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“Stop him!” Stiles hissed, grabbing at the empty air his best friend had just vacated. He was half standing, half sprawling over Derek’s stupid, firm, immovable bulk. Ordinarily, he would’ve lingered to fully appreciate the experience of having so much of that warm body pressed against his, but his attention was - to the dismay of some far off corner of his brain that was always dedicated to Derek - too focused on the fact that his way out of the booth was obstructed. Sadly, friendship sometimes took precedence over the pangs of his loveless life, and this was - “an emergency,” he panted, elbowing Derek in the ribs as he tried to scramble over him.
Derek’s only response was to carefully shift his beer away from Stiles’s flailing limbs. He didn’t even grunt in discomfort, the bastard, and Stiles made sure to elbow him once more for good measure. At least that finally made him grasp Stiles by the arm, effectively freezing him in place, and raise an eyebrow in question.
From his other side, Boyd contributed in a slow, sedate, unhurried, goddamn infuriating tone, “Define emergency.”
“When someone yells fire in a crowded room, you don’t stop to ask them what kind,” he retorted, then shot a quick glance at Derek’s face. “Sorry,” he added, and Derek shrugged but let go of his arm, his fingers clenching in a quick spasm that he tried to hide by wrapping both hands back around the sweating beer bottle.
He would deal with that later, Stiles decided. Or - more likely, considering their track record - they’d both pretend it had never happened and that Derek didn’t still get weirdly sensitive about things Stiles sometimes said in the heat of the moment. Shit. He needed to focus.
“This is not a drill!” he said, barely keeping his voice at an acceptable volume for the crowded bar. “It’s Code Alpha…Tango…Delta…fuck, forget codes, he’s going to ruin everything, why aren’t you listening to me?”
“He’s just going to sing karaoke,” Erica said. “His voice can’t possibly be that bad. Or if it is, that’s part of the fun.”
Stiles exhaled sharply through his nose. “He’s really fucking drunk, which means he’s going to sing Wonderwall.” He looked pointedly around the table, but other than a slight furrow on Isaac’s forehead, everyone’s faces remained blank. “To Allison?“
“Oh,” Erica said, her eyes finally tracking to the corner of the room where Allison and her date had settled at a table only a few minutes earlier. Right about the time Scott had drained his drink, then Isaac’s, then swayed to his feet and announced he was next up to sing.
It’d been six months since the breakup, and the whole point of this outing was to get Scott cheerfully drunk and introduce him to the cute bartender, Kira, whom he’d admitted on prior occasions was “really sweet” and “had nice hair.” Allison showing up with her hot boyfriend in tow was decidedly not part of the plan. Fortunately, Stiles was pretty sure she hadn’t actually seen them yet - happy hour was in full swing, and she was too busy dimpling at her stupid date to waste much effort looking around - so there was still time to salvage the situation. But they had to move quickly.
At least everyone seemed to have caught onto the urgency in the air now that Stiles had so obligingly connected the dots for them. Derek slid along the booth, but before he’d made a large enough gap for Stiles to slip through, he reached out again, his fingers hovering just over Stiles’s arm, as though he didn’t quite dare to touch him. “I didn’t know that was their song,” he said, his voice almost too soft for Stiles to hear over the hubbub of conversation that always picked up in volume between the warbling karaoke numbers.
“It’s not,” he said impatiently. “It’s my favorite song, actually. Or I guess it used to be? I don’t know. We used to sing it when we were kids, into the remote control and stuff, and talk about how it was the kind of thing you’d only sing to someone if they were it, you know. The One. That’s why it’s a disaster if he sings it to Allison right now, and he’s absolutely gonna try it. I know him, the stupid romantic fucker.”
He was vibrating with the need to dash to Scott’s side, but the intensity in Derek’s eyes stopped him in his tracks, as it always did. Probably always would, if he was being honest with himself, which he generally preferred to avoid when possible. Once Scott had been rescued and sobered up, he’d have a lot to say about glass houses and shit, but Stiles would deal with that later. Much, much later, if he had anything to say about it. First things first: Mission Rescue Best Friend From Further Heartbreak and Inevitable Crushing Embarrassment.
But Derek, who’d searched his eyes as though to make sure Stiles wasn’t leaving anything out, stepped all the way out of the booth, scooped up his drink, and continued walking toward the small stage.
“Good idea,” Stiles said, hurrying after him. “Extra muscle, always a solid plan.”
Scott was already stepping onto the stage and picking up the mic, the first beats of Wonderwall - to absolutely no one’s surprise, his friend was so goddamn predictable - pumping out into the room. Stiles didn’t dare to look in Allison’s direction. “Laser focus,” he muttered to himself, bounding up the first step and just barely managing to catch Scott, whom Derek had nonchalantly pushed off the stage.
“What the fuck,” Stiles tried, the reflexive curse trailing off as Derek ducked his head to the mic, his lips parting to echo the words dancing across the screen in front of him. “What the fuck,” he said again, more softly this time.
“I thought I was singing that,” Scott said, looking up at him blearily and swaying a little in place.
“Yeah, buddy, you were. Maybe next time, alright?” Stiles patted him clumsily on the back and steered him down to the floor and off to the side a bit, where he would hopefully be safely out of Allison’s eyeline. He should be heading back to their table - he knew he should - but he couldn’t take his eyes off Derek.
His voice was…rough, yeah. Pretty clearly untrained, but with an unexpected throaty rasp that caught at Stiles’s lungs, stealing the breath right out of them. It was surprisingly beautiful, although he wasn’t sure why that would catch him off guard, when everything about Derek was implausibly beautiful.
At the second refrain of I don’t believe that anybody / Feels the way I do about you now, Derek opened his eyes, turning his head until he caught Stiles’s gaze. From that moment on, he didn’t look away, and Stiles lost track of everything around him. The room melted away - Scott, the probably perfectly respectable new boyfriend Stiles loyally hated, Kira gracefully flipping bottles at the bar, the crowd that had hushed a little when Derek started singing. He could feel Derek’s eyes on him, like a brand, and nothing else seemed to matter.
“And all the roads we have to walk are winding,” Derek sang, his voice breaking slightly over the words. He brought his loose hand up to the mic, cupping the mic and his beer between both hands like a safety net, or a shield. He was nervous, Stiles realized, and something in his chest swooped alarmingly before settling into place. The next few lines came out more smoothly, with that soft rasp Stiles was already addicted to, and determined to hear much more often in the future, but there was a question in Derek’s eyes.
There are many things that I would
Like to say to you
But I don’t know how
Stiles wasn’t sure when he let go of Scott, or how he got up on the stage, but he managed, somehow, to pull the bottle free from Derek’s hands, to set it to the side, and to wrap his own hands over Derek’s, the mic held between them. As the last chorus started, he joined in - his voice rougher than Derek’s, wobbling over the syllables, but equally earnest.
I said maybe
You’re gonna be the one that saves me
And after all
You’re my wonderwall
By the last note, they were kissing, the world around them rushing back in as a wall of noise, voices whooping in encouragement. Derek shivered a little at his touch, his hands clenching again until Stiles drew them free, guiding them to his shoulders, his own hands gravitating naturally to the curve of Derek’s waist, the warmth of his muscles steady and inexplicably familiar under his fingers.
“You’re full of surprises,” he breathed into Derek’s mouth, feeling the curve of Derek’s smile against his lips.