SIAND - PDF - Nothing Safe is Worth the Drive.pdf

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Explicit No Archive Warnings Apply M/M Teen Wolf (TV) Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski Stiles Stilinski, Derek Hale, Scott McCall, Allison Argent, Isaac Lahey, Erica Reyes, Lydia Martin, Sheriff Stilinski, Laura Hale Alternate Universe, Werewolf Reveal, Stiles Wears Glasses, Break Up, Previous Relationship, everyone is human except for derek, Original Secondary Characters, derek lies a lot Published: 2015-01-04 Completed: 2015-01-07 Chapters: 2/2 Words: 55151

Nothing Safe is Worth the Drive by standinginanicedress Summary

An AU in which Stiles is a crass, rude, glasses-wearing wedding planner living on Scott and Allison's newlywed couch, and Derek is his rich, prudish, well dressed ex-boyfriend living in LA. AKA the one where Stiles gets swindled into planning Derek's wedding to someone else after not seeing him for nearly two years and everything winds up going to shit

Notes

The main thing with this fic is that I put the boys in a really shitty situation and neither of them handle it well at all - they both do some REALLY terrible things (like, unforgivable in my opinion) and I think you might hate them for a lot of this fic. Also, there's a discrepancy in that Beacon Hill's approximate canon location would not be ANYWHERE near LA, so I had to kind of stretch that a bit I hope you can forgive me haha. It was really important to me to not have the ~wife~ character be some huge bitch, like that classic trope; but I did want you to DISLIKE her, or at least not like her more than Stiles (I

almost, ALMOST went with Kate Argent but thought better of it tbh) (also PS title and chapters titles are from...Treacherous by Taylor Swift bc...it fits and thus ends the longest author's note of all time)

and I will get you alone.

It all began when he agreed to plan Scott and Allison's wedding. Or, really, more specifically, it began when he finished college with a useless degree in English, even though he didn't even fucking like it, just so he could have something to hang up on his wall. He had kind of been planning to work at the coffee shop for his entire life, but after high school his father had laid down the law – forced him to go to college. So he went. And he read a lot, wrote a lot of papers, and came out the other side at 22 years old like...um? What the fuck do I do now? One thing he was absolutely, positively determined to do was to not live at home anymore. He was an adult, dammit! It was impossible to feel like his own person when his father still made him misshapen pancakes every morning, still patted him on the back and called him bud in front of all his other adult friends. He didn't make nearly enough at the coffee shop to afford his own place, not to mention the student loan bills he had to pay off, so he and Scott moved in together. It was all good fun for a while; all bro stuff, like video game marathons, and days spent eating nothing but pizza, and pissing with the door wide open. Typical guy stuff. Until Scott proposed to Allison. Then it became newlyweds stuff, like making each other heart shaped pancakes in the morning but none for Stiles, patting him on the back and telling him he'd find work soon, sleeping on the god damn couch in the living room, living on ramen noodles and macaroni and cheese like an invalid – like a college freshman lives. Not a man with a fucking degree! For Christ's sake. So Allison proposed, hey, Stiles, you could plan our wedding! Because Stiles has always had a bizarre attention to detail; could spot a single flower out of place in the pot a mile away, became disturbed by the sheer thought of a crooked picture frame on the wall. That, as well as the fact that he'd planned nearly every single large get together and event for their friend group for as long as any of them could remember, and, well...why not hire a friend to do a job for cheap? Who knows, honey, he might be good at it. And good at it, he was. The wedding went off without a hitch, without a single mismatched tablecloth, with any and all family drama handled seamlessly by Stiles' calming presence, with all the catering and floral arrangements and invitations taken care of so easily it practically fell into place on the big day. It's funny – Stiles had never given much thought to doing something like event planning, because where he's from, in probably the poorest part of California, people didn't just spend money on some random guy to plan things for them.

So, yes, he was good at it. Too good. Way too good, for a small little hamlet like Beacon Hills; filled to the brim with clueless people who had never heard of such an absurd thing. A person to do something anyone else could easily do? How foolish they were, though, to think that planning an entire event was simple. Seems that way, doesn't it? Oh, flowers and appetizers, and, like, table settings. Who cares? Just throw out some lawn chairs and Dora the Explorer tablecloths. No one will know the difference. They all learned the hard way. And Stiles put an ad in the paper, charging a measly ten dollars an hour (whereas most planners, like in big cities, go for fifty ) to either help the dream become a reality, or do all the hard work himself. To most people, the idea was still pretty foreign – so he only did three jobs in the first four months, and still lived off ramen and macaroni and cheese, still lived on Allison and Scott's couch, still could barely afford the rent and gas it took to just be a normal human being. Forget moving out, forget getting his own place – he was just trying to survive. “That big break is coming, buddy,” Scott would say, while Allison hmm 'd from behind her newspaper every morning, “you just have to wait. Good things come to those who wait. Right, honey?” Another hmmm from the lady of the house, and Stiles would stare into his cheerios with a frown. If he lived in LA, oho, the big break would've come already. As it was, he couldn't even afford the gas to get there; let alone move there, in his own place. He couldn't even afford a cardboard box with a please help sign on the outside in LA. Out here, in Nowhereville, he felt like big breaks just didn't exist. There was just what you had, and you lived and worked with what you had, and made ends meet, and got drunk on the weekends, and that was that. It was hicksville. Redneck town. Country music video material, at best – with nothing but mom and pop stores that charged up the ass because they could. Stiles was never going to get anywhere. He was going to make enough money to get by, maybe be able to afford a shack of an apartment somewhere in the slums district if he really saved up his money, and that would be that. He had accepted it. Moved on. Until. Allison came home one day, after Stiles had spent almost a year of planning backyard BBQ weddings and stupid events for the town; she was bright eyed and grinning, dumping the groceries onto the kitchen table with an unceremonious plop, rearing her Cheshire cat smile onto Stiles menacingly. “I got a very interesting call while I was at the store.” “Really?” Scott, perpetual puppy, grinned back at her as he peeled potatoes in front of the sink; Stiles just mumbled something about you don't say under his breath while seasoning the meat at the counter. “Remember how I used to live in LA? A way, way, long time ago, when I was still in Elementary school.”

“Yeeahh,” Scott trilled over the sound of more peeling. “I used to have this best friend – Tiffany Milano. She was a trust fund kid; born and raised in a huge mansion in the country. She had an indoor pool, with a waterslide." “I think I remember you mentioning her!” Because Scott probably remembers every single little thing that every single person has ever said to him in his life – most of all the shit Allison tells him. It's what's always made him both an awesome person, and a shitty person; because he can remember the good and the bad, at the drop of a hat, and can hold grudges like nobody's business. “Anyway, she's getting married! And do you know what she asked me?” “What!” “She asked me about a kid in Beacon Hills that she heard plans weddings, and asked me if I recognized the name Stiles." Stiles stopped seasoning the meat. He flat out dropped the pepper down onto the ground with a clatter, whipped around, nearly sending his glasses flying across the kitchen, to find Allison and Scott both leering at him with parental pride. “What did you say?” Stiles demanded, fixing his glasses. “I said yes! Yes I do know Stiles! I can give you his number right now!” Which is what lead to Stiles getting a phone call at three the following day, with Scott and Allison hovering over him listening to every word. “Tiffany,” the cheery voice on the other end of the phone had said, “Tiffany Milano! Well, Milano for now! Then Tiffany Ha- Rocket! Get down from there! Sorry, sorry. Just the dog. Anyway, how much do you usually charge? Forty an hour?” Stiles practically threw up on the coffee table before answering with a resounding yeah, forty an hour, that sounds about right, while internally doing the math. Forty a day, working a typical five hours a day, that's two hundred fucking dollars a day. Working at the usual pace of about four days a week, that's eight hundred dollars a week. Working for the three months until the date she has planned, that's nearly ten. Thousand. Fucking. Dollars. There's the click of a pen in the background, and then Tiffany was saying, like it's nothing, “and a finder's fee of two hundred. Right?” “Um -” Stiles has never charged a finder's fee before. No one could afford the finder's fee around here. He was about to pass out. “Yeah. Two hundred. Sounds – yeah, that sounds...” “Okay. Twoo...huunndreed...dollars....and how do you spell Stilinski?”

Which is what lead to Stiles sitting in a posh, all white meeting room in a building in downtown LA, nervously fidgeting with the collar on the nice dress shirt that his father had bought for him, trying to pretend for ten seconds like he actually belonged there. All things said and done, yeah, he could plan a wedding better than anyone else – but that was in Beacon Hills. People don't expect much around there; so you show up with a chocolate fountain and a couple tea lights and perfectly lined up décor and people think you're the second coming of Christ. This was the big leagues. This was people who have grown up around thousand dollar ice sculptures. People who could afford to get the real and actual Taylor Swift to show up at their wedding to perform. People who knew how to use a color wheel. He was freaking out. Absolutely about to faint, talking to Tiffany – who turned out to be an outrageously pretty, outrageously tall, outrageously well dressed black girl in six inch stiletto heels; sweeping into the room like she just got out of a photoshoot, holding her soft-skinned hand out for Stiles to shake. Tiffany commented on his glasses, with a lilting, “ you don't look like a wedding planner in those!”, laughing her way through it. She was nice. She was friendly. She was rich. Stiles could practically smell the money on her. This was, without a doubt, the big break. The only break he would ever need. He planned this one fucking wedding, for this one rich LA girl, with her trust fund and her indoor pool and her waterslide, and he would be golden for the rest of his life. Because LA girls talk to other LA girls, and LA girls would be at this wedding, and LA girls love having someone else do all the work for them. And LA girls walk around with pens at the ready at all times, prepared to write thousand dollar checks. So, Stiles calmed down. He calmed right the hell down, cleared his throat, and said, “A theme?” To which, Tiffany instantly replied, “Russian Winter.” Instantly Stiles could see it. The aisle, white carpet, lined with fake trees covered in fake snow and light red string lights; glittering in the dim lightning of the reception hall, while on the ceiling above, huge white chandeliers would hang with candles flickering instead of bulbs. This was going to be easy. An easy ten grand. Holy fuck. “Budget?” He asked, pretending like he was so cool and calm and put together – casually sitting with his pen poised over his notebook, trying not to let a single emotion pass across his face. Totally professional. He's totally planned weddings like this before. This is not new. Nothing new here. “I'm not looking to spend more than 7.”

Stupidly, so stupidly, he said, “hundred?” Tiffany blinked at him, and then a slow smile crept across her face. “Hundred thousand.” Seven. Hundred. Thousand. Dollar. Wedding. Again, Stiles was not freaking out. No, sirree bob. He wrote 700,000 very slowly and precisely, thinking he has never in his life ever written a number that huge down on a piece of paper. Has never even seen that number with a dollar sign next to it. His eyes were dollar signs – like Mr. Krabs. All he was thinking about at that exact moment was cashing his ten thousand dollar check and jumping into a gigantic pool of money, swimming around in it, while drinking champagne and wearing Ray Ban sunglasses and Gucci swim trunks. Does Gucci make swim trunks? In the background, Tiffany told him there are going to be about eight hundred guests. He started imagining doing a cannon ball into his money pool. But he had to ask the one question you're really not supposed to ask, as an event planner – the are you sure about this... question. “You want me to plan a 700 grand wedding in three months?” Tiffany smiled at him, all pearly white teeth, and said, “unless you think you can't do it.” Oh. Stiles could do it. His entire life had been leading up to this moment. His finest hour is upon him. He is David and this wedding is a shimmery white and red Goliath, taunting him, waving money around in his face. “It's not a problem,” he decided to say. And it's like a contract had been sealed. Which is what lead to the single worst occurrence of Stiles' entire life – the thing that lead to the longest, most horrible two and a half months of Stiles' pathetic little existence. Derek Hale came walking into the room, accompanied by Tiffany's caw of “and here's my man!”, and Stiles thought for a second all his money might just have to go to his hospital bills from the heart attack he nearly had. ---It should have occurred to him. That's what he's saying to himself as he sits across the glass table from Derek, pointedly avoiding eye contact, just staring directly at Tiffany and nothing else, tapping his pen incessantly against his notepad. He's stopped taking notes. Taking notes means having to turn his head, turning his head means having to glance at Derek, glancing at Derek means seeing Derek and seeing Derek means acknowledging that this is actually. Fucking. Happening. And Stiles still has not accepted that it is. No. It's a nightmare. He's going to wake up to Tiffany standing over him going um, are you all right?, and it'll all be over. Derek Hale is not there. No. No. No.

It should have! Occurred! To him! LA? Trust fund kid? Insanely attractive human being getting married? All signs point to Derek Hale; except not really. He couldn't have possibly known, because he had kind of already decided, long ago, that he was never going to lay eye on Derek again in his entire fucking life. He was looking forward to it, honestly! A long, Derekless existence! Ahh, just what the doctor ordered after the horror of a breakup he suffered because of that... fuckface. Fuckface himself spared him about four seconds of a glance, barely even reacted, and then sat down across from him like it was nothing to him. Like Stiles was nothing to him. Like he didn't even remember who Stiles was – despite the fact that they dated for nearly an entire year while Stiles was fresh out of college. Fuck. You. Stiles sends the brainwaves as far as he can get them in Derek's general direction without even looking at him. “...and, well, Derek doesn't really have much family left.” Tiffany casts an apologetic glance in Derek's general direction, but Stiles keeps his eyes locked firmly on her side profile, thinking frantically about how nice and soft her skin looks, how her jawline is perfect, how her teeth are all pin straight and shiny white, how much better looking than Stiles she is altogether... “...so it's mostly just my family that you'll have to put up with. My mother can be, hmm...impossible, is one word for it.” “Okay. That's fine,” Stiles assures her, in what he hopes is a calm and even tone. “I'm sure I've dealt with worse before – it's my job to – um....control situations. Manage, the, er – the...” “And don't get me started on my father,” she continues on, like a real angel, ignoring Stiles' stuttering, “but I think your real problem might be with Derek.” There's really only about two seconds of dead air. The break between Tiffany finishing her sentence, and taking a breath to start the next is miniscule, in real time. But in Stiles' head, it feels like an hour. He literally stops breathing; oh god, oh god, she knows, I'm getting fired before I even get started, she knows, she knows! His eyes flick to Derek, for the first time since he walked in, and finds him staring at Tiffany - his fiancee' - with what might actually be misconstrued as an actual emotion, and Stiles knows that Derek is thinking the exact same thing that he is. “...he's so horrible at making up his mind about things!” Stiles breathes out audibly; and he swears that he sees Derek looking at him from the corner of his eyes. “I literally have to force his hand to get him to make any major decisions – but it's really important to me that he have a hand in the planning. I can't stand the thought of being one of those Bridezillas. It's just not me. I want this wedding to be his as much as it is mine. Think you can handle the both of us?” ---“You're fucking kidding me.”

Isaac has been laughing for five minutes straight, practically rolling around on the floor, tears streaming down his face – every time Stiles would think he was done, Isaac would calm down for a second, look at Stiles' face, and start it all over again. While Scott...Scott has just been repeating the same thing again and again, “ you're fucking kidding me," met with Stiles', “ I know." Five. Minutes. The meeting had ended shortly after Derek had arrived, with Tiffany citing something about needing to get back to work, and Derek shooting up out of his chair immediately thereafter to follow her out of the room like a lost puppy, and then it was just Stiles sitting alone in a room that looked like it cost six hundred thousand dollars itself, staring blankly at the wall; as if he was waiting for Jesus Christ to appear to him and say, “ oh, just kidding, by the way. None of that was real. You're hallucinating. You're going to wake up on the couch in five...four...three...two...one...” Sadly, Jesus never appeared. It was just Stiles, and eventually a snooty secretary who kicked him out, and then a snooty valet who handed him his keys back with a hint of disgust; like having to touch the Blueberry was a serious tax on his health. “So, you didn't take the job?” Stiles takes another sip of his beer. Swallows. “I took the job, Scott.” “Good! You shouldn't let that – that person – ruin this opportunity for you!” “Good? It's a horrible idea!” Isaac wipes the few remaining tears out of his eyes, sighs deeply, and shakes his head. “This is the worst idea you've ever had, Stiles.” “It wasn't an idea, Isaac. It was just thrust upon me, like a sneak attack, all right? It would've never been my idea to plan Derek Hale's wedding.” “The idea is Stiles making thousands of dollars off one job,” Scott interjects, raising one finger in the air, “getting his name out to the wealthier population,” a second finger, “and becoming a millionaire.” A third, and final finger. “Right,” Stiles hastily agrees after another sip of beer, “exactly.” Because the whole thousands of dollars thing totally outweighs the whole...Derek thing, right? Totally. Absolutely. “Wrong,” Isaac counters Stiles' internal monologue with another heavy shake of his head. “So fucking wrong. I feel like you're forgetting what Derek Hale was actually like." At that, Scott purses his lips, narrows his eyes; but doesn't respond. Stiles doesn't have much to say to that, either – because he remembers exactly what Derek Hale was like. In vivid fucking color. “I'd rather work with a rabid fucking wolf than spend even five minutes alone in a room with that

son of a bitch,” he pushes his curls back on his head, looking Stiles dead in the eye. “As your friend, I'm seriously suggesting that you back out of this while you still can. The situation is justjust...” “Too fucking weird,” Stiles finishes for him, in a low voice. Planning a wedding for his exboyfriend? Who does something like that? It would make about a zillion times more sense if they had ended on good terms, or if they both looked at each other and said, I don't really like you on a romantic level, but as friends, we could totally work! Neither of those situations played out with Derek and Stiles. Oh, no. The ending was a car crash into a solid concrete wall at over a hundred miles per hour. Both of them saw it coming, but neither of them moved to turn the wheel, to swerve in another direction. “Then why are you doing it?” Stiles sighs; and then fishes his wallet out of his pocket. He pulls Tiffany's check out and holds it up in the air, right in front of Isaac's face. Two hundred and forty dollars. Just for talking to her for an hour. “Exactly,” Scott points to the check with a smug look on his face. “What's weird to me is you even entertaining the thought of turning this down just because you have a little bit of an uncomfortable history with the guy!” Isaac blows a raspberry, but doesn't offer any more arguments for them to debate on – a sign that he's admitting Scott is at least partially right about this entire ordeal. Stiles reminds himself that they're talking about ten grand here. That's Stiles' own place – a semi-nice place. That's a new car – a nice car. That's paying off a huge chunk of his looming student loans. It's a lifechanging lump of money. Scott is right. He would be a fucking idiot to turn this down just because he and Derek...well. Just because he and Derek. Money. Money! A lot of money. So much fucking money. It's worth it, it's worth it, it's worth it. ---“That doesn't match the theme,” Tiffany laughs at Derek's invitation choice – a sunny, yellow thing with white blocky type. Stiles cannot believe that Tiffany is laughing at Derek instead of kicking him directly in the balls for such a stupid fucking suggestion – yellow? Block type? Floral? For a winter themed wedding? God, it's exactly the type of shit he expects from the guy, but it still makes him step back, scratch his head, and go, you can't be serious. The type of shit that would've gotten the two of them into a huge bickering match, right there in the middle of the store, in front of everyone. But Tiffany just laughs, shaking her head and nudging Stiles conspiratorially, like, oh how silly

he is! “I think we're in the wrong section,” Stiles starts, shoving his glasses up higher on his nose. “This is more, er...spring.” “Right,” Tiffany agrees, smoothing her sweater out. There's not a single piece of lint or cat hair on it, and Stiles keeps finding his eyes shifting down to stare the fabric of it, to marvel at how perfect and pristine it is. Rich people. “Winter would be in this direction. Unless you were thinking of going eclectic with it, which wouldn't be that bad of a-” “ No," Tiffany insists, already clacking her high heels away from the conversation, “I don't do eclectic.” People with sweaters that clean rarely do eclectic. Stiles speedwalks to catch up with her, to avoid getting left behind with Derek. The second he walked into the store, even though the building is huge, and the couple was an entire fifty feet away, Derek turned around and looked him dead in the eyes. It was just one of those creepy, unnerving things that Derek was always doing when they were together – the exact type of shit that made Isaac so wary of him. "You don't think he's, you know...odd?” “Creepy. Creepy is what he is, dude. Incredibly fucking creepy.” But just as quickly as the eye contact was made, it was broken – and Derek went straight back in to trailing along behind Tiffany and focusing his full attention on her, like Stiles didn't exist. Since then, it's pretty much just been Derek and Tiffany talking, Tiffany and Stiles talking, and then Derek going deathly silent – as if saying a single word would prompt a response from Stiles, or initiate a conversation. Which, apparently, would be horrible, in his mind. It would be horrible. Stiles knows that. So he plays along. “This one,” Derek points at a sample card with confidence, tapping the glass display as if he's running out of patience. Dear. God. It's the single most hideous thing Stiles has ever laid eyes on. It looks like an invitation to a four year old's snowman themed birthday party – not an elegant seven hundred thousand dollar wedding. Awful, gaudy blues. Cartoonish snowflakes. Comic? Sans? Font? Tiffany laughs again. Stiles thinks he's going to have an aneurism. “Let's try this -” Stiles suggests, keeping his tone even and light; not too demanding, not too annoyed, just pleasantly offering an idea out to his clients. Because that's what these people are – clients. No matter how many times he's had sex with one of them. Clients. “...when you

imagine your mother receiving an invitation to your wedding in the mail, what do you imagine it looks like in her hands?” Tiffany actually closes her eyes for a second; which Stiles finds amusing for all of two seconds, until he realizes that it more or less leaves Derek and Stiles alone in the room together. Tiffany has gone away into the land of imagination, and left the two boys alone to soak in the awkwardness of the fact that they're standing here right now. Stiles clears his throat. Pushes his glasses up on his nose. Tries to look professional and not like a person way in over his fucking head. “Satin bow.” Tiffany says matter of factly, opening her eyes again. “Red satin.” Stiles suggests. Tiffany's jaw drops. “ Exactly. Oh, my God. You and I are going to get along. I can tell. I knew hiring you would be a good idea – told you, Derek." A few things occur to Stiles all at once – things that probably should have occurred to him sooner. He had been too busy trying to deal with the fact that this was a real thing that was happening in his life to really consider all the many, many strings attached to such a thing being possible at all. For starters, at some point, Tiffany had said to Derek we should hire a wedding planner. This would not offend Derek. Derek has the money to pay for it, Derek doesn't even like deciding anything for himself, or handling anything himself. So a wedding planner just makes perfect sense for his tiny little pea brain. Second of all, at some point, Tiffany had said to Derek, we should hire Stiles Stilinski. Oh, what Stiles would have given to be in that room at that exact moment – to hear his name rolling off of his ex-boyfriend's future wife's tongue, to see the look on his perfect chiseled face, to see him drop his dinner roll into his lap in shock. Oh what relish. What joy. Third of all, at some point, Tiffany and Derek had gotten into an argument about not hiring Stiles. Two guesses as to which side of the argument Derek had been on. “Red is too strong a color,” Derek says. It's in direct response to Stiles' suggestion, something that should be directed at Stiles. But the stupid idiot doesn't even so much as flick his eyes away from Tiffany, as if looking at Stiles through anything but a mirror would cause him to turn to stone. “Bright, I mean. Intense.” Tiffany opens her mouth to respond, only to be cut off by Stiles' firm “burgundy.” “Burgundy! Even the sound of the word, the word itself ...I like that.”

“Burgundy is too depressing.” Not a glance at Stiles. “Well...” “Maroon.” “Maroon and burgundy are the same exact color.” Stiles' left eye twitches. “Maybe we should go look at the color wheel,” it's a cutting, biting, sarcastic thing to say; but he says it in a cheery, happy voice, a smile spread across his face. “And you can pick which shade of red best fits your vision.” “A color wheel?" That does it. “You know, Tiffany,” Stiles touches her arm gently, “I think me and the man here should have a one and one, real quick. Normally that's how it goes – a one on one with both of you, to get the ideas out of them without the influence of the other.” It doesn't take much to convince her. Her eyes go wide and she nods. “I should've thought of that.” “Okay, great,” Stiles latches onto Derek's arm with a vice grip and starts dragging him towards the door. “Right now, then. Outside.” Derek doesn't put up much of a fight to being dragged out of the store, even though he could probably easily shake Stiles off and evade the situation altogether. This is mostly, Stiles thinks, because if he did put up a fight, Tiffany would find it odd; or at the very least get upset at Derek resisting the planning of their fucking wedding. So outside they go, into the crisp Autumn air, and Stiles wheels around on the other man to look directly into his face, up close, for the first time in nearly a year and a half. He looks the same, really; the same as he always did. Frown, furrowed brow, hazel eyes, dark hair kept the same length and all. Right now, he's got that you're annoying me, Stiles face on, which is really just like old fucking times. “You have got some serious fucking nerve.” Off to a great start. An excellent start, here, ladies and gentlemen, Stiles and Derek, back again, for their encore performance of : The Fight. “You said yes to this entire thing-” “As did you.” “You heard my fucking name! How many Stiles Stilinkski's do you think exist in this entire universe? One! And you're looking at him! You knew the minute she said oh honey!" Stiles clasps his hands together and bats his eyelashes, putting on a fake girly voice that sounds nothing like Tiffany, “ Stiles Stilinski sounds like a good guy to hire to plan our dream wedding!" Derek's face sours, like it always does whenever Stiles starts getting theatrical. “What was I supposed to do?”

Why did God put him on this earth? Stiles really wants to know who okay'd his birth. Who said Stiles Stilinski - yeah, okay. Let's put him down there at the same exact time at Derek Hale. It'll be hilarious. “Um! Say fucking no! That word that you love so much, as I do seem to recall!” “She found your portfolio," and he says it like it's the single most ridiculous thing on the face of the planet – like Stiles having proof of his line of work and how good he is at his idiotic job is so unbelievably crass and obtuse that it deserves a sneer and a roll of the eyes. “She said it was either you or I'd have to do it myself.” Dear. Fucking. Lord. So Tiffany would be sending out Comic Sans wedding invitations right about now if she had never called Stiles. Derek might have horrible, shitty taste, and he might've been rich his entire life and always had someone there to pick out his outfits and, like, do everything for him, but he is at least self aware that he has no idea how to be a person all on his own. Of course he'd rather suffer through this with Stiles than do the whole thing on his own. Of course. “And the thought never occurred to you, it never crossed through your puny little brain,” a glower, “to call me? Let me know? Before just bursting in through the door and acting like you've never fucking seen me before?” Derek rolls his eyes. “So don't call me ever again only applies when it's convenient for you?” The urge to slap this idiot clean across his beautiful face is so strong that Stiles' hand literally starts shaking from the exertion he's putting in to not actually doing it. He's really struggling right now, and he knows that one good, clean slap would at least get some of his frustration out. But out of the corner of his eye, he can see Tiffany meandering down the aisles through the huge glass window; what would her reaction be to seeing her wedding planner slapping her future husband? Stiles predicts not good. This is not the time. Verbal slaps will just have to do. “You haven't changed one fucking bit.” “I guess now you think you're so different, then? Maybe you are – a wedding planner, Stiles? Really?" The words drip off his tongue like acid onto the ground, burning through the concrete and steaming up all around their feet. Belittling every little thing that Stiles ever tries to do is just another thing Derek is absolutely spectacular at. Derek was rich. Stiles was poor. Derek came from Hollywood. Stiles came from Bumfuck, Nowhere. Derek went to Yale. Stiles went to community college. So, naturally, everything that Stiles did was just lackluster compared to Derek. “Yes! Really! Because I'm an actual person with an actual job instead of just a weird hermit with a trust fund who does whatever the hell he wants,” (see : buys hundred thousand dollar cars only to get bored of them within two weeks) “Go fuckin' figure.”

“One thing I really don't understand here - why are you mad at me? I seem to remember you being the one who kicked me out, Stiles.” “You know what,” Stiles takes two steps closer, into Derek's personal space, and points one finger into the taller man's face, “I get the feeling you're making this job harder for me than it has to be just so you can try and get rid of me. You think you can argue with me about specific shades of red and point out hideous Comic Sans invitations to get me to crack,” Derek purses his lips guiltily, “well it's not going to fucking work. I'm doing this damn job, and I'm getting my money, and then I'm never, ever, ever, going to have to see you again. Now if you'll excuse me,” he shoves his glasses higher onto his nose and glares as menacingly as he can while looking like Buddy Holly. “I have some invitation orders to place. For your! Wedding!" ---“I'm quitting,” Stiles pronounces after downing a shot, slamming the glass down onto the table. “Called that,” Isaac snickers, trying, and failing, to hide his grin behind his beer glass. Stiles can imagine the entire scene – all his so-called friends sitting around in a circle, placing bets on when and where Stiles was going to wind up cracking. Would it be in a week? In a month? The day of the wedding? Apparently, Isaac had been the only one to think that Stiles would hardly even make it one day. “I'm not doing it. I cannot emotionally, physically, or mentally do it! It's – it's not even about the fact that we dated," he reaches across the table for Allison's drink – the one she left behind to go out onto the floor with Erica, leaving the men behind to talk about manly things. Like exboyfriends. “It's about the fact! That he is still just as much of a fucking asshole as he was when we were together! Two years ago!” Scott has the long-suffering look of a best friend who has heard this exact same rant, in variations, about ten zillion times. “I know.” “And – I know maybe I'm not really in a place to be turning jobs away-” “You're not.” “...and this would be a job that pays well and gets me out of my current, you know, situation...” situation meaning living on Allison and Scott's couch and eating all their ramen. “But where do I draw the line? Where can I draw my line of dignity in the sand, Scott? How low do I dare to fucking sink?” “Well,” Scott begins, looking like he's about to say something really, really important, “I don't really see how planning Derek Hale's wedding and making ten grand is lower than sleeping on my couch.” “Oh, Scott. How naive you are!” Stiles shakes his head solemnly back and forth before finishing off the rest of Allison's vodka-sprite; slamming that glass down onto the table, as well. “You

have no idea what he's like. You really don't. He said, and I quote, maroon and burgundy are the exact same color. ” “Horror of horrors,” Isaac mutters under his breath – and there's another person he'd love to fucking slap. “I feel like you're just not getting it here -” “We're really, really not, Stiles. If you're getting paid forty dollars an hour just to sit and argue about whether or not burgundy and mauve-” “ Maroon." “...are the same color, then you've got a pretty good fucking job. I'd do that job, easy.” Isaac snickers again, shaking his head, while Stiles opens and closes his mouth to try and think of a retort. The reality is – there is no retort, because Scott is absolutely right. Nowhere, nowhere is Stiles going to find a better paying job than this one. Planning the wedding of one of Allison's rich trust fund girlfriends from LA is the be-all end-all. He could work this job and not work another one for months, living more than comfortably with a new car and his own house, and maybe even a cat. This is, quite literally, a dream job. The job that changes the entire course of his life. The only hitch is that the groom is his ex-boyfriend. And, so what? Big fucking deal. Derek Hale is a secretive asswipe who probably cheated on him anyways – and will probably cheat on his fiancee', as well! Who fucking cares. “People have done a lot worse things for money,” Isaac adds, raising his eyebrows. “ You've already done a lot worse things for money.” Stiles once ate a handful of earthworms, still wriggling and covered in dirt, for twenty dollars. He also once purposefully threw a high school lacrosse game for fifty dollars a bottle of vodka. Were either of those things worse than this? Scott looks like he's remembering exactly what Stiles is, and he says, emphatically, “this is not the worst thing on the face of the planet. We're talking about forty dollars an hour. We're talking about you not sleeping on my couch." We're talking about the most uncomfortable three months of Stiles' life. But it's just business, after all. And business is never, ever personal. ---The question that Stiles heard for months after he and Derek broke up, the one he always dodged his way out of answering, was this ; what exactly happened between you two? This was usually

always paired with raised eyebrows, wide-eyes, a bit of a slack-jaw. Complete and total disbelief – no one could believe that Stiles and Derek weren't together anymore – that they weren't going to be together forever. It only seemed that way on the outside. How exactly did a broke, sad community college kid from the middle of nowhere California meet a rich, sad Yale graduate from the opposite end of the country? The Yale graduate wandered into the coffee shop the poor kid was using to put himself through college. It was fodder for a romantic comedy, probably – the rich criminal law graduate, the poor english major, brought together by fate and fate alone. If things had wound up going better, Stiles would've sent the script in to be optioned by film companies. Of course, things wound up turning out more like a Shakespearean tragedy than they ever did turning out romantically. Like – double suicide dressed up as a love story levels, here. They were literally insane about each other. And not in an eyelash-batting, aww, they're crazy about each other! way. Like...they were literally nuts. Derek used to almost borderline stalk Stiles – although he could never prove that. Around the third week they were seeing each other, he just started appearing in all of Stiles' usual places; including spots that Derek had absolutely no reason to be at. He'd always act so casual about it, too. Like, oh, I forgot you go here and oh I forgot you worked here and oh I forgot you get pizza here every week at six o'clock with your best friends. Isaac and Scott used to look at him, shake their heads unanimously, and say “ you deserve so much better than that fucking creep.” It would've been sinister and odd, if Derek was actually any good at following him around. He sucked at it – most of all at being stealthy about it. And it wasn't like Stiles was any better. He became clingy, like, call three times in a one hour period just to check in clingy, and possessive, like, why were you just over there talking to her/him, and, ultimately, paranoid. Because it really didn't make sense to Stiles that Derek would ever have wanted to go out with him. There was nothing that great about him – he had no money, no assets, no real goals, no anything. He was just plain old Stiles. Derek had this air of mystery about him, like he was an enigma, or like there was just something about him that he wasn't willing to let anyone know. At first, Stiles had found it intriguing and sexy. At first. As time went on, however, Stiles became...obsessive. He knew there was something that Derek wasn't telling him. Weird, whispered phone calls in the hallway, him waking up at two in the morning, putting on his coat and saying I've gotta go out with no other explanation. He would vanish for a week at a time, no calls, no texts, no nothing. Stiles thinks he did what anyone else would've done. He freaked out about it, constantly demanded to know where he was going, constantly demanded to know who he was talking to, and Derek never gave him a straight fucking answer. The answer, of course was obvious – he had to have been cheating. A lot. It was the only explanation that made any god damn sense. Both of them saw the end coming; but neither of them could really predict how absolutely earth

shattering it was going to be. Three o'clock in the morning, Stiles ripping open his drawers, tossing Derek's clothes out the window, throwing plates and glass cups at the wall, and screaming, again and again, “ I want you out, I don't want to see anymore, I want you gone." Derek kind of took the entire thing in stride. He didn't say much of anything at all, that night – just sullenly picked up his clothes from the front lawn, shoved them all into the back of his car, and drove away. That was that. No calls (Stiles had expected at least one, despite his threats) no emails (again, at least one) and he stopped coming around. It was almost like he left California altogether. (Subsequent Google searches would beg to differ, however.) Stiles couldn't afford their shared place anymore – they had only lived there for two months, because Stiles was a fucking idiot and thought it would be a good idea to move into a place with his rich boyfriend who shouldered most of the rent money. So he had to literally pack up his entire life and start all over again. And clearly, he had failed miserably at that. “I don't care that he's gone,” he remembers saying to his best friends, that first night after he moved back into his Scott's place, pre-marriage, “it was a mistake to go out with him in the first place. He was a liar,” Scott nodded, “a manipulator,” another nod, “and a... stalker." A pause. Then another nod. Now, Stiles wonders, what is he now? His fucking boss. That trust fund money is getting poured directly into Stiles' bank account, check after check, and in a way, it's like poetic justice. Money for emotional damages, Stiles thinks, as he throws another three hundred dollar check into the bank. Tiffany is unbelievably easy to like, on a professional level. She's direct, knows exactly what she wants but is willing to compromise, and doesn't pretend to like any of Stiles' ideas just for his sake. On a personal level, it's also hard not to like her; with her easy smile, friendly demeanor, and ability to take Derek's bullshit with a giggle and a shrug. Stiles had kind of been expecting, you know – a rich woman. Two thousand dollar crisp white pant suit, with six inch stilettos, perfectly manicured nails, looking like she just got lost on her way down the catwalk. Instead she typically shows up in jeans a sweater, dark hair pulled back into a careful bun, minimal makeup, and a coffee for Stiles. She's a nice person. No wonder her and Allison were such good friends – good enough that Tiffany knew she could call in a favor from her. She's Allison's long lost sister. Derek, though. Ohohoho... Derek. Derek shows up forty-five minutes late, every single session (hehe, he's so unpredictable! Stiles wants to fucking vomit), he wears six thousand dollar shirts, like he's so fucking above it all, flashes the keys to Lamborghini in front of Stiles' face, and disagrees with nearly everything Stiles says. Most infuriating of all, is that Tiffany is apparently such a pushover that she'll just agree with Derek, no matter how absurd his ideas are. It

sometimes takes forty-five minutes to just explain to them both that blue and red do not belong together anywhere else aside from on national flags, or that yellow daisies are not appropriate for the wedding theme, just because Derek insists on bickering with Stiles at every turn, and Tiffany goes along with it. Sometimes he has to take off his glasses to meticulously clean them, staring down at them with barely contained rage, chanting again and again in his head, ten thousand dollars. Ten thousand dollars. Ten. Thousand. Dollars. By the time he's shoving them back onto his face, he's composed. He's rational. He says in a customer service voice, “I think we should go down the roses road. We're thinking classical, remember? Think – Russia." “Anastasia,” Tiffany reminds the men, finger going up in the air, “was my favorite movie as a child. Red and white. Red and white roses." This is basic stuff – like, a no-brainer, in Stiles' mind. Tiffany acts like she just cracked the morse code on the entire wedding. How is it possible that two people so unbelievably rich have no taste whatsoever – who raised these animals? Did they not have parents? Belatedly, Stiles remembers just what happened to Derek's parents, to his entire family, and a pinch of remorse for thinking something so insensitive about him, no matter how annoyed the idiot makes him. Then, as if Derek can sense Stiles beginning to feel sorry for him, he mutters under his breath, “maybe burgundy roses,” and Stiles takes his glasses off again. “Have we come to any decisions about bouquets,” Stiles asks as pleasantly as possible, still rubbing at his glasses, “you said you were thinking about icicles, but – I think white roses with cranberry spray branches might be best.” Derek looks about a half a second away from saying what the hell is cranberry spray, so Stiles reaches forward into a bucket less than a foot away from him, pulling a branch out to show to the couple. “Right?” Tiffany agrees enthusiastically, while Derek's face sours. Pretty much every single decision is made this way. The worst moments of all, though, are when Tiffany abandons the two of them, alone, to just stand there and soak in the awkwardness. Derek never speaks a single word; just hovers menacingly beside Stiles, looming and glowering with his hands shoved into his pockets, like there's no place he'd rather be. How did these two people end up together? Stiles wonders that so often it's become like a mantra in his head. How? How? How? Does not fucking compute. Not that Stiles and Derek ever computed much either. But that's another story. At this particular moment, Tiffany has vanished to go to the bathroom. Stiles sips at his lukewarm coffee, playing idly with the cranberry spray branches, acting like he's doing something important, to distract away from the fact that he can feel Derek's eyes boring into his skull. Apparently, something about the flower mart makes Derek especially chatty, because, for the first time in three weeks, since the drama outside the card shop, he directly addresses Stiles.

“You're pretty okay at this.” It's said like it physically pains him to speak, or at the very least causes him broken bones to compliment Stiles. “It's what I do for a living.” Stiles tries to keep his tone non-threatening; small-talk voice. Like he barely knows the man he's speaking to. “I hope I'm more than okay at it.” There's a beat of silence, and then Derek says, like a kicked puppy, “I was just trying to be nice.” Stiles drops the branches back down into their bucket, fixes Derek with what he hopes is a withering stare, before scanning the room to make sure Tiffany is nowhere in sight. “Don't victimize yourself in this ridiculous situation. Let me ask you something, innocent bystander, does Tiffany have any idea, any inkling of a clue that you and I used to fuck?" Derek looks around too, like he's embarrassed – even a couple flowermart workers give Stiles dirty looks, like they've never heard the word fuck before. Or maybe they've just never heard the word fuck said by a dorky looking man carrying a hot pink scrapbook with the words Big Day written in Tiffany's swoopy, swirly handwriting before. “Lower your voice." When they were together, Derek was always saying shit like that. Lower your voice, stop yelling, it's not that funny, can you calm down? It was completely invalidating, and most of all humiliating to be, like, chastised in front of Derek's rich fucking uncle and sister. Infuriating, too. Needless to say, Stiles does not lower his voice. “Does she know? Does she know?" “Christ –“ Derek runs his hands down his face slowly, up and down; as though if he scrubs hard enough he can make Stiles disappear. “She doesn't need to know.” Stiles lets loose an incredulous bark of a laugh, one short burst of it, startling a woman with a bundle of roses in her arms as she walks past – Derek however, remains impassive, blank. “It's literally incredible to me that in the two years since I've seen you-” “A year and a half.” “...you literally haven't changed! You're still the same old, same old – big secret keeper, never a single word of truth coming out of your fucking mouth!” At the same time, they both notice Tiffany coming back around towards them, sidetracked slightly by a man shoving tulips into her face for her to sniff. Derek looks away, and leans in close to Stiles' face, murmuring in a dangerous voice, “do I have to remind you that I'm paying you? You are my employee. The fucking help. What I do or do not tell my fiancee' is none of your business.” Stiles gets so angry that he wants to cry – he really, really wants to cry. His lower lip starts quivering. They're not even dating anymore, and Derek Hale still manages to make him feel absolutely useless and obsolete. “You never let me forget how much better you are than me, Derek.”

Derek pulls his neck back, as if surprised by Stiles' words, like he wants to disagree – but Tiffany is already there beside them, looking between the two men with a concerned expression. “Everything all right?” Fixing his glasses, and taking two steps away from Derek's looming presence, Stiles shakes his head. “Artistic differences, is all.” Right. Artistic differences. ---“You are walking on a very dangerous line, here, Stiles.” Allison has mom voice on, paired with mom face and mom body language (hands on her hips), and the three of those things together create a triple whammy of something akin to a guilt trip. As though Stiles is eleven years old again – or, at the very least, as though Stiles is back in high school where he first met Allison and where she first started giving him that look. Right now, that look is directed at a Stiles slumped on his usual spot on the couch, beer in hand – but beside a packed suitcase, this time. It's been over a month since he started working for Tiffany (and by extension, Derek), and he has been given two thousand of the promised ten grand so far – two grand per month for three months, with a four thousand dollar final payment. It's literally like he's being made rich for doing nothing but stopping Tiffany from making terrible, shitty décor decisions. It's almost, almost too easy. It weren't for Derek, it would be an absolute walk in the park. The point is, he's finally moving off of Scott's couch, into his own, very small, very humble place a couple of blocks away. A one floor, one bedroom, kitchen/living room and one bathroom type of deal. It's all he really needs, after all – and he'll have plenty of money left over to take the Blueberry into the shop to get that weird rattling noise checked out. Finally. Driving that thing back and forth from Beacon Hills to LA has absolutely started to wear the poor thing down. There's only so much such an old car can take before it gives up the struggle altogether. This is supposed to be his Going Away party, for lack of a better word – but it's turned more into a Lecture Stiles party, with both Erica and Allison glaring down at him and making cryptic statements about how he's making a mistake, and Isaac and Scott aren't offering very much help; they're egging the girls on for Christ's sake. “You know, when I first started this job, you all told me I'd be fucking insane to turn it down. Remember that?" “I was against it from the beginning,” Isaac says, raising his hand in the air. “Just gonna throw that out there.” Scott glares at him, frowning. “Okay...yes. I more or less pushed you into it...”

“And now you're coming back around and taking it back. Now that I'm finally moving off your couch! You've got a problem with it?” Scott and Allison exchange a very long, silent look. The kind of look only people who have been together for as long as they have can share with each other; the silent communication. “Well...” “It's not about the money,” Allison says. “Yeah, of course it's not,” he takes a sip of his beer and leans back, appraising all his friends with a steady gaze, “you get your couch back. So, I feel like, everything else is kind of moot.” More silence. Isaac adjusts his cardigan awkwardly, as if he's just trying to give his hands something to do. “It's also not about the couch,” Scott adds, as if tacking onto what Allison had been saying a full two minutes ago. Stiles blinks around the room at all his friends, and everyone is blatantly avoiding his eyes. “So then what is it-” “You're acting like a psychopath!” Erica nearly screams this at the top of her lungs, cutting Stiles off while simultaneously startling the shit out of everyone else in the room. “Apparently I'm the only one who has balls enough to say it!” Has balls enough to say it Stiles repeats in his head, narrowing his eyes at her, before letting loose an indignant squawk of what? Allison and Scott exchange another glance. “Well...” “It's just that you've been acting a bit...well, a bit like you used to?” Allison finishes off Scott's thought, nervously, like she's afraid any second Stiles is going to lash out at her. And, okay. Admittedly, Stiles has been a bit on edge lately, to put it simply. Maybe he's slammed a few too many doors and drawers, and maybe he's been a lot more careless with where he leaves his stuff, and maybe he hardly ever calls his friends anymore unless it's to go out and get black out drunk. But for all intents and purposes, he's doing way better now than he was before taking the job. He has money now. You know, the key to all happiness and success? Come on. “Fine. I hear you,” he leans forward and drops his beer bottle onto the coffee table, huffing out a sigh, “but I think you're reading way too much into all this.” None of them look convinced, least of all Scott, so he continues on. “I'm just wound up tight these days because working with Derek is, you know, hard! He's so fucking annoying, and planning the wedding of your ex-boyfriend who disappeared without a trace isn't exactly the most fun a guy can have. It's like every single second I spend with him, the less I can believe I ever actually thought that I, like, loved him.” There's several long beats of silence, with everyone else in the room looking at each other, as if wondering which one of them is going to speak first.

In the end, it's Isaac, surprisingly, that pushes his curls back out of his eyes, and shakes his head. “You didn't think that you did, Stiles” he says with a strangely sad tone, “you really, really did.” Stiles doesn't know what to say to that; doesn't even really know what to think about it. He just sits there and soaks it in; letting the bizarreness of the statement wash over him. “I've never seen you like that. About anyone. The way you were when you were with him, and how psycho he made you, and how you were when you broke it off...” Scott stares off into space, as if struggling to find the words. “You were someone else, when you were with him.” “Not particularly a good someone, Stiles,” Allison says in a soft, soothing voice. “An even worse someone when you guys broke up.” “You were a real dick,” Erica supplies, tactful as ever. “And we feel like...” “Hold on,” Stiles holds his hands out in front of him, scans his eyes over the room, and then knits his eyebrows together. “Is this...an intervention?" No one says a word. Which is really all the validation that Stiles needs. “What the fuck you guys! This was supposed to be a good night!” “It is a good night!” Scott agrees, to a chorus of yeah's from the rest of the gang. “But we thought it would be best if we reminded you that getting back with Derek is a bad idea.” “Getting – wh – what? What!? ” Stiles' eyes nearly roll directly out of his skull onto the floor. “ Getting? Back? With? Derek!?" “We just think-" “No! No more of this!” Rising from the couch, the one that's been his home for the last year, he begins to pace back and forth across the hardwood, shaking his head frantically back and forth. “No more of what you think! Because just from the sheer fact that – I – I mean!? I'm planning his wedding! To another person! I would sooner chew my own fucking toes off than even – oh, God I can't even – begin to...ugh!” “He's handling this really well, I think,” Erica says to Allison, who purses her lips, probably to keep herself from laughing out loud. “We only brought this up because we're worried about you, Stiles!” Scott's puppy dog face is in full force, now, while Stiles continues to pace back and forth manically, shaking his head still. The absolute audacity of his friends to even begin to entertain the thought of Stiles getting back together with Derek is unreal to him. Un fucking real. And, okay, maybe Stiles wouldn't actually eat his own toes off before trying again with Derek Hale, but...he'd at least think about it! Weigh his fucking options! Meanwhile, they're all looking at him with these faces as if they feel sorry for him or something – he feels like ripping out the hundred dollar bill that's sitting in his back pocket and waving it around in the air; as if that would be proof that there's nothing to feel sorry

for him about. “You know what! I'm canceling this – this – ambush!" Skittering across the floor, he scoops up his last bag, and his car keys, stumbling a bit over his feet on his way to the front door. “Goodnight, all of you!” “Don't forget to check in!” Allison caws as he slams the front door closed. Outside in the brisk night air, he mutters under his breath as he shoves the last of his bags into the packed Jeep, slamming the back door shut. As he's walking around to the driver's side door, he thinks he spots something glowing red in the woods – pauses for a second, staring. Something rustles behind him and he's startled into dropping his keys – swears. By the time he's stood back up to look at the woods again, the red light is gone. ---“I hope you don't think I'm a freak with no friends now,” Tiffany says while a woman stands behind her, clipping the dress a few sizes too big for her against her back. “All my friends were too busy to come down with me, and-” “It's my job,” Stiles cuts her off with a smile, “it's actually pretty typical.” It isn't, actually. Normally the bride has already picked out her dress at this stage of the show – the wedding is only two months away and the girl still doesn't have a dress. These are the kinds of judgmental thoughts Stiles has about all his clients. But even the Beacon Hills people at least got their dresses and tuxedos on time. Stiles praises God that Tiffany isn't forcing him to go tuxedo shopping with Derek. That would've been the final fucking straw. All the same, Stiles likes Tiffany well enough. She's...nice. Stiles always struggles to come up with any other word to describe her aside from nice. She turns around, takes one look at herself in the dress in the mirror, and says, sadly, “no. Not this one.” She's been trying on lace dresses that fall straight down the entire way – completely unflattering on her first of all, and not really fitting with the theme of the entire day second of all. When it comes to the dress, though, he tries his best to keep his opinions out of it, unless the bride is planning on making a really horrible choice. So he just sits back and watches her go through lace dress after lace dress, wondering why the store girls aren't trying to convince her to try a different route. Huffing down on the couch beside Stiles in her normal clothes, they sit together and wait for the assistant to appear with more choices for her to peruse based on her general specifications. One thing that's similar about Tiffany and Derek is that they can both just sit still and wait patiently, without tapping their feet or fingers or fidgeting or fixing their hair every two seconds. It's

almost eerie – it must be a rich person thing, Stiles surmises. Or, a boring people thing. Either/or. “So,” he begins, unable to stand the silence for another second, “how did Derek propose?” She shrugs casually, flicking a piece of lint off the knee of her jeans. “I proposed to him, actually.” Stiles raises his eyebrows – but he's not surprised at all. “Derek has never really been the, for lack of a better word, pusher in our relationship. I was the one who asked him out the first time, too.” With a sick curiosity, Stiles asks, as casually as possible, “when did you guys start going out?” “Mmm,” she murmurs, “about a year ago.” Huh. So Derek wasn't cheating on Stiles with Tiffany at least. Now that's one thing he doesn't have to worry about anymore. He does still have to worry about the fact that, you know, he knows in vivid detail what her fiancee's dick looks like and she has no fucking idea, but...eh. No matter. “He's so distanced from all this stuff, honestly.” She gestures widely to the boutique, as if this room, right here, filled to the brim with bridesmaids dresses and bridal gowns encompasses everything Derek avoids. “I've been trying to involve him as much as possible, but...he doesn't seem interested. It's hard to get him to really – hm... commit to anything.” Before he can stop himself, before he can remind himself that it's a stupid thing to say, that he's not supposed to know anything about Derek aside from what his checks look like, Stiles snickers and goes, “I know all about that.” Tiffany looks at him with a perplexed expression, and Stiles rushes to cover himself. “Um – you know. From guys that I've dated. The whole commitment thing is, like, lost on them.” He laughs nervously, adjusting his glasses on his face just for something to do with his hands. Tiffany appraises him for a second, and then twists her whole body around to face him with another one of her pearly white grins. “You're gay? Oh!” She's got that look on her face that Stiles knows all too well – the look of a rich girl who has just discovered her new Gay Best Friend™. He hates that so...fucking...much. They treat him like he's an amusing little puppy who's going to tag along with them on all their shopping expeditions and dole out ludicrous relationship advice while flipping a scarf sassily over his shoulder. It's infuriating, to say the least. If she were anyone, literally anyone else on the planet, he'd shrug her off with a sarcastic answer, rolling his eyes. As it is...she's not just anyone else. She's the woman who writes his checks. “Yeah, I am.” “Oh! So I guess I made the right choice in bringing you along instead of Derek.”

Stiles' left eye twitches, and he takes his glasses completely off – ten...thousand...dollars... “He has good taste, but-” wrong. Wrong. So wrong. “...he has a very straight man way of looking at things.” Slowly, very slowly, Stiles puts his glasses back onto his face, and turns to look at Tiffany with what he hopes is a completely blank slate on his face. The assistant has come back, handful of a hanger of heavy looking dresses, and Tiffany has her eyes trained on her, scanning the dresses with her eyes, paying no attention to Stiles whatsoever. She called Derek a straight man. Tiffany doesn't even know that Derek is bisexual. She has no fuckin' idea. The thought that he and Stiles had even met before the first meeting in her office building probably hasn't even occurred to her – she's in the absolute pitch dark. Which is probably exactly how Derek likes her. Whether or not Derek comes out to the people in his life is entirely up to him – who is he to judge, after all? But something about this innocent statement from Tiffany – straight man – makes him feel horribly awful about the entire situation she's in. No, Stiles has no plans of ever getting together with Derek, like, ever again, but, Christ. The least he could do is let her in on the fucking game they're playing, here. Stiles doesn't think that she would particularly care. Maybe she'd start treating Derek like her new shopping buddy or something. But other than that... He fantasizes for a moment, watching her paw through the dresses, only half listening to what she's saying to the assistant, about just telling her. Here and now. Look, Tiffany, here's the thing...I actually knew Derek before I met him under the umbrella of planning his wedding. Me and him actually used to date. Like, a long time ago though. Probably before the two of you ever even met. It's not a big deal or anything, but, I just thought you should know. No big deal, right? Anyway, what about this dress here? There are two things wrong with that, he decides. Number one, no matter how fucking pissed off he feels towards Derek, he could never just out him like that. Number two, he might get fired. He lets the subject drop. “And speaking of Derek,” Tiffany starts up again, holding up another long lace number an arm's length away, appraising it, “remember how you said at the invitation store that you usually have one on one's with both members of the couple?” Stiles feels like punching himself directly in the dick right about now. “I think we should plan something for the two of you to do. Maybe not actually planning the wedding, but, you know – just a little something.” Tiffany turns out to be one of those heinously annoying people who actually follows through on her word when she says she's going to do something – weird, right? So, three days later finds

him sitting in an upscale LA restaurant, the kind of place he never would've dreamed of affording before this entire thing, checking his phone for the time again and again. Because, surprise, surprise : Derek is late. Half an hour late, to be exact. He had no idea how fancy the place would be; so he just showed up in ratty old jeans and a gray undershirt. Compared to everyone else in the place, he looks fucking homeless. The staff keep sending him nervous glances, like they expect him to dump the basket of rolls into his pants and make a dash for the door at any second, tiny little packets of butter crammed into his fists. “You know, sir,” his waiter says to him after forty minutes of him just sitting there, “the tables are only for... paying guests.” Stiles looks up at him through his glasses – a good, long look. Blonde hair, blue eyes, chisleed jawline, a crisp white button down shirt without a single spill or strain on it. He decides that he hates this guy. A lot. “Okay. What's the most expensive thing on the menu?” The waiter pauses for a second, looking confused. “Er – our fifteen ounce New York Steak, but-” “I'll have that then.” Stiles leans back in his chair, with a smug grin. He doesn't even like that steak that much. “It – it's ninety seven dollars, sir.” Stiles gestures to himself, and says, “do I look like a man who can't afford a ninety seven dollar steak?” The waiter looks at him like yes, actually, raking his eyes all the way down to Stiles' five year old, beat up Converse sneakers with I