A/N: FYI, break-dancing is commonly referred to "breaking" or "bboying" by those into this dance style. If you're confused about the terms, don't be! (A/N cont. at bottom)
In retrospect, it was all entirely Scott's fault.
"How is this my fault?" asked Scott with a puzzled frown. Despite the fact that everyone else in the class was sweating new rivers into existence, Scott looked—well, he looked out of breath, but at least the seat of his pants were still dry. The same could not be said for Stiles's.
Stiles scoffed at him. It was hard to maintain a bitchface when your muscles were screaming in agony with every small movement, but Stiles managed. "If you had never fallen in love with Allison, and if Allison had never noticed you, and if Allison wasn't best friends with Lydia Martin, and if I wasn't in love with Lydia, then I would not be here right now!"
Scott blinked.
Stiles blinked back. "It sounded a lot clearer in my head."
"It really sounds like all your fault," said Scott. "You didn't have to come. It could have just been me and Allison—"
"And the other fifteen students in Derek Hale's class?" asked Stiles, ruthlessly shattering Scott's fantasy of a romantic evening. He didn't care. If he had to suffer, Scott had to suffer too. It was a time-honored rule among all best friends: if your best friend suffered, so did you.
Scott scowled, but his face smoothed over as he caught sight of Allison behind Stiles. "She looks so beautiful when she dances," he said dreamily. Stiles half-expected to see actual hearts in his eyes. Or maybe stars. Or frolicking puppies—no, that would just be creepy.
"You think Allison looks beautiful doing anything," said Stiles, and twisted around to see what Allison was up to. Next to her, sitting in the corner, was Lydia—his reason for coming (okay, so it wasn't Scott's fault really—just Stiles's inability to let go of obsessive tendencies, read: the crush he had on Lydia for ten years running). Lydia had taken one look at the exercises Derek had the class doing, and curled her lip while informing them that she wasn't interested in "flopping around in the dirt." Beside her, Allison was busy doing a complicated set of moves that involved more flexibility than Stiles would ever be able to gain, even if he stretched for four years straight. Or four-hundred years.
Stiles looked from Allison, back to Scott, and then over at Lydia, who seemed oblivious. He noted with a pang that she was busy texting on her phone. Stiles had thought—well, he hadn't been sure what to think when Scott had informed him 1) Allison was back in town 2) she wanted to take Scott to the local break-dancing class that Derek Hale was teaching so she could check out if Derek was as good as everyone else claimed 3) she'd invited Lydia along.
Okay, so he'd thought that maybe—well, break-dancing was something guys were definitely supposed to be better than girls at, right? He hadn't expected a sudden talent for break-dancing to manifest within himself—unlike, who would have thought it, Scott—but he'd at least thought that maybe he'd be able to pull off something at least slightly impressive.
Nope. It had just been one torturous exercise after the other, ranging from painfully humiliating to straight out painful. On second thought, maybe it was a good thing Lydia wasn't paying attention to his existence at all. That way, she couldn't see him embarrassing himself as Derek insisted on teaching everyone one by one. Ugh.
"McCall! Stilinski!"
"Oh god," said Stiles flinching at the sudden shout, which had somehow managed to drown out all other noise (even the music!), like the voice of God. Flinching hurt too. He looked up to see Derek scowling down at them. Unlike Scott, who had hardly sweated at all, Derek was also sweating heavily through his clothes. Because of cosmic unfairness, he still looked incredibly attractive. It helped that the sweat had made his white wife beater completely transparent, so that Derek's beyond-a-six-pack abs were displaying themselves in all their glory. Stiles was pretty sure that if he looked at Derek's abs directly, they'd blind him with their magnificence.
"You know our names?" said Stiles, forcibly wrenching his gaze away from a downwards drift. "You know our last names? And you had to shout them in front of the entire class?"
Derek ignored him. Because of course, such was Stiles's life. Gorgeous people ignored him every day.
"Show me your baby freeze," said Derek.
Scott shrugged at Stiles, and then of course, effortlessly did a baby freeze. Stiles gaped at him. Derek had just taught them this ten minutes ago. No one was supposed to be able to get down a freeze this fast when they'd spend five of those ten minutes gazing besottedly at their significant other.
Derek grunted in what Stiles assumed was approval. "Now you," said Derek, transferring over the weight of his gaze to Stiles.
Stiles just knew this was going to end in pain and embarrassment and possibly someone taking a video on their phone of his failure. He hoped that someone wouldn't be Lydia.
After a few painful moments, he sat back on his heels. "Can't do it," he said. "I wasn't born with any hand-eye coordination and I have all the grace and poise of a swan being clubbed to death, which is to say it's all gone and I can't even get in a decent swan song before I die. I'm a hopeless case and you should probably go harass someone else into doing baby freeze for you."
Derek raised his eyebrows. They were like mini-clouds of doom. Stiles half-expected to see tiny Zeuses hiding behind them, ready to throw thunderbolts on any mortal who challenged their might.
"Also I don't do well under pressure," added Stiles. "Or judgment. I'm getting a very judge-y feeling from you right now" and from your abs, he mercifully did not say.
Derek rolled his eyes. "Breaking isn't just about grace or poise."
"Swag? Is it about swag? What did you think of Justin Bieber's variation of the word 'swag' into 'swaggie?' Did it hurt your ears as much as it did mine, or did you just roll with it?"
"Breaking is about technique," said Derek. He knelt down beside Stiles, and said, "Put your right elbow to your hip and your left elbow to your knees."
"Um," said Stiles. "I've tried that—"
"You're doing it wrong," said Derek. He made it sound like a personal affront. Actually, knowing how seriously he took break-dancing, maybe he did see it as a personal affront.
And then without any warning he was grabbing Stiles's arms and manhandling them into the proper position.
"Hey," said Stiles, because while he did not necessarily object to hot (hot!) people grabbing and touching him, he felt like some token objection was necessary. "My personal space is like Poland! If you invade it, there will be war." He was pretty sure it had been Poland.
"Use the side of your head," said Derek, and Stiles wondered if the only reason that Derek hadn't succumbed to the frustration that most people did when encountering Stiles was because he was tuning out seventy-percent of what Stiles was saying. Not that Stiles really blamed him. He was pretty sure Scott and his dad tuned out at least fifty-percent of what he said all the time.
Stiles sighed and slowly tipped over…into a baby freeze. He was so surprised he'd managed it that he squawked and fell right out of his freeze. "Hey, I did it!"
"Now you just have to learn how to hold it," said Derek, but he sounded pleased. When Stiles looked up—
Big mistake. Derek was grinning at him, pleased, and it was just seriously unfair how one grin could magnify someone's hotness so much. If Stiles tried the same grin, he'd probably just look like an escaped lunatic. On Derek, the grin looked perfect. No, it made him look perfect.
"You should be made to wear a warning label," Stiles told him.
"What?"
To warn people that they're within proximity of absurd amounts of hotness and all old ladies and those with heart conditions should take extreme care in handling you oh god don't say it Stiles, shut up shut up shut up!
"Asakfjhdjsfh," managed Stiles very eloquently. His brain to mouth filter wasn't perfect, but at least it was working.
Derek was still smiling though, and he still had his hand wrapped around Stiles's ankle—wait, when had he done that? His hand was really warm. Stiles wondered that if maybe he didn't move, ever, Derek would just keep his hand there. Stiles considered telling Derek that if he moved his hand, Stiles's ankle would end up having abandonment issues.
"Hey, Stiles!" Stiles twisted around to see Scott waving at him, and then groaned inwardly because when he turned back, Derek had stopped smiling and had went back to looking like a serial killer. A very hot serial killer, but a serial killer nonetheless. Maybe the kind who went around scaling tall buildings in order to sulk in darkness and solitude. Or the kind who went around wailing in moors—wait no, he was thinking of something else.
"Keep practicing," said Derek, and moved onto the girl next to Stiles, who was still having trouble with her baby freeze. That made Stiles feel slightly better until he realized that said girl was a tiny, fragile Asian girl, but she was still kicking his ass at break-dancing.
Stiles turned around to glare at Scott. Bros did not interrupt bros when said bros were in the middle of…okay, it hadn't been a sexually charged moment, just a moment where his ankle had been fantasizing about Derek's hand never leaving it—but it had been some kind of moment and Scott had ruined it!
Stiles got up and stomped over to where Scott was sitting next to Allison.
"I hate you," he said, and Scott nodded absent-mindedly.
"Allison is trying to figure out if she can do a one-handed airbaby and kiss me at the same time," Scott said. "That way we can take a photo of it and post it up on Facebook to use as matching profile pictures."
"Do you even hear me?" demanded Stiles, but without any real heat. He'd learned the hard way that it was impossible to get through to Scott when he was on his focus-on-Allison-or-else-the-zombie-apocalypse-will-come-and-everyone-will-die-tragic-horrible-deaths-even-the-puppies-and-kittens mood.
"Everyone heard you, Stiles," said Lydia. She was still texting and she looked more bored than ever. Stiles felt a brief moment of joy that Lydia had actually 1) addressed him 2) by his (not so given but whatever) name, but then that joy died a little when she said nothing else.
"If you post it up on Facebook, her father will hunt you down like a dog on the street," Stiles told Scott, but without any real hope that Scott was paying attention or would catch the literary reference.
"I almost have it down," said Allison. "But I don't want to get it wrong and accidentally fall on top of you and crush you!"
"You won't," said Scott. He looked deeply into her eyes. Stiles resisted the urge to make gagging noises because his inner child was six years old, but his outer one was at least twelve, so he could control some of his urges. "I believe in you."
Allison laughed. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I think I'm going to keep practicing this until I have it completely down."
Scott just continued smiling at her. Stiles sighed. Sometimes he wondered if he was just the side character the epic love story that was Scott-and-Allison. It was kind of terrible being the side character. He should at least get his own love interest.
"Hey Allison," said Stiles, in an attempt to distract himself from his own thoughts and also Scott from pouncing onto her. Scott paused mid-pounce. Stiles had successfully—albeit only temporarily—halted the nauseating public displays of affection. "How long did it take for you to get down baby freeze?"
"About ten minutes," said Allison. "I learned from a video online, from Lady Jules."
"…oh. How long did it take for you to learn how to hold it?"
Allison stared at him. "Ten minutes."
Stiles thought that if he concentrated intently, he could hear the sound of his masculinity squeaking and shriveling up into a withered ball.
"But then again, I have a gymnastics background," said Allison. "I grew up learning gymnastics, so a lot of moves in breaking are easier for me to get down faster." She smiled sunnily. "If you really want to learn breaking though, you should go for it! Just, um, remember it usually takes ten years to actually get good at it."
"Yeah," said Stiles, and for some reason, found himself looking up at Derek. Who was staring at them. Oh right, he was probably mad that they'd secluded themselves into a corner and weren't practicing. Stiles did an awkward wave at him and Derek stopped staring and started glaring instead. That definitely wasn't an improvement.
"Okay, Scott," said Stiles, scrambling to his feet. "Back to practice!"
A/N: There are A LOT of inside jokes inside this fic that probably no one will get. I'm sorry I'm not sorry? Basically, let's just say that there is a lot of sexism in the breaking community, and some of what Stiles thinks refers to that (i.e. the "tiny fragile Asian girl," "sitting in the corner," etc.), although I guess non-bgirls wouldn't catch this. Also stuff about taking photos of your s.o. while doing a cool freeze, etc. But it's not really important anyways—it just felt extremely satisfying put it into this fic. ;D
2) Speaking of bgirls and bboys (if any are reading this): in my head, Allison is extremely talented at breaking (even though she can't do one-handed airbaby…shhhh) and the move Stiles saw her doing was a hollowback. Awwww yeah.
3) The move "baby freeze" is an actual move, and it is easy because I learned it under ten minutes from a video by Lady Jules. (And I do not have a gymnastics background. :C) You can learn it too! :DD
4) In my head, Derek is leading a bboying crew called The Alphas, and Allison is on the rival crew (have no idea what it's called) comprised of Argents! So she's going to Derek's class to check out the competition? I don't even know.