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"Scott, I am not investigating your daughter's boyfriend," Stiles repeats.

"Why aren't you worried about this?" Scott shouts back over the line. "You should be worried about this!"

"First, because you're doing that thing we talked about. Starts with 'over', ends in 'reacting'. Second, because you've clearly been hanging around your father-in-law too much. Third, your werewolf daughter can take care of herself just fine-"

"I hate it when you make lists," Scott grumbles.

"And fourth," Stiles concludes with a flourish "he only put mud in her hair. Also they are five years old. That about cover it? Want me to draw up a diagram and fax it to you?"

"Do you really have a fax machine?" Scott asks, incredulous.

Stiles glances to the left of his office. Glances to the right of his office. Ducks to peer under his desk, just to be safe. Never hurts to check for spiders, anyway.

"Nope," he admits brightly. "Gotta go, my next client's here."

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When Stiles was six, he wanted to be a cop like his dad. When he was sixteen, he wanted to be a chef. Or a pilot. Or a drummer. Or a personal Ferrari shopper. Mostly he wanted to be anything that would make Lydia Martin spin on her perfectly arched heel and pledge her undying love.

At twenty-six, he finds himself in a narrow brown office over a diner that specializes in fried chicken on waffles. Stiles had never envisioned a future as a private investigator (okay, once, but Lydia was going to sweep into his office in a short black trench coat and shake the rain out of her hair and tell Stiles that he was the only one who could help her, the only gumshoe for the job). But when you're seventeen and your best friend slash brother from another mother slash platonic life partner gets chomped on by an alpha werewolf in the throes of a messy, lose-your-anchor divorce, life changes. A lot.

Stiles considers himself one stealthy motherfucker. Scott, not so much.

By the time they graduated high school, elbow to elbow in their red polyester gowns and crooked mortarboards, Scott McCall, resident teenage werewolf, was only a secret in the sense that the entire town of Beacon Hills knew, and covered for his ass. Stiles didn't mind losing valedictorian to Lydia, not when she smoothed her hands over the podium, barked at Jackson to put his phone away, quoted Archimedes, and acknowledged Beacon Hills High School as "the arena in which we challenged ourselves not only to accept the profound weirdness in our fellow students, but to celebrate it. To set aside all that petty high school shit and be the people we were meant to be. Unafraid."

Winning three state championships for the lacrosse team didn't hurt. Still, Scott blushed and glanced over at Allison through the sea of shoulders and tassels, then grinned down at his shoes.

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The clock over the door reads a quarter of six. Stiles doesn't particularly approve of analog clocks, they make him feel like he's back in high school white-knuckling his way through Harris' toxic chem class. Apparently the marriage counselor who leased his office before couldn't bear the thought of spending one minute more than prescribed with her feuding patients, and the clock is affixed to the wall by some nefarious adhesive immune to nail polish remover, screwdrivers, hammers, and improvised blowtorches. The last was an ill-advised contraption rigged to a can of WD-40. After singeing his eyebrows off, Stiles conceded to the clock and its evident will to live.

At present, Stiles is elbowed up on his desk, getting trounced at internet chess by some thirteen year-old in Korea. Stiles sort of fucked his laptop a while back when he jumped up to save his microwave popcorn from scorching and tripped over his power cord. Now the frame is cracked and the upper left portion of his screen is black. He chooses to blamed his obstructed visibility for his opponent's lead.

Honestly, there's a box of wine in Stiles' fridge calling his name. He flicks a glance up to the clock again. Five forty-nine. And that evil prepubescent genius just castled his king out of check.

Stiles has a new episode of Mythbusters to watch, and this whole "be your own boss, be professional, stay in your office during office hours" thing requires a reservoir of self-discipline that Stiles finds rapidly seeping out of his pores as six o'clock nears.

Stiles' frosted glass door reads "S. Stilinski, Paranormal Private Investigation". So does his card. He'd weighed the options, the phraseology, back when he first moved to Los Angeles, when he was sleeping on Lydia's loveseat in her graduate student housing with the water-stained ceiling possibly haunted fridge.

In the end, he decided to go straightforward with his title and let the non-initiated public assume what they would.

Once a month, maybe more, he gets a walk-in with some bogus haunting gig, and if it helps his clients sleep at night, placebo-effect or whatever, Stiles will collect his payment with a smile. Usually it just means boarding up a drafty attic or replacing a few light bulbs, or maybe just chanting Latin backwards and shaking some oregano around the place. Have to keep the lights on somehow, and Stiles has a rattling, oil-sucking Jeep to maintain.

Five fifty-four and Stiles forfeits his game.

That's about the time his door is kicked in, splinters erupting like shrapnel. Stiles has his revolver in hand, hammer cocked, finger curled around the trigger, he's a quick fucking draw and you keep your sidearm in reach when your office caters to wolves and fairies and the occasional stumped hunter. Stiles' job is like a box of chocolates, only his surprises come with fangs and claws and pixie dust.

Stiles is on his feet with his weight braced, arms extended to clean, steady lines, before he really sees the guy. The jerk-off fantasy stubble and the clenched fists and the hawkish nose. Knocks the fight clean out of him, and he lowers the gun to his side.

"Derek?" he asks, tasting the weight of the name on his tongue.

"And who the fuck are you?" Derek snarls back, and yep, that's some serious golden action happening to his optics, not to mention the fangs.

"Stiles Stilinski," he snaps right back, properly incensed now, shoving his revolver back into his thigh holster. "Private investigator? Even if you don't remember me, I'd think you could read the sign. Or do you just kick doors in like, a hobby? You're paying for that, by the way," he adds. "Now put your pearly whites away. What do you want?"

To his not inconsiderable consternation, Derek looks chastened, and he does so. Folds his chompers away, and his claws, and his eyes are the same unfairly appealing sea glass green that Stiles remembers.

"Derek," says Derek, brows beetling. "Is that- my name?"

Stiles blinks, and he must be catching flies, slack-jawed in disbelief, because Derek's jaw hardens into a scowl that looks practiced for all Stiles has never witnessed it before.

"I don't know who I am," he says stiffly. "When I woke up, I was sitting on a bench in front of the wolf enclosure at the zoo." Stiles doesn't quite manage to stifle his snort. "I don't have my phone, or my wallet, I don't have a dollar. All I have," he growls, "is your card. In my pocket."

At that, he does produce a card from the pocket of his- really, fucking tight jeans. They look ready to pop a seam, straining across the bunching muscle in Derek's thighs. Not that Stiles was, looking. Or remembering.

Derek slaps the card down on the desk, his glare accusing, and yeah, Stiles recognizes that. It's last year's version, there's a fax number under his land line, and seriously, what happened to his fax machine? The font is embossed black on cream-colored stock, and over his name Stiles had crossed out the abbreviated S and scrawled "Stiles- so you don't forget" in blue pen. The corners are worn soft and white.

Stiles had tucked that card into Derek's back pocket, at an overloud bar in West Hollywood. He was trying to play hard to get, make a mysterious exit, but ten minutes later he was cutting through parking lots dragging Derek to his Jeep anyway. When he was unzipping Derek's jeans with his teeth, backed against Stiles' front door, he had slipped a hand around Derek's (sleek, tanned everywhere, god) hip, and touched his card in Derek's back pocket like a talisman.

The laughter catches at his throat like broken glass, ugly, and Stiles would swallow it back if he could.

"Wow," he says, pleasantly poisonous. "You really don't remember me, do you?"

"I don't remember anything," Derek says. He looks a little scared now, holding himself tight like a string about to snap. Stiles feels sorry for him. Not much, considering, but he's tender as the dawn, it's a weakness.

Stiles collapses heavily into his chair, wheels squeaking in protest. Derek's shoulders are hunched under his black leather jacket, it's fucking spring, and Derek just looks like the best rough trade, for all that he's clearly used up all his bitchiness and remembered to freak out again.

"I remember that I'm a werewolf," Derek ventures. "Other people shouldn't know that. But you do-"

"Obviously," Stiles huffs, rolling his eyes. "Aside from your totally unsubtle entrance. I pegged you before we even met. Any guy who gets served a certain purple petal in his gin and tonic stands out."

That, and after Stiles called Derek out, called him "sour wolf" with lips brushing his ear, engine puttering at a red light, Derek had blinked, laughed, and proceeded to assault Stiles' neck shamelessly for the remainder of their drive, sniffing and licking and biting and rubbing him raw. Stiles was damn lucky he didn't wrap the Jeep around a telephone pole.

"Doesn't sounds like we're friends. Stiles?" He furrows his bushy yet also fucking hot brows at the name, but then Stiles glowers, and Derek is smart enough to bite his tongue.

"Hardly. We fucked once," Stiles offers. Likes the easy dispassionate lilt of his voice. Let Derek think Stiles was the one who had better things to do than call. Or stay the night. "Sucks to be you, because I don't even know your last name."

Derek deflates a bit. Then cocks his head, leans back on his heels, and studies the busted door.

"But you are a detective," he says, "and you know what I am. You know my name. Hn. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope," he deadpans, then pauses. "Huh. Star Wars."

"You are the actual worst," Stiles promises fervently. "And when this is all over you're getting a bill for my time and my door and my gas. Now sit down."

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A/N: I'm shaking off a lot of rust. Any comments or critiques would be deeply appreciated.