Chapter Text
Artwork by Fae_vorite (also on Tumblr).
Chapter One
Death Spiral
The indefinable distant hum of the airport’s activity fell out of focus as Stiles rested his head on one hand. His elbow was propped up on the bar as he held his phone to his other ear. Eyes closed against the world, he waded through the silence from the other end of the line that seemed to take an eternity to break.
“I mean…okay it’s pretty bad but, you know, maybe your boss will see the funny side of it?” Scott tried hopefully.
“The funny side?” Stiles slammed his hand on the counter, making the woman beside him jump. He offered her an apologetic grimace before returning to his call. “Cybill is going to murder me, Scott. I walked into a meeting that was a sure thing and ruined it somehow without even opening my mouth! Then just for good measure, I sprayed Alpha Prime all over him! Just to really make sure I really messed things up beyond repair.”
He could practically hear Scott wince on the other end of the phone. “Okay. I know you get excited when you’re giving your impassioned speeches, but you do know Alpha Prime is a carbonated soda, right? You didn’t think it might explode if you opened it right after waving it around?”
Stiles dragged his free hand over his face and gave the bartender a nod when he silently offered to refill Stiles’s glass. He chugged it back in one. “I was…caught up in the moment. I really thought I was doing well. I used to be good with people, Scott, what the hell happened to me?”
“Dude,” Scott said sympathetically, “everyone has a bad day.”
“Scott, this is so beyond bad. Forget promotion, Cybill is gonna probably have the contents of my desk waiting on the curb for me tomorrow.” Because Cybill was…yeah, one of the most stunning people Stiles had ever seen, but just as beautiful as she was terrifying.
He was curling into himself already just thinking about what would be waiting for him at the office tomorrow.
Even Scott’s relentless reassurances and all the alcohol he could consume did not numb him to the worries for his future. It actually just made him a bit woozy, if he was honest. Woozy and emotional. He was near to tears by the time he filed onto the plane with the other passengers, only to come up short as he recognised the air steward that greeted him. She’d been the lady that’d sat next to him at the bar.
“It’s been a bad day, hasn’t it?” she asked.
Stiles just nodded in answer. Honestly, his first trip outside of California had not been everything he’d hoped for. Massive understatement. That morning had been his first ever time on a plane, he’d been nervous but excited and full of hope that this would be his time to shine and show everyone he deserved the promotion he’d been working for the last two years. Now he’d be lucky to still have a job tomorrow.
“There’s…a space in first class,” she whispered to him conspiratorially. When Stiles just stared at her in shock, she nodded encouragingly. Honestly, Stiles thought she might be his guardian angel when she gave him a reassuring smile, along with directions to his upgraded seat. If ‘seat’ were a word he could even use to describe it. After his phenomenally shitty day, it was like a cloud from heaven. It had a cushioned, curved headrest; lumbar support and padding that honestly made him feel as if he were floating. And all that was before he saw the leaflet listing the available complimentary extras that came with the seat.
This was like a drink of ice water on a dry summer day.
Before he’d even finished reading through the leaflet, an air steward came and offered him a generous glass of complimentary champagne. He had already downed most of it by the time the seats around him started filling up. By then, his head was spinning pleasantly. He’d only had champagne once before and it’d hit him hard and fast then too. With any luck he could pass out before they even took off and he could sleep through the flight.
It was only his second time flying and the nerves still bubbled beneath the tipsy tide of his awareness. He guzzled the last few mouthfuls for courage just as a guy took the seat next to him.
“Yeah, definitely. Keep me updated,” the man said into his smartphone, largely ignoring Stiles as he secured his hand luggage in the storage area in front of their seats. “I want to hear if there are any changes – any time of day or night.”
He had a baseball cap on that Stiles’s fuzzy brain couldn’t help but think was an accessory to disguise rather than fashion. Especially in first class, but maybe he was drawing stereotypes of rich people – they couldn’t all wear suits. This guy was rocking the smart casual open-collared shirt and blazer look, complete with designer stubble. It took far too long for Stiles to realise that the reason he was observing all this was because the guy was staring right at him, watching him down his glass of champagne like it was his first drink after a trek through the desert.
Stiles waved his glass at him a little sheepishly. “Bottoms up?”
The guy just lifted his eyebrows and sort of blinked at him in a mix of disbelief and amusement.
Well, at least Stiles could provide entertainment for their short time together if nothing else. He set his glass down on the fixed table that curved around his arm rest nearest the window. Then he settled in to read through what other compliments he could take advantage of to get him through the rest of the day.
To his surprise, take off was a breeze. The sky was a little grey and ominous but they soared into the dimness without issue and Stiles had mostly slumped in his seat by the time night fell outside the plane. It was pitch black outside now so he closed the blind over the window and found himself tapping rhythmically on his armrests. He’d made the mistake of eating quite a lot of the complimentary snacks and now he was a little jittery with the sugar. So jittery he hadn’t even really registered what he’d selected to watch on the entertainment screen in front of him.
Mr Baseball Cap next to him kept giving him odd looks whenever he caught him tapping or fidgeting and while Stiles’s luck may have been improving the further away from New York they got, he wasn’t sure what this poor guy had done to deserve a seat next to him. Even his own dad struggled to deal with him when he was this fidgety.
He was just about to pick up the headphones attached to the screen in front of him again, maybe pay attention to his selected in-flight entertainment this time, when the plane gave a worrying jerk, like a train going over an unstable section of track.
Stiles felt his stomach drop.
The ‘Fasten Seatbelts’ sign on the far wall lit up and Stiles’s head spun as he watched and heard the air steward urging the people that had been standing back into their seats. The plane jerked and shuddered as if it was soaring through a barrage of missiles and Stiles’s breathing became sharp and panicked. There wasn’t enough air in his lungs and he screwed his eyes shut as he slammed his hands down on the arm rests, holding on for dear life.
It took him a moment to realise through the chaos that his neighbour’s hand had been on the joined arm rest before, and Stiles was now squeezing it desperately.
He didn’t even have enough breath in his body to care. His vision was twisting without oxygen, making everything hazy like it had that time he’d fallen down Scott’s stairs.
“Oh my god,” he gasp-groaned, eyes still shut. He could hear the steward arguing with a terrified passenger as the plane seemed to drop, shuddering harder. “Oh god, oh god, oh god,” he panicked under his breath.
“It’s just turbulence,” said the guy in the seat beside him, the guy whose hand Stiles had taken captive and pinned between his own and the armrest. “They said it’s just turbulence.” His voice was oddly soft, though even he didn’t sound convinced of his own words. Even so, he sounded a hell of a lot more composed than Stiles. For some reason that feigned calmness enraged Stiles and his eyes flew open.
“Of course they said that! They’re not going to say ‘this is it, we’re going down’ that would make everyone panic!”
Kind of like he was right now.
Oh wow, where were all his hopes and naïve dreams of that morning? That optimism? He was going down and the last thing he’d done with his life was lose Alpha Prime a sure-deal customer? What type of legacy was that?
The shuddering intensified so that Stiles felt like his back was on fire from the tension. He squeezed his seatbelt a little tighter.
“This is it! We’re going down! We’re going to die and I’ve—I've never done anything. I've never been anywhere or achieved anything with my life. I haven’t bought a house, I've never had the perfect kiss or been in love. I’m not married. I’ve never even had an orgasm when I’ve been having sex apart from like the first time where it was literally touch and go!”
“Excuse me?” the man asked, sounding stunned but Stiles talked right over him.
“Like is that even normal? How do I even ask someone if that’s normal? That I have to use my hand to get the job done? Like what…the person I’m with isn’t good enough?”
He found himself staring into brilliant green eyes, rimmed in hazel with flecks of brown and gold and that was when he literally forgot how to even breathe in the rapid, useless breaths he’d been sucking in.
“I also talk when I panic.”
The man’s face was unreadable but his eyes were dilated with the same fear Stiles felt throttling his insides. “It’s okay, keep talking.”
Stiles was suddenly visited by a memory of his mom talking about her day at work, back before she’d fallen ill. She’d been an emergency call handler for Beacon Hill’s Sheriff’s department, which was how she’d met his dad. A big part of her job had been to keep people calm, keep them talking about anything she could to hold their focus. Stiles told the stranger this and with the admission, it felt like something in him exploded outwards. Like a dam that had burst, everything flowed out of him, great geysers erupting through the cracks the nightmare had formed.
“I like to pee sitting down,” he blurted out, eyes slamming shut as the shaking of the plane started to make him feel like someone had strapped his seat to the back of a rodeo bull. “Whenever I hear ‘My Immortal’ by Evanescence I cry instantly. I lost my virginity to my mom’s friend’s daughter Heather and I lasted twelve seconds. I used to have pretty severe ADD and it kinda faded as I got older but I can still feel the pull of intense fixation and it scares the crap out of me sometimes.
“The first guy I ever kissed punched me in the face right after and broke my nose but I told everyone it was a lacrosse accident.” He blurted it all out in almost one constant stream of verbal diarrhoea and he kept going. “I was originally going to be an FBI agent. I was selected for an internship and everything but after a few months I had a total meltdown and couldn’t face a career that would take me away from my dad so much. So I dropped out and wasted like…so much time. Everyone’s time. And I’m pretty sure my dad is secretly disappointed because he always gets this look on his face and is always asking me about work like he’s sad or something.”
He was pretty sure he was crushing the guy’s hand by now and his back ached where he was being jerked around in his seat, tethered in place by only his seatbelt and white-knuckled grip. “And someone at the office I work in found out and now when my boss isn’t there they call me Agent Stilinski like it’s funny and I brush it off because, you know, I don’t wanna let it show or whatever. When Erica at the office does it I water her stupid spider plant with apple juice.”
He felt it all bubbling up out of him like a soda when you threw in a Mentos.
“And this asshole at my office, Jackson? He started like a few months before me but got promoted to senior marketing and now he uses me as his personal secretary and errand boy. But he stole tonnes of ideas off me and probably everyone else too to get where he is. Not that I can prove it. So I just spit in his coffee when I can, like a total adult.”
He heard a woman near the back start screaming, then it felt like everyone started screaming, the panic carrying like a wave. He just kept talking, faster and louder.
“He probably doesn’t even notice because the coffee is absolute poison. But he acts like it’s a ‘superior taste’ thing, just because it’s an upper-class brand. I don’t care if the Queen of England herself harvested the beans, the stuff tastes like asphalt. I get my buddy Scotty who works reception to call my desk so I can have an excuse to leave it and we go to the place down the street just for a decent cappuccino.”
He heard a sharp little exhale of laughter next to him and he opened his eyes to see the guy watching him, even though his head was pressed back against the headrest, his body was tense as Stiles’s. He looked surprised by his own amusement and Stiles was caught off-guard by the fact that this guy was still listening, still watching him as if his insane rambling mattered.
Then the plane seemed to swoop. His stomach lurched the way it did when he took a hill too fast in his Jeep. At the thought of his beautiful, banged up Jeep that he may never see again, his mom’s Jeep, his mouth motored ahead faster than before.
“I’m a total extrovert but somehow I’ve only had one friend my entire life. My best friend, who I had a sex dream about once by the way and now it’s like stuck in there and it creeps up on me when I least expect it. And my dad is amazing but he’s the sheriff and has to work so much so I’ve always been so friggin’ lonely and none of my boyfriends have ever been able to stick around.
“It’s like I’m too much, you know? And the only boyfriend I had that I could get to rim me was like, so bad at it but I told him it felt great, like my body was opening up like a flower and he dumped me like two days later so I’m pretty sure like there’s something wrong with my ass or something. Like why doesn’t anyone want to rim me? I am like….super clean! But it’s like it’s a chore to make me feel good?”
His voiced carried on, rambling and rambling and he barely even registered what was coming out of his mouth because he felt hysterical with the release of it and the fear of death and of just not mattering, to any of these people that’d played a part of shaping the mess that was his life.
“…pretty sure I’m just bad at sex or something, like they should give you lessons on that shit in high school instead of Algebra and English Literature. Like real life stuff. Then maybe then I could figure out why no one ever wants to stay with me, like what it is about me that drives them away? And every time it doesn’t work out I get more and more self-conscious and needy and weird and that’s not me…”
“…just want the same thing everyone else wants like…a connection and unconditional affection and attention, I want to matter to someone, you know? Because someone or something has always mattered more than me, even to my dad. He’s like the best, he’s so amazing but he’s always had to work to take care of me, to keep a roof over my head and pay the hospital bills, so work has had to come first, especially since mom died and I’m scared I’m just gonna keep doing through life and not matter but now I’m going to die and I don’t think that’s even going to matter…”
He kept talking and talking until his throat was hoarse and everything welled up inside him then burst, dispersed into the air and released him from its hold. And then, after an eternity of talking, broad, soft fingers covered his where they were still clinging to the guy’s arm.
“Excuse me?” the guy said cautiously.
Stiles twisted his head on the headrest to blink at him.
“We’ve landed. They’re going to let us off soon.” His voice was calm and soft as the first time he’d spoken and Stiles’s stomach gave a little flip and a flutter.
“What?” Stiles demanded, wrenching his hand away, releasing the guy’s arm and sitting up a little straighter in his chair. Now he looked around, the hostess was already signalling for their cabin to collect their things and start disembarking.
Stiles flew to his feet. “What?! Why didn’t you say something?”
The guy’s lips gave a little twitch. “That would’ve been rude. You obviously had some things you needed to get off your chest.”
“Oh my god!” Stiles declared, utterly lost for words for the first time in his life. That was how embarrassed he felt. When it was their row’s turn he shot up and grabbed his backpack, scrambling past the guy with his face actually burning from humiliation and the last effects of the alcohol.
He was never drinking champagne again.
The more distance he put between himself and the plane, the more composure he managed to scrabble together. It wasn’t like he’d even be seeing the guy again anyway. What did it matter what he blurted out to some stranger when he thought he was going to die?
His dad met him at the pickup point in Car Park B as they’d planned. Just seeing him standing there, leaning against his cruiser made something in Stiles break, and he blubbered nonsensically as he walked to him.
“Hey, kiddo, what’s the matter?” His dad asked gently, guiding him by his shoulders to stand by the car and out of the way of other vehicles.
Stiles managed to choke out something about turbulence and death spirals and his dad squeezed him in a one-armed hug that made Stiles feel like the safest human ever. He didn’t cry, but it was a near thing, almost like verging on a panic attack. Even after the cathartic release of his outburst to that stranger on the plane.
He knew logically it hadn’t been a near-death experience but it had really, hadn’t it? He could have died and he’d had the worst day ever and he was quite drunk now and he’d told a complete stranger about his lonely desperation and the rimming thing and he was so, so done with today. He just wanted his bed and his pillow.
Somehow he managed to get into the passenger seat and get his seatbelt on without having a full blown panic attack as he retold his near death experience to his dad, including spilling his guts to the guy next to him – with much censoring of course.
As his dad reversed out of his parking space and guided the car slowly through the lot toward the main road, he saw the stranger waiting at the collection point. Their eyes met through the window and Stiles felt his breath catch. Then he was gone.
*
Since his dad was the best human, he didn’t give Stiles the third degree about drinking his sorrows away. Instead the next day, he woke him up for work with a huge glass of orange juice and some Advil. Stiles felt almost human by the time he’d made the drive to work, even if his head was still throbbing on the elevator ride up to the fourth floor of the Alpha Prime building and his stomach felt a little queasy. He hadn’t managed anything solid yet. He was too busy trying not to puke at the thought of what Cybill might say when he got up there.
He’d had some margin of hope that his colossal failure yesterday wouldn’t be public knowledge. That was until he walked to his desk by the window and took his seat. He looked around as he waited for his Mac to boot up and caught Jackson’s shit-eating grin from the desk across from his.
The Alpha Prime building was a huge converted warehouse, with the marketing department settled in what was arguably the part with the most character. The large windows let light stream in, the honey-coloured wooden beams and struts stood exposed and incorporated into the design of the office in an example of architecture at its finest, restoring the old and making it functional too. Stiles loved the space. He loved the busy nature of the job and he loved most of the people too. But his least favourite person, namely one Jackson Whittemore, liked to lean against the wooden strut Stiles’s desk was situated by, sipping his coffee like he was Stiles’s boss.
He wished.
“Bad luck yesterday with the Hamilton case,” he said with a tone of poorly concealed superiority. “Guess they just let you out of the gates too soon. Don’t worry, I’m sure after some more time working with the rest of the team we’ll have you up to scratch.”
Stiles’s muscles actually bunched to rise, to remind Jackson that Stiles didn’t report to him and just because his daddy had enough money to buy him into every other part of Beacon Hills didn’t mean he could buy his way to the top of Alpha Prime. Thankfully, at that exact moment some commotion seemed to break out in the hall beyond the original sliding doors that had been restored and fixed open like a statement art piece, framing the foyer where the elevators let out.
The marketing departments’ heads whipped around. Cybill strolled onto the floor but the excitement continued behind, signalling Cybill hadn’t been the source of the commotion. Something else was going on. Stiles’s brow furrowed as he recalled there had been a sort of upheaval in reception too, last minute cleaning and one of the sales executives using the mirrored wall at reception to touch up her lip gloss.
Was an important client visiting? It happened sometimes, but if that were the case, he was sure Cybill would be downstairs waiting to receive them, not sparing time to deal with him.
Just like that, the whole horrid situation swooped back down on him and he felt his empty, queasy stomach churn as the terrifying beauty that was his boss came to stand before him.
Unlike Jackson, who Stiles did his best to ignore, Cybill commanded attention. She was beautiful, of course, tall and dark-skinned with hair spilling over her suit dress, and she usually had a kind, perfectly painted smile for Stiles when she greeted him. Today, however, she was all business.
“Tell me you did not pour Alpha Prime Soda over Doug Hamilton.”
Stiles bit his bottom lip, hesitating just briefly before leaning across his desk, hands folded together to keep them from fidgeting. “Define pour exactly.”
She narrowed her eyes. “How do you define it?”
“To give full expression to,” Stiles answered, inwardly pleading to Cybill’s good sense of humour and mercy. “To vent. To pour out my passion for our brand to Hamilton with gusto, emphasis and with possible gesticulating motions.” He gestured illustratively and watched the bewildered look cross her face.
“Did you do that gesture in front of Doug Hamilton?” she demanded coolly.
Stiles thought about his up and down hand movements and supposed he got where she was going with this. “I was passionate about the product and I maybe gesticulated a little, like this, then slammed it on the table. It was a little bit. It was spray, really, not even proper fluid so–”
“Stop doing that with your hand!” she demanded, taking a moment to collect herself before continuing. “Give him a few days, then try and clean up your mess. Give him a call and do what you need to do to get him to reconsider.”
Stiles swallowed. “Yes ma’am.”
“Derek Hale is due to arrive any minute,” she added distractedly.
“As Alpha Prime’s owner Derek Hale? I thought he was a recluse?”
“Well not anymore. He’s going to be here any minute,” she turned to level him with a warning glare. “If you spill Alpha Prime on him not even your smart mouth will save you, Stilinski. Now clean up your desk.” With that, she strode toward the doors. “Get back to work people and act normal, he’ll be here any second.
Stiles felt hyper aware of his every movement as he logged in and started scrolling through his emails. He tried to start a draft for his next communication with Doug Hamilton but he was too wired, too distracted by the silence that seemed to have fallen over the building.
Derek Hale had started Alpha Prime with his sister Laura after most of their family were killed in a freak accident, a fire in their home with their extended family inside. Some years later, Laura Hale had also died in a car accident and Derek Hale had been a recluse after that. Until now, it seemed. Stiles’s dad had been heavily involved in the Hale fire case, had been a deputy back then and had witnessed the aftermath first hand, so Stiles had grown up knowing that much. Aside from that, however, Stiles didn’t know much about Derek Hale.
Stiles knew of him, because of his name associated with the biggest disaster in Beacon Hills, because of his place in the company, but he knew nothing else. The initial Google search on the company and its owners back when he’d been offered an interview hadn’t even turned up a picture of Derek Hale, aside from a few dated group photos from Beacon Hills High School’s website. There had been some of Laura, who’d been the face of the company in the years leading up to her death but otherwise, information about them as people was very limited. What had happened to them must’ve made them very private people, he supposed. It made sense.
Realising his mind was drifting when he had a serious mistake to make up for, and that he still miraculously had his job, Stiles sat up straighter and made a start at responding to his emails if nothing else. He’d start his new proposal to Hamilton after the VIP visit. The office radio was turned off in anticipation for Hale’s arrival and Stiles couldn’t concentrate in silence.
Before long, the chime of the elevator’s arrival on their floor filled the entire converted loft space. Stiles heard whispering, saw Jackson down a breath mint like a total loser out of the corner of his eye. When he chanced a glance up at the doorway, he saw Cybill walking in, accompanied by the stranger from the plane.
Stiles froze.
He was sure he must be mistaken. He squinted just to make sure, but as Cybill introduced him around the office and came slowly closer, horror prickled up Stiles’s spine and his heart started hammering in his chest with growing panic.
The guy he’d spilled his innermost secrets to was standing right there. Right in front of him as Cybill started introducing everyone. Any hope Stiles had that the guy wouldn’t recognise him died when he saw those piercing hazel-green eyes flicker with surprised recognition, before carefully shifting back behind a polite smile.
“Nice to meet you, Stiles. Stilinski, like the sheriff?” the stranger, Derek Hale, asked as Cybill introduced them.
Stiles was too horrified to even try to respond.
“Yes!” Cybill declared. “Stiles’s father was recently elected again. He’s a very capable man and so is Stiles. We expect great things from him, he has an amazing mind.”
Jackson gave a poorly stifled cough at this which he hid behind his coffee cup. It was barely audible but Derek Hale turned to him regardless. He’d definitely heard.
“Jack, wasn’t it?” Derek asked, even though he’d just been introduced to Jackson seconds before and surely must’ve remembered him. Stiles thought Jackson wouldn’t like the implication that he was forgettable but he masked his disappointment well.
“Jackson, sir,” Jackson said in his most charming tone, his pretentious coffee cup with the fancy handle between his fingers.
Derek nodded. “Of course, my mistake,” he said in a voice that seemed friendly enough. “How’s the coffee here?”
Stiles choked on his own surprise, hastily downing some water to try and stop the coughing but as he drank it down, Derek met his eyes briefly. There was a glint in them that was almost playful, teasing and Stiles knew then that he’d remembered everything Stiles had said on that plane.
*
The morning passed in a sort of blur. Stiles kept waiting for Derek to reveal his secrets, to call him out on being drunk on a public plane and it not reflecting well on their company or something but after the introductions and a tour of their floor, Derek only gave him the same polite smile he gave everyone else before disappearing with Cybill.
They had headed toward the big corner office that was normally used as one of the conference rooms but was now apparently to be Derek’s office. How long was he even staying? Stiles felt scattered and anxious enough just trying to work through the morning, knowing that the man with all his embarrassing and most private secrets was in the same building. Not a stranger any longer.
Somehow he managed to get through the morning after all, even with the lingering throbbing headache from yesterday’s impromptu drinking binge. He made a dent in the workload that had piled up when he’d been in New York for Hamilton; he'd even composed a pretty decent follow-up to Hamilton that wasn’t too needy. He could send that later. Right then, he needed a decent cup of coffee.
Scott had already texted to say he was taking a working lunch, but Stiles decided to bring him a cup back. He set his office phone to the answering machine and headed for the elevator. Unfortunately someone was waiting for him in the foyer.
“Stiles,” Scott greeted him brightly. “Did you hear? I’m going to be the stand-in for Derek Hale’s assistant for the next couple of days until they guy they have lined up can start. Just running a couple of errands and taking calls for him as well as working the front desk, but I’m getting a bonus for the extra work.”
“That’s awesome,” Stiles said, knowing that’d mean a lot to Scott now he was close to finishing his degree. “There’s no one better for the job.” Stiles reached to push the button to call the elevator. At that moment, however, Scott’s hand reached out to squeeze his shoulder, his lopsided grin faltering.
“Please tell me you didn’t piss the big boss off in just a few hours?”
Stiles blinked. “What?” His heart stuttered.
With his dark brows drawing in with a worried frown, Scott released him. “Why else would he ask to see you?”
Stiles literally forgot how to breathe for a moment. “He…he wants to see me? What for?”
Scott shrugged. “He didn’t say. I mean he didn’t seem mad or anything but it seems weird to single you out.”
With a cringe, Stiles edged around the truth. “Probably heard what happened with Hamilton yesterday.” He started making his way down the hall to the big corner office. “Better get this over with.”
Scott trotted after him a few paces though, reaching for him. “Should I…I mean you’re allowed to have a witness if it’s like some sort of official meeting. Should I find Cybill or…should I come?’
“No,” Stiles said quickly, then a little more calmly, “I mean…no, no it’s fine. I’ll be fine, Scott. He probably just wants to know my next step for fixing the mess, that's all.”
The corner office had two walls that were made up entirely of windows, letting the grey late morning light spill into the room. It had been a tad small to be a conference room, and so had always been used for more private consultations between clients or staff before. For one man, however, it made a large office, a great expanse of space now filled with a desk, a few potted plants, filing cabinets and two chairs facing the desk that Derek Hale occupied. He looked up from where he’d been typing at the iMac and offered that same subtle, reserved smile that’d greeted Stiles that morning.
“Hey,” he said, seeming surprised. “You got here fast.”
“Uh, yeah. Scott caught me heading out to lunch,” Stiles said, feeling awkward and apprehensive. This man literally knew every embarrassing thing about him, some things even Scott didn’t know. Just one scrap of that information in the hands of someone like Jackson could make his job at Alpha Prime incredibly difficult. Things could be so cliquey here, like high school in some ways. But even aside from that, Stiles had already majorly messed up with the Hamilton project. Derek wouldn’t need much more reason to fire him entirely he was sure.
Through the still present pounding in his head, Stiles’s brain was whirring at double speed trying to recall everything he’d let spill in his panicked outburst on that plane. How much had he said about his job? He couldn’t even remember half of it. It was a blur of fear, despair and the buzz of alcohol.
Derek didn’t look like someone who was about to fire someone though. His expression was soft, even if his expression gave no indication of emotion.
“I didn’t realise you were on your break. Please take your full hour after this, I won’t keep you.”
He was all distant politeness that Stiles couldn’t quite read. It didn’t sound like he was going to be fired though. He hesitated in the doorway, trying to gauge how this was going to go, to prepare himself for what was coming somehow. Derek stared at him from his desk, eyes focussed on him with his elbows on the desk, hands folded together just in front of his face, enough that Stiles almost missed the amusement playing along his lips.
“Do you want to sit down?” Derek asked eventually, head tilted a little.
Stiles almost tripped over himself on his way there, dipping his head a little apologetically as he found his way into one of the chairs on the near side of the desk. When Stiles met his gaze again, it felt intense somehow. Not in a foreboding way exactly. Stiles wasn’t entirely sure but if he weren’t mistaken, it looked almost…appreciative. It seemed to burn more fiercely the longer he held Derek’s gaze.
Derek had hazel eyes, Stiles thought, though the realisation came to him unbidden among everything else that was running through his throbbing, sleep-deprived head. They were like a breathtaking blend of hazel and green. When he realised he was staring, Stiles finally looked away awkwardly, fingers tapping out his nerves on the arms of the chair.
“So…if this is about the Hamilton case…” Stiles began, not really sure how to explain himself to the man that’d seen him in the aftermath of that disaster. Hadn’t he admitted to Derek on that plane he’d messed up his first big break at work? That was a confession, right?
A look of surprise crossed Derek’s guarded features. His thick brows knitted in confusion. “No, that is…it was Hamilton you had the meeting with yesterday in New York?”
Stiles bit the inside of his cheek. “Uhh, yeah. Yeah that’s…that’s why I was there, actually. In case my stellar breakdown and penchant for free champagne yesterday wasn’t a giveaway, it didn’t exactly go to plan.”
When Derek hesitated, visibly processing this information, Stiles leaned forward slightly, sensing an opportunity. “It was a complete accident, the soda. I was passionate about the product; I didn’t mean to spray it over him. He said he’d been giving the deal second thoughts long before I did that so if you were going to fire me, I really don’t think–”
“Mieczysław,” Derek cut across him, sounding a little bit ambushed.
The sound of Stiles’s birth name sent everything rushing through Stiles’s overactive mind screeching to a halt. It’d been a near-enough perfect pronunciation too, from lips framed by stubble that sort of made Stiles want to reach across the desk and stroke to see if it was soft or prickly. He curled his fingers around the arm of the chair to ensure he didn’t. His impulses couldn’t always be trusted.
“I’m not going to fire you,” Derek said at last, sounding bewildered. “I can tell you’re a hard worker. When she was bringing me up to speed with the company and our employees, Cybill had nothing but praise to offer about you. You care about the company, our target demographic, our customers. I wouldn’t waste your potential by firing you just because a vacillator like Hamilton changed his mind. I’ve met Hamilton; he likes to play games with the people he does business with. Make sure he doesn’t feel pushed into the deal and he’ll reconsider. Cybill seems convinced you can achieve that.”
“Oh,” Stiles said, relaxing a little in his chair. He knew that Cybill tolerated him, he hadn’t realised she valued him so highly. He’d thought, since he hadn’t got the promotion he’d been working for yet, she thought he was just sort of average. “That’s…that’s good. Umm, I’ll have to thank her for her glowing recommendation.”
Derek’s lips twisted into that almost smile that made his eyes dance with amusement again, crinkling a little in the corners as he regarded Stiles as if he were something thoroughly engaging. “You’d better not, she’d be furious to hear her good opinion is public knowledge. She’s very sparse with her praise, her good opinion is hard-won, but she’s fair. I trust her judgement. She’s worked with the company since its bedroom-office days when it was just Laura and I.”
Stiles blinked. He hadn’t realised. He’d known Cybill was a highly valued senior member of staff but he hadn’t realised she had been there from the start, or that she’d known the Hales that well. “Were you good friends?”
The warmth in Derek’s expression shuttered a little. He sat up straighter, letting his hands drop to fold more formally across the table top. “She was closer to Laura than me. I’d say she respects me, ultimately she answers to me but she’s a fierce ally. I trust her implicitly.”
“Sounds like a friend to me,” Stiles offered wryly, but Derek’s expression remained closed off. It was similar to how he’d appeared when he’d first taken that seat beside Stiles on the plane. Untouchable, like an unpredictable animal sizing him up to whether he was worth fighting.
“Maybe,” Derek said, sounding detached and faraway. He was still staring at Stiles though, still regarding him with a mix of fascination and calculation. “She handled a lot of the business while I was…unavailable. She’s probably the only one who cares more about it as much as me. She’s not a partner but she has a lot of power and responsibility at Alpha Prime. Even now, she’s the one who completely handles the marketing team and recruitment among various other things.”
Stiles frowned, not one hundred percent sure why Derek was explaining Cybill’s role in the company to a junior marketing executive. His thoughts must’ve been clear on his face because amusement flickered across Derek’s face, thawing the coldness that’d been there since the mention of his sister somewhat. “You’re not going to be fired because of the Hamilton case, Mieczysław, and you’re not going to be fired because of anything you said yesterday on that plane.”
A breath Stiles hadn’t realised he’d been holding rushed out of him and he dragged a hand through his hair, gingerly rubbing his throbbing head. “Okay, ‘cause that’s…that’s good. Since I saw you downstairs and realised who you were I’ve sort of been having the longest, most drawn out panic attack ever and I’ve got like the headache from hell after all the stress of that flight and the champagne yesterday. I hate champagne. It tastes like garbage and I’m still sort of feeling it from yesterday and I…” He caught himself on a breath. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this, you don’t care about my opinion on champagne, you probably really like champagne, right? Oh my god, you totally do.”
“I don’t really drink,” Derek said dismissively.
“Oh, cool. Is that like…a religious thing?” He blinked, horrified at what had just come out of his mouth without even thinking. “Oh my god, that’s so not–”
“You really have no brain to mouth filter, do you?”
Stiles felt his face burn. “Sort of, not really, no. It’s mostly only when I’m nervous, I guess.”
Derek cocked his head to regard him again in a way that made Stiles feel exposed in ways nobody had ever made him feel. His pulse quickened and he swore Derek’s eyes flickered over him searchingly
“I make you nervous?” Derek asked softly.
Stiles moistened his dry lips. “Uh, yeah. You’re like my boss and you know every insignificant and noteworthy, humiliating secret that has ever haunted me since pretty much birth. Of course I’m nervous.”
Not to mention he was sort of insanely attractive in an intense kind of way.
Derek seemed to consider him a moment, contemplating him thoroughly before speaking again. “That’s what I wanted to discuss with you actually. Yesterday, on the plane…”
Stiles watched him tap his index finger against his own bicep as if it was a nervous tick. Did Stiles make him nervous too? Maybe he wouldn’t go that far, but he did get the feeling that Derek was a man who hadn’t garnered success by taking fools lightly. But he definitely seemed to be considering his words to Stiles carefully, as if Stiles’s good opinion mattered to him, or perhaps he was concerned how Stiles might react at any rate.
“I’d really appreciate it if no one knew I was in New York,” Derek said eventually. “If you could keep it a secret.”
Oh, was that what Derek was so nervous about?
“Oh, yeah, sure. I mean yeah. I’m an excellent secret keeper. When I was a kid I used to sneak into my dad’s office and peek at his notes on the cases he was working on at the station? I learned to be secretive at a pretty young age. That information is technically classified but I’m too nosy for my own good. And if I’d accidentally blabbed any of it, my dad could’ve gotten into a whole bunch of shit so…yeah. I can keep a secret is what I’m basically saying.”
Derek seemed to relax in his chair as well. “Thank you.”
“But you too, you can’t tell anyone any of the stuff I blurted out yesterday. I thought I was going to die. I was having an existential crisis in the face of death. Some of the people here…well I guess you remember what I said about the Agent Stilinski thing, right? It’s just…I could handle it if they knew some of my embarrassing secrets but I just…I don’t want to have to handle it if I can help it. It gives me anxiety just thinking about it, actually.”
Derek held his gaze seriously. “I promise you, I’ll die with your secrets.”
That…that was…again, pretty intense, actually. Stiles wasn’t sure what it said about him that his pulse fluttered at the way Derek said that. He had issues.
“Cool,” he said, a little too breathily, rising to his feet in his urgency to get out of Derek’s office before he completely humiliated himself. Again. “If that’s all you wanted to check then I’ll just head on out to lunch.”
As he approached the door though, his curiosity got the better of his sense of self-preservation – not for the first time.
He turned back, surprised to find Derek had risen too, as if to escort him to the office door, like he was a guest or something rather than an employee intruding in his space. He was almost as close as he’d been on that plane, those hazel-green eyes tracking his every move and Stiles felt his stomach swoop a little at his proximity. All he could remember in that moment was grasping his arm as the plane swooped in turbulence, the feel of the toned muscle there evident, even through the jacket he’d been wearing.
“I gotta ask,” Stiles managed, his treacherous voice a little huskier than even he’d expected. “How come you used my legal name? And how come you pronounced it so well? Only my parents can pronounce that name. I couldn’t pronounce it until I was like nine.”
Derek blinked as if surfacing from a haze or an enchantment. “Oh, I…Cybill introduced you as Stiles, but when I looked over the cases with Cybill and came to the paperwork on the Hamilton file, I saw that your official name on the documentation, on the company system was Mieczysław and I thought…” His eyes swept across Stiles’s face, looking a little distant again, almost wistful before he found his voice again.
“I thought maybe you only used Stiles because you’d felt pressured to fit in, because your name was a little more difficult to say.” He winced, “I had hoped it’d make you feel more comfortable, but you don’t like it?” He was looking at Stiles like he couldn’t make sense of him, but rather than frustrated he was concerned, perhaps a little confused.
“Not really. I mean…I’ve always gone by Stiles, since I couldn’t pronounce my real name. It was after my mom’s dad. Only she ever used it when she was pissed at me. I don’t think anyone’s called me that since she died.”
Derek seemed to step back and put some space between them at that, looking pained. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” Stiles said quickly, “it’s fine, really, it’s really thoughtful of you actually. I appreciate it. But I’d prefer Stiles.”
“Stiles then,” Derek said, the name sounding warm on his tongue, almost fond and Stiles swore his stomach swooped again.
“How did you pronounce it so well?” he asked before he could stop himself.
“I used a pronunciation dictionary online before I got Scott to ask you to come see me,” Derek said, as if that was obvious, as if that wasn’t a really considerate and kind of sweet thing to do for an awkward employee. As if it was something ordinary, when really it was more than even Stiles’s teachers or best friend had ever thought to do.
“Thank you,” he said, sounding a little breathy to his own ears. Derek’s eyes dropped to his lips, as if he were too considering the sound of Stiles’s voice and Stiles scrambled to recover some form of professionalism and get the hell out of that office. He stuck his hand out between them, offering it for a hand shake. “Nice to officially meet you, Mr. Hale,” he managed, only a little awkwardly.
There was a beat of startled hesitation, before Derek grasped his hand. At the contact Stiles felt a little hum of static, something warm and almost electric that made his skin tingle and all throughout Derek still held his gaze unrelentingly.
“Derek,” Derek insisted.
“Derek,” Stiles agreed, feeling the handshake linger a little too long and his headache ebb into a fuzzy haze of attraction, of appreciation for the man in front of him. He’d be blind not to see it, how attractive he was, how capable he was. Intense, yes, but also polite and oddly thoughtful. Stiles could see why Cybill respected him.
The relief of reaching the elevator was so intense that he swore the headache lingering from yesterday’s champagne had almost completely gone by the time he reached the lobby on the ground floor.
Scott was back in his regular spot at reception. He waved at Stiles from his seat as he battled his way through what looked like a difficult phone conversation. Stiles would definitely have to bring him back a doughnut or something. Perhaps a latte with an extra shot of espresso would be appreciated.
He was late taking lunch, so the lunch time rush had been and gone and the street outside was nearly empty, with only a few people milling around. But when he paused at the crossing, waiting for the lights, he saw something out of the corner of his eye. From this vantage point of the sidewalk, he could see a woman standing against the side of the steps leading up into the building, a position that would have been nearly impossible to view from the front doors. There were other offices in the restored warehouses of course, so she could easily have been hanging around waiting for an appointment, or even waiting for someone, it was entirely unfeasible. Something about the way she was leaning against the brickwork of the stairs, however, just raised alarm bells.
He hesitated in a suspended moment, torn between heading back into the building to warn security and ringing the front desk from where he stood. His cop kid’s brain ticked over in that second but in the end, the chime of the crosswalk made his decision. He brought his cell to his ear as he crossed. The cheerful hold music filled him with an odd sense of anxiety. When he’d crossed the road, he glanced over his shoulder as casually as he could, only to find the woman watching him.
He made it to the corner before someone picked up.
“Good afternoon you’re through to Alpha Prime, how can I help?”
Scott sounded his usual perky self in spite of his hectic schedule, of course.
“Hey, Scotty, it’s probably nothing but can you send security to check out someone hanging around the stairs in front of the building? Grey jacket, dark hair, sunglasses in overcast weather. Total 10-66.”
He felt frazzled and on edge all the way to the coffee and doughnut place across the street. He practically wolfed down the pastry and doughnut he bought for his lunch, watching the street outside with an uncomfortable buzz of apprehension. And he’d wanted to do this for a living? Stake outs and potentially dangerous suspects?
It was things like this that reassured him that he’d made the right choice about dropping out of the FBI internship. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t have been able to do it, he definitely could have, had proved his potential there, in fact, but it wouldn’t have made him happy. He’d have ended up as one of those workaholic agents that burned out before he hit forty, through stress and anxiety and guilt over difficult cases he just couldn’t let go.
The pounding in his head that’d plagued him most of the morning had left him a bit nauseous, and so his stomach mournfully empty. That probably hadn’t helped his jitters, he realised then. With it gone and with food lining his belly, he already felt a lot better. The woman outside the building was probably waiting for a job interview in one of the other neighbouring businesses or something. Stiles had probably totally overreacted as part of his hangover and an aftermath of a fairly stressful couple of days.
He needed an early night.
He nursed his latte for a little while, letting the sound of the chattering customers and the food in his belly calm him. The caffeine probably helped too. He still processed it differently to most people even though the worst of his ADD had faded as he’d grown into adulthood – caffeine was still somewhat soporific to him. He also was also still prone to hyperfocus sometimes, so he guessed it’d always be a part of him, even if it didn’t rule him like it’d done as a child.
It came to him then in a flash, a memory of blurting out something about his childhood ADD diagnosis amongst other things. He tried frantically to claw some of it back and even the little he could remember from the last part of the flight from hell made him cringe. But what he couldn’t get away from was Derek Hale apparently being completely unperturbed by whatever he’d heard. The barest hints of…something from behind Derek Hale’s stoic mask. He couldn’t get away from how warm his skin had been when they’d shook hands or the way his voice, still surprisingly soft, had said his given name – that he’d bothered to learn how to say it at all.
It was difficult to reconcile the idea of an impassive, untouchable businessman and absent company owner with the light he’d seen behind Derek’s inhumanly beautiful eyes. He couldn’t stop his mind from trying either. He wondered about the way Derek had looked at him, from behind the guarded veil of his countenance, like Stiles was an enigma to him, a puzzle he was haplessly intrigued by. He wondered if Derek’s earnest promise to keep his secrets was genuine. He wondered what was so important about New York that made Derek want to hide the fact that he was even there in the first place.
The mystery of Derek Hale monopolised his thoughts so completely that he nearly forgot about the time altogether. He snapped back to himself with just enough time to make another coffee order before shooting out the door. By the time he made his way back to the building, two coffees in hand and a paper bag hooked over his arm, the woman from earlier was gone.
“Did they chase her off?” Stiles asked as he set a cup and the bag on Scott’s desk.
Scott frowned as he looked up from whatever email he’d been frantically typing. “Huh? Oh, the 10-66. No, security checked it out but there was no one out there. Apparently they’ll keep a lookout though and check CCTV just to be safe.” He sipped hurriedly at the tall latte and groaned. “Dude, you’re a lifesaver.”
“You can get the next one,” Stiles said, cheerful but distracted, but Scott rose from his chair as Stiles made to move away, snagging hold of his sleeve.
“Hey, wait up. What did the big boss want? Was he mad about Doug Hamilton?”
“Huh?” Stiles blinked. For the last hour or so, he’d actually completely forgotten about Hamilton. “Oh. No, not at all. No, I guess he wanted to…discuss yesterday is all. All good, nothing to worry about. I live to fight another day. I better get back though I’m cutting it kinda close.”
Thankfully, the elevator was waiting for him when he pressed the call button and he made it back to his desk by the skin of his teeth. The afternoon was also blissfully busy enough that he only sometimes found his thoughts drifting to the new occupant of the corner office.