An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Title: Nothing Safe is Worth the Drive
Author: standinginanicedress
Archive Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Characters: Stiles Stilinski, Derek Hale, Scott McCall, Allison Argent, Isaac Lahey, Erica Reyes, Lydia Martin, Sheriff Stilinski, Laura Hale
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Werewolf Reveal, Stiles Wears Glasses, stiles plans weddings, Break Up, Previous Relationship, everyone is human except for derek, bit of sex but not a ton, sex is MENTIONED a lot though tbh, Original Secondary Characters, derek lies a lot, probably the slowest moving werewolf reveal plot of ur life, derek is gross at first and then redeems himself
Summary: An AU in which Stiles is a crass, rude, glasses-wearing wedding planner living on Scott and Allison’s newlywed couch, and Derek is his rich, prudish, well dressed ex-boyfriend living in LA.
AKA the one where Stiles gets swindled into planning Derek’s wedding to someone else after not seeing him for nearly two years and everything winds up going to shit
It all began when he agreed to plan Scott and Allison’s wedding.
Or, really, more specifically, it began when he finished college with a useless degree in English, even though he didn’t even fucking like it, just so he could have something to hang up on his wall. He had kind of been planning to work at the coffee shop for his entire life, but after high school his father had laid down the law – forced him to go to college. So he went. And he read a lot, wrote a lot of papers, and came out the other side at 22 years old like…um?
What the fuck do I do now?
One thing he was absolutely, positively determined to do was to not live at home anymore. He was an adult, dammit! It was impossible to feel like his own person when his father still made him misshapen pancakes every morning, still patted him on the back and called him bud in front of all his other adult friends.
He didn’t make nearly enough at the coffee shop to afford his own place, not to mention the student loan bills he had to pay off, so he and Scott moved in together. It was all good fun for a while; all bro stuff, like video game marathons, and days spent eating nothing but pizza, and pissing with the door wide open. Typical guy stuff.
Until Scott proposed to Allison. Then it became newlyweds stuff, like making each other heart shaped pancakes in the morning but none for Stiles, patting him on the back and telling him he’d find work soon, sleeping on the god damn couch in the living room, living on ramen noodles and macaroni and cheese like an invalid – like a college freshman lives. Not a man with a fucking degree! For Christ’s sake.
So Allison proposed, hey, Stiles, you could plan our wedding! Because Stiles has always had a bizarre attention to detail; could spot a single flower out of place in the pot a mile away, became disturbed by the sheer thought of a crooked picture frame on the wall. That, as well as the fact that he’d planned nearly every single large get together and event for their friend group for as long as any of them could remember, and, well… why not hire a friend to do a job for cheap? Who knows, honey, he might be good at it.
And good at it, he was. The wedding went off without a hitch, without a single mismatched tablecloth, with any and all family drama handled seamlessly by Stiles’ calming presence, with all the catering and floral arrangements and invitations taken care of so easily it practically fell into place on the big day. It’s funny – Stiles had never given much thought to doing something like event planning, because where he’s from, in probably the poorest part of California, people didn’t just spend money on some random guy to plan things for them.
So, yes, he was good at it. Too good. Way too good, for a small little hamlet like Beacon Hills; filled to the brim with clueless people who had never heard of such an absurd thing. A person to do something anyone else could easily do? How foolish they were, though, to think that planning an entire event was simple. Seems that way, doesn’t it? Oh, flowers and appetizers, and, like, table settings. Who cares? Just throw out some lawn chairs and Dora the Explorer tablecloths. No one will know the difference.
They all learned the hard way. And Stiles put an ad in the paper, charging a measly ten dollars an hour (whereas most planners, like in big cities, go for fifty) to either help the dream become a reality, or do all the hard work himself. To most people, the idea was still pretty foreign – so he only did three jobs in the first four months, and still lived off ramen and macaroni and cheese, still lived on Allison and Scott’s couch, still could barely afford the rent and gas it took to just be a normal human being. Forget moving out, forget getting his own place – he was just trying to survive.
“That big break is coming, buddy,” Scott would say, while Allison hmm’d from behind her newspaper every morning, “you just have to wait. Good things come to those who wait. Right, honey?”
Another hmmm from the lady of the house, and Stiles would stare into his cheerios with a frown. If he lived in LA, oho, the big break would’ve come already. As it was, he couldn’t even afford the gas to get there; let alone move there, in his own place. He couldn’t even afford a cardboard box with a please help sign on the outside in LA. Out here, in Nowhereville, he felt like big breaks just didn’t exist. There was just what you had, and you lived and worked with what you had, and made ends meet, and got drunk on the weekends, and that was that. It was hicksville. Redneck town. Country music video material, at best – with nothing but mom and pop stores that charged up the ass because they could.
Stiles was never going to get anywhere. He was going to make enough money to get by, maybe be able to afford a shack of an apartment somewhere in the slums district if he really saved up his money, and that would be that. He had accepted it. Moved on.
Allison came home one day, after Stiles had spent almost a year of planning backyard BBQ weddings and stupid events for the town; she was bright eyed and grinning, dumping the groceries onto the kitchen table with an unceremonious plop, rearing her Cheshire cat smile onto Stiles menacingly. “I got a very interesting call while I was at the store.”
“Really?” Scott, perpetual puppy, grinned back at her as he peeled potatoes in front of the sink; Stiles just mumbled something about you don’t say under his breath while seasoning the meat at the counter.
“Remember how I used to live in LA? A way, way, long time ago, when I was still in Elementary school.”
“Yeeahh,” Scott trilled over the sound of more peeling.
“I used to have this best friend – Tiffany Milano. She was a trust fund kid; born and raised in a huge mansion in the country. She had an indoor pool, with a waterslide.”
“I think I remember you mentioning her!” Because Scott probably remembers every single little thing that every single person has ever said to him in his life – most of all the shit Allison tells him. It’s what’s always made him both an awesome person, and a shitty person; because he can remember the good and the bad, at the drop of a hat, and can hold grudges like nobody’s business.
“Anyway, she’s getting married! And do you know what she asked me?”
“She asked me about a kid in Beacon Hills that she heard plans weddings, and asked me if I recognized the name Stiles .”
Stiles stopped seasoning the meat. He flat out dropped the pepper down onto the ground with a clatter, whipped around, nearly sending his glasses flying across the kitchen, to find Allison and Scott both leering at him with parental pride. “What did you say?” Stiles demanded, fixing his glasses.
“I said yes! Yes I do know Stiles! I can give you his number right now!”
Which is what lead to Stiles getting a phone call at three the following day, with Scott and Allison hovering over him listening to every word.
“Tiffany,” the cheery voice on the other end of the phone had said, “Tiffany Milano! Well, Milano for now! Then Tiffany Ha- Rocket! Get down from there! Sorry, sorry. Just the dog. Anyway, how much do you usually charge? Forty an hour?”
Stiles practically threw up on the coffee table before answering with a resounding yeah, forty an hour, that sounds about right, while internally doing the math. Forty a day, working a typical five hours a day, that’s two hundred fucking dollars a day. Working at the usual pace of about four days a week, that’s eight hundred dollars a week.
Working for the three months until the date she has planned, that’s nearly ten. Thousand. Fucking. Dollars.
There’s the click of a pen in the background, and then Tiffany was saying, like it’s nothing, “and a finder’s fee of two hundred. Right?”
“Um -” Stiles has never charged a finder’s fee before. No one could afford the finder’s fee around here. He was about to pass out. “Yeah. Two hundred. Sounds – yeah, that sounds…”
“Okay. Twoo…huunndreed…dollars….and how do you spell Stilinski?”
Which is what lead to Stiles sitting in a posh, all white meeting room in a building in downtown LA, nervously fidgeting with the collar on the nice dress shirt that his father had bought for him, trying to pretend for ten seconds like he actually belonged there. All things said and done, yeah, he could plan a wedding better than anyone else – but that was in Beacon Hills. People don’t expect much around there; so you show up with a chocolate fountain and a couple tea lights and perfectly lined up décor and people think you’re the second coming of Christ.
This was the big leagues. This was people who have grown up around thousand dollar ice sculptures. People who could afford to get the real and actual Taylor Swift to show up at their wedding to perform. People who knew how to use a color wheel .
He was freaking out. Absolutely about to faint, talking to Tiffany – who turned out to be an outrageously pretty, outrageously tall, outrageously well dressed black girl in six inch stiletto heels; sweeping into the room like she just got out of a photoshoot, holding her soft-skinned hand out for Stiles to shake.
Tiffany commented on his glasses, with a lilting, “you don’t look like a wedding planner in those!”, laughing her way through it. She was nice. She was friendly. She was rich. Stiles could practically smell the money on her.
This was, without a doubt, the big break. The only break he would ever need. He planned this one fucking wedding, for this one rich LA girl, with her trust fund and her indoor pool and her waterslide, and he would be golden for the rest of his life. Because LA girls talk to other LA girls, and LA girls would be at this wedding, and LA girls love having someone else do all the work for them.
And LA girls walk around with pens at the ready at all times, prepared to write thousand dollar checks.
So, Stiles calmed down. He calmed right the hell down, cleared his throat, and said, “A theme?”
To which, Tiffany instantly replied, “Russian Winter.”
Instantly Stiles could see it. The aisle, white carpet, lined with fake trees covered in fake snow and light red string lights; glittering in the dim lightning of the reception hall, while on the ceiling above, huge white chandeliers would hang with candles flickering instead of bulbs. This was going to be easy. An easy ten grand. Holy fuck.
“Budget?” He asked, pretending like he was so cool and calm and put together – casually sitting with his pen poised over his notebook, trying not to let a single emotion pass across his face. Totally professional. He’s totally planned weddings like this before. This is not new. Nothing new here.
“I’m not looking to spend more than 7.”
Stupidly, so stupidly, he said, “hundred?”
Tiffany blinked at him, and then a slow smile crept across her face. “Hundred thousand.”
Seven. Hundred. Thousand. Dollar. Wedding. Again, Stiles was not freaking out. No, sirree bob. He wrote 700,000 very slowly and precisely, thinking he has never in his life ever written a number that huge down on a piece of paper. Has never even seen that number with a dollar sign next to it.
His eyes were dollar signs – like Mr. Krabs. All he was thinking about at that exact moment was cashing his ten thousand dollar check and jumping into a gigantic pool of money, swimming around in it, while drinking champagne and wearing Ray Ban sunglasses and Gucci swim trunks. Does Gucci make swim trunks? In the background, Tiffany told him there are going to be about eight hundred guests. He started imagining doing a cannon ball into his money pool.
But he had to ask the one question you’re really not supposed to ask, as an event planner – the are you sure about this… question. “You want me to plan a 700 grand wedding in three months?”
Tiffany smiled at him, all pearly white teeth, and said, “unless you think you can’t do it.”
Oh. Stiles could do it. His entire life had been leading up to this moment. His finest hour is upon him. He is David and this wedding is a shimmery white and red Goliath, taunting him, waving money around in his face. “It’s not a problem,” he decided to say. And it’s like a contract had been sealed.
Which is what lead to the single worst occurrence of Stiles’ entire life – the thing that lead to the longest, most horrible two and a half months of Stiles’ pathetic little existence.
Derek Hale came walking into the room, accompanied by Tiffany’s caw of “and here’s my man!”, and Stiles thought for a second all his money might just have to go to his hospital bills from the heart attack he nearly had.