Sterek Library (a03 Edition)

Queer Your Coffee

By: alisvolatpropiis

It's early morning when Derek drives over the Beacon County line, fifteen miles to go before he’s back in Beacon Hills. He never thought he’d come back to his hometown, thrilled as he was to leave after high school, saying goodbye to small-town life for good.

But it’s been fifteen years since he left, and a lot has changed. Derek has changed. Enough that when Laura called, in tears, six-months pregnant and dumped by her fiance, he offered to move back to help her raise the baby. The relief and hope in her voice when she responded – oh, Der, I can’t ask you to uproot your life for me – had convinced him that he made the right choice. You’re not asking, I’m offering, he said, the decision feeling more right as he thought about it. You’re the best big brother ever, Der-Bear, she said. He knew she meant it because she usually never lets him get away with the big-brother title, always pointing out that he’s only six minutes older.

It’s not like he has much of a life to uproot. He’s a novelist, successful enough that he can identify as a writer on his tax returns, which means he can live anywhere he wants. He likes Portland, has a couple good friends there, loves being close to the ocean for surfing in the spring and summer and the mountains for snowboarding in the winter. But he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t been feeling…not restless, exactly, but unsettled. Incomplete. He doesn’t like to think of himself as lonely, even though he’s been single since the divorce, over three years now. His work, his books, the outdoors, that’s all he really needs.

All to say that leaving Portland isn’t a big deal for him, and that he’s even looking forward to being back in Beacon Hills, surprising as it is. He’s just enough of an optimist – hidden under layer upon layer of fine-tuned defensive cynicism and surliness – to be cautiously hopeful about the next chapter of his life.

The next chapter he’ll never get to if he doesn’t get some coffee, like, now. He’s been on the road for twelve hours, leaving Portland just as night fell, preferring the long drive at night with less traffic. His last stop was in Sacramento, where he got an undrinkable soy latte from Starbucks. Living in the Pacific Northwest has made him incredibly spoiled – snobby, Laura likes say – about both beer and coffee, and he’d be lying if he said Beacon Hills’ lack of decent coffee options definitely gave him pause when deciding to come back. We have two Starbucks now, Derek. Two! He had glared, even though they weren’t even facetiming. Starbucks is terrible, Laura. And isn’t one of them in Safeway? It doesn’t even count.

Derek's just over the city line when he sees a sign for an independent drive-thru place, Full Spectrum Brew. There are three cars in line when he turns in, which annoys him but gives him hope. Not that he really trusts the people of Beacon Hills to have much taste when it comes to coffee (god, he is a snob), but the shop’s popularity does seem to bode well. The line of cars moves way more slowly than he’d like, each customer in front of him seeming to take way too long to order, and then lingering when they get their coffee. He’s irritable from lack of sleep and an even more detrimental lack of caffeine, anxious to get out of the car. Finally it’s his turn and he slowly rolls up to the window, turning the radio down.

For a second, he thinks he must have fallen asleep while he was waiting, because what he sees when he looks in the window surely must be a dream.

Stunning brown eyes like glowing honey and a sweet little nose, slightly upturned; a shapely pink mouth, bottom-lip pierced by a thin black hoop that he's worrying with the tip of his tongue as he smiles a gorgeous hello.

He's the most beautiful man Derek's ever seen.

And he’s shirtless.

The guy’s arms, neck, and most of his torso are covered in a wild collage of tattoos Derek can’t even begin to decipher, distracted as he is by the thick line of dark hair that starts at the guy’s belly button and disappears underneath the waistband of black his underwear, which is just peeking out above a pair of snug-fitting jeans that hang pornographically low on his narrow hips. He’s younger than Derek, mid-twenties probably, and smaller than him too, which he likes, but still well-muscled and strong-looking, wiry, which he really likes. Derek hasn’t been with a guy since college – not counting that messy, anonymous blowjob he received in a bathroom the one and only time his best friend Erica convinced him to go out to the gay bars right after he left Jen – but even back in college, in what Erica likes to lovingly refer to as his cockslut years, he never felt so immediately and viscerally attracted to a man at a first sight – or anyone ever, for that matter.