Chapter Text
Chapter 1
Irritation (ɪrɪˈteɪʃn) : noun - the state of feeling annoyed, impatient, or slightly angry
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Derek’s phone felt uncomfortable against his ear, the sharp corners pushing into his skin as he ran his fingers along its smooth surface, jogging down the stairs. His free hand clenched into a fist as he navigated through the corridors which were steadily filling with students coming back from summer break.
“What do you expect me to say, we never really talk about anything,” Jackson started and Derek rolled his eyes. “Danny and I got this really cool apartment only about fifteen minutes away from campus. I got my own room and all, and it’s not that much more expensive than the dorm rooms, I had to say yes.”
“You should have told me,” he murmured the same moment Jackson yelled something not directed at him. “I’ve got to go, bye,” Jackson said, hanging up before Derek could say anything else.
Derek let out a frustrated sigh and crammed his phone back into his jeans pocket. Sprinting down the corridor, he took the next set of stairs almost without touching the ground. He nearly ran into a guy blindly carrying boxes upstairs, his messy hair the only thing visible behind the huge stack of moving boxes he was desperately clinging to.
“Watch it,” Derek hissed despite him being the one running into the guy, turning around only to meet the guy’s irritated stare before Derek came to a halt in front of the secretary’s office. He only had about half an hour left before it closed and there were a dozen people in line before him, each of them every bit as impatient as he was. The girl in front of him tapped her toes to the music she was listening to, her flip flops gruesomely squeaking every time she moved her feet. “What’s it with the eyebrows? You keep staring at me,” she snarled after a couple of minutes, pulling out her earplugs.
“You’re noisy,” Derek told her , shrugging, but she only raised her eyebrows and put her earplugs back in, humming along and tapping her feet against the floor.
Three Muse songs and “Bohemian Rhapsody” later it was her turn to get into the office. Derek scraped his fingernails against his palms, willing them to stay blunt and not to form into claws as he waited impatiently for the girl to get out again before the office was closing. A couple of freshmen were chattering and giggling while walking by and Derek rolled his eyes as he leaned against the wall - after a whole summer of being on his own, able to enjoy the quiet, the ever-rising noise level of the hallway got onto his nerves.
He almost ran into Earplug Girl when she opened the door after what must have been an eternity, squeezing past her to get into the room before the secretary could call it a day and close the office.
“I need an application form for a single room,” he told the middle aged woman with a name tag saying S. Masley in front of him. She raised her eyebrows at him, taking a sip of her Seven Upand pointed her finger at a printout hanging on the wall next to her.
Registration for single rooms closes August 28th.
Derek bit back a curse. He was a day late. He breathed in and tried to stay as calm as possible, repeating the mantra his mother had taught him - alpha, beta, omega, alpha, beta, omega - silently in his head over and over again.
“It’s an emergency. You see, my ex-roommate only told me today he was moving out and I can’t possibly share my room with a stranger.”
Ms. Masley only blinked at him. “This is Harvard University,” she said slowly, carefully pronouncing every word. “And since you’re a student here, I suppose you can read.” She smiled at him sweetly, and Derek could see her lipstick had stained her front teeth.
“So,” she continued, the smile vanishing from her lips, “what does it say?”
“Registrations closed yesterday,” Derek answered. “Look, I have money, I -”
The woman cut him off, staring at him, completely unimpressed. “You’re not the only one.” She pushed an application form in front of him. “See, I can put you on the waiting list, maybe get you a single room around January if enough people drop out, but until then, have fun with your new roommate. Now hurry up, I’m not working overtime.”
Derek quickly filled out the form, handing it back to Ms. Masley, who squinted at him.
“I hope your roommate doesn’t have the same anger issues you have,” she told him quietly and shooed him out, not before Derek noticed the dents his claws had left behind on the edge of her desk.
***
Derek arrived at his dorm room just in time to hear something crash onto the floor and someone cursing loudly. He opened the door, peeking into the chamber. The side of the room that had belonged to Jackson was a mess of boxes, books, and clothes, smaller items cluttering the floor from where they had fallen out of one of the boxes. A guy, the one from before with the messy hair, crouched in between the mess, glancing up at him with his arms flailing when he tried to get up.
“You don’t look like a sophomore,” the guy said, raising one corner of his mouth. “Not that I care, don’t get me wrong here, I wouldn’t care if you were thirty-” he stopped, standing up and throwing another box off his bed in the process. “It’s just that you don’t look like thirty. You just don’t look like a sophomore, that’s all I’m saying. Well, I thought I was going to be put in a room with another sophomore, like they did with the freshmen, which… doesn’t make that much sense in retrospect, does it?” He frowned for a moment.
“So, we’re roommates then, right?” He extended his hand. Derek looked at him for a long moment, his eyebrows shooting up, before taking and slowly shaking it.
“I’m Stiles. I actually wanted to be roommates with my best friend Scott, we shared a room last year, but the secretary, who was very, very unfriendly by the way, told us to fuck off. Not in those words exactly, but you get my drift, right?” Stiles shoved a couple of books to sit down on the bed and crossed his legs.
“What’s your major?” He looked at Derek for a second, moving on when he didn’t get an answer. “Mine is applied mathematics. I know it sounds kinda nerdy and stuff, well, it kinda is… I thought about studying physics, but then I realized I would basically end up as one of the guys on The Big Bang Theory, except without the part where the beautiful blonde waitress-slash-actress moves in next door and falls in love with me. And I prefer maths anyways. My best friend wants to become a vet, I still can’t believe he actually did it. He wasn’t kidding when he told me he would do anything to fulfill his dream, he actually managed to get into college on a sports scholarship.” Stiles smiled widely and Derek’s eyebrows shot up again. How the hell was he supposed to survive this year?
“I guess it’s better that way, though. Scott’s a bit of an oversharer -” Derek had to suppress a laugh, ”-and to be honest, I’m not sure if I’d survive sharing a room with him for the next couple years. You know, having to hear about how often he makes love to his beautiful, perfect girlfriend, how passionate their kisses are, how much he loves her cute little dimples when she laughs, that kind of thing.”
“What the actual fuck,” Derek mumbledunder his breath when Stiles started throwing even more books onto his bed.
Stiles turned around to him. “You say something?” His gaze shifted to Derek’s shelf and he dumped the stuff he had in his hands on his bed and walked over.
“Is that a wolf?” he said when he saw the small wooden statuette on the ledge. “It looks hand-made, is it hand-crafted? Did you carve this?”
“Don’t touch that,” Derek muttered.
“Sorry?”
“I said, do not touch it.”
Stiles raised his eyebrows and backed off, continuing emptying his suitcase.
“So, back to you. What are you, a senior? You sure look like one, with all this scruff and the serious face and the eyebrows. Downright intimidating. Well, if someone gets intimidated by eyebrows, that is.” Stiles looked up, shrugging. “I didn’t catch your name, roomie.”
“I didn’t tell you,” Derek managed to get out through gritted teeth. He had the sudden urge to shove one of those books down Stiles’ throat, instead digging his fingernails into his palms until the skin broke.
“Well, what is it then?” Stiles demanded to know, biting his lower lip while doing one of those crooked half-smiles.
“Derek.” He almost growled, his voice deep and animalistic. He glanced up to Stiles again, taking a deep breath, but his roommate just grinned.
“Impressive,” he drawled. Then, a moment later, “You don’t look like a Derek.”
Derek raised an eyebrow. “I… don’t look like a Derek,” he repeated slowly.
“Nah, not at all, dude. That dark hair and those eyebrows just don’t fit a Derek,” Stiles told him, exaggeratingly wiggling his eyebrows at him. “I would’ve taken you for a… Miguel or something.”
Derek nodded slowly, backing out of the room. He leaned against the door the second it closed behind him, exhaling loudly. Inside the room, he could hear Stiles shouting, “What the hell, dude?” but he chose to ignore it, instead making his way outside. This time around, there were hardly any people left in the hallway, but Derek could barely breathe. He felt as if his lungs had shrunk inside his body, hardly letting enough air inside.
He gasped for air when he was outside, stumbling a couple of steps, and then simply sunk down on the stairs until his breathing normalized again. He got up after a few minutes, deciding to go for a walk and searched his pockets for some change to maybe buy a coffee on the way, but of course his wallet was back in the dorm room. After an hour or so of aimlessly walking around he sat down on the grass, his fingers digging into the ground. Jackson was an asshole for not telling him in time, no, not telling Derek was actually reckless. Wasn’t Jackson the one who had told him werewolves had to stick together? He let out a frustrated sigh. To be honest, Jackson was also the one who had told him on numerous occasions that he needed to work on his anger issues, that he couldn’t expect to be living and working around werewolves for all his life. He had a point, sort of. But Derek didn’t quite understand why he hadn’t even gotten a heads-up from him.
Because he never really liked you and thought you were an asshole. Derek shook his head in resignation. Not reason enough for not telling him. There was so much that could have happened, he could have attacked this Stiles guy, could have knocked him out, hurt him, or worse - after all, the guy was invading his room right now with his boxes and books and his constant chatter.
He dug out his phone from his jeans pocket, one glance at the screen telling him he had a couple of texts and missed calls. He didn’t even open the text he got from Jackson, probably some half-assed apology the other werewolf had felt obligated to write. Instead, he tapped his finger on his sister’s name, opening the text conversation with her and reading the new message she had sent.
Laura: I hope you'll have a great start into your new semester. You’re always welcome at home, baby bro, you know that, right? xoxo Laura
Derek shook his head, staring at the text for a moment longer before he turned off the phone screen. Laura’s plan - making him feel guilty for not showing up all summer - didn’t work. He had his reasons and she knew it, she knew he wouldn’t give in so easily. She knew staying away as far as possible was his way of coping with what had happened.
He stayed outside for a little while longer, twirling a blade of grass between his fingers and listening to the constant chatter of people in the buildings around him. It was rather late already; he was almost alone outside except for a couple leaning against a tree a few hundred feet away from him, whispering and giggling. Eventually, they went inside, leaving Derek alone on the lawn. He stared at the sky, willing his wolf to come out for a minute after he reaffirmed himself no one was around anymore. He could almost feel when his eyes started to glow and he took a deep breath, taking in the scents of hundreds of people, of paper, books, and freshly washed clothes. He closed his eyes, concentrating until he could hear Stiles humming to some song he didn’t know. How would he survive this?
For a moment he thought about transferring to some other college - Stanford, Berkeley, somewhere with a higher werewolf population. He got up from the ground, grimacing at the way his jeans stuck to his thighs, and made his way back inside. This was his senior year. He would survive it. Somehow. He grimaced when he heard Stiles singing painfully out of tune, and remembered the text Laura had sent him.
I hope you'll have a great start into your new semester.
He stopped in front of his dorm room the second Stiles started cursing and only shook his head in resignation as he heard something heavy hitting the ground.
This was not Derek’s idea of a great start.