andavs:

I have to go with the obvious here and say cursed bar! (And by cursed I mean haunted.) Derek’s the surly bartender who patrons are constantly flirting with while he gives nothing in response. They’re batting their eyelashes and sliding their numbers on napkins across the bar, and he puts their martini directly down on top of it and moves on to the next customer.

Stiles is…a server seems cliche.

(Though him trying to flirt with Derek as he picks up drinks from the bar, shouting to him over the crowd and the noise, devastated that Derek never reciprocates but still bravely forging on to save face—and it turns out that Derek can never hear anything he says. He hasn’t heard one stupid pickup line, hasn’t seen a single wink because he’s always moving on to the next drink, has no idea that Stiles wants him, just as much as he wants Stiles…)

No, Stiles lives in the crappy apartment above the bar. Technically it isn’t an apartment, it’s actually zoned as office space and he is living there very illegally, but his landlord really wanted to get the place rented so when a confused grad student asked about it…maybe he didn’t correct him. There’s a small kitchen, a bathroom, hardwood floors, crown molding, and the ghost of the reclusive writer who rented the place as his office, died, and wasn’t found until five days later.

But it’s an old building from the 1890s or something, so there isn’t just the writer’s ghost there. No, there’s also a jilted lover, a gunslinger who died in a shootout, and Stiles is pretty sure he hears phantom drumming in that “old ancient burial ground” kind of way. It could also be the music from the bar below, because it’s really loud through the old floor, but he hasn’t slept much lately so he can’t say for sure.

So Stiles’ illegal apartment is very haunted and turns out he has just enough of The Sight to see all of them. All through the night. Standing over him, wailing at the walls, brandishing a very old six shooter, typing on a very loud typewriter. The only refuge is the noisy bar downstairs so he picks a barstool in the corner, out of the way of the patrons having fun, and settles in. Every night until closing. There’s a few ghosts down there, some old guy yelling about the noise, but at least he’s drowned out by the crowd and the music.

Derek sees this rough looking guy there every night and starts to pay attention. Stiles doesn’t drink often, maybe a beer or a cocktail every couple nights, so he isn’t one of the barely functioning alcoholic regulars. He never hits on anyone, only talks to the people who approach him first, and he never leaves with anyone else. Some nights he pulls out a laptop and actually tries to work with all the chaos around him. He stays until the lights come on, and then almost reluctantly, he trudges back outside.

It’s too loud to talk inside and he always leaves before Derek finishes for the night, disappearing before he gets outside, but one night Derek throws down his bar rag and jogs after him. He finds him at the narrow door between the bar’s storefront and the art gallery next door, struggling to unlock it in the dim streetlights.

“What’s your deal?” he asks, maybe a little aggressively because Stiles is weird. He tips too much on one beer and never tries to flirt and sometimes he pokes at his laptop. People don’t go to crowded, trendy bars to write papers and be sober.

“My apartment’s haunted,” Stiles answers, and as if to prove his point, ghostly drumming floats down from the open window above. The music is off in the bar, the only sound on the sidewalk is from the few straggling groups of bar patrons having a last cigarette or waiting for a cab.

For the briefest second, Derek thinks he sees the weathered face of a dirty cowboy missing teeth behind the glass door Stiles is still struggling to open, and it sends a shiver of warning down his spine.

“How about you stay at my place?” he suggests, entirely unlike himself. Stiles’ eyebrows jump.

“Seriously? I tell you my apartment’s haunted and you invite me over? You have terrible self-preservation instincts.”

Derek would give him that, but he’s seen glasses fall off the bar with no one nearby. Candles in the corner booths relight themselves hours after they’ve been blown out. A bottle of top shelf scotch levitated itself right onto the floor, from behind the metal railing keeping them all in place.

“You moved into a haunted apartment,” he counters. “You have no room to judge.”