Chapter Text
He leaned up against the old ‘74 Chevy C10, wiping the sweat off his brow. Grabbing the water bottle in the bed of the truck, he squirted it’s contents into his mouth, spilling some of it on its journey. Sweat stained the pits, neck, and back of his white undershirt, with wind whipping at his open plaid shirt. Derek had been working hard for four hours, chopping wood and whatnot; hell, he deserved a break. The scene of the mountains still took his breath away when he took the time to really pay attention. Setting the trees and mountains ablaze, the light reflecting off the near by water falls and made them look like flowing silver. Along the rim of the valley, laid the blue, red, and purple crown of mountains. It would take hours to fully take in the beauty of the land, but someone like him doesn’t have the time to do that.
The other sweat stained men came up behind him, pulling him away from the landscape. Gabe, an average sized man, with a jawline sharp as steel, and dark hair not unlike Derek’s, clapped his gloved hand on Derek’s back, making him give a forceful sigh. They piled around him, ten in all. The smell of antiperspirant and sweat started to mask the smell of mountain air and fresh cut wood. Derek offered his brother some water, Gabe gladly took it.
“I didn’t hear you leave this morning, what time did you get up?” Gabe ask, out of breath. Derek and Gabe share an apartment downtown. They were forced too, after the house fire. Their mother asked Derek if Gabe could stay with him, while she, his dad, and two sisters moved into a three bedroom condo on the outskirts of town.
“I woke up at 3:30 and couldn’t fall back asleep,” Derek huffed, still trying to calm his breathing. He’s been doing that lately, waking up at unreasonable hours in the morning. He suspected it’s because of nightmares, but he can’t remember any of them.
“Der, that’s like, three times this week. Are you not sleeping good?” Gabe tried to sound casual, but Derek could hear worry in his voice.
“No, I’m okay.” He lied.
“Hey, did you guys hear that Whittemore got a new accountant? Guess whose paychecks are going down.” Greenberg gestured to the whole group. “I heard he’s from Denver, probably some big-wig. Why he would move here is beyond me? Silver Spring sucks, there’s nothing to do here.” Greenberg wasn’t wrong, Silver Spring has a population of 800 year round, so there isn’t like, a mall or anything. They’ve got a movie theatre… that’s only open eight months of the year. Many people stay in Silver Spring during the summer, but leave in winter. That’s mostly because Silver Spring is deep in the Colorado Rockies, and they get snowed in every year.
“Who is it? I hope it’s a hot broad!” Mickey said a little too enthusiastically, “We could use some more hot chicks around here.” A boom of laughter erupted from the group, Derek gave a forced laugh.
“Nah, bro, I heard it was a dude.” Johnny said.
“Great, just what we need, another guy to compete with. You know all the girls in town are going to go after him, he’s probably got a lot of money,” Another guy said ruefully.
“Well, we don’t know that, this could be his first job, but why he’d choose Silver Spring, I don’t know. Maybe he has family here?” Greenberg muttered. “I wonder if he’ll make more than us.”
Before anyone could answer, Jackson, Mr. Whittemore’s son, came walking up to the group. “Uh, we don’t pay you guys to stand around, get back to work!” He said in a sly, matter-of-fact tone. They all grumbled, some of them said rather crass things under their breath, but they all got back to work.
***
It was about one o'clock when Derek decided to leave. It was Friday and he had finished his hours for the week, why would he stay here any longer than he had too? He definitely didn’t need the overtime, his family was very well off. In fact, the Hales were the second richest family in town, after the Whittemores of course. Derek walked to the worker’s break trailer to collect his things. He pushed the door into the trailer open and climbed in. He glanced around the room, it was small with fluorescent lighting and cheap white paint, cubbies for the workers lined the walls with their owners names above them. He spotted Gabe’s cubby, but no lunch pail in it. Derek grumbled, he grabbed his own lunch, and plopped it into his brother’s cubby. “He’d starve without me,” Derek said out loud.
The door to the trailer popped open, and in walked a man. Since Derek has never seen this guy before, he must be the new accountant. The man looked around. “Oh, this isn’t the office,” he said to himself. Derek’s breath was taken away, the man before him was the most beautiful person he’d ever seen. His brown hair was stuck up in the front, his eyes were a light amber and he had cute, little moles splattered all over his face. He had the most perfect lips that Derek would do anything to kiss. The man’s tongue darted out of his mouth the wet them. His eyes focused on Derek, “Hey, man, could you tell me how to get there?”
Oh god, is he talking to me? Derek asked himself. He started to feel a bit embarrassed. Here there was this guy in a perfectly tailored suit, fancy tie, nice dress shoes; and Derek was standing there in dirty, sweat stained clothes with mud crusted up to his knees. He could feel his face heat up, he must have been blushing. “Uh, it’s kind of hard to explain how to get there…” Derek said, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Can you show me? I really need to make a phone call, and my cell doesn’t have service out here.” The man was thrumming his fingers on his thighs, clearly impatient.
“Uh, yeah…” Derek had time, he wasn’t doing anything. Actually, he was just going to go home and read, five less minute of reading shouldn’t hurt. Derek grabbed his dirty work gloves off of the table, and walked toward the door. Silently praying he didn’t smell, Derek passed the man on his way out of the trailer.
“Thanks man, you’re really saving me. My name is Stiles, by the way.” Stiles pushed his hand out to shake Derek’s. Derek obliged and took Stiles’ hand; his hand was so soft and smooth, it was like he had never worked with his hands before. Derek quickly pulled his away, he didn’t want to get Stiles’ all dirty and gross, Stiles didn’t seem to notice. “Hey, do you know of any good places to eat? I haven’t had lunch yet.” At the mention of food, Derek realized that he was famished, he hadn’t eaten since four this morning. His stomach started to grumble, and his blush went from pink to red.
“Yeah, Venison’s is a good place downtown. I actually haven’t had lunch either,” Derek patted his tummy, leading them to the main office.
“Oh really? Wanna go get some grub with me? I’d like to start to get to know my co-workers. Well, we won’t really be working together. I’m the new accountant, so I’ll be working inside.” Stiles said, smoothing over his suit jacket. (So he is the new accountant, he most definitely looks the part.)
Derek started to blush again, he internally started to kick himself for the involuntary action. Maybe Stiles wouldn’t notice, and if he did, it might look like the cold made him blush. Derek was being asked to lunch by the new hot, maybe rich accountant. He started to scream in his head. “Yeah, sure. I mean, we’re both getting food, so why not get food together, right?” He was stammering, he kicked himself internally again. They finally reached the main office.
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Hey, thanks for showing me how to get here. I’ll make that call, then we can go. I’ll just follow you to the restaurant.” Stiles jumped up the three steps leading into the office, and walked in.
Minutes of nervous waiting passed before Stiles came out of the office, he looked more calm this time. “Hey, you ready to go? My car is just over there,” Stiles motioned to their far left, where the other vehicles were at rest. They started to walk in that direction, they slip up when they got to the lot. Derek jumped up into his Chevy, throwing his gloves into the seat next to him. Stiles, on the other hand, smoothly slid into the seat of a shiney Corvette. Derek couldn’t figure out the model, it must be super expensive. Well, Stiles is rich, Derek thought.
The engine of the C10 roared to life, Derek still gets chills when he starts his truck. Thrusting it into gear, Derek started to roll out of his parking spot and out on to the dirty road leading to town. Stiles’ car was in his rearview mirror, it would disappear when they rounded a corner, but would pop back into view when they straightened out. The drive to town took ten minutes to complete, ten minutes of silence and beautiful mountains. This was one of the only times Derek got silence. With Gabe intruding on most of his personal space, his loud sisters fighting at his parent’s house, and the other residence of the town, Derek rarely got Derek Quite Time.
The only time Derek could be alone, was when he went up to his family’s cottage deep in the forest. The other three Hale kids think it’s scary (mostly because it’s miles from the town, in the middle of nowhere), but Derek loved it. Being so far from people, in his own little island of isolation, made Derek’s heart sing with joy.
Maybe he should change his clothes before he goes to lunch? He was pretty sure he smelled, and ‘that would be rude in polite company,’ his mother would tell him. Just then, he noticed that he had an extra shirt in the the truck. Awesome, he’d put that on, and some more deodorant! But that left the problem with his muddy jeans. Well, the whole town knows what he does, he works at the Whittemore Lumber Mill, like most of the town. They wouldn’t mind muddy jeans.
The outskirts of the town started to come into view: the strange colored houses that gave Silver Spring it’s charm. No two houses were the same color, some only varying with different shades, but some were completely different. There were bright pink, aqua, plum, pumpkin orange, and cobalt blue houses just in sight. The colors only got stranger closer to the town’s center. Derek’s friend, Isaac’s house was even silver. Isaac’s house was one of the more popular houses in town, tourists would stand in awe and snap pictures of the houses, the not so humble abodes are one of the main attractions to the town.
One would think that Main Street would be the most strange, but it’s actually really normal. Little mom and pop stores line the road, with old wooden decks out in front of them. It was fall, so there were a few tourists walking up and down the road. It’s easy to spot the tourists, mostly because Derek had grew up with everyone who lived in town. Normally the tourists wore short kakias with fanny packs and sunvisors, so it’s not hard to miss them. Tourism is one of the greatest resources of the town, along with the lumber mill. Also many of the residents were well off anyways.
Derek checked to see if Stiles was still following him, the grey Corvette was tailgating the truck. Stiles must be an impatient person, that’ll change after he’s been here for a while. The rest of the world seems to be rushing by, while Silver Spring moved at a leisurely pace. When Derek was little, the outside world was a mysterious place, with fast cars, fast people, and fast lives. His mom, would say that they all need to take a deep breathe and calm down.
They were coming up to Venison’s, a little pub owned by one of the town’s founding families: the Argents. Well, only Chris and his daughter Allison; the rest of the family was either dead, in jail, or left a while ago. Actually, there was only one family member in jail: Kate. The poor excuse for a humble Silver Springer was the one who burned down the Hale house. He still blamed himself, though. It was he who broke up with her and made her fly off the deepend. The dead members of the family were also a short list: Allison’s grandfather died of cancer back in ‘09 and her mother had died from a wolf attack last year. They still haven’t found the pack that killed her.
Derek pulled into a parking spot, Stiles did the same on the other side of the street. He leaned over and grabbed his extra shirt and deodorant. Flipping off his plaid over shirt, he put the Old Spice on. He pulled the sweat stained white shirt off, his well defined, still glistening with sweat abs and pecs were in full view. He unfolded the grey v-neck, pulling the clean shirt over his head, he heard a loud thump on the car next to him, he pulled the shirt all the way down to see that Stiles was on the ground next to the truck. The truck’s door popped open and Stiles stumbled back to his feet, “Uh… um… I saw a bug! And it scared me! And I tripping and hit the car…. I totally wasn’t looking at you change…” A bright red blush was splattered all over Stiles’ face, he started to pat the dust off of his suit.
“Uh…” Derek didn’t know what to say. “Okay..” He settled with. Things got a little awkward, so Derek opted to walk toward the front door of Venison’s, Stiles in tow. The door opening with a ding and Allison’s sweet voice could be heard from the other side of the room. She must be taking someone’s order, but she couldn’t be seen. He’s been here many times, so he knows the rules of the place; Derek’s feet, clad in thick black work boots, landed in loud thuds while he walked to a booth. “We’re suppose to seat ourselves, Allison will be over in a minute to get our orders.”