The first time Derek meets Stiles, it's a Wednesday morning in the middle of January. "I'd like some flowers, thanks," says the stranger with eyes the colour of whiskey, and Derek maybe forgets to breathe.

"Right," he answers after a long moment of just staring, because the customer is tall and thin and wrapped in layers of plaid and really shouldn't be doing these things to Derek's heart. "Do you, um." He sees Laura's shoulders shaking as she arranges the window display, and he scowls. "Who are they for?"

The guy spreads his hands out wide. His fingers are long and spidery and Jesus Christ, Derek can't be having these thoughts while he's working. "My mom," smiles the customer. "Her favourite colour's yellow."

Derek considers this for a moment, before turning and gathering together a small bouquet of sunflowers, chrysanthemums, daffodils and ferns. He ties it off with a blue ribbon. "This what you had in mind?"

The customer stares. "Oh my God, yes, it's perfect! You're an absolute lifesaver, you know –" He continues talking as Derek rings up the price, only stopping as he hands over his credit card.

Derek squints at the printed name. "Um," he says, unhelpfully. The man flushes.

"Stiles is fine."

"What?"

He smiles. "Just call me Stiles. I'm not even sure I can pronounce my real name right." Derek blinks, accepts this, and gives the guy – Stiles – privacy for him to enter his PIN.

Now in his periphery, Derek can't help but notice the way sunlight seems to glance off Stiles' hair, or the way muscles bunch and expand beneath the plaid in a way that belies all the layers. Derek swallows. Laura snickers from the front door.

"Special occasion?" he finds himself blurting out, desperate to bargain for more time with Stiles because God, he hasn't felt this way since he was a teenager. Stiles looks up from where he's been pocketing his wallet and gives a small, confusing smile.

"Anniversary," he says with an odd tone to his voice. "I'll tell her you said hi, Derek." With that, he turns, gives a small wave to Laura, and exits the store. Derek slumps back against the counter, glancing down at the nametag Cora had insisted he wear, glad of it for the first – and probably only – time. Laura cackles from where her hands are full of roses and gerberas, and Derek flips her off.

People don't really buy flowers regularly, and they're not cheap either, so Derek resigns himself to that fact that he's probably seen the last he will of Stiles for quite a while.

Of course, Derek's predictions are often wrong. A little more than two weeks later, with February chill in the air, the little bell over the door rings as a familiar figure in plaid walks inside.

"Hey, Derek," Stiles smiles from underneath his lashes, and Derek almost topples off the ladder he's using to adjust the Valentine's Day displays. Stiles stifles a laugh and moves forward, placing a hand on Derek's calf to steady him.

Stiles' palm is like a brand, burning through the denim of Derek's jeans.

"How – how can I help you?" Derek manages to say once he's got two feet safely back on the ground again. Stiles grins at him.

"Funnily enough, I was after some flowers. Know where I might find any?"

"Ha ha," Derek says dryly. "You should meet my sisters; you'd get along swimmingly." Actually, no, a small part of Derek's brain supplies. Stiles meeting Laura, who's been teasing you since that first day? Stiles meeting Cora, who always manages to have you make an ass of yourself in front of company? Abort. Abort.

Belatedly, Derek realises Stiles is speaking. "– even says stuff like that anymore, Derek? I mean, come on. Swimmingly?" Stiles' eyes are sparkling – they're more the colour of caramel today, warm and liquid – and Derek's throat is dry. "But I digress," Stiles continues. "Flowers. Of the romantic kind, thanks. Biggest bouquet you got."

Derek's heart sinks to somewhere in his kneecaps. Of course. Of course Stiles isn't single. Unfairly adorable strangers who remember your name after only meeting you once weeks ago are always too good to be true.

"Who's the lucky lady?" he asks dutifully, surveying the ready-made bouquets for something suitable. He's glad his back is to Stiles, because he isn't quite sure what his face is doing at the moment. He's infinitely gladder his sisters aren't on shift today.

"Name's Allison," comes Stiles' lazy drawl. "Scott's been away on this weird vet symposium thing, and he wants to surprise her with flowers when he, you know, turns up at her door a couple days early. I said he was an idiot, because, you know, Valentine's is in like two weeks, but that's Scott for you. He's also a massive cheapskate, hence my presence here."

Derek's fingers still around a classic bouquet of roses. He clears his throat and turns back to Stiles, who's braced his forearms down on the counter and is leaning forward and, oh God, Derek can practically feel his own pulse skyrocket. "So these aren't for your girlfriend," he says flatly, trying to make sense of the word vomit Stiles just sprayed him with.

"God, no." The way Stiles laughs is sharp, like his edges haven't been dulled enough to be safe. "I'm flying solo right now, Der, and besides, I don't really swing that way. Scott's my bro and Allison's his fiancée. They're like, you know, soul mates. Destined from the womb, or whatever." Stiles grins and hands over his credit card.

"Oh, okay," he answers, letting Stiles enter his PIN. His heart is still jack-knifing in his chest, because Stiles is single, Stiles is gay, Stiles is –

He's writing his phone number on the back of a Rain, Hale and Shine Blooms business card.

Derek bites down on his tongue painfully to stop himself from blurting out anything too embarrassing.

"I'm not –" Stiles says, stops, swallows. He fidgets with the buttons of his shirt. Derek's never seen him at a loss for words before. "I haven't read this wrong, have I?" is what he finally murmurs, looking almost shyly at Derek, like he's afraid he's going to be rebuffed.

As fucking if.

"No," Derek grates out, licking his lips and not missing the way Stiles' gaze follows his tongue. "No, you –" He looks down at the number, scrawled messily and punctuated with a winky face. "I get off at six," he says, he smiles, and damn, he must have done something right because Stiles is smiling back, a mega-watt of a grin that lights up the whole room.

"I'll be here," he says through the grin, before picking up the bouquet and slipping out the door with a final wink in Derek's direction.

Derek is so fucking glad his sisters aren't working today, because he spends the rest of his shift trailing his fingers through the flowers and smiling absently up at the big pink hearts on the walls.

Derek's grateful for having their apartment above the store, because he can close early and duck upstairs to change into something a little nicer than his work clothes for tonight. He'd like to say he doesn't watch the clock as the minute hand creeps around to the twelve, but he does.

So sue him.

Stiles walks into the florist three minutes early, having ditched the plaid for a plain grey shirt open over a fitted white tee. He looks ridiculously beautiful in his black skinny jeans and red Converse, his hair seemingly even more windswept and messy than it was earlier today, but his smile is the same: warm (but also burning) and soft (but also dangerous).

If Derek wasn't so far gone on the guy already, this probably would've been the head-over-heels moment people talk about. As it is, all it does is make Derek want to snatch Stiles up in his arms and never let him go.

He doesn't. It's a close thing.

Stiles takes him to this little restaurant a couple streets over Derek never even knew existed. Stiles seems to know the wait staff – a couple of people in uniform named Isaac and Erica come over at various times in the evening to (in Isaac's case) smile at them adorably or (in Erica's case) make lewd comments which force all the blood into Derek's cheeks.

"Your friends are…" he says, searching for the right words. Stiles laughs gently.

"Vicarious? Over-compensating?" He drains his wineglass and grins at Derek over the rim. "Don't worry; I've heard it all before. They've heard it all before."

"They're almost as bad as my sisters."

"If I remember correctly, you suggested your sisters and I would get along just fine."

"A statement which I am sincerely regretting."

Stiles just smiles. "So do they know that we're…?" He makes a flailing Vanna White gesture between the two of them, and damn, Derek must have it bad because he finds the motion absolutely adorable.

"Ah, no," Derek begins. "I mean, not about dinner, but they know about you – I mean –"

"They know about me?" Stiles' tone is teasing, but his eyes are serious and beseeching.

"Um." Derek can feel himself flush, from his collarbone all the way up to his forehead. "I mean. Laura. She was there when you came in that first time. Um, she. Might have noticed."

"Noticed what?"

Derek looks away from Stiles' gaze, all of a sudden too golden and penetrating and immediate. "The way I looked at you," he makes himself admit, and waits for Stiles to laugh, to brush the confession off with an awkward comment, or, worse, to realise what a huge mistake this was, to understand that Derek is just a pretty face and only that, to recognise that he could do so much better than a twenty something English Lit graduate living with his sisters and making just enough money in the flower shop to keep his head above water.

But.

Derek feels a hand cover his own, long fingers reaching out to grab his chin and forcing his gaze upwards. Stiles smiles at him, just smiles, before leaning over their cleaned plates and pressing his lips against Derek's in a small, soft kiss. "Then she probably noticed the way I looked at you, too," he says, and Derek thanks every god ever known to man that Stiles chose Rain, Hale and Shine Blooms to walk into that Wednesday morning two and a half weeks ago.

"How about we get out of here?" Stiles grins, and if their first kiss had been chaste, the one he gives Derek now is anything but. They split the bill, ignoring Erica's cry of "Get it, Stilinski!" as they leave hand-in-hand. Derek can feel Stiles' pulse ricocheting in his wrist, and later, when they've tumbled into Stiles' bed gracelessly, laughingly, he can feel it as he kisses along the taller man's jaw, as he kisses down his neck, as he mouths at his chest and his inner thighs and his everywhere, Stiles' heartbeat is everywhere, and Derek's own heart feels like a star gone supernova because it's fit to bursting with Stiles.

Stiles visits the florist every day for almost two weeks running after that. The bell announces his entrance as he sidesteps past the masses of roses Cora insisted on lining the shop with, as he walks up to the front and gives Derek a kiss over the counter, fisting bunches of t-shirt into his spidery fingers and smiling against Derek's lips. They do go out again, but more often than not they stay in, curled against each other on the couch, watching bad remakes and eating shit Derek knows he'll have to work off later.

Every time Stiles walks into Rain, Hale and Shine Blooms Derek counts his lucky stars, because after Paige, after Kate, he never thought he'd ever deserve someone like this.

Valentine's Day finally rolls around, and Stiles texts Derek to say he'll be there after closing. Derek puts together a bouquet, the first one he's made that he intends to give to someone he cares about. He irons his clothes and shaves most of his scruff off – but leaves a little stubble because Stiles likes it that way – and waits patiently (nervously) for his date to arrive.

Stiles is late, which is unusual in itself, but what's even stranger is the way he holds himself as he greets Derek and escorts him to the jeep: stiff, uncomfortable, almost anxious. He receives the bouquet with a tremulous smile and kisses Derek until the both of them are breathless, kisses him so hard and long it's like a bit of Stiles breaks off and slips beneath the membrane of Derek's skin.

"I want to take you somewhere," Stiles says when they're in the car, and he won't meet Derek's eyes.

"Okay," is all he says, because he's never seen Stiles like this before, and it scares him.

They drive in silence, and it doesn't take Derek long to figure out where they're headed, a theory he's proven right on as they pull up in the car park outside open wrought iron gates. Stiles kills the engine and stares at his hands for a long moment. "Come on," he says at last, grabbing the bouquet from the backseat and hopping out. Derek follows suit.

They walk beneath the archway in silence.

Stiles leads Derek along the rows confidently, effortlessly, like he's walked this same path countless times before. He stops short beside a small, white marble marker, newer than most but older than some, and sighs.

"Derek," he says in an unsteady voice, "This is my mom. Mom, meet Derek."

Claudia Stilinski (13.5.1963 – 17.1.2004) greets him with silence.

It clicks.

"Her anniversary –" Derek begins, but is cut off by Stiles' sharp nod.

"Yeah."

"Oh."

Stiles bends down and places the bouquet Derek so lovingly constructed for him on the mound of dirt. The thing is, Derek finds he doesn't mind in the slightest.

"I just thought," Stiles starts thickly, then stops. Swallows. Rubs his eyes and takes a long, deep breath. "I just thought you should know. That I'm not. I'm. Kind of." He takes in another shuddering breath. "I'm kinda screwed up. It doesn't look it, but." Long breath. "I am. I just didn't want to lie to you anymore."

Derek hesitates only for a moment before stepping forward and wrapping his arms around Stiles' waist, drawing the younger man back into his chest. Stiles accepts the embrace, melts into it, and Derek gently wipes away the tears from his cheeks. "You never lied to me, Stiles," he says, kissing his hair. "But I'm honoured you brought me to meet her."

Stiles twists in his arms, looks up at Derek with his wide Bambi eyes and Derek's heart splits open then and there, makes a space wide enough for Stiles to crawl inside. "She would have loved you," Stiles whispers, before kissing Derek like he never has before, gentle but sharp, soft but broken. "Sorry I wasted your bouquet. It's lovely, really."

"It's not a waste, Stiles." Derek kisses him back, deeply but quietly, smoothing over the jagged edges and starting to glue together the shattered pieces. "Happy Valentine's Day."

It's not the February fourteenth Derek ever expected or imagined, but standing with Stiles by his mother's grave until nightfall, kissing away the hurt and the scars, makes him realise how easily this world can break you. Later, as he lays Stiles gently down into the mattress and takes him apart kiss by kiss, breath by breath, Derek realises just how hard it is to put yourself back together again.

It's a good thing he's in it for the long run, then, and it's an even better thing that Stiles believes him when he says so.

Author's Note: I really don't know where I was going with this, but idgaf. Dumb title is dumb, also, but. Brain's dead today. Review? (Happy Valentine's!)