Scrubs

Summary:

Sterek A/U: Starts in college/med school, no significant age gap, Derek is socially competent, Stiles doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve

Getting together was never the problem- a guy like Stiles Stillinski didn't say no to the Derek Hales of the world. So even though Stiles isn't completely over his ex, and Derek's views on love are ripped from the walls of prehistoric cave art, they still end up falling hard and making a mess of each other.

Warnings: Rating will bump up eventually

My name is Stiles Stillinski, and I'm a med student. If you want to know why, I have a meticulously drafted personal statement full of good reasons—I wanted to help people, I'm decently intelligent, I've no problem giving up a significant portion of my twenties to the betterment of humanity.

But if you want the real reason, it's because I had to watch my mom die. Slowly. At the time I didn't know anything about tumor receptor upregulation or lymph node staging. What I did know was that the oncologist was in the room with Dad talking about what to do if there was nothing else that could be done.

But that was seven years ago, and I've worked through it. Firstly because of my father, secondly because of a boy I thought was my soulmate…. who years later dumped me on my front porch, took my dog, and left the state but that's a different story entirely.

Currently, the source of my epic man pain is seated on the other side of a long steel table in the anatomy lab. There's a very stiff, very pungent cadaver laying between us that our group had affectionately named Kevin, even though we weren't really supposed to be naming them- but 'Male-1276' as the tag on his big toe read sounded so much more formal.

Call me old fashioned but if I'm going to be elbows deep in anyone I'd at least like to be on a first name basis.

Replacing the blunted blade on my scalpel with a new one, I scour over my preemptively highlighted notes. In med school, if you're not pre-reading two chapters in advance, you might as well not bother showing up at all. Unless of course you're Derek friggin Hale. Then you can show up whenever the hell you want and just know everything about everything and still not come off as an arrogant turd. It became quite obvious within the first couple days that he was our year's Gunner- the guy with all the answers, oozing so much natural confidence and carefree intelligence it made me want to vomit all over the brown suede Pumas he was so fond of. I swear he had like eight pairs. Then of course there were his collection of three hundred dollar 501's, and multiple Ed Hardy t-shirts that screamed d-bag but also showed off his gloriously broad chest.

With a distasteful sigh I look up from the horrific mess I've made of Kevin's right shoulder and give my eyes a break from the gore, washing them clean with the sight of Derek. Even in pale blue scrubs he was breathtaking.

His dark liquorice hair, minty eyes, chocolate sprinkle stubble… I think I may just want to eat his face. I swear I'm not a card carrying member of the Hale fanclub. I just appreciate effortless sexual prowess when I saw it, and Derek had it in spades. What's worse is that he knew how to use it.

Derek was an aggressive flirt.

Guys, girls, that turkey sandwich he had molested the other day—anything was fair game to him. Sure he claimed he was gay, but he still looked down Lydia's shirt and commented on how sprightly her breasts were on a day-to-day basis, much to her delight. He did it for attention. Thrived on it. Fed off it. Existed completely in the spotlight though it was obvious it meant nothing to him. For all the smiles he flashed, it didn't seem like Derek Hale cared about anything.

He did the work—he must have, if he was passing all his classes—but most of the time he had his earphones in, jotting down things on scraps of paper that I'm certain have nothing to do with what the professor was saying. Yet somehow when he's asked a question he's all smiles and teeth and correct answers.

Sometimes I imagine that under that candy coated exterior there's a dark brooding asshole just waiting to burst forth, and that guy I could perhaps understand, but the way he is now… I didn't know whether to just ignore him or stick my tongue between his teeth and try to osmotically absorb whatever double helical structures he carries that makes him so fuckably gifted at life.

"Derek, looks like Stiles is stuck- could you come help us out?" Lydia asks sweetly.

"I've got it," I manage to splutter, but to be honest, dissecting out the ivory white nerves in a cadaver's arm isn't as easy as I thought it would be.

"But Derek's already done his arm," Lydia replies innocently. I don't for a minute buy her wide-eyed vacant expression, not when she's got one of the highest grades in the class.

"What have you got here?" I stiffen as a deep, impossibly sexy voice rumbles over my shoulder.

"Just getting down to the axilla," I say tightly, glancing down at the lab manual on the steel table.

It doesn't look anything like the diagram.

"That doesn't look anything like the diagram," Derek echoes my thoughts, helpfully.

I attempt a glare, but his disarmingly handsome smile makes it wither away.

"You want to give it a go, Gunner?" I offer up the scalpel.

He lifts it from my hands, twirls it in his fingers because he's a cocky sonofabitch, then proceeds to tell me I should be using the mall probe instead. Lydia leans over the cadaver to hand him one, and a wayward lock of shiny strawberry blonde dunks into the Kev's gaping chest cavity. I choose not to point this out. She should have her flawless tresses pinned back anyway—it says so right there on the sign behind her head.

Derek smiles at her, and it makes my stomach turn.

That makes my stomach turn, not the three rows of dead bodies in the room. What is my life?

"It's easier to work from distal to proximal and follow the radial nerve up to the brachial plexus…" Derek coaches us. It takes him all of three minutes to separate through the fascia and produce the neat little M-shaped intersection of nerves that look exactly like what's in the manual. He's disturbingly good at this.

"You were right there Stiles, just needed a little cleaning up."He grins at me.

I try not to have a violent orgasmic reaction to the way he says my name—which really isn't any different to the way he says anyone's name, it's just the fact that he knew my name in the first place that makes my heart stiffen and my cock thump. Or the other way round. I don't know.

"That looks great Derek!" Lydia smiles winningly before alerting the TA, who then proceeds to tell the entire class that they should come look at the standard of Mr. Hale's 'fine work'.

My side of the cadaver is overrun, and I end up sitting on the high stool for the next hour pretending to read my lab manual while Derek Superstar Hale points out structures to the other students.

And it's actually kinda helpful, listening to him explain things. He has a calm leadership I could find myself gravitating to. Half of me thinks that if I just give in and join the Hale worshippers, but I don't feel obligated to be his butt monkey just because he has the body of a navy seal and the cheekbones of a demigod.

Derek says my name a lot after that day.

"Hey Stiles, want to come to lunch with us?"

…No, because I don't like how Lydia's side boob presses against your arm, and how Isaac eyefucks you across the table and how you seem to enjoy all of it.

"Stiles what page are we on?"

How the fuck should I know when I've been staring at the back of your stupidly broad shoulders and fantasizing about climbing you like a palm tree.

"What color are your eyes Stiles? I've been trying to figure it out all day."

I like to call them Urban Swamp. For the record I call yours Forest Wonderland.

There's also the touching.

His hands have a bizarrely paralyzing effect on every bone in my body, especially when his fingers knead the back of my neck and he murmurs 'morning Stiles' in my ear.

But then, he touches everyone. He touches Lydia, a lot. She gets a lip lock in the morning. Granted it's no more than you'd give your aunt but it's still Derek Hale's lips on Lydia Martin's. I'm gay and even I get turned on by that. After the initial spasm of revulsion, that is.

"Hey, you want to grab a burger?" Derek asks a few weeks later as we rinse off our dissecting kits. We're the last ones to leave because Derek had dawdled and fidgeted and loitered around just to make my life miserable.

"My roommate and I are doing lunch, but I think Boyd and Isaac were going to get pizza," I say nodding out the door. "Why don't you go ahead, I can finish up."

Derek flings the tools in the sink so they clatter loudly, as if accenting the sudden irritation pouring off him in waves.

"What the fuck is it going to take to get anywhere with you Stillinski?"

My eyes gape open. That wasn't very Derek Charmer Hale of him.

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about how I've been flirting with you for weeks and you've done fuck all about it! I know you've noticed."

My face heats. Yeah alright, I'd picked up on it. I just never thought it even registered in his brain since he seemed to be that way with everyone.

"Oh." I reply.

"…That's it?" Derek asks, ripping off his size eleven latex gloves and violently throwing them in the trash. Well, as violently as soiled gloves can fly.

"What exactly did you want me to say Derek? I never gave you any indication I was looking. I'm not, for the record."

"Stiles, I'm gay."

"Congratulations?" I say, thoroughly scrubbing my hands as he does the same in the sink beside me.

"Look all I'm trying to say is that... we could get along in an environment with fewer dead people. We have similar interests."

Derek deliberately reaches over my shoulder to tear off a piece of paper towel. He's barely got two inches on me, but the way he postures makes it feel like a mile.

"And by similar interests you mean cock?" I ask dryly. Figures. I'm the only other out gay kid in class so clearly his options are limited.

"Yes. But I'm okay with starting out as friends," he pauses. "With benefits."

"A kind and generous offer Derek, but I've got a lot on my mind right now. Why don't you give me a call after graduation, alright?"

…It's not alright. His lip curls and I swear I can see his canines flash at me.

"How would I call you Stiles- I don't even have your number!"

Of all the things for Derek Hale to get worked up about, this is what got to him? "You have my number Derek. It was in the email we got when we first got split off into lab groups."

It takes a moment for the words to register, but eventually he looks up at me through long eyelashes that curve up just at the tips like a ski jump.

"Oh." He says, broodingly. I'd made Derek hale brood. It suited him; somehow he seemed more real in that moment than he had flashing that heart-stopping smile to anyone that looked his way.

"You know if it was such a big deal you could have just asked me for it," I tell him.

"When would I have had the chance to? While we're cracking open a rib cage? Hey Stiles- watch out for flying shards of bone. Also, you have the prettiest mouth I've ever seen and I'd very much like to cum in it sometime so may I give you a call? I'm free this Saturday."

"I work Saturdays," I reply, because my comebacks tend to be reflexive, and not in continuity with my brain. In reality I'm wrapping my head around the realization that Derek fucking Hale was trying to get in my pants. Mouth. Whatever.

"Work? You sit at in the front desk in the library for five hours in the morning."

"…Great, you're stalking me now? When exactly should I expect to turn up in a body bag in the trunk of your car?"

"Keep turning me down and you might find out. You already know how good I am with a scalpel," he says it with such a dead serious face it makes my laugh come out a little nervous. It dies in my throat however when his palm brushed across my cheek. There's a waft of disinfectant, but this close I can also smell his aftershave… though it doesn't look like he bothered with the shaving part of his morning ritual. I was alright with this.

"You're going to remember this moment," Derek rumbles, with air quotes in his tone.

"What?"

"That's something my mom said to my dad the first time they met."

"You're going to the doctor Eddie," I reply somberly. "That's something my dad said to my uncle when we found him in the garage trying to build a time machine out of my jeep's engine and some hangers."

"Good to know you have mental health issues in your family. When we have kids, we're using my swimmers."

"Aaaand now I'm genuinely afraid of you. Like, on a scale of one to rape whistle you-"

His hand shoves my jaw up roughly and his mouth presses against mine.

So maybe he is gay. Or at least Bi. One thing he certainly is, is a good kisser. His fingers dig into my cheek and my jaw forcing open my mouth as he dips his adventurous tongue so deep I'm wondering if he tastes the pop tart I had for lunch.

He on the other hand tastes like coffee and pepperminty toothpaste… at five in the afternoon. He wasn't in class this morning; I'm starting to think he rolled out of bed minutes before lab started, threw on some scrubs and raced down here. I smile at the thought, letting a laugh roll from my chest.

He pulls back curiously. He's probably not used to being laughed at during a kiss. When he presses the impressive bulge in his jeans against my hip, any amusement in my eyes dies.

"I'm not fucking around Stiles," he says, low and raw. "We can start off slow, but we better start something, because I'm tired of waiting. Believe it or not I'm not usually the one that has to make the first move."

I believe it.

I just don't know how to respond.

"…You know Derek… you picked a really romantic location to come out with all of this. I hope this means we have our first date at a funeral, and get married in a picturesque graveyard."

Derek doesn't reply, choosing to use his tongue to tease mine back to life. It's warm and intoxicating, and I'm pushing my hips back against his before I realize what I'm doing.

How I keep attracting guys way out of my league I'll never understand. Not that I was putting myself down- I'm not in high school anymore. I've come to appreciate my boyish handsomeness, and I have a body most gay guys appreciate on second glance.

But to the Derek Hale's of the world, the perfect people, I barely meet the minimum physical requirements… which means any attraction they feel for me is usually coupled with some ulterior motive that they might not even realize until it's too late and they've already broken me. Guys like that were like a hurricanes—they maimed and mutilated and just as easily disappeared.

And the disappearing, that was the worst of it.

"Stop that," Derek growls. "You're looking at me like I'm about to kick you in the balls. I don't want you projecting whatever your ex did onto me."

I do a double take. Scott and his big mouth.

"And what did my well intentioned roommate tell you?" I ask.

"Not much," Derek concedes. "I asked if you were seeing anyone and he said you weren't really looking… said some guy did a number on you and now you had issues so I should watch my step."

I smille to myself. Considering Scott and I had only met in undergrad, it was curious how quickly we'd become protective of each other. He's the only one who knows the whole humiliating history of what happened with my last real boyfriend.

Derek clearly isn't appreciating my train of thought as his face turns more sour by the second. The expression tells me he doesn't understand my hesitation, that he's never had his self-esteem torn to shreds by someone he's loved.

Of course not- Derek was the kind of guy that did the shredding. I was the guy left with the gaping chest cavity, allowing curious fingers to poke and prod until there was nothing left.

"God you're annoying—I can hear your brain running a mile a minute!" Derek grunts. "I'm not asking you to fall in love with me on one date Stiles, just give me a shot."

He hadn't phrased it as a question. Derek Hale doesn't need to. I'm Stiles. Funny, haha, bookish Stiles. Guys like me don't say no to guys like him, and I wasn't brave enough to be the first to break the trend.

I take a hesitant breath, and release it along with any remaining resolve I'd had to turn him down. I was about to get my heart broken all over again when it wasn't even done healing from the last guy who gutted it… but you know, what's a Thursday afternoon without a little masochism?

"Why don't we start with pizza," I say. "We'll work up to the 'with benefits'."

The sour expression lets up a little. "I can live with that."

Review if you'd like to, or not, it's all good. I'm not sure if anyone's going to read this anyway, it's up to the Internet Gods. I mean tumblr.