Work Text:
“Argent Insurance,” Stiles answered in a moderately cheery tone. He couldn’t sound too happy because most of the people who called him just lost loved ones in horrible premature ways and then somehow got screwed over by Argent Insurance - gold might be having your loved ones, but there’s always a fucking silver lining (money) - but he couldn’t sound too dull either because that was equally as insulting.
“Derek Hale,” the voice on the other end said in clipped tones, rhyming off his account number with the kind of monotonous sense of expectation that came from repetition.
Stiles muffled a groan. At one point he had been forced to give Derek his extension number because every time he called he insisted on speaking to the person who usually handled the Hale account and Stiles had the misfortune of being the person who got randomly assigned to answer that call.
Years ago.
“Derek,” Stiles said in his usual faux-warmth, greeting his client by name like the prompt sheet in front of him highlighted. Of course Stiles had memorized that sheet years ago. He’d destroyed about eight of them using them as a coaster for his mug of coffee before management wised up and laminated them. Now they wiped clean of coffee and everyone was happy. “What can I help you with?” he asked, slightly more genuine.
“I’m looking at my latest statement and your company spelled Annabelle’s name wrong. It is A-N-N-A-B-E-L-L-E not A-N-N-A-B-E-L and I find that a gross negligence for a company who prides themselves on putting a name to the number,” Derek sounded snide.
Stiles had seriously had it with this guy. The policy was two years old, and Derek had found something to complain about every month. He’d personally changed the spelling of Annabelle’s name months ago to prompt Derek into calling, believing this to be a deliberate and flirtatious give-and-take, which was a little morbid considering Derek’s entire family was dead. It had taken Derek months.
Months.
Derek wasn’t calling to hear Stiles’ voice, Stiles decided. He was calling to maintain a sense of control over the tragedy and Stiles should have recognised that and put an end to this a year ago. “If I log one more complaint from you, your account will be suspended and put under official review and I will be fired.”
Well, a little drastic.
“And with my qualifications the only job I’ll be able to get is doing phone sex. Is that what you want, Derek?” Stiles questioned idly.
If silence could be angry, this would be angry silence.
“Would you still call?” Stiles finished, grinning, because now he was so far over the line and it felt so good. ”Still request for me by name?”
“Yes,” Derek gritted out before hanging up and Stiles was left staring at the phone receiver, mouth an “o” of surprise.
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First it was flowers. They were on Stiles’ desk when he arrived for the dreaded 1pm-9pm shift. They were unsigned, and he figured that maybe they were for Stella Stillwell up in Fraud. Stiles Stilinski. Stella Stillwell. Such an obvious mistake to make.
Never mind that it had happened before. By this point he and Stella were alliterative besties.
Only, when he called up Stella wasn’t seeing anyone new and told Stiles that it had been so long that if anyone sent her flowers it would be creepy and stalkery.
Stiles wasn’t sure why she said that like it was a bad thing when the idea that they might be for him under the same umbrella of reasoning shot a thrill through his spine.
Not that he actually wanted “creepy” or “stalkery” but Stiles liked a good mystery.
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Second it was the box of chocolates. It wasn’t really within company policy to allow workers to eat at their desks - Argent was cruel like that - but Stiles turned his phone off to all but direct calls to his extension number so he could enjoy the chewy chocolatey goodness.
Then his phone rang and Stiles almost fell out of his chair in shock, because Stiles made it a game not to directly give out his extension number to anybody. He claimed he kept forgetting it, but who could really forget “24.” Like 24 hours in a day (the number Argent claimed to be open for). Like 24, the television show (more like 16 once one accounted for commercial breaks and credits - which was the actual number of hours Argent was open for).
“Did you get my chocolates?” a male voice asked, silken and smooth.
“Erg?” Stiles questioned, teeth full of gooey caramel. “Yers so gerd.”
“Are you eating them now?” the voice - and ok, it was a little familiar, but not in a way Stiles could place - questioned. And if voices were chocolate, his would be unsweetened, bitter. Or maybe that kind with chili peppers? Hot and kind of weird.
“No?” Stiles asked, sucking on his teeth. “Can I get your number?” Stiles had it typed into his computer before he realized it was one digit short, one digit that seemed to be not coming. One digit that made this a phone number and not an account number.
“Ok, this is creepy. I’m hanging up now,” Stiles said.
But he didn’t throw the chocolates away.
_________________
Next, it was an apology card, but Stiles couldn’t appreciate it; he spent the day sulking because Crankypants Derek Hale missed their monthly appointment.
It was his fault too. He shouldn’t have mentioned he could get fired before bringing up the phone sex.
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It occurred to Stiles that Chili Chocolate and Derek Hale might be the same person. Usually Derek Hale sounded grouchy on the phone, not like he was selling something hot and sweet and melt-in-your mouth. It was possible that, if Derek Hale was the mysterious caller, that he was the one with the voice for phone sex.
Stiles decided to test out this theory and call the mystery number from his home phone, because he made amazing life choices.
“What?” the voice on the other end gritted out, obviously very annoyed at being called at 1AM, because it took Stiles about 5 hours to build up the kind of courage it took to call someone who may or may not be creepystalking him.
“Derek?” Stiles questioned. For some reason his subconscious thought it was a good idea to disguise his voice so he pretty much sounded like Binky the Clown.
“What do you want?” Derek growled, and that was pretty par to the course of what Stiles knew about Derek’s voice, which had always given him a disturbing thrill considering that Derek called to talk to him about dead people.
But now, now Stiles was lounging across his bed, his hand sliding slowly down his torso. “What are you wearing?” he asked in his own phone-sex voice.
To the dial tone.
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“Argent Insurance,” Stiles answered crossly, partially because he hadn’t slept well the night before and partially out of sexual frustration.
“What are you wearing?” Derek asked uncertainly.
“NOPE.” Stiles yelped into the phone, jamming the “close call” button on his computer and throwing the headset across his desk for good measure.
“No,” he said more sternly in the direction of his pants.
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Stiles wasn’t sure what the rule was for this. Should he call Derek? Was it weird to call Derek after hanging up on him, or would Derek understand the whole at-work thing? It was possible Derek was only trying to give him a message, which was “call me in your sexy voice again.”
So Stiles called him in his sexy voice.
“Hello?” a woman answered.
“Uhm,” Stiles stuttered.
“Who’s on the phone, Laura,” Derek called out in the background. “I TOLD YOU NOT TO ANSWER THAT! WHO IS IT?”
“Who is this?” Laura asked sweetly. “Who has my brother so freaked out?”
“WHO IS IT LAURA?”
“Uhm,” Stiles answered.
“You don’t need to be scared of me.”
“GIVE ME THE PHONE. GIVE IT TO ME. LAUUUUURA!”
“Uh…” Stiles answered, because Stiles had actually once dealt with Laura directly after the fire and Stiles was pretty sure he should be terrified.
Laura made Derek Hale seem sweet and apologetic. Laura made Derek Hale seem downright Canadian.
Stiles did the only thing he could think of. He hung up on Derek for the second time in the span of 24 hours.
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The phone sex with Derek thing wasn’t really looking up.
“It’s not like I’m going to tell you that it never happens. I mean yeah, sometimes it happens and I’m man enough to admit that it happens, I’ve just never had a problem with it not happening to your voice. It’s been kind of involuntary and inappropriate to this point considering our professional relationship?” Stiles trailed off. “That’s weird. I’m sorry for that, and also I’m sorry for the other thing too,” Stiles said mournfully. “I’m just really tired.”
“It’s fine,” Derek growled, the grittiest of chocolate. He was chocolate with sea salt, or that really gross homemade chocolate that wasn’t mixed enough and tasted like cocoa powder and sugar granules.
“Oh no, you’re so totally turned on right now, aren’t you?”
“We’ll just… talk. Just talk,” Derek ordered.
And yeah, ok, Stiles could do that. It wasn’t even the most awkward thing he’d done today.
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Stiles awoke to his phone smashed up against his face, drool coating the touch screen. And oh god, the iPhone 5 was waterproof, right? Water resistant at least, right?
Then he realized the weird echo in his ear was the sound of Derek snoring.
And just like *that* he wasn’t tired anymore.
Stiles reached down to stroke himself beneath the blankets to the sound of Derek breathing. Yeah, this might be the most awkward thing he did all week.
He might just be the creepy one in this (not a) relationship.
Did he care? No. He was pretty sure Derek had gotten off at some point the night before when he was rambling about how he should reorganize his sock drawer by seasons.
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“My phone bill is ridiculous!” Derek enunciated in his unimpressed-rage voice. Stiles hadn’t really heard that since their calls were strictly professional. “WHO PAYS $400 A MONTH TO TALK ON THE PHONE?”
“Oh god yes,” Stiles responded.
“I SHOULD CALL AT&T.” Derek ranted. “Give them a piece of my mind.”
“Give it to them,” Stiles agreed.
“They should be ashamed, charging someone that much for talking for — NINE HUNDRED AND SIXTY EIGHT MINUTES?? I could never talk that long! This is clearly a mistake, and I’m going to tell them. I don’t even have nine hundred and sixty eight minutes of free time a month! How could I accumulate that many minutes? This has to be a computer error.”
“Mmmm,” Stiles agreed? Probably agreed. What was Derek even saying?
“It’s unconscionable! I should take my business elsewhere.”
“Derek. Deeerek!” Stiles panted.
Derek was silent for a moment. “… are you?” Derek groaned. “Stiles this wasn’t that kind of conversation. This is a serious problem.”
“Yes. I know, yeees,” Stiles hissed. But he was taking care of that problem. Taking care of it so good.
“FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS STILES!” Derek yelled at him.
Maybe it was that it was directed at him, or maybe years of listening to Derek complain over the phone had conditioned him, but Stiles was suddenly coming so hard that his headset snapped off his ear and hit him in the eye, and he didn’t even care.
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Hottie alert. Hottest of all hotties alert.
Could he even check out hotties in line at Starbucks when he had an undefined phone sex relationship with someone?
Heck yes.
He and Derek had an understanding. They could get off on each other’s voices so long as they didn’t have to see each other and ruin the mystery. Stiles was convinced that no one who sounded as hot as Derek did on the phone could look like anything other than …Mike Myers?
The comedy actor, not the serial killer.
Though that analogy stood too.
Unattractive, anyway, with the scent of door to door salesman surrounding him.
Hottie, though, hottie was probably really good at sex not over the phone, and even if he wasn’t Stiles could probably just get off rubbing himself against the powerful thigh muscles obvious through the tight jeans hottie was wearing.
As though sensing the intensity of Stiles’ thoughts, hottie turned around and furrowed his eyebrows at Stiles.
It was an angry and mean look. God, had Derek conditioned him into finding that arousing? Stiles wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
Hottie was now waiting for his drink off to the side as the overly long line-up Stiles was standing in crawled closer to the cash. He wasn’t hiding the fact that he was watching Stiles back.
Was this cheating?
There wasn’t actually any speaking during the eyesex, so maybe not.
Hottie received his drink with the most flirtatious eyebatting he had ever seen from a Starbucks barista and took a drink. Stiles was mesmerized by neck, until…
“Is this SOY?” Hottie growled. “I come here every day. Do I ever order soy?”
“No sir,” the girl behind the counter stuttered.
Wait.
Stiles took one step forward without thought.
“Then why would you think I wanted soy today?” The man questioned in a voice that made lessers cry.
Stiles knew that voice.
He knew it well.
He’d fucking gotten off to that voice, ok? And all his jokes about mental conditioning weren’t really jokes.
Not for Starbucks consumption, anyway.
“DEREK?” Stiles questioned incredulously.
Derek broke off mid-rant and swung around. “Stiles?” If anything he sounded even more shocked.
“Holy fuck,” Stiles breathed, grabbing the coffee from Derek and throwing it in the garbage as Derek’s hands scrambled at Stiles’ plaid shirt, trying to draw him closer with a desperation that only made them get a little twisted in each other as Stiles did the rational thing and tried not to get scalded by soy product. He couldn’t even think as he pulled Derek in, or pulled himself closer to Derek, or fluttered his eyelashes or his lips or whatever it took to get Derek to kiss him.
But Derek seemed to be on the same page because he was looking at Stiles with an intensity that Stiles wouldn’t even have been able to imagine, as though Derek could really only see Stiles, and it was really super flattering. “I’m going to kiss you. You’re going to kiss me, right? I mean we’re kind of already doing the whole... oh my god, your voice. How are you hotter in real life?”
“Stiles, we’re in a Starbucks,” Derek said, aggrieved.
“Holy shit. Ok. Ok. Ok.” Only sensible things from here on out. He would shake Derek’s hand and invite him to join him for coffee. In his bed. “Do you want to... oh fuck it.” Then he climbed Derek like a tree.
Derek didn’t seem to mind at all.
It was probably wrong to make burning allusions about someone who lost their family in a large blaze, but Derek kissed like he was making the world burn around Stiles, all friction and passion. Their phone sex was downright boring compared to this.
Because when they kissed, fire.
Or, like, at least the hope that they would last beyond a quickie in an alleyway outside in five minutes. Stiles had plans for Derek Hale and the years of torture he had to go through in the name of his job. He might just start calling Derek up and making demands of his own.
Sex demands.
“So... wanna date now?”
Derek rolled his eyes. “I thought we were.”
“Get the hell out of the line,” someone from behind Stiles demanded.
Oh right. As if Stiles needed coffee anymore now that he had Derek to keep him excited and... yeah, he needed caffeine. “I’m still in it!” he snarled back. Then he turned back to Derek. “Since when?”
“Since you kissed me in the Starbucks.”
“Yeah?” Stiles grinned. “That was pretty awesome. Oh, fond memories. Want to try it again?”
Derek hummed like he was thinking about it. “What I really want is the right kind of coffee,” Derek said, glaring at the barista.
“Good job we’re in a Starbucks,” Stiles answered with a cheeky grin. “I think we should go on an official date. Wanna get coffee with me?”
“When?” Derek smirked, and wasn’t that interesting? He was so clearly playing along with Stiles’ special brand of crazy.
“Hmm,” Stiles debated, looking at the line up in front of them. “Let’s say in about five minutes?”
It wasn’t until he was seated across from Derek in Starbuck’s charmingly cosy and somehow impersonal lounge area that Stiles really had time to consider Derek. He was clearly very attractive, and Stiles defied anyone to meet Derek and not notice that right away, but he was also clearly uncertain about this turn of events, and Stiles felt like laughing. Leave it to him to start a relationship all backwards, learning all the private, darkest moments of a person in a very impersonal way, continuing on the impersonal train by then developing a phone sex relationship with them that was less about phone sex and more about awkwardly trying to phone sex and rarely succeeding, and then meeting the person in real life and somehow making out with them before really finding out if they were interested in a real relationship or in him as a real-live-boy.
No wonder Derek looked so awkward if he was thinking some of the things Stiles was thinking, which more or less translated into his brain screaming between an alternating “OH MY GOD YAY” and “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
He wasn’t actually sure.
“Listen, Stiles…”
“Do you actually want to date me?” Stiles asked with seriousness. “I mean, there is a huge difference between casual whatever we were doing and seeing each other in person, and it’s a big step, and neither of us had talked about it and then this happened and it was in public, so if you were just saving face I get it, and if you want to maybe just continue on with the way we were and maybe negotiate meeting up in the distant future, I get that too. And maybe you don’t even think I’m attractive, and I get that. Oh do I ever get that. Constantly.”
Derek furrowed his brow at him. “Are you breaking up with me? That lasted,” Derek looked at his watch, “about five minutes.”
“No. Do you want to break up with me? Because if not I was thinking of going to this Hitchcock revival down at the theatre on Main.”
“I promised Laura I would help her move around the showroom of her store this afternoon.”
“Oh,” Stiles answered, vaguely disappointed, because he wasn’t sure if that was Derek putting him off or Derek genuinely needing to keep a promise to his sister. He guessed it all depended on if the next words out of Derek’s mouth were ‘I’ll call you and we can reschedule’ versus ‘maybe we can have supper instead.’
“You can come with me,” Derek offered.
“Meet the sister. Already?” Stiles asked. “Sorry, did asking that point out an awkward you hadn’t thought of? I’ll totally go with you, get all hot and sweaty under the watchful eye of your ballbusting sister, it sounds like fun.”
Derek scowled a bit. “We’re not strangers,” he pointed out entirely rationally. “People do this kind of thing all the time. Successfully, I hear. Sometimes they go into it blind without knowing a thing about the other person. So stop thinking of this like some kind of blind date because I – apparently – spent 968 minutes speaking to you last month, and maybe we are pushing up the timeline, but it seems to me that it is on something that was inevitable.”
“Yeah, but would you hit that?” Stiles asked in all seriousness.
Derek gave him a look like he was crazy. “So hard,” he said, completely deadpanned delivery.
“I suppose you could have wiggled out of it by now if you didn’t want to,” Stiles mused. “And you’re a pretty blunt guy, so it would have been more of a ‘not interested’ than actual wiggling.”
“I don’t wiggle.”
“Squirm then. In discomfort… if I was hiddy, which I guess I’m not. Because believe me, I’d be doing the same if you were hiddy, which you are not and which I totally wasn’t expecting at all. Like, even the slightest bit.”
Derek shrugged. He probably didn’t know the word ‘hiddy’ was short for hideous, though Stiles suspected it might be self-explanatory.
“So come on, you can introduce me to your sister and somehow explain why you’re dating your insurance guy and why I hung up on her last month.”
“She doesn’t know that was you.”
“Not yet she doesn’t!” Stiles answered cheerfully. “But I bet she’ll suspect the moment you show up with me.” Then he laughed, because Derek was right. This kind of teasing was something that came with a knowledge of each other and it felt right.