After meeting randomly in an airport and sharing mutual attraction, Stiles and Derek have the intention of staying in contact. Neither of them expect to meet again a few hours later at forty thousand feet.
Startling enough to pinch his lip between tooth and ceramic mug rim as someone thumped down onto the stool beside him, Derek threw a glare at his new companion.
“Coffee,” the newcomer breathed reverentially, caressing his own travel mug with large hands in a near-pornographic devotion that made Derek snort. “After the night I had, you should just be glad this isn't crack,” the fair-skinned guy told him wryly as he took a drink that had to have nearly emptied the mug.
“I'll try to be grateful,” Derek smirked, his attention returning to his book.
They sat at the bar table in Sydney’s busy Kingsford-Smith airport Starbucks in companionable silence, each drinking their respective coffees, until the coffee-worshipper shifted on his stool and groaned, folding his arms on to the table and dropping his head down onto them.
Derek raised an eyebrow as he glanced at him, admiring the slender curve of pale neck and broad shoulders displayed by the guy's posture, highlighted by the pull of the fabric of his white business shirt. He could feel his eyebrow inch even higher when the guy reached blindly for him.
“Please, if I pay you a hundred bucks will you go and get me more coffee?” he asked plaintive, long fingers wrapped around Derek’s forearm. “You look like you're strong,” he added, long fingers briefly squeezing --and Derek didn't flex, he didn't-- “you could just pick up the entire machine and just… bring it to me, right?”
“I think you need more than just the machine,” Derek told him drily, and I only have so many hands. Sorry.”
The guy withdrew his hand and turned his head so one bourbon-coloured eye was visible, lashes long and dark. “You don't sound sorry at all,” he accused.
Derek felt himself begin to smile but ruthlessly stamped down on it. “I'm not. Self-inflicted pain should be considered and experienced so as to become a life lesson.”
“Ugh,” the guy groaned, shoving himself back upright. “You drink protein shakes and eat shit with kale and go running voluntarily, don't you?” he said.
Like those were bad things, Derek thought. “I aspire to do all things in reverence to our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.”
The wide-eyed surprise and discomfort were absolutely worth the effort that had taken Derek to keep a straight face, but he couldn't help the slight uptick at the left corner of his mouth.
“You fucker,” the guy breathed, sounding begrudgingly impressed. “I was about to begin speaking in tongues just to have an excuse to bail.”
“You can speak in tongues?”
“I have a very talented tongue, how hard could it be?”
