Chapter Text
As of the summer after Stiles completes his master's in criminal psychology, he has two major goals in life: one is to attend Comic-Con, and the other is to convince the Beacon Hills Sheriff's Department that they need to hire a criminal psychologist. The first one was thwarted again this year and is carrying into the next, while the second is proving equally fruitless thus far, despite the fact that his own father is in charge of the Beacon Hills Sheriff's Department.
It's not really his dad's fault that Beacon Hills isn't exactly a hubbub of criminal masterminds, or that Stiles doesn't have that Ph.D. on the end of his name that the state apparently prefers for its paid consultants, but he wouldn't mind a bit more enthusiasm shown for helping him with the goal.
Stiles is nothing if not dedicated, though, so while his official job this summer is at the library (it's actually pretty awesome, all things considered, and is an especially nice break from the whirlwind of exhaustion the last year of school was), his unofficial one is as an intern at the department. This self-appointed title means that Stiles sticks his nose into any ongoing cases that spark his interest and snoops in old case files whenever he gets the chance, all while pointedly refusing to do anything that might endear him to the actual employees, like maybe bring coffee once in a while.
Astoundingly, despite numerous threats, he hasn't been physically removed from the premises yet.
Stiles is sitting at an empty desk at the station one afternoon in late summer, reading old newspaper clippings (which isn't even breaking a law, or anything), when Deputy Laura Hale materializes in the chair across from him. "Stiles," she says.
"No," Stiles replies, without taking his eyes off the article.
Laura is constantly trying to get Stiles to run errands for her, most of which involve picking up food from her family's pizza place a few blocks away. Stiles steadfastly refuses, for two reasons in particular: one, it's her family's pizza place and Stiles knows for a fact they will willingly deliver to the station, and two, Stiles has avoided stepping foot in that restaurant since he left for college and he has no intention of breaking the streak now.
"Your dad tells me you're good at baseball."
That gets Stiles's attention, and he looks up at her, not sure whether to be confused or suspicious. "Um. No?"
Laura raises an eyebrow at him. "You don't play baseball?"
"No—I mean, yeah, I play, I have played, but that's not—why are we talking about this? Has there been a baseball-related crime?" That's actually kind of an exciting prospect.
"Yes," Laura says, nodding solemnly, and Stiles sits up straighter in his seat. "The coach for my son's Little League team is missing."
"Oh, wow," Stiles says, sitting forward a little, mind already whirling with possibilities. A disgruntled parent? Rival coach? Stiles doesn't remember the coaches being that cutthroat when he was in Little League, but you never know. "How long has it been? Any leads?"
"Just one," Laura says, clasping her hands together on the desk and leaning forward conspiratorially. Stiles leans in as well, unthinking. "He said he was moving to Sacramento. That was about a week ago."
Stiles opens his mouth to speak, and then stops. Blinks. Narrows his eyes. "Your son's coach, huh."
"Disappeared," Laura says with a slight hand wave. Stiles can see the smile she's hiding, now. "Leaving a gaping hole in my son's baseball-loving heart. So. You play baseball, right?"
"No," Stiles says, leaning back again. He wishes he had a full newspaper in front of him so he could hold it up and block her from view.
"Come on, Stiles," Laura says, splaying a hand over the article he'd been reading. "Practice is supposed to start next week and they have no one. The fall season isn't as big a deal as the spring, but it's still important to the kids, you know?"
"So get someone in your family to do it," Stiles says, crossing his arms. "My dad coached my team, it was awesome."
"Your dad is the one who suggested I talk to you," Laura counters, crossing her own arms as well. "He said that you loved Little League as a kid, and so he was sure you'd jump at the chance to help out some kids in need and let them have the same experience."
Stiles snorts. "My dad did not say that."
Laura puts her palms on the desk in a manner slightly reminiscent of an interrogation technique. Stiles is unimpressed. "My family sponsored your team, you know."
"Oh yeah? My dad tell you that, too?"
"No," Laura says, smiling like she has evidence he doesn't. "There's a picture of you at bat in your living room. Your uniform has ‘Hale Pizza’ on the back."
Stiles rolls his eyes. "Congratulations on the detective work, Deputy Hale. So I owe you, then. That's what you're saying."
"However you want to see it," she says, smile growing a little but softening, too. "You'd get free pizza."
Stiles considers this. The Hales do make some freaking awesome pizza.
"How old are the kids?" he asks, tentatively, watching his fingers move a loose newspaper clipping in a slow circle.
"Nine and ten. And like I said, this is the fall season, so it's more about just teaching them how to play and making sure they have fun. All the games are on Sundays, so it shouldn't interfere with the library too much."
"What about my internship?" Stiles asks, looking up and making eye contact.
"Tell you what," Laura says, leaning forward on her arms. "You do this for my kid, and maybe you'll actually have an internship to worry about."
Stiles narrows his eyes again. "You can't promise that."
"No," she agrees, "but you'd at least have someone on your side. And everyone knows I'm your dad's favorite."
That’s true enough. Stiles has heard frequent praise of Laura’s deputy-ing skills from his dad in the years since she joined the department—he literally talks about her like she was the daughter he never had. Stiles likes to think his dad talks about him the same way; maybe he does, if this 'good at baseball' thing is any indication.
It also makes Stiles think maybe his dad’s been exaggerating a bit about how awesome Laura really is.
Stiles tilts his head back a little, regarding Laura. "So I teach your kid to play baseball, and you somehow convince my dad that a criminal psychologist is just what this department needs?"
"Criminal psychology intern," Laura corrects. "And I'll do my best, as long as you do the same."
Stiles waits a beat, two. Three. "I'll think about it," he finally says.
Laura rolls her eyes. "You have a day, Stiles." She pushes away from the desk and stands up. "I'll send you an e-mail with the information you'll need."
"Hey, I haven't agreed to anything yet!" Stiles says, but she's already walking away.
—
"They want you to coach a Little League team? Dude, that's awesome."
"It is not awesome, it's extortion," Stiles clarifies. He calls his best friend for moral support and this is what he gets. "And it's completely ridiculous, I mean, I have spent the last two years learning about the inner workings of the criminal mind, and now I'm supposed to hang out with a bunch of little kids on a regular basis? How does no one else see the problem with this?"
"Maybe you can pick out the potential bad ones and save them from a life of crime," Scott suggests, and Stiles can't tell if that's mostly a joke or just half of one. "Maybe that's why Laura picked you. She's afraid one of her kid's friends is going to be a drug lord."
Stiles laughs in spite of himself. "That would make more sense than picking me for my baseball prowess. I have like zero coaching qualifications."
"That is so not true. You played in college."
"I played intramural, Scott, that's basically like Little League for college kids."
"Sounds like a qualification to me," Scott says, grin in his voice, because sometimes he's an asshole.
"Remind me to punch you the next time you're in town," Stiles says. "And anyway, that was in undergrad. I haven't even touched a bat in like two years."
"I thought we agreed not to talk about your sex life," Scott says, and Stiles makes an incoherent noise of frustration and hangs up the phone to the sound of his best friend's laughter.
—
Stiles learns from Laura’s e-mail that the team in question isn’t actually part of Little League—it’s an unaffiliated, and more casual, youth league—and spends the next few hours reading up on youth baseball from the adult side of things. All he remembers about it from when he was a kid is getting dirty and having fun, spending a lot of time with his dad, and listening to his mom cheering from the bleachers.
Unsurprisingly, things are a little more complicated when you're a grown-up.
"So Deputy Hale talk to you about coaching her kid's team?" his dad asks over breakfast the next morning.
"Yes, thank you for that," Stiles says with a half-hearted glare.
"What? You loved Little League. I thought you might like the opportunity to get involved again."
Stiles shrugs and pokes at his cereal. "It's not the same. I'm not a kid anymore."
"But you still like baseball," his dad counters.
Stiles heaves an exaggerated sigh. "I guess. Although a big part of the appeal is aesthetic and that's completely missing in this case."
"Stiles," his dad says, with a very similar sort of exaggerated sigh.
"There are always the parents, though…" Stiles adds, musingly.
"Finding a date is not the point of coaching a team," his dad scolds.
"'D be a nice side benefit," Stiles says through a mouthful of milk and cereal.
He's pretty sure his dad rolls his eyes. "So you're gonna do it, then?"
"Yeah, I guess," Stiles says with another shrug. "Hey, maybe I'll get a lead on some nefarious criminal act being planned." He drops his spoon, eyes wide, as an idea occurs to him. "Is that—is that what this is? Am I a plant? Is there some sort of criminal ring among the Little League parents?"
"No," his dad says, looking incredibly put-upon. Stiles has literally been home for two and a half months after giving his dad a break for the better part of six years; he does not deserve that look.
"Are you sure?" Stiles asks, hopeful.
His dad doesn't even answer, just rolls his eyes again and gets up to put his dishes in the sink.
—
"I have an early shift tomorrow," the voicemail had said, "so I don't have time to get the check from my mom. You can stop by the restaurant and pick it up; they'll be expecting you."
It probably should have occurred to Stiles earlier—like, right away, say—that coaching a team sponsored by the Hales' pizza parlor meant he would actually have to go to the pizza parlor.
He's not working today, and he knows if he tries to go hang out at the station Laura will just find out and harass him about not getting the check for the uniforms and equipment yet. So instead he has the whole morning to fight off the mild anxiety the idea of going to the restaurant causes—or to just make it worse, which is more what happens.
It's kind of…stupid, really, that he's like this about it. When he was in high school, Hale Wood-Fired Pizza & Grill (or ‘Halefire Pizza,’ as it's more colloquially known) was a popular student hangout, and he and Scott spent a fair amount of time there. The Hales are a family composed of individuals both incredibly attractive and incredibly self-possessed, and among the teenage crowd at least they were as big a draw as the food itself (which, again, has always been awesome).
And Stiles…was not immune, okay. He was as intrigued as anyone else—maybe even a little moreso than most—by the Hale family mystique, although Laura becoming a deputy during his junior year helped with that some. And then. And then. Senior year, Derek freaking Hale waltzed back into town.
Derek had worked at the parlor when he was in high school, but he was at least a few years older than Stiles so Stiles really only had vague memories of a tall boy with dark hair and bright eyes darting back and forth from the kitchen. It was enough for Derek to be recognizable when he came back but not nearly enough to reconcile the difference those years made—maybe more in Stiles than in Derek, really. Because to 17-going-on-18-Stiles, a newly returned Derek Hale was far more captivating than the rest of his family—and, excepting Lydia Martin, the entire senior class of Beacon Hills High—put together.
Stiles wasn't blatant about it. Maybe. Scott never teased him about Derek, but then Scott also never teased him about Lydia, so it didn't necessarily mean Stiles kept his incredibly one-sided infatuation hidden at all. Derek never seemed to notice, and that was the main thing, anyway.
This went on, and on, with Stiles gleaning small bits of info here and there from Laura about her brother along the way, until a few weeks before Stiles left for college when he did something dumb and embarrassing that he still doesn't like to think about, and he hasn't been back to Halefire Pizza since.
Until today, at least.
—
Hale Pizza—which is what the mature adults call it—opens for lunch at 11, and Stiles is there when it opens. Or close to there, anyway. He's down the street a bit. He has no idea who works when anymore (he may or may not have accidentally or intentionally memorized the schedule back in high school), so he doesn't know if he's being sort of ridiculous or completely ridiculous. Or whether it would be better to go when the place is fairly empty or wait for the lunch rush. Or if he should order something while he's there, because he is sort of hungry. When does the whole 'free pizza' policy go into effect, anyway? He'll have to make a point to ask about that.
After stalling to the point where he can no longer physically sit in his car, Stiles makes his way into the restaurant at approximately 11:28. There's one person at the counter picking up what looks like a to-go order, and a lady with two small kids at a far booth. Stiles really hopes those aren't some of his not-really-Little-League kids. They look too young, but what the hell does Stiles know about kids' ages. Or coaching them.
Why is he doing this, again?
Anyway, the girl behind the counter is younger than Stiles and not familiar, which doesn't necessarily mean she isn't a Hale; there were some younger kids in the family before Stiles left, and he has no idea what they would look like now. Maybe she'll have the check for him and he can be in and out without any fuss, or anxiety-inducing encounters with former crushes who are probably even hotter now than they were six years ago. The last time Stiles saw Lydia she looked even better than she had in high school, so that is apparently the way things go for Stiles.
But hey, Stiles is hotter, too. Like, by a lot. He's totally been found attractive by numerous other attractive people in the years since high school. He even had actual sex with a few of them, thus cementing his status as a desirable person. So maybe he should run into Derek.
…Just, y'know, hopefully he won't.
"Good morning," the girl says with a polite smile as the other customer leaves. "Are you making an order to go?"
"No," Stiles says, tapping on the edge of the wooden counter, "I'm actually, uh, here to see the Hale in charge?" He tries to turn it into a joke, and the girl smiles a little so the effort wasn't totally wasted.
"Sure, what's your name?"
"Stiles."
She turns to the open counter into the kitchen and calls out, stopping Stiles's heart with the words: "Derek, you have a visitor!"
"Who?" he calls back, which starts up Stiles's heart again, except in double-time.
"Stiles," the girl says.
Stiles wonders if he should say something else, but then there are footsteps approaching the counter and suddenly, Derek.
He's wearing a black t-shirt with the restaurant's logo on it, and while it's clean now Stiles knows that's just because it's still early; in a few hours it'll probably be speckled with tomato sauce. He's stubblier than Stiles remembers, but it's close-shaved and sort of artful, almost. His hair is shorter but still dark, and his eyes are—well. Eyes don’t change.
And yeah, he's totally gone and gotten hotter. Because sometimes life just sucks.
"The baseball guy, right?" Derek asks, one eyebrow slightly raised.
"Yeah," Stiles manages with just the barest hint of a squeak.
"The check's in the office. Come on," he says, waving briefly at the swinging door leading into the kitchen. Stiles doesn't have time to question it before Derek's taking off again, and Stiles scrambles through the door to catch up.
"Um, is it okay for me to be back here?" he asks, looking around at the kitchen equipment.
"Don't touch anything," Derek says without turning around, and Stiles pulls his hands in close to his body immediately. Sometimes they just touch things on their own if he's not careful.
They reach a door that Derek unlocks and opens, and Stiles follows him into the small office. He's never seen this side of the restaurant before and never expected to (although it may have featured in an idle fantasy or two), and it feels sort of exciting, almost illicit. Not that those are really the thoughts he needs to be having at the moment.
"What position do you play?"
Stiles's attention jumps back to Derek from where it had been wandering, to see him looking in a drawer on the other side of the desk. "What?"
"Baseball?" Derek's eyes flick up to Stiles. "Laura said you play, that's why you're coaching, right?" He takes an envelope out, then closes the drawer and straightens up.
"Oh, uh," Stiles says, and he feels himself blushing for reasons he doesn't want to examine right now, "I uh, played a little at school, but it wasn't—I kind of did a bit of everything, sort of."
Derek regards Stiles silently for a moment—judging him, no doubt—before stretching out his arm to hand the envelope to Stiles. Stiles takes it, glancing at his name on the front to avoid looking at Derek's arm and arm muscles instead, then taps the edge of it lightly against his other hand. "Thanks," he says with an awkward nod. "Um…thanks. I guess I'll let you get back to running a restaurant, and all."
"You're familiar."
Stiles jerks a little in shock; hopefully it wasn't noticeable. "What?" he says again.
Derek's still just looking at him, although his expression has gone considering. "I know who you are—you're the sheriff's son, and you just finished school so you're back in town—" Stiles's heart starts beating wildly until he realizes Derek must have heard all this from Laura— "but I just knew that from your name. You are familiar."
"Well, I am from this town…" Stiles tries, weakly.
"Right," Derek says with a slight nod, "but I didn't think I was here when you were in high school."
"You weren't, until I was a senior," Stiles admits without thinking, then tries to salvage it. "I was here a few times that year, so. Maybe that's why." He shrugs, hoping it's nonchalant and not as jerky as it feels.
"I guess," Derek agrees, eyebrows raised in what looks suspiciously like amusement as he crosses his arms. "So you like our food, then? I don't think I've seen you in here since you've been back."
Stiles had opened his mouth to answer the question, then closed it in embarrassment after the next part. "I've been—busy, you know, working and having an internship and all," he says, waving the envelope in some approximation of the busyness of his summer. "But dude, no, I love your pizza. Your family's pizza. That's half the reason I hang out at the station so much, the regular supply of free Halefire Pizza."
He feels his face heat at the offhand use of the nickname—plus he wasn't exactly being truthful, although the free pizza at the station is a definite side benefit—but Derek just smiles a little. It makes Stiles's heart do funny, unwanted things.
"You get free pizza whenever you want now, you know," Derek says, as he puts his hands into the pockets of the apron around his waist. It's both hot and cute and it's entirely too much; Stiles has to stifle a whine. "So I’ve been told. You hungry?"
"I—yes," Stiles says, although it sort of sounds like an incredibly forceful question and he feels a little stupid and lightheaded. He has the weirdest feeling that he's being flirted with, maybe, a little, and he doesn't know what to do with that under normal circumstances, and these are anything but.
Maybe Laura just told her brother to be nice to Stiles so he wouldn't back out of the coaching gig. Yes. That's much safer.
"C'mon then, Coach," Derek says, stepping around the desk to head back into the kitchen, and Stiles desperately hopes the full-body shiver he just let out at that went unnoticed.
—
"Scooooootttttt," Stiles says to his friend's voicemail on the way home from the restaurant, "dude, we have a problem." He pauses for a couple seconds. "Well, okay, not, like, a major problem, just—call me. As soon as you get this. Or, I mean, as soon as you can, it's not, nobody's dying, just—call me. Bye."
He tries to shove his phone in his pocket, misses it twice, gives up and tosses the phone on the passenger seat instead. He's feeling wired, which isn't exactly rare for him, but this is more distracting than usual. He just keeps thinking about Derek's face. And arms. And ass. But mostly his face.
That smile. That hadn't been in Stiles's memories of Derek, and it is apparently—well, distracting as fuck.
Stiles had intended to run some errands after picking up the check, maybe stop by the bank and see about setting up an account for the team so he could order the uniforms as soon as possible, but he finds himself at his house almost without realizing it. He glances at his phone; he really needs to discuss this whole…situation, and he's probably not going to be able to focus on anything else until Scott calls him back.
In the meantime, though, the house is totally empty.
Stiles grabs his phone and heads upstairs to properly enjoy the memory of Derek's…everything.
—
Scott, in his infinite best-friend prowess, doesn't call back until Stiles has finished, uh, remembering. "Scott," Stiles says, still maybe a little breathless when he answers the phone, "dude, hey."
"Stiles, man, you okay?" Scott asks, sounding appropriately worried after that message Stiles left.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, totally." Stiles sits up, goes to run his free hand through his hair before he thinks better of it. "Completely—everything's good."
There's a brief silence, then—"Ugh, Stiles, really? You know you're not supposed to answer the phone right after you—that is just gross, man."
Stiles blinks a few times. "What? Wait, how—how can you even tell that?"
"Stiiiiiles," Scott groans. "Just call me back later—"
"No!" Stiles says quickly, before Scott can hang up. "No, come on, I really need to discuss something with you. It's important, dude."
Scott lets out a truly impressive sigh. "What, Stiles. What is so important that we need to have a phone call in total violation of our friendship rules?"
"Okay, first of all, there has never been a verbal acknowledgement of that rule—"
"Because we don't talk about it!"
"And we're not talking about it now, we're talking about how I went to Halefire Pizza today!"
"Wait, what? Really?"
Stiles flops backwards on the bed again. "Yeah, they're sponsoring the baseball team, I went to pick up the check for the uniforms and stuff."
"So that was like, the first time you've been there since…"
"Yeah."
"How'd it go? Was, uh—"
"Derek there?" Stiles smiles, which is just, so different from the reaction that name caused this morning. "Yep."
"Okay, you sound—not traumatized, so—oh my God, Stiles, that's what you—you hung out with Derek and then you came home and you—are now talking to me about it!"
Stiles rolls his eyes and mentally concedes that Scott may have a point. He probably could have just let the phone ring and at least, like, done more than a cursory clean-up before calling him back. Too late now, though.
"I am sorry for offending your delicate Scotty sensibilities, can we please move on and talk about my actual problem now?"
"The problem where you're still in love with Derek Hale, you mean."
Stiles pulls the phone away from his ear to make an incredulous face at it. "I am not—" He holds it back to his head again. "I was never in love with him, okay, that is a completely unfounded accusation."
"But?" Scott says, tone full of friendly encouragement.
"But he's just so pretty, Scott," Stiles admits with something approaching a whimper. He sits up, glares at his hand, then stands up and heads to the bathroom, keeping an ear out in case his dad gets home unexpectedly. "And look, okay, remember how back in high school Derek was basically, like, the mysterious dude in charge of the ovens, and we only ever saw him waiting tables when the place was pretty much dead? And then he only did the bare minimum?"
"I was really not paying that much attention," Scott says, "but yeah, sure."
Stiles turns the sink on in the bathroom and starts to wash his hands, phone held against his shoulder. "My point is, today I talked to him. Actually talked to him, Scott, and it was great, he smiled at me, and then he offered to make me pizza with anything I wanted and he didn't even judge me for the toppings I picked!"
"Ham, spinach, and banana peppers?"
"And extra cheese, yes, stop judging me."
"So…" Scott says, as Stiles wets a washcloth. "You talked, you flirted, he made you food?"
"That…is a fairly apt summation, yes." The flirting, assuming that's what it was, was subtle, but it still counts.
"And then what?" Scott asks.
"And then there were actual paying customers, so I sat at a table with my awesome pizza and a root beer and ate lunch by myself." He tries not to sigh too much about that.
"Wait," Scott says, sounding serious all of a sudden. "You mean he gave you free pizza?"
"So not the point," Stiles says, but then he grins. "But yeah. Apparently coaching a Hale kid has its perks."
"Man," Scott says, with feeling. "Lucky. And hey," he adds, and the grin in his voice is not at all reassuring, "maybe this means you'll be touching bats again before you know it."
Stiles splutters, unbelieving. "Okay, why is it only acceptable to talk about my sex life through shitty baseball metaphors making fun of it?!"
Scott laughs. "You're gonna ask him out though, right?"
Stiles sighs as he walks back to his room, tossing the used washcloth in the hamper when he gets there. "Wouldn't that make things weird? I mean, since I can't really get away from the family as a whole until the coaching thing is over. The team's probably going to like, go to the pizza place after games and stuff."
"It'll only be weird if he says no."
"Exactly." Stiles pulls on his discarded underwear and flops back down on his bed. "If he says no, or if the date is terrible, or the next date is terrible, or if there's, you know, anything awkward in the sex department, or—there are literally hundreds of things that could go wrong, Scott. And then I'd have to avoid the issue every time I was at Halefire. And every time I talk to his sister. And shit, Scott, I work with his sister!"
"So you're not going to ask him out, then." Scott sounds vaguely like a disappointed authority figure.
"Hey, it's not like I'm stopping him from asking me out," Stiles says, defensively. "But…yeah, no, I think I'm good with just constantly torturing myself with his face every time I go there. That sounds awesome, actually."
"No, it sounds like high school. Didn't we graduate six years ago?"
"Shut up, you don't even remember what it's like to be single."
"You say that like it's a bad thing," Scott says with a laugh.
"It is for me, because you have no perspective on my life."
"You mean on how you'd rather torture yourself wanting a guy than risk the discomfort of it not working out."
"Yes," Stiles says, nodding.
"You know," Scott says, and Stiles can almost feel the comforting shoulder-pat in the tone of his voice, "I think I'm really okay with not having that kind of perspective."