So this got very long very fast, but it was just so easy and fun to write and I'm really genuinely excited to share it.
I actually started it in July/Aug and wrote continuously for like a month, aiming to post it in its entirety before the new season started. Clearly that didn't happen. I took a little time away from it (read: a lot) came back to it, fixed up the first chap and now I'm posting it in the hope it'll make me finish editing/writing the rest so the first part won't be a total sad sack on its own on the world wide web.
Anyway! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it…
Title: Stay All Day In The Sun
Disclaimer: I don't own a thing except the obvious OC and the vague semblance of a 'plot'. Title taken from lyrics of Disney's 'Part of Your World' – I'm particularly partial to Arden Cho's rendition.
A/N: This is AU. Also, while other characters and their outside relationships will be included, their involvement will mainly revolve around Derek and Lydia and the main romantic relationship (for want of a better term) will be Derek/Lydia. Just so there's no confusion.
WARNING: some swear words, and reference to sex in later chaps.
Summary: Her bosses termed it burnout, while the so-called medical professionals put the episode down to sensory overload. Lydia preferred to call it a blip. She had bagged that job right out of college and she was fantastic at it. One little freak-out was not going to determine the rest of her life. Returning to Beacon Hills for 'rest and recuperation' on the other hand…
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"Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly."
Aaron Outward
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Chapter One
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"Sometimes you meet someone and even though you
never liked brown eyes before, their eyes are your new favorite color."
Anonymous
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Today was the start of Summer. The giant red-marker proclamation of 'School's Out!' on the wall calendar was a helpful reminder of that fact; spread across three date boxes, it looked like it had been scrawled by a child.
Lydia was still waiting on the excitement to hit; even a relatively low-level buzz would do at this stage.
She blew out a sigh as she watched the cars drive by the entrance to Argent's, a haze of color against the backdrop of the thick dark trees on the other side of the road.
According to both members of the father-daughter duo that now constituted the Argent name, it was the same trend as previous years, with sales picking up by the afternoon (despite the relatively slow morning). So far, Allison had been dealing with those that had come into the hardware store looking to make enquiries and purchases below the hundred dollar mark, while the rest of their customers were met by Chris before they'd even made it the length of the driveway.
Lydia was still trying to make some sense of all the paperwork left neglected by her best friend; like being a math whiz and statistician made deciphering the mess any easier. (It did actually. She'd spent hours already designing a whole new accounting system for them and tracing the inaccuracies in the stock and logging the data from the invoices and delivery notes into spreadsheet after spreadsheet using complex algorithms that'd make Allison's head spin. Still, just because she was a finance nerd, didn't mean her best friend could get away with such blatant disinterest in keeping good business records.)
Dust kicked up in the yard as a black pickup truck turned off the road and into the lot, pulling into one of the spots designated for 'Employees Only' like it was habit. As far as Lydia knew the only ones who should've been parking there were Allison, Allison's Dad and Pretty Boy Parrish: so named after that total sweetheart Jordan had come in on his day off specifically to meet Lydia, overspilling with eagerness and boyish charm as he'd presented her with a large coffee upon arrival. Oh and her, when her best friend her actually let her take her own car instead of insisting they carpool.
Lydia eyed the driver through the back office window; it didn't look like Allison's boyfriend either. Isaac was tall and lean with a head of voluminous waves that could make even the most secure person develop hair envy for those brown curls (there was also the striking bone structure, baby blue eyes and sweet sweet smile). Yet, Chris hadn't chased the mystery vehicle owner out of the parking space and Allison hadn't so much as lifted her head at the sound of the truck's engine cutting out right outside their window. So admittedly the newcomer's identity piqued Lydia's curiosity. After all, she was due an afternoon pick-me-up.
She watched the man step out the driver's side door and she took in every inch of him as he did so. From the distressed leather of his boots and the worn denim jeans that fit entirely too well to the sculpt of his legs, to the handprints dusted across his pecs – his t-shirt – the dark stubble trimmed close to the angles of his jaw and the black, wind-tousled hair she would readily volunteer to run her fingers through. She couldn't see his eyes behind the aviator shades, but given the rest of him, she doubted they'd be a disappointment.
"Seriously?" Lydia let out, slapping the folder in her hand down on the table-top with a glorious snap!
Standing right outside their store, sun beating down on him like he was a Goddamn gift from Heaven, was a man who could easily be the most perfect specimen she'd ever laid eyes on (and that was saying something given she'd met the arrestingly beautiful Isaac and aforementioned Pretty Boy).
"If I'd known that was the sort of thing coming out of Beacon Hills, I never would've left."
(And she might not have put up such a fight upon her return – but that was another point.)
She'd been back to the town intermittently over the years since she'd moved away the start of Freshman Year, and yet somehow it seemed she'd never crossed paths with this guy. Even in a place the size of Beacon Hills that was a little odd, although not completely out of the realm of possibility. Still, she'd remember. You didn't readily forget a face or a body like that. At least, Lydia Martin didn't.
"Wasn't the last time you said that when we stopped by Kira's place at the end of one of your visits, but we ran out of time for a sit-down meal so you had to take your order to go and you called me from the road telling me how delicious it was and why hadn't we been there before and how could I just let you drive off like that before you'd even had the chance to try it or better yet, become friends with the chef?" Allison rattled off the memory in its entirety, without even bothering to look up from her phone. If she wasn't doing something 'work-related', Lydia was going to hit her with something. Something hard. Like a hammer. Right on one of those short black fingernails that made it look like she was still channeling all that teenage angst of years ago.
"That's a different sort of mouth-wateringly good," Lydia informed her smartly, continuing to ogle the guy outside (there really was no other word for what she was doing, so why bother denying it?) "Trust me."
"Why? What are you talking about now?"
Her best friend kicked her feet off the desk and stood up, finally shifting her attention from the screen in her hand to the view that had Lydia enthralled.
And then she immediately started laughing.
"Stop laughing," Lydia demanded, barely taking her eyes off the six-foot-tall, dark-haired, drink of Holy-Hell-I-need-me-some-of-that as he walked around to the other side of his truck.
"No, it's just – this is perfect," Allison managed between giggles, composing herself long enough to declare, "You like Derek."
Her red hair whipped across her cheeks as she turned to her best friend with wide eyes and high brows. "Derek as in… ?"
"Hale," Allison finished for her and sounded more than a tad smug about it. "Yes, Lydia, Derek as in Derek Hale."
"Ok," she nodded, tilting her head back and squaring her shoulders, "I can work with that."
"Can you?" her best friend questioned, in a tone that suggested Lydia was missing something and she knew exactly what that something was. "Can you really?"
"Yes, I can," Lydia told her, deliberately keeping her chin high, "Why do you have such little faith in – "
She looked back out the window in time to see Derek Hale coming towards them; with a small human sprinting ahead of him.
Oh.
"You were saying?" Allison sounded unquestionably amused with this little turn of events, and ok, fine so Lydia hadn't been expecting that, but her best friend didn't need to look so pleased about it.
"I guess there's no point asking if the kid's his?"
The Hales were a big family, maybe the kid belonged to one of his sisters, or his cousin, or –
While not as perfectly styled as her own, Allison's arched brow was all the answer Lydia needed.
Right.
Of course the child model was Derek's.
Lydia sighed.
Just once, could she just like a guy? Maybe have a nice, easy, no-strings relationship – with good sex, lots and lots of good sex?
It was this sort of shit that made her leave Beacon Hills in the first place. Well, ok, fine, not this per se, but it was definitely a factor that put her off moving back for good. A plan that was going swimmingly for her at that moment.
The bell above the door to the shop chimed and she dived into the corner to flatten herself against the wall, hoping the still-open filing cabinet drawers would shield her from view.
Allison just laughed, but noticeably made no move to go and greet the pair herself. In fact, she'd taken up her previous spot lounging on the chair, feet on the desk and fingers on the buttons of her cell phone.
God, no wonder Chris had dragged Lydia back to Beacon Hills to help out.
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"Derek!" Chris called out and the other man spun round at the sound of his name. "How many times do I have to tell you that you can just call your order in? You don't need to make the trip over here every time you need to hire some equipment."
"Maybe I just miss seeing your face on a daily basis?" Derek replied, and when he flashed that winning smile that made the women of this town drop to their knees Chris could've slugged the bastard.
Instead, he slung his arm over the younger man's shoulders and pulled him bodily towards him. Derek allowed himself to be drawn into the hug with little protest.
"What's all this?" Chris gestured to the powder marks that spread across Derek's light blue work shirt from curved collar to hem; he looked like he'd been grinding flagstone all morning. "Tell me you've been out on a job and you didn't go to an appointment like this?"
Derek gave him a sideways look like he was disappointed Chris thought so little of him, especially after years of enduring the elder's talk of the importance of first impressions. He hit back with, "You think a clean shirt's what closes my deals?"
"I think an excellent mentor who taught you the game is what closes your deals," Chris returned, his lips pulling back to reveal both rows of teeth as he huffed out an accompanying laugh. "Although I'm pretty sure the majority of your customers hire Hale Hardscapes hoping you'll turn up at their door having forgotten to put your shirt on and then just continue in that fashion until their outdoor remodel project's complete."
To which Derek said, "Gossiping with the old ladies at the grocery store again, Chris? That's how you get a name for yourself."
Chris barked out a laugh.
"What're you doing here anyway?" he asked. "I thought you and the kid were going off on your magical adventure as soon as school let out."
"Me and the kid and Kira and Malia," Derek corrected.
"How forgetful of me," Chris was teasing, but he knew the situation well. He tilted his head as he remarked, "Well, that's girls for you."
Derek rolled his eyes, his mouth pulling downwards as he exhaled through his nose. "I picked D up from school, went by the site to check in with the boys, and those two still aren't ready. So we're here killing time."
"I don't believe that for a second." Chris shook his head and stepped right up into Derek's personal space. "You wanted my face to be the last thing you saw before you left, didn't you?"
"I think I have it committed to memory by now," Derek assured him with a closed-mouth smile, and jerked his thumb in the direction of the back of the store, "But he could probably do with a quick refresher."
Chris saw the shock of black hair before anything else, a small hand brushing over the top in a repetitive move that had quickly become as familiar as all the other tics. As expected, the kid was by the buckets, where he always migrated, inspecting the many screwdriver and drill bits they had on offer.
"Hey Uncle Chris!" came the shout as Duke turned and gifted him with the bright white-toothed smile he'd inherited from his father. It was times like this that Chris was grateful Allison was over a decade older than the boy; he was already a handful at this age, Lord help them all when he became a teenager.
"Hey Uncle Chris," he mimicked and shook his head, "Like butter wouldn't melt."
Beside him, Derek's lips quirked upwards.
"You said he could have something shiny if he stopped asking when you were leaving, didn't you?" He was accustomed to a fair number of the younger man's parenting tactics by now. "You know most people use toy stores to bribe their kids. Hardware stores aren't usually high on the list."
"Maybe those people just don't know the right hardware stores," Derek snarked back, neither confirming nor denying his intentions either way.
"One of these days I'm going to send you an itemized bill for Mr. Magpie over there," Chris remarked, but all Derek did was smile; that long drawn out curl of his lips that took its time steadily rising amid the dark stubble on his cheeks just to piss you off that bit more.
"Stay in the store," Derek called over to Duke before he walked out into the yard.
"And don't pocket anything," Chris added, before he shut the door and followed after his friend.
"My mother's going to have a few choice words for you if you keep referring to her only grandchild as a petty thief."
"Don't think I don't know he bats those ridiculously long eyelashes at my daughter and sweet-talks her into giving him freebies," Chris quashed that play for innocence, even if Derek's defensive line was half-hearted at best. "She's terrible at doing stock count. Why d'you think I brought Lydia in?"
"Lydia?" Derek flicked an eyebrow up in question. He hadn't seen anyone else in the store, but since there'd been no response when he'd called out to say it was just him – or rather, when Duke had announced their presence loud and clear – he figured Allison was in the back, intentionally ignoring them while she pretended to do paperwork or grabbed products to restock the shelves (Parrish would've rushed out to greet them if he hadn't already been manning the desk waiting for them to walk through the door).
"Allison's best friend? Beautiful redhead with a quick-sharp tongue and a scarily brilliant mind to go with it? Really? You didn't notice Lydia?" Chris said, clucking his teeth and shaking his head. Usually Derek was more observant; he had to be with a livewire kid like Duke. "We'd better make this quick then before your son gets in there before you."
"Shut up."
He could feel the laughter building in his throat as he placated Derek with the words, "I wouldn't worry about it too much. The kid's usually pretty good about sharing."
Derek eyed him, reading the setup in his words. "Is this about you dating my sister? Because I told you I don't care."
It wasn't actually – well, not entirely – although he appreciated Derek reiterating his thoughts on the matter. Namely that he absolutely did not give one flying fuck about the supposed views of their townspeople on Chris and Laura's relationship; age gap and the elder's widower/single-father status included. Derek didn't tack on the sentiment, "so long as you're both happy," but Chris took that as a given.
"Think about it as an opportunity, Derek," he tried to coach the younger, although the constant twitch of one side of his mouth might've given away his true intentions. "You surround yourself with fearsome women. That can be intimidating for potential life-partners. I'm just trying to help you bridge the gap."
Derek glowered at him; he honest to God glowered. It was hilarious.
The earlier statement was retracted with the unimpressed: "You're starting to sound like her."
His tone was probably a touch too mocking for the other man's taste, Chris should've really dialed that back, except: "Personally I'd be more concerned with what sort of bias my daughter's passing onto your son than your sister's influence on me," Chris told him. "Allison's a big Lydia fan. And D's so young and impressionable. She might just knock you off the top spot."
Ok, so maybe taunting Derek like that was just too much of an indulgence to pass up (Chris didn't think it was any great wonder that he and Laura had got together given just how much they had in common).
"I hate you."
"No you don't," he easily dismissed, "And you haven't even met her yet!"
"Wasn't aimed at her," Derek muttered in correction.
Chris let the grin form fully-fledged on his face.
.
Allison wasn't even paying attention to the customer in her own store. He could've been up to something – he could've been stealing something – and Lydia said as much to her best friend. Her best friend who so helpfully responded with an unruffled shrug and the words "More than likely" to the first comment, and "Oh, he definitely is" with a knowing smile to the second.
"Well?" Lydia pursued that very point, hand on the hip and foot tapping impatiently on the floor. "Aren't you going to do something about it?"
"If you really want me to," Allison accepted, still paying more attention to the screen in front of her than her best friend or the supposed thief she was giving free rein to the next room.
"If I – " she broke off with a huff. It wasn't her surname emblazoned in wrought-iron over the entrance.
The brunette kicked her boots off the table and stood with that athletic grace she'd always possessed, moving towards the door to the main shop with barely a glance away from the message her thumbs were rapidly typing.
"Hey, sticky fingers!" Allison called out, as she stepped behind the cash desk and finally put her phone down. "Get over here!"
"Allison!" Lydia hissed as she stomped after her, pinching her best friend's arm (not that the bitch even flinched). "That was not what I had in mind."
"I know," Allison's response was as quick and gleeful as her smile.
The kid turned at the command and broke into a run across the store. A blur of black and gray and red, he pounced – yes pounced – over the lower counter and launched himself into Allison's arms. Her best friend very nearly collapsed under the sudden weight, staggering backwards with the child in her arms before she found her centre and managed to walk with him to the front desk where she deposited him next to the register. Because of course Allison thought nothing of positioning the wayward, possibly thieving, child next to a machine filled with cash (that sort of blind trust was usually more in Scott's nature; generally Allison illustrated less naiveté than her ex – provided there wasn't a pair of pretty eyes persuading her otherwise).
"Hey Ally Cat," the boy greeted with an easy grin that lit up his whole face, his legs swinging back and forth over the edge of the work bench. His grey sweat-shorts rucked up with his inability to sit still, displaying an impressive set of skinned knees as well as a thin coating of dirt and grime spread over the bruises and scrapes on his shins. Lydia took a step back lest he try to spread the love with a red-hot sneaker to her own.
"Neat trick," Allison praised his predator's pounce; because she'd been in Beacon Hills too long and considered that normal public behavior. "Aunt Malia teach you that?"
"Yup," the kid said, while Lydia stood cataloguing their exchange, connecting the dots. "Aunt Cora says it's good to test people's reflexes, but I mostly just like jumping on Stiles 'cause he almost never catches me in time." He shrugged and swept his hand from his crown to the peak of his dark hair, like Stiles's inability to ward off the incoming attack was the perfect reason to keep doing it until he could. Kid logic was apparently not so dissimilar from its elders'. "It's funny."
Stiles. Of course. Lydia had that overdue lightbulb moment. Malia was the girl he'd been going on and on about in what seemed like every Skype call they'd had since she'd left (in actuality it was probably just in their exchanges over the past year or so, but it seemed longer, much longer). Lydia tended to tune out a lot of what Stiles said because he had a tendency to go on and on and on about the girl and she really had no desire to know that Malia was always the big spoon to Stiles's little spoon whenever they were in bed together and that Stiles actually kind of liked it. Among other things.
Malia who also happened to be related to Cora, who Lydia had the misfortune of running into in gym class during Freshman Year; an encounter she still hadn't forgotten. They'd been pitted against each other during a game of basketball and when Lydia went to shoot, Cora decided to nearly break her arm in half while blocking the shot. Needless to say, it had left an impression – the four-finger-and-a-thumb kind, with nails so long and sharp fifteen-year-old Lydia had been adamant they'd penetrated right through to the bone. She'd nearly torn Cora's hair out in retaliation at being manhandled like that, and when the teachers had forced them to apologize to one another she'd handed the other girl a gift card for a manicure at her mother's salon with the words, "Wouldn't want you scratching anyone else with those claws of yours, sweetheart." Cora looked torn between wanting to punch the redhead square in the face or grin manically back at her. Lydia remained quite proud of that.
Malia was a Hale. Just like Cora. And the kid. And his Dad.
Perfect.
Small-town living at its finest.
.
"So?" Allison prompted, squeezing the boy's sides as she held him in place on the counter, material as black as his hair bunching up between her fingers and causing Mickey Mouse's smile to fall lopsided across the front of his t-shirt. "Are you excited?"
"Yeah!" the kid exclaimed, his whole face brimming and his shoulders doing a little dance of their own. "It's gonna be the best ever!"
"Best ever, huh?" the brunette echoed, eyes and brows going wide.
"Yeah, Ally, it's Disneyland."
By the sound of it this was the most obvious thing in the world.
Lydia stifled a laugh.
"Well, I'm sorry my Dad didn't take me to Disneyland when I finished First Grade," Allison said, drawing out her words as she exaggerated the hardship she'd faced at such a young age. "In fact, I think I was lucky to get an ice cream to celebrate the occasion."
"We got ice cream too! But I ate it all 'fore we got here," the kid told her, because apparently this was a competition now. "I bet if you'd asked Uncle Chris he'd've taken you to Disneyland. He's pretty cool like that."
"Oh, yeah," Allison intoned, looking for all the world like she believed that line. "So cool."
The kid shrugged, palm skimming over his dark hair. "S'prob'ly why Daddy and Auntie Laur like him so much."
"Pretty sure that's not the only reason," Allison returned, her mouth turning down and her brow knitting together, "At least in Laura's case."
Ah. Laura. That would be the woman Allison's Dad was dating. Lydia had never met her. She was sure that was a move carefully orchestrated by Allison, because that number of near-misses in a town like Beacon Hills was definitely a sign of someone running interference (plus she'd been around Stiles enough to recognize the whole once, twice, three times scenario, especially when it was staring her right in the face). Her best friend switched between cagey and flippantly dismissive whenever Lydia tried to broach the subject so she stopped asking and instead resolved to just find out herself when she returned to Beacon Hills. She should've guessed that Chris's girlfriend was a Hale; apparently six degrees of separation was too much for the people of this town.
"He has lots of shiny bolts and stuff. That's cool," the kid pointed out, running his hand across the top of his head again. Lydia caught herself watching, mentally tallying up the number of times he'd done that, and the kid blinked at her. He quickly brought his fingers together, causing the light to catch on the object held within his grasp, rolling back and forth in the bridge he'd made between the digits.
Apparently that was all that was needed to break Allison from her brooding, her whole face softening as she breathed out a laugh and nodded to the boy's joined hands. "Is that what you've chosen for today?"
He lifted it up to show Allison what he'd picked out, his gaze narrowing in on the little drill bit and his eyelids fluttering (and damn, the kid had the most gorgeous brown eyes) as he explained each section in turn. "It's got spiky bits here, see? But the top part's flat and there's a little nook so if you had two of 'em you could stack 'em like Lego."
Allison was no doubt familiar with the piece; she knew the names and distinguishing features of every single item they had for sale in the store as well as all the machinery outside in the lot. It was damn impressive.
"Ok, but no telling Uncle Chris," Allison instructed and the kid immediately grinned, wrapping his whole hand around the piece again.
"Misappropriating stock, Allison?" Lydia spoke up, head tilted so she could get a better look at the item she'd be taking out of the day's stock count and not adding to the sales figures. "Really?"
"Oh hush," her best friend waved off her attempts to chastise her. "Besides, that's your area of expertise now, isn't it? Sales projections and inventory and all that jazz?"
"You know I wouldn't even be here if you didn't keep giving away freebies to every person who batted their eyelashes at you – no matter how enviably long and lush they may be without the use of cosmetic enhancements," she pointed out, because wow those lashes with those eyes? Kid could be a freaking model. Unsurprising given what his father looked like, but damn did those Hales have good genes. "Remind me again why you and Scott broke up? Because he's the champion of that whole mantra: 'let's trust everyone to do the right thing'."
That wasn't strictly true (at all), but her best friend had the good grace not to call her on it in front of present company. She also didn't so much as glower in Lydia's direction for bringing up the ex-boyfriend angle, but that might just be because she and Scott were still on such good terms.
What Allison did do was draw the kid's full attention to Lydia's presence. And if her tone of voice didn't give away her intention, the curve of the lips certainly did: she was up to no good. "Duke, have you met my best friend Lydia?"
The boy shook his head and upon the prompting, looked to the redhead. "I'd've said hello proper, but Grandma says your host is s'posed to intr'duce you."
Lydia turned to her best friend with deliberately high brows and tightly pursed lips. Allison feigned ignorance with an initial exaggerated gasp, before biting her lip and knitting her brow together like she was truly remorseful about the oversight.
"I'm Duke Christopher Hale," the kid said, taking it upon himself to do what Allison so conveniently hadn't, and striking out his hand, "Pleased to meet you."
He beamed at her, and God, Lydia didn't have the heart to do anything but smile back and take his hand in hers.
The dastardly little charmer.
"Lydia and I went to school together. She moved away during our Freshman Year of High School to live with her Grandmother, but she's back now," Allison explained, and the way her lips pulled farther and farther up her cheeks was enough of a tease without the laughing delivery of: "And we are all so looking forward to seeing what happens next."
What happened next was the phone in the office rang and Allison had to run to answer it, leaving Lydia alone with Derek Hale's kid.
"Me and Daddy lived with Grandma 'fore we lived in the loft. It's the highest building in all of Beacon Hills and we're at the top," Duke informed her, sounding completely unfazed at the prospect of having essentially been abandoned with a virtual stranger, although his near-constant eye twitching and the hands twisting in his lap might have suggested otherwise. "Grandma takes me to the shop with her when Daddy and everyone's working and teaches me about all the flowers."
"That's nice," she said, and then frowned because that sounded terrible and trite even to her own ears. How old had Allison said the kid was? First Grade? She might get away it.
"Yup," the kid agreed, either oblivious to her not-so-internal struggle or just ignoring it. "I sit up front with her, on the counter like this, and she does all the mixy-matchy with the flowers and I get to choose the ribbon and the paper to wrap them all up. And lots of times ladies come in an' ask if Daddy's in the shop with me, but he almost never is, but they still get flowers anyway an' sometimes they even ask for a box of chocolates. That costs extra. And it always makes Grandma laugh."
"I bet it does," Lydia murmured, could well imagine why so many women flocked to his mother's flower shop when they saw his son inside (and why they'd comfort eat when the thought of seeing him was so cruelly ripped away from them); if he was anything like his boy he probably charmed the pants off them – and enjoyed doing it.
Allison's phone buzzed and Lydia looked down instinctively as a message from Kira flashed up on the screen: Is Derek still at your Dad's? Can you keep him there a little longer? Pretty pretty please? Malia's in a frenzy and no, we've not finished packing yet.
She looked through the office door and found her best friend still preoccupied with the customer call.
When the phone buzzed again from the inactivity, Lydia huffed and swiped across the screen to gain access, quickly typing out the reply: Allison's on a call, he's out in the yard with Chris and I'm playing babysitter to his kid. I'd say you have a little time. Lydia x.
Thanks Lydia! We'll bring you back Disney presents of gratitude! That reply had a whole different set of emojis with it. Seconds later, another message followed: Isn't the little man just cavity-inducing cute?
Lydia flicked her eyes up and as predicted, Duke was still watching her with blinking curiosity.
"You know, Allison looks like she could be a while in there, and who knows how long Chris will be out there with your Dad looking at those hunks of metal." She reached down to pull open the drawer under the counter and brought out a pack of cards, holding them up for him to see. "Wanna play a game?"
The kid grinned at her and shimmied backwards to make room, drawing his legs up and crossing them basket-weave-style as he pivoted round to face her again. From the opposite end of the counter, Lydia started to shuffle the cards and Duke watched mesmerized at the quick movements of her fingers.
She was pretty sure he even whispered, "Awesome!"
That made her smile.
Ok, so maybe babysitting duty had its perks (like being hero-worshipped by the son of the town's hottest resident).
.
That was how Derek found them a short while later. Lydia hadn't heard a peep out of Allison since her best friend had run off to take that call, so she presumed it'd turned from an inquiry or a quote into an actual order that required processing.
She was aware of someone watching her as she was leaning over the counter dealing the cards between them, passing instructions to the kid as they played, but she didn't say anything. If he wanted to be a creeper and stand there silently checking her out she wasn't about to stop him. She knew she looked good.
"You're teaching my kid how to count cards?"
One side of her mouth pulled up her cheek and she let it ascend high enough for him to notice before she corrected, "I'm teaching him how to win at cards."
That produced a huff of laughter and Lydia looked up to match the face to the voice even though she knew fine well who it was that was speaking to her.
Derek Hale was even more gorgeous up close.
And apparently she wasn't the only one staring.
However, her more-than-pleasant view was abruptly obstructed by the boy between them as Duke hopped up from the cash-desk and threw himself right at his father with a shout of, "Daddy! Think fast!"
Lydia pulled back quickly to avoid a foot to the face and readjusted her skirt as she straightened (it was one of those floaty high-low mullet ones she'd borrowed from her best friend's wardrobe; not usually her style except for days when she was short on clean clothing and wasn't in the mood to rifle through her as-yet-unpacked luggage – which seemed a fruitless endeavor in itself since she'd only have to re-pack it all when her mother sold the house out from under her anyway). The sole of one of the kid's sneakers slipped on the spread of cards on the counter and threw off his trajectory, but his father caught him instinctively, and she could've sworn it was the first time she'd seen the man blink since he'd walked into the store.
And then Chris was there too, clearing his throat and looking far too smug for her liking as he nodded to her, but directed at Derek, "You've met Lydia then."
"See? That's what the hosts're s'posed to do," Duke piped up and at his father's furrowed brow he clarified, "Ally just let me talk and talk 'fore she properly intr'duced me an' Lydia."
"Ah." Derek nodded, apparently he knew Grandma's teachings as well as his son did, the corners of his mouth pinching into his cheeks as he turned back to face the redhead. He closed the distance between them easily, like he didn't have a human limpet attached to his front. "I'm Derek."
She inclined her head and smiled as she took his hand in hers. "Lydia."
"Well, now we're all properly acquainted." Chris clasped his hands together, eyes gleaming and lips twisting as he glanced between them. As if his eagerness alone didn't draw suspicion. Allison was just as bad – and equally as obvious.
"Dad!" the brunette called over to him as she appeared at the door to the office, "I need you to look at this order."
It was Derek who responded to that, his expression as incredulous as his tone of voice, "You've been working the systems since you were D's age. Since when do you need help running orders?"
He made a very good point. The Argent women had been in charge of managing the family businesses for generations, while the men were sent out to work the machines and learn the tools and do the grunt work, essentially.
"Since now, Derek. Ok?" Allison replied with more bite than was probably necessary. "And hello to you too."
"No, I'm with Derek," Lydia spoke up. "You might be terrible at balancing out the stocks sheets, but your product knowledge is second to none."
"Second only to my father, actually, whose assistance I require right this instant," her best friend replied primly and turned to her father again, jerking her head in the direction of the office and prompting, "Dad?
Chris just nodded, apparently deciding it was easier to agree to Allison's terms than stand here arguing the point. Of course, there was also the high probability that he was in on his daughter's little scheme and he was making his getaway as planned.
"Hey Artful Dodger," he said as he walked by Derek, catching sight of the item poking out the top of Duke's tight grasp as he gripped onto his father's neck. "What've you got there?"
Duke shuffled himself upwards in his father's arms and produced the little bit as Derek craned his neck to see what all the fuss was about.
"You're going to Disneyland," Chris pointed out when he got a proper look at what the kid was holding, "What d'you want this for?"
Duke shrugged more than once. "I'm making a model."
"I better get that model for Christmas," was the elder's response to that, complete with a shake of the head and long exhale as he moved to join Allison, "'Supplied all the damn parts for the thing."
"Maybe if you're nice, Santa'll get you something you actually want for Christmas," Derek told him with a lopsided quirk of his lips that carried over into the lilt of his words.
"I could put in a good word for you in my letter, Uncle Chris," Duke said with all the seriousness of an under-ten talking about his direct line to the magical man in the North Pole. "You're mostly always nice to me."
"You hear that?" Chris turned back and looked beyond the kid to his father, head tilted to the side. "Mostly alwaysnice to him. Bet that still puts me near the top of the list though."
"Well Auntie Kira's always nice to me," the boy informed him, shoulders lifting up and down.
"Kira's nice to everyone." Derek ran a hand down Duke's back. "It's her default setting. Unless she breaks character and threatens to slice you in two with one of her cooking knives."
"She's not getting my model," Chris chimed in, which would have sounded petulant coming from the kid amongst them, but actually just resulted in varying degrees of amusement from them all. "What is it you're building anyway?"
"Can't tell you," Duke replied, blinking furiously. "Not finished yet."
"'Course you're not." Chris rolled his eyes. "You're gonna bankrupt me with all these little projects I'm funding. You're gonna come by one day with your Dad and there'll be a big sign out front that says 'Foreclosure' and I'll be standing there telling people it's all that Duke Hale's fault. He took all my stock to make models and I had nothing left to sell."
"It's only a little one," Duke defended timidly, shoulders up to his ears.
"Dad, stop being mean."
"That's where the mostly comes in," Derek remarked, in case there was any residual confusion to the kid's earlier assessment of his Uncle's temperament.
"It's just one little drill bit," was Allison's accompanying comment, echoing the boy's statement.
"You say that every time I ask why the stock doesn't balance with the sales and deliveries," Chris directed her way before shaking his head at the father-son duo. "Like I'm the damn Lego store."
"I'd say it's more your daughter's perpetual soft spot for the puppy dog eyes that's the problem," Lydia piped up with artful swoops of her brows and lips as she looked to her best friend, "Isn't that how Parrish got the job?"
Derek's chuckle only resulted in making Allison's scowl even more pronounced. "You're a terrible best friend."
"Not true at all," Lydia dismissed with a wave of the hand and a flash of a dazzling smile, "And I am an excellent employee."
"Well, excellent employee, you can tend to these customers here while the boss and I are in the back," Allison told her, looking so full of it at the prospect of what was to come.
Chris's expression wasn't any less subdued. "Enjoy!"
Lydia had the sudden urge to take that drill bit of Duke's and lob it at the pair, hoping luck was on her side and she got them both in one.
And then she turned around and wondered why she hadn't been ushering Chris into the back with Allison instead.
Laughter lines framed Derek's face from his eyes to his mouth and his boy was in his arms like he didn't know any other place to be and it was one of the most honest-to-God heartwarming sights Lydia had ever seen.
She committed it to memory along with the reminder: sometimes her best friend knew her better than she knew herself.
.
Duke was back on the counter in a mirror-image of when Allison had placed him there earlier, facing out the way instead of in, and regaling Lydia and Derek with an exhausting list of all the rides he planned to go on and all the characters he intended to meet and absolutely everything he wanted to do while in Disneyland. She wished his father luck with that and he returned her comment with a scathing look.
"D'you have a fav'rite, Lydia?" the kid asked, an indication if they'd ever heard one that someone other than him was now allowed to contribute to this so-called 'conversation'.
"When I was about your age I was obsessed with 'The Little Mermaid'," and she was absolutely not exaggerating. "My Grandmother and I read it every night for months."
Duke's eye screwed up at the same time his mouth did, crinkling into his ruddy cheek. "The movie?"
The exchange was reminiscent of the exact discussion she'd had with Stiles when he'd found out one of her passwords was Ariel.
"It was based on a book," Derek informed his son, before she could.
Because of course he knew that.
"Oh, cool," the kid easily accepted, blinking rapidly again in a way that had been noticeably absent when she'd been teaching him the various card tricks earlier, as he asked, "Can we read it?"
"I don't know that Grandma would think too highly of me traumatizing you with the Hans Christian Anderson collection so early in life."
"But Lydia's read it," was Duke's argument, and apparently the boy saw no flaws in his logic of comparison between them.
The edges of his mouth hooked into the divots in his cheeks as Derek tried to formulate a diplomatic way of answering that.
"That was different," Lydia answered for him this time. "I was fairly convinced it was my life story and my Grandmother and just about everyone else in town had taken to calling me Ariel at my insistence. There was no prying me away from those pages."
Duke's eyes widened, and if she hadn't had her own eyes on him since he'd appeared on the scene she'd have thought he was winking at her, as he gasped out the words, "Is that why – ?"
He spun his head round to beckon his father, who dutifully stepped forward and bent down to listen to what the boy was so eager to whisper in his ear. She saw Derek's shoulders shudder, but when he emerged he was tight-lipped. A little too tight-lipped, so she wasn't expecting a glowing compliment to have come from the mouth of the babe.
"D was just wondering," Derek started, pausing briefly as the smile spread all the way up to his eyes before he could get the rest of the words out, "if that's why your skirt looks like a mermaid's tail," and the good-natured roll of the eyes should have told her what was coming next, "even though you have human legs."
She had to cover her mouth with her hand to stop from laughing too much and right in the boy's face too.
Derek fell to the side to nudge into the kid as he shared his observation, "I think we can take that as a solid rejectionof your Princess theory."
"Well she looks like one," Duke muttered, sounding sincerely put out that he wasn't in the presence of a real live Princess.
Lydia supposed it was the hair; she should really thank her mother one of these days for gifting her with such luscious locks along with the ability to style them so successfully.
"Thank you, Duke" she accepted with more grace than would've been possible a minute ago. "It's always nice to be thought of as royalty. Although it doesn't happen nearly as often you'd think."
Duke shrugged in a 'what can you do?' sort of fashion and lamented, "People are dumb. 'Specially if they dunno how special you are."
"No arguments here," she practically sing-songed her assent; no wonder the kid thought she was a Disney Princess.
"Daddy thinks you're special too," Duke informed her as a matter-of-fact. "S'why his eyes're like that."
Lydia slid her gaze across to the man standing next to him, who was pointedly staring right back at her. The kid obviously had some sort of uncontrollable tic (well, more than one from what she'd seen that afternoon), but she was hardly about to bring that up; especially when the topic of conversation wasn't him, but his father. Coupled with the fact she wasn't a total dick.
"I'm sure it's just a trick of the light," she said kindly and watched Derek's lips tweak at her response.
"No, it's not, it's a real thing." Duke tilted his chin up so he could survey his father's face for himself, beaming suddenly when he saw the proof in his words. "Grandma says it's how you know when something really matters. 'Cause you think they look green, but then they'll be brown and when I was born everyone says they looked gold. Grandma says Daddy has beautiful eyes."
Derek ducked his head, apparently more than a little self-conscious with his son's running commentary on two of his best features. She heard him inhale and then exhale just as deeply before he lifted his head back up and faced her.
"We're gonna go now."
One side of his mouth was quirked upwards.
"Have fun in Disneyland," Lydia told him, lips wide and smiling.
And fuck if his eyes didn't look a delicious mix of green, brown and gold.
.
TBC
Hope you liked it :)
Steph