The next morning Stiles woke up laying on his back, which was strange because he liked to sleep on his side curled around a long pillow. He grumbled incoherently, and tried to shift to a more comfortable position, but a hand held down his shoulder. A solid weight sat on top of him, right on his groin. His morning wood shot up in interest, while the rest of him wasn't entirely in agreement.
Groggily, he opened his eyes to see Malia straddling him. She pecked him on the lips and then nipped her way down to his neck. "I think I need to wake up a bit more," he mumbled against the sensation of her teeth grazing the sensitive skin of his neck.
Her lower half grinded against him, causing an involuntary groan. "You seem awake enough to me."
"That's only one part of me," he laughed, but was grateful when she still swung off.
Malia leaped from the bed to land gracefully a good three feet away. "I'll make you expresso. That should wake you up." She was wearing one of his shirts - the one with the flash logo on it - and it barely hid the fact that she wasn't wearing any panties. Stiles shifted to his side to watch as she poured coffee in the little cups her father had bought her last Christmas. Feeling his eyes on her, she danced in place as she set the cups on saucers and returned to the bed with him. She handed him one of the cups and took a sip from her own before setting it down on the bedside table. Leaning forward to trail her fingers up his thigh, she purred, "I can't wait to do this every morning."
The look of confusion must have been clear on his face.
"When we move in together," she explained, moving her sharp nails higher up his leg.
"Right." That was what she had wanted to talk about over dinner. After dating five years of dating, she thought it was time for them to take the next step in their relationship; to live with one another.
He put his hand on hers to stop her advancement. Usually he'd accept her seductive techniques, because she did them very well, but the previous evening had left him feeling frazzled even into the early morning, and he wasn't up for anything too strenuous.
"Me too," he kissed her on the cheek chastely. She allowed the small form affection, but made no effort in hiding her frustration at having him stop her own plans. Before she had a chance to press for her more aggressive stance on physicality, Stiles explained, "Until then, I think I need to get home before work so I can get changed into some actual clean clothes."
She huffed and rolled her eyes, but didn't argue. With a hard press of her lips against his, she stood from the bed again to make her way to her walk-in closest. "I guess I'll see you after work then."
Without any exchange of "I love you" (because that wasn't their thing), Stiles hurriedly put on the clothes he'd worn the day before, grabbed his suitcase, and headed out of the door where his own apartment waited for him two streets down.
"Scotty, I'm home!" Stiles called as soon as he stepped into the apartment. Now usually Scott would come bounding towards him like an overly large puppy, but that day there was no bounding, or yelping, or any other sort of playful, puppish antics to be seen. It was pretty disappointing if Stiles did say so himself. He tried again. "Scott. Hello."
The further he stepped inside, he began to hear Scott's bedroom. Clambering noises, as if rushing to put things away. And whispering noises too. Suspicious, Stiles moved to the door, prepared to call Scott out once more, but then the door swung open and a pretty asian woman tripped into the main room. "Oh, um, hi," she stammered at the sight of Stiles, pushing back long black hair away from her angular face. She had a kind smile, both shy and quirky. It was especially adorable when she bit the side of her bottom lip nervously. "You must be Stiles. I'm Kira." She hardly gave him a chance to greet her in return before she was moving towards the door, calling over her shoulder, "I'll see you later Scott."
Yea," Scott appeared in the doorway looking sweaty and out of breath. "I'll see you later."
The door closed and and Scott turned to Stiles, ready to ask how the end of the flight was. Stiles beat him to the punch. "So I guess this means you're over Allison? Good for you!" Because that had been a rough time for everybody as Scott mourned the loss of his high school sweetheart when she'd made the decision to move to France with her father.
"What?" Scott had the audacity to look clueless, though to be fair, that tended to be a natural state for him. A moment later he was blushing and shaking his head in denial. "No. Uh, no. She's just a co-worker."
Stiles's eyebrow rose incredulously, "A very attractive coworker." Who seemed to have stayed the night, Stiles thought, but didn't think needed to be said aloud. Scott could only handle so much humiliation.
"Oh? Uh, yea? You think so?"
"Seriously dude?" Stiles scoffed, a little annoyed his best friend was trying to play this off. "You're telling me you didn't notice how attractive she is?"
"Hey how was the end of your flight?"
"Don't try to change the subject!"
"You were freaking out in your texts and then suddenly radio silence. I was getting worried man."
"Obviously not too worried," Stiles mocked, but he was already starting off towards his room to get ready for work.
"Malia called me when she saw you getting your luggage. So, how did the rest of the flight go? Things calmed down afterwards?"
"Actually, the whole flight was mortifying," Stiles groaned. "Man, you'd never guess what I did."
Although, he might be able to make a guess. Stiles did have a habit of getting himself into the most awkward situations.
Stiles arrived at Wolf Security just in time to walk the last stretch with Lydia Martin. Without ever verbalizing their intent, they'd synchronized the time they would pass by Maribel's Bakery for 7:45. Petite, strawberry blonde, and fashionable, she skipped to his side and intertwined her arm with his. "Guess what I heard?" Her sultry voice was heavy with conspiratory gossip.
"Don't tell me everyone already knows about my meeting."
Her brilliant emerald eyes peered up at him, narrowed in their criticism. "My news has nothing to do with you."
"Oh, okay. That's good. Carry on then."
She huffed haughtily, irritated at even the slightest bit of interruption. It took her a moment to regain her composure to continue with her report. "Apparently the founder of Wolf Security is going to be here. Arrived yesterday."
Stiles's forehead furrowed. "I thought the founder was dead."
"That was Laura Hale. She founded the company with her brother, but after she died I guess he had a complete meltdown. Moved to New York or something. And now he's back to help run the main office." She thrummed with energy as they walked through the glass, double doors. He could only imagine what was going on in her head: a fantasy of a rich, successful, and hopefully attractive man to manipulate to her whims. "Now," she wondered, her tone sincere but her eyes twinkling mischievously, "What was that you were saying about your meeting?"
He opened his mouth to respond, but before he could get the words out, one of the secretaries caught his attention from behind the front desk. "Stiles, Mr. Finstock wants you in his office."
Sighing, he disentangled himself from Lydia's hold. "I guess you'll find out soon enough."
"Good luck," she called after him as he headed towards the elevator. This time she didn't even bother to sound sincere.
Stiles fidgeted the entire time in the elevator going up to the 4th floor where the design team had their cubicles framing the polished, dark wood department space. Mr. Finstock, who everyone but the secretaries called Coach, didn't actually have an office. Rather, he had a cubicle like everyone else on the team, only his had glass panels surrounding it.
"Stilinski!" Coach shouted as Stiles other anxiously stepped out onto the floor, though there was no need to yell. At 7:55am, no one was on the floor yet except for the head of the department himself.
"Uh, hi Coach."
Finstock scowled, but it was without any real heat. Just annoyance. Granted, really heavy, serious annoyance. "I just got a call from Chicago. Guess what Harrison had to say about the meeting?"
"That I demonstrative and enthusiastic about our new portal security deivces?"
Finstock curled a thick finger to signal Stiles to come closer. When they were standing barely a breath away (very uncomfortable and not altogether necessary, Stiles thought), Finstock raged, "Did you really electrocute Harrison?"
"Only a little bit."
The scowl darkened to an almost scary level of intimidation.
Frantic, Stiles explained, "He said our prices were too high and that the device wasn't something that would just sell itself, so I felt it was up to me to show him exactly why our prices were quite reasonable for what we were offering."
"And exactly how did you think electrocuting him would accomplish that?"
So the thing was, their newest product was meant to replace the use of legalized trasers. Because tasers were usually kept in purses or something similar, it was typically more difficult than it should be to get out when the need arose. To make defending oneself easier, Wolf Security had developed a small but impactful taser that hung on a bracelet like a charm. The person being attacked just needed to raise his/her wrist, press the metallic bead at the top of the taser, and shoot. Stiles had thought that it simply needed to be demonstrated to in order for its value to be seen.
"I was in defense position," Stiles mimicked his actions from the Chicago meeting; one foot in front of the other, fists up. "I made a notion towards the bracelet with the taser on it to show how easy it was and I talked about how the design would get more people to think about defending themselves because it was something so simple. That it would be easier to people." As he talked, he waved his hand around to get the point across. And just kept waving.
"What is this?" Finstock cut him off gruffly. "What are you doing with your hand? Stop that. Is this what you did at the meeting? Stop, just stop." Stiles stopped. Finstock heaved a heavy, loud sigh. With irritated, I'm-done-with-this-shit posture, he ordered, "Clean up your desk."
"What? You're firing me? You can't fire me! I provide valuable contribution to this company. I…"
"I'm not firing you. I said clean up." Finstock turned away, finished with the conversation, leaving Stiles to hurry over to his desk, jumping up on the wooden divider to swing himself over into his cubicle. On cue, the other two members of the design team stepped out onto the floor: Erika and Jackson. With the addition to their presence, Finstock raised his voice, talking on what people at the company liked to call his 'Coach" persona. They all figured it was him trying to sound inspirational and motivating, but was really just corny and dramatic. "The founder of Wolf Security will be working from this site for the foreseeable future. I expected everyone to put on their best game faces and get shit done."
By this time, Erika and Jackson had both taken their places, a smirk playing on their stupidly hot faces. Jackson, whose cubicle was closest to Stiles, peered over his computer screen at him, silently laughing. Next to Jackson, Erika was stifling chuckles, pretending to organize her pictures around her desk while continually looking up to mock Stiles. He did his best to avoid both of their knowing gazes, his face heating up at the knowledge that the news of his failure had indeed spread. Not allowing their infuriatingly aura of superiority ruin him completely, though, he forced himself to keep tidying his area, senselessly moving around the miscellaneous objects he had laying about.
"He wants to observe each department for the first few days that he's here and I want this department to outshine the other departments."
"But aren't we really just one big team?"
"Shut up Stilinkski!"
The elevator dinged. Every eye in the room turned to see the new arrival. When the door opened it was to reveal a white, blonde man just about to exit his middle aged years, a bored expression plastered on his face. He nodded to Finstock and Finstock nodded in return, turning to the other three members of the team with an over the top, fake smile. "People, let me introduce you to Derek Hale."
The blonde man stepped aide to speak with Finstock semi-privately, and in doing so, allowed the design team of Wolf Security to get their first glimpse of the once elusive founder of the company. Stiles's jaw dropped, immediately ducking his head. The Derek Hale was a green-eyed, greek god. The same greek god from the plane.
Shit. Stiles's life officically sucked.
