Chapter Text
“You’re parked a little close, don’t you think?”
Stiles unbuckles his seatbelt, pulling his keys out of the ignition with the familiar tinging and clinking of all his keychains rustling together. He assesses the distance between his car and the car next to his – narrowing his eyes as he takes in the shiny black paint job, the dent on the side from when Stiles had been thrown up against the door. The side mirror affixed with duct tape from another time when Stiles had shoved the car’s owner into it, snapping it clean off like a piece of spaghetti.
“Not close enough,” he mutters, popping open his door. It immediately smacks into the adjacent car with a metallic thwap. “He’s the dick that can’t be fucked to park in the lines.”
Scott seems uncomfortable. He looks to and fro, side to side, like he’s trying to think of an escape route. He always does that, whenever Stiles starts going off on this particular subject. It’s like he’s constantly searching for the emergency exit, or a fire alarm to pull. “Um…”
“Just come on,” Stiles is wedged in between the two car doors like cement between bricks. He can’t even get his backpack on. He barely managed to slide out of his own car – it’s a lucky thing, in this instance, he’s thin and nimble. Scott reluctantly begins to climb out. On his side, he’s got plenty of space. He puts his backpack on and slams the door behind him, shifting his eyes about like he’s expecting the boogeyman to leap out at them at any second.
The boogeyman does not wind up appearing. What does show its face turns out to be much, much worse.
Stiles is side walking like a crab between the sardines of their two cars, backpack held up because there’s no room for it on his back, when he hears the crunch of footsteps coming his way. Scott hears it too. His antenna goes up, head whipping around. Hands up in the air, already, like he’s surrendering to the situation before it’s even gotten started.
“Are you kidding me?” The voice is like nails on a chalkboard, to Stiles, for all its familiarity. “Are you actually fucking kidding me?”
“I’m not wearing my clown shoes today,” Stiles finally slides out from his crevice, stumbling a bit as he does so. When he rights himself, standing up to his full height, Derek Hale is there. Right there, like right the fuck there in his personal space bubble. He has this amazing habit of doing that, always has. “So, no.”
Derek looks at Stiles. He looks at their two cars. He looks at the sky. He looks at Stiles again. His jaw is twitching, ticking, the way it does whenever Stiles does something like this. Whenever Stiles looks at him or speaks to him or approaches him or does anything, anything at all really. He clenches his teeth, and his jaw ticks, and his eyes sharpen. “Do you see the way you’re parked?”
Stiles looks back at his handiwork, as if he’d already forgotten. “I see.”
“You see.”
“You haven’t managed to punch either of my eyes out of my face just yet, in spite of your best efforts,” he squares his shoulders, raising an eyebrow.
Derek gestures to the cars again, forcefully, as if begging Stiles to take another look for himself. “You’re practically right up against it.”
“Hey, I managed to get out, didn’t I?”
Then, Derek gets that look on his face. It’s the look he gets whenever he’s about to say something particularly shitty. Stiles knows it well. “All twenty pounds of you, yeah.”
Stiles huffs. Making weight means something to a fuckhead like Derek Hale who runs and plays football and lifts the weights that would otherwise accumulate dust in the boys locker room, but to Stiles, it’s nothing. Derek has said much, much worse things about the way Stiles looks, believe that, so it just goes over his head like wind rustling his hair, nothing more. “Don’t you have a homeroom to get to?” He starts walking.
This makes Derek Hale angry. Most things do.
Derek follows hot on Stiles’ footsteps, the hard crunch crunch crunch in that particular way he always walks. Hard and fast, like an athlete. Stiles is more lackadaisical, backpack slung over his shoulder, legs long but lazy, so Derek catches up easily. “I’m never going to get out of that fucking spot without taking your mirror off, you know that.”
“Eye for an eye,” Stiles drawls. Scott is there, sort of trailing along beside him with a nervous gait. He does not want a repeat of what happened last time – or the time before that, or before that one, or…on and on and on. “I take your mirror, you take mine, or was that not the plan to begin with?”
“The plan?”
Stiles finally stops. Whips around, meets Derek’s eyes head on – this does not take Derek by surprise. Stiles is an eye contact person, and so is Derek. They have no problem staring at each other like this, no matter how much they might hate one another. They’ve stared at each other like this a million times before. Nearly chest to chest, at each other’s exact eye level, tension and years of previous experiences to make them angry at one another even without anything current to propel them into another fight. There’s always a reason for them to fight, whether the reason just happened, or happened the day before, or last month, or two years ago, or when they were just children on the playground.
Derek Hale and Stiles have known each other since they were six and seven, respectively. Stiles’ father was a deputy and Derek’s mother was a defense attorney, so the interactions came up naturally whether either of the two adults liked it or not. In a lot of cases, Deputy Stilinski and Mrs. Hale did not get along quite so well. But the important distinction between those two and Derek and Stiles is that the former two were adults. Maybe they didn’t like each other, but they were cordial and said how are you and fine, thank you and forced smiles and made small talk, in the situations where it was warranted.
Derek and Stiles were not adults. Still aren’t, as a matter of fact. If it was the tension that oozed off from their parents or the things either one of the adults might have said about the other within ear shot of their children, or something else entirely…it didn’t really matter. One day Stiles punched Derek in the nose at school, and the blood dripped out from between the cracks in the other boys’ fingers into the sand under their feet. That blood was like a christening, or a pact between them without either of their knowledge.
The pact being that they were going to hate each other for the rest of their lives. A blood pact in its most organic form – their fates sealed. From that day forward, it was always something. It was always Derek stealing Stiles’ lunch money or even his lunchbox itself, throwing the peanut butter and jelly in the trash or smearing it on the wall. It was always Stiles breaking every crayon in Derek’s pencil box and laughing, while Scott nervously suggested that maybe they get rid of the evidence, at least. It was always Derek pushing Stiles into lockers, or Derek flipping Stiles’ lunch tray over so spaghetti ruined his favorite shoes, or Stiles doing nothing, nothing at all, and Derek punching him anyway.
It’s always been like that. Neither of them can remember a time before hating each other, like it never existed. Like they both came out of the womb with this preternatural knowledge that their enemy was out there, somewhere, and their one job was to make the other’s life miserable at all costs.
For Stiles and Derek, it’s a way of life. For Scott and Derek’s friends, it’s a nightmare they can’t wake up from, most likely.
“You parked outside of the god damn lines knowing damn well I’d barely be able to get into my spot,” he points his finger, jabs it into Derek’s chest, “because you wanted to fight me.”
Derek takes Stiles’ finger, pushes it away like he’s disgusted by it. Scott says, “maybe we should just move the car a little,” in that nervous tone of voice Stiles is familiar with. Both boys ignore it anyway.
“I want nothing to fucking do with you,” Derek growls this, practically, getting even closer to Stiles’ face; for Christ’s sakes, they’re basically sharing the same breaths. “I don’t want to see you, I don’t want to talk to you, and I don’t want to fight you.”
“Really?” Stiles’ eyebrows go up into his hairline. “That’s not the tune you were singing last week when you bashed my head into the lockers.”
Both of Derek’s hands come up, and he uses his palms to shove Stiles back – as if Stiles was the one getting into his space, and not the other way around. Stiles stumbles back, catches himself before falling completely, and Scott’s posture goes stiff. Not again, he’s probably thinking. Not uh-fucking-gain. “Move your car.”
“You move yours!” Stiles points to the lines, where Derek’s shitty car is obviously veering over and where Stiles’ is perfectly perched in between the two. “You fucking need glasses if you think you’re not the problem, here!”
“Maybe we should just inch it over a bit,” Scott suggests, again, and Stiles acts like he hasn’t spoken at all. So does Derek – who clenches his fists as if readying them for a punch. Stiles almost wishes he would.
Says as much. “Hit me,” Stiles dares him, taunting in a low voice. “Hit me, fucking do it.”
“Nope,” Scott shakes his head and moves to get in between them. “Nope, nope, not here, not today, come on.”
“Yeah?” Derek says. They’re close, again, chin to chin, eye to eye, toe to toe.
Scott moves to grab Derek by the shoulder, maybe say something placating to him about how fighting at school is never a good idea, that if they want to fight can’t they do it on their own time and not on school property where there are consequences and people watching. People stopped, right now, frozen on their way to going to class in favor of getting their popcorn out to watch Stiles and Derek Hale go at it again.
He never gets the chance to say anything, because Derek reacts to that hand like it’s poisonous, shoving it off of him violently and pushing Scott backwards, hard. “Give me one fucking reason, McCall –“ he starts to warn, and Stiles gets angry.
Angry enough to hit first, throwing his fist out in a practiced, precise motion. Most kids don’t know how to fight very well when they’re just juniors in high school, but Stiles and Derek know how to fight. They learned early. Even if Stiles’ father had never taught him the basics of self defense, even if Derek wasn’t built like a truck, they’d have learned how to hurt each other. Some way, somehow.
So, the hit connects hard. Makes a sound like flesh hitting bone, while Scott swears and throws his hand in the air in defeat. Derek doesn’t reach up to grab his face in pain – there’s no time for that in between him taking the hit and gearing up to deliver his own right back.
Derek hits him so hard he sees stars for a second, grunting in pain and staggering back. The kid can throw a punch, of course he can – he’s fucking gigantic and Stiles is skinny and doesn’t spend his free time at the gym. Derek would wind up winning most of the fights, honestly, if they ever actually managed to get the opportunity to finish one.
As it is, they start wrestling and swearing at each other, battling for the upper hand while kids laugh and point and roll their eyes. Stiles’ backpack winds up on the ground and Derek stomps on it as he puts Stiles in a choke hold, squeezing like a python in spite of Stiles’ flailing and punching him in the arm.
Scott has got his hands on his hips when Mrs. Rose appears like a ghost out of thin air – she’s got her purse on and her scarf primly wrapped around her neck, as though she’s just driven up and parked and spotted the scene. “What’s going on here?”
“What does it look like?” Derek snipes. He does not release Stiles, not one bit, so the best Stiles can do is cough and struggle to get free, all hope of managing to get another hit in completely lost.
She gets close, heeled shoes clacking on the pavement and her hands held out. “Let him go, let him go right now,” she commands, and Derek abides instantly. On occasion, both of them have gotten so fucking angry at each other, wrestling and squabbling on the ground or throwing themselves around in the hallway that not even the threat of trouble has stopped them from continuing to beat each other senseless. Stiles half expected Derek to keep choking him out until Stiles went limp and passed out, even with Mrs. Rose’s protests. He’s surprised when he gets free, slumping to the ground and coughing.
Mrs. Rose appraises them. The entire situation. Derek Hale standing there panting and wiping the blood off his face, Scott hovering in the background likely trying to decide if he’s going to run and pretend he had nothing to do with it, Stiles on the ground rubbing his neck.
“Principal’s office,” she decides with finality, because what is she – a 4’11” 45 year old woman with a doctorate in history – going to do about a bunch of teenage boys fighting each other? “Right now. Up. Let’s go.”
“Look at how he’s parked,” Derek starts up, spitting a wad of blood onto the pavement right by where Stiles is camped on the ground. Stiles recoils back and then immediately goes to kick Derek in the shin – Derek grunts and swears, lunging forward like he’s going to start choking Stiles all over again.
“Enough.”
In the office, Stiles and Derek sit in chairs they’ve been in dozens of times before. They both glower, arms crossed over their chests, refusing to look at anything but their preferred spots on the floor to stare at. Mr. Keenan, in one of his festive Fall ties, is tapping his pen on his desk. Again and again. Tap tap tap tap. That’s the only sound in the room aside from the rustling of leaves as the wind blows outside the window.
He knows them very, very well. Too well, Stiles would think. But not well enough to know what to do with them.
“This is the third fight you two have been in since school started,” he says. Derek snorts, in this yeah we fucking know type of way that’s so annoying Stiles wants to hit him again. If he weren’t in this situation right now, likely, he would be hitting Derek. Stiles always wants to hit Derek. It’s his automatic setting. “It’s only September.”
“He parked like a complete jagweed this morning.”
“Jagweed,” Mr. Keenan repeats the word like it’s from a foreign language. Stiles bites his lip to keep from laughing.
“I want a new assigned parking spot,” Derek pipes up, sitting up straighter. He’s got an eye turning black and blue around the edges, puffing up, and a split lip. Stiles can’t help but feel accomplished when he turns and sees it, the damage he’s done. Stiles has got a darkening eye, too, but that’s besides the point. “I cannot stand being anywhere near him, the fact that you assigned us side by side –“
“They’re assigned randomly,” Mr. Keenan pinches the bridge of his nose and then turns to look out the window. It’s this far, far away look, as though he’s imagining himself on a beach somewhere with a mai tai, or on a boat, or fuck it, in a prison cell. Anywhere but here, dealing with Derek and Stiles for the umpteenth time. “It was by complete happenstance that you two wound up right next to each other this year. You two wind up thrust together quite a bit.”
“Since birth,” Derek grits out from between his teeth.
He turns his swivel chair, giving them both critical looks. “You two ever spend any time wondering why that may be?”
“Why what may be?” Stiles pokes at his eye, wincing.
“Why you wind up in each other’s trajectory. Constantly.”
Oh, has Stiles wondered why that could ever be. In elementary, out of the five grades they spent there, Derek and Stiles wound up in three of the same classrooms. In middle school they had gym together two years in a row and the class ended in skinned knees and black eyes and shouting matches more than half the time. Stiles’ freshman year it was lunch period food fights and history class debates that on occasion ended with one of them leaving the room in a huff. Stiles’ sophomore year it was French, where Derek would make fun of Stiles’ pronunciation and Stiles would remind him he’s the meathead who can’t even fucking spell.
Now this year, it’s the parking spots and English class. At least Ms. Kirby has half a mind to not seat them anywhere near each other in that class.
“God’s sick way of playing pranks on us, I guess,” Stiles says this mostly under his breath, but Mr. Keenan observes him seriously, like he’s thinking that might just be the case.
“Be that as it may, this is a small town. This is a small school. You live within four blocks of each other. Your parents’ work overlaps. You share these hallways.”
“Is there a point you’re getting at?” Derek shifts uncomfortably in his seat, looking out the window with a frown. “We’re late for first.”
“My point, Mr. Hale, is that you seem to be unable to escape one another. Maybe it’s time you two learned to at least keep your distance, if not get along.”
“The thing about that is-“
Stiles gets cut off with a sharp finger held in the air. He closes his mouth. “No one’s getting a new parking spot. No one’s switching classes as you’ve begged me in the past, no one’s getting a new lunch hour. You will learn to ignore each other and be the young adults this school has taught you to be.”
Both boys start protesting over one another at the same time, sitting up straighter and whining about the indignity of it, the ridiculousness of it, but Mr. Keenan keeps right on going.
“You’re eighteen now, Mr. Hale. You’ve got scholarships to think about – you want all that taken away because you can’t stop punching a childhood rival?”
Derek goes quiet and says not a word, nothing. Barely reacts. Just silence and a frown. Stiles knows for a solid fact that if Derek Hale gets into Beacon it will be on nothing more than a football scholarship – because Stiles also knows for a solid fact that Derek would never be able to make the grades to get into that school for academics. It would be a full ride, because as much as Stiles hates Derek even he has to admit the kid is good at playing ball, or at least, that’s what everyone says. It’s not like Stiles is lining up to go to those games. Stiles has to press his lips together to keep from laughing, imagining Derek getting denied a scholarship all because of Stiles.
“And Stiles, your father is the Sheriff. You really want to get into trouble with something more serious than the principal of your high school over a petty fight with an older classmate?’
There’s never enough room in Stiles’ head for what his father thinks about Stiles and Derek’s hatred for one another. One time, the man opened up his front door on a Saturday morning and found the two boys rolling around on the front yard punching each other in the back again and again because Derek had been out for a morning run and Stiles had been collecting the paper. They made eye contact, briefly, and that was all it took.
There have been lectures. There have been warnings about how one day, Derek is going to press charges and he’s got a hell of a good lawyer on his side and there’s not going to be anything that his father will be able to do to help him.
Stiles purses his lips. He’s not laughing anymore.
“Maybe it’s time you two thought about your futures instead of your useless disagreements about, most of the time, nothing at all.”
Nothing at all. He can’t have any idea how right he is, about that. Nothing at all.
“If I catch you two fighting one more time,” he warns, pointing at each of them individually for seconds on end, “it’ll be suspension. With your need for scholarships Mr. Hale, and with your perfect record Mr. Stilinski, neither of you can afford it. Think about that, next time.”
Stiles and Derek meet eyes, for just the briefest of seconds. There’s nothing there that means anything, in the eye contact. It’s furtive and quick, two scolded kids sharing the scolding together.
“Okay,” Stiles agrees at the same time Derek does.
When they walk out of the office, Derek adjusts the straps on his backpack and makes like he’s going to dart off quickly to his own class (History with Mrs. Rose, as luck would have it for him), but Stiles stops him with a hey.
Standing there with his black eye and bruising neck, Stiles clutches the strap of his bag as Derek turns and meets his eyes. Derek shrugs, holding his arms out like what?
“Don’t do shit to provoke me, man,” he warns, shaking his head. “You know my grades and clean record are important to me, not everyone’s got a 500 dollar an hour lawyer for a mother. I can’t afford Beacon any other way.”
Derek stares at him. Stares and stares. His jaw starts doing that thing again, that thing that Stiles hates hates hates, maybe more than anything about him. “Not everyone’s got the grades to get into Beacon otherwise,” he says back, voice low and even.
They stare. It’s different from the eye contact they share when they’re fighting, different by a long shot. There’s tension there, but it’s not the tension of two people about to explode. It’s the tension of two people who have reached an impasse, a bridge they cannot get off of. A bridge over an angry river, where either one of them could push the other off to their demise.
There’s nothing more to be said. Those are the reasons they have for avoiding one another from here on out, and they’re good and solid reasons – so they both just turn and walk away without another word.
They don’t know how to talk to each other, really. They never actually learned.
**
In third period when Stiles finally sees Scott again, sitting in his usual seat and jiggling his leg up and down, the only thing Scott wants to hear about is what happened in the principal’s office. If Stiles or Derek got detention, if they’re going to get suspended, what Mr. Keenan said, what Derek said, and on and on.
“He warned us,” Stiles says, taking his notebook out and opening it up to the last page of his notes with a twist to his mouth. “He said if he caught us fighting again he’d suspend us.”
“Dude,” Scott leans over the bar of his desk, into the aisle between his and Stiles’ seats – he looks very serious. It’s an odd expression to see on his face. “You cannot afford to get a suspension.”
“I know that,” he clicks his pen and leans back in his seat, glaring down at his notes. The top of the page is filled with his neat and prim handwriting, the bottom half empty and waiting for him to write more.
“You’ll never be able to afford Beacon without that scholarship, and you can’t get it if you –“
“Man, I know,” he sighs, shaking his head. “I know, I fucking know. And Derek can’t afford to lose his athletic scholarship because he doesn’t have the grades.”
Scott blinks at him. He’s applying to Beacon too, so he knows what the standards are like. Scott has got the grades and the extracurriculars to probably get in, but he’s also applying to places in Southern California and a state school in New York because he isn’t sure if he wants to leave the state or not. He’ll get in to one of his three choices, and has got nothing to worry about.
Stiles is banking it all on Beacon. He knows he can get in with his squeaky clean transcripts and his perfect grades and his long list of extracurriculars, and he even more knows he can get that full ride if he just keeps his head down and focuses on the work.
“I see,” Scott says, leaning back in his own desk. “So you guys can’t really get away with fighting anymore.”
“Nope,” he lets his lips pop on the p.
He’s quiet for only another moment longer. Across the classroom, Stiles feels eyes on the back of his neck, and when he looks over his shoulder he finds Seth Turner staring at him. They meet eyes, and Stiles’ cheeks get hot and he quickly looks away. He shakes it off immediately and clears his throat, just in time for Scott to start talking again.
“You know what? It’s about time. It’s about damn time you two grew up, no offense,” none taken, Stiles thinks, because he knows it’s true. “But I mean, come on. He’s going to college next year and you’ve got way too much on your plate to focus on something like him anymore. It’s…I dunno. It’s time to grow up, that’s all.”
Stiles clicks his pen, again and again – looks over his shoulder at Seth, who’s looking right back at him. They hold each other’s eye contact for as long as they think they can get away with it, for as long as no one notices, and Seth gives him a self-assured smile.
If only Scott knew exactly how much Stiles had on his plate. There really isn’t a lot of room left for Derek, anymore. “It’s not easy to just stop hating someone, you know,” he says, finally looking away from Seth to give his attention back to Scott.
“You can keep on hating him all you want. Maybe learn to be an adult about it.”
Their French teacher stands from his desk and adjusts his glasses, the surefire sign that the bell is about to ring and class is about to start. The stragglers who either have class all the way across campus or just linger in the hallways too long file in one by one, and Stiles tries to ignore Seth’s laser-eyes as he feels them like fingers on his skin.
“I mean, shit. Your guys’ parents fucking can’t stand each other, and they manage to not get into fist fights in the court room every other week.”
Right, because they’re adults. Maybe Stiles’ dad calls Mrs. Hale a spineless snake, and probably Mrs. Hale calls the Sheriff a donut loving pig, but that’s all behind closed doors. They’re professionals. Grown adults, with grown up jobs, who smile and make small talk when they’re in the same room together.
“Yeah,” he agrees, as their teacher starts scribbling on the white board and the bell rings above their heads. “Derek and I should really learn a thing or two from them.”
Scott seems pleased with this, more pleased than he’s looked when discussing Derek in…years, honestly. Typically, whenever Scott suggests that maybe Derek and Stiles stop fighting, Stiles gets even angrier than he was to begin with.
Now, though, this tired feeling settles in the pool of Stiles’ gut. Tired of fighting, tired of being angry all the time, tired of having so much on his mind – which of those it is, Stiles isn’t sure. But it’s tired, and he’s tired, and he knows Seth is still looking at him, and he’s just…
“Now that there’s room in your head to think about it,” Scott lowers his voice to a whisper because class has started, “Erica Reyes is totally staring at you, man.”
Stiles has noticed Erica staring at him, before. In this class and in lunch, specifically, and he knows exactly what kind of a stare it is. It’s the same stare that Seth gives him, the same set to the eyes, the same wry smile, the same shy blush.
The difference is, when Stiles looks back at Erica, he doesn’t feel very much. He catches her eye, looks away with no reaction, and then shrugs at Scott with a tight smile. “She sure is.”
**
In the hallway sometime during fifth period, Stiles flashes his hall pass from his English teacher up in the air as he passes the hall monitor – a brown-nosing know it all named Freddy Highmore. Stiles can’t stand him because no one else can stand him. As they pass each other, Freddy gives him this look like there’s no one on planet earth he hates more than Stiles, which Stiles actually knows isn’t true.
There’s truly no one on earth that Freddy hates more than Derek. Derek is mean, so everyone says. Stiles has got a bias so his own opinion on Derek being a dick means next to nothing to most people, but everyone agrees with each other that Derek is just…fucking mean. He’s not a bully, not in the strictest truest sense, but he’s not nice.
A couple of girls on the cheerleading squad, spurned lovers from underneath the bleachers Stiles is sure of it, turn their noses up at the sheer mention of a Derek Hale. Stiles has often wondered what it was that did it for all those ex-girlfriends of his; the hair gel, the car, the dick attitude, the holier-than-thou, the money, the arrogance? All of it, at once?
The point being, he’s got a reputation for being snide and rude. He likely walks this hall without a hall pass constantly, and Freddy tries to stop him and Derek laughs and tells him to shove a calculator up his ass. Since everyone in this school fears the jocks on principle alone, it’s not like Freddy would ever rat him out – so to Freddy, Derek is likely the ghost that haunts the halls. No exorcism in the world could get rid of him.
You’d think Freddy would find solidarity with Stiles because of their mutual hatred for Derek, but then again, Freddy has separate reasons for hating Stiles. Stiles is the one who has, four semesters in a row now, taken the coveted top spot in their class by a hair. Like, a quarter of a point. It’s the kind of thing Freddy likely writes in his bad thoughts journal.
As it is, Freddy glares and looks closely at the hall pass to assure its validity. Then, without another word, he stalks off. It’s hilarious to see someone wearing a bright orange vest that might as well be covered in neon lights reading NERD walking with that much conviction, so Stiles smirks as he watches him go.
Back on task, Stiles heads for the supply closet tucked off to the side near the entrance to the gym. He can hear sneakers squeaking and hollering, the tell-tale sign of basketball being played, glances as he walks past the door. Scott is there, grinning from the sidelines waiting for his turn on the court, stretching out his arm as he talks to a traditionally somber Isaac Lahey.
Stiles and Isaac don’t hate each other. But Isaac is Derek’s good friend, and so they avoid one another. Scott, however, has always liked Isaac and will proudly admit that they’re friends whenever Stiles has brought it up. It’s one of those no-no subjects they just don’t really breach.
Using the key Ms. Kirby gave him, hanging on a ring alongside a grinning Cheshire cat, he opens up the supply closet door and flicks on the light hanging over his head. The lightbulb drifts around in the air from side to side for a moment as Stiles takes in the sight of shelves upon shelves of pens, notepads, planners that teachers use, spare computers piled up in the corner collecting dust.
As he’s searching for a box of dry erase markers per request, squatting down near the shelf Ms. Kirby said they would be hiding on, he hears the shuffle of clothing behind him – someone else is in here with him.
He turns his head and meets eyes with Seth. For only the fourth time today, they share each other’s eye contact for what should be an uncomfortably long moment. And it is uncomfortable. It’s charged.
Stiles swallows a lump in his throat. “Uh, you get sent on a mission as well?”
Seth steps further into the closet, closer to where Stiles is perched there low to the ground. “Sure did,” he says. His voice is low, deeper in timber. He’s in a poetry group, one of the clubs on campus that Stiles has never had much of an interest in. But Stiles knows that Seth goes to poetry club because he reads poetry on the morning announcements and is constantly trying to recruit likeminded individuals to come in and share their own work. Stiles doesn’t know why he cares about this detail, why it matters – it just…is. Seth is in poetry club. Stiles isn’t really interested in that.
They’re both standing here in the supply closet, looking at one another.
“Uh,” Stiles says again, looking back to the boxes of pens and pencils before him. “Just looking for dry erase markers. You?”
“Erasers,” he says, simply. He walks a bit further in, past where Stiles is crouched, so his shadow crosses over Stiles’ back. “You’ve heard the rumors about me, I assume.”
This is not a statement that follows the tone of their conversation. It’s not on theme at all. It comes out of nowhere, like a shotgun boom in the middle of the night.
“Uh…” Stiles feels sweaty. His hands clam up and he stands back up to his full height, wiping his palms on his jeans. “Like, about how you juggle? I don’t –“ nervous laughter, bubbling up without Stiles’ consent, “I don’t care if you wanna go to clown college.”
This makes Seth laugh – genuine, full, not nervous at all. “You are very funny.”
“Not really,” he disagrees. Other people have told him they think he’s funny before, but for some reason, Seth saying he’s funny is different from when other people say it.
“Those are not the rumors I was referring to,” he steps closer to Stiles. It reminds Stiles, bizarrely, of when Derek steps close to him. It’s similar, but it’s not the same, not at all, and Stiles cannot for the life of him imagine why he’s thinking about Derek at a time like this. “I’m talking about how you know that I’m gay.”
“Oh,” Stiles voice feels tight. “Oh, yeah. Which is totally cool. I’m cool with it.”
Seth raises his eyebrows.
“Are other people…” he has to look down at his hands. He finds a loose piece of skin around one of his nails and picks at it, fixates on it, feels miniscule. “Are other people being cool?”
Seth shrugs. Every movement he makes is dangerous, to Stiles. “Half and half. People are shitty, but not everyone is, but some people still are. You know how it is.”
“I don’t, actually.”
“My whole thing is that you never knew I existed until, you know,” he steps closer again, and Stiles remembers when Derek had been that close just earlier this morning. “…this September. When I came to school and everyone knew I was gay because I had come out. You never noticed me, before.”
“You did the poetry thing on the announcements,” Stiles says this like it’s an argument, but it isn’t, it’s nothing, and Seth knows it, so he ignores it like Stiles had never spoken to begin with.
“What I’m saying is, you had no interest in me until you found out I was gay. At first I thought you looked at me because you’re homophobic.”
Nervous laughter. “I’m not –“
“No, I know that now. I know why you look at me.”
“I don’t really look at you.”
“I think you want to kiss me, is all.”
Stiles feels the lump in his throat come back, and he looks away. He squats right back down and clears his throat frantically, because he’s afraid to speak and have his voice be choked up, because it’d be evidence for Seth to find. He begins to paw almost desperately through the boxes of other writing utensils that aren’t the ones he’s looking for. “You don’t know where the dry erase markers are, do you?”
Then, Seth is down at his level, squatting with him and fixing his dark eyes directly on the side of Stiles’ face. It feels like physical contact, like it always does when Seth looks at him – because he shoots contact out of his eyes like fingers, somehow. This all-knowing gaze, that sees right through to Stiles’ very center. “You know, it’s cool to be confused and it’s cool to not know what the hell is going on…”
Stiles fumbles a box of pencils, so it breaks open and sends them scattering across the floor, all around both of their feet in slow rolls that eventually come to stops.
“I don’t care if you don’t know. I’m not asking you to tell me anything. I’m just asking if you want to kiss me, because I think you do. I just think you’re wondering something, or asking a question. When you look at me, like…” he moves closer. His breath is warm on Stiles’ cheek, because Stiles won’t look directly at him, can’t, for the life of him. “…you want to ask me. It’s just a kiss.”
Stiles clenches his hands into his fists, and fight or flight response kicks in automatically. But the truth is, that he doesn’t want to fight, and he doesn’t want to run either. He wants to stay right here in this cramped little room with all the pencils on the floor and he wants to…kiss a boy. Any boy.
He stands up straight and rubs at his eyes. It hurts, from when Derek punched him earlier, but he keeps rubbing because it’s something to do with his hands, he guesses. A long beat of silence passes after Seth stands up straight, too. Seth is taller than Stiles by maybe a couple of inches, at most, so they’re nearly at eye level, but just shy of it. “I uh,” he begins, and wants to punch himself for how stupid he sounds and how stupid he feels. “I don’t know if I’m – or what.”
“Okay.”
“And I don’t – I haven’t told anyone that I don’t really…girls are,” he shrugs, like that’s all the explanation in the world, and Seth seems to get it. Of course he would. But Stiles doesn’t want to relate to him, yet, because he’s not ready to, but he could…
“That’s not really the question I asked,” Seth shakes his head. “I asked if you wanted to kiss me, that’s all. Do you want to?”
“Um,” Stiles twiddles his fingers. “I don’t like you like that, I don’t think.”
“That’s also not what I asked.”
Finally, Stiles gets brave enough to look into Seth’s eyes. They’re alone in here, but Stiles can hear the squeaking of sneakers seeping in through the walls. Scott is on the other side of this wall, somewhere, talking to Isaac Lahey and dribbling a ball and having no idea, none whatsoever, his best friend is in here about to kiss another boy.
Stiles doesn’t know what Scott would say if he found out. Or what his father would say. Or anyone. He wonders what shitty things that Seth has heard said about himself, or said directly to him, or behind his back as he walks through the hallways. Stiles wonders that a lot. Too much.
“Okay,” Stiles agrees. His voice doesn’t sound like his own, like it’s coming from someone else, or like his body is taking over and controlling the narrative now. Living out the thoughts in his head that he shoves to the background most of the time, drifting and hiding along the outskirts of everything he does.
Seth leans forward, inch by inch, holding Stiles’ eye contact until they get too close. When their lips meet, it’s soft, like butterfly wings touching. Then, they kiss again. Quick pecks, hesitant, like Seth isn’t sure how much Stiles wants him to do and like Stiles doesn’t know either. They pull back and Seth looks at him.
“I don’t like you like that, you know,” Stiles says again, just to drill it into Seth’s head. “I just…”
“I’ll take any opportunity to kiss a good-looking boy,” Seth shrugs. “I don’t think I like you like that either.”
“Okay,” Stiles agrees, and Seth agrees back, and then they’re kissing again. This time, it’s not a quick peck. Seth puts his hand on Stiles’ chest and leans into him, deepening the kiss. Stiles backs up into the shelves so everything on them rustles, puts his hand on Seth’s hip.
Stiles has kissed girls before – three, to be exact. He’s put his hand on a girls’ hip before, too. This is…not that. It’s not that at all. This is new territory. And just like Stiles always knew, always knew in the back of his mind, this is better. This is actually what he wants.
They kiss, for maybe ten more seconds, flush up against each other in the dim lighting, before the door opens. Quickly, light from the hallway spills across their faces, and they don’t pull apart in time. Whoever’s standing there just saw Stiles making out with a boy and he’s frantic in his haste to push Seth away from him and stand up straight, turning to try and look casual even though the damage has been done.
It’s Derek Hale. Hall pass clenched in his hand, holding the door open, stuck frozen still. Derek Hale has just seen Stiles kissing Seth. Derek Hale has just seen Stiles kissing another boy.
“Whoops,” Seth says, looking at an imaginary watch on his wrist. “Better get back to class.”
He skirts past Derek, and Derek doesn’t move. He just stands there and stares, stares, right at Stiles. His brow is furrowed, his posture stiff – it’s like he cannot believe what he just saw, needs time to process it. Stiles feels like a deer in headlights, for how unable he is to move. Completely stupefied. This is his worst nightmare.
He’s imagined Scott finding out and recoiling and wondering if at all those sleepovers they had over the many years of their friendship Stiles jerked off to the thought of him while he was asleep, kissed him without his consent. He’s imagined his father being disappointed that his only son is a faggot, that he’ll have to take barbs from his deputies for the rest of his life about his gay son. He’s imagined the entire school laughing at him and beating him up and he’s imagined losing his scholarship, of all things. He’s thought of all the worst case scenarios, before, because Seth is not the first boy he’s ever thought about kissing.
But this tops them all. Derek Hale. Derek fucking Hale. Resident asshole. Rich playboy son of one of the most powerful families in Beacon Hills. Biggest dick on the football team. Stiles’ worst enemy.
Of course it would be him. Of course it would.
“You dated Lydia Martin,” Derek says. This is what he says. It’s like he’s trying to wrap his brain around it. Stiles dated the prettiest girl in school last year, so there’s no way he could be in the supply closet kissing Seth fucking Turner. Stiles fucks girls.
“What are you doing here?” Stiles demands, and he feels like crying. Bursting into hysterical tears and running away – but that would be worse. It would be worse to do that.
Derek’s jaw works. It ticks. Stiles wants to pull his hair out. “Ms. Kirby sent me to see if you got lost. You’ve been gone for fifteen minutes.” His voice is very, very even. It’s like a robot is speaking to him, as opposed to Derek, like he’s running his brain functions on autopilot.
“There’s no dry erase markers in here,” he snaps, and crosses his arms over his chest uncomfortably. It’s protective, defensive. This isn’t normally how he is around Derek, curling in on himself like he’s small, but he can’t help it. “I’m going back to class.”
He pushes past Derek and into the hallway, where the air feels less stifled, and walks as fast as he can without it seeming like he’s trying to run away. Derek stays behind – Stiles knows because he hears no following footsteps. Stiles doesn’t look behind him, so he doesn’t know if Derek is still standing in the exact same spot as before, or if he’s moved, or anything. Stiles just keeps going.
Back in class, Stiles returns the key and says he doesn’t think there are any more markers left. Ms. Kirby shrugs it off, like no big deal. Stiles sits.
It’s twenty seconds later Derek is back. He walks in, looks at Stiles for only a second, and then looks away.
Derek sits down and says nothing.
**
“I got a call from the principal at school today,” Stiles’ father says at the dinner table, looking down his glasses at him. They’re eating lasagna, Stiles’ mom’s secret recipe, because it’s Friday and they always do a special dinner on Friday evenings before his father has to go in for the night shift. There’s garlic bread and Stiles’ favorite salad and the lasagna always tastes just like it used to – tonight, he’s barely even picking at his plate. He swirls some cheese around with his fork, shrugging.
When no response comes, his father sighs and takes his glasses all the way off, eyeballing him. “Another fight with Derek Hale.”
Stiles shrugs again. “That kid is a jackass.”
“Be that as it may,” Stiles’ father has never once said a kind word about Derek, but he’s also never gone out of his way to say something unkind about him either, “aren’t you two getting a little too old for this?”
The mention of Derek brings intrusive thoughts. He thinks about Derek calling his father and saying guess what Sheriff, your son’s a faggot, a giant faggot, so I guess that makes me and my family better than yours after all. “We’re not gonna fight anymore, dad.”
“I’ve heard that before,” he argues, wagging his finger.
“Well, this time it’s for real. There’s a lot at stake for both of us, now, so we’re just gonna…” he slices off a bite of his lasagna with no intention of eating it, just cuts it up with his fork again and again, preoccupied with it. “…avoid each other.”
“Hmm.” He’s critically examining Stiles, now, the way only a parent can. The way Stiles hasn’t eaten a single thing, the way he got home and immediately stormed up to his room to brood in the dark, that he’s already in his pajamas and it’s only six o’clock on a Friday night. Stiles’ plans for the night are hiding under his covers, hiding from the world, dreading Monday morning when he’ll walk into school and everyone will know he’s gay when he’s not even sure if that’s the right word yet, because Derek might not be able to punch him anymore, but psychological warfare is always on the table.
“Is everything okay? Did Derek do something…?”
“Derek Hale always does something, dad,” Stiles takes a sip of his milk just for something to do. “Look, I’m not very hungry, can I be excused?”
“No, you may not,” there’s finality there in his tone, so Stiles slumps down and pouts. “You’re going to sit there and eat your dinner and tell me what’s the matter with you.”
Stiles’ father has always been no-nonsense. Especially after Stiles’ mother died, and he had to learn how to be two parents at once. Even with all the help Melissa could give, there was still a hole that needed to be filled, and Stiles’ father became overbearing and obsessive and did things like go through Stiles’ room when he wasn’t home, read Stiles’ texts, this that and the other thing.
It didn’t take him more than a year to learn that was called bad parenting, and he stopped. Eased up a whole lot. But that doesn’t mean he became the chill, cool dad. He’s still a cop, and he seriously acts like it, even at home.
“Look, I had a shit day. Derek Hale is a dick and – I don’t know,” he stares at the mush of food on his plate and wishes he could disappear. “I’m worried about my scholarships and fucking everything up, I guess. Just because of Derek Hale.”
That seems like an acceptable answer, so his dad nods his head and swallows the bite of food he has in his mouth before speaking. “Well, kid, you can’t control someone like Derek Hale – but you can control your own actions, right?”
A stone sinks in Stiles’ gut. No, Stiles can’t control what Derek will do with the information he gathered today in the supply closet. He can’t control what Scott will say, or the jocks, or Lydia when she learns why Stiles was never very good in bed, or…anyone. It will be horrible, and he knows it, and word will get back to his father, and he doesn’t know what he’s going to do.
It was just one kiss. One stupid kiss.
“Yeah,” Stiles agrees. He takes one bite, maybe just to placate his father. “I hate Derek Hale.”
“I don’t very much care for his mother, either,” he shrugs. “Life goes on.”
The weekend passes by in a haze. Stiles has a hard time sleeping at night, staying up playing video games long past the time he’s allowed to be up, even on weekends. He lays in bed and stares at the ceiling and imagines everyone’s faces when they hear he made out with Seth in the supply closet. He imagines the story getting twisted, Derek lying and laughing and telling everyone they jerked each other off, that Stiles always tried to grab Derek’s dick whenever they fought each other, that the fighting was all just sexual frustration on Stiles’ end. That Stiles is a freak, that he’s sick.
Not even Seth will want anything to do with him. He tosses and turns and stares out the window at the full moon, feeling tiny. A speck of dust on a floating rock in the middle of the universe.
When Monday morning comes, Stiles’ alarm goes off and he’s already awake, staring at his ceiling with a pounding heart and a tight chest. It’s the 21st century, he reminds himself in the shower. Other kids at school are gay.
Well. It’s just Seth, who’s been absorbing ridicule for the past two months since he came out, and then Shana who Stiles heard is bisexual. But then, Stiles only thinks that because he heard she made out with one of her friends at a party and everyone took pictures and spread them around. Stiles doesn’t know if she’s gay or bi or what – all he knows is that now she has a boyfriend.
That’s not a very big crowd of peers. Not a very good support system at all. Stiles gets into his car and starts the engine, pressing his forehead into the steering wheel. It was just one fucking kiss. It was experimental. Seth won’t say anything about how Stiles basically admitted to not liking girls at all, he won’t, he’s not that shitty of a person. Not even close.
When Scott opens up the passenger door, the first thing he says is, “dude, you won’t believe what Isaac told me.”
Immediately, Stiles grips the steering wheel, white knuckling it so hard he’s amazed it doesn’t crack.
“They’re opening a new pizza place, like, three blocks from your house.”
Stiles’ grip relaxes, but his heart rate stays sky high. “Oh,” he clears his throat. “Uh –“
“We could be in walking distance of pizza and pasta before Summer starts. Isn’t that awesome?”
“We could also always just order delivery from any one of the other four pizza places in town,” he looks at his hands as they’re stopped at an intersection, sucks in a deep breath. It’s possible the news just hasn’t gotten to Scott yet, he figures. It’s not like Scott runs in the same circles as Derek, not including Isaac.
“You’re not as into this as I am,” Scott accuses, pointing a finger in his direction.
“I am,” he promises, “but what this town needs is a Thai place. Not more pizza.”
“I’ll give you that one,” Scott puts his hands up in surrender, “I’m pretty sick of having to drive all the way to Rosemont just for some pad thai. I mean, I’ll do it. But I don’t like that I have to.”
The conversation is normal for the rest of the drive to school, and when they pull up, Stiles is relieved to see that Derek’s car isn’t parked there. He’s not at school yet – Stiles has beat him to the punch. The relief is short lived, however, because it’s only seconds after Stiles has unbuckled and leaned over to pop open his door that the sleek black car Derek received for his sixteenth birthday pulls in, catching the sun as it does so.
Stiles grits his teeth as he looks at the duct tape work on the side mirror. His mother had refused to pay to get it fixed because he had lied and said it was an accident that took it off – not Stiles throwing him into the side of it. She apparently said he needed to learn responsibility. Stiles used to laugh every time he saw it. Now, not even a chuckle.
He steps out and tries to keep his shoulders squared, even as Derek climbs out at the same time. They meet eyes over the hood of the car. Derek’s jaw does that ticking thing that Stiles hates, and Stiles doesn’t know how to act. If he should act angry, or if he should pretend Derek doesn’t exist, or if he should act nice to gain Derek’s favor.
He wants to scream and ask him if he’s going to tell anyone, that he doesn’t know what he saw, that Stiles isn’t sure what he was doing. That he’ll do anything, if Derek just doesn’t tell anyone.
But Scott is right there, so Stiles can say nothing. They just stare at one another, until Stiles has to look away and start walking away, toward where Scott is waiting for him outside of the parking space. Derek keeps staring. Stiles feels the eyes.
“Jesus,” Scott says once Stiles is in ear shot. He’s got his own eyes on Derek, but they slowly slide over to his friend as they start walking towards the back doors of the school. “What the fuck is that look for?”
“It’s no different than the way he usually looks at me,” Stiles mutters under his breath. He can hear Derek’s footsteps trailing behind them, and he wants to scream.
“Uh, yeah it is.” Scott glances over his shoulder. Stiles has no idea what he must see there, none whatsoever, but Scott turns back with a frown on his face. “Did something happen between you guys again?”
Stiles remembers the light from the hallway shining across Seth and Stiles’ faces, the fact that their lips were still locked and Derek saw the whole thing. The look on Derek’s face.
“Nothing since Friday morning.”
They walk up the steps, past a gaggle of Derek’s jock friends all hovering about in their letterman jackets, laughing and making assholes out of themselves. Stiles’ shoulders tighten when he hears Derek greet them, and he can’t help but look over his shoulder.
Derek is still looking at him.
Every class that goes by, every time Stiles spills into the hallway with everyone else, he imagines that the news has gotten out. Derek has told his popular friends and it’s filtering through the school – but it never happens. The bell rings and Stiles walks out into the hallway and everyone either ignores him or says hi. Like everything’s normal. Like nothing happened.
In English class, Derek sits in his assigned seat all the way across the room and he looks out the window. He doesn’t look smug, he doesn’t look like the cat who got the cream, or like someone who’s been spreading vicious rumors all day. He just sits and stares out that window, head in the clouds, not taking a single note. It’s bizarre, if nothing else.
When the day is done and nothing has happened, Stiles becomes convinced Derek Hale is going to use this piece of information to blackmail him. He’s going to taunt Stiles with it, use it to get Stiles to do his bidding, or something even worse than that. It’s gotta be that – why else would Derek have not told anyone by now? Why else?
Scott occasionally rides the bus home with Allison if they plan on spending the afternoon together – so when Stiles walks out to the parking lot after the final bell and Derek is leaning against the hood of his car with his arms crossed like he’s waiting for Stiles, they’re alone.
Stiles picks his keys out of his pocket and thinks about ignoring him, walking right past and getting in his car and never speaking to him again, because he’s too afraid of this conversation. He thinks about it very seriously.
But then, he stops right next to where Derek is perched, and looks away. Squinting at the sun. “Look,” Stiles starts, refusing to look at Derek directly. “What you saw, man, it…”
“What I saw,” Derek repeats, lifting one eyebrow. God, Stiles can’t fucking stand this smug piece of shit.
Earlier in the day, Stiles had entertained the thought of telling a lie. A bad one. He thought about laughing, if he were confronted by Derek or someone else. He thought about laughing and laughing and saying something like oh yeah, that weird freak just jumped on me and started kissing me, haha, fucking weird faggot, am I right?
But not even Stiles is that low. He can’t tell that lie. He just can’t.
He shifts from foot to foot, unsteady. “I dunno,” is what he chooses to say. It’s the truth, in some weird, twisted cosmic way. He doesn’t know.
Derek looks up at the sky. At his feet. Then, right at Stiles. “Is he your – you know.”
“No,” Stiles scoffs, and then quickly backtracks. “Not that it’s so ridiculous. He’s nice and all. Um. I just don’t think – I don’t know.”
“And Scott,” Derek turns his body, so he’s facing Stiles head on. “He’s not –“
“Scott doesn’t know,” he squares his shoulders, as though this doesn’t make him ashamed. It does. “No one…no one knows. I don’t, uh…look man.” He steps forward, nervous, and Derek gives him this look that Stiles can’t say he’s ever given Stiles before. Can’t put a name on it, even. “I’ll…I’ll do just about anything to keep you from telling people that I – because I don’t know what’s going on. It’s not –“
“Jesus,” Derek interrupts. He stands taller, and he looks angry. Now that, Stiles thinks, is the Derek Hale that he knows. “How much of a piece of shit do you think that I am?”
Stiles blinks at him. “You want an answer to that question?”
Derek scoffs, shakes his head, looks away. “No,” he frowns, looks angry again. “No, I’m guessing that I don’t.” He mutters something under his breath and turns to get to his driver’s side door. When he gets his hand on it, he pauses and looks at Stiles the same way he had this morning – over the hood of his car, frowning, pensive. “I’m not that much of a piece of shit, how about. No matter what you think about me or my family –“
“The family thing again, come on,” Stiles rolls his eyes.
“I would never do that.” He opens the door, stops again. “I’m not the fuckbag that you’ve always thought of me as.” Then, he gets in and the engine revs.
Stiles is left standing there, knuckles turning white from clutching the straps of his backpack, while Derek breaks the speed limit driving off and away from him.
**
“Are you coming?”
Stiles startles from where he’s hovering with his locker door open, nearly fumbling the piece of paper he has in his hands down to the ground. He had found it tucked neatly into his locker through one of the slats, neon pink with big black letters reading BYOB and PARTY among other things – like time, location, etcetera.
Lydia Martin is standing there, cocking her head to the side, looking him up and down. It’s a funny thing that they used to know each other rather intimately – because now, they never speak. Hi and bye, for the most part.
They didn’t even have that bad of a breakup. It was mutual and it needed to happen. Stiles guesses that the issue was that Lydia never really quite understood why it needed to happen, only that it did. And that Stiles knew exactly why, but that he never gathered up the stones to tell her himself. She perhaps rated the truth from him. But that seems like spilled milk, now.
Because now, she’s standing there with her eyebrows raised, waiting for an answer to her question. “To the party?” She clarifies when Stiles is silent for long enough.
“Um,” he looks at the flyer again. He hasn’t gone to a party at Lydia’s house since last year, before they broke up. Way before Summer vacation, all the way before the spring dance. He had gotten more drunk than he’s ever been at the last one, where phase one of their break up officially launched. Lydia should remember that. It’s a wonder he’s even been invited to this one. “I guess I have to.”
“You sure do,” she looks him up and down again, that same way she always has. Back when they were dating Stiles found it somewhat flattering. Now, he finds it unsettling. Like she’s searching for answers written somewhere on his skin. “You haven’t been.”
“I haven’t been invited.”
She rolls her eyes. “Your invites were always, you know,” she waves her hand fruitlessly, “implied. You’re always invited.”
Uncomfortable in the situation with her eyes on him like this, he shifts a bit and shrugs. “Well, I’ll come to this one. Scott can come, I assume.”
Lydia does not like Scott. This was made crystal clear to both Scott and Stiles when Lydia and Stiles were dating. Not like it ever stopped Scott from third wheeling with them nearly constantly, which come to think of it is likely another reason he and Lydia stopped dating. But just one of many.
Her lips purse, which Stiles had expected. But she still says, “fine,” in that clipped tone of voice Stiles used to know very well. “You know, it’s been a while since I’ve heard anything about you and Derek Hale. Did you guys finally kiss and make up?”
The word choice has Stiles reeling for a moment, so his cheeks turn pink and he can’t help but to look back down at the flyer just so Lydia can’t catch his eyes. Truth be told, Stiles has been avoiding that boy like he’s infected with the black plague. He gets to school ten, fifteen, sometimes even thirty minutes earlier than he’s ever been before just to beat Derek to the parking lot so they don’t have to see each other. He never looks up from his notes in English class. If they cross paths in the hallway, Stiles pretends to be studiously glaring at a text message or something else more interesting on his phone.
Derek, for his part, says nothing. Does nothing. Floats on the outskirts of Stiles’ reality. And he has still not said a single word, not to anyone, about what he saw in the supply closet that day.
“Derek and I decided maybe it was time to grow up,” he says, which is ambiguous and avoidant, and Lydia knows that. She tends to know everything.
Most everything, at least.
“Huh,” she shrugs. “See you at the party.”
Off she goes, while Stiles is left staring after her before looking back down at the flyer. A party at Lydia Martin’s house sounds like a no good very very bad idea, but it’s not like he’s got any other plans for this Friday night. This is a notion that Scott agrees with, because he very enthusiastically demands to tag along before Stiles even has a chance to ask him. He sees the flyer and that’s it – Stiles’ Friday night has been planned for him.
They’ll go to the party, and they’ll probably have too much to drink, and it will all probably be just fine. Stiles curls the flyer tight in his hand as he walks down the hall with Scott chattering excitedly next to him – who’s gonna be there, how are we going to get alcohol, is your cousin still in town maybe she’ll get some for us – and it’s just happenstance that Derek is standing at his locker looking down at the same invitation.
Derek doesn’t notice Stiles or Scott, or if he does he pretends that he doesn’t. He folds the paper up and tucks it into his back pocket. Stiles knows beyond any shadow of a doubt that Derek Hale will be in attendance, because it is no secret whatsoever that Derek likes to drink and party. There have been stories, more mythological lore it feels sometimes, of Derek Hale at parties. Like drinking an entire handle of vodka and making out with half the cheerleading squad, or falling out of a second story window and living to tell the tale thanks to a gaggle of bushes down below, or falling into the pool with all of his clothes on and nearly drowning. Stiles has seen with his own two eyes Derek at more than one of these parties.
He gets really, really drunk. Were Stiles a true friend to him, he might have brought up that it doesn’t seem particularly healthy for an 18 year old kid to already have this much of a problem with binge drinking. But since they are friends neither true or fake, Stiles has always laughed and made tasteless jokes about how he’s already got his foot in the door of a rehabilitation center.
Stiles never really cared beyond a few jabs about how much Derek has to drink, but this time, for whatever reason, it makes Stiles nervous. No, he’s never seen or heard about Derek having too much to drink and spilling secrets out of his mouth like vomit, but it doesn’t seem that far fetched to Stiles for it to be a possibility. Maybe he will get too drunk and go around telling everyone he saw Stiles Stilinski and Seth Turner making out in a supply closet. But maybe he’ll be so drunk he’ll lose all credibility.
Either way, Stiles averts his eyes as soon as Derek closes his locker and turns to face them, staring down at the floor.
**
Lydia Martin’s house is mammoth in a way that has always made Stiles feel uncomfortable. Even when they were dating and he was a more than welcome guest, he felt like he was walking around in a museum rather than someone’s actual house. There are antiques from Europe and World War 2, big paintings spanning lengths of entire walls that look stolen from the Louvre, miles and miles of fine rugs and carpeting, fine leather couches, and on and on. It’s a wonder Lydia feels brave enough to host a party in this house at all.
She’s got it sectioned off so only the front porch, foyer, kitchen, and back patio area are available for partying. The rest of the house, the living room and the staircase leading to bedrooms and pool rooms and home theaters, are blocked off with baby gates and dog gates. Behind one such a gate there are in fact four little yapper dogs barking their heads off at anyone who walks past, a sea of little toys and furry things lying around their paws.
Stiles pauses to reach in and offer a hand to pet. It nearly get bitten off by one of the Chihuahuas in the mix, so he retracts it with a quick laugh. These dogs have never ever liked him. But to be fair, they don’t seem to really like anybody, Lydia included.
In the kitchen, there’s a lot of alcohol. It’s spread out on top of the island, littering the counter tops, spilling out of the fridge as someone opens it in search of a beer. Stiles simply drops his twenty-four pack of PBR on the island, pries it open and hands one to Scott, and then stands there drinking his own. Scott is looking around himself like a kid in a candy store, always more than ready for any kind of social outing as an extrovert.
Stiles is more of an introvert. So he hovers and sips his beer. Finishes it in less than five minutes and goes onto his next one.
Scott is gone before Stiles can blink, locating a gaggle of people he’s particularly interested in speaking to, and Stiles is okay with that. He nurses his third beer and meanders his way through the kitchen, taking note of all the familiar classmates he sees as he travels through. The cheerleaders are all here, sitting on the cushioned patio furniture out back and smoking cigarettes, talking amongst themselves in hushed tones about other people, Stiles is sure of it. Erica Reyes is among them, taking a long drag from her own smoke and catching his eyes as he walks past.
She really has the biggest crush on him, and has since they were freshmen. Why she, as a popular and pretty cheerleader with her pick of the jocks, not only find Stiles attractive but also seems to be terrified to do anything about it is beyond Stiles entirely. But it’s obvious, and everyone knows it, including all her friends, so Stiles has always been very careful never to lead her on. He averts his eyes instantly and keeps walking without more than a passing glance.
There are lots of people in the hot tub, underneath glittering string lights and some paper stars, but Stiles chooses a seat on the sidelines in one of the pool chairs. He takes a long sip of his beer and looks up at the sky – when he looks back down, there’s Derek, across the pool.
He’s got his arm around some girl that Stiles only vaguely recognizes. She’s younger, maybe a sophomore which would explain Stiles’ inability to come up with a name for her. He seems to be in pretty good spirits, a party cup in one hand, a girl in the other, and before Stiles knows it, he’s watching them make-out. Aggressively. Like, any second they’re about to disappear into the surrounding tree line to have sex.
Which pretty much solves that problem for Stiles. There’s not much gossiping Derek Hale can do with Stiles’ secrets if he’s too busy fucking some no-name behind a tree. Stiles drinks his beer and feels only a pinch of relief, watching the two of them tongue at each other with something twisting in his gut that feels a lot like envy.
It’s either lucky or not that a pair of smooth pale legs in a short skirt appears in his eyeline, blocking any and all sight of Derek Hale and his new conquest. Stiles looks up and meets Lydia’s eyes. She’s got a raised brow and a party cup in her hand, her mouth twisted. She might be a little drunk. “Staring at people as they kiss isn’t weird or anything,” she opens with, and then sucks at her neon straw.
Stiles shrugs. “I wasn’t staring.”
“You were, I’ve been watching you.”
“It was the most interesting thing happening around the pool,” he gestures at the scene – the empty pool rippling, the girls all laughing in the hot tub, the cheerleaders and their cloud of smoke, the few people milling on the grass drinking and talking.
Lydia levels him with a steady gaze. “Not the girls taking their bikini tops off in the hot tub.”
This takes Stiles by surprise. When he looks, sure enough, there are bare breasts to be seen over there, a half dozen of them. He stares and stares, and then shrugs.
“Right,” she draws the word out nice and long. “Who Derek Hale does or doesn’t kiss is more interesting to you than a naked woman’s body.”
This makes Stiles’ antenna go up. Lydia is two things – drunk, and calculating. She has an uncanny ability to stare through people’s souls to get at the very core of them, the center, where all their dirtiest, deepest secrets lie. When they were dating it’s possible she never saw clean through to Stiles’ deepest secret because she simply did not want to know. It was a type of protection for herself that kept her from ever realizing why it may have been that their relationship was never going to work.
Now, though, she’s just drunk and spurned. Stiles isn’t quite sure how to combat it, so he just drinks more of his beer and shrugs, hoping that she’ll just lope away somewhere to torment somebody else.
Instead, she stands there and stares at him some more. She looks over her shoulder to look at Derek Hale again, then back to him. “He’s an asshole, you know.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Stiles is confused, furrowing his brow. “I’ve only spent the last ten years of my life fighting with him.”
“Yeah, but, I mean, he’s an asshole,” she draws the word out nice and long, as if it takes on a different meaning depending on exactly how she says it. “No one who has ever dated or hooked up with that guy has ever had anything nice to say about him after the fact.”
“What do I care about that?”
She looks at him. It’s that all-knowing, all-seeing gaze, like the eye of Mordor. Stiles feels tiny under its wrath, so he looks away and stares down at his beer can, traces the design with his thumb. “I know you, Stiles Stilinski.”
“Not really. We only dated for, like, five months.”
With a snort, totally uncharacteristic of her and something she would never do sober, she rolls her eyes. “Gee, I wonder why.”
“Has Derek said anything to you?” He demands, out of nowhere, because this conversation is starting to feel a lot like…well. It’s just starting to feel shitty. “Has he told you anything?”
“I don’t talk to that dolt,” she hisses as though it’s such a ridiculous accusation. “There’s better conversation to be had with a snapping turtle. Why do you ask?”
Stiles decides then and there that he’s had just about enough of this conversation, standing up and towering over Lydia instead of the other way around. She looks up at him and frowns, like she’s only just now getting the impression that maybe she’s upset him. She says, “look, I wasn’t trying to expose your –“
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he speaks with finality, and she snaps her jaw shut. She knows exactly what she’s talking about, and she knows that Stiles knows that – but she also knows she’s drunk and has overstepped her boundaries, so she just blinks a bit rapidly and turns to walk away. Off to the cheerleaders, who will embrace her with open arms as everyone else does for social royalty.
As for Stiles, he’s a social nothing. People like him, yes, but there’s no one around here clamoring for his attention or his company. The girl that Derek had been kissing only moments before is now sitting alone and dejected on a pool chair, a puzzled and somewhat annoyed look on her face. Derek nowhere to be seen. Stiles decides he doesn’t care about that, waving his hand off and going back inside to get another beer.
There, he runs into Scott, who has been holding court in the kitchen for the entire time Stiles has been outside, playing cards with a small group of people. Isaac Lahey is one of them, looking placid as he examines Stiles from head to toe. Derek isn’t in here with his best friend, either.
As he gets another beer from his pack, Scott says, “you look irritated.”
Stiles pops open the can and practically finishes the entire thing in one go. From the corner of his eye, he sees Isaac and Scott share a look with one another. Stiles rarely ever drinks this much. “Lydia Martin just decided to accost me drunkenly about the downfall of our relationship.”
“Oh, man,” Scott puts his hands on his head like he’s getting ready for a bomb to go off. Isaac looks away, sensing maybe this isn’t any of his business, while other people around them stop what they’re doing to tune into the conversation. “She did what?”
“Oh, yeah. Out of the clear blue sky.”
“It’s ancient history!” Scott is implicitly on Stiles’ side. He has absolutely no clue what Lydia said, what the context even was, who exactly they were talking about, but it doesn’t matter. Stiles is upset, and so now Scott is upset on his behalf. “She invited you here just to harass you about that?”
“She’s drunk,” Stiles says this dismissively, while people murmur quietly to themselves about it. What they must think, Stiles can only imagine. That maybe Stiles and Lydia are unfinished business, that maybe they’ll get back together, that they were born to be the it couple of Beacon High, king and queen of the prom, whatever.
The truth, Stiles thinks, is so much worse than that.
“Do you want to leave?” Scott asks, already setting down his own pile of cards. He’d be ready to go at a moment’s notice, out the door, never to return, if Stiles were to say so.
“No,” he decides, tossing his empty can into the recycling among many others just like it. “I just ah – I want to get some air.”
Scott doesn’t look convinced. He furrows his brow and scratches at his head. “Are you sure?”
Stiles nods his head and shrugs. “She was just drunk, man.”
Slowly, Scott sits back down in his stool next to Isaac and picks his cards back up. “Just let me know.”
Out the door Stiles goes again, and there are the cheerleaders still. Sitting in their circle, eyeballing him as he walks past. Lydia is there, as well, looking somewhat somber, and Erica stares at him some more, and Stiles just…doesn’t have the mental energy for any of them right now. He keeps walking and then stops right at the edge of the pool. He drinks his beer and has this insane thought, like maybe he’ll jump in fully clothed, sink down to the bottom like a rock, stay down there for a while where all the noises of the party are muffled, where no one will be able to see him clearly.
Instead, he walks away and heads toward the edge of the property. The end of the house, right up against the cover of the trees, where the only light filters out from the windows in small squares on the grass. As he walks past the window to the kitchen, he hears raucous cheering like someone has just won the game, silhouettes moving quick and fast in excitement, but he pays it no mind.
Around the corner, he expects to be alone, but there’s someone there. A huge figure leaning up against the house next to the AC unit, drinking right out of a bottle of Maker’s Mark. Stiles knows it instantly to be Derek Hale, just from the shape and size of the shadow alone. As such, he freezes as soon as he sees it, skidding to a stop and wondering if maybe he should turn around and go back to find somewhere else to mope on his own.
Derek turns to him, still far enough away to be just a shadow in the dark with no discernible features. “Is that Stilinski?”
He has this hilarious thought of saying no and turning and making a run for it. He doesn’t know what it is that propels him to actually take another step forward and nod his head. “It sure is.”
“What’s the matter?” He says in somewhat of a taunting tone, taking a huge sip from his bottle and then running his hand across his mouth. “Not having much fun?”
Stiles stops five feet away, maybe, just close enough that he can make out the dark holes where Derek’s eyes should be. “I’m not a big party person.”
“Too busy wasting your life studying.”
“It’s better than wasting my life drinking myself to death, I’d reckon.”
“You don’t know me,” Derek corrects lighting quick. It’s amazing he can be so defensive of this particular subject, standing here drunker than hell in the dark, sipping out of a handle of whisky.
“Then what’s the matter with you? It looked like you were ten seconds away from hooking up with a sophomore.”
Derek laughs, but not in a ha-ha, funny way. It’s a low, dark, mean sounding laugh, that comes from the throat more than the chest. He shakes his head and stares off into the tree line. “Well, I’m an asshole.”
It’s an echo of what Lydia had said, of what every single person alive has said about Derek. “Sure.”
“I’m a fuck up, I don’t know.”
Stiles feels weird standing here, now. Like he’s interrupted some deeply personal sad sack session and he should probably turn right around and high tail it for the hills before this gets any weirder. Of course, he doesn’t, and so of course, it does.
Derek pushes himself away from the house and turns directly towards Stiles. Takes a couple steps in his direction, so the distance between them closes to only a few steps’ worth. “Did you come back here to hit me?”
“I’m not going to fight you, you asshole, just relax.”
“You always want to hit me, so do it,” he throws the bottle off to the side with a clink and a smattering of liquid spreading all across the glass, and Stiles takes one step back on instinct. “Fucking hit me.”
“You’re drunk,” Stiles hisses at him, putting his hands up in the air to surrender. “I’m not going to hit you, man, fuck off.”
“Oh, yeah?” Derek is very abruptly there, in Stiles’ personal space, the way he’s been hundreds of thousands of times before. This time, it feels different. Stiles gets this thrill of adrenaline up his spine, just like in a fight, just like before he gets hit in the face, just like when Derek has always been this close, in the past.
But Stiles doesn’t think Derek is about to hit him. Something in his eyes, now that he can see Derek’s face lit up just enough from what’s spilling out of the living room windows, isn’t the same as it used to be. There’s no anger there. There’s no fight.
Derek grabs Stiles by his shoulders, big bear paws gripping him tight, and kisses him. It’s long. Their lips stay locked together for what feels like an eternity, Stiles’ eyes big in his head and wide open, Derek’s shut and his lashes brushing up against Stiles’ cheeks. Stiles can’t move. His brain isn’t working. He’s had too much to drink to react quickly enough.
He’s too slow to do anything about it when Derek pulls away, uses his hands to push Stiles up against the side of the house. He doesn’t move when Derek buries his nose into Stiles’ neck, inhaling deeply like he’s thought about doing it for a long time – Stiles’ deodorant, Stiles’ cologne, Stiles’ innate scent – and when he presses his lips to Stiles’ skin, licking a stripe up towards his ear, Stiles’ only reaction is to drop his beer can so the liquid spills out and fizzles around their feet.
There is no move Stiles can think to make. It feels good, like sinfully good, like come in his pants good, like he’s going to go straight to hell for feeling like this good. He stays planted still as Derek sucks a hickey into his neck, as Derek paws at his chest, hand trailing to go lower, even lower, lower still…
…and then Derek pulls away. Looks Stiles right in his face, and Stiles can only imagine what his face looks like right now. There’s silence between them for an extended second, Stiles licking his lips and his hands shaking, either with fear or from holding back reaching out to touch him, and then Derek says, “oh, man.”
Without another word, he turns away. He staggers a bit towards the trees, and then makes a break for it. Just starts fucking sprinting into the woods, top speed, zig zagging a bit from the drunkenness. Stiles watches, stuck still and silent.
Derek abruptly stops at one point, putting his hand on a tree for balance as he leans over and pukes into a pile of a leaves. Stiles gapes at this, putting his hands up on his face. It feels hot, flushed.
And then Derek is off again, disappearing into the darkness where Stiles can no longer see him anymore.