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The first time they meet, Stiles is forced into swerving in front of a cab to avoid the obnoxious businessman who’s too busy talking on his cell to pay attention to cyclists.
Stiles brakes, inches away from hitting the car, and swears under his breath before turning to face the man.
“Are you kidding me right now? I could have died.”
The man ignores him, just keeps talking on his phone, and Stiles kind of wants to punch him in the face, except he’ll get fired if he gets into another altercation with one of the many bastards in New York City who don’t care about cyclists.
He can’t afford to be reported again, so he narrows his eyes, gets back on his bike and pedals toward the office he’s delivering a package too.
**
The second time they meet, the man pays just as much attention to Stiles as he did the last time.
Stiles has a package addressed to one Derek Hale, and is dropping it off in the lobby when the man bumps into him, too engrossed in a conversation on his phone to pay attention to his surroundings. Again. Stiles turns to say something, realises who it is and rolls his eyes, because seriously? He decides to ignore him, instead turning to the doorman and saying, “I have a package for Derek Hale, but it needs to be personally signed by him.”
When he turns to look back to the man, he realises he’s already out the front door.
Stiles is prepared to wait, because for some reason everyone just assumes that bike messengers don’t have anywhere else to be and can take their leisurely time in getting around to signing for their delivery, so he sits down in the first free seat and begins tapping his feet in boredom. The doorman beckons him back over, so Stiles sighs, and collects his things, before walking back to the desk and putting the package on top of the wood.
“Mr. Hale?” The doorman says, and Stiles turns around to greet the recipient of the package.
Of course it’s Obnoxious Business Guy as Stiles has taken to calling him in his head. Though, now that needs to be changed since he knows his real name. Derek Hale.
Now, Derek’s off his phone, instead cradling a cup of coffee in his hand like it’s his life force.
Stiles knows that feeling, so he decides to cut him some slack. Well, he tries to. But, then Derek just makes some faint gesture, and it takes Stiles a few seconds to realize he’s asking for a pen, and moves to sign the package without even saying anything.
Stiles picks up the package and forces it into his arms without an ounce of grace. The man grunts, and Stiles smiles innocently.
**
The third time they meet, Stiles is weaving in and out of traffic on Broadway to get a package to one of the newer buildings in the area. A cab cuts him off suddenly, and in trying to avoid hitting the car he accidentally swerves into the gutter and falls over his handlebars.
“Mother fucking-” Stiles curses, standing up and patting himself down to ensure his body parts are all still, in fact, attached to his body.
Nothing hurts too badly, so at least nothing’s broken besides his ego. He opens his bag quickly to check that he hasn’t lost anything, and is thankful that instead of delivery packages he only has letters today.
The driver gets out of the cab and immediately starts hurling abuse at Stiles, blaming him all the while hurling insults and saying, “You brought this on yourself, kid.”
Stiles tells the man to “fuck off”, and if he gets reported he’ll probably get fired, but what the fuck ever. This is so not his fault.
One of the back doors of the cab opens, and then someone familiar is stepping out and Stiles just wants the ground to open up because of course.
“You know, if I made a venn diagram for ‘me getting hit by cabs’ and ‘me seeing you’, they’d almost be one circle.”
The man, Derek, ignores him, and instead asks, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Does it really matter?”
He picks up his bike, and walks away.
He ignores the traffic behind him, the sound of car horns and angry drivers yelling, the look on Derek’s face when he walked away.
**
The fourth time they meet, Stiles tries to get out of it. He gets his list of deliveries and sees Derek’s name and immediately tries to convince Scott or Isaac to do it, but they refuse.
“No, it’s out of my way,” Scott says.
Isaac just sighs until Stiles finally gives up and walks away.
Though, today he’s pleasantly surprised. Instead of being on his phone, or just walking out the door, Derek is sitting in the lobby like he’s expecting Stiles.
Or, maybe it’s just a really important package that he’s been tracking.
Stiles doesn’t particularly care.
“Sign here,” he says, opening his bag and pulling out the necessary forms before shoving them in front of Derek.
“How are you feeling?” Derek asks, pen still in hand, paying more attention to Stiles than the sheets he should be signing. Really, Stiles just wants to get the hell out of here.
“Fine,” he answers, tapping his fingers impatiently, “I need to go, if you’re done.”
“Sure,” Derek looks down, suddenly looking guilty, “sorry.”
Stiles grabs the papers and walks out of the door, throwing a, “It’s fine” over his shoulder when it’s clearly not.
He doesn’t know why he’s upset. He doesn’t even really think he has a right to feel that way. There’s just something about Derek Hale, mostly, he thinks, it’s the way that Stiles keeps making an ass out of himself whenever the man’s around.
**
The fifth and sixth time they meet goes similarly. Derek tries to be apologetic. Stiles tries to not look desperate for Derek’s attention, but instead comes off looking like an asshole.
**
The seventh time they meet is at a gallery downtown, which Lydia owns. She forced Stiles to come to the show, forced him to bring all of his friends. Well, the two friends he does have.
Isaac had been cramming for an exam, but came anyway when Stiles came up with the convincing argument of, “Free champagne!”
Scott would have forced Stiles to go, if Stiles was not already in the position of having to force Scott; if there was an event organized by Lydia Martin, then you could guarantee Allison Argent would be in attendance, and wherever Allison Argent went, Scott would be trying to find himself an invitation too.
It takes Stiles twenty minutes before he’s ready to go home, but Lydia seems to have been expecting that and immediately appears out of nowhere whenever he gets within a two-metre radius of the exit.
“I don’t believe we’ve officially met,” someone says, in a voice that sounds too familiar.
Lydia, in her final attempt of keeping Stiles from escaping, decided to bring him into a conversation with a group of people. Now, they’ve all unknowingly been placed with the task of keeping him otherwise engaged for the rest of the night. The problem is that they’ll all go along with it, and they won’t even know.
Stiles looks up, doing a double take when he realises who it is. He immediately narrows his eyes, saying, “At least I won’t get hit by a cab in here.”
Lydia slaps his shoulder, hissing in his ear, “Stiles! That’s the brother of the artist.”
“You might be safe from cabs, but not Lydia,” Derek smirks, holding out a hand, “Derek Hale.”
Stiles obliges, shaking Derek’s hand and introducing himself as well.
Stiles finds himself asking, “So, do you actually like these things or are you just here for moral support?”
Derek gives a small smile, glancing across the room to look at a woman, “Moral support, for Laura. I don’t mind it though, sometimes it’s not so bad.”
He looks directly at Stiles when he says that last part, and suddenly Stiles feels a little bit better about the way he’s acted around Derek in the past. Obviously, he hasn’t made the other man completely hate him yet.
“Plus, there’s free champagne,” he says in response, lifting his glass as if toasting to it.
“There’s always that,” Derek says, taking a sip from his own flute.
They spend the rest of the night talking, drinking too much champagne, and then Derek decides to take Stiles on a tour of the gallery. He points out certain pictures, mentioning how Laura had been inspired by one event or another, until they come to the last one.
It’s a portrait of Derek, glaring from the canvas with a mug pressed to his lips.
The plaque beside it announces the painting to be called, “Stop Looking At Me Like That,” and Stiles laughs until he’s crying.
Afterwards, he asks Lydia offhandedly how much the paintings are, mentions two or three so it doesn’t look like he’s asking about the one of Derek specifically, and then tries to act not too disappointed when it’s clearly out of his price range.
**
The eighth time they meet, Stiles is dropping off a package to someone else in Derek’s office building. Though, instead of having it picked up in the lobby like usual, he finds himself being ushered into the elevator and up to the seventh floor.
The doors open, with Derek standing on the other side as he waits for the elevator.
“Derek,” Stiles says, smiling, “How did the rest of the showing go? Did Laura sell many paintings?”
“All of them,” Derek replies, even though it means he misses the elevator when a few other people get into it, “apparently there was even a bidding war over one of them. Laura has decided that this means she is the queen of art, and thinks it’s a reasonable argument to throw out all of the art in my apartment and replace it with her own.”
Stiles laughs, running a hand through his hair when he realises that he really wants to stop bumping into Derek accidentally, and maybe make it a little bit more purposely.
“That’s awesome for her, dude. Hey, I’ve got to deliver this,” he says, lifting up the package in gesture, “but, can I maybe get your number? Lydia is having another showing at her gallery on Thursday night, and I wondering if you maybe want to go? I mean, there’s free champagne.”
Derek smiles, and Stiles finds himself having to actually put effort into not staring at his lips, “What kind of person would I be if I turned down free champagne?”
“A terrible, terrible one,” Stiles answers.
This time, when Stiles invites Isaac and Isaac says he has to study, Stiles doesn’t even bother pulling out the argument of free champagne.
He isn’t worried about having nobody to talk to all night.
**
The ninth time they meet is at Lydia’s gallery, again. This time the showing is weird, some sort of concept art that goes way over both of their heads.
They spend the night laughing at some of the paintings, and Stiles tries so hard not to liken any of them to genitalia until Derek asks, “Is that one over there a vagina?”
Together, they spend the night laughing despite Lydia glaring at them whenever they get too loud, which is often. Stiles goes into the back room, which is roped off to everyone else, and grabs a bottle of the expensive champagne Lydia buys for the showings.
They spend the rest of the night in Central Park, taking sips from the bottle of Moet and, much like at the art gallery, pointing out constellations that look like dicks.
**
The tenth time they meet is when they wake up in bed together the next morning. Stiles has to go to work, and so does Derek, but they exchange the time that should be spent getting ready for kissing one another in Stiles’ kitchen.
They’re just about to leave when there’s a knock on the front door, and Stiles opens it without even bothering to look through the peephole.
Lydia is standing there, dressed far too properly in comparison to the “I’m hungover leave me alone” look Stiles has going for him, holding a canvas wrapped in brown paper underneath one arm.
“So, I thought I’d do you a favour and buy this for you. You don’t have to pay me back, but you do have to help with the gallery’s finance at the end of the tax year.”
Stiles frowns, curious as to what piece of art Lydia is holding, but still replies, “You can do that yourself, you’re better at math than I ever was.”
“Yes,” she says, heels clacking against the floor as she steps further into his apartment, “but it’s boring and takes too long.”
“Stiles?” Derek calls out, and Stiles watches as a grin spreads across Lydia’s face, “Have you seen my keys?”
Lydia is still smiling when Derek walks into the living room, dressed in the suit he was wearing the night beforehand at the gallery, looking hungover but somehow still managing better than Stiles.
Honestly, Stiles thinks it’s a conspiracy that he’s surrounding by so many good looking people when he is this hungover. There’s, like, at least eight million people in New York City and he’s stuck with the ones who could easily moonlight as models.
“Lydia, you’ve met Derek.”
“I have,” she pauses, looking between the art she’s holding and Derek, before she continues, “In fact–”
Suddenly, Stiles knows what painting she’s brought him. He watches in horror as she unwraps it, keeping eye contact with Derek the whole time.
“Lydia, you didn’t,” he says, mostly because he can’t believe that she’s doing this now, in front of Derek, but also because he gets this one painting and all he has to do is the finances for the gallery.
It works out pretty well, if Stiles is being honest.
Which he’s not, at the moment, because he’s horrified.
“Oh my god,” he says, looking at Derek, “I am so sorry. I didn’t know she was doing this.”
Derek shrugs, “If you have to hang it up, I think it’d look nice in that blank space above the TV. I can help you put it up later, if you want, but now I have to go to work.”
Stiles grins, pressing his lips to Derek’s as he leaves.
Lydia’s pursing her lips when he turns back around, “You know, at first I didn’t know if you wanted Stop Looking At Me Like That because of the name or the subject. But, now I get it.”