple shot if he’s anticipating a particularly trying day—with two sugars), and tidies up a little while he waits for the coffee (particularly if it was Erica who closed shop the day before). Derek likes routine because it’s predictable and soothing. He hates surprises.
When everything in the store is clean and arranged to his satisfaction, Derek puts on his plain black apron and makes his way through the stockroom to the kitchen hidden out back, to make use of the top-of-the-line appliances and cooking utensils Laura had insisted on installing. He then proceeds to mix and stir and knead and bake for the next couple of hours, whipping up salted caramel chocolate chip cookies, wild blueberry muffins with crumb toppings, buttercream vanilla cupcakes, loaves of chewy sourdough bread for things like bite-sized avocado and turkey sandwiches or good ol’ grilled cheese, dark chocolate mud cakes, savory buttermilk scones with parmesan and an assortment of spices and herbs, creamy cheesecakes with strawberry swirls, anything that strikes his fancy; he makes a small batch of each kind which he later arranges in the baskets and pans in the display case next to the counter, and there is a blackboard propped up by the display where he carefully prints out in block letters the pastry choices for the day.
He and Laura have agreed that the baking is not for making a profit; they only ever offer a small selection of food each day and there is no “set” menu. It’s just that some people like to have a bite to eat with their coffee, and ordering out from professional bakeries seems redundant when there’s a chef/baker-in-training with too much free time hanging about the place.
It has always been his favorite time of day, those quiet hours of the early morning, spent “working his magic” in the kitchen as his mother would say, surrounded by the delicious aroma of baked goods mixed with fresh coffee. Derek likes to work with his hands, to keep busy and not have to think too much, to feel useful and not like the dysfunctional sociopath he sometimes suspects he is.
The others usually show up at around seven, just as he’s wrapping up in the kitchen. They change into their own black uniform t-shirts while Derek stacks the last of the baking sheets and mixing bowls back into their usual places, and then they do the last minute set-ups together: realign the displaced tables and chairs, arrange the morning papers and magazines on the little stand in the corner, check the stocks and the supplies for the day, set up the outdoor seats if the weather is good; Laura doodles on the menu sometimes if she’s in the mood; Erica, Laura, and sometimes Isaac (and even Boyd a handful of times) would sneak a pastry from the display case when Derek is busy wiping things down one last time before he flips the little hand drawn sign to OPEN.
The Triskelion opens at seven thirty every day. Morning shifts are nearly always two people, as they don’t get much business in the mornings. Their café is tucked away in a residential area, on the edge of a university campus; hence they have managed to maintain a rather steady stream of business since they opened. However, there are also two university cafés and a Starbucks in their neighborhood, so the competition is pretty strong. Laura decided to not fight with the other cafés over the early morning crowd, choosing instead to cater to the students’ need for a quiet and comfy place to study in the afternoons and evenings. They close at ten thirty, but as Derek has early mornings, he’s hardly ever around for closing time (except once in a while when he feels an intense urge to clean).
Mornings shifts at The Triskelion are laid back, mostly just the regulars trickling in at their various “usual” times and asking for their usual orders. Except during the brief bouts of chaotic frenzy during mid-terms or finals time, when the sleep-deprived, zombie-like students flock here from the overcrowded Starbucks and school cafés; those mornings were awful. But aside from the horrors of exam weeks, morning shifts at the café are generally okay for Derek.
Afternoons, though, are an entirely different affair. It’s like every caffeine-junkie college student and harried parent with their flocks of restless, unruly brats just let loose from the schoolyard decides to congregate at the shop, clamoring and demanding and generally being rude, seemingly solely for the purpose of annoying Derek.
Derek does not understand why every single customer feels the urge to inflict idle, stilted, oftentimes rather embarrassing conversation on him. He’s reserved by nature; he would take staying in to cook and/or read all by his lonesome over going out to “mingle” with people any day. (Though Laura never listens to his protests when she drags him out “to have some fun, you do know what ‘fun’ is, don’t you, baby bro?”.) He would have thought his “sullen, grumpy, and generally disagreeable demeanor” (Laura’s words, not his) would put people off and make them back off, or at least think twice before launching their blathering at him, but no. Derek is forced to listen to all sorts of mindless drivel from their various patrons.
Even worse are the children. For some reason, the local mothers and babysitters and grandmothers and the occasional uncle or brother all like to have a kid or three trailing behind them on their quests for caffeine, wreaking havoc wherever they go; and every child that enters the shop is strangely determined to do their utmost to make Derek suffer as much as humanly possible, in all sorts of creative ways.
Derek hates afternoon shifts. He has two afternoon shifts a week and they are the bane of his otherwise fairly regular existence.
Derek is on one such hateful afternoon shift on this particular Friday afternoon in early September, god help him. He is currently trying to hold down the fort by himself behind the counter while Isaac mops up the contents of an extra large strawberry frappe some spoiled little monster emptied all over a table by the door, and Laura is out back making a couple of phone calls while she grabs more supplies. He is right smack in the middle of a prime example of the worst type of torment he has to suffer through twice a week.
After what seems like hours but is probably just twenty minutes, tops, the line has finally diminished to just one person. Derek sends the present customer off with his vanilla latte and a curt nod, sighing internally and already looking forward to a brief respite which seems to be finally on the horizon.
The last woman in line seems vaguely familiar, probably a local. Perched in her arms is a maybe kindergarten aged boy (quite possibly a bit too big to be hauled around by his mother, in Derek’s opinion) who is currently gazing rapturously at Derek, an oddly predatory expression on his face. It’s uncanny how similar that look is to how Derek imagines a hungry wolf would watch its helpless prey.
And now that he’s thinking about it, that eerie gaze seems somehow familiar. This… does not bode well.
Derek looks behind the woman with trepidation and slowly dawning horror, and sure enough, there’s the second little terror with an almost identical face peering up at Derek from behind their mother’s legs as she walks up to the counter, an impish grin on his small face. It’s the Tiny Twin Terrors (as dubbed by Laura) who had started coming into the shop with their mother over a month ago. They turn up every Friday afternoon to make Derek’s life absolute hell. Twin One has rapidly grown smitten with Derek (Laura gleefully predicts a proposal of marriage any week now), while Twin Two makes it his life’s mission to cause as much chaos in Derek’s orderly life as he can (which is a surprisingly large amount). Derek honestly cannot decide which one is worse.
Derek grits his teeth and steels himself for the imminent onslaught of shrill cries and creepiness and unreasonable demands and just overall mayhem.
“Mister Derek Mister Derek! Hi! Did you miss me? I missed you lots!” True to form, Twin One chirps up as soon as his mother stops in front of Derek, his glinting eyes following Derek’s every movement unblinkingly. Twin Two ducks behind his mother when he sees Derek glancing his way, then pops up on her other side and proceeds to shred a paper napkin he must have picked up somewhere into little strips, giggling while he tosses the carnage on the floor and all over the glass pastry display.
The woman doesn’t even glance down. “Hello, Derek. Pretty nice out today isn’t it? Thank God it’s Friday! You are looking good, as always.” She grins while Derek fidgets and glumly thinks about how much he hates Fridays, actually, and then she clears her throat, handing over a ten dollar bill. “A large iced raspberry white chocolate mocha for me, as usual, and two small toffee chocolate frappes for the boys, please. Ethan, honey, stop making a mess. Ethan.” The mother finally notices Twin Two’s antics. She rolls her eyes and tries halfheartedly to bat the napkin out of his dirty fingers with one hand. Twin Two ducks away and she has to put Twin One down to scold Two properly. Twin One immediately disappears from sight as he toddles up to the counter. He latches onto the edge of the counter with his fingers and strains to peek over it at Derek; only his eyes and mop of messy dark blond hair are visible.
“Hey Mister Derek, guess what? We learned about wolves today at school! So cool! Ms. Morell showed us a bunch of pictures and there was a ginormous black one with pretty eyes like yours! Ms. Morell let me pet the picture. Can I pet you? Please?” He flails his arms in excitement and promptly disappears from view for two seconds before popping up again. “Oh, oh, can I work here with you when I grow up, Mister Derek? Will you let me eat the chocolate syrup?” Twin One continues on in this fashion, paying no heed to the way Derek’s carefully impassive face is slowly slipping into aggravation. Derek can feel his eyebrows furrowing.
As if on cue, Twin Two pops up from the other side of the blackboard menu where he just managed to struggle out from his mother’s clutches. “Eyebrows! Do that eyebrow thing again!” He crows and smacks his sticky and filthy palms down on the glass display case Derek had wiped off not a minute ago, leaving two muddy paw prints on the previously spotless surface. Derek can feel his left eyebrow give an involuntarily twitch. Twin Two squeals gleefully and begins pounding on the glass with his fists. “Again!”
Derek barely suppresses a growl of frustration and turns abruptly around to go about making the drinks. They are children, probably no more than six years old; he is a twenty-five-year-old grown-ass man. He will not lose his temper at children.
Twin One is still chattering enthusiastically, voice helpfully raised now that Derek is not directly in front of him. Twin Two’s pounding has mercifully been stopped by his mother; he has reverted to shouting, “Eyebrows!” at the top of his lungs. On repeat. Derek thinks to himself that this must be some exceptionally creative form of torture as he moves on autopilot, pumping the correct mixture of white mocha and raspberry syrup into the large cup in his hand.
Laura must have figured out that the Terror Twins are here. There is no way two phone calls and a few bags of coffee beans can take her this long. His sister is a horrible, heartless woman. She knows how bad Derek is with children. They confuse and terrify him, and he would have liked to forever steer clear of any and all individuals that have yet to reach their adolescence. All children under the age of ten look the same to him, all soft and pink and seemingly harmless; yet every single one is a miniature bundle of destruction and despair in disguise, capable of reducing Derek to wanting nothing more than to cower pathetically into a dark corner. Not that this ever happened before, or ever will. Most certainly not. (And no one can prove otherwise.)
And now, with these two overactive children in particular, clamoring for his attention at the same time? Derek can feel his sanity slowly deteriorate.
He sets the cup of white mocha down on the counter, trying to snap out of the downward plunge towards utter desolation his thoughts have taken. One is singing a song now, something about brave and handsome princes (and scowling princesses and messy monsters? But that can’t be right), while Two starts on another paper napkin. Derek hurriedly puts the finishing touches on the chocolate frappes, drizzling chocolate syrup over the whipped cream topping, and then puts the lids on and hands them off.
“Your drinks,” he mumbles, hoping against hope that they will be on their way soon.
The woman smiles at him and takes the cups and straws, then hands the two smaller cups off to the boys. Twin One claps his hands in delight and mercifully stops his babbling to slurp greedily at his drink. Two looks for a second as if he’s wavering between savoring his sugary treat and sacrificing it for his ongoing quest of making messes, but fortunately the lure of icy chocolate-flavored slush seems too strong to resist.
Derek has barely breathed out a sigh of relief at the narrow escape from an impending sticky disaster before Two tears the lid off his cup and proceeds to lap at the contents like an eager puppy. Bits of cream and ice chunks dribble off his chin onto his hands and clothes, and the abandoned lid and straw leave a small chocolaty puddle on the floor. Derek closes his eyes and counts to ten, resisting the urge to leap over the counter right this second to scrub everything clean. Twice.
The woman is looking at Derek apologetically when he opens his eyes again. She tries her best to clean up the mess (but there isn’t much she can do with shredded napkins), and then starts herding the twins toward the exit. Two does as he’s told, for once, leaving behind a trail of chocolate water as he goes. But One hangs back, still watching Derek with unnerving intensity.
“Come along, Aiden, say goodbye,” the woman calls at the door. “Bye Derek! Sorry about the mess. And Laura! Lovely to see you again. Aiden, c’mon, we’re leaving.”
Laura, the traitor, seems to have deemed it safe to come out now. Derek throws her a glare but she ignores it completely, choosing instead to wave cheerily at the twins.
“It’s great to see you too! Bye Ethan! Bye Aiden! See you guys next week! Enjoy your drinks!”
“Bye Laura! Bye Eyebrows!” Twin Two says after some prodding from his mother and sticks out his tongue.
Laura sniggers. “The kid made an excellent call, Eyebrows.” And Derek manfully resists reverting to childish name-calling wars. He has “Ms. Frizzle” in his arsenal though, so the advantage is his.
“See you next Friday Mister Derek! I’ll miss you! Remember to think about me every day! Bye bye Laura!” Twin One flashes them a chocolaty grin and finally, finally turns around to trot over to his mother and brother.
The wind chime Laura insisted on installing at the door tinkles, the sound grating on Derek’s already frayed nerves. He watches as some lanky guy with a buzzcut holds the door open for the trio as they head out at last. The guy waves the mother and sons off with a flourish, and then proceeds to trip over the threshold as he steps in the door, making the chimes jangle loudly.
Derek rolls his eyes at the blatant clumsiness, which is the equivalent of pandemonium-in-the-making in his book, and turns to Laura, ready to bail and call in his ten minute break. Laura, who’s hiding a smile behind her hand, evidently has other plans for him, however.
“Aww, an adorable newbie! This one’s all yours, brother mine. He looks like he could do with a dose of your amazing charm, stunning eloquence and winning personality,” she glides close to Derek to whisper with an eyebrow waggle, green eyes glinting with mischief.
Derek opens his mouth to retort something scathing and probably a tad childish about Laura’s nasty personal hygiene routine (or lack thereof) whenever she gets into a piece of artwork, but Laura is already stepping away from the counter. Any further squabbling is deterred by a throat being cleared hesitantly, so he contents himself with throwing her a dirty look, then redirects his ferocious scowl at the person (well, the other person if you want to get technical) who blew his plans of a light workout session and possibly a bit of therapeutic cleaning right out of the water, the current source of all his woes. The poor guy nearly stumbles back a step, managing to catch himself at the last minute, eyes wide, mouth gaping, cheeks faintly flushed. Derek nearly does a double take because the guy is attractive up close, all pale skin and freckles and eyes the color of fine whiskey framed by long, long lashes, and that mouth.
Okay, so Derek ends up doing a double take anyway. Buzzcut Guy is about Derek’s height, long-limbed and a bit lanky; his body is wiry but built, surprisingly broad shoulders encased in a rumpled looking dark blue t-shirt with the Bat Signal emblazoned across the chest. His hair is cropped close to his scalp. His facial structure is striking and strangely delicate; the tip of his nose is turned up the slightest touch, rather endearingly; his lips are plushy and pink. He has moles scattered across the bits of skin Derek can see. There’s a sheen of sweat on his forehead and upper lip; Derek’s eyes involuntarily follows the path of a droplet as it makes its way from his hairline past his jaw, down his neck and over a clavicle to disappear under the slightly distorted neckline of his shirt.
Derek hastily looks away when he realizes he’s staring. When his gaze inadvertently lands on Laura, she does a finger wave from by where she is leaning by the pastry case, chin in one hand and a half-eaten croissant in the other, obviously settling down to watch the show. Derek doesn’t even have the heart to glower at her anymore. He secretly resolves to boycott chocolate cake in his kitchen for at least a month as payback though. Never let it be said that Derek Hale doesn’t fight his battles; he just prefers his own special methods. He turns to Buzzcut Guy, hoping to get this over with as quickly as he can. “Yes?” He asks, voice low and gruffer than usual.
“Uh, hi?” Buzzcut starts shakily in an unnaturally high voice, looking uncertainly between Derek and Laura, then clears his throat again and adds in a less squeaky tone, “N-nice café you’ve got here! I hope you guys have good coffee. Sure smells like it. I’ve walked past this place, like, twenty times now on my way to class! I moved in with my best friend and his girlfriend this semester; the apartment is just a block away from here, so I guess we’re practically neighbors! Ah ha ha ha. Um, anyway, I’m so glad Lydia pointed this place out to me as the obvious answer to my prayers when I was freaking out over being kicked out of Starbucks earlier today. Lydia always has the best ideas. I don’t know why I never came in here before; force of habit probably? Boy I’ve been missing out this whole time… Ahem. Oh yeah, I’m Stiles by the way. Jeez, do you ever stop smolder—I mean, scowling? Um, never mind. So uh, coffee?”
Derek's brain halts its linguistic cognitive functions midway through that flurry of words and tunes what little remains of his brainpower exclusively to his visual perception, focusing on the way those long, slender fingers flutter through the air as if to punctuate the kid's animated rambling. Those bony but nimble-looking fingers, in combination with the toned, slightly sweaty forearms covered in fine hairs and the flexing biceps and deltoids which are only just noticeable where the slightly baggy t-shirt clings to them with perspiration, all make it exceedingly hard to drag his eyes away and concentrate on more appropriate things such as human speech and, oh right, his job. He only just manages to latch onto something about being neighbors and the name “Stiles”? What the hell is a “Stiles”? Is that even a real name people give their kids? But Derek just grunts and nods to hurry him along. The sooner this “Stiles” is out of here, the sooner Derek can make his escape up to his room, and the better for the battered remains of Derek’s sanity.
“Okay! I would like a caramel macchiato.” Then he draws in a quick breath and adds hurriedly, “Only… Could you, um, could you maybe, possibly, make it with extra syrup? Like, with extra caramel, and, um, a bit of all the other syrups you got? Maybe? Pretty please? Yeah?” He smiles at Derek hopefully. “Danny at Starbucks usually lets me have four or five different kinds of syrup, sometimes even six if he’s in a good mood! Well, that was before I got kicked out just now.” He does an exaggerated pout, doing an admirably accurate impression of a kicked puppy.
Derek tries not to let his eyes linger too obviously on those lips, but they are red and soft-looking and extremely distracting. He also quashes an irrational urge to not to be outdone by this Danny person.
He turns to look a question at Laura, who’s watching the exchange closely with a calculating expression (which is frankly terrifying and bodes ominous things in Derek’s near future).
Laura shrugs and nods, says, “Go for it!” and Stiles pumps his fist in triumph, a blinding grin splitting his face.
“Yeah, Laura Hale: the pinnacle of charm and eloquence,” Derek mutters under his breath with a mocking eye roll. He turns to Stiles, shaking his head in resignation, and asks, “Hot? …Or iced?”
Stiles snaps his head up and gapes at Derek’s “Hot?” and then blushes scarlet when he hears the second part. He looks down and mumbles, “Yeah, hot, totally, I like hot,” and peeks up at Derek through his dark lashes. Derek can’t help staring a little at the whiskey-gold of his irises. Stiles holds his gaze for a small eternity (in reality probably around five seconds) and looks away first, blush darkening. Derek hasn’t been able to retain eye contact for more than a second with anyone other than Laura, let alone stare anyone down, for many months now. A moment of awkward silence later, Stiles holds up a hand and says quickly, “Oh and by the way, could you top it off with whipped cream and syrups and sprinkles and what-have-you? Thanks!”
Derek heaves a relieved put-upon sigh and grabs a large cup, heading for the syrup pumps. With an eye roll, he adds in a couple pumps each of mocha, white chocolate, hazelnut, toffee, caramel, and cinnamon syrup. That’s six syrups. With a wince, he tentatively pumps in a bit of the mint as well. Derek adamantly refuses to add any of the fruit-flavored syrups or the coconut into this already satanic mixture though. Just. No. By the time he’s done, the syrup mixture in the cup is over an inch deep. Derek looks at it in despair.
While Derek is busy pondering his terrible life choices and his bone-deep hatred of syrup, Laura saunters over to behind the till. “Hey, Stiles, right? I’m Laura. As you probably have already figured out, I am the boss here.” She smirks at Derek challengingly and offers her hand to Stiles, who shakes it kind of cautiously. “Yes, that’s right, I own this fine specimen of wild mountain man. Kind of. Sorry about Mr. Grumpy-pants here,” she hip checks Derek before moving to lean on top of the cashier register. “Feel free to laugh at him, we all do around here. He won’t bite, unless you ask very nicely.” She winks.
The blush returns to Stiles’s cheeks and he stutters a bit. “H-huh? Wha—? O…kay?” He looks back and forth between them a couple of times and asks haltingly, “Are you two—?”
Laura chuckles. “Probably not what you were thinking, sweetie. Grumpy here is my darling baby brother, aren’t you, Der?” She leans over to smooth down Derek’s t-shirt, which was perfectly fine to begin with, thank-you-very-much, and then smacks him once, hard, on the chest. “Go froth up some milk, Stiles here doesn’t have all day!”
“You do understand the concept of co-ownership, don’t you, boss,” Derek remarks drily, but he’s too tired to pick a proper fight today and his brain is still recovering from its earlier haze of sexual frustration, so he wisely stops at that and goes to pick up some milk from the fridge and a clean pitcher, setting about steaming the milk.
Stiles seems to perk up a little at Laura’s words. “Oh! I see. Awesome! Der…? Short for Derek?”
“Got it in one! Smart kid. And you can totally just call him Grumpy. Though, sometimes,” she leans over the counter and stage-whispers dramatically, “he prefers ‘Muffin.’”
Derek heaves a longsuffering sigh, repeats “Frizzle, Frizzle, Frizzle” like a mantra in his head, and starts pouring the milk into the cold pitcher.
Laura ignores him and carries on the conversation. “So, tell me, Stiles: how did you manage to get kicked out of Starbucks? I thought they’re a pretty easygoing crowd over there?”
“It’s really stupid. Seriously.” It sounds like Stiles is hedging. He’s blushing even harder now, blood making his face and neck bright red.
“Indulge me, I’m curious.”
Derek shakes his head to himself, going over to the steam wand to begin frothing the milk evenly, his hands steady and sure with the familiar motions.
“Um. Okay. Uh. So… Danny, I mentioned Danny earlier, right? Well, Danny and I are bros, sort of. I always used to go to him for my coffee fix. He gives me the extra syrup cheap, which is nice of him because I’m just a poor college student, y’know?” Stiles starts fidgeting on his feet. Derek is half paying attention to his words as he carefully strains the steamed milk into the cup, slowly rotating his wrists counterclockwise, as is his custom.
Stiles huffs out a breath and resumes his tale. “So, today after lunch I went to pick up my coffee as usual, and Danny started complaining about how I’m always mooching syrup off him. I’ve always been pretty bad at noticing my surroundings, okay, so I didn’t notice his boss there, I swear! I… Well, I kind of… offered him sexual favors in exchange for the syrup? And his boss was right there to hear it.” Stiles scoffs and makes a face, probably trying for indignant, but ultimately looking flustered. “Yeah. Stupid, right? Though in my defense, blow jobs from me? Totally worth all the syrups, dude. I mean, who wouldn’t want a piece of The Stilinski?” He gestures at himself grandly and a little awkwardly. Laura titters and nods her apparent agreement. Stiles beams at that.
Derek can feel his coherent thought processes slowly disintegrate with the phrase “sexual favors”; his exhausted brain completely zones out at “blow jobs”, mind filling with fragments of half-formed, rather scandalous ideas, nothing concrete, mostly just vague impressions of lush lips against heated skin. He notices belatedly that the paper cup in front of him has started to brim over with the hot, frothy milk while he was distracted by Stiles’s ridiculous narrative. He rights the pitcher immediately and tries to salvage the situation, but there’s already a small pool of sweetened foamy milk on the stainless steel worktop. Derek stares at the mess in dumb horror.
“Derek, sweetheart, you okay?” Laura is suddenly next to him, leaning up and propping her chin on his shoulder. She takes one look at the overflowing cup and tsks, patting him on his other shoulder. “Oh, baby bro, so you’ve been enjoying Story Time with Stiles? I’m sure you know what to do with this. Messes are your specialty, after all. I’ll just be over here, chatting with Stiles. He’s a keeper, this one.” She leaves Derek to his own devices with a final squeeze to his bicep. “So Stiles, looks like Der-der is going to be a while, yet. But it’s okay, we can take this opportunity to bond and become BFFs! Let’s talk about you. Tell me about your day.”
“Oh. Uh—okay?” Stiles casts a concerned look at Derek, and seems adorably confused for a second until he shrugs and goes with it.
This time, Derek resolutely tunes out their conversation to avoid any further mishaps. He grabs a stack of spare hand towels and starts mopping up the mess, then carefully carries the cup over to the sink to pour the excess milk down the drain, burning his left thumb a little with the steaming hot liquid. He curses under his breath and licks his thumb quickly on reflex, then runs the sore digit under cold tap water and wipes it on a towel. He then slowly settles back into his rhythm and gets the espresso ready at just the right time, then gently pours it into the frothy milk, leaving a perfectly round espresso mark on the white foam. He looks down critically when he’s done adding the espresso. He’s fairly confident that he’s managed to achieve the ideal ratio of milk to espresso, but there’s not a lot of foam due to the accident earlier, and it just doesn’t look like a macchiato made by a trained barista, which Derek most definitely is. Derek eyes the remaining froth left in the pitcher thoughtfully and decides—to hell with it, he’s going to make this monster macchiato look good. He scoops up the remaining foam in the pitcher and piles it evenly into the cup. He is very meticulous about it, almost gets the exact correct amount of froth, but because it’s sloppy, drippy froth, some of it still manages trickle over. Derek curses internally and starts wiping up again.
“Oh, don’t forget the whipped cream, Der!” Laura reminds him, watching his struggle with an amused air.
“And sprinkles!” Stiles adds helpfully.
Derek grits his teeth and suppresses the urge to scream. Nothing has been going his way today, and Laura is being even more maddeningly patronizing than usual. She can probably tell Stiles has piqued Derek’s interest and is determined not to make this easy for him—as if he’s going to attempt anything in the first place. Derek doesn’t do friendly with strangers. With anyone. Not anymore. He gives up on his attempts at a decent presentation and grabs the whipped cream to pile as much as he can over the mess in the cup, then throws on some caramel and the colored sugar sprinkles the kids go wild for. He tries not to look too closely as he snaps the lid on, giving it one last swipe with a clean towel before heading over to the register.
“Here.” Derek plops the completed sugary monstrosity down by the till, wiped free of all remnants of the spillage and looking none the worse for wear. If it weren’t for the fact that he’s actually sweating in the air-conditioned interior of the shop, you wouldn’t be able to tell he’s spent over five minutes struggling over the stupid thing.
“Oh, great! Thanks!” Stiles looks up, eyes bright, from his animated conversation with Laura (about male actors and “fanfiction”, from what Derek has caught. He emphatically does not want to know). He reaches for the drink eagerly, then pauses with his hand in mid-air, eyes glued to the lower half of Derek’s face for a very long second, completely frozen. Stiles licks his lips once and swallows, quickly averting his gaze to his fidgeting hands. “You—you’ve got-” Gulp. “You’ve got some—” He flicks his gaze up once, then promptly squeezes his eyes shut and makes a weak, confused sound from the back of his throat, ever-present blush intensifying.
Derek tilts his head in confusion and looks at Laura, only to see her doubled over in silent laughter. He frowns a little in mixed confusion and annoyance, but that only seems to set her off into another bout of hysterics. Derek decides to ignore her.
Stiles is keeping his face turned away from both Derek and Laura now and grabs his drink, flicking the lid off and managing to get whipped cream over his hands and the cup and the counter in one second flat. Derek feels a vicious headache coming on. Stiles, on the other hand, has apparently miraculously recovered from his previous psychotic break or whatever it was and does not seem to care in the least. He hums happily, closing his eyes to take in a whiff of the contents of the cup.
“Mm-mm,” Stiles makes a pleased noise before noticing the dripping lid in his hand. “Ooh, whipped cream! And sprinkles! Aw, Derek, you are my favorite right now.” He then promptly commences to lick the lid clean, very thoroughly. Derek suddenly feels faint, can see nothing except long fingers and red lips and pink tongue chasing after trickles of cream, oh god; there’s cream everywhere, little splatters on his nose and chin, a smidgen on his right cheek bone, streaks down between his fingers. Stiles nimbly cleans them all off with his tongue and fingers. Stiles tosses the lid carelessly on the countertop afterward, but Derek is too dazed to care anymore. He makes a mental note to forego the lid next time. Not that he’s expecting a next time.
Stiles goes on to take a swig of the drink, groaning dramatically,“Yes, oh my God, I love you,” and then reddens again. “Uh. B-by the way, how many syrups did you end up using?”
“…Seven.”
Laura snorts and mutters, “Ooh, competitive, are we?,” while Stiles’s eyes widen comically. He’s flushed red from the tips of his ears down to his neck. He quiets down, taking delicate sips from the cup and not looking at Derek or Laura. “Oh yeah, how much do I owe you?” he speaks up suddenly, hand going for his wallet. Derek looks helplessly at his sister; he may be like a human rolodex on most days, but he simply does not possess enough wits about him to calculate the cost of that disaster of syrups and cream and sprinkles trying to pass as coffee at this moment, what with the exquisite cruel performance of provocative licking he’s just endured; and was he supposed to give Stiles a discount or what? Laura’s no help at all, as usual.
“You made it. You should know better than me how much it would cost.” She shrugs.
“Uh. Four fifty?” Derek hazards, head still spinning from adrenaline and exhaustion and residual arousal, head filled with rampant thoughts all to do with Stiles and the offer he made to that Starbucks barista.
“Oh wow! That’s awesome. This is for a large? How much for an extra large then? ‘Cause I wanna go bigger next time. Um. Wait.” Stiles goes from giddy excitement to deer-in-headlights in record time. “I—I wasn’t—I. Yeah. I mean, no. Nope. Nothing. I didn’t say anything.” He flails his arms for a bit before ducking his head and shoving his fists into the pockets of his cargo shorts. “Uh, I mean, the drink. How much is it?”
“Oh. Um. Five dollars.”
“Cool! Yeah, yeah, awesome. Better tasting and cheaper, and super h—awesome baristas? Man, I seriously should have been coming here since last year. Right. Here,” he fumbles with his wallet for a minute and slips out a five dollar bill to hand it over.
“Hey, I got this, Der, why don’t you go grab those bags of coffee beans I left by the backroom door and put them in the cabinets for me? Thanks.” Laura suddenly intervenes and pushes Derek off in the direction of the storage room, giving him a meaningful look.
Derek stares for a second at this suddenly polite and helpful Laura with undisguised suspicion but philosophically decides it’s not worth arguing over. He obediently goes to the back and picks up the large box with bags of coffee beans piled inside. He carries the whole thing out to the front and looks questioningly at Laura, who’s just finished ringing Stiles up.
“Hmm, the cabinets here near the counter, I think?”
Derek grumbles under his breath about evil sisters who are lazy asses and has the box heaved halfway up, shoulders straining a little, only for Laura to change her mind again and direct him to put it on the shelves right under the worktop. Derek throws her a look of disgust and bends to arrange the bags neatly on the shelf below.
“We have a very nice view here, don’t we, Stiles?” Laura says conversationally, just as Derek is putting up the last couple of bags.
There’s a choking noise and Derek turns to see Stiles sputtering, a sizable portion of his sticky beverage all down his front. Derek doesn’t even have the strength to feel irritated at the mess, just looks numbly at the way the now wet shirt clings to Stiles’s abdominal muscles, and the way liquid drips down his arms and catches on his body hair, as Stiles tries to clean himself up in vain.
“Whoopsie! Here, have some napkins!” Laura offers helpfully, eyes glinting with unholy glee, looking disgustingly smug.
Stiles on the other hand looks mortified. He nods his thanks to Laura, mumbling incoherently about screwing things up and overstaying his welcome and hey, he’s gotta be somewhere else anyway, takes the napkins and makes a beeline for the door, never looking once in Derek’s direction.
“See ya Stiles!” Laura calls.
“Uh, yeah, bye! See you tomorrow! Sorry—about, well, everything? I’m—I’m just gonna go and die now. Bye!” And with that he’s tripping out the door. His ears and the back of his neck are flushed dark red as Derek follows him with his eyes until he crosses the street and turns a corner.
Derek goes back to mechanically wiping splatters of cream off the counter after Stiles disappeared from sight. He actually feels a sense of kinship with the kid now. Social awkwardness is something he can genuinely empathize with, and he’d forgotten, just for a moment in the face of Stiles’s animated flailing and blunt sincerity, how inadequate he’d sometimes feel in the alien surroundings. He’s…not opposed to being made to forget again. If Stiles ever comes around again. Which he probably won’t.
Laura whirls around with a self-satisfied smirk aimed at Derek. “Ah, little brother, I’ve been meaning to tell you, guess it just keeps slipping my mind; you got a little somethin’ right… there.” She grins wickedly and holds up a finger, hovering steadily closer to Derek and reaching with deliberate slowness for the right corner of his upper lip. Laura cackles at his horrified expression and easily dodges his instinctive swat.
Derek scrubs a hand vigorously over his mouth and stares blankly at the wisp of white that came off on his palm. Well. That certainly explains a few things. Derek wants to bury his face in his hands, but that’s just asking for more mocking from his sister. His ears are starting to feel rather warm. “You—Oh my God, you couldn’t have just told me like a normal person? Oh, right, how could I forget, you aren’t normal.”
Laura giggles. “Yeah, yeah, I honestly don’t know what you’d do without me, brother. I, like the wonderful big sister that I am, told Stiles to come by tomorrow for Saturday brunch and promised him chocolaty heaven; so you better whip one of those sinful Death By Chocolate things up sometime between now and tomorrow morning. And save me a slice; and one for Erica too, I guess. Actually, make that two for me. You owe me, D. I ingeniously helped you show off your wares! He couldn’t look away.” She pats his rump affectionately.
Derek bats her hand away indignantly, though the possibility of seeing Stiles again makes him feel strangely lighter, brighter. “You are totally using him to feed your cake addiction, aren’t you. You are a terrible person.”
“I know, it keeps me awake at night. And oh yeah, just so you know, since he’s already practically my BFF now, I totally get dibs on him, even if you ever manage to man up and ask him out one day, baby bro.”
“I don’t even—what…oh my God, what are you even talking about? So now we’re calling blatant interrogation ‘bonding’ now. And who said anything about asking anyone out?”
“Ha! Yeah, keep telling yourself that, Der. Me and Stiles, we totally bonded, okay? Stiles is like my spirit animal, basically. We share very similar tastes in men. I don’t know why he seems to like you so much though.”
“I hate you so much.”
“Aww, love you too, Muffin.” Laura reaches up a hand to pinch his cheek, and he ducks out of reach just in time. He blows out an exasperated breath and decides to let it go for the moment, because he has better places to be right now. He can always get revenge later. That’s one upside of living under the same roof as your biggest headache. He wipes his hands clean and pulls off his apron, and pats Isaac, who has finally returned from cleaning up the epic mess at the door smelling like he just bathed in strawberry syrup, on the back as he walks by.
“I’m taking twenty,” he calls out over his shoulder, feeling strangely lighthearted despite the long day he’s had. The Tiny Twin Terrors are barely a blip on his radar now. He’s not even particularly bothered by the trail of coffee Stiles left behind, just points at it and tilts his head at Laura, who rolls her eyes and nods. He grabs his sunglasses from his drawer and heads out the door, already planning out a grocery list in his head, mentally preparing himself for the impending mess, and for once actually looking forward to getting down and dirty.
After all, that chocolaty heaven is not going to bake itself.