[Fic] Words Like Sparks

[kototyph]

Words Like Sparks
» Fandom: Teen Wolf
» Rating: NC-17
» Pairing: Derek/Stiles
» Additional tags/warnings: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Stiles Writes Songs, Derek Sings Them, There May or May Not Be Hot Backstage Sex 
» Summary:

Based on this prompt, from saucery :

>> stiles is an incredible songwriter

AND IS DEREK THE ROCKSTAR PERFORMING STILES' LYRICS

DO THEY HAVE HOT BACKSTAGE SEX

SOMEONE WRITE ME THIS AU DAMMIT


Stiles is warm and sleepy and very, very comfortable, which is probably why it takes him so long to notice that something has gone horribly wrong with his morning.

A vague sense of not-quite-right pulls him to the surface, rising out of dreams so gradually that it takes several long minutes to register that he's even awake, and warm and sleepy and so on. And it's still a full ten minutes after that that he so much as wonders what time it is, and bothers trying to open his eyes to look at the clock. He shuts them again almost immediately, the morning sun briefly blinding him where it slants across the bed and falls on his face. He makes a petulant noise of protest and turns his head away.

The inherent rudeness of morning sunlight aside, he feels great. He's lying in a cozy tangle of sheets and limbs, his entire body feeling like it's been lined with lead, muscles limp and a little sore. He shifts just to feel the smooth slide of cotton against his bare skin, and sighs happily.

The room is quiet, downtown street sounds dulled to a low, far-away rumble. His eyes slit open again, this time prepared for the brightness, and for a moment he just watches the wide blades of the ceiling fan spinning lazily at the peak of the angled roof.

Not his ceiling.

Huh.

Stiles' eyes slide closed, then open again. Nope. Definitely not his ceiling.

So, safe to say this is probably not his room. Probably not his sheets, either, with a threadcount so ridiculously high it feels slick as silk. That should have been one of his first clues, really; he bought his sheets on sale at Walmart and you'd think he dressed his bed in sailing canvas and sackcloth.

It follows, then, that this can't possibly be his mattress that he's sunk six inches deep into. Which makes sense because his mattress isn't even six inches total in depth. Ditto for the pillow, because his flat, lumpy pillows he inherited from his dad when he moved out, and he can't ever remember them cradling his head the way this one seems to. Or ever smelling like expensive cologne.

He doesn't wear cologne.

Stiles wakes up a little more, enough to frown lethargically at the unfamiliar ceiling and wiggle experimentally against the unfamiliar mattress. From the movement he becomes aware, abruptly, that the reason he's sunk so deeply into the springs is because there's something heavy draped across his chest. Something with hair, which tickles his nose as he inhales sharply.

His muttered, "Wha?" is loud in the still room, and the heavy something mumbles and stretches languidly against him. Stiles becomes rather intimately aware that not all the limbs he's tangled in are his own, as a leg presses higher between his thighs and a hand flexes under his shoulder.

"Mmn," the man lying across him comments, and tucks his arm more securely around Stiles.

Naked.

He is naked. The man is naked. They are both naked. In bed. In a bed that is not Stiles' bed, which is not in Stiles' apartment, and did he mention naked? Because they are. Naked, that is.

Together. In bed.

The man inhales deeply and tucks his head more securely under Stiles' chin, the warm exhalation raising goosebumps on the thin skin there.

Stiles, completely and irrevocably awake, stares wide-eyed at the ceiling fan and has a very small, very quiet mental meltdown.

He's in the campus Starbucks when he first hears it, playing whisper-quiet and almost inaudibly over the cheap speakers mounted on either side of the counter. He stops, just freezes right in middle of reaching for his iced dirty chai latte, and listens as hard as he can.

"Well here you are
And here I am, babe
Wish it didn't matter so much.

"You told your lies
I told them back
But you're still standing close enough to touch-

It's not the voice, not really, although it's a deep and smoky baritone that makes his toes curl in his Converses. It's the music, and the words, his words, words he knows as intimately as the insides of his eyelids, except for that "babe" (who put the "babe" in there?) and what are his words and his music doing on the radio.

The cashier, pretty in a fake-tan, fake-nails kind of way, chews her gum and stares at him, one eyebrow creeping slowly up into her ice-blonde bangs. "Um… sir?"

He makes a wild shushing gesture that has her edging away from him, and stands on tiptoe and stares as if direct eye contact and a few more inches will make the music louder.

"I know that you said
that you'd love me forever But babe we're not a fairy tale.
You're not climbing the tower
I'm not slaying the beast-"

The cashier is starting to look a little creeped out. "Sir, is there a prob-?"

"I will literally give you everything I own if you shut up, shut up," he says desperately, but the moment is gone, cracked in two like an egg. He barely hears, "Babe, you're not my fairy tale," and then loses the lyrics completely under in the bustle and chatter of a hundred people trying to get their caffeine fix for the rest of the workday. "Oh God, no!"

The cashier is now giving him a wide-eyed look normally reserved for crazy screaming homeless men; it's a look Stiles gets depressingly often. "Sir, please just take the drink."

Stiles takes the drink, but he also plants his hand in the middle of the Formica and leans forward. He's not hot enough or intimidating enough in his baggy old hoodie and holey jeans, so he goes straight for the bribe. "There's a twenty-dollar tip in it for you if you can tell me what the name of that song was."

"Like, duh," someone says behind him. "It's Fairy Tale, by Derek Hale."

Stiles turns, and there's a gaggle of teen girls in various shades of eye-searing pinks standing behind him. "Who?"

"Derek Hale?" the girl standing closest to him says slowly, eying him with a bored kind of distain.

"Am I supposed to know who that is?" he asks her. "Because I don't. Like, at all."

She just holds up a hand and wiggles her fingers expectantly. "He's a singer. Twenty bucks, dude."

"So I'm supposed to apologize for doing my job, doubling your income and quadrupling our profit margins?" Lydia asks. "Sorry, no."

"I can't believe you did this to me," Stiles whines, sitting slumped on the concrete wall next to the Starbucks' outside trashcan. "That song was private. It wasn't even finished!"

"Legally, any and all of the lyrics or music you produce is mine to do with what I want," she points out, with a distracted air that says she's probably painting her nails or horsewhipping secretaries or whatever it is that big-label music agents with no souls do instead of listening to their clients. Because Stiles is just that boring.

"Which is why I hide things from you," he points out. "And that song was hidden. Very well hidden, actually, how did you even find it?"

"I made Scott let me in. Under the mattress and taped to the back of the toilet are not 'well hidden' Stiles, they've only been used in every movie ever made."

In case Stiles ever forgets that Lydia is the devil, the devil, there is the small matter of all of his so-called friends being entirely on her side-or at least too afraid to go against her. Also- "You found the ones in the bathroom, too?" he squeaked.

"Toilet, and under the sink, and inside the empty plant food box," she confirms. "Pathetic, really."

"The box was genius!" he yells, earning odd looks from two middle-aged women throwing their half-finished venti frappicinos away.

"The only green thing in your apartment is the mold, Stilinski, how is plant food good camouflage for anything?"

"I will find the jewel inside the rabbit inside the fox inside the dog where you hid your heart and break it into a million pieces," he promises.

"Whatever," she says, her eye roll almost audible, and hangs up on him.

The worst part is- well, there are varying degrees of horrible happening here. Level one: Stiles is what he likes to call discerning and what Lydia likes to call "Stupidly pigheaded, are you allergic to money or something, Goddamn it Stilinski what is the point of writing music if you don't sell any of it?" The idea that his music is now making the rounds on the pop circuit is physically painful, like hundreds of white-hot needles poking his pride. Allison, pop princess extraordinaire, doesn't count because she's a friend and mostly writes her own stuff now anyway.

Level two: that particular song is one Stiles wrote in high school, while somehow under the severe delusion he was in love with Lydia and there might be the slightest chance of her liking him back. The embarrassment is enough to choke him, listening to someone else sing about his stupid crush, and the music isn't exactly his best effort either- he wrote it in high school, after all. He's now a graduating senior writing his thesis on musical theory, he has come a long way from "Babe, you're not my fairy tale," okay?

Level three: If Stiles could have picked anyone to sing his songs, he might have picked someone like Derek Hale. And that might be the worst part of all.

Stiles spends the next three hours in the Virgin Records up the street, listening to the entire discography of Derek Hale and hating his life more and more every second. Apparently Lydia has been doing this for years because there are more of them. He finds his piecespeppered throughout the latest two albums; the newest has one that Stiles just listens to over and over, utterly floored.

"The love notes she planted all withered and died,
The roses grew and covered them,
A thicket of thorns."

The delivery isn't what he'd pictured. Several chords have changed completely. It's beautiful, and tragic, and his heart is beating out of his chest and he doesn't know why.

"The promises she made him were tatters and lies
Safe and close he gathered them,
Her-"

"Dude, are you going to buy something?" the clerk says, apparently out of patience.

"Uh, yeah, sure," Stiles fumbles out, and puts three CDs on his credit card, Derek glaring out at the world from their moodily-lit covers. Seriously, he has yet to see a single smile on the guy's face, from the CDs to the music videos he was streaming on the walk over to the giant poster that practically gave him a heart attack when he entered the store.

Outside, he calls Lydia again. "I will voluntarily give you the next five things I write, no strings, no stipulations," he blurts as soon as she answers. "But I need you to do something for me."

"Are you in jail?" she asks suspiciously.

"No!"

"Oh. Well, then," she purrs in her best Eve-eat-this-apple voice. "What can I do for you, Stilinski?"

Which is how Stiles finds himself backstage at Derek Hale's next concert, and shaking the sweaty, glowering popstar's guitar-calloused hand. He doesn't look happy to meet him, not even close, but his eyes are even more vividly blue in person and Stiles catches himself staring more than once as he sits awkwardly to the side while assistants dart back and forth with water, protein bars, schedules, and stock photos to autograph.

"Did you want something in particular?" Derek asks finally, hoarse and taciturn from a long night on stage. His voice is scraping even deeper octaves now than he'd growled out on set, and Stiles tries to cover up a shiver with a self-conscious laugh. There's a song writing itself in his head about wolves and smoke and midnight fog.

"Just to meet you?" he tries, and winces, because it makes him sound like the panting fanboy he's really not, damn it. "I-think your. Um. The switch to minor chord for the last three bars of Thorns was inspired, really, I was so determined to carry the three-note major it never occurred to me," he babbles.

Derek just stares at him.

"You're a really great musician," he mumbles. "That's all."

Where the night's progression of events becomes somewhat unclear is from that point, awkwardly sitting there and feeling like a complete tool while Derek stares, to making out in Derek's limo, Derek's hands sliding up the backs of his thighs while he makes a bruised and bitten mess out of Stiles' throat. That part, however, Stiles has no problem remembering-heat and teeth and the knife-keen edge of nervy excitement hitching his breath as rough fingers slide under his shirt.

"Come home with me," is sunk into Stiles' mouth, along with Derek's tongue and an approving groan when Stiles experiments with a shallow roll of his hips.

Stiles is pretty sure he said yes, because here he is, trying not to hyperventilate as he drags the last part of his body- right arm, wrist ringed in dark purple bruising-out from under Mr. Grabby-McGrabbpants, who mutters darkly in his sleep and stretches into the warm spot Stiles left behind with a scowl perilously close to a pout.

Asshole.

Now that Stiles is vertical, he's no longer warm, sleepy or very comfortable. He's buck-naked in a stranger's house, he's hungry, and how the hell is he supposed to get home when he has no freaking clue where he is? Of all the bad decisions Stiles has made over the years, a one-night stand with Derek fucking Hale probably ranks between trusting Lydia and introducing Scott to Allison (and the guys have all agreed that Allison is their Yoko Ono, full stop, broke up the band and shanghaied their lead bassist with her feminine wiles and six-figure paychecks- but mostly feminine wiles because Scott is laughably easy that way).

Stiles finds exactly one article of clothing that belongs to him in the trail leading to the bed from the closed master suite door: a black sock with a hole in the heel. Damn it. Well, he' not going to catch a taxi wrapped in a sheet, fuck him, so he tiptoes quietly back into the bedroom proper and starts pawing through drawers. Investigation of the lacquer bureau in the corner yields a pair of jeans, minus the belt that would actually keep them from slipping indecently low on Stiles' hips, and a white tee long enough to hide his exposed… everything.

He catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and does a double-take, because the asshole still passed out in the bed behind Stiles has fucking savaged his neck and chest, the skin along his jugular hot and tender when Stiles touches it experimentally.

He prods one particularly gruesome-looking bitemark and there's a dull throb of pain before the sensation mellows into one of soft-edged bliss. He makes a little, "Oh," sound, reflection going blurry-eyed and slack-jawed, before he snaps out of it and glares.

Fucking asshole.

And because Stiles has no luck, none whatsoever, there's a man looking posh and polished in thin grey pinstripes on the living room couch, and he happens to be looking up at the exact moment Stiles cracks open the door and pokes his head into the room.

Stiles freezes, stock-still as the proverbial deer it the headlights, and they stare at each other for a moment, the man holding the business section of the paper out in front of him half-folded like he's momentarily forgotten what he was doing.

Oh, fuck a fucking duck. He's going to be cringing from this memory for years, how the man's eyes travel slowly down his body, taking in the hickeys and the bruises and the bare feet, his eyebrows ever so slightly raised in utter bemusement. Years. And that's before Stiles sees his clothes in a messy pile on the glass coffee table where the rest of the newspaper is sitting. Oh, dear God, please shoot him now.

"Well," the man says dryly, finally setting the paper aside. "This is a surprise."

"Uh," Stiles says dumbly. "Yeah. I mean," he fumbles out, trying to jumpstart his shock-frozen brain. "I'm sure it is. A surprise. For you. " What the hell is even coming out of his mouth, you'd never know he uses words to make a living.

The man stands, radiating friendly interest, and starts walking towards him. Oh God.

Stiles starts edging away along the wall. He has to hold on to his waistband to keep the jeans from dropping to his knees, and the man's faint smirk says he hasn't missed this little detail. "I was just- gonna catch a cab-"

"You must be Mr. Stilinski," the man says, overriding him easily. Stiles is nonplused, until he notices the contents of his wallet spread out over the same coffee table his clothes are and seriously, what the hell.

The man's still coming towards him and Stiles is still trying to keep as much distance between them as possible without being totally obvious about it. The weird little ballet this creates ends with them on opposite sides of the sofa grouping, staring each other down over the shiny wood and smooth suede.

"Of course I'll call you a taxi, Genim. I hope I can call you Genim?" the man says soothingly. His expression is- strange, face arranged in a sympathetic frown, a gentle smile curving his mouth. But his eyes-

The man steps forward again and this time Stiles definitely takes a step back.

"I actually prefer Stiles, but that's fine, really, I'll just grab my stuff and skedaddle, okay?" Skedaddle, Stiles is a songwriter, he should be able to not sound like a gibbering idiot.

"Stiles," the man says, as if it's a genuine pleasure.

"Yep, that's me. Listen, let me just-"

"My name is Peter. I'm Derek's manager," the man- Peter- continues, as though Stiles hasn't spoken, and keeps right on coming. Stiles hesitates a bit too long- can't he please just grab his clothes and run? Isn't he constitutionally guaranteed the right to walk his walk of shame in peace?

But Peter is suddenly there, right there, fingers around his wrist digging hard into the bruises Derek left behind, and it's not just his eyes that are terrifying.

"Stiles," Peter purrs again. "So nice to meet you."

"Eep," Stiles manages.

"Now, please, take these," Peters says, holding up a stack of paper fully an inch thick between them, "and sign on the dotted lines?"

"Wa-what?" Stiles asks, eyes darting between the pages and Peter's face. "What am I signing?"

"Oh, just a standard non-disclosure agreement, prohibiting you from selling your story, photos or," eyes flicking up and down his body again, "other mementos to the media. In return for which you have my solemn promise not to destroy your life," Peter says, laying a sincere hand over his heart.

Stiles gapes. Peter's cheery smile never flickers.

The papers get signed (Stiles is not to contact Derek. Stiles is not to seek Derek out in public places. Stiles is not to mention that he has ever met Derek in a context that isn't wholly platonic. And Stiles has no problem agreeing to it, any of it, because by this point he would chew off his arm if it meant he could get out of here).

Clothes are changed in the middle of the living room and Stiles feels violated, damn it ("I'm sure you understand the need to be certain you haven't taken anything," Peter murmurs, eyes glued to the largest of the bruises on his throat). His shirt is ripped to the point of being unwearable and there's crusted something all over fly of his jeans, but at that point he's just too grateful to have fabric between his skin and Peter's hungry gaze to care. Jesus.

Sleeping Beauty doesn't appear at any point in the proceedings, which is quite honestly just as well as Stiles now feels as cheap and disposable as a used Kleenex. If this is how Derek treats all his one-night stands, palming off the hard part on his crazy-eyed grabby-hands manager, then Stiles really doesn't want any more to do with him anyway.

Peter finally, finally loads Stiles into a shiny black Bentley with a driver as big and unshaven as the guy always trying to steal Olive Oyl from Popeye. Stiles spends the first fifteen minutes of the drive wondering if instead of going home he's going to be taken out into the hills and shot, but in fifteen more minutes he recognizes his neighborhood and slumps against the butter-soft leather in relief.

Scott's waiting on the front stoop leading into Stiles' apartment building, and he gawks unattractively after the Bentley's receding taillights. "Dude," he says with way too much awe, considering that he's the spoiled boytoy of a girl who has to be worth millions. "You win the lotto or something?"

"Or something," Stiles mutters. He needs food, three showers and a double-dose of brain bleach. Scott comes bearing McDonalds, so that's Step One out of the way; now, he just needs to make sure that the hot water works and there's plenty of Spongebob Squarepants on television, and he's set. He needs to forget that last night ever happened- not only because he's now contractually obligated to do so (and he'll die a happy, happy man if he never meets Derek or Peter again in this lifetime), but because words are coming together in stanzas in his head, and they sound like wistfulness, and faded photographs, and sepia-toned regret.

Of course, that would be easier if Derek Hale wasn't fucking everywhere.

There's a billboard advertising his latest single right across the street from the student union. Derek's crystal-clear eyes follow Stiles' every move from fifty feet above the ground, and he starts avoiding the building altogether.

He's half-asleep after a long, shitty day of academia, buying dinner at the bodega across from his instrumentation lecture and Derek is there, wrapped around some pouty brunette and sprawled all over the cover of People magazine. Stiles flips him the bird and takes his hot dog to go.

The film night Danny drags him and Jackson to is fun, until the palate-cleanser after the arthouse show turns out to be an impressively bad slasher flick starring a much younger Derek Hale. He glares and monosyllabically grumbles his way through the entire movie, and Stiles is secretly convinced he's the killer right until the end credits roll, especially after watching him practically have sex on camera with the main heroine. Are American films really allowed to show that much skin in theaters?

He's sitting on the bus, letting the music in his headphones drown out the world, and glances up to see a life-sized poster of Derek screaming into a microphone pasted to the wall across from his seat. The man's lips are peeled back from his teeth in a snarl and Stiles has a sudden, brutally vivid sense memory of exactly how they feel sinking into the junction of his thigh and groin.

He rides with his book bag in his lap the rest of the way, cursing Derek's voice, Lydia's greed and his own goddamn curiosity.

Stiles usually likes the massive, packed-from-wall-to-wall parties Allison throws in the summer. There's a lot of cool people in this industry, the food is awesome, the booze is free, and her house has the most amazing waterfall-hottub-pool. It's huge, it fits like five hundred people or something. And, normally, he would be cannonballing into the deep end by this point in the evening.

"Stiles," their hostess says slowly. "Why are you hiding in my shoe closet?"

"'m not hiding, I'm playing kingmaker. And, and only stupidly rich people have closets just for their shoes," he tells her from where he sits crosslegged, a pack of cards spread out on the carpet in front of him. Scott sits across from him, looking vaguely guilty- as well he should, considering that he'd abandoned his girlfriend to go hide with a guy in a closet.

"Yes, I am stupidly rich and it's great, really, you should try it," she says. "Why are you in my closet?"

"He said something about fucking Derek Hale and ran," Scott pipes up, eager to appease. Stiles stares at him, aghast.

"You are the worst best friend ever," he exclaims loudly, because at least half of the apple vodka bottle and five of the empties scattered around them are his and Allison always gets the good shit. "I do not want to fuck Derek Hale!"

Allison is starting to look less pissed and more interested. "You want to fuck Derek Hale?"

"He's already fucked Derek Hale," Scott says, and Stiles lunges for him.

"Shut up, shut up, they'll never find my body-"

"Oh my God," Allison says wonderingly. "Well, that explains why I caught him prowling around up here."

Hands pressed firmly over Scott's loose, ship-sinking lips, Stiles' mouth drops open in horror. "He saw me?"

"He saw you," she confirmed. "He followed you. Did you really sleep with him? Because that's big news, Derek Hale being bi."

"I'm going to be murdered," Stiles says mournfully as Scott struggles to pry his fingers off his face. "I'm going to get carved into little pieces and fed to coyotes, and you won't even be sad because it's good gossip."

"St'llllllsss," Scott whines, wiggling and shoving at him.

Stiles lets him up and rolls to his feet, swaying briefly as the Absolut and five alcoholic whathaveyous assert their influence. "I have to get out of here," he announces to the shoe closet at large, and reaches down to grab the vodka. "Scott, cover me," he orders, and finishes off the bottle.

Scott really is the worst best friend ever, because he is so definitely not covering Stiles when he trips going down the last flight of the back stairs and lands almost literally at Derek's feet.

"Owie," he says in a small voice, and the look on the man's face is downright murderous as he hauls Stiles into a standing position.

"You-" he starts angrily, but Stiles is dizzy and extremely drunk and somehow, it seems like way too much work to stand up straight when he could just lean into the warm body next to him and let Derek take all his weight. Even if it will eventually lead to concrete shoes and being sunk in the harbor.

"You smell good," is his answer to Derek's wordless sputter.

"You..." the man starts again, as his hands come up to grip his shoulders tightly."What are you doing?" he asks, a bewildered edge entering his voice.

"Sleeping," Stiles decides, and tucks his face deeper into Derek's collar. Mmm, yes. Sleep.

Silence from Derek, which Stiles takes as permission to continue, and he's most of the way under when the man gives a frustrated growl that rumbles in interesting ways against Stiles' body and scoops him up.

"Hnrgh?" Stiles says, concerned with this development but not concerned enough to open his eyes. Derek is carrying him with impressive ease, arms braced under his thighs and Stiles' legs on either side of his waist.

"You're a child," Derek snaps, but the words lack heat and Stiles hums agreement and goes back to all but drooling on Derek's shirt.

Things go a little fuzzy, and the next time Stiles is aware of anything he's in Derek's lap, Derek's arms crossed over his back and his face tipped down to Stiles', studying him intently. The low rumble and occasional shift in momentum seems to indicate they're in a car. Stiles briefly debates worrying about this, but decides if they were going to kill him he'd probably be riding in the trunk.

"What?" he slurs, and Derek looks momentarily surprised.

"You never called," the man mutters, and immediately looks like he wishes he hadn't said anything of the sort.

"Your manager made me sign a shitload of documents saying I wouldn't," he huffs, and Derek stills.

"He said you were gone before he got there," he says slowly.

"Um?" Stiles murmurs, distracted by the sensation of one of Derek's broad palms stroking up over his spine. "He made me strip down in the living room to make sure I wasn't... y'know, smuggling out your underwear. Or something."

"Oh."

"Yep." Stiles nods, inadvertently rubbing his cheek over Derek's chest, and then does it again because it feels awesome.

Derek tightens his arms around him. "In the future, you can disregard anything Peter says. He doesn't speak for me."

"Mmmm," Stiles sighs. "'kay."

No further conversation seems forthcoming, and Stiles takes the opportunity to curl his fingers into the hem of Derek's shirt and let the movement of the car rock him back to sleep.

Stiles wakes up in his own bed, mostly clothed, with a hangover that could have felled a dinosaur and the desperate urge to just shoot himself in the head and be done with it. All of it. Especially Derek fucking Hale.

There's a glass of water on the bedside table and a piece of paper pinned under it, with a number scrawled across it and underlined several times. Underneath it, bolded like an eleventh commandment, is the simple instruction Call.

Stiles debates flushing it. He spends several minutes huddled over the toilet, staring at the number in between bouts of dry heaving.

When he finally grabs his phone to add it to his address book (it will be filed under 'Asshole' and subject to deletion without notice), there's a text message from Scott, dated two am this morning.

/hey, bro, you leave or something?/

Worst. Best friend. Ever.

Stiles isn't dating Derek, because dating someone requires seeing them in person, face to face, not on billboards or posters or through really wildly inappropriate pornographic phone sessions that Stiles does not instigate, thank you very much. Often, anyway. Really.

But when he's not whispering the filthiest things he can imagine just to hear the low, strained pitch Derek's voice takes on when he's so close a breath of wind could blow him over, Stiles learns to his complete and utter surprise that Derek is actually kind of a cool guy. Sour and constantly short-tempered, irreverent and cynical, moody and really, really stubborn, yes, but Stiles kind of likes it despite himself.

Finals season rolls around and Stiles studies until his eyes ache, then spends his nights telling Derek about the town where he and Scott grew up, being the sheriff's kid and how he still misses his mom. Derek tells him about his big sister, Laura, and how Peter is actually his uncle. Stiles is appropriately appalled.

He's never written so much music so quickly in his life. He hands Lydia her five finished pieces and three more, unsolicited, and she eyes them like she expects to find a pipe bomb buried in the paper. "Is there something that you want to tell me?" she asks, lifting up the corner of one binder with a pen.

Stiles shifts forward on the balls of his feet, trying to look completely indifferent to the answer as he asks, "D'you think you could get me another backstage pass for his concert in Houston? And, er, cancel everyone else's?"

From the narrow-eyed, highly speculative look on Lydia's face, he doesn't quite succeed.

Accosting your not-boyfriend in the wings just a few minutes before he's slated to perform could be considered not very nice, especially when he's wearing tight leather pants that probably show everything. It's dark and loud and Stiles breaths, "You'd better not let just any random groupie wandering around back here do this to you," under the sound of the opening band and Derek's breathless laugh. It catches on a groaned-out curse when Stiles leaves off and tugs him into an even darker corner, sweeping a heavy black curtain closed behind him.

"What're you-?" Stiles hears him rasp out just barely over the music, and then Stiles hooks his fingers under that tight leather and drops to his knees, and Derek gets the picture fairly quickly. "Fuck."

"That's the idea," Stiles says, and draws the zipper down with his teeth.

After the show, Stiles is waiting for him. The second Derek sees him splayed out over the couch in his dressing room, he turns to the two dozen people following on his heel and very firmly shuts the door in their faces. Locks it. Bolts it. Turns slowly back to Stiles, who is already stripping out of his shirt and doesn't see Derek coming until he's slammed against the cushions hard enough to bounce.

"Wanted you every second I was out there," Derek mutters, looking down at him with eyes gone dark and hard and possessive, hot enough to burn if Stiles didn't already feel like his skin was on fire.

"Me too, come on, come on," he pants out, reaching for him because he doesn't know what he wants except that he wants, and Derek isn't giving it to him just by staring.

But Derek's already come once tonight, and so has the patience to take Stiles apart piece by piece, bite by bite until he's is strung out and desperate and grabbing at any part of Derek he can reach.

"Bastard," he gasps, "Fucking bastard," and feels Derek's chuckle as a vibration around his straining erection just as he adds a second finger to the first working him open so fucking slowly he could cry. A frantic "Please," gets punched out of him as Derek draws back to fasten his teeth less than gently on the tight knot of nerves under the head, and Stiles' hands fist where they're buried in Derek's hair. "Derek!"

Derek's response is to sink a third slick finger into him, and the stretch stings but Stiles is still rocking up to meet each thrust. The twisting pull of them is stroking over his prostate in a maddeningly steady rhythm and if he doesn't come soon he's going to spontaneously combust.

Stiles is all but writhing on the worn corduroy when Derek's fingers finally slip free and he moves up Stiles' body to kiss him stupid, open-mouthed and filthy and bitter with precome. He doesn't ask if he's ready, which is for the best really, because then Stiles might have had to kill him and his eyes wouldn't be rolling back in his head as Derek rocks up into him, working himself into Stiles with slow, shallow thrusts.

"Goddamn it," Stiles gasps, "Harder," and Derek growls and snaps his hips up. It's a little too much a little too fast, and Stiles sinks his teeth in the meat of Derek's shoulder to muffle the cry he can't swallow. Judging by the quick, helpless shudder that wracks the body over him, Derek likes to be bitten as much as he likes biting, and pulls at Stiles' thighs to grind himself in deeper.

Stiles tries to get him to move, to thrust, to do anything to ease the hot tight ache of arousal in his gut, hands running restless and determined over Derek's back, nails digging harshly into the straining muscle. "Come on-"

But Derek snarls something gutteral and needy against his lips and shoves his hands under Stiles' knees, pinning them back so Stiles has no leverage, so he can't do anything but squirm and beg and take it when Derek does start to move. He would mind more but Derek fucks like he's trying to batter his way inside of him, break him, own him, and Stiles' greedy mouth and grasping hands leave bruises because he wants it too. By the time Stiles comes, something close to a scream ripped from his throat with a force that hurts, he's so high on the pain and the heat that orgasm hits him like a fucking supernova, pieces of him shattering off into the dark.

Derek's hips jerk sharply and he stills, shuddering against Stiles with a cry choked back behind his teeth. It sounds surprised, like he somehow didn't think it could be this good. He spends a long moment bowed over Stiles, breathing hard into the curve of his neck.

"Stiles," he pants finally, lifting his head to rub a rough cheek along Stiles' jawline. It reminds him oddly of a cat, and with a huff of laughter Stiles lifts a hand to stritch fingers back through Derek's sweat-damp hair.

The man gives a rumbling groan and lets himself drop, crushing Stiles into the couch cushions. He's hot and sticky and a little too heavy, but Stiles laughs again and drapes an arm over his shoulders, combing a cowlick back behind his ear.

Derek mumbles something into the hollow of his throat and Stiles grins at the ceiling.

"Little soon for that, don't you think?"

Derek stiffens, then slowly relaxes as Stiles' fingers continue to stroke through his hair. "Nothing you weren't screaming two minutes ago," he grumbles, curling his hand around the jut of Stiles' hip.

"Touché," Stiles allows on a yawn, and lets his eyes slide closed.