Chapter Two
Derek was sitting in a taxi. He hadn't been in a taxi in ages. Laura was in the seat next to him, staring out the window in awe. Derek was looking down at his phone with a frown.
"Oh my god, Derek, look," Laura gasped, pointing. "Tiny China is still in the same place!"
"Great," he grumbled. "You can fly mom and Terrence out here next time and go eat a nostalgic meal with them."
She smacked his arm hard enough that it actually hurt, but he refused to make even a grunt. "It wasn't my idea to sneak you out of the city, baby brother," she reminded him. "Your publicist and your manager agreed. I'm just following their plan, so stop taking your bad mood out on me."
He huffed and loaded twitter on his phone. As usual these days, he had a million new tweets to read and dozens of direct messages. He would've shut the message feature down entirely by now except that sometimes he got a good one. Okay, sometimes he got one from WAWRZYNIEC. He never responded to the messages, since every time he tried it always came out sounding rude so he erased it, but he liked knowing that Deputy Manbatinski was still on his side. In fact, he had a new message from the guy now.
Heard filming for ur new movie got pushed back b/c of the crazy. Wish ur fans knew they were hurting more than helping. Short sighted peons.
Laura poked his cheek and Derek scowled. "What?"
She shook her head, dark waves cascading beautifully over her shoulders. "I just wanted to feel it," she said. "I haven't seen you smile in ages."
"I wasn't smiling," Derek denied with a snort, even though he was realizing that yeah, he had been. He hadn't even noticed.
His eldest sister rolled her eyes but didn't push it. He was grateful to her for the small kindness.
The plan his publicist and manager had come up with was that he disappear for awhile, go somewhere that no one would expect him to be. No one would expect him to come back to crummy Beacon Hills where his family nearly burned to death over ten years ago. Derek had already given a formal statement on the situation - mainly that he was tired of getting fake marks mailed to him and please just leave him alone (though the please had been forced in there by his publicist and wasn't there by choice) - and responded to a few choice tweets and facebook comments (again chosen and edited by his publicist). Now all he needed to do was lay low until it blew over.
If their luck held out, no one would even know Derek and Laura had left L.A. until he was back and filming again. That way Derek could relax and avoid the paparazzi for a few days. Now if only he didn't have to hide in Beacon Hills, everything would be perfect.
...
...
Bussing tables was pretty much the last thing Stiles wanted to do at the moment, and yet here he was. Stuck in a Denny's at midnight, picking up glasses and plates leftover from some group of teens that just got their licenses and thought Denny's was cool.
Derek hadn't responded to him on twitter. Stiles had sent him dozens of messages in the past few days - probably more than was strictly acceptable if he was honest with himself. But ranting was his thing. He always talked more than he should. And if that wasn't working, if he wasn't getting through to Derek that way, then Stiles didn't know what to do next. He couldn't exactly call Derek up and ask for a chat after all. Writing a letter could take days to get to him and then days to get back, if it was even delivered to him at all and not just tossed out with all the other nut jobs sending Derek love confessions. And while Stiles knew where Derek lived, it wasn't feasible to make the trip. The trip would take hours and then he would still be stuck outside with those creepo paparazzi and it would be a waste of time and money.
With a sigh, Stiles placed the last dish on the tray and hefted it up to carry to the kitchen for cleaning. At least his shift was almost over so he could go home and sleep instead of moping about his failed soul mate venture.
"I swear to god, if you don't stop looking at your phone I'm going to break it," a female voice said, just loud enough to catch Stiles attention. "What's so important anyway?"
"I'm checking my twitter."
Now that voice was familiar enough to make Stiles turn and look. There were only four groups of people in the restaurant at this hour, two groups of four and two pairs. Stiles found the nearest group, a young woman and young man, with the man looking down at his phone and a frown on his face. He saw dark hair and faint stubble, light eyes and muscles hidden beneath a dark shirt. The same moment that his brain realized he was looking at Derek Hale, Stiles tripped over nothing and sent himself, the tray, and all the dishes cascading to the floor with a yelp.
The sound was deafening in the nearly empty room. The plates and glasses shattered. The silverware clanged against each other and the broken dishes. Even the tray made a dozen low thudding sounds as it found a place to settle on the carpet. Stiles immediately jumped up, holding his hands in the air as if to stop everyone from moving.
"Don't walk here! Broken stuff!" he shouted needlessly, then scurried away to find the broom and bucket to clean up after himself.
Stiles cast an apologetic look to his manager on the way and got a look that said 'We'll be having words later' in return. He hated that look. It never ended well for him no matter who he got it from.
When he got back to where he'd dropped everything, Stiles had to stop and remember how to breathe. Derek was kneeling next to the crash site, picking up the biggest pieces of glass and placing them on the tray once more. Shaking himself, Stiles hurried the last few steps and knelt down as well.
"You really, really don't need to do this," he said, proud that he didn't stutter.
Derek looked up at him and frowned. "You could just say 'thank you' and accept the help."
Stiles had to bite his tongue, literally, to keep from blurting 'Why? You can't.' So Derek helped him put the big pieces on the tray and then Stiles put the tray on a nearby table while Derek sat back down in his booth. Stiles quickly swept up the glass into the broom bucket and moved out of the way so Derek's waitress could finally give them their food.
Only once he was in the back room, tossing the silverware into the trays to be cleaned and the broken ceramics into the trash, did Stiles let himself process what just happened.
Derek Hale.
Was in Beacon Hills.
Eating at Stiles' Denny's.
Holy shit. Why?
Did he come to see Stiles? Even as the thought made Stiles blush he knew it wasn't true. Derek hadn't recognized him just now. So then what had brought him here, to little out-of-the-way Beacon Hills?
...
...
"So that was the most fun I've had a restaurant in the middle of the night," Laura commented as the door shut behind them.
The hotel room was paid for by Derek's agent, but it was still nice. Two large comfy beds, eight floors up so no one could look in, large bathroom, room service available. Derek dropped onto the bed furthest from the window and stared at the ceiling. Instead of going to her own bed, Laura plopped down on Derek's next to him.
"The bus boy was cute," she noted.
Derek shut his eyes. "Aren't we having enough relationship problems right now without you hitting on the staff?"
She was right though. He'd been cute. Early twenties at best, pale skin, lithe body. Even the apron had looked better wrapped around his waist. Moles dotted his skin but seemed to fit him perfectly. And, for a moment, Derek had seen eyes richer than chocolate. He ran his hands over his face with a small sigh.
Laura was side-eyeing him when he dropped his hands to the bed.
"Just because he's not my soul mate doesn't mean I can't appreciate the merchandise," she said. "Which, correct me if I'm wrong, you were."
"We're not going there, Laura," Derek grumbled.
His sister walked over to the window but didn't open the curtains. "Sometimes I hate this Soul Stamp business," she said. "Sometimes I wish you could just go out and find someone you like and date them without worrying that when your clothes come off you'll find someone else's mark there." Plopping down on her own bed, she gave a sigh. "I didn't need to see a soul mark to know Lance was the one for me."
Lance Turnbilt. He'd been a set designer on a movie Derek was in back when he was still a teenager. Laura met him at the refreshment tent when they both wanted potatoes at the same time. While Derek had been pleased she'd found The One, they'd been sickening to watch as they fell in love.
"But I suppose not everyone feels that connection at first," Laura admitted.
Derek wondered what kind of connection it was that, when he heard a yelp, his first concern was to protect whoever had made the sound. He'd never had that happen before, not with anyone who wasn't family.
But the point of coming to Beacon Hills was to lay low. Even without the Soul Stamp that said there was only one person on the planet for him, now was not the time to be flirting with random guys just because they happened to be cute and a little bit clumsy.
...
...
It was a shitty thing to do, but Stiles didn't care. He climbed the porch awning, jimmied open the window - seriously why did Scott still lock it?, and tucked and rolled inside. He'd learned long ago that he couldn't just step inside, he always crashed and knocked stuff over. Besides, rolling made him feel like a secret agent.
"Scott!" he whisper yelled. "Wake up!"
The body on the bed jolted and then Scott sat bolt upright, eyes wide. "What? Wha'sit?" he gasped out, flicking the bedside lamp on.
"Derek Hale's in town!" Stiles stressed, clambering up onto the bed by his best friend.
"Wait, what?" Scott said, running his hands through his messy hair.
Stiles barely stopped himself from rolling his eyes. "Derek Hale. My freaking soul mate. In Beacon Hills. He was at Denny's during my shift!" He let his head thump against the headboard. "What do I do, man?"
Scott yawned. "Talk to him?" He reached over to grab his alarm clock, checking the time. Almost one in the morning.
"You don't just talk to someone like Derek Hale, Scott," Stiles countered. "And what exactly would I say anyway? 'Hey, know how you've been getting all those fake Soul Stamp confessions? Well here's another one but it's real! Yay, soulmates!'? Yeah. I don't think that'd go over well."
Scott whacked him on the head. "I was thinking more along the lines of a conversation, dummy. You know, getting to know each other?"
Stiles grabbed Scott around the neck as if in preparation for a noogie. "Okay, Mr. Genius. And how do I talk to him? I don't even know where he is."
With a shrug, Scott slumped down onto his pillow. "I don't know, dude. That's one problem you'll have to figure out on your own." He yawned again. "Now turn off the light if you're staying over. It's late and I'm tired."
"I'm having a crisis, Scott. I can't sleep!" Stiles protested.
"Great. Crisis away. I'll talk to you about it in the morning." Then Scott turned on his side, hunkered down, and fell asleep. Seriously, he was the only person Stiles knew that could literally fall asleep that fast.
Stiles didn't sleep. Coming over hadn't accomplished anything because his best friend was a baby who needed a full eight hours of sleep like a normal person. Ugh. What was he going to do?
...
...
It happened faster than Derek had anticipated. A girl passed him and Laura in the hallway on the hotel as they headed toward the ice machine, of all things. It only took her about four seconds to recognize him, even with his hat and glasses (not sunglasses because he thought those were tacky and also he was inside). He'd even shaved that morning, ridding himself of his typical rugged beard. But the point was that she recognized him, and with barely a warning she had shouted and lunged at him.
The ice bucket went rolling down the hall when Derek stumbled under her weight on his back. No matter how much Laura tugged on her, the girl wouldn't let go. She babbled on about how much of a fan she was and, of course, Soul Stamps, and about her life.
It took hotel security five minutes to arrive on the scene, and only five minutes more for the Beacon Hills police to show up. And only fifteen minutes for him and Laura to find themselves sitting in the police station in a side room, waiting out of the way while the girl was dealt with.
"What is the world coming too when siblings can't get ice without being mugged, right?" Laura joked, trying to lighten the mood.
"The world sucks and I want no part in it," Derek responded dully, watching the people walking around outside their room with little to no interest.
Laura sighed and crossed her arms. "You know what? I hope this whole thing ends up with you meeting your soul mate. Hell, I don't care if it's your soul mate, as long as you find someone. You've been getting more and more depressing to be around every year. Go find that cute waiter guy and fall madly in love and be happy, Derek."
"I don't need to fall in love to be happy, Laura," Derek noted.
"Well you aren't happy without it either," she quipped back.
Before she could say anything else, Derek jerked. He sat up straight in his seat.
"What?" she asked. Following Derek's gaze she saw a young guy with moles meandering around the desks. Her jaw dropped. "No way. Is that waiter guy?"
Derek's jaw was tight. Waiter Guy was wearing a batman logo shirt with a green and white plaid over shirt, carrying coffee and files and handing them to people as he passed their desks. Derek watched as he made an older male cop laugh, the deputies around them grinning into their paperwork and phone calls, before moving on. He'd put a sticky note with a crude but funny pained emoticon on the front of a thick file he handed to a female cop, who grinned and thanked him. Derek frowned. What had he said to make those people laugh? Was the emoticon an inside joke or something spur of the moment? He wanted to know. He really wanted to know.
"I wonder what he's doing here," Laura said aloud. "I know I just said I wanted you to find someone, but if he's another crazy fan, then he can just steer clear."
But Derek didn't think the waiter guy was there for them. In fact, it didn't even seem like he knew they were there. A middle aged man accepted a cup of coffee from the guy. It was the sheriff who greeted them when they arrived and who had let them sit in the relative privacy of this room while they waited. Waiter Guy said something to him with wild hand motions that nearly spilled the files he was carrying. After a few words from the Sheriff, said with a wry grin, Waiter Guy gave a mock salute and moved on while the sheriff began walking toward the room with Derek and Laura.
"Hello again," the sheriff greeted as he shut the door behind him. "Sorry about the wait. We've had three car accidents and a small robbery in the past few days, plus a few disorderlies and speeders. It's been unusually busy here at the station."
When he sat down in the chair behind his desk, Derek noticed the name plaque sitting on the desk in front of him. Earlier the sheriff had simply introduced himself as 'the sheriff' but his full name was written on the plaque.
"Jan?" Derek let out before he could help it. Laura elbowed him hard in the ribs, even though her chair should've been too far away for it.
Luckily the sheriff just laughed. "You're not the first person to pronounce it like that. It's actually 'yahn.' It's Polish," he said. "But in English it's 'John.' Sheriff John Stilinski."
Something about the name was sticking out in Derek's mind, but he couldn't place it.
"Now, about the girl who attacked you," the sheriff said, back to business. "We're going to hold her overnight, but other than that, we can't do much. Unless you want to charge her with assault," he added. "Of course, that won't stick for very long unless one of you has an injury."
The sheriff looked between the Hale siblings for a few moments. When they just shook their heads, he continued.
"Right then. So we'll hold her overnight. I know you said you wanted to remain anonymous," the sheriff said, "which makes sense given who you are and what's going on right now."
They hadn't told him anything about their situation, but of course he'd heard about it.
"We've given the girl a talk about keeping her mouth shut, but we can't legally do anything to make her comply. So my question for you is, what would you like to do from here?"
Derek glanced out the door to where the Waiter Guy was trying to stack pencils on a desk like anyone else would stack a house of cards. Predictably, it wasn't going well.
Laura spoke up in his silence. "Thank you for doing what you could, sheriff," she said. "We'll figure something out. It was Derek's agent's idea to come here, so if nothing else, we'll just get on her case for awhile until she sends us somewhere nice for a few days."
She was joking but it took the sheriff a few seconds to catch on to that. He nodded slowly.
"Right."
"Anyway, sheriff, I have a question for you," Laura broke in easily, pushing some loose hair behind her ear. "Who's the guy in the batman shirt?"
For a moment, the sheriff seemed a mixture of caught off guard and confused. Then he blinked and seemed to come alive again.
"Oh, that's my son," he said. "He helps out around the station. He works as a busboy at the Denny's in town usually, but he was looking for some extra cash while he attends the local college, and we needed some help around here, so I offered him a part time position. He mainly runs errands for my deputies."
Deputy. Stilinski. Batman.
Deputy Manbatinski? Was it even possible?
"He likes random facts?" Derek asked, voice quiet.
The sheriff blinked at him once. "Yeah, actually. He was just telling me about the 1904 Olympics before I walked in here. How do you know that?"
The smile on Derek's face was ironic. "I think he follows me on Twitter."