Laura hooks them up. She is friends with a friend of this guy, she says, and she's tired of Derek's moping (or so she says, Derek hasn't been moping) and she slips the torn piece of paper towards him and says, "for the love of God, call him" and leaves, boots stomping heavily and arms somewhat tense, back straight as a wall.
She must be off again with her girlfriend, Derek thinks, vicious, but bites his tongue because he knows his sister, and she isn't above coming back to cause a scene and make him regret everything he's ever done in his life.
He sips his coffee and watches her go, and then he looks at the numbers carelessly scribbled on the paper in Laura's sloppy penmanship, and the name stiles underneath them, underlined twice.
Derek's heart possibly skips a beat, and he almost spills scalding hot coffee all over himself.
Derek doesn't know Stiles. Personally.
Or at all, really.
No, that's a lie.
He does know him to an extent. He knows how he likes his coffee, and what college courses he's taking, knows he likes sugary drinks and that he abuses straws between his lips, knows the exact crease of his brow when he's focusing on something.
Derek's kind of-
"A stalker." Erica says, pushing him aside to get to the bagels' showcase.
Derek grunts at her.
"I'm not a stalker." He replies.
"You are. You so are. I bet you know his schedule by heart." Erica sing songs, and if she wasn't one of his best employers, he would fire her.
"Well," he drawls then, and busies himself by cleaning the counter to hide his burning cheeks. "I'm pretty sureyou know Boyd's schedule by heart."
Erica punches his arm and when he looks at her, she's blushing a little.
"Shut up," she says, "I'm working up my courage."
"Yeah, well, so am I."
They both know they other's lying but don't point it out because underneath it all they're friends.
Derek's had Stiles' phone number programmed into his contacts for a few days already, but he can't bring himself to just text him. Thinking about doing it out of the blue makes his stomach cramp, makes him want to go and run a few miles or do pull ups or something just to work the restlessness out of his body.
Laura calls him on the third day or fourth day, sounding happier and more vibrant than when she'd given him Stiles' number (she patched up things with the girlfriend, Derek knows, that's Laura's 'I'm getting some' voice tone), and when she makes Derek fess up that he hasn't gotten himself together enough to call him she laughs at him for about a minute. And when Derek hangs up on her because that's what bully sisters deserve, she sends him a text that's just a block full of 'hahaha's and laughing emoticons.
'i need to find an appropriate occasion. stop bugging me.' He texts back, and then pointedly refuses to look at her replies for the rest of the day.
"This looks a hell of a lot like 'an appropriate occasion'." Erica tells him two days later, making finger quotes with one hand as she drops a fairly ordinary notebook in front of him on the counter and Derek kinda regrets telling Erica about that one conversation with Laura.
"What is that?" He asks, even though he knows exactly what it is, is enough of a creep to know the notebook by its barely battered cover and by the few telling marks it offers.
Erica rolls her eyes at him.
"You know what it is, don't even try with me." Derek keeps playing fool, raises his eyebrows, and Erica sighs at him, says: "this is your opportunity to stop pussyfooting, and finally call your guy."
Derek looks at the little haggard thing, heart pounding on his ears, and finally thinks fuck, i'm doing this and grabs it.
Erica smirks at him, red lipstick shining and glossy, and then smiles showing her teeth, white and menacing. Derek wishes he could be more annoyed at her, but he mostly feels fondness and pride at how far she's come since they met.
That night, with the notebook (that turned out to actually be a sketchbook) sitting on his bedside table, he composes, deletes, and recomposes a text message at least fifty times. He feels completely ridiculous, but still can't bring himself to send it, keeps making drafts and discarding them, until he just settles for a neutral and almost dismissive text telling Stiles that he found the notebook on one of the tables and that he can come get it whenever.
He regrets sending it almost a second later.
"I hate you," he tells Laura's voicemail (she's on date night with the girlfriend, like they're a forty year old married couple with an established routine, it's so domestic, Derek's expecting wedding invitations soon), "So much."
And then he hangs up.
Stiles hasn't sent anything back yet, and maybe that's good.
He looks at the sketchbook and not for the first time since Erica gave it to him, contemplates going through it, at least skimming through it, just to get a look inside Stiles' mind, some insight. Maybe a few random pages.
He's reaching towards it when his phone beeps.
It's Stiles, thanking Derek for getting in contact with him, and telling him he'll go pick his sketchbook up the next day.
Derek can see Stiles in the text, in the misspellings and lack of capitalization and excess of exclamation points and his stomach flutters and he grunts and puts his pillow over his face and tries to smother himself.
He's fucked.
After that, he leaves the sketchbook alone, feels skeevy for even thinking about violating Stiles' privacy like that.
He tries to go to sleep with his heart still beating loudly, and firmly lodged in his throat, like a hot thumping stone, and his mind filled with scenarios and possible outcomes and just Stiles.
Erica brings Isaac with her the next day and refuses let him work. On his own coffee shop.
"You're ridiculous," he tells her, but still hands a smirking Isaac his apron.
"And you've got a hot date, so shut up and go set camp somewhere else."
He doesn't wait long for Stiles. They hadn't really agreed on a time the night before, but Derek already knew Stiles' schedule because he's- (a creepy stalker) he's observant, and so he just trusted that Stiles would show up at the same time he always did.
And he's right: Stiles comes barrelling through the door, talking over his shoulder at someone who stays outside and he's all loose limbs and a lazy smile and a thumbs up that makes Derek's insides churn because he's just that much of a loser, and then he turns around, and looks over the place, as if searching for something.
Probably him.
He doesn't wave him over because he'll look like an eager dork and after Kate, that's kind of the last thing he wants, so he just takes the sketchbook from his bag and lifts it up so Stiles will spot it.
And he does, after a second or two, first he goes right over Derek and kind of fixates a bit on the counter (where Erica is manning the espresso machine and Isaac is taking someone's order) he starts to frown for some reason, but then it seems to compute that he'd swept right past Derek, who'd been holding up what he'd come for and his eyes go right back to him, and pin him on place.
His face goes white, fucking transparent, and taking a few distracted steps closer, he almost collides with a chair.
Derek's hands probably start sweating, he can swear he feels them going clammy and cold, and he definitely finds himself thinking shit, he knows.
But then Stiles is walking up to Derek's table with eyes still comically wide and his lips kind of pursed, and when he's within hearing range of Derek, he starts speaking, his voice clear and the tiniest bit deeper than his own, and Derek's stomach kind of flips, it's so visceral and ridiculous and really, just unfair, that when Stiles is done -standing ramrod straight in front of Derek, looking down at him with deep honey colored eyes wide as saucers- it takes a little while for Derek to actually digest what he was saying, and when he does he frowns a little, nonplussed.
"I just- excuse me, what?"
"I said," Stiles starts again, and his hands grip the back of the chair in front of him so tightly that his knuckles are going white and the skin there starts looking paper thin, stretched tight (and Derek should stop looking at his long, long fingers, stop being such a creep altogether), "that I swear I'm not stalking you. I mean, I knowhow bad this must look like, and that I'm here almost every single day, but it's because... It's just, convenient? I go to college near here, and this place is the best one to get quality coffee. Just. Dude, this is not just because you're hot? And I swear I'm not following you around, or anything creepy like that.
"Anyway, I- I can just take my sketchbook and leave? And, y'know, if you're uncomfortable with me being here after this I can totally stop coming."
He takes one of his hands from the back of the chair and gestures at the sketchbook still in Derek's hands, and he looks sort of manic and harried and Derek knows there's something he's not aware of, something that's going over his head, but all he can croak out is, "You think I'm hot?"
Which is so embarrassing Derek can feel his ears start burning.
Stiles' body locks in surprise, and he blinks at Derek with deeply confused eyes; his face goes a deep, uneven and splotchy red, and then white again and his mortification is simply riveting to Derek, riveting enough that he can kind of forget his own.
He'd beat himself up for how gone he is on Stiles, but he can't even find it in himself because Stiles finds him hot. And though he is very aware of the way he looks and the fact that other people often find him attractive, the fact that this is Stiles saying that he does is exhilarating.
Derek's eyes are on Stiles', and maybe he's turned up the intensity level a notch too high, but he's feeling full and earnest and daring like he hasn't really been since Kate; Stiles breaks eye contact after a few seconds, sighs and nods at him, and then finally sits down across Derek, dragging the chair noisily and sort of dropping onto it heavily.
They sit together in an uncomfortable silence for a little while, Derek trying not to overtly stare at Stiles and Stiles kind of avoiding looking at Derek at all, focusing on his own tightly crossed over the table hands instead, until the guy looks up at him with a vaguely resigned determination, mouth in a tight line.
"Okay," he says, and then stops to lick (which is nothing short of distressingly distracting) his lips and squint his eyes a little at Derek in a gesture Derek can't really comprehend, "I guess I kind of owe you some sort an explanation? For freaking out on you?"
Derek's about to say he doesn't really need one ( and quite possibly that he only needs Stiles to be actually interested in him, or for him to just stay here with him and talk like they are on an actual date, because that's the kind of loser he's these days), but Stiles is talking before he can even open his mouth.
"You're a better guy than I am, really."
And that's... pretty much a non sequitur if there ever was one, so Derek starts asking, "what do you-"
But Stiles interrupts him (Derek can tell this is going to be a thing if they ever get together, and it's a testament to how fucking ridiculous he's about this guy that the idea doesn't annoy him as much as it should), says, "here." and takes the sketchbook from Derek's limp hands and opens it right at the middle and Derek glances down with eyebrows raised, intrigued and not really knowing what to expect.
"Is that...?" He asks, tracing one of the drawings lightly with his fingers, and he feels lightheaded and strange and like his heart is gonna beat right out of his ribcage because he's looking at himself. He turns the pages and there's... Wow, there's lots of raw and detailed and everywhere in between sketches of him in different positions, from different angles, with different expressions.
"This is..."
Gorgeous. Mind blowing.
"... Creepy?" Completes Stiles, sighing and closing the sketchbook. "I thought you'd seen it already, I assumed anyone would look inside but you didn't, which means you're probably an awesome, privacy-respecting guy, and here I am, a grade A creep with a little notebook full of shitty drawings of you. I'm sorry?"
"I know your schedule by heart," Derek blurts out, without meaning to, eyes boring into Stiles', "I know your best friend's name, and I can tell you all about Allison's dimples and your dad's diet, and I can probably name all of your favorite bands and books."
"Wow, that's-"
"-Creepy?" he asks, smiling a tentatively coy smile.
"-Intense." Supplies Stiles, smiling back at him.
"I am," Derek agrees, "pretty intense. You might wanna back out of this while you're ahead."
"Well," Stiles drawls, his smile turning openly flirtatious and just this side of lecherous, "I kinda like them intense."
Derek reciprocates the smile.
It's quite possibly the corniest situation that Derek's ever been in, with the rom-com meet cute thing and the misunderstandings; it's also definitely the most surreal one, with the whole having a moment (a bondingmoment) with his (reciprocal) crush over being massive creeps with boundary issues.
It's good, though. It's really good. It's great.
They are going to be great.