Archive of Our Own ^beta

“So, let’s recap,” said Stiles, fanning his hands out to encompass the mass of pencils, character sheets, and junk food before him. “Our, uh, let’s call him intrepid? Our intrepid hero Scott … who is, you know, played by Scott… is a sophomore at Beacon Hills High School, a school you should all be reasonably familiar with. Scott is five-foot-ten and has, uh -- nah, I’m gonna let you guys do it. Describe yourself, Scott! Make it good.”

“Do I have to?” asked Scott, awkwardly. He sat with his chin wedged against his knuckles, one knobby elbow braced dangerously close to the french onion dip. “I mean, I’m not trying to be a dick or anything, but you’re both looking right atht me so it seems kind of silly to just… tell you what I look like.”

“Does your character really look just like you? That’s … creative,” Derek rolled his eyes as he reached out a finger and scooted the dip container into less dangerous territory. Stiles had a tendency to pretzel himself into the most awkward positions possible at the gaming table, but Scott somehow always managed to end up with a limb in the dip bowl.

“Not all of us can be budding Van Goghs,” Scott pulled a face at Derek, making Stiles laugh.

Derek set his pencil down self-consciously. It was hardly his fault Scott hadn’t put any thought into his character description, or design, or stats.... in fact, it was Scott’s inability to remember his character name that lead Stiles to decree their game-selves would simply be named after their real-life selves.

“If you don’t describe yourself,” Stiles decided, a gleeful look on his face, “then I get to.”

“Alright, alright,” Scott tugged at a lock of hair as though reminding himself of what color it was, nose scrunched thoughtfully. “He’s kind of average, I guess. Brown hair. He’s got a strong, you know, manly jawline and is probably wearing a BHHS lacrosse shirt or something, seeing as he was a lacrosse player at school and kind of an all-round loser until he was bitten.”

Derek snorted. That… was actually a pretty good description coming from Scott. It had taken three sessions for him to learn how to actually roleplay, but he was definitely improving.

“Right!” Stiles beamed happily, evidently sharing Derek’s opinion on Scott’s most-effusive description to date. “So, ruggedly handsome game-Scott ventured out into the woods with his stalwart friend and companion, a roguish rascal named Stiles Stilinski,” Stiles summarized, grinning at Derek over the top of his manila-folder screen.

Scott made a gagging noise, but Derek smiled back shyly, pushing his glasses a bit further up the bridge of his nose.

“When Stiles and Scott headed into the woods to investigate a murder case Stiles’ father, the town sheriff, was attempting to solve, the boys found the mangled half-dead corpse of a girl out in the woods.”

“You mean Scott found the half-dead corpse – Stiles totally ditched him out there,” Scott reminded them, loyally.

“--yeah, yeah,” Stiles said, waving a hand at him. “Jesus, let me finish the recap or we’ll never get anything done! Either way, not only did Scott find the corpse, he also found the creature that mangled it and ended up with a nasty bite across his torso. Not wanting to tell his mother where he’d been given the curfew in effect, he tromped home and cleaned the wound in the bathroom, patching it and taking some tylenol before bed. It healed startlingly well overnight, and it was only in the following days that he realized it left something behind. Dum dum dum!”

Stiles wiggled his fingers dramatically, but even Derek had to admit it was a bit difficult to take the him seriously when he wore his “+1 Cloak of GMing”. It looked suspiciously like the polyester monstrosities sold in bagged Dracula costumes around Halloween.

“While the young Scott McCall devoted himself to figuring out his little furry problem, our dark, brooding anti-hero was hard at work on the other side of town.”

Derek grinned smugly, picking potato chip out of his braces.

“Read your description!” Stiles reached for Derek’s character sheet and spun it around on the table. “'Derek Hale is tall, clear-skinned and dark-haired with a permanently broody expression. His eyes are a light green color, and he usually wears a five-o’clock shadow all day long, along with his badass leather jacket (a gift from his sister) and fitted Henley shirts...’” Stiles read, laughing. “I guess with an 18 strength, anyone can pull off a Henley. Awww, and the illustration is so cute...cheer up, emo-Derek!”

Derek could feel his cheeks pinking but he refused to rise to the bait. “So? I was going to make a cheerful bard until you fucked with my backstory.”

“Lies,” Stiles waved a hand at his protest, allowing Derek to reclaim his sheet.

Derek had been secretly thrilled when Stiles hemmed him in after class last month and informed him that his half-complete backstory was to be sacrificed for the sake of the plot. It was a secret for them to share and the others to find out, and the very thought made Derek’s stomach do flips.

Of course, it also meant that choosing a heavily edited version of his own backstory might have been a mistake… Nobody at the table realized how true-to-life the Hale family story actually was.

“Whatever,” Derek muttered agreeably, smoothing the sheet out with one hand. “Henleys are cool.”

He picked up one of the pencils sitting at the center of the table and started sketching out game-Derek. An 18 strength was a perfectly good reason to use Stiles’ biceps as a figure study, right?

Right.

“Derek Hale is returning to Beacon Hills after a few years away. Your character received a phone call informing him that his sister had been declared a missing person, and last night that was upgraded to murder victim, so you’re not having the best day in the world. Now, this should have been more surprising than it was, but you made all of your search checks last night, meaning you ended up with the half of Laura’s body that the boys didn’t find and gave it a proper burial in accordance with,” - his voice went up a as he quoted - as though Derek sounds like that at all! – “the ancient rites of your people.”

“Hey, that’s my sister you’re talking about! Real sensitive, Stilinski,” Derek groused, giving himself fierce, broody eyebrows in the ‘character portrait’ box.

“Back in Beacon Hills proper, Scott failed every single one of his gather information checks, leaving Stiles to save the day by eventually figuring out that Scott has been transformed into a … dum dum dum… werewolf! This is good news, because werewolves are badasses, but also bad news, because Scott has – against all odds –”

“Against -- hey!”

“...managed to hit it off with the attractive new girl at school named Allison. Stop interrupting the recap!” Stiles ordered, imperiously. “Scott, you and Stiles returned to the woods, looking for the other half of the girl, when you came across a figure standing moodily amongst the trees. You two combine your efforts and manage a strong Knowledge: Local roll to work out exactly who he is. It’s Derek Hale, the brother of the deceased…”

Derek had a gaming group. A gaming group! After long months of playing the quiet outlier in BHHS’s nerdiest clique he considered a tabletop game to be a serious step up the social ladder.

So the game wasn’t a system he was familiar with… that was alright. Derek had played Traveler and GURPS, White Wolf and Star Wars with his group back in New York, but never straight-up Dungeons and Dragons. He could make it work. And sure, his character was a little ridiculous -- a snarky, badass, leather-wearing werewolf version of himself…but that was okay too.

Because he had a gaming group, and it was being headed up by Stiles Stilinski, undisputed nerd-king of Beacon Hills High School.

The thing was, see, the thing was that broody character-Derek was fun to play, fun to draw, fun to be for a couple of hours every Tuesday night. He was handsome and stern and, as of a third period doodle in the margin of Derek’s Spanish notebook, apparently had a cool tattoo.

Derek had always wanted a tattoo.

Real-life-Derek was none of those things – round-faced, acne-plagued, and scrawny as hell with terrible, thick-rimmed black glasses. The only fangs he was sporting were the prongs of his recently tightened Corellian blood-stripe themed braces. Really, the only trait they shared was that both Werewolf-Derek and Real-Life-Derek were severely lacking in friends.

Derek gave his notebook Derek sketch a little speech bubble and filled it in: Como se dice “loser” en español?

In Real-Life Derek’s case his friendless status was largely due to the fact that his family had moved to Beacon Hills that summer. Well, part of his family -- his father was still in New York, unable to secure a transfer to the California branch of his office. While Derek hadn’t exactly suffered from an overabundance of friends back in New York, relocating the family hadn’t helped his situation.

He had always been shy, he’d always been slow to warm up to people… but it was a lot worse since the Incident in New York that had prompted their move. His therapist, before he’d stopped going, had told him he needed to break out of his shell, but the last time he’d tried to do that...

He tried not to dwell on it.

Derek met Stiles during his first week in Beacon Hills at the gaming shop nestled in a strip center half a mile from his soon-to-be-high-school.

Stiles caught his eye when he accidentally hip-checked the display of Warhammer miniatures he was perusing and brought the entire shelf collapsing down on him. He quickly learned that crashing, swearing, and chaos were fairly common side-effects of Stiles Stilinski.

When Derek offered to help restock the scattered figurines he’d quickly learned the abridged version of Stiles’ life story, his ice cream preferences, his opinions on Dick Grayson versus Jason Todd, his Reddit handle, his father’s profession, and the names of half a dozen equally nerdy friends Stiles sat with at lunch at BHHS. Stiles liked to talk almost as much as Derek disliked it, but he was easy to listen to and Derek found he didn’t mind the chatter.

He’d also learned that Stiles played skaven, and once the display was repaired they immediately unpacked Derek’s undead army from the trunk of his mother’s Corolla and played a pitched match on the stained gaming table in the back room.

Quick to smile and quicker to snark, Stiles had clearly sensed one of his own in Derek – but beyond Stiles and his little circle of friends Derek could barely name another student in the school,

Given that sad state of affairs, having a raging crush on Stiles Stilinski definitely ranked amongst Derek’s worst ideas ever.

High school lunch was at best a Darwinian exercise for nerds everywhere. Survival of the fittest, law of the jungle, tooth and claw, etc etc. Unfortunately for Derek he’d never qualified as ‘fit’ by any stretch of the imagination.

In his first semester at BHHS he’d been stuck in 4th period lunch (thanks to AP Pre-Cal), while Stiles, Scott and their other “nerd-herd” compatriots were all in 5th lunch. Derek quickly took to scarfing his lunch on a bench and then hiding out in the library rather than brave the wilds of the school cafeteria alone.

Second semester took a turn for the better when Stiles dropped choir in favor of Webmastering and wandered into 4th period lunch on the third day of class. Derek had been so shocked he’d dropped his apple and had to chase it under a table. It turned out most of the group now shared his lunch, which meant Derek suddenly had company.

Lots of company.

It was strange to be squished onto long plastic-topped benches and bump elbows with an entire group of friends at lunch. They made room for him when he was running late, squishing down until Derek’s white styrofoam tray could be squeezed onto the table. They laughed at his jokes and complained about chemistry together… Lydia even spent a reasonable amount of time trying to convince Derek to join the varsity math team.

Strange. Not bad, but strange.

It was particularly tough to spend forty-three minutes every day pretending not to stare as Stiles molested straws with his tongue. Derek had known from the moment that they met that Stiles was a frenetic ball of perpetual motion -- a real life Kid Flash. It was as if all the energy he pent up sitting still in class poured out of him at lunch in the form of run-on sentences, wild gestures and gut-deep laughter. Spills were a common occurrence at their table, so much so that the seats adjacent to him had been nicknamed the ‘splash zone’.

Today Stiles was wearing a henley, and while he might not have an 18 strength like Werewolf-Derek, gym class was doing wonderful, glorious, beautiful things for his arms.

Derek set his tray down and set about pulling the rubber bands from his braces and fervently ignoring how warm he felt beneath his hoodie. Opposite him Stiles and Scott were apparently creating the “SS Cheesy Goodness”, a sailing ship sculpted from a half-congealed red and white macaroni tray with a broken fork for a mast.

Just as they began to affix a napkin-sail with chewing gum, a shadow fell over Derek’s chicken tenders.

He looked up, blinking in shock as Lydia Martin shoved two trays onto the table, elbowing Stiles in the side to scoot him down the bench.

“Scoot over, Stilinski,” Lydia teased, flicking the side of Stiles’ head. Stiles groaned and slid sideways with such force he nearly fell off the far end of the bench.

Satisfied, Lydia slid Jackson’s tray next to hers at the edge of the table and he rolled up, dropping his backpack at his feet with a satisfied huff.

“God, the food here sucks,” Jackson observed loftily, scowling at their assorted trays. Jackson had been in private school until the eighth grade and loved to wax poetic about the grub at his previous school.

“Can’t recommend the macaroni,” Stiles agreed, returning to his sailmaking.

If Stiles was the nerd-king of Derek’s heart, Lydia Martin was the undisputed nerd-queen of the entire Beacon Hills High School. She was rail-thin with long, dishwater-brown hair that frizzed in the slightest breeze, thick hipster glasses and a Dr. Who hoodie semi-permanently attached to her body. She was a champion AMC mathematician and earned a letter jacket in her freshman year as part of the math club.

Derek had very few feelings in general about girls, but he knew Lydia was attractive. He had a sneaking suspicion that she wore her trademark oversized clothing to disguise a body boys with more than a passing interest in women would find unbearably distracting. He – along with most of the group at their table – figured it was only a matter of time before she unleashed her inner Queen Bee and started knocking men’s socks off.

As it was, the only socks she was knocking belonged to Jackson Whittemore.

“How’s it going, Lyds?” Stiles asked mere seconds after shoving a handful of curly fries into his mouth. He had a habit of licking crumbs from the corners of his lips instead of using a napkin like normal human beings. It was terrible.

Derek bit into his sloppy joe dejectedly, trying to ignore flashes of pink in the vicinity of Stiles’ lips.

The sloppy joe was weirdly vinegary and didn’t really make him feel any better.

Across from him Scott struck up a conversation with Jackson chiefly on the topic of lacrosse – a familiar conversation, if one that Derek had zero interest in. Those two were the sportiest nerds Derek had ever met, betting on the school matches and bickering over their fantasy football lineups at any given opportunity.

Derek didn’t give a shit what anyone else said – he was convinced that fantasy football was just Dungeons and Dragons for jocks.

He tuned the conversation out as he slurped on his soda, trying fruitlessly to wash the sloppy joe taste from his mouth. Ten minutes later the sound of his own name jerked him out of his reverie.

“…and so last night, Derek and Scott became kind-of-sort-of allies, except that Scott kind of thinks Derek murdered his sister, and kind of wants him arrested.”

The sound of his own name on Stiles’ lips made Derek look up and realize, with a faint blush, that Stiles was smiling at him. He stared back for a moment, awkwardly, then cleared his throat.

“Sorry, I wasn’t… I was thinking about something else.”

Lydia turned her bright eyes on Derek, all keen interest and raised brows. “Did you murder your sister?”

“What?” Derek’s eyes flickered over to the opposite corner of the cafeteria where Laura and her friends sometimes sat. He didn’t see her anywhere… but given that seniors were allowed to go off-campus for lunch, spotting Laura anywhere near the cafeteria was unusual.

“In the game,” Lydia sighed, the implied ‘you moron’ hanging silently in the air after her words.

Beside her, Stiles was flapping his hands and mouthing something indecipherable, staring at Derek as though he could bore a hole through his forehead with his eyes.

Derek pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Spoiler alert – if you want to know, you’ll have to join the game.”

He gave his drink a defiant slurp, ice rattling around in the waxy paper cup.

Lydia flipped her hair. “Fine,” she said, and Stiles let out a whooping cheer. “You guys win, we’ll join your creepy werewolf game.”

It said something about Beacon Hills High School that not a single student at the neighboring tables batted an eye at the outburst.

“Come over tonight,” Stiles turned on Lydia, grinning from ear to ear and practically vibrating with excitement. Derek’s heart sank as Lydia agreed after minimal wheedling and the two leaned their heads together, Stiles diving into the intricacies of character structure, promising to print her a sheet and even allow her a re-roll if she didn’t like her stats.

Distracted by their tete-a-tete, Derek accidentally stabbed his straw through the bottom of his cup, then scrambled for napkins as the entire table laughed.

The following Tuesday Stiles relocated their gaming session from the Stilinski basement to a card table set up in the living room. This had the added bonus of providing ample seating on their squashy oversized couch as well as better proximity to the refrigerator and snack resources of the kitchen.

It was also significantly more crowded than it had been the previous two weeks, which meant Derek had his mom drop him off twenty minutes early to guarantee his claim on the side of the loveseat closest to Stiles’ chair.

Stiles threw the door open and beamed at Derek, who offered up a bag of Cheetos and a shy smile. “There’s bowls in the cabinet to the left of the fridge,” Stiles told him before disappearing into the living room to set up the Dungeon Master’s screen - a glorified construct made of two manilla folders taped together - that hid his rolls from the group at large.

He really needed a real screen... Derek thought of the glossy trifold stands he’d seen in Big Bob’s comics and wondered how long he had until Stiles’ birthday.

By the time the others arrived, Derek had claimed his coveted spot beside Stiles and was thoroughly engrossed in sketching out ideas for the GM screen. They spent half an hour going over the recap, reminding the newcomers of game rules and explaining the dice used for action.

Lydia frowned down at the set of seven dice in front of her and poked one forward. “So … when I attack I roll one twenty sided die--”

“D20,” Stiles agreed.

“...and add my attack bonus, and when I get attacked I do the same thing but add the number here, the armor bonus? When do I roll the four sided ones? This seems stupidly confusing.” Lydia sniffed, flipping a page in the Player’s Handbook.

“The four-sided ones are D4s. Those are mostly damage dice,” Stiles explained, counting out the plastic polyhedrals. “The funky shaped ones are used mostly for different weapons, like, statistically a massive bludgeoning or slicing weapon will do more damage than a knife, so you roll the twelve sided one for a big hardcore weapon. You have the potential to do more damage, though not the guarantee. You could always roll a one or two.”

“Probability,” Lydia said, smugly. Derek figured it was probably dangerous to let a math whiz like her at a character sheet.

“The D4s are for like, magic missile, mostly, and you’ll roll that if you use your knife. Also, they make excellent caltrops, so don’t drop any on the floor. My dad hates them.”

“So I get to roll six-- uh, D6s,” Jackson agreed, running his finger down his sheet. “If I decide to like, punch Scott in the face. But I’m unarmed, so my damage is non-lethal.”

“Yep! Everyone hits unarmed, except for the werewolves, who can deal lethal or non-lethal based on whether they have their claws out.”

Stiles leaned back, lacing his hands behind his head. “Every time you want to hear something, or find something, or hide something, or see something or whatever, you have to roll your dice and meet a certain number,” Stiles said, simply. “Whether you’re good at it or not depends on whether or not you put skill points into it at character creation. So like, Derek put points in stealth and his werewolf senses and stuff, Scott put points into Lacrosse, but not as many as Jackson did… and the harder the thing you’re doing is, the higher the number. So you’d have to roll like, a ten to try and climb over a fence, but you’d have to roll a twenty to scale a building unless you had a rope, which would make it easier. That kind of thing.”

Lydia rubbed her temple, looking annoyed. “This sounds very subjective,” she complained, looking over her sheet.

“It’ll get pretty intuitive,” Derek promised, pouring himself a drink.

“Okay,” Jackson said, nodding to himself. His expression was far more interested than Derek had expected. “Let’s do this.”

“One more thing,” Stiles told Jackson and Lydia, cheerily. “Even though we’re using the armor class system, stats, spell lists and shit from D&D 3.5, I may let you skip some checks or have you make extra ones, depending. If you actually play out conversations you’re more likely to be successful. I really should have rolled the game up in GURPS or something, but Half Price Books only had the older D&D books and it’s a pain searching PDFs for stats, so...”

“Whatever, Stilinski,” Jackson snickered. “It’s not like we know anything about other systems or LARPing or whatever. It’ll be fine.”

“Technically this isn’t LARPing,” Derek said, irrationally annoyed on Stiles’ behalf. “And if you don’t care about playing, why are you even here?”

Jackson rolled his eyes in Lydia’s direction, but his girlfriend just flashed her painfully straight teeth in a sweet, yet patently false, smile. It made Derek run his own tongue over his braces self-consciously.

“I was skeptical too, but you’ll get into it once things get started,” Scott promised, patting Jackson on the shoulder and having his hand swatted away for his trouble. Lydia ignored their rough housing and perused her character sheet as Stiles set up their session with some ridiculous drama about Scott’s imaginary-girlfriend. Apparently he was dreaming about murdering her - how romantic.

“Alright, so Scott,” Stiles began. “You’ve explained the dream, but Stiles is looking at you skeptically. He says, ‘So you killed her?’”

Scott leaned forward. “I say, ‘I don't know. I just woke up. And I was sweating like crazy, and I couldn't breathe. I've never had a dream where I woke up like that before.’”

“Really? I have.” Stiles grinned, raising a brow. “Usually ends a little differently.”

Jackson snickered into his hand and Stiles, encouraged, waggled his eyebrows at them.

Scott waggled his own right back. “‘A,’ I meant I've never had a dream that felt that real, and ‘B,’ never give me that much detail about you in bed again.”

Lydia and Jackson jumped right into the game, introing their characters in a supremely awkward scene that included everyone but Derek. Stiles laughed as Scott’s set date with the too-good-to-be-true NPC Allison turned into the world’s most awkward double bowling date.

“Man, how come Jackson gets to be rich as sin and captain of the lacrosse team?” Scott complained, grumpily. Derek suspected he was actually disappointed he wouldn’t get to play through an imaginary date full of imaginary makeouts with his imaginary girlfriend.

“We came with a price,” Lydia informed him. “I’m the smartest girl in school, also, gorgeous.”

“I thought we were supposed to play as something we’re not,” Jackson said, surprisingly smooth. It earned him an unnecessarily tongue-filled kiss from Lydia that had everyone else at the table averting their eyes.

“Well,” Lydia said once she’d cleared her throat and wiped at her lip gloss. “just wait ‘til you hear about my super special secret character history.”

Jackson snorted. “Seriously though,” he said to Scott, “I just asked Stiles to make me better at something than you are.”

“Traitor,” Scott accused Stiles, who shrugged.

“What? The best parties have four people!” Stiles waved one long-fingered hand cheerfully. “It’s way easier to design encounters for four than for three.”

Derek tried not to think too much about how Lydia also had a super special secret backstory, and whether or not that made his own any less cool.

“Okay, so, Derek.” Stiles changed gears from the school cafeteria and Derek sat up a bit straighter in his chair. “What are you doing? Still hunkering down in your old burned-out house?”

“Yep,” Derek said, chewing on the end of his pencil. “Just like, you know. Doing pushups or something, I don’t know, he works out a lot.”

“Thank god someone around here does,” Jackson muttered. Derek glared at him but couldn’t say much in protest – Jackson had arms like trees.

Stiles rolled a set of dice behind his GM screen. “Around…. three o’clock I’m gonna need you to you roll a listen check.”

Derek’s werewolf hearing gave him a crazy bonus to listen, so he rolled his check and passed easily.

“You hear a car coming up the driveway and it turns out to be a police cruiser. What do you do?”

“I’m going to stay in the house and use my super-hearing to figure out what he wants.”

“Weenie,” Scott teased, and Derek flipped him the bird. “What? What if he finds your dead sister’s creepy dead body?”

“He won’t,” Derek said, confidently.

“You listen in and hear his radio go off, crackling in quiet of the house’s overgrown yard. It sounds like someone from the county wants to confirm that the structure is abandoned. You also hear a whining sound from inside the vehicle. You recognize it as a dog.”

“Do dogs like werewolves?” Derek wondered, figuring that could go either way.

Stiles grinned. “Roll and find out.”

It turned out that this dog in particular did not like werewolves, but Derek’s check to intimidate was through the roof – the natural 20 plus his bonuses meant that not only did the dog piss itself in the backseat of the cruiser, the cop himself was so intimidated by the barking that he abandoned his search altogether and left Werewolf Derek to his emo solitude.

Lydia decided to order pizza with Jackson’s credit card, and while the pair deliberated on toppings, Scott and Stiles played through Scott attempting to figure out if his dreams were real, followed by Lydia and NPC-Allison picking out what to wear, a scene that went on entirely too long for Derek’s comfort level. Lydia was clearly enjoying it, though - so he sketched her character in a minidress Laura wore to prom last year. Lydia excitedly made him tear the page out of his sketchbook and hand it over.

“Do me next,” Scott asked, hopefully.

“That’s what she said,” Jackson snickered.

Derek smirked, then drew Scott with buck teeth and a massive unibrow.

The dress-up scene segued into the date at the bowling alley (complete with a chipper soundtrack on Stiles’ iPod) and a long series of hilarious bowling checks that had everyone rolling with laughter. Scott actually managed three rolls under five in a row. His scores were so bad that Stiles actually rolled to see if Allison would ditch him for Jackson but decided that she failed her “be a dick” check and let her stick out the date, snuggling up to Scott and giving advice.

Derek had to admit Stiles’ GMing was improving with every session – he even managed to make imaginary bowling sound exciting.

By the time it was Derek’s turn again he was munching on a stolen slice of pizza, having fastidiously picked off every last mushroom. They picked up with Werewolf Derek at a gas station with his beloved Camaro, but from the grin on Stiles’ face Derek could guess he wasn’t going to like what came next.

“You recognize the man at the gas station as Chris Argent, and you remember that – well, roll to see what you remember.” Derek rolled. “Yeah, great, you remember that he’s a member of the Argent hunting family. He swaggers up to your sister’s sweet Camaro and is all, ‘Nice ride… black cars though, very hard to keep clean.’”

“I watch him, hoping he’ll give away information about the hunters and their movements,” Derek said, seriously.

“He takes the …the whatsit called, you know, the squeegee thingie out of the water bucket beside the pump and starts washing your windows for you.” Stiles dropped his voice to a lower pitch, his Mister Argent voice making Derek grin. “‘I would definitely suggest a little more maintenance… If you have something this nice, you want to take care of it, right? Personally, I'm very protective of the things I love.’”

“Ohhhhhhh,” Lydia hummed, snapping her fingers. Next to her Jackson leaned forward, listening intently.

“Is Allison like, secretly a werewolf murderer?” Jackson asked Stiles, who simply grined his best shit-eating grin. “I mean, Lydia saw her do that crazy flip out of the window…”

“Game-you doesn’t know that,” Scott reminded him, stacking his D6s in a tower, then adding a two D12s on either side. “You weren’t there.”

“Are you making a dice dong?” Jackson asked him, incredulous. Scott swore as the d4 he’d meant to cap his masterpiece with sent the entire thing tumbling down.

“Damn it, Jackson!”

“You’re so weird,” Jackson muttered, shaking his head.

“So what, are you just standing there?” Stiles studiously ignored them, keeping his eyes on Derek.

“Well, he has other dudes in the car,” Derek said, defensively. “If he’s just threatening me, whatever. But I don’t want them to fuck with the car or like, tag-team me. He obviously thinks Derek’s gonna go for Allison or something, but he hasn’t even met her yet, so…”

He shrugged, and Stiles nodded. “So then he’s all, ’But that's something I learned from my family. And you don't have much of that these days.’”

“Ouch!” Scott slapped the table. “What a dick!”

“He finishes going over the window and makes a comment about being able to see through your windshield. ‘See how that makes everything so much clearer?’ he asks you, looking smug as shit.”

Derek’s heart was pounding in his chest, but he couldn’t just let the guy touch his Camaro. It belonged to game-Laura, and game-Laura was dead. “I tell him he forgot to check the oil,” he decided after a moments’ thought.

“I hoped you’d say that.” Stiles grinned an unnerving grin and rolling his dice.

“Am I rolling initiative?” Derek asked, reaching for his d20 nervously.

“Well, you can, but if you go into combat he’s still going to have a move before the first round. He’s got the element of surprise working for him, after all.”

“Damn it,” Derek muttered. “Derek is so not surprised.”

“Okay…yep, he definitely calls his buddies out of the car and tells them to check your oil.” Dice hit the table again behind the screen, and Derek held his breath. “One of them knocks out the window of your Camaro with a single hit, shattering the glass.”

“Assholes!”

“Yeah…” Stiles rolled again. “You want to roll initiative and try to take them?”

“Do it,” Jackson demanded, pizza sauce caught at the corner of his mouth. “Seriously, you’re gonna let those dickbags fuck with your car without getting even? Dish it out, dude!”

“I do kind of want to see how I fare against regular humans…” Derek considered the d20, then shook his head. “But it’s not worth it.”

The entire table groaned except for Stiles, who just shrugged. “Fair enough,” he said, moving on.

“God, Derek!” Scott complained. “You never do shit! What’s the point of being a badass superpowered werewolf if you just stare at people in gas stations?”

“Shut up, Scott.” Derek rolled his eyes. “I was all alone.”

“You shut up! The only reason we’re playing this game is so you--” Scott grumbled, then yelped and scowled over at Stiles. Derek had a sneaking suspicion that Stiles had just kicked him under the table. “Just saying, you’re all into werewolves, so...”

“I’m not into werewolves,” Derek muttered, blushing.

“Yeah, right,” Lydia snorted. “You’ve read Blood and Chocolate like, four times this year already. And I bet you’re totally Team Jacob.”

“Nobody’s making you guys play,” Derek told Scott sullenly, then widened his glance to indicate the table at large.

“Hey, Derek, I don’t think he meant …” Stiles’ face fell at the sudden tension at the table. “C’mon, guys. It’s Derek’s character, he can do whatever he wants with him. That’s the point of the freaking game!”

“Whatever,” Derek muttered, sinking back with his arms crossed over his chest. “If Scott wants a fight so bad, he can pick it.”

In the end the session did end with a fight scene, but Chris Argent was totally uninvolved.

Instead, Derek and Scott took out their real-life aggression in an epic throw down inside the abandoned Hale house, the fight scene set to the manic background music of Stiles’ tasteless ipod playlist entitled “motherfucking throwdown, bitches!”

’You don't believe in God, I don't believe in luck
They don't believe in us - but I believe we're the enemy...’

“My Chemical Romance? Really?” Jackson asked with a sardonic rolling of his eyes.

“Really,” Stiles informed him, cranking the volume unapologetically. He turned to the table, flourishing his long fingers and grinning maniacally. “The house is huge, filled with crumbling walls and blackened window frames. At one time it would have been huge and warm, wide windows letting in sunlight filtered through the leaves of the Preserve’s trees, but blackened by fire it’s now just a creaking husk. The winter-dead branches cast eerie shadows across the floor boards inside. Most of the glass in the windows has been shattered by heat, weather, or the stones thrown by bored teenagers, but Derek has found a half-complete pane to stand beside, looming menacingly at Scott where he stands in the foyer.”

“Woah,” said Scott, mouth falling open. “Dude, you’re like… really good at this.”

Stiles smirked. “Yeah, I know.”

With that Stiles proceeded to share in great, gleeful detail the roaring of wolves and splintering of walls against the backdrop of phrenetic strains of My Chemical Romance pouring out of their speakers.

By the time Derek had successfully leapt down to the first floor and monologued dramatically at game-Scott, he wasn’t so much actually-pissed as feeling actively enthusiastic about the conflict. He cheesed up his character’s actions with corny neck-popping had game-Derek dust his sleeves off and adjust his jacket prissily, while Scott enthusiastically described the gruesome injuries accounted for by each and every vanishing hit point.

Stiles granted Scott bonuses to his dexterity, constitution and strength when he was werewolf-ified, but Derek’s were higher. After all, his character was older and a natural born wolf. How much higher wasn’t clear, though, as Scott stubbornly refused to share his sheet.

Derek had a clear upper hand in their tussle despite a few shitty rolls at the start. His will-checks to avoid transforming with a surge of anger or fear were definitely a hell of a lot higher than Scott’s, who kept wolfing out accidentally.

He may or may not have made a point of transforming back and forth a couple of times, just to show off.

Walls splintered and cracked and the banister of the stairs took a beating before Scott pulled himself up and started shouting. “This? This is all your fault! You ruined my life!”

Not only was Scott speaking in-character, but he was shouting so fervently that Stiles’ father paused in the doorway to the kitchen, holding his open beer in one hand and looking on with amusement.

“No, I didn't,” Derek said, calmly. He was totally going to draw this scene later.

“You're the one who bit me!”

Derek narrowed his eyes, the corner of his lip curling up in a snarl. “No, I'm not.”

“What?”

The look on Real-Scott’s face was so priceless Derek couldn’t help but grin. “I'm not the one that bit you.”

Jackson’s elbows were braced on the table, his eyes glued to Derek and Scott. Lydia’s head was settled on his shoulder, her pencil stilled against her character sheet. There was tension in the air - the keen, exciting tension that Derek had missed so much when he didn’t have a group to play with.

“There's another. It's called an Alpha. It's the most dangerous of our kind.” He glanced up at Stiles, who raised a brow at him. “Can I explain the pack stuff to them?”

“If you’re ready, go for it.”

So Derek explained pack hierarchy as he understood it, half-expecting Stiles to stop or correct him. He enjoyed knowing more than the other players, being secretive with that knowledge… so he was careful not to give too much away. He used broad strokes to explain Stiles’ carefully crafted werewolf world before ending his glare-filled exposition with a real punch to the gut.

““You're part of his pack. It's you, Scott. You're the one he wants.’”

“Aaaaaaand SCENE!” Stiles shouted, gleeful. “We’re done for the night… I will see you suckers next week!”

Everybody groaned.

As easy as that, Lydia and Jackson became semi-permanent fixtures of the Tuesday night gaming group. Lydia played a caricature of herself, though she insisted that pretend-Lydia be a bit taller, with shinier hair while also being inexplicably popular. She appointed herself the keeper of Jackson’s sheet and meticulously calculated the maximum value of each and every feat and skill point he was allocated.

“Jeez, Lyds, you’re a terror. You’re min-maxing the shit out of this!” Stiles accused at lunch, going over the adjustments she’d made to Jackson’s sheet. Lydia threw a fry at him.

“You said we could re-tool our builds after the first session,” she sniffed imperiously. “Besides, there’s no point in doing something unless you’re the best."

“Then how do you explain your dating life?” Scott snickered, then yelped as Jackson struck him in the nose with a piece of ice.

Lydia ignored Scott completely. “If Jackson is stuck being human -- for now -- he needs the best possible stats for survival in a game full of superhumans.”

Jackson’s character was, of course, a total tool. Derek took a perverse satisfaction in watching all of his scenes – he was great at spitting out douchey comebacks on the fly. As an added bonus, now that Jackson had with a gaming outlet for his pent-up aggression he grew far more pleasant to be around in real life. He shared his lunch with Derek one day when Derek was out of lunch money, and even offered to check over Scott’s Spanish homework.

Game-Jackson was the captain of the school’s lacrosse team, and that was how Derek learned that real-life-Jackson played wheelchair lacrosse five months a year.

“Intramural only,” Jackson groused, tipping the crumbs out of his back of potato chips. “The school won’t let me try out for the league team.”

“Is that even legal?” asked Stiles, tonguing his straw obscenely.

“Probably. I mean, even if it were allowed the chair would tear up the field,” Jackson admitted, grudgingly. “And the rules are a little different. My club always plays indoors on a court.”

“You should get some of those awesome leg-attachments and go out for track and field instead,” Scott suggested, eyes wide. “You know, like the ones you see on the Olympics!”

“Paralympics,” Jackson corrected. “And I don’t give a shit about track and field, I’ve been handcycling and rowing for like six years. Jesus, don’t you people know anything about adaptive sport?”

Despite the feigned annoyance, he was clearly pleased when Stiles seized on handcycling and began peppering him with questions.

“But they look so freakin’ sweet, you’d look like a fucking cyborg gazelle or some shit,” Scott continued on, blithely. Jackson just rolled his eyes.

“Handcycling sounds pretty badass,” Stiles interjected, a straw hanging out of his mouth.

“It is,” Lydia agreed, smugly. “You guys should come to a race sometime.”

Jackson looked oddly embarrassed, eyes dropping to his tray. “Yeah, right, like I need a cheerleading squad.”

“You don’t mind when I cheerlead!” Lydia reminded him, pursuing her painted lips into a pout.

“Yeah, well... you usually make out with me afterwards.” Jackson leered at her, his shyness evaporating only to be replaced by a grin. “I’m hardly gonna suck face with Stilinski at the finish line.”

“I’ll just be over here, sad and alone, crying myself to sleep…” Stiles sighed woefully, dropping his eyes back to the character sheet.

Derek smiled at the pack of them and allowed himself a moment to imagine a world in which he not only played sports but also occasionally won at sports and had a Stiles to make out with at the finish line. He imagined it enthusiastically.

“I wish we’d made the team last year,” Scott sighed, wistfully. “Or this year. Or...any year we’ve ever tried out for it, actually. Asthma sucks.”

“At least you have an excuse...” Stiles prodded him in the arm with his pencil, grinning. “Me, I’m just lousy at it.”

“You’re not a bad player,” Scott told him, loyally. “You just get all nervous when balls are flying at your face.”

“Don’t feel bad, Stilinski, lots of guys get nervous when balls fly at their face,” Lydia encouraged him primly. Derek took another bite of his lunch, trying to look as though he hadn’t spent any time whatsoever wondering about Stiles and balls.

“... at least you don’t have that problem,” Stiles returned sweetly, earning a round of “ooooohs” from the others at the table. Lydia swatted at Stiles, but he caught her hand and kissed the back of it, smiling his most winning smile.

Lydia pulled her hand away, shaking her head at him.

“We’d just have been bench-warmers anyway,” Stiles said at last, glancing over to grin at Derek. “At least this way we don’t have to change up our WOW raiding schedule.”

“Would have been easy PE credits, though,” Scott would not be easily consoled when it came to lacrosse.

“You think lacrosse is easy?” Jackson laughed outright, and just like that the pair of them had been drawn into a bickering match about the finer points of form and how much they should be bench pressing.

Derek listened, laughing and nodding along, then quietly slipped away to google ‘bench press’ in the bathroom.

That night, after a massive bowl of his mom’s specialty macaroni and cheese, Derek found a youtube tutorial and committed to figuring out the appeal of push-ups. It was… character research, just to make sure he was playing them right.

Pushups were integral to game-Derek, after all. They were pretty much his only hobby.

He hunkered down on the floor of his room and carefully spread his hands apart, balancing on his knees rather than his toes. His arms felt like noodles after the first six, but he made himself do ten that first night, increasing by one a night in the following days. Three nights into his new regimen he threw in few crunches for good measure, and five days later his mother drove him to Academy to buy a pull-up bar to install in his doorway. It wasn’t quite a bench press, but Derek found he liked the low, lingering ache in his arms.

It made him feel like Christian Bale Batman. Maybe if he got good enough he could try them upside down.

More important than his new efforts towards physical fitness, the game gave them all something to talk about. Even Derek, a relative newcomer to the school and awkward as an upended turtle, found himself talking more. As the most experienced player of their group, he was often brought in to settle debates between Jackson and Scott when they demanded the answers to life’s serious questions… questions like “can a tiger make a climb check with a rope?” (Technically, yes.) “What happens if a portable hole is placed within a bag of holding?” (Give you ten bucks if you try and find out.) “Make Stiles give me a deck of many things!” (… oh hell no.)

Best of all, Derek found himself talking to Stiles more. Stiles moved to the seat behind him in their homeroom class and began picking his brain during passing period.

On Thursday morning they spent the entire period with their heads bowed over scratch paper as Derek outlined how to generate battles. “....so the challenge-rating is how hard the encounter would be for four characters, so when you add multiple monsters in you divide the total by the number of characters in the party… but if the monsters are too tough you risk a TPK. Nobody wants that.”

Stiles grinned up at Derek, his eyes close enough that Derek could pick out the flecks of gold within. “Then I’d have to phoenix-down you all back to life, and that would be such a pain.”

“Does all this research this mean we’re going into combat this week?” Derek asked idly, shuffling the papers on his desk to hide the doodle of Stiles in his +1 Cloak of GMing that graced the corner of his math homework. He pulled out a fresh piece of paper and started sketching an outline of Derek in werewolf form.

“I always like to be prepared,” Stiles teased. After a few quiet moments watching Derek doodle, his expression relaxed into something Derek couldn’t quite recognize. “You’re … enjoying the game, right?”

“Of course,” Derek said, worrying the inside of his lip with his teeth. “It’s great. I’ve never played a -- what would you even call this genre? Magical realism? Alternate universe self-insert--”

“Self-insert? Dirty.” Stiles laughed at his own joke, then poked Derek in the hand with the eraser of his pencil until he looked up again. “I know your GM at your last school was probably better, but I’ve had a lot of fun designing the setting for this campaign…”

Derek allowed himself a faint smile, feeling - for the first time ever - grateful about the horrible cross-country move that had consumed the last year of his life. Leaving his friends and family in New York had been hard, but if someone had told him then that Stiles was waiting on the other side of it... “Boyd wasn’t nearly as animated as you. he was always a super-stoic rules-lawyer type. That fight scene this was really great… it was more exciting with you narrating the action.”

“Which one?” Stiles asked with a dry snort. “The real-life fight or the in-game fight?”

Derek had underestimated his capacity to blush, because his face began to burn even hotter at that. “Uh… yeah, the game fight. I’m sorry about the other one. I just… Scott’s always interrupting, and I don’t give him shit for his crummy description or his fixation with playing imaginary makeout sessions with his best friend.”

Stiles snickered. “You so do! Or at least, you used to. I guess that hasn’t happened so much recently…”

Derek shuffled his papers again, trying his damndest to will his blush away. Eventually he pulled out a suitable distraction -- his sketchbook -- and flipped it open to his current work in progress before shoving it at Stiles. He’d spent the last two nights sketching away at a full-page spread of game-Derek jumping off the top of the staircase in the Hale house, while game-Scott crouched, totally wolfed-out, at the bottom of the stairs. He hadn’t filled out the details yet, and the background needed tweaking and shading. He liked the depth of the room - it was fun to play with perspective, even if the proportions of Scott’s left hand were pissing him off.

“Oh my god,” Stiles breathed, tugging the sketchbook closer. “This is totally badass. Holy shit, Derek!”

Derek tried to look cool and collected as he shrugged off the compliment -- inside he was practically dancing. “The proportions are kind of wrong I think, game-Derek’s not that much taller than Scott in-game, but …”

“Whatever, this is crazy-good! Scott’s going to love this. He was actually really disappointed that you didn’t draw him like you drew Lydia,” Stiles admitted, eyes alight with mirth.

While Derek was searching for something to say that involved actually words rather than giddy squeaks, Stiles looked down at the sheet again and said in a wistful voice, “I’d really like you guys to be friends.”

It turned out that Derek was singularly incapable of saying no when Stiles looked so genuinely hopeful. Those big brown fucking Bambi eyes made even befriending Scott McCall seem possible.

“I could try harder,” Derek admitted, only somewhat grudgingly. When Stiles looked up again his expression was so singularly pleased that Derek felt warm and pleasantly tingly all over.

When the bell rang they broke apart to pack up their things, Derek carefully folding his sketchbook up and sliding it into his bag. He was shouldering his bag when Stiles, a few feet in front of him, was nearly knocked over by an enthusiastic shoulder-punch from Coach Finstock. “Well done, Bilinski!” he barked. “I haven’t seen you sit still for that long in… well, EVER.”

“Stilinski,” Stiles said with an automatic sigh, running a hand across his buzzcut.

Things were good.

Derek slowly got used to the feeling of Stiles’ eraser digging into his shoulder when he had a question in homeroom, and stopped feeling surprised when Jackson offered to share his pretzels in English class. Lydia gave up on her efforts to involve him in the math team, which suited Derek well enough. He still felt a little too envious of her closeness to Stiles to be overly friendly.

Plus… well. He’d never been very good with girls.

On Friday afternoon Stiles caught up with Derek in the hallway before his sixth period class, leaning up against the locker next to Derek’s with his hands stuffed deeply into his hoodie pockets and a flush to his cheeks. He must have been jogging to get there so quickly… the bell had barely rung, and Stiles’ locker was on the opposite side of the 200’s wing.

Derek grinned at him shyly as he whirled his combination lock into place with a click and cracked open the door, wedging it open with his hip as he shoved his books in.

“Sooooo…you got a busy weekend planned?” Stiles asked, one thumb hooked under the shoulder strap of his backpack. He was more fidgety than usual, shifting back and forth on the balls of his feet, the locker creaking behind him.

Derek slotted his fifth period folder into its place and drew out the one for his sixth period class, thumbing through it briefly to make sure his homework was still tucked neatly inside. “Not… not really,” he said, glancing over and hoping fervently he didn’t have any remnants of lunch stuck in his braces. “My sister Laura flew back to New York to look at schools yesterday. Cora and mom are off you know, sportsing and stuff.”

“’Sportsing?’” Stiles asked with a laugh that lit Derek up from the inside.

His laugh was ridiculous – a light sound complete with a full-body shake and the occasional shameless snort. There was an effortless openness to his face when he laughed, and the sound of it set Derek’s heart climbing into his throat.

“Cora plays softball,” Derek explained. “She does an offseason camp thing that’s doing a tournament, so mom’s driving out with the kids.”

“Fancy,” Stiles said with a half-grin that Derek found himself automatically returning. How did anyone spend time around Stiles without smiling like an idiot?

“Well, uh, if you’re not going to ‘sports’ along with them, do you wanna hang out or something?” Derek’s eyes snapped up to Stiles’ face, but Stiles had looked down at his hand, picking at a nail. “I mean, you know, to um… work on the game and stuff, I thought we could.... hang out. And -- jeez, wait, your dad’s still in New York, so you’re home alone all weekend, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Derek started, only to have his thoughts completely derailed by the idea of having an entire weekend of empty house and Stiles. He swallowed tightly, wondering when all the oxygen had left the room.

He took a moment to swallow and breathe, collecting himself. “That’d … be really great, actually. Mom left me money, I can order pizza...”

“Yeah?” asked Stiles, grinning. “Oh, man. This is going to be so excellent... Scott’s at his dad’s this weekend, and I’ve got some game stuff I wanted to run by you before the session on Tuesday, it’s gonna be awesome!“

“Oh,” Derek said, inwardly deflating. Of course this was a – a hanging out kind of hangout. Scott was out of town and Stiles needed someone to occupy his time.

“We might need to hash out particulars on your backstory, given where I think next week’s session might go,” Stiles added. His grin was ear to ear now, and even if this was a hanging out hanging out and not a date-type-hangout, at least he’d have a few uninterrupted hours with Stiles.

They could eat pizza and -- he could totally stay the night. Maybe the heater would break and they’d have to pile into his bed for warmth and--

“Derek?” Stiles asked, blinking at him.

“I’ll text you tomorrow,” Derek managed to say, clutching his folder to his chest awkwardly.

“Excellent! Not too early though, I usually grind on WOW Friday nights, you know, bastion of excitement and action that my life is. I plan to sleep until eleven at least,” Stiles told him excitedly, just as the warning bell began to chime.

Derek snagged his seventh period folder along with the homework he’d need for the weekend. “Okay,” he agreed, knowing his smile was edging towards goofy. “See you tomorrow, Stiles.”

“Later, Der-bear,” Stiles called back. Derek slammed his finger in his locker in surprise.

When noon on Saturday rolled around, however, Derek found a text from Stiles waiting for him.

‘HEY’ it read, followed by a series of short additions sent rapid-fire one after the next. ‘I AM SO SO SO SORRY BUT I HAV 2 CANCEL 2DAY’

Then, ‘JACKSON DUMPED LYDIA DURING OUR RAID LAST NIGHT, SHES KINDA FREAKING OUT SO IM GOING OVER THERE 2 DO DAMAGE CNTRL’

‘its cool, he typed, even though it wasn’t. text me if you wanna come over later’

He then made a silent attempt to smother himself in his pillow amidst the shards of his shattered hopes.

Stiles didn’t text him later, so Derek ate pizza by himself.

The session that following Tuesday was action-packed but short a player. Lydia was nowhere to be seen, but Jackson -- shockingly -- showed up right on time, holding a six pack of diet Mountain Dew and a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos and looking none the worse for the wear.

“What?” he asked defensively, eyebrows arching at Scott’s judgemental look. “It’s comfort food. God, you guys suck.”

Derek kept his eyes firmly planted on the tabletop as Jackson rolled in and tossed the chips onto the table. He really had no idea how to talk to Jackson about casual subjects… should you give condolences -- or maybe congratulations? -- for dumping someone?

“You doing okay, Jackson?” Scott asked awkwardly, taking the soda from him and sticking it in the Stilinski fridge.

“I’ll be better after we murder some imaginary monsters,” Jackson growled, setting up his spot at the table and dropping his dice down roughly. “And maybe if Stilinski quits bending over backwards to hang out with--”

“Dude, remember the rules.” Stiles frowned as he peered at Jackson, shaking his head. “We talked about the rules, and you agreed to leave that shit at home. I don’t care what’s going on in anyone’s lives - for our freaking sessions you leave it off the table.”

The stubborn set of Jackson’s jaw made Derek think he was going to protest, but he eventually subsided with a sigh and an eye-roll.

Stiles, evidently considering the matter settled, checked to make sure everyone had their character sheets in hand and then launched into his recap.

Derek reclaimed the seat to Stiles’ left (now his official spot) and opened a Mountain Dew with a crack-hiss, trying hard to ignore the obvious tension in the air. You heard the man, he admonished himself. Leave the crush off the table, Hale.

As Stiles cranked up his soundtrack and ‘My Darling’ started pouring out of the speakers, Derek’s subconscious did not feel particularly inclined to obey.

‘Don’t you wanna fall asleep, forget about tomorrow
Close your eyes, but not to weep
Forget about your sorrow...’

“-- da da da da da da da da da da da,” Stiles hummed, then glanced up. When he smiled, Derek’s heart did an awkward little flutter in his chest. “Last week I started with Scott, so this week Derek gets the first scene. We’ll start late one evening - let’s say it’s around midnight, while the full moon is still a ways away. What’s everyone’s favorite social reject up to?”

“He’s not a social reject! He just hates all of you,” Derek informed them, firmly.

“My bad.” Stiles leaned over and knocked his elbow against Derek’s, companionably teasing.

Game-Derek’s honor having been suitably defended, real-life Derek gave the question some serious thought. “He’d definitely be out and about looking for the alpha. Probably trying to be stealthy, using the cover of darkness to hide his movements from any unsuspecting eyes as he patrols Beacon Hills...”

“Okay Batman, what part of town are you in?”

Derek thought for a moment. “He’d stick closer to the main roads at night. The alpha’s been attacking humans, so he’d look for places where there’s more human activity. Is it a weekend?”

“Nope,” Stiles said, cheerfully. “Probably like a Wednesday.”

“Okay, then he won’t focus too much on the bars, more like… intersections or 24 hour filling stations and shit. That’s probably what he was up to last time, cruising and looking for the alpha before the Argents fucked with his camaro. Can the Camaro be fixed?”

Stiles scratched his chin. “Yeah, I feel like a window’d just take a day or maybe an overnight in the shop. It’s gonna cost ya, though. We can sort out the cash after the session. Roll me... spot, listen, track and let’s see how you do… oh, and do a stealth roll. Actually, I’ll do that for you, what’s your bonus?”

“Plus seven,” Derek answered, calling out his rolls as he went. “Spot is a 15, bleh. Listen is a 24, track is a 21…”

Stiles rolled his dice behind the screen and then burst into laughter. “Alright, okay. So, you running footsteps that can tell are somewhere between animal and human, and you recognize it immediately as that of a werewolf.”

“Follow it!” Scott ordered, excitedly.

“I follow it,” Derek agreed, drumming his fingertips on the tabletop.

“You follow it easily, though you aren’t sure if it’s managed to see you or not. It seems to be sticking to one of the roads. Are you driving or walking? I should have asked that before, whoops.”

“Driving. I figure he drives himself to an area, parks and patrols there on foot, then drives on to the next so that he can cover more ground in a night.”

“You really are Batman,” Jackson observed with a snort that was not entirely polite as he reached for the chips.

“So, you just happened to hear the footsteps when your camaro was parked outside that greasy dinner on the corner of Walnut and 8th street. When you recognize the footsteps you start running. Are you on ground level or trying to stay out of sight?”

“I jump across the rooftops and try to gain ground!”

“You hear a screech of tires and the sound of shattering glass coming from the direction that you’re heading. It’s a lot further away than you first suspected, though, as though they’ve been moving away from you too quickly for you to keep up. You keep running, and when you get about eighty feet away you suddenly scent the faint smell of blood on the wind.”

“Oooooooh,” Jackson crooned, wiggling his fingers at them.

“How much blood?”

“Hard to tell as you’re still fairly far away, but not a lot.”

“Does it smell familiar?”

“Roll a … god, what would that even be. Make it like, a gather information check to see if you remember.”

Derek rolled poorly and Stiles shrugged. “It smells human. You can’t figure out much more than that without getting closer.”

“I try to catch a glimpse of what’s happening.

Stiles grinned at him, picked up his own d20 and rolled behind the GM screen. His eyebrows drew up and Derek felt a stab of anxiety before he looked up and grinned wickedly. “You start looking for a vantage point just as a series of shots are fired.”

“I try to get closer to the blood, but keep as close to the roofs a I can. If there are any obstacles around I keep close and use their shadows to disguise myself.”

“Roll for ninja skills,” Scott ordered, cheerily. Derek flipped him off.

“You manage to do that, climbing down onto the packed earth and finding a blood spatter relatively easily. Roll another spot check -- yeah, that’ll do it, as you reach down to investigate you catch the bright flare of brutal red eyes as the alpha scales one of the walls nearby and climbs easily onto the roof.”

“Follow it!” Scott exclaimed.

“Quit backseat gaming!” Derek muttered back, scowling.

“You are so fucked, there’s no way you can take that dude alone without the party,” Jackson informed him, sagely sipping his Mountain Dew. “If Derek dies, make him re-roll as a human and let me be the werewolf.”

“If he dies, make him reroll and play Greenberg,” Scott suggested, earning a round of laughter from everyone but Derek.

“That’s cruel,” Jackson snickered. “Greenberg is an absolute dick.”

The last thing he wanted to do was tangle with the alpha without the party to back him up. Maybe he could track it back to wherever it was living, collect the party and then go after him as a group. “I follow him, but I’m doing it stealthily.”

“The dice will decide that,” Stiles practically cackled as he rolled another stealth check. “You climb up the wall and manage to make it to the rooftop of the building. You keep your body low as you dash after the Alpha, the scent of fresh blood making his trail plain as day -- he’s making no attempt whatsoever to keep you from following.”

“That’s nice, at least,” Scott offered, tone conciliatory.

Derek opened his mouth to snap at Scott, but remembered his conversation with Stiles in the hallway. He could try and be friendly, even if Scott was being annoying. “Maybe,” he said grudgingly. “Or maybe he’s trying to lure me someplace he can corner me and rip my throat out.”

“Optimist,” Jackson snickered.

“When you reach the edge of the roof you coil up and then leap, arm outstretched for balance. You can see an SUV parked on the side of the road, one of its windows busted out. A slim figure is standing next to it, holding a gun, and when you reach the apex of your jump another shot rings out, this time aimed at you. What’s your AC?”

“Shit!” Derek groaned down at his character sheet. “Uh… fifteen, I guess.”

“Yeah, whoever was in the car deeeefinitely beat a fifteen. Your left arm explodes in pain and you hit the rooftop hard, rolling to a stop. You take … eight damage, plus an additional five due to the special properties of the weapons.”

“That’s not too bad,” Scott said, eager to encourage. “That’s almost average, right?”

“Scotty!” Stiles exclaimed, throwing a palm to his cheek. “Did you just do math?”

Scott flicked a d4 in his direction, laughing.

“Fifteen is not average on two d6,” Derek muttered, erasing the hit-points and penciling in his new total. “How long before I can make a heal check?”

“You stagger to your feet, groaning, and look down at the wound. It’s emitting a strange kind of smoke, the gaping hole tinged with a strange bluish-purple glow. You grit your teeth and focus on the healing process, but absolutely nothing happens.”

“What do you mean, nothing happens?”

“Nothing … happens. You’re still injured, it still hurts. So, what’s your plan?”

Derek ran his tongue over the brackets of his braces, poking at the rubberband on the left-hand side. “I think it’s time for a strategic retreat.”

“I want to find Scott,” he said thoughtfully, ignoring Scott’s excited fistpump.

“I bet you’re wishing you hadn’t been such a dick last session,” Scott cackled.

“Bet you wish--”

“So,” Stiles said, raising his voice in a bid to steamroller through Derek’s snarky comeback, “what’s your plan? You’re parked about a mile away, and it’s the middle of the night.”

“How far away is Scott’s house?”

“A couple of miles, dude.”

“Do I think I can make it to the car?”

“Maybe. You’re going to need to roll another constitution check though, to see how you’re holding up.”

“I didn’t lose that many hit points,” Derek said, sullenly.

“Well, if the purple glowing didn’t tip you off, I’ll just tell you straight up -- this isn’t a normal gunshot wound,” Stiles informed him, rolling the con check on his behalf. “Oooohhmmmm. Well, the good news is that you don’t have to worry about making it back to your car.”

Derek breathed a sigh of relief.

“Because you definitely just collapsed against an air conditioning unit and passed out on top of a roof.”

“Fuck!” Jackson grunted, taking the words out of Derek’s mouth. “Shit, she was right below you, what if she comes after you? She’s gonna KO you right there, dude!”

Derek’s heartbeat pounded in his ears as Stiles picked up the dice again. His face was impassive as he rolled.

“This is kind of intense,” Jackson observed, making Derek jump in his seat.

“....it looks like your attacker has chosen not to pursue.”

Dropping his head to the table, Derek let out a slow, relieved breath.

“Holy shit dude,” Scott squeaked, setting his can down. “I totally thought you were going to die.”

“Me too,” Derek admitted, queasy.

“There was a chance,” Stiles admitted, inspiring absolutely no confidence in any of them. “But fortunately for game-Derek, that day is not today. When you wake up again the sun is shining in your eyes and your body is sweating... It takes you a few moments to realize you don’t know where you are.”

“I squint up at the sun, then pull out my phone.”

Another roll, Stiles wincing in sympathy as the dice bounced to a stop. “Ouch. You may have survived your interlude with the hunter, but your phone didn’t. Its hard cover was a casualty of the fall, and when you jam your thumb on the power button it doesn't turn on.”

Derek groaned again, chewing on his lower lip. “Fine. I … I get up, and I point myself in the direction of Beacon Hills High School.”

By the time game-Derek staggered into BHHS the school day was almost over. He’d failed one con check and passed out again at a bus stop, where a stranger woke him up by throwing change at him.

Stiles laced his fingers under his chin and turned his gaze to Scott. “Now, at the school proper Scott and Stiles are talking in the classroom. Scott, Stiles is harassing you with questions, tapping you on the back, reading your grades over your shoulder. He – as usual – blows through his coursework with a litany of As—“

“—and the occasional C-for-circumcision,” Jackson reminded them, resulting in a snorting round of laughter.

Derek’s eyebrows shot upwards as color crept up Stiles’ cheeks.

“That’s a long story, a long, long story best suited for another…” Stiles trailed off and cleared his throat. “Anyway, games-Stiles taps you on the back and is all, ‘Do you want help studying?’”

“Do I?” Scott asked, uncertainly.

“Mmm.” Stiles grinned into a fist as he considered it. “Well, I seem to recall you having some pretty exciting afternoon plans—”

“SHIT! No, I can’t, I'm studying with Allison after school today.”

Stiles’ grin grew wider, and Derek has no doubt the smile is both in-game and out-of-character. “That's my boy.”

“We're just studying, dude.”

“Uh, no, you're not.”

“No, I'm not? I’m pretty sure I am, because roleplaying a makeout session with my imaginary girlfriend played by my definitely dudely bestie is kind of--”

Stiles cleared his throat. “Game Stiles says, ‘Not if I'm forced to live vicariously through you. If you go to her house today and squander that colossal opportunity, I swear to God I'll have you de-balled!’”

“De-balled?”

“That’s what the man said.”

Scott wrinkled his nose, just as disgusted by the idea of Stiles cozying up to his balls out-of-character as he was when in-character. “Okay. Just…. stop with the questions, dude. This is getting to be way too much like real life.”

“Is this real life?” Derek quipped, eyes wide and round, making Jackson snigger beside him.

“’No more talk about the Alpha or Derek,’” Stiles agreed, batting his eyes innocently. “Especially Derek… who still scares me.”

Derek flashed Stiles a faint smile over the top of his knuckles, and Stiles smiled back.

Beside them, Jackson made a gagging noise.

“So Derek, it took you like... eight thousand hours to show up at the school, but you finally made it. You’ve been taking 1d4 damage per three hours thanks to whatever magical voodoo was in the bullet, let me roll that…”

Derek’s heart lurched and sank as Stiles read him his new hit point total. “Shit,” he said grimly as he stared at his single-digit count of hit points, the severity of his situation hitting all over again. “Okay. Can I see or smell Scott?”

“Roll a search check.”

Because it was his lucky freaking day Derek rolled a three. “Fuck,” he groaned, while Scott and Jackson high fived.

“Youuuu seeeee…..” Stiles was positively beaming as he rolled a percentile die. “Jackson. Or rather, you’re busy staring at the grimy linoleum floor of the high school and Jackson sees you limping up, totally focused on putting one foot in front of the other.”

“I move closer, equal parts fascinated and grossed out,” Jackson said firmly. “That’s pretty much my default reaction to Hale, so it shouldn’t be that hard to play. Can I tell that he’s been shot?”

Stiles considered that. “Probably not. He’s wearing his leather jacket, which is black and wouldn’t show a lot of blood, and I assume Derek’s being as subtle as he can be with a bullet in his arm.”

“Yeah,” Derek agreed, elbowing Jackson at the table. Jackson elbowed back and oh that’s right, his arms were massive. It was like getting into a shoving match with a boulder. “Where's Scott McCall?” he grunted, trying to sound tough.

Jackson tipped his jaw up and grinned, falling into character with ease. He was so much better at this than Scott. “Why should I tell you?”

“Because I asked you politely….. and I only do that once.” Derek threatened, resisting the urge to Z-snap.

“Oooooooooooooh,” chorused both Scott and Stiles at once.

Jackson laughed, then schooled his face back into his most serious, too-good-for-you expression. “Hmm. Okay, tough guy. You know, how about I help you find him if you tell me what you're selling him? What is it? Is it, uh, dianabol? Hmm?”

“How does Jackson know that much about steroids?” Scott stage-whispered to Stiles.

“Give you one guess,” Stiles whispered back, eyes wide and innocent.

Derek kept his eyes on Jackson, trying to channel his completely suave, buff, intimidating-but-also-possibly-dying-23-year-old-badass-beta-werewolf. “Steroids….?”

“No, girl scout cookies. What the hell do you think I'm talking about? Oh… and, uh, by the way, whatever it is you're out selling, I'd probably stop sampling the merchandise. You look wrecked.” Jackson said prissily. He punctuated the line with a suave sweep of one hand through his hair.

“He really does,” Stiles piped up, grinning. “People shouldn’t be that color. He’s looks like he spent the night unconscious in a pile of garbage -- because, well, he kind of did.”

Derek sniffed disdainfully. “It was a rooftop, not a dumpster. And Jackson is pissing me off, so I grab him by the neck and try to intimidate him into telling me what I want to know.”

“Dude!” Jackson laughed. “You’re such a dick!”

“Well, roll your attack to see if you connect. Jackson, you’re flat footed so leave out your dexterity when calculating your armor class.”

Derek rolled and whooped when he connected.

“Now Derek, roll to see if you can manage to intimidate him. You’ll take a penalty for looking like death warmed over, so just give me your total and I’ll figure it out.”

Derek’s dice chose that very moment to turn up a natural one. Derek groaned, dropping his head to the table.

“CRITICAL FAILURE,” Stiles cackled, steeping his hands together. He looked from Derek to Jackson and then back, his mouth split into a slow, unnerving grin. “Jackson, Derek reaches out to grab and shake you, but he’s so weak he ends up staggering forward into you. Under the stress of the poisoning and the overwhelming noises and smells of the high school, Derek’s control slips and his claws sink into the back of Jackson’s neck.” The sound of dice rolling behind the DM screen made both Derek and Jackson flinch. “You take three points of damage, J, and … well. You were just clawed by a werewolf.” He grinned wickedly. “We’ll need to talk.”

“You suck!” Jackson told Derek petulantly, but Derek refocused on his sheet before Stiles could come up with something worse than a little scratch.

“What?! Maybe you’ll become a werewolf… we’d all be happier if you weren’t whining about being human,” Derek said with a roll of his eyes. “Fine, I'll find him myself. Can I do a listen roll or something? How long do I have to wait to re-roll my search?”

Stiles humphed into his hand. “Well, you don’t have any more information to go by, and everyone’s about to flood the halls as they head out for the day, which isn’t gonna help your rolls. You sure?”

“Yeah.”

It took a little time, though not enough to make Derek roll another d4 for damage. Eventually a thought occurred to Stiles, making his face light up with excitement. “Oh, I have the perfect -- here. You’re listening in, and while you don’t hear Scott’s voice you do hear someone talking about him.”

Scott groaned, but Derek leaned forward nervously. “I listen in!”

“Okay!” Stiles turned and began rifling through the folders he kept in the messenger bag leaning up against his chair leg. The gesture gave Derek a view of the back of his neck, pale and just a freckled as the rest of him.

He looked away quickly.

“Okay, here it is.” Stiles returned to his usual position and folded out a piece of paper. “Lydia and I did this over chat on Sunday. You overhear two girls, Derek. The first one says…” Stiles pitched his voice up into an absolutely terrible impersonation of a woman’s voice. “‘Scott's coming over? Tonight? We're just studying together.’
“Then the other is all…. ‘Just studying’ never ends with just studying.’ You don’t really know who is who, since I don’t think you’ve ever met the girls before.”

Jackson does this thing with his eyebrows that immediately makes Derek regret having seen it.

“’It's like getting into a hot tub-- somebody eventually cops a feel,’“ Stiles reads blithely. He sounded ridiculous, reading a conversation with himself in two absurd, squeaky voices. Lydia would probably slap him if she knew how he was making her sound in-game! “‘Well, so what are you saying?’”

“’I'm just saying, you know, make sure he covers up.’” Scott and Jackson groaned, making Stiles laugh.

“I do not want to hear this,” Scott wailed.

“Well, Allison looks almost as scandalized by that as you do right now, Scott. I guess that’s appropriate, seeing as you two are like imaginary soul mates or something. Not that any of you can see it, of course.”

Scott raised a hand. “Dude, I feel like I need to defend my imaginary girlfriend’s honor! She’s so not putting out on the second date.”

“Not with that attitude she’s not,” Stiles laughed.

Jackson shrugged. “She can put out if she wants, it’s a free country.”

Derek buried his face in his hands for what felt like the umpteenth time that night. “Oh my god, please, I don’t need to know any more than I already do about you and Lydia’s sex life—“

“Well you aren’t going to be hearing much more anytime soon,” Jackson snapped, the humor disappearing from his expression.

“Can it, people, I’m trying to scene here.” Stiles rolled his eyes at them, then continued in his squeaky voice. “‘Hello, snow white! Do it with him with a condom.’”

Derek spluttered, unable to control his laughter.

Stiles wiggled his eyebrows at the paper. “‘Are you kidding? After one date?’ ‘Don't be a total prude, give him a little taste.’ ’Well, I--I mean, how much is a little taste?’” Stiles set the paper down momentarily, shaking his head and making a face. “Oh, God, this is weird to read out loud. I had no idea girls talked this much about sex.”

“What did you think they talked about?” Jackson asked, rolling his eyes again. “We’re teenagers. Everyone talks about sex.”

“I never really…”

“Finish reading it!” Scott demanded, leaning forward hopefully. “I need to know if it’s like she likes me or if she like, likes-me-likes-me likes me.”

“You’re not there, dumbass,” Derek reminded him, sighing with gusto.

“Also, she’s not real,” Jackson offered, helpfully. “You guys really need to get laid.”

Stiles laughed, running one finger down the page to find his place. “Also, what does that even mean?”

Scott blushed, lower lip firming up in what Derek recognized as an incoming sulk. Stiles, for his part, completely ignored it.

“Okay, so Lydia’s all … ‘You really like him, don't you?’ and Allison says ‘Well, he's just … different. When I first moved here, I had a plan -- no boyfriends till college. I just move too much. But then I met him, and he was different. I--I don't know, can't explain it.’ She sounds kind of sheepish about it.”

“Awwwwwwwww,” Scott breathed, a dopey smile replacing his pout.

“So then Lydia gets that fuck-all-y’all-I’m-the-smartest look she gets--”

“I can’t see her face in a listen check,” Derek grumbled, but Stiles ignored him.

“--and says ‘I can. It's your brain flooding with phenylethylamine.’ Allison looks at her all disbelieving but she just shrugs and tosses her hair. ‘I'll tell you what to do.’”

“Yeah she will,” Jackson agreed, smugly. Scott must have kicked him under the table, though, because he winced and glared across at each of them, one by one. “What?”

“So,” Stiles said, clearing his throat. “Derek, what do you do?”

“That’s it? That’s… totally useless, good job Lydia and Allison.” He rubbed his temples. “I guess I’ll head to the parking lot to wait for Scott. He’s gotta pick up his bike to ride to her place.”

“Staaaaalk-er,” Scott sing-songed across from him.

“The final bell rings, at last, and you all head to the parking lot from your respective classes. Jackson, you’re giving Lydia a ride home--”

“Yeah, right--”

“You are giving Lydia a ride home because you aren’t broken up in-game, so she meets up with you and you head out. Stiles goes and gets in his jeep. Scott, roll me a spot-check.”

Scott rolled obediently then pumped his fist in the air. “Natural nineteen, yeah!”

“Dude, don’t get so excited, you needed like… a ten or something,” Stiles laughed. He rolled another check behind the screen and nodded. “So you and Stiles both see Derek, standing in the parking lot aaaaaaaaand making another con check. Derek, let’s see how the old bod’s holding up against that poison…”

The next week Stiles cancelled their session entirely - he, Lydia, and Jackson had all come down with a terrible stomach bug. Lydia and Jackson getting sick at the same time made sense as they had been sucking face up until a week ago... but Derek couldn’t help wonder what exactly Stiles had been doing on those evenings he stayed over at Lydia’s to get himself sick too.

Half of his friends group being ill also had the unfortunate side effect of sticking him alone at the lunch table with Scott… and while things weren’t as tense as they had been when the game first started, Derek wasn’t at all sure what to talk to Scott about. Scott played WOW and a lot of X-Box, but Derek was more of a Marvel and old-school Star Wars kind of guy.

On the third consecutive day of absent friends, stilted conversation and awkward silence, Derek unceremoniously shoved his open sketchbook in Scott’s direction, desperate for something -- anything -- to talk about.

When Scott looked down at the drawing of game-Derek leaping down the stairs and game-Scott wolfing out he actually dropped his cup of lemonade in shock. The cup fell in slow-motion, hitting the edge of the table and wobbling for a horrible moment before tipping sideways. The sticky contents sloshed out across the tabletop in a tidal wave of sugar.

Derek yelped and jerked the sketchbook back in panic, examining the corners for any trace of spillage and completely ignoring the miniature waterfall pouring into Scott’s lap.

Scott jumped up, swearing and sputtering and shoving the cup away. A secondary wave of citrus-flavored syrup quickly soaked through the bottom of the paper basket holding Derek’s fries.

“Fuck, oh fuck, shit shit shit I am so sorry Derek, man, I really - I didn’t mean to, is it okay?”

“It’s fine.” Derek grit the words out between clenched teeth, knuckles white around the spine of the sketchbook. He scrambled to his feet and tugged his backpack out from under his seat. “It’s -- I think you somehow managed to miss it.”

“Ohthankgod,” Scott bit his lip hard, face ruddy with embarrassment. “You worked so hard on that and I just - I didn’t think you were gonna draw me after-- and I --”

A group of girls was glaring at them from the other half of the table. “Maybe you wanna do something about the tsunami over there?” one sneered, giving them a judgemental look.

“Oh, yeah, uh, do you guys have any napkins?” Scott asked sheepishly. Derek rolled his eyes stalked over to the condiments counter, sketchbook still in hand, to grab an entire box of napkins.

As he crossed the cafeteria again, a wave of giggling pulled his attention to the table where Laura sat. A flush swept across his face when he realized that she -- along with all of her popular, pretty friends -- was watching him and laughing.

Laura was skinny, clear-faced and painfully gorgeous -- painful in the “oh god, are you two seriously related?” kind of way. She’d inherited their mother’s long, silk sleek dark hair and had mastered the art of subtle makeup at age twelve. Her teeth were straight, her grades were great, and she ended up with a solo in every single choir concert.

What’s more, Laura had yet to forgive Derek for single-handedly necessitating the family’s cross-country move that had jerked her out of high school the summer before her senior year and preventing her from graduating alongside her friends.

He knew he was in trouble the very moment she leaned out into the walkway between the long cafeteria tables to block his way.

“Is there a reason you’re tracking sticky yellow stains across the cafeteria, baby brother?” Laura asked sweetly, applying another layer of chapstick to her lower lip.

Derek instantly felt short, awkward, and painfully uninteresting. It was one thing to be teased, but another thing entirely to be teased by Laura -- Laura who had always stuck up for him back in New York, Laura who had given him a pep talk before his first school dance...

Laura ate off-campus ninety percent of the time; why the hell did she have to be here today of all days?

“I, uh.”

Despite the trauma of a cross-country move it hadn’t taken Laura long to make a place in the upper echelon of high school society in Beacon Hills. Her table was crowded with sweatered, preppy kids boasting shiny white teeth and way too much makeup. A handsome, dark-haired guy sat beside her wearing some kind of sports shirt and a ridiculous fuzzy cap, complete with awkward earflaps. Derek didn’t know his name, but felt absolutely certain he was a quarterback or pitcher or star bowler or something. Laura had always liked jocks.

“...Scott’s a walking disaster who can’t handle his drinks,” he finished his thought, looking away. The entire table burst into laughter, leaving Derek to wonder how exactly he’d managed to make that statement funny.

“Who?” the guy asked, sliding an arm around Laura’s waist. His hand was extremely low against her back. Their father would not have approved.

“A friend of mine,” Derek said, tightly.

“You run around with McCall and his nerd herd, huh?” Stupid Hat Guy asked, grinning at him.

“Well--”

“You know, he tried out for lacrosse this year - with that buddy of his, the one with the ridiculous nose? It was the most entertaining tryout I’ve ever freaking seen - one was running full-tilt, tripped over a shoelace, and faceplanted into the turf so hard he managed to cough out his mouth guard and hit himself in the eye with it.”

“Back off,” Derek snapped, face flushing hot at the thought of Stiles’ humiliation. “Just -- shut up, why don’t you.” Hunching his shoulders, he started to walk away as another cacophonous round of laughter broke out.

“Hey, kid, I’m not finished with you!” Stupid Hat Guy hefted himself up and away from the table.

Laura snagged at his hand with her own, but he jerked his fingertips away. “Greenburg, what are you--”

“Shit, you’re leaving a slime-trail, Hale. Why the fuck are you covered in soda? Your boyfriend throw a drink in your face?”

“He’snotmyboyfriend.” Derek’s words ran together as he took a step backwards. He tried to look past the barrel-like torso to Laura, but Stupid Hat Guy -- Greenburg -- was already shoving a hand into his shoulder. When Derek flailed a hand out for balance he snatched up the sketchbook and started thumbing through it roughly.

“Give that back!” Derek yelped, hand snapping out to reclaim his stolen property. “Come on, dude, it’s not --”

“What the fuck is -- these are pretty good, kid. Creepy, but good. You got some kind of weird furry fetish or something? Check this one out,” he cackled, tilted the book sideways so that his other friends could see.

“Jesus, why do you have to be such a dick?!” Derek snarled, his face flushed red and hot. The table burst into laughter again.

“You just got told, dude,” one sniggered.

The laughter of his friends only served to make Greenberg angrier. “What did you call me?!”

Derek set his jaw. “A dick.”

“He’s got you pegged, Greeny,” someone behind them called.

“That one’s got a mouth on him!”

“You are being a dick, Greenberg,” Laura said, stepping up behind him and snapping the sketchbook out of his hands. That was the sister he remembered -- her gorgeous face was pinched in a mixture of annoyance and something Derek hadn’t seen in a long time. Worry, maybe? Sympathy? “And you lot, really?”

“You started it,” one girl pointed out, slurping from her straw.

Greenburg turned his irritation on Laura instead. “Fuck you, Laura. You invite this pimply little nobody over and then--”

“I was giving him a hard time in an appropriately sisterly fashion, you’re being an obnoxious bully. If I'd realized you were such a tool I'd never have gone out with you,” Laura snapped, tossing her hair over one shoulder.

"What?"

"You heard me. Grow up ...and find a new date for the dance while you’re at it. I'd rather sit at home chewing glass than dance with you.”

With Greenburg distracted Derek was able to snatch his sketchbook out of Laura’s hand with enough force to rip one of the pages out. The sound echoed in his ears as he fled across tge cafeteria, dropping the box of napkins into the sticky puddle on Scott’s table without a word.

Scott’s eyes were wide enough that Derek suspected he’d watched the entire encounter unfold. Of course he had -- from a safe distance, not bothering to interrupt! Derek lifted his eyes and realized that Scott hadn’t been the only one staring.

Half the cafeteria had their eyes glued to Derek.

Scott cleared his throat. “Hey, Derek, are you--”

“Leave me alone,” Derek snapped, grabbing up his sketchbook, tugging his hood over his head and beelining out of the cafeteria.

During his free fifth period, Greenberg and three of his senior friends gave Derek his very first black eye.

Derek was on angry pushup number 45 when a tapping on his window sent him face-planting into the hardwood of his bedroom floor. He scrambled away from the window frame in an awkward crab-walk, heart rate spiking. God, there was someone out there on the roof, she was here, she’d found--

He lurched to his feet and made a hasty retreat for the door, one foot catching on the trash can next to his desk. It went skittering away, trailing papers all across the floor of his room, and Derek followed it down in an awkwardly flailing pile.

The force of his graceless impact knocked all the breath out of Derek; when he rolled over on his back he was croaking in big, unpleasant swallows of air.

Whoever was outside tried the sash -- which was unlocked, of course, because he was so fucking stupid, because he never learned -- and hoisted the pane up in one smooth motion. “Derek! Hey, Derek, crap, I didn’t mean to scare you!”

Derek was gasping like a fish, trying to catch his breath, his terror segueing into a combination of anger and horrified embarrassment as Stiles rolled over the window sill, one foot narrowly missing the lamp on his bedside table. He had a panicked look on his face -- oh, god. He’d seen everything.

Flushing, Derek managed to right himself into a sitting position. He crossed his arms across his shirtless chest and looked away.

Stiles took a step backwards after straightening the lamp, apparently just tuning into the awkwardness in the room. “I… sorry, um. Are you…”

“What are you doing here?” Derek asked, not meeting his eyes. One of elbows stung, so he rubbed at it. It was scraped red where he’d banged it into the floor.

Stiles shifted awkwardly beside the window, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Scott told me you had a shit day, and you weren’t answering your phone, or facebook messages, or Skype..”

He trailed away as he realized that Derek didn’t look amused -- or the least bit pleased to see him, really. “Please… don’t do that again. You’re the freaking Sheriff’s kid, you can’t go around breaking and entering, Stiles!!”

“I didn’t break anything! It was unlocked!”

“Well, do that again in this house and my mom’s likely to shoot first and ask questions later,” Derek told him flatly, rubbing at his biceps. His bare arms had goose pimpled under Stiles’ gaze.

Stiles grinned at him, moving over to drop onto the bed and look around the room. “What, you get a lot of midnight visitors crawling through your windows?”

Derek looked away.

“...Derek?” Stiles asked, leaning forward worriedly before running his hands through his hair, clearly frustrated. “Oh, god, I just stuck my foot in my mouth, didn’t I? I do that. I’m sorry, Derek, I’m really sorry - I always forget I don’t know you like I know Scott and Lydia. God, I fucking - I talk too much.”

Derek suddenly felt very, very tired. He closed his eyes and tried to ignore the throbbing of his bruised cheekbone and the ache of his ribcage where he’d been kicked -- thoroughly -- while hunkered against a locker.

“God damn it. Look, I’ll just…” Stiles trailed off, shoving his thumb awkwardly at the window.

“No, no,” Derek started, taking a step forward as Stiles moved away. “It’s fine. You just … kind of freaked me out, but it’s fine. Stay?”

Stiles lingered for a moment at the window with his eyes glued to Derek’s face. “Yeah. Uh, yeah. Okay.”

“Sit or something, you’re making me nervous,” Derek muttered, pulling a shirt out of his dresser and shrugging it on over his painfully bony shoulders and splotchy bruises. He’d been working out but hopefully he didn’t smell too bad … but there was no way he was venturing out to the bathroom shower.

When he turned around again Stiles was sitting on the side of his bed, staring fastidiously at the wall. “Scott told me what happened at lunch, but he didn’t tell me someone had hit you,” he said, looking pissed off. “Who the fuck hit you, dude?”

“Does it matter?” Derek asked morosely, reaching for the towel-wrapped bag of frozen peas he’d liberated from the freezer. He settled onto the bed next to Stiles and laid back, adjusting the makeshift cold-pack on his face. The move had the added bonus of obscuring Stiles’ angry expression. “And aren’t you like, plagued?”

“It does matter - and I’m fever-free for 24 hours as of two pm today, so whatever. Don’t avoid the question.”

“They cornered me during my free period after lunch,” Derek tried to shrug a shoulder against the bed and hissed at the soreness of it. Beside him, Stiles shifted - the pillow whooshed out air as he flopped back against it.

“We’ve got to talk to someone about this,” Stiles said, fervently. “Bullying is one thing, but we’re talking assault for sure. Greenberg can’t--”

“Nobody’s talking about it,” Derek groaned. “It’s not that simple, dude.”

“It’s the simplest thing in the world!” Stiles declared, affronted.

“I think Laura’s dating Greenberg,” Derek explained, squinting into the darkness of his bag of peas.

“Your sister Laura?”

“She was teasing me during lunch--”

Stiles made an affronted noise.

“--sisterly teasing, it was fine. But Greenberg got involved and it got out of hand. And Laura -- Laura and I don’t really get along. Pointing the finger at her would just make things worse.”

“Oh my god, your sister sucks, dude. You didn’t tell your parents Laura was there?”

Derek was silent for an awkward, uncomfortable moment. “They haven’t actually seen me. I don’t even think Laura knows about it. I walked home after the fight.”

Okay, using the word ‘fight’ was a bit of an exaggeration, but he certainly wasn’t going to admit to Stiles that he went down without landing a single punch.

Stiles was quiet for a long moment, shifting in a way that made Derek suddenly and agonizingly aware that they were all alone and sprawled across his bed. “The shiner’s pretty rough, dude. They’re going to notice.”

“I know, I just… have to figure out what to say.” Derek hadn’t talked about his home life much to anyone at school, even Stiles.

He took a deep breath.

“It’s my fault we moved to Beacon Hills. It was -- complicated. My parents ended up with no real choice but to pick us all up and move us right before the start of Laura’s senior year. My dad’s job wouldn’t transfer him, so he’s still in New York and mom is here, working dealing with the three of us. We’re not allowed to talk to anyone back home. Laura’s not even supposed to have contact with her friends for another three month.”

“Dude,” Stiles gaped, rolling over to shove at his arm and dislodging Derek’s peas in the process. “Are you telling me you’re in witness protection? Because you really shouldn’t be--”

“It’s not witness protection,” Derek grabbed his peas and thwacked Stiles in the chest with them. “I don’t really want to talk about the details, I just... Laura has a right to be pissed and I don’t want to ruin her life any more thoroughly than I already have, so I’ll just stay away from Greenburg from here on out and everything will be fine.”

“So it was Greenburg!”

Groaning, Derek kicked at his feet in warning. “Stiles…”

“Ow! Ow, ow, okay, okay.”

They lay there in comfortable silence for a bit longer, before Stiles reached out to run his thumb along the outer edge of Derek’s black eye. It was still swelling, his eyebrow puffed out and and lower lid taut and tiny, impinging on his vision just enough to be annoying. Derek froze, incapable of tearing his eyes away from Stiles’ face, his fingertips soft and gentle against his skin.

“For the record, I think you’re being a dumbass,” Stiles said, though his voice was soft. “But it’s your shiner, so you get to make the calls. For now, at least - if they come after you again I’m telling my dad.”

Mesmerized by the proximity of him, Derek nodded dumbly.

A smile tugged at the corner of Stiles’ mouth. “Did you eat dinner?”

“...huh?”

Stiles heaved his legs over the edge of the bed and grabbed Derek’s forearm. “Did. You. Eat. Dinner. I’m betting you’ve been up here doing angry pushups since school ended - and it just so happens that my jeep’s around the corner. I’ll buy you a chili cheese dog.”

Derek allowed himself a weak grin, feeling a warm bubble rise up in his chest. “Fine. But only if it’s, Sonic. I’m staying in the car.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Stiles grinned and threw the window open again, cold wind blustering in. Derek grabbed his jacket and, after checking to make sure his bedroom door was still locked, followed him out the window.

The secret of Derek’s mangled face only survived until the following morning when his mother came downstairs. Derek was sitting in stony silence opposite his sister and was, unfortunately, the very first thing Talia laid eyes on in the kitchen.

Laura, for her part, at least had the decency to look horrified by his injuries. The idea that she hadn’t known her friends had been trolling the hallways looking for Derek in his free period was comforting.

Talia sent Laura off to school, called in sick, and took Derek to a doctor. “It’s a head wound, baby,” she said sharply, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. “Blows to the head can cause concussions, visual impairment…”

“I think I’d have noticed if I was going blind,” Derek insisted, but the argument was futile.

He missed the entire morning, his mother dropping him off school just in time for lunch, a take-away bag tucked under his arm. When he finally reached his locker he found Stiles standing there, Scott looking grim at his side.

“Are you my escort?” Derek asked, trying to sound cheerful.

Stiles’ shrug wasn’t a yes, but it wasn’t a no either.

Scott stepped past him, staring miserably at Derek's bruised cheekbone. “Derek, dude, I am so, so sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Scott.”

“I just keep thinking, if I hadn’t dropped my soda…”

“It’s fine,” Derek repeated, spinning his combination lock and cracking his locker open. “But you should give me your e-mail. I scanned that picture, I figure it’s safer to give you a digital copy than let you handle my sketchbook again…”

Scott blew a breath out and began a slow, hopeful smile. “Ohthankgod. Not to be a dick, but I was super afraid that was the page that got ripped…”

Derek laughed and reached for his books.

Despite the drama surrounding Derek being pummeled outside the math wing, the days ticked on. Lydia didn’t show up in game for another two weeks; worse, she made sure those two weeks were miserable for everyone by sitting at the lunch table each day and alternating between stony silence and angry glares at Jackson. Jackson always made a point of sitting as far from her as humanly possible, putting everyone else at the table in the middle of their drama.

It was well into February before she and Jackson both appeared at the Stilinski household again, and Stiles (after another brief speech about Leaving Their Bullshit At Home) tossed them into a scene together immediately.

“You’re in a car together, and you’re -- surprise! -- fighting!” he said, waving one hand dramatically. “It’s date night and Lydia always picks the movies, but the movie she wants to watch is--”

“The Notebook,” Lydia said, primly. “Because jerkoff high school boyfriends have no idea what real love is and require instruction.”

“Don’t you even--”

“Leave your shit at home!” Stiles cut through the tension, “or I start docking XP. I’m fucking serious, guys, if you can’t handle it you’re both out.”

Jackson glared down at Stiles, but took a deep breath and slipped into character. “Jackson’s sick and tired of the fucking Notebook, so his money’s on something sporty and actually interesting. He tells her that Hoosiers is not only the best basketball movie ever, it is the best sports movie ever made.”

“It is good,” Scott interjected, appreciatively.

“No,” Lydia said, syrupy sweet.

“It's got Gene Hackman and Dennis Hopper.”

“No.”

“Lydia, I swear to god you're gonna like it!”

“No.”

“I am not watching The Notebook again!”

“Roll for it,” Stiles suggested, smiling. “Each of you roll a d20, luck of the draw.

There was a clatter of dice across the table, swiftly followed by a groan and a whoop.

Jackson smashed his face into his palm. “This is so fucking ridiculous. My character stomps inside, looking pissed a hell, and half-shouts at the staff for someone to help him find the fucking notebook.”

Stiles steepled his fingers behind his GM screen with a grin.

Laura didn’t apologize for her part bringing around Derek’s black eye -- and she didn’t thank Derek for failing to mention that she’d watched whole thing unfold. In fact, Laura stopped making eye contact with Derek altogether, and didn’t show up in the school cafeteria at all.

The eye in question healed slowly, the swollen purple-maroon of it slowly fading into blue, then a sick-looking browny green that had Derek stealing Laura’s concealer. When that went on uneven and blotchy he bribed Cora for the use of her make-up remover, with a cash bonus for her silence.

Derek e-mailed Scott the scanned drawing of their fight and was surprised to be invited not once, but twice to their gaming sessions at Scott’s house. His mother was nice, pretty and sarcastic enough to put three teenage boys through their paces, which Derek respected on principle.

Scott usually sat on the side of the couch closest to the lamp, which meant that Stiles and Derek sat with their legs pressed together from knee to hip - they were good, if frustrating, nights.

“Derek?” Scott asked, and for a moment Derek wasn’t sure if he was in character or out of it. “I-- I know I said I would stay away, but you broke my phone. I had to at least tell her why I wasn't answering. Derek?”

“I appear like a creepy, douchey dickbag,” Derek decided, cheerfully.

“You seriously need to stop doing that!” Scott announced, pointing an accusatory finger at him. Derek just shrugged, mildly.

“What can I say? It’s a gift.”

“Creeper.”

“Game-Derek won’t be distracted from the matter at hand, though.”

“Like a dog with a bone?” Jackson called across the table, making everyone snicker -- except Lydia, of course, who just kept glaring down at the chemistry homework she was picking through as they played.

Derek continued, leaning on one hand. “He asks, ‘So what happened? Did he talk to you?’”

Scott snorted. “Yeah. We had a nice conversation about the weather... No, he didn't talk!”

“Well, did you get anything off of him?” Derek asked, rolling one wrist. “An impression.”

“What do you mean?”

Derek sighed, feeling a great deal of camaraderie with his game-self. Scott was still so terrible at remember to use his werewolf senses in game. “Remember your other senses are heightened. Communication doesn't have to be spoken. What kind of feeling did you get from him?”

Scott gave Derek a blank look, then glanced over at Stiles. “Did I get any, uh, feelings off of him?”

“I’ll give you one guess what the GM is gonna tell you,” Lydia told Scott with a faint smile, pencil tucked into the corner of her mouth.

Sitting across from her, Scott dropped his head to the tabletop. “...roll the dice?”

“Bingo!” Stiles shoved a finger in Scott’s direction triumphantly. “Give those suckers a toss, see if you’re in touch with your Werewolfy super senses!”

Scott rolled obediently. “Uhhhhhhh, twelve? God. My dice hate me.”

“They do, actually,” Lydia agreed. “You’re consistantly rolling two points below the statistical average. Buy new dice?”

Jackson and Stiles started snickering in unison -- a horrifying thing, really. When Stiles swallowed back his laughter he waved a hand at Scott, wiggling his fingers. “Oh, god. You… well, he seemed pretty pissed! I mean, he did chase you off a roof and into your car, scribbling arcane symbols onto the glass with a claw.”

Scott considered that answer for a minute, then turned to Derek and answered simply. “Anger.”

“That’s it? Just anger?!” Derek laughed. “Focused on you?”

Scott looked at Stiles and Stiles, surprisingly, shook his head.

“No, not--not me,” he said thoughtfully. “But it was definitely anger... I could feel it. Especially when he drew the spiral.”

From his left, Stiles raised an eyebrow at Derek… but Derek had already thought about the encounter, and what game-Derek’s reaction should be if the spiral were mentioned.

“Wait, the what? What'd you just say?”

Scott traced the spiral in the air with a finger. “He drew this spiral on the window of my car, in the condensation, you know?”

Derek gave him a long, broody look.

“ …… What? You have this look like you know what it means. “

“That’s not what that look says!” Derek protested. “That’s a broody face, not an all-knowing face.”

“Whatever, game-Scott totally knows Derek likes withholding information. He totally can guess this.”

“Fine,” Derek muttered. “You can try to pry, but he’s totally not telling you. He just says, ‘No, it's--it's nothing.’”

“Drama queen,” Lydia snickered. Derek made a face at her.

“Wait--wait--wait--wait a second. You can't do that…. you can't ask me to trust you and then just keep things to yourself!” Scott protested.

Derek folded his arms over his chest and stuck his chin out, refusing to budge. “Doesn't mean anything.”

“Do I remember this?” Scott groaned, smearing a hand down the front of his face. “Do I need to roll or some shit to recall this?”

“Depends. What are you trying to recall?” Stiles asked.

“The dead body -- I mean, come on, we found half his oogie dead sister under a spiral of rope!”

Stiles considered Scott’s annoyance, then waved one hand magnanimously. “I feel like dead bodies are traumatic enough that you remembering that one’s a given.”

“Thank god,” Scott groused.

“Go one,” Derek prodded verbally, as Jackson simultaneously gave Scott a poke with his pencil.

Swatting Jackson’s hand away, Scott leaned back from the table before continuing. “You buried your sister under a spiral. What does it mean?”

Derek smiled serenely, lacing his fingers together and keeping his secrets. “You don't want to know.”

Derek’s second run-in with the lacrosse team’s first-string happened the Thursday before the Valentine’s day dance, right after gym.

Being dangled upside down over a toilet while Greenberg was gleefully flushing away did very little to improve Derek’s mood. Neither did cracking the lens of his glasses in his struggle against the porcelain.

“It smells in here,” Scott complained. Of course the one time he’d remember to roll a smell-check would be someplace like a locker room, where scents were masked under layers of sweaty dude funk. He really was the worst werewolf ever.

“Really? In a boys' locker room? That doesn't make any sense at all...” Stiles said, laughing.

“No, it's like something's rotting or dying….” Scott added, wrinkling his nose. Derek wondered gloomily if Scott was as intimately familiar with the stinkier portions of the locker room as Derek was. He’d woken up twice that weekend imagining the smell of toilet water in his hair.

“They walk out of the locker room together, and I think that’s that,” Stiles decided, nodding. “Pass the cheetos, would you, Derek?”

Derek sent the bowl Stiles’ way, keeping his eyes on the table. His face was no longer swollen, but today the bruises had achieved a particularly magnificent tableau of brown and mucus-green, so he was doing his best to keep them turned away from the object of his affections.

“You look really different,” Stiles told him, cheetoh hanging in one hand as though he’d forgotten it entirely.

Derek felt his cheeks pink. “I-- “

“Without your glasses, I mean,” Stiles quickly amended. “It’s a good look. You look nice.”

“Uh,” Derek managed, unintelligibly.

“Why’d you switch to contacts, anyway?” Scott asked around a mouthful of Late Night Hamburger flavored Doritos. “I thought you hated them.”

“I broke my glasses,” Derek admitted, sheepishly. “Dropped them on the tile in the kitchen, that was that.”

Stiles’ eyes narrowed at him, but Derek managed a weak smile.

“May they rest in peace,” Lydia said with a smile. Her teeth were very white and straight. “You should ditch them for good. You look at least twelve percent cooler without ‘em.”

While Lydia’s approval made Derek feel oddly good, it didn’t hold a candle next to the way Stiles was looking at him. It was a long, charged sort of look, his eyes and mouth all soft and warm. Everything about the expression was almost --

Stiles snapped his eyes away from Derek’s face and scanned the rest of the table. “Next up… I think it’s Jackson’s turn. Jackson? You’re at school, you’re, you know, being you. What do you do?”

What Jackson did was utterly ruin the truce between himself and Lydia by cheerfully attempting to poach Scott’s imaginary girlfriend.

“What are you doing?” Lydia asked, glaring across the table at Jackson.

Jackson shrugged with a nonchalance that suggested he knew exactly what he was doing. “I’m not doing anything, Lydia -- he needs information on the shit he thinks Scott is using, and figures Allison would know.”

Lydia set her jaw. “So you’re...what, hitting on Scott’s imaginary girlfriend for the sake of the plot?”

“Are you jealous that I’m hitting on Scott’s imaginary girlfriend for the sake of the plot?” Jackson asked, perversely delighted.

“How about we just stop hitting on my imaginary girlfriend?” Scott asked in a clumsy attempt at humor that completely failed to diffuse the situation. “She’s all the action some of us can manage to get!”

“This is ridiculous,” Lydia snapped as Stiles and Derek dissolved into poorly-smothered laughter. Her face went redder and redder until she couldn’t stand it a moment longer -- she stood and scooped up her purse.

“Lydia!” Stiles yelped, standing so quickly his chair tottered over backwards and clattered against the tile floor. “Hey, hey hey hey Lydia, don’t--”

Lydia glared as he awkwardly righted himself. “What, should I stay? You want me to hang out and play your stupid game when he’s only doing this to hurt my feelings?”

“My character is a dick!” Jackson protested. “Of course he’s hurting your feelings!”

“No,” Lydia blinked sharply, her face growing splotchy. Derek realized she was about to cry and felt his stomach go tight with sympathy and discomfort. “You’re the dick. You’re the one who dumps people five minutes after they tell you they’re stupid enough to be in love with you and then rubs it in their face at a tabletop session!”

The room went silent for a moment, each of the boys blinking at Lydia with wide, shocked expressions - except for Jackson. Jackson just looked down at his hands, uncharacteristically silent at the outburst.

Lydia spun on one heel and stomped out the front door. Stiles trailed after her, reaching for her hand as he rounded the corner. The front door swung closed behind them, the screen door banging shut a few seconds later.

The silence stretched for a long moment until Jackson cleared his throat, running his hands through his perfectly-coiffed hair until the carefully jelled front stuck out in every direction. “I don’t know why she says shit like that.”

“Maybe it’s because she’s in love with you?” Scott asked, scowling. “Somehow, against all odds and any measure of common sense?”

Jackson’s eyes darkened. “McCall--”

Scott held up a hand. “Dude, I’m not saying … it’s none of my business. But Lydia’s cool. She’s smart and thoughtful, even if she doesn’t always show how much she cares, and she’s a good friend when she’s not verbally eviscerating you. Date her or don’t, but don’t dump her and act like it’s her fault for being upset about it. That’s shitty.”

Jackson flushed. “She’s not -- you don’t get it. She’s manipulative, she -- only said it to make me feel obligated to do shit for her. She doesn’t mean it.”

He fixed his character sheet with a miserable glare.

Derek looked away from Jackson and window, out the window to where he could see Stiles sitting next to Lydia on the porch. “She looked like she meant it to me.”

The following Tuesday Derek walked home from school with a broken phone and a brand new bruise purpling up on his wrist. He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his hoodie against the chill in the air, wishing pain and misery on Laura and all of her stupid friends. She hadn’t said a word to him since the Cafeteria Incident, and had -- according to Cora -- no fewer than six invitations to the Valentine’s Day dance to pick and choose from.

When he turned into the driveway his mother’s sedan was parked in front of the house, even though it was still far too early for her to be home from work. Derek tromped up the wooden steps and let himself in, shucking off his coat in the foyer. “Mom?” he called, nervously. “Hello?”

His mother appeared from the kitchen, looking Derek over for a worrisomely long moment, then wrapped her son up in a massive bear-hug.

“Derek,” she breathed, then continued to squeeze Derek tight.

“Mom...?” Derek asked, chest tightening with terror. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s not an emergency, so please don’t worry,” Talia said quietly, running her hand through his hair and tucking her chin against his shoulder. “But I need to talk to you and your sisters. Where’s Laura?”

Derek shrugged awkwardly, inhaling the soft, sweet smell of mom. “Dunno. I walked home.”

“You walked home?” she repeated, letting Derek go with reluctance. “Laura is supposed to be taking you to and from school. That’s the stipulation for her use of the car.”

“She was going out with her friends, I don’t know. It’s a pain in the ass to ride with Laura,” Derek hedged.

It wasn’t exactly a lie. Laura was supposed to give him rides every day in exchange for free use of the car after school, but Derek was leery of approaching her or her friends after school. “Does it really matter?”

“This is unacceptable,” his mother said, firmly. There was something in her expression that Derek couldn’t quite pin. “And it’s going to change. Would you go and have a seat in the kitchen while I call your sister?”

Derek did so, pulling a can of sprite out of the fridge and settling himself in one of the bar stools that lined the taller section of counter. Talia returned a few minutes later, looking tired. She pulled out the electric kettle and flipped it on, shuffling through the boxes of tea in the cabinet by the sink as Derek fidgeted uncertainly.

“Mom, what’s…”

“Kate Argent has disappeared,” Talia said, bluntly, flipping the kettle on and dropping a teabag in her favorite mug. “I got a call this morning from your Uncle Peter.”

Derek’s heart seized in his chest. “What do you mean disappeared?

Talia’s lips formed a thin, unhappy line as she studied her son. The kettle started to bubble quietly behind her as she sighed. “Peter was informed by one of his connections with the police department. A missing person’s report was filed this morning.”

“I thought she was in jail!” Derek exclaimed, blood ringing in his ears.

“She was charged with a Class-D felony but plead down to a series of misdemeanors,” Talia admitted, grimly. She pulled off her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose, giving her son a weary look. “Your uncle seems to think money exchanged hands.”

Derek swallowed tightly. “You should have told me.”

“You know why we didn’t,” Talia said, softly. “It might not have been the right choice, but it was a choice we made with your best interests in mind.”

After the move -- and after Derek entered counseling for his panic attacks -- his parents had been careful not to talk about how the legal process was unfolding in front of their children. They had wanted Derek to move on, and worried that focusing on the minutia of the trial would prevent him from settling in and moving forward in their new home.

Derek wanted to shout -- shout, and hit something, and possibly curl up into a ball and cry. “So someone got paid to keep her out of jail and now she’s dropped off the map. Whats the point of even having a justice system if people like that psychopath get off free and clear, huh? It’s fucking stupid.”

“Derek,” Talia said, in a tone that brooked no argument. “Language.”

Derek just glared at his mother and slid off the stool, pacing to one end of the dining room and then back to the counter. Talia stood calmly, dunking her teabag in her mug. “You don’t think she’s coming here, do you?”

Talia sighed. “We’ve been cautious since moving to California… you and both of your sisters have been so cooperative and careful. There’s no reason to believe she knows where we are, but just to be safe we’re paying the Beacon Hills Police Department a visit. We have an appointment at six.”

Derek swallowed, his voice spiraling upwards in dismay. “Six?! But -- tonight is game night. It starts at seven.”

Talia rested her mug on the countertop, shaking her head at him. “I’m not comfortable with you being unsupervised until this Kate situation has blown over, Derek. Given that the Sheriff is working late enough to see is at six, he’ll obviously not be home during your game tonight.”

“But mom--!”

“I know that’s not what you want to hear, but your safety trumps any and all social schedules, sweetie.”

“Mom!” Derek protested, eyes prickling with tears -- damn it, there was no way he was going to tear up over a stupid game night, not when Kate was in the mix. He took a steadying breath. “It’s just -- I got stabbed in the back by a killer werewolf in the high school parking lot last session, my character might die if I don’t --”

“Kiddo,” his mother said gently, ruffling his hair. “I’m more concerned with your health than that of your character. Your friend Stiles is running the game, isn’t he? I’m sure they won’t knock you off while you aren’t there to play.”

“Can’t I go over after?”

“Family meeting. Your sister is supposed to be dropping you off and then picking Cora up from practice, and your father is Skyping us at eight. We need to make a game plan, Derek. I’m sorry about your plans this evening, but this can’t be delayed.”

Derek took a deep breath and tugged his phone out of his pocket.

“Sheriff Stilinski, thank you for seeing us so late in the evening,” Talia murmured, smiling wanly at the man across the table. Derek had more than a passing familiarity with Sheriff Stilinski from his nights around Stiles’ gaming table, but it was strange to see him there in his official capacity… He looked much tougher in a uniform, complete with side arm, than he did in his glow-in-the-dark-ants-and-bananas pajama pants.

Sheriff Stilinski smiled, the expression touching every inch of his face. “It’s not a problem, Mrs. Hale. You just missed the shift-change, so things are pretty quiet around here. Have a seat.”

Derek was ushered in by his mother and settled in the seat furthest from the door, slouching down unhappily. He sat down and swallowed nervously, not missing the way the Sheriff’s eyebrows dropped with concern as he took in Derek’s body language.

His friendly eyes ran over the faded edges of Derek’s bruises before he smiled again at Talia. Derek found himself wishing he’d tried some of Cora’s concealer on the last edges of the black eye before making his debut at the Beacon Hills police department. Stiles dad was going to think he was some kind of hooligan or something, jeez, he’d never let Stiles go out with--

“What can I do for you this evening?” the Sheriff asked, mildly. He had kind eyes -- sharp in a way that suggested he didn’t miss much -- and a crooked smile that reminded Derek of his son. It was oddly comforting despite the unpleasant circumstances that had landed him here.

“Derek and I wanted to inform you and the department about the circumstances that surrounded our moving to Beacon Hills,” Talia said simply, reaching out to squeeze Derek’s forearm. Her hand settled on the bruises on his forearm and left him hiding a wince.

“I’m all ears,” the Sheriff agreed, reaching for his coffee mug.

Derek took a deep breath and let it out as slowly as he could.

Talia began after a moment’s hesitation. “Last year my son Derek was the target of a stalker. She was a substitute teacher he met at school, who approached Derek repeatedly and attempted to initiate a sexual and romantic relationship. Derek refused repeatedly, but she eventually climbed through his bedroom window and attempted to burn down our home. Her name was Kate Argent.”

Sheriff Stilinski froze, his coffee cup halfways between his desk and his mouth. He very slowly lowered it to the desk, eyes flickering from Talia to Derek. “Kate Argent,” he repeated, reaching for his pen.

“I took the liberty of bringing copies of our files related to the case,” Talia added, setting a manilla folder on the desk and pushing it towards the Sheriff. Derek fidgeted nervously as Stiles’ father flipped open the folder and spread the documents out over the table, picking up the police reports first and then scanning the profile and lingering for a moment over the mugshot.

“I assume you wouldn’t be bringing this to my attention were there not a recent development,” he said grimly.

Talia swept her long, dark hair over one shoulder. “I wish the circumstances were different, but … Argent was initially charged with a felony level offense but wound up pleading down to charges of criminal trespassing and menacing,” she explained. “The entire affair was … very public, and lead to our leaving New York. My husband is still there arranging our affairs -- he called this morning to let us know that a missing person’s report was just filed on Argent.”

She squeezed Derek’s fingers, and he looked away. Stilinski took another sip of coffee.

“It’s likely nothing,” Talia reassured. Derek knew it was more for him than for the Sheriff, but Stilinski nodded along anyway. “But in the event that she appears in Beacon Hills we thought it prudent to pass along a photograph and any information that might be helpful.”

“Is there any remaining legal precedent to keep her away from your family?” Stilinski asked, tapping the eraser of his pencil absently against the desktop.

“We’ve maintained restraining orders against Argent for the last eight months,” Talia said, mouth twisted into a frown. “They include the entire family, the home property, and the kids’ schools. Anyone who needs to contact us now goes through my husband.”

Stilinski nodded. “This is very helpful, Mrs. Hale. I can absolutely recommend that our patrol patterns be altered to include your home and Beacon Hills High to a greater degree; I’ll also reach out to the department in Suffolk county and ask to be kept informed regarding the case.”

Derek let the sounds of conversation wash over him, fixing his eyes on the coffee mug on the desk as the conversation continued. Anger washed over him as he stared, silently chewing on the inside of his bottom lip.

Months had gone by, he and his entire family had completely restarted their lives, and his entire family had to do the same, all of it because he’d drawn unwanted attention. He’d talked to Kate when she approached him after school, he’d let her buy him a milkshake when she “happened” upon him in the food court at the mall, he hadn’t told his parents when she’d kissed him in a dark classroom --

The coffee mug clicked against the desktop and Derek jerked back to reality. From the way the Sheriff and Talia were staring at him he must have been directly addressed. “Huh?”

“Just making sure you’re alright, dear.” Talia murmurred. “I know this isn’t easy, and you do have a tendency to stew over things.”

Derek felt his cheeks growing ruddy. “I…”

“If it’s not too much trouble, would you mind if I had a word with Derek privately?” Stilinski asked, smiling warmly at Derek.

“If it’s alright with Derek, we certainly don’t mind.”

Derek swallowed, but he couldn’t exactly say no, not when it was Stiles’ father asking, and certainly not with his mother looking at him so expectantly. “Sure,” he squeaked, uncomfortable. Talia dropped a kiss into his hair and then trailed out of the office, leaving Derek alone with the Sheriff.

Sheriff Stilinski stood, crossed the room, and cracked open the mini-fridge next to the filing cabinet. “Coke?”

“What?”

“You want a coke? Like, a soda. I’ve got Coca-cola, Dr. Pepper, Sprite...”

“Um. Sprite, please,” Derek said, taking the frigid can and popping the top.

Sheriff Stilinski settled back into his chair with a sigh, propping his feet up on the trash can to the side of the desk. “So how are you holding up, son?”

Derek took a long sip, wishing he could disappear through the floor. “Fine.”

Sheriff Stilinski studied him over the top of his Dr. Pepper can. “I imagine it’s been a rough year for you. Being stalked is a scary thing, but moving across the country and to an entirely new school can’t have been easy, either.”

Derek swallowed. “It’s been a weird year. Um, Stiles has helped, a lot. He introduced me to pretty much everyone I know at BHHS.”

“He really thinks the world of you,” the Sheriff said gently, smiling. “He talks about you a lot, actually. I hear you’re quite the artist.”

Derek looked up, hope flooding his chest. “I am, I guess. It’s just a hobby. Stiles talks about me? You -- please don’t tell him about the stalking. I … really don’t want anyone to know about it.”

The Sheriff gave him a long, considering look. “I promise you right now that my professional and personal lives are separate -- I would never speak to Stiles about something told to me in confidence.” His mouth turned up at the corner. “That said, you know Stiles. Surely you don’t think he’d judge you for being the victim of a crime.”

“It’s embarrassing,” Derek said, throat tight. “She was twenty three, and pretty, and … I just should have realized something was wrong sooner. Even an idiot could figure out the situation was sketchy.”

“You figured it out,” the Sheriff said, calmly. “It says in the police reports that she let herself into your bedroom and you managed to pin her down and alert your parents.”

“Mostly I tripped over her while trying to run away and then screamed my head off,” Derek admitted, embarrassment washing over him. “And she was only there because of me. She tried to kill my family because I wouldn’t go out to a stupid movie with her.”

“No, she tried to kill your family because she’s a mentally unbalanced predator,” the Sheriff told him in his most authoritative tone. “And I doubt a movie was what she had in mind, Derek.” He slid open one drawer and pulled out a stack of pamphlets held together with a rubber band. “People like Kate target individuals that they believe they can safely take advantage of. She underestimated you. You did exactly what you needed to - you kept yourself as safe as possible and alerted the authorities. You saved your family because you stayed collected under pressure. Here… I have some pamphlets on stalking here somewhere...”

Derek squirmed in his seat as the Sheriff shuffled through the public service flyers and bookmark-shaped pamphlets on everything from seat belts to identity theft. Finally he pushed two over, one on stalking and another on bullying.

Picking up the bullying pamphlet, Derek turned it over in his hands. “I don’t think Kate counts as a…”

“That’s for the eye,” the Sheriff said, mildly.

Derek swallowed. “I’m not being bullied. It was an accident.”

Sheriff Stilinski leaned in. “Derek Hale, I assure you that I recognize the telltale signs of a strong right cross any day of the week. Whoever hit you committed simple assault, and whether it was someone at school, or someone at home--”

Derek jerked up in his seat, eyes going wide. “No! Jesus, no, it wasn’t anything like that! My parents would never, ever--”

Stilinski raised a brow and Derek dropped back into the seat, sagging with embarrassment. He had the sinking feeling that he’d just inadvertently confirmed the Sheriff’s suspicions. How the hell did Stiles get away with anything living with this man?

“It’s not important, it was just a stupid disagreement.”

“Well, stupid disagreements that involve shiners that large should be brought to the attention of the authorities, be they school authorities or otherwise,” Stilinski said, a note of steel in his voice. “You winced earlier when your mother touched your arm, so I’m willing to bet you’ve had more than one run-in with whoever gave you that. New kid in school or not, you deserve better treatment at the hands of your peers. I hope you’ll consider bringing it to the attention of the faculty.”

Derek opened his mouth, snapped it shut, and dropped his eyes to the desk and resumed fiddling with the pop-tab of his soda can.

“Don’t feel ashamed, son -- you’re not in trouble. Just give it a think. Remember that you can always swing by casa de Stilinski if you have questions or need support. I say that as a Sheriff, but also as a dad. We good?”

Derek nodded and stood, then blinked in surprise as Sheriff Stilinski offered him a hand. “Yeah. We’re good,” he said, and they shook on it.

Derek missing the session ended up working out handily, though Derek moped a bit on Wednesday over having missed so much action. The entire party (sans Derek, of course, who was bleeding out in the parking lot) had been trapped in the school and went head to head with the Alpha, cannibalizing supplies in the chemistry closets and even deploying the automated bleachers against the creature. It sounded like a good session - Jackson apparently sabotaged Scott’s attempts to steal the keys to the fire escape from the dead janitor, and Lydia had recited the formula to molotov cocktails from memory.

(Yet another reason Jackson probably shouldn’t have pissed her off, but hey, who was Derek to judge...)

Worse, game-Scott had thrown game-Derek under the bus yet again by blaming him for the murders at the school under the assumption that he was dead and therefore wouldn’t mind shouldering the blame.

“Seriously?!” Derek asked, throwing up his hands. “I miss one session…!”

Scott laughed, flashing Derek the kind of wide-open smile usually reserved for Stiles. “I’m sorry! Stiles wouldn’t tell us whether you were gone because you were dead or because --” He broke out air quotes as he continued, “it would build suspense. And then I rolled a natural one on my bluff check…. I couldn’t come up with any other scapegoats that made sense!”

“It was priceless,” Lydia informed him cheerfully. She was painting her nails blood red and calculating hit/damage percentages for different types of knives.

Being wanted by the police meant that Derek had to move conservatively in-game. He spent most of the session laying low, sketching in his sketchbook and trying not to smile awkwardly at the Sheriff when he passed through the kitchen as he puttered about the house.

Stiles knew a lot about policework, including the radio codes and patterns of deployment his father used when they were looking for suspects. Derek wondered if he wanted to be a cop when he grew up, and was suddenly inundated with mental images of Stiles filling out a deputy’s uniform.

“You’re really into this policing stuff, aren’t you?” Jackson asked, his eyebrows creeping upwards as Stiles explained how the police were moving.

“After my mom died my dad used to take me along on his patrols and quiz me on all the scanner codes,” Stiles admitted, a fond half-smile sliding across his face.

“And then Stiles would quiz me on them at school the next day,” Scott rolled his eyes. “He used to fine me skittles when I couldn’t answer.”

“Mmm,” Stiles said, dreamily. “Skittles.”

“I think you’d be a good cop,” Derek told Stiles, thoughtfully. The Sheriff was certainly the kind of police officer Derek liked the most -- friendly without being condescending, approachable without strong-arming Derek into talking about something that made him uncomfortable.

Laughing, Stiles knocked his shoulder against Derek’s. “Like I could actually pass the police academy fitness tests… I can’t even make a lacrosse team. Plus they’ve kind of gotten away from scanner codes these days, they’re kind of inaccessible. So all that studying was for nothing. Nothing!”

Derek smiled helplessly at the easy way Stiles shrugged off his compliments. He wasn’t sure how Stiles would react to finding about why they moved away from New York… particularly since Derek had written so much into his character background. Even he could admit that having your crush play the character of your psycho stalker was a bit odd.

It was hard to imagine him being anything but sympathetic, though. He might be a little overwhelming from time to time, a little enthusiastic or quick to jump to conclusions, but he was absolutely the kind of guy who gave people around him the benefit of the doubt.

Derek cleared his throat. “Well, I’m just glad I’m not going to be ending session bleeding to death in a parking lot…”

“You say that now,” Stiles muttered all too ominously as he redirected his attention to the matter at hand. “Alright, people, let’s get this show on the road. Scott, what are you up to now?”

“Looking for you. Game-you, obviously.”

Stiles leaned in, lacing his fingers together and narrowing his eyes at Scott. “Alright, so Scott is roaming the halls…”

An hour later, game-Stiles and game-Derek were bitching at each other in an imaginary version of Stiles’ shitty blue jeep, sitting outside of the hospital that contained the comatose body of game-Derek’s uncle Peter.

Stiles had his hand up to his ear, finger and thumb sticking out as though he were talking on an imaginary phone. Scott was theoretically on the other end, though he was desperately clinging to the shreds of his dignity by staunchly refusing to talk into a hand-phone.

“Man!” Scott groused, looking sincerely offended over the early death of Stiles’ imaginary lacrosse career, “I look at my phone, pissed, and then shove it against my ear again and snap at Stiles. ‘You're not gonna play if you're not here to start!’”

“I know,” Stiles muttered, glancing over at Derek. “Look, if you see my dad, can you tell him-- tell him I'll be there, I'll just be a little bit late, okay?” He paused a moment for dramatic effect as Scott gaped at him like a fish. “Alright, thanks.”

“You're not gonna make it,” Derek informed him blandly, grabbing another handful of cheetos.

“I know,” Stiles said back, blinking at him.

“And you didn't tell him about his mom, either.”

“Not till we find out the truth.”

“Please!” Scott interjected. “Like my mom is helping out a werewolf serial killer!”

“You don’t know,” Lydia observed sweetly. “Living with you would be enough to drive anyone crazy. ”

Scott groaned, Stiles cackled, and Derek raised a hand with a quiet smile. “By the way, one more thing.”

“Yeah?” Stiles asked.

Derek reached out, casually tossing a d20 across the table. He rolled a 14, then added his attack bonus. “Derek reaches out, grabs the back of Stiles’ head, and slams it down into the steering wheel of the jeep.”

“Jesus christ!” Stiles yelped in surprise, turning to stare wide-eyed at Derek. He tucked one long, lean leg up against his chest, shin pressed awkwardly against the rim of the table. “Seriously. Is that seriously an in-game move?”

“I rolled for it, didn’t I?” Derek asked, laughing.

“But--”

“But what?” Derek set his chin on his hands, trying to look innocent. “What’s your flat-footed armor class? I bet it’s not more than 12, he’s way too flaily to have a reasonable dexterity…”

“Flaily?” Stiles asked, looking affronted. He shuffled a few sheets behind his makeshift GM screen and sighed. The sound of dice clattering against the table told Derek that he was rolling for damage.

“Well, Stiles takes 1d6 non-lethal damage…” he muttered. “He looks stupefied at Derek, fails to see the hit coming, then shouts ‘Oh, God! What the hell was--’”

Derek pointed a finger at the screen. “You know what that was for.”

“Does he?” asked Stiles.

“He made Derek do a creepy strip-tease for his underaged hacker friend!”

“Danny wouldn’t mind his game-cameo,” Jackson observed with a shrug. “I mean, assuming your character is as ripped as you say he is. I’ve never known Danny to lament a bit of eye-candy.”

Next to him Lydia snorted in amusement despite herself, then tore her eyes away from Jackson’s face to look back down at her character sheet.

“Derek points at the door to the jeep and orders Stiles to get the hell out of dodge,” Derek informed his GM, cheerily. “Go. Go!”

Stiles rubbed his fingers against his temples, his mouth twisted in a faint slant. “Are you sure you don’t want to go inside?” He asked, patiently. “I mean, you know, sending the pitiful human out all alone…”

“It’s a hospital,” Derek blinked. “He’s safer in a building looking for a human contact, and we checked the schedules and know she’s working. I mean, the alpha’s looking to consolidate his pack, right? So getting further away from Derek is literally safest thing he could do.”

Stiles nodded, face impassive, and popped the eraser end of his pencil into his mouth. Derek tried very hard not to stare. “Alrighty, then. Derek cheerfully gives Stiles a bloody nose, feeling smugly satisfied over slamming him into the steering wheel of his own jeep. Stiles scrambles out, wiping his bloody nose on his sleeve and trudging into the hospital alone with his phone clutched in one hand. How long is Derek going to wait for him?”

Something in the way Stiles described that left Derek feeling suddenly uneasy. “Until he comes out…?”

Stiles tapped a finger on the edge of the table. “After about fifteen minutes your phone rings.”

“He picks it up,” Derek says quickly, leaning in. “And grunts into the receiver, ‘What’s going on?’”

Stiles rolled his dice, glanced over the result, then looked back up at Derek. “Stiles tells you he can’t find her.”

“What?!”

Lifting his hand-phone to his ear Stiles repeated the information, looking darkly amused at the expression on Derek’s face. “Yeah, I said I can't find her.“

Derek bit his lip. “Look, ask for Jennifer. She's been looking after my uncle.”

“Yeah, well, he's not here either.“

“What?”

“He's not here,” Stiles repeated, rolling the dice again and sliding them together, calculating the totals silently. “He's gone, Derek.”

Derek swallowed, mind working furiously as he slid pieces together. Had someone moved Peter? Stiles would have had to inform him if that was the case, since he was the only living relative. There was only one reason his comatose uncle wouldn’t be where he should be -- that is, if he were alive and well. And if Peter was well, then Deaton wasn’t the alpha at all.

By the time he glanced up at Stiles again he was absolutely certain his theory was right. Oh, god -- he’d just sent game-Stiles off to his doom, into a hospital where the Alpha and his lackey could both be laying in wait.

“Stiles, get out of there right now--it's him!” Derek ordered, making Scott jump with the volume of his declaration. “He's the Alpha! Get out!“

Stiles rolled, then shook his head. “Even though Stiles has moved the phone away from his mouth, you can hear a muffled conversation between Stiles and someone else in the room. He doesn’t seem to be listening to you.”

“I’m jumping out of the car and running after him,” Derek said, urgently. “I follow the sound of his voice -- or his heartbeat or whatever, I’m making a listen check! Where the fuck is my d20?!”

Scott slid his own across the table, but Derek scowled. “No way. Your dice are fucking cursed.”

His own d20 was on the floor next to the leg of his chair. Derek whipped it up, rolled, and swallowed back a surge or relief. “Twenty three!”

“Stiles is on the second floor -- you can hear his heartbeat pounding like a drum from the moment you enter the building. He sounds terrified,” Stiles informed them all, rolling his dice. “Oh, lucky you, he’s stalling.”

“I’m going to be super extra pissed if you get imaginary me’s imaginary best friend killed,” Scott grumbled at Derek over the rim of his can of Mountain Dew. Derek ignored him.

“I have werewolf speed, right?” Derek consulted his sheet again, quickly doing the math. “So I run fifty feet per round. I’m hauling ass into the hospital. Jumping over desks and shit, and taking the stairs because elevators suck.”

Stiles rolled the dice again, then once more. “Wow…. wow, none of these dicks can roll for anything. You’re so fucking lucky, you actually manage to show up before Stiles is eviscerated, good work!”

Derek breathed out a sigh of relief, slumping back in his chair. “Ohthankgod,” he muttered, casting his eyes up at the ceiling.

“What does he see?!” Scott demanded.

“Stiles is standing in the hallway of the hospital, flanked by your creepy-looking and decidedly non-comatose uncle and a skinny redheaded woman in a white nurse’s uniform. He’s got his phone in one hand and a look of utter horror on his face.”

“I punch the nurse,” Derek blurted. Beside him Jackson snorted out a laugh, nearly choking on his handful of popcorn.

“You’re punching a girl?!”

“Derek is an equal-opportunity puncher,” Derek snapped. “She should be flat-footed!”

“Roll to see if you sneak up on her,” Stiles agreed. “And… yeah, yeah you do. She’s staring at the other two guys with an intensity that’s almost creepy. Roll for damage… you’re doing non-lethal, right? Or are the claws out?”

“She’s human, right?”

“Yep.”

“Non-lethal.” Derek rolled again and Scott let out an excited whoop.

Stiles grinned. “Peter looks up at you, his expression almost amused. His face is still all mangled and burned, though it’s not nearly as bad as it was the last time you saw him. He barely bats an eye when the woman goes down without a fight, just says ‘That's not nice. She's my nurse.’ ….in a tone that is creepy as fuck, of course.“

“‘She's a psychotic bitch helping you kill people!’” Derek said firmly, before adding: “And then I tell Stiles to get out of the way.”

“Stiles swears and ducks down, out of the line of fire, and you move in on Peter…”

Fifteen minutes later game-Derek was frantically attempting to heal a fractured spine on the floor of a hospital operating room as his deranged uncle closed in for the kill.

“Glowing red eyes draw closer, closer, and you close your eyes against the macabre caricature of your once-loved Uncle Peter’s face,” Stiles intoned, low and serious.

Then his face split into a grin. “And that’s where we leave off for the night.”

Derek dropped his head into the table with a groan of denial, while Scott and Jackson high-fived beside him. Even Lydia was shaking her head at them, hiding her grin with the back of one hand. “You’re terrible,” she told Stiles.

“I am,” Stiles agreed, snapping his notebook closed with a flourish and then draining the last of his Mountain Dew. “Next week is good for everyone, yeah?”

“Yep.”

“Definitely!”

“I have a trig test Wednesday morning, so as long as you don’t mind me looking over my notes…”

“Like she needs notes!”

“I’m just saying.”

Scott began scooping up handfuls of empty snack wrappers as Jackson piled all of the half-empty bowls into his lap and ferried them into the kitchen. Derek waited until both of them were out of the room to clear his throat and inch closer to Stiles, who was filing his copies of their character sheets away into his messenger bag.

“St--”

“Stiiiiiiles, are the dishes in the dishwasher dirty or clean?” Scott shouted from the kitchen.

“Uh, I don’t know, why don’t you check?”

“I can’t tell!”

Stiles rolled his eyes, flashed Derek a grin and then went trotting off into the kitchen.

Derek exhaled slowly, dragging his feet as the others began to trickle out. Jackson drove Lydia home -- huh -- but it soon became apparent than neither Scott nor Stiles were going to do the same for Derek, so he texted Laura with a sigh.

As he slung his backpack over his arm Stiles flashed him a thumbs up. “We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” Derek agreed.

The next morning Derek’s alarm didn’t go off, which meant Laura woke him with a shout and a pillow to the kisser. When he finally made it down to the kitchen he spilled coffee on his shirt and had to change again, only ducking his arms through the sleeves as he dashed out the door. Once they made it to school he managed to drop his books on his toes twice before he even reached his locker.

Worse, his brain kept replaying the disappointment on Stiles’ face when Derek had refused to enter the building. He hadn’t meant to let Stiles face the main villain alone, he just hadn’t made the final leap from Deaton to Peter. After all, Stiles hadn’t spoken to him about using a backstory characters as the actual villain du jour. How could he see something like that coming? Not to mention that Derek also had trouble thinking of his uncle as anything other than the only-moderately-sleazy lawyer who had helped his parents out pro-bono when Derek’s twenty-three year old stalker required restraining orders and court appearances...

Homeroom that morning was quieter than usual -- Stiles’ head was bowed over the AP English worksheets he hadn’t finished the evening before. They didn’t talk much, though he did poke Derek in the shoulder and ask him for the definition of ‘synecdoche’.

When the bells sounded the ending of third period, Derek headed towards the cafeteria on his own. He got into the hot food line, scanning the crowded cafeteria, but Stiles was nowhere to be seen.

Halfway up to the counter he fished his phone out of his pocket and typed out a text -- just a worried ’hey, all ok?’ before he thought the better of it and slid the phone back in his pocket.

A few minutes later he had shoved back his anxiety and crossed the cafeteria with his food balanced on top of his math book. When he set the styrofoam tray down he found Lydia staring at him, her face pale. “Derek, uh,” she said, her delicate nose wrinkling. “Your nose is bleeding.”

“Wh--” Derek lifted a hand to his face automatically, swallowing when it came away bright red. “Oh shit,” he muttered, groping for the napkins on his tray and shoving one up against his nostrils. “Gross, I’m sorry -- I haven’t gotten one of these in ages, I don’t...”

He pulled the napkin away, unable to keep himself from staring down at the dark red blood spotted across it.

“Maybe you should go to the nurse?” Lydia asked, looking queasy.

“Right,” Derek swallowed, wadding up his napkin and pressing it to his nose. He slung his backpack over one arm and scooped up the soggy pizza in its greasy red and white striped paper boat.

“Can you dell Sdiles I need do dalk do him lader?” Derek asked, snuffling into the bloody napkin.

“Yeah, I-- sure, just --” Lydia was definitely looking sick. Derek turned away quickly and managed to get to the nurse without running into anything or anyone -- no small feat considering he had his head tipped back and his eyes trained on the ceiling as he went.

The nosebleed was a true gusher, the likes of which Derek hadn’t seen since he was thirteen. He lay on his back for almost half an hour, head tipped backwards and breathing through his mouth. The sticky tang of blood made his stomach churn only slightly more than the sight of his rapidly cooling pizza slice with its fatty, greasy piles of sausage slowly congealing on the counter. Once he could sit upright again without dripping, the nurse passed him a cannister of vaseline to rub inside his nostrils. “Thanks,” he muttered.

“This isn’t your first rodeo, I see,” the nurse said, smiling faintly as he began to apply the vaseline.

“I get nosebleeds before growth spurts,” Derek admitted.

“Poor thing. My own son had them from time to time, but that one was impressive,” the nurse hummed, making Derek flush all over again. He touched his nose self-consciously, but the bleed seemed to be through.

“Here, we have a few spare shirts -- can I microwave your pizza for you?”

He nodded and surrendered the pizza, taking the offered shirt in its crinkly plastic wrapper. It was a cheap cotton undershirt with a v-neck, but at least it wasn’t covered in blood.

Derek stepped into the single-stall bathroom to change. The undershirt was entirely too tight for his comfort, but it fit well enough. He picked at it uncomfortably before stepping out and averting his eyes.

“Well done, you look good as new,” the nurse said cheerfully, taking his old shirt and slipping it into the plastic bag his new one had come in. “Don’t you worry, a little club soda will take that blood right out.”

Derek ate his pizza by the window, staring morosely out at the parking lot until the bell rang, then thanked the nurse and slid out into the hallways. As he walked he earned a handful of raised eyebrows and pointing fingers -- geez, couldn’t he do anything right? Someone even whistled at him.

Embarrassed, Derek was shoving his old shirt into the top section of his locker when his phone buzzed in his back pocket. He canted a hip against the locker and flipped it open. It was a text from Stiles.

‘hey big D,’ he read silently. ‘Missed u at lunch... Meet me under the bleachers during 5th?’

Then Derek read it again, brow furrowed. Big D??

He typed out a quick response and mashed the send key before he could think the better of it. ‘don’t you have class?’

He looked up and around as the warning bell sounded, halfheartedly hoping to see Stiles appear at his locker. He waited until the hallway had drained into the classrooms but his phone stayed ominously silent.

Would Stiles really skip class just to talk to Derek? What could be so important he couldn’t just text him about it? Maybe it was about the game, or the nosebleed, or--

Derek left his things in his locker, read the text over again, and headed out the side door of the school. He tucked his scarf up over his nose, stuffing his hands into his pockets as he went.

The lacrosse field was empty, standing damp and brown and dotted by mud puddles that reflected a brownish version of the slate-gray clouds overhead. It was just chilly enough that his breath puffed out white against the dismal backdrop.

Derek crossed the parking lot and hooked his fingers in the chain link of the fence that blocked off the seating area. “Stiles? Stiiiiiiles...”

Derek’s voice bounced off the metallic undersides of the bleachers and came back at him from every direction. Nothing seemed to be moving.

Moving down the fence, Derek checked the gate and turnstile, finding both unlocked. Was he even allowed to be in here when there wasn’t a game on?

Derek ducked inside and moved far enough beneath the shadow of the bleachers that any onlookers wouldn’t easily be able to spot him from the parking lot.

“Stiles…?” he called again, uncertainly. The sound of something scuffling against metal at the mouth of the tunnel that opened up to the field drew his attention. “Hello?”

“Awwwwww, look what we have here.”

Derek nearly jumped out of his skin as Greenberg jumped down from above, landing just behind him. Derek barely had time to open his mouth before a fist snagged itself on his shirt and slammed him up against the concrete wall of the tunnel. He gasped for air as a finger shoved into his face, eyes focusing on the familiar figure it was attached to. “A little rat, fresh from the New York subways. Gross.”

Derek twisted and kicked out at Greenberg’s knees, earning himself another hard slam for his trouble.

“Ever since you showed up in this town things have turned to shit for me,” Greenberg hissed through gritted teeth. “First your sister quits speaking to me, then she gets me banned from even attending the dance, then your freaky fanclub starts following me around, asking all sorts of fucking stupid questions about your ugly face --”

Derek hit the wall again, teeth clacking as the air whooshed out of his lungs.

“I’m fucking sick of it, and I think you owe me an apology.”

Greenberg stepped back abruptly, pulling his phone from his pocket.

“Fuck you,” Derek snapped. He lashed out at the phone in Greenberg’s hand, then turned and ran as fast as he could towards the mouth of the tunnel. The only sounds he could hear were the pounding of his heart and the thunking of his converse sneakers against the cement floor.

If he could just get out onto the top of the bleachers he could shout for help, or use the gate on the field to escape--

Unfortunately for Derek, his assailant was first line on the lacrosse team. Greenberg was as fast as he was big and caught up with him in a heartbeat, snagging him by the hood of his sweatshirt and effectively clotheslining him. Derek’s feet went out from under him and he hit the dirt flat on his back. Greenberg came down on top of him and drove a knee into his chest, making Derek see spots.

The world slowed down as Greenberg’s ham-sized fist came down. Derek squeezed his eyes shut, his mind seizing absurdly on a feeling of relief that he’d worn his contacts instead of his brand new replacement glasses. Greenberg’s fist connected with a strength that forced a grunting cry out of Derek’s mouth.

“Shut up -- you little prick -- ” Greenberg grunted. “--have to do this, don’t have a--”

A right cross, a hard backhanded slap, and a second punch, this time to the mouth. Derek felt his lip split and his teeth slice open the inside of his cheek as his head snapped sideways, grinding into the dirty concrete floor.

When the barrage eased up Derek forced his eyes open, staring blankly up. Greenberg had multiplied, his tight frown floating in triplicate in the air before him… or maybe that was just the blows to the head? The tang of blood filled his mouth (for the second time that day, go figure) and sent a wave of nausea through him as he swallowed it down.

“Apologize,” Greenberg said, through gritted teeth.

He Greenberg had his phone out again, hovering between them… no, he was recording this, he’d probably take it home, show all of his friends, laugh about how pitiful and wimpy Derek was.

Derek gave up the battle to keep his eyes open, searching for some part of himself that could continue to defy the order on the very principle of the matter.

All he found was throbbing pain and a sad, desperate sort of acceptance.

Of course this was happening. It was his life, after all.

“M’sorry,” Derek slurred, voice mushy around his rapidly swelling split lip.

“For what?”

“Sorry for -- for fucking up your life,” he croaked, grasping for the right thing to say. “This was all my fault.”

“Say you provoked me,” Greenberg prompted, lens of his phone’s camera fixed on Derek. As things drew into better focus Derek got a good look at the gritty, hunted look on Greenberg’s face.

“Yeah,” Derek agreed, suddenly uncertain. He could feel blood trickling out of one nostril, cooling as it slid down his face. “I provoked it.”

“Because you’re a worthless piece of shit,” Greenberg agreed, brow pinched tight.

“Yeah.”

“And you’re sorry.”

“I,” Derek started to speak but devolved into a coughing fit. Greenberg’s hand came down sharply and tightened around his wrist. “Ican’tapologizeenough,” he wheezed.

Greenberg appeared satisfied, the phone dropping from where it hovered between them. For the first time since Derek had met the guy he actually looked uncertain -- maybe even a little unhappy. “Hale...”

Derek swallowed, listening to the sound of their breathing in the momentary silence until a nearby voice shattered the empty moment. “There, coach! Right in the tunnel in section A!”

The metal bleachers reflected the sound until it was impossible to know just where it had come from -- the echoing words were more than enough to send Greenberg shooting to his feet, any trace of softness gone from his expression. “If you tell anyone about this,” he hissed at Derek, shoving his shoulder once more for good measure, “you’re dead.”

Derek hurt so badly he suspected death would be a relief; instead of trying to follow he just lay there, unwilling to move, as Greenberg’s footsteps disappeared. He waited for the coach to find him, to shout at him for sneaking under the bleachers during school hours, for fighting…

The echoing footsteps pounded closer, slowed, and stopped.

“Oh my god, Derek,” said a voice that was decidedly un-Finstock-like. Derek forced his eyes to open again and refocus -- his vision was doing weird things, drawing halos around the figure that was suddenly kneeling next to him. It was only when a long wave of tangled, curly hair obscured half of his vision that he realized he was looking at Lydia.

She looked like she was about to throw up.

“Lydia?” he asked, the ‘L’ sound mushy in his mouth.

“Derek, oh my god, Derek….”

He tried to sit up, head spinning. “Where’s coach?”

“He’s not here,” she bit her lip, eyebrows peaked together with worry. “Oh my god, Derek, I’m so sorry -- I shouldn’t have waited, I just..”

“You scared him away,” Derek realized, admiringly. “How did you know I was here?”

“I followed you,” Lydia reached out for his hand, lifting it close and giving it a squeeze. It shouldn’t have felt as good as it did considering he’d dedicated a significant portion of his school year to feeling absurdly jealous over her closeness with Stiles. “You were acting funny at lunch, and Stiles was worried when you didn’t come back from the nurse’s office.”

He blinked at her. “You skipped class to follow me?”

“Fifth period is my free period,” she admitted reluctantly. Derek hadn’t known that -- but then again, he hadn’t exactly been open towards Lydia this year. He’d certainly never been friendly enough to warrant the careful way she tipped his head towards her, peering into his eyes. She looked like she might be crying.

It was possible he’d made a serious mistake by not being friendly towards Lydia.

“We need to get you to the nurse’s office,” she said. “I think you have a concussion.”

“Does that involve moving,” Derek asked, punctuating the question with a wet cough. Lydia dropped his hand to reach into her handbag and pull out a little packet of tissues.

“Unfortunately,” she said, quietly. “But I want to take a photo of you first.”

Derek’s head was pounding. “Please don’t put this on Instagram.”

Lydia snorted. “No, dummy. It’s for the sheriff, when we file assault charges on that dickhead and get him kicked out of school.”

“No,” Derek groaned, turning his head away from her. He didn’t want photos -- he knew how much they would hurt to look at, later. “It’s over. It’s fine. He…”

“He should be expelled,” Lydia snapped, tucking her phone away. “He’s a monster.”

“No. He-- no.” Derek’s head was swimming, his vision going black at the corners. “He’ll hurt my family. I can’t -- let anyone do that, again, Lydia.”

When he opened his eyes again a woman with dark braids was was hovering over him, shining a light into his eyes. She seemed to be wearing a uniform. Disoriented, he blinked and turned to where warm fingers were wrapped around his own.

Lydia was still there.

“You called an ambulance?” he asked blearily, vaguely aware that he’d lost time.

“You passed out,” Lydia told him, squeezing his fingers. “Mild traumatic brain injury, which means you should see a doctor anyway. Plus, you’re too heavy for me to carry.”

“Miss, if you could just step away, we need to brace his neck … ah, you’re back with us. Keep your eyes open, buddy.”

Lydia let his hand go with great reluctance, folding his fingers up on his chest. “It’s gonna be okay,” she told Derek, voice quavering despite the determined expression on her face. “It’s gonna be fine.”

He nodded, but stopped when his vision began to swim.

The EMT expression was calm as she settled down next to him. “Hi there, son. Can you tell me your name?”

“Where are we?” Derek asked his mother -- the question felt oddly familiar.

The room was dark but his bed was propped upwards to keep him in a sitting position. His mother was seated on the mattress next to him, her hand clenched tightly around his own. The touch made him think of Lydia.

When she looked at him Derek immediately felt like he’d made a mistake in asking. Maybe he’d already asked that question before -- he knew he’d been repeating himself all evening, but it was hard to think clearly when his brain felt like it had been wrapped in cotton. Thick, scratchy, throbbing cotton.

“We’re in the hospital, sweetheart.”

“Oh.” Derek tried to snatch at his thoughts. His face felt hot and swollen -- he reached up and felt along his left brow. Something small and flat was stuck there.

“Don’t touch,” his mother said, soothingly. “They’re butterfly closures, you have a cut on your forehead. Do you remember what happened?”

Derek must have hit his head. He remembered being at school, he remembered… “Someone jumped me.”

“Your friends told me this wasn’t the first time you’d been harassed at school,” Talia murmurred. “You should have told me what was happening, sweetheart. Nobody gets to treat you like this. Nobody--”

“They’d hurt you,” Derek said, blearily. “He said he’d kill me. I didn’t--”

He thought of Kate, climbing through his window when the whole house was asleep, waking Derek only by chance. He’d thrown himself at her, knocked the can of paint-thinner out of her hands, choked on the smell of it as he shouted and kicked, as she’d pinned him with a hand tight against his throat--

“Oh, Derek,” his mother said, and started to cry.

The hospital kept Derek overnight for observation, waking him every three hours to ask him the same stupid question -- what was his name, where was he, what day was it. Derek barely slept anyway, listening to his mother’s breathing and the beep of the machines and rattle of gurneys in the hall. His breakfast came in at seven sharp, a familiar face accompanying it.

“Hi there, kiddo,” said Nurse McCall.

“Hey,” Derek slurred back at her before nearly splitting his face in two with a massive yawn. “It’s early.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” she said gently. “I brought jello?”

Derek was surprised to find that he was actually hungry -- he let Nurse McCall ask him the same questions they’d asked him over and over the night before. She shone a light in his eyes, and then patted him on the arm and sat down across from his mother while Derek dug into his watery eggs and electric blue jello. Apparently he’d been given a CT scan the night before -- something he didn’t quite remember -- but the results were good and he seemed to be on the mend. They even cracked the blinds and, when he didn’t flinch away, let in some of the early morning sunlight.

The brain fog was lifting, too. He could remember more of the fight, more of the ambulance ride, the expression on his mother’s face when she’d burst through the door of the treatment room where he’d been tested repeatedly for visual or cognitive impairment.

“We wouldn’t normally have kept you overnight for something like a concussion,” Nurse McCall admitted, smiling warmly at Derek. He could see a lot of Scott in her features. “But any time someone loses time after a head trauma, particularly someone young, we take the precaution.”

“I feel like I’ve been hit by a train,” Derek admitted, embarrassed

“You look a bit like it, too,” the nurse teased, gently. “Your friends were outside all night -- I had to kick them out when visiting hours finally ended.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” his mother said, pointing upwards.

Derek tipped his head back with only a slight wince, then let out a little huff of a laugh. He reached backwards to tug at the string of a ridiculous looking mylar balloon. It was covered in yellow smiley faces.

“Stiles,” Nurse McCall said, a long-suffering expression on her face, as if that explained it all. “I tell you what, kiddo, I’m going to go get your release paperwork started. You two hang tight. Sometimes processing this kind of thing takes an hour or two.”

Nurse McCall slipped out of the room as Derek gave the balloon a little tap, groaning as he caught sight of his pummelled features in the reflective mylar. “Oh man, my face!”

His mother tugged the balloon out of his hands, mouth pursed in concern. “It will heal,” she said, gently. “Don’t let it get you down.”

Derek nodded, then wished he hadn’t as the ache between his ears increased.

“I know you’re still not 100%, but we have some decisions to make, Derek. The school administrators want to speak with you about what happened, and Sheriff Stilinski will be accompanying them.”

Biting his lip, Derek swallowed hard. “I don’t want to make a big fuss.”

“It’s not a fuss,” Talia said, sharply. Her dark eyes narrowed thoughtfully as she looked at her son. “Derek. I know this has been a rough year for you. You aren’t a burden in any way -- you are a victim.”

“Again,” Derek agreed, miserably. His mother reached out and squeezed him on the leg.

“Your friend Lydia caught your schoolmate hitting you on her phone. It was clear that you weren’t fighting back. Laura admitted that the same boy has gone after you before. This isn’t something we can -- or should -- ignore.”

Derek stared steadily at his hands, wishing he could sink through the floor.

“If we need to press charges and have another restraining order instated we will. If we don’t need to, we won’t. It’s up for discussion, but we are going to discuss it.”

“Alright,” Derek agreed, meekly.

“We’re also starting up your weekly appointments with Dr. Cho again,” she added, for good measure. “Since it worries me that you seem to think your health and safety are optional”

Derek groaned and sank back into the thin mattress of the bed. It wasn’t that he disliked seeing a therapist, it was just so time consuming…. “Fine. But it can’t be on Tuesdays!”

“Not Tuesdays,” his mother agreed, as Nurse McCall returned with his paperwork.

The entire gang appeared at the Hale house after school that day. Derek felt a tiny bit surprised that his mom let them in given the doctor’s stern orders for bed rest and a quiet atmosphere, but his Cora acted as gatekeeper while Laura and his mother fed the entire pack of them, letting Derek have one-on-one time with each.

Derek could hear them moving around below, the sound of laughter rising and falling, someone turning on the TV. He wished he could join them, though the thought of descending the stairs quickly squashed any intention of actually following through.

Surprisingly, Lydia was the first person to poke her head into his room. Derek wasn’t sure if he was relieved or annoyed that Stiles hadn’t been lurking outside… but he really did need to talk to Lydia.

He’d spent much of the night before trying to remember what had happened when she showed up.

Lydia brought a box of chocolates and another balloon, this one in the shape of a giant mylar rainbow.

“Hey,” Derek said faintly. The split in his lip made smiling painful, so he just sort of grimaced guiltily at her as she crossed the room and ignored the comfy chairs his mother had set out in favor of settling on the bed next to Derek. Her face was pinched, little worry lines marring the corners of her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Lydia blurted before Derek could even open his mouth.

“Huh?”

“I said I’m sorry.” Lydia laced her fingers and stared at the poster-covered wall opposite them. “I figured you’d be pissed that I showed the video -- or maybe that I took the video at all. I’d understand if you were pissed off, even.”

Derek rubbed as his temple -- so much for the casual social call. “I don’t remember everything that happened,” he told her, ignoring her worried expression. “You followed me out to the bleachers, didn’t you?”

That made her look sideways at him. “Yeah. Do you remember any of the conversation we had after Greenberg made a break for it?”

“I think so,” Derek wrinkled his forehead in thought. “You followed me out because I was acting weird.”

“Stiles was worried when you weren’t at lunch, but he had a test during fifth and couldn’t skip to go find you. I told him I’d look around for you and make sure everything was okay.”

“He texted me,” Derek said, blankly.

Lydia set her jaw angrily. “No, he didn’t. Greenberg’s jackass buddies stole Stiles’ phone during gym and they texted you. It was a setup. Totally freaking premeditated.”

Derek swallowed. “Oh.”

It was hard to believe Greenberg disliked him enough to pull something like that -- Derek had never felt particularly safe around the guy, but luring someone out to be assaulted and filmed was beyond the pale. Greenberg had never seemed like a psycho, just an asshole.

“It’s kind of funny,” Lydia mused, her long, painted fingernails picking at the blankets. “Stiles used that exact same plot device in the game… but it was in the session you missed,” she added, shaking her head in disbelief.

Derek huffed out a little laugh. “That’ll teach me to miss sessions.”

“Spo,” Lydia continued, clearing her throat. “I realized what was happening when I got close and took out my phone, thinking that if we had proof of what was happening the administrators might take it more seriously. So I filmed it, some of it, and then shouted as if there were teachers around to get him off of you. I… meant well, but -- as has been pointed out to me repeatedly in the last 24 hours -- it was a dick move to stand there and watch him beat on you. I should have interrupted before you got hurt.”

“He might have just turned on you, too,” Derek pointed out, oddly warmed by the idea that Lydia had been looking out for him, even if her strategy had a certain type of brutal utilitarianism to it. “It wasn’t safe for you to do anything.”

“I also shared the video with the school without asking you first,” Lydia admitted, dropping her eyes again “I didn’t realize that you would care, and by the time Stiles told me you weren’t into the idea of going public with the bullying it was a little too late for take-backs.”

“It’s fine,” Derek said automatically… surprisingly, though, he found that he actually meant it. His mother would be happier knowing the administrators were involved… and he wasn’t sure she’d let him go back to school if she didn’t feel safe about him being there. “It really is, Lydia. You did your best and you saved my ass. Don’t apologize for a judgement call.”

Lydia blinked and turned to face him full-on for the first time since she’d entered the room. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he confirmed, half-smiling at her. “Of course.”

She smiled, mouth crinkling upwards -- man, Lydia was really was pretty. “Jackson’s downstairs too, by the way. He told me to say hi, and to remind you that his dad is a lawyer.”

“My uncle’s a lawyer too,” Derek admitted. Offering up his father’s legal services was practically a declaration of love when coming from Jackson. “But I appreciate the offer. I’m sorry he can’t come up.”

Lydia shrugged one shoulder, standing and straightening her dress. “He’ll live,” she said, simply. It was the nicest thing he’d heard her say about Jackson in weeks. “It’s not like he isn’t used to it.”

“Soooo… are you two…”

She smiled at him helplessly and shrugged again, though the expression of contentment didn’t leave her face. “We talked a bit at the hospital, before they kicked us all out. I’m not sure exactly what we are, but at least… well, it’s something.”

Derek nodded, trying to look supportive. It might be a revolving-door of a relationship, but at least it made Lydia happy.

“Jackson drove everyone to the diner once Mrs McCall kicked us out. Stiles didn’t eat a bite.”

“He… huh?”

“He was too worried to eat,” Lydia rephrased, cocking one hand on her hip. “Just… remember that when he comes barging in here in about …” she glanced down at her watch. “Thirty seconds.”

Almost as if on cue a set of footsteps came pounding up the stair. Derek listened to them approach his door, hesitate, and then stand awkwardly for a few moments before a tap-tap-tap sounded through the room.

“He only gave me five minutes,” Lydia explained apologetically, stepping up and kissing him on the forehead. “Text me if you want to know anything else.”

The door clicked shut behind her, and a few moments of muffled conversation followed before Lydia’s footsteps trailed away. Derek could imagine Stiles standing on the other side of the door, taking a deep breath.

When the door opened up, Stiles looked wrecked.

Derek swallowed, taking in the bags under his eyes, the worried pinch of his eyebrows and the rumbled clothing that looked suspiciously like it had been slept in the night before. “Hey.”

“...hey. Hi. You -- can I, uh,” Stiles started. He couldn’t seem to decide what to ask first. “Can I come in?”

“What are you, a vampire?” Derek asked with a painful half-smile, gesturing him in. The room was dim enough that the brightness of the hall lights made him squint, the remains of his headache twinging at the illumination.

“I wish,” Stiles muttered, carefully closing the door behind him. He lingered at the door uncertainly. “Then I could bite Greenberg’s fucking face off.”

“It wouldn’t change anything,” Derek pointed out, though he could certainly sympathize with the urge.

“It’d make me feel better?”

Derek scooted over, making more space on the side of the bed and hoping silently that Stiles would take him up on the unspoken offer.

He did.

“How are you feeling?” Stiles asked, settling cross-legged and facing Derek. He met Derek’s eyes with a pained expression, his gaze dropping to trace over the scrapes and bruises, the split line in his fat lower lip, the second black eye in as many months.

“Not so great,” Derek admitted, mouth twitching into a slight smile. He’d thought he would feel embarrassed for Stiles to see him like this, but the look of concern on Stiles’ face was… nice. It washed some of the embarrassment away, at least. “I wasn’t expecting you to look almost as bad as I do.”

Stiles bit his lip. “I’m so, so sorry, Derek. If I hadn’t let Greenberg take my phone--”

“You didn’t let him do anything,” Derek countered, folding his arms across his aching ribs. “Your dad came to talk to me at the hospital.”

Without any warning Stiles reached out, taking the hand he’d braced against his own bicep and turning it over in his own. Derek could feel the pads of his fingertips like brands against his skin, hot and electric and impossible to ignore. Stiles didn’t even really seem to realize he was doing it.

“I told them Greenberg had been harassing you for a while,” Stiles admitted, still staring at Derek. “And I told him to look at your knuckles -- if you’d been fighting back, or fighting anyone you’d be just as split up as Greenberg.”

Derek’s ears burned.

“But then they told me that Lydia caught some of it on her phone, so I’d gotten all shouty at the vice-principal for nothing,” he added, flushing slightly.

“I appreciate you defending my honor anyway,” Derek laughed. “I wish I could have seen it.”

Stiles swallowed, turning Derek’s hand in his own. “Lydia told me he was videoing your apology on his phone. It was deleted by the time my dad questioned Greenberg about it, though. That’s super twisted, man. I never would have guessed...”

“Yeah,” Derek agreed, fingers twitching. “The whole thing was… weird. He had this look on his face like he was pissed off he was even there.”

“What a crazy fuckhead,” Stiles growled, irritably. He set Derek’s hand down as though he’d just realized he was still hanging on. “He’s been expelled.”

“Really?” Derek asked, jaw dropping. It had only been a day.

“Yes, really! You think someone like that needs to be running around our school? You think he deserves to play on the lacrosse team?”

“Finstock is going to fail me for getting his star player expelled,” Derek groaned.

“I doubt it,” Stiles said, working up a thin smile. “There is a small silver lining in the whole getting-your-face-punched-in though.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. See, Greenberg was kind of the Captain of the Lacrosse team, and now that he’s been sent off to Arkham, Finstock’s put Danny in his spot.”

“Danny’s a sophomore,” Derek’s brows rose with surprise.

“Yeah, but he’s Danny. Everybody loves him. It’s like his freaking superpower or something.”

“That’s good,” Derek managed. He didn’t know Danny very well, he was one of Jackson’s other, slightly less nerdy friends. He and Lydia had taken turns sitting at Danny’s table during their off-again phase, which had prompted a litany of jokes about custody agreements.

“Yeah, it’s great! But see, Coach was thinking about putting together an emergency tryout since Greenberg’s outta the picture, but Danny put in a good word for me and Scott. Apparently Coach figures two decent players are probably almost as good as one Greenberg, so he’s letting us fill the empty spot on the team.”

Stiles’ entire face lit up as he spoke, his bright eyes crinkling with pleasure. His enthusiasm was so contagious that Derek felt himself grinning back despite the stinging of his split lip.

At least this horrible experience had done something positive… Stiles had been lamenting his tryout-failure since December.

“Really?”

“Yeah!” Stiles beamed. “The only thing is, we’ll have to move the game to Monday since that’s the only day we won’t have practice after school. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get all my homework done if we play on a practice night.”

“Monday works,” Derek said quickly. “Of course it works. When’s your first lacrosse game?”

“Two weeks,” Stiles leaned in, looking hopeful. “You’re coming, right? Cheer my ‘sportsing’ on from the sidelines?”

“If you’d like me there, I’m there,” Derek told him firmly. “I might even wear the school colors.”

“I always want you around,” Stiles said softly, wearing an expression of quiet sincerity. Derek believed him.

Derek went back to school the following Monday, but by lunchtime his head had begun to pound in the noise and clamor of the cafeteria. It must have shown on his face because Stiles noticed immediately, one hand stroking gently against Derek’s back as he passed him a water bottle to drink from.

Stiles was touching him a lot more since the attack in the stadium, as though he wanted reassurance that Derek was still there and in one piece. It was hard not to read too much into it, but Derek couldn’t help but hope...

A few minutes later Laura appeared, oblivious to the hateful glares Scott was shooting at her across the lunch table. “How you doing, baby brother?”

Derek had his elbows on the table, rubbing his temples with his fingertips. “Fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” she mused, squinting her dark, pretty eyes at him. “You know what mom said. If you start feeling bad…”

“I’m not gonna make her miss another day of work,” Derek said, shaking his head and then hissing through his teeth as the headache redoubled on itself.

“So we don’t call her,” Laura said, gently. “Grab his backpack, would you, Stilinski?” She took Derek by the arm and they all walked together to the attendance office, where Laura signed him out -- she was eighteen now, that was so strange -- and brought the car around.

“Text me later?” Stiles asked, dropping Derek’s backpack into the back seat and pressing the water bottle back into his hands once he’d buckled his seatbelt.

“You got it,” Derek promised with a wan smile.

Laura turned down the radio to spare Derek the noise and they drove home in silence. It was only when she turned off the car in front of their house that she turned to him, bit her lip, and started to cry.

“Laura…?” Derek asked, stunned almost beyond the use of his words. He watched in bewilderment as Laura scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her forearm, smudging her mascara.

“I’m such a shitty sister,” she hiccuped, shoulders trembling with the force of her sobs. Derek leaned back in the bucket-seat and took another long sip from Stiles’ water bottle, not knowing what else to say.

Eventually he elected to go with the truth, even if it might not be what she wanted to hear. “Yeah, kind of. Lately. But I’ve been a pretty shitty brother, too.”

“It’s my fault that Greenberg approached you at lunch,” Laura sniffed, her dark eyes and pretty peaked nose gone ruddy. “I was just as much of a bully. I never shared the car, never gave you a hand in school--”

“You’re not responsible for me,” Derek muttered, wishing they were inside in the dark, comfortable shadows of his bedroom instead of the slowly cooling interior of their supposedly-shared car. “But I’m responsible for landing you in California. I know you’re pissed off at me, and you have plenty of reasons to be. You had to quit your job, leave all your friends, graduate with a bunch of strangers...”

Laura wiped her eyes again. “I had no right to be so angry. That woman was crazy. She tried to hurt you, but instead of being pissed at her I was pissed at you. I wasn’t the only person whose life she wrecked, but I turned around and wrecked yours all over again.”

Derek’s mouth opened and closed like a fish.

“If I’d used my head I’d have just sucked it up and dealt with it because it meant we were all just that much safer. And it was just a year -- it felt like the end of the world, but I’ll be back in New York before next Christmas. I’m applying to NYU, Cornell and Columbia. I just...”

Derek had guessed that. Laura had always spoken wishfully about NYU.

God, his head still hurt, this was too serious a conversation to happen when his entire brain ached.

“I’m sure you’ll get in,” he managed, swishing the last inch of water around in the bottle. “It’s okay, Laura. You’re allowed to be pissed at me, and my life’s not wrecked,” Derek told her, closing his eyes. Even the bright winter sunlight filtering through the windows was enough to make him uncomfortable. “It’s really not. The stuff with Greenberg has sucked, but I have more friends than ever before, I have…”

“A boyfriend?” Laura supplied with one more sniff, her mouth twitching up slightly at the corners.

Derek’s eyes flew wide. “Boyfriend?”

“The Stilinski kid? Dark hair, big Bambi eyes…?” Laura asked, her voice soft, one eyebrow raised questioningly.

“He’s n-not my boyfriend!” he managed to stutter out, voice squeaking. “You can’t tell people that, Laura, what if he thinks I told you--”

Laura’s serious look wavered into an insuppressible smile. She was teasing him -- teasing him with the same kind of sweet affection she used to before Kate and the move. She hadn’t done that in months.

“But you want him to be, don’t you?” Laura grinned. “I know we haven’t exactly been on the best of terms, but I’d have to be blind not to see how sweet you are on each other. He’s always staring at you during lunch.”

“Laura!” Derek whined, burying his face in his hands.

“You know mom and dad would be thrilled - he seems like a cute kid, his dad is the sheriff, right? So he can’t be that much of a troublemaker…”

Derek yanked on the door handle in protest, piling out into the brisk February air and stomping into the house. Laura’s laughter floated after him -- so he flipped her off once he’d fumbled his keys out and let himself in. He wasn’t really angry, though. Her gentle teasing lifted a massive weight from his shoulders.

It felt like he had his sister back.

Laura made him hot chocolate, tossed him a bottle of Excedrin, and then went back to school. Derek napped the afternoon away on the couch in the living room, plugging away at the homework he’d accumulated during his absences when the pain between his ears subsided enough to make rational thought bearable.

His mother vetoed the game that evening, even when Stiles offered to come to Derek instead of having him come over to play. “If you’re too sick to work you’re too sick to play, kiddo,” she told Derek, ruffling his hair when he scowled at her.

“I guess I’ll just sit around then, bored out of my skull while all of my friends hang out without me,” he muttered, unable to keep the edge of resentment from his voice.

“Life is tough,” Talia agreed. She diplomatically didn’t tease him a bit when he fell asleep at seven on a pile of history notes he’d borrowed from Stiles to copy.

When he woke up again the clock had struck ten. A complete copy of Stiles’ notes were neatly stacked on the table in Laura’s precise handwriting, a little smiley-face sticky note stuck on the top.

Derek rubbed at one eye with the ball of his hand. ’what did i miss??’ he texted Stiles, dreading the response.

‘only the worst formal dance ever’ Stiles texted back. ‘also, lydia got chewed on by your crazy uncle’

Derek gaped. ‘what????’

All he got in return was an all-caps text: ’TALK TO YOU TOMORROW SWEETPEA :)’

He couldn’t even stay mad.

It turned out that Stiles hadn’t been kidding about Lydia getting chewed on -- but Lydia also wasn’t the newest member of Derek’s teenage werewolf pack, either. The new time slot for the game interfered with Lydia’s math club meetings, and so she wouldn’t be playing with them until the end of the semester unless the game was moved to weekends. It didn’t seem fair that she’d have to drop just when she and Jackson were okay with being in the same room with one another again -- or when she and Derek were finally becoming friends -- but math club had always been Lydia’s priority.

“You’ll manage to get on without me somehow,” she teased them at lunch, blowing Stiles a kiss.

The following Monday, game-Derek was captured by hunters and chained to a chain link fence in a creepy burnt-out basement.

“This really should have happened last week,” Stiles told him, after cheerily describing the massive quantities of electricity currently rendering Derek immobile, “but since you weren’t feeling well we just played the parts of the session that didn’t involve you.”

“You literally left him hanging,” Jackson cracked, grinning at them. He had been in an absurdly good mood all week -- no surprises there.

“Doesn’t that guy ever get a break?” Scott asked, laughing into his hand.

“Apparently not,” Derek muttered, scowling down at his hit points. “I’m starting to think Stiles just puts him in weird, shirtless situations with the hope that I’ll draw him that way.”

“Am I that transparent?” Stiles wondered, making Jackson groan.

“I want to do some rolls to figure out where I am and who captured me,” Derek decided, stretching out his legs under the table. He rolled his spot/listen checks, and a gather information check for good measure -- and then froze, feeling a leg nudge up against his foot.

His eyes jerked immediately to Stiles’ face -- but Stiles only flashed Derek a private little smirk before tapping his d20 with one finger.

“The ‘where’ of your situation is immediately discernible, because it smells horrifically familiar. You instantly realize that they’ve chained you up in the basement of the burnt out ruins of your family home.

Derek groaned. “Typical.”

“You aren’t sure how much time has passed, though there are a few high windows that seem to be letting in moonlight… and your listen check informs you that someone is stalking down the hallway in what sounds like expensive leather boots.”

“I test the metal of the handcuffs. Can I roll a strength check?”

“You can, but I can tell you right now that’s not gonna do you much good.” Derek rolled his dice, but Stiles shook his head to veto the attempt. “Given the penalties caused by the electricity, you’re basically waiting for a natural 20 and a lucky reroll to get the numbers you need. You would also know that metal used by Hunters tends to be as wolf-proof as it is possible to get. They’re much, much stronger than typical handcuffs--which you, of course, know all about since you keep running into the law, thanks Scott.”

“Hey, you helped get him actually arrested!” Scott pointed out defensively. “I just put him on the Wanted list.”

“Focus, people!” Jackson ordered, tossing a piece of popcorn at Scott’s head.

Stiles tapped an icon on his ipod and brought up Mikky Echo.

Who, who are you really?
And where, where are you going?

Derek winced.

“Nowhere. You are going nowhere. Your day gets even worse when the door to the room slides open and reveals a face from your past that you don’t need to roll to recognize.”

The foot under the table nudged up against Derek’s ankle, making him swallow tightly. He focused on that as the reality of who was about to enter the room sank in.

“...let me guess,” Derek said, his stomach clenching despite his calm expression. “Kate.”

“Kate Argent,” Stiles agreed, popping the eraser of his pencil into his mouth. “But not just Kate. She has a dark-haired teenager in tow, who also looks particularly familiar, if also completely horrified by the sight of you.”

“Allison?!” Scott yelped. The look Stiles gave him was positively gleeful. “That’s right. Allison. I’m gonna give you that one for free, since she probably smells a lot like Scott.”

“Gross,” Jackson said with a snort.

Derek only half-listened as Stiles played out a dialogue between Kate and Allison, his mind ticking in circles around his own Kate Argent, newly vanished out from under the nose of her parole officers.

He’d included Kate in his character’s fictional background originally as a way to talk-about-Kate-without-really-talking-about-Kate. The characters were supposed to be them, after all, it had seemed... appropriate, somehow. Derek had stopped seeing his therapist at Christmas, he’d figured vilifying and eventually defeating a fictional version of his worst nightmares might be therapeutic in and of itself.

He hadn’t counted on how horrible it was to hear Stiles speak on her behalf, playing Kate Argent just like any other NPC out there. Now that she was a looming specter in his life yet again, having her in the game was oppressive and sickening. It felt like she’d contaminated even his favorite escapist hobby.

“Derek?” Jackson asked, reaching out to snap his fingers in Derek’s face. Derek blinked and looked up, feeling Stiles’ foot withdraw from his own.

“Sorry, I... my painkillers must be wearing off,” Derek said, quickly.

“Are you okay to--?” Stiles asked, concerned.

“Yeah! Yeah, definitely,” Derek lied, fervently. “It just makes it hard to concentrate. So Kate, and Allison.”

“Allison was just sent upstairs,” Stiles explained, “Leaving Kate down below with you. She’s just as pretty as you remember her being, only now that you’re a bit older you can see how creepy and predatory her eyes are. She watches you thoughtfully and says, ‘Come on, Derek….. He killed your sister. Now either you're not telling me because, well, you want to kill him yourself, or for some reason you're protecting him.’”

“This chick is creepy as hell,” Scott muttered, shaking his head.

Stiles leaned in, his voice sugary-sweet and disturbingly close to what Kate had actually sounded like. Derek could actually imagine her saying those words, could almost hear it.

“‘Look at that sour face,’ she says, coming in close. ‘I bet you always used to get people coming up to you saying smile, Derek. Why don't you smile more?’ Then she steps into your personal space in a big way and tips her head up as though she’s going to kiss you. ‘Don't you just wanna kick those people in the face?’”

“I can think of one,” Derek snarled, taking a deep breath.

Stiles grinned toothily at him. “‘Promise? 'cause if I thought you'd be that much fun I'd let you go.’”

The words sent a chill up Derek’s spine, one that made him grit his teeth, intensely uncomfortable. He swallowed, trying to force the feelings back -- he’d missed so many sessions lately, he wasn’t going to ruin this one too by taking things too seriously, damn it. “Derek scowls at her and asks her if she’s going to torture him or if she’s just gonna talk him to death.”

“‘Oh, sweetie, I don't I don't wanna torture you. I just wanna catch up. Remember all the fun we had together?’”

“‘Like the time you burned my family alive?’”

“‘No, I was thinking more about the hot, crazy sex we had.... but the fire thing? Yeah, that was fun too.’”

Derek stared at Stiles, heart hammering in his chest. Stiles couldn’t know, could he? Had Sheriff Stilinski told him that Kate was actually a part of Derek’s past, that he’d made out with her in an empty classroom, that-- oh, god, he was going to be in so much trouble if he puked all over the Stilinski’s dining room table.

Fortunately for Derek, rescue came from an unexpected quarter. Just when his throat grew too tight to breathe, Sheriff Stilinski’s head poked in through the doorway to the room, brows arched. “Hot, crazy what now?”

“Augh!” Stiles squeaked, actually falling out of his chair sideways and ending in a sprawl on the floor. One leg kicked out and caught the table let, sending his trifold GM screen fluttering down on top of him. “Dad!!”

Jackson burst out into disbelieving guffaws at the spectacle, while Scott jumped up to as though the sheriff had ordered him to attention. Derek dropped his head to the table in front of him and sucked in a deep breath, wanting to melt through the floor in his horror and embarrassment. If Stiles explained Derek’s character background to the Sheriff, the sheriff would realize he was playing a character much more like himself than anyone at the table knew--

“I didn’t realize this was that kind of game,” the Sheriff said mildly. Derek could just imagine the way his eyebrows were wiggling.

Stiles groaned, scrambling back to his feet in an awkward flailing of limbs and fingers. “No, dad, come on. Ew. Ew!”

“Gross,” Scott muttered, sliding back into his seat and making a face.

His work done, the Sheriff laughed aloud. “Fine, fine. Do you boys want to order pizza tonight?”

The promise of pizza was shockingly sufficient at distracting the group. They argued about topics for almost fifteen minutes, during which time Derek escaped to the bathroom and washed his face, trying not to hyperventilate in the Stilinski guest bathroom. Once he’d pulled himself together enough that the idea of continuing the scene didn’t make him want to barf his guts up he returned to the kitchen just in time to cast a tie-breaking vote on the all-important matter of pizza toppings.

(Scott wanted Hawaiian, Jackson wouldn’t eat anything with vegetables on it, Derek didn’t like any meat other than pepperoni. When they’d settled on three massive pies the Sheriff called it in, throwing in an order of wings for good measure.)

By the time they sat back down Stiles was prodding morosely at the bruise he’d just added to his elbow, while Scott was arguing with Jackson about the virtues of garlic butter versus ranch.

When Stiles pitched his voice to Kate’s level again, Derek felt a great deal steadier than he had before the break.

He settled his chin on one hand. “I think we were on… ‘Are you going to torture me or are you just going to talk me to death,’” Derek offered, helpfully.

“‘Sweetheart,’” Stiles said, batting his eyes. “‘I really don't want to torture you....’ And then she tips her head back for the door, where a broad, gritty henchman-type dude is standing in the shadows, and finishes her sentence. ‘....but he does.’”

As February ticked on to March the days grew longer and marginally warmer. Derek’s favorite hoodie had been ruined in the affair under his bleachers, so his mother took him to the outlet malls three downs away. He bought -- despite the inevitable teasing from Jackson and Scott about turning into his character -- a black leather jacket. He liked the way it looked, the way it creaked when he moved, and the way it made his eyes seem lighter.

From the way he caught Stiles staring at him during chemistry the following day he suspected Stiles liked it too.

Things with Stiles were -- well, they were something, that was for sure. Derek could feel a sort of undercurrent running through their relationship that he’d never felt before. It started with the almost-hand-holding in his dark bedroom and continued on with touches to the shoulder and back, inside jokes, and the way that Stiles started sitting beside him every day at lunch, and even one night where they talked on the phone until Derek actually fell asleep with the receiver mashed against his ear.

The other seemed to sense the shift too -- Lydia seemed pleased by their growing closeness and even invited Derek and Stiles to come out with her and Jackson. They slurped on milkshakes and watched a ridiculously campy thriller at the dollar theater in something that felt suspiciously like a double date. Scott occasionally looked resentful over the way Stiles’ head bent towards Derek instead of him, but Derek started helping him catch up in geometry during lunch, which seemed to smooth things over.

Even though the change was gut-churningly exciting, Derek didn’t feel an overwhelming urge to push for more. He still wasn’t entirely sure Stiles wanted more, but given the lazy way their acquaintanceship had transformed into friendship, it seemed appropriate that this maybe-transition to something more would be a slow, inexorable slide.

Laura started saying hello to his friends in the hallway, and drove Derek to game nights without complaint.

When the first lacrosse game of the pre-season rolled around, Derek pulled on a pair of dark-wash jeans, a graphic tee, and his black leather jacket. Jackson had recommended him axe and his favorite brand of hair gel, both of which Derek tried to apply sparingly. Once he’d finished dressing himself he couldn’t resist the urge to flex in the mirror, squinting at the lingering bruises on his temple and the soft pink scar over one eyebrow.

His reflection in the mirror actually looked… kind of cool.

Unless he smiled, of course. The braces weren’t doing a lot for his image.

When he came down the stairs Laura and Cora were lounging in the living room. Cora’s mouth fell open in shock, while Laura just looked up at him and grinned. “You look nice,” she admitted, ruffling his hair and completely destroying his artful tousle.

“Ohmygod,” Cora squeaked, eyes wide. “Do you have a date?!”

“No!” Derek felt his cheeks pinking up. So much for looking like a badass. “No, not a -- I was just gonna go catch the lacrosse game. Laura, can I use the car?”

“Yeah,” Laura said, grinning. “Of course, baby bro. Let me grab the keys.”

Derek almost never went out on Friday nights… it made him feel weirdly mature, having plans and a car and a cool leather jacket.

This was clearly going to take some getting used to.

He met Lydia and Jackson in the parking lot, where Lydia was standing next to a dark-haired girl he’d never seen before. She was wearing a bright blue TARDIS dress and had her hair pulled up back in a messy ponytail.

“Derek!” Lydia hooked her arm in his and flashed him a wide, calculating smile. “You made it! And early, too.”

“Nice gel,” Jackson said approvingly, grinning at him. Derek smiled back, keeping his lips closed over the brackets braces.

“Derek, this is Allison,” Lydia continued, smiling brightly. “Her family just moved here… she’ll start at BHHS on Monday.”

“Hi,” Derek said wonderingly, staring at the girl. She looked just like the Allison he’d drawn for Scott, albeit a bit softer around the edges. All she needed was a dangling gold pendant to complete the image. “I’m new-ish to Beacon Hills too... started at BHHS this fall.”

Allison bit her lip, her gentle face clouding with worry. “You look like the school chewed you up and spit you back out,” she said, eyes lingering on his remaining bruises.

“You shoulda seen the other guy,” Derek joked, and she laughed. “Seriously, you’re off to a good start with Lydia. She’s pretty alright.”

“Pretty alright!” Lydia huffed, abandoning Derek to take Allison by the arm and tug her towards the box office. “So, where was I?”

“Scott’s lacrosse skills,” Allison prompted, looking amused.

“Yes! Scott,” Lydia started with relish, leaving Derek and Jackson to shake their heads in bewilderment as the girls moved away.

“Fast friends,” Derek blinked.

“Allison is actually a friend of Lydia and Stiles,” Jackson said. “She groups with us on WOW sometimes, plays this totally badass hunter chick with a sweet core hound for a pet…”

“I’m just gonna nod along and pretend like I understood that,” Derek admitted sheepishly.

“Yeah, well. Stiles actually named game-Allison after her, since she was a hunter and all, and now her parents have moved and she’s transferring in. Small world, right?”

“Jeez, yeah.”

“You know, you oughta play WOW with us sometime,” Jackson said cheerfully, rolling up towards the ticket office. “I bet Stiles would power level you if you asked nicely…”

Jackson was the only member of their little group who actually understood the rules of the game, so he sat in the center next to Lydia and provided them with a running blow-by-blow. He seemed to think the game went reasonably well for a pre-season match… and since the results had no effect on league standing, even the newest players on the team were given time on the line. Derek jumped up and whooped with the best of them when Stiles managed a pass with surprising grace -- and then winced as he promptly tripped over another player’s knee and went tumbling ass-over-teakettle into the grass.

Stiles bounced up, though, grinning and raising a fist triumphantly as Danny completed the pass, lunged in, and scored.

Even Scott played well -- or so Allison and Lydia seemed to think. Derek admittedly had eyes only for Stiles, watching him even when he was sitting on the sidelines, elbowing his teammates or slurping down the contents of his water bottle. Once or twice he even looked back at the crowd, though his eyes never did manage to find Derek’s.

When the final buzzer sounded and Beacon Hills’ modest win made official the crowd jumped up, cheering and clapping. The players lined up on the field, slapping palms with the opposite team as the speakers creaked to life and started blaring the school song.

Derek squeezed along the row as people began packing up their things, apologizing profusely for every toe he managed to step on. He let the crowd swallow him up, pressing him through the very tunnel where he’d grown so intimately acquainted with Greenberg’s right cross. Derek barely spared the experience a thought, his brain humming with the excitement of the game and his anticipation about seeing Stiles.

He followed the crowd out of the stadium and into the parking lot, where groups of people were circling up and chatting about the match. He ignored all of them, jogging across the lot towards the exit from the field closest to the locker rooms.

There was a crush of players and family loitering around the gates in a chaotic mix of celebration and cheering. When Derek squinted he thought he could see Sheriff Stilinski amongst them, his son’s arms thrown around his neck. They both looked ecstatic, the Sheriff ruffling Stiles’ hair and then throwing an arm around Scott’s mother, who gave Stiles an excited kiss on the cheek.

Derek slowed his pace, feeling suddenly nervous. He would be too embarrassed to say what he wanted to say in front of parents… maybe if he waited they’d head out and he could get Stiles alone. He avoided the sidewalk by cutting through a line of parked cars.

A broken street lamp overhead flickered and then died as he moved past; when it did a strong hand shot out to snare his shoulder.

“What the fu--” Derek tried to twist around to face his attacker but stiffened as a cold metal circle shoved up against against his ribs, just under the fall of his jacket. Surely that wasn’t a gun. Nobody brought guns to high school lacrosse--

Oh god, had Greenberg brought a gun to the game?

“Hello, Derek,” said a familiar voice in his ear, husky, seductive, and straight out of his nightmares.

That wasn’t Greenberg.

“Thaaaat’s right,” Kate purred, the familiar scent of her perfume cloying and overwhelming; it made Derek want to puke, or cry, or possibly both. He felt the weight of her press against his back, surprisingly strong despite her size.

“We’re going to take a little walk. Can you do that for me, Derek?”

He needed to stay calm. He needed to buy some time. Surely someone in this crowd would notice a kid with a gun trained on him in a parking lot… people would be coming out now that the game was ending, moving towards their cars --

“I hear you have a friend on the team,” Kate said, sweetly. The gun shoved harder into his ribs. “Wouldn’t it be unfortunate if he came looking for you?”

Derek started to walk.

The school itself was dark despite the crowd at the stadium, and they wound their way through the parking lot at a sedate pace. Derek quickly realized that two onlookers picking their way amongst the cars wouldn’t attract a bit of attention -- every other person in the parking lot was doing the exact same thing. Worse, they were laughing, talking

Once they crossed the lot and moved into the courtyard at the center of the U-shaped campus Derek knew they were well and truly alone.

His throat went tight. How the actual fuck was this his life? Could this year possibly get any shittier? He’d been stalked, assaulted, and now he was being kidnapped at gunpoint like a fucking damsel in distress… it wasn’t going to happen again. He wasn’t just going to let Kate whisk him away and ruin his life -- or his family’s lives -- again without at least putting up a fight.

“This is far enough,” he decided, stopping outright. “Say what you want to say.”

“Oh, baby grew a spine, did he?” Kate’s mouth pressed up against the back of Derek’s neck in something that felt suspiciously like a kiss. She then slunk around to face him, her head tilted at a curious angle as she took in his disgusted expression.

She looked… different. She’d cut her hair short, dyed it a bright red, and wore big hoop earrings so low they almost skimmed her shoulders. Derek hated the part of himself that still caught on the pretty bow of her mouth and long, lean lines of her neck. She was pretty, in the same way a poisonous snake was pretty.

He dropped his eyes to her gun, which looked as real as any gun Derek had ever seen.

“You look good,” Kate decided, looking him over. “My swinging telegram didn’t work you over as well as I’d hoped.”

“Your what?”

“Didn’t you get a very-special-message from our … mutual acquaintance, Mr. Greenberg,” Kate purred, running a finger along Derek’s jaw.

Derek’s mouth fell open. “How…”

Kate leaned in and hooked one finger in Derek’s belt buckle, shoving the gun up against the flat of his belly. “I’ve been following you for weeks, sweetie. When I saw you walk home from school with that awful shiner I knew someone in school felt as strongly about you as I do.”

“You put him up to it,” Derek said, shivering at the feel of her mouths so close to his ears. He thought about the strange expression on Greenberg’s face -- he’d mentioned a fanclub. The fanclub was Kate. “He wasn’t videoing it, he was fucking facetiming you.”

“Bin-go,” Kate sing-songed, tapping the gun against his belt. “Poor thing. He was pretty cross about the whole thing, no fun at all. Shouted and screamed when I threatened to burn his house down if he said anything, but then… you know how that goes.”

Derek shuddered.

“I thought the apology would be enough, but it just wasn’t as satisfying as I imagine the real thing will be,” she said thoughtfully, pursing her lips.

“You threatened Greenberg just like you threatened me,” Derek thought of Greenberg’s subsequent expulsion and felt sick.

“Oh, it didn’t take a lot of convincing,” Kate said with a wave. “He blamed you for ruining his chances with your sister, apparently. And nobody’s as ripe for the picking as a dejected teenage boy whose advances have been soundly rejected.”

Derek stared resolutely past her, back in the direction of the lacrosse field, with its lights and people and an off-duty Sheriff, wishing he were anywhere but here.

Which was when someone came around the corner and froze, staring straight back at him.

Derek deliberately didn’t focus on the other person, but he did tip his chin up, taking a step back, drawing away from her. Kate’s eyes locked on his mouth in that way they always had back in her days of substitute teaching -- so he licked his lips. “That’s it? You want an apology? How old are you, five? Are you gonna tell teacher on me, too?”

“Don’t test me, Derek,” Kate growled, crossing one arm across her breasts and then tapping the muzzle of the gun against her jaw. The figure behind her began to move again -- but not away. In the strips of light filtering into the courtyard Derek could see the bright red and white of a lacrosse jersey, a dark head of short, cropped hair--

Damn it -- it was Stiles.

“You have a predatory nature, Derek,” Kate murmured. “You play this meek character, the shy little boy, when within you I can see the potential to be so much more. You’ve never been able to see it like I do.”

He needed to get Kate away from here before Stiles could get any closer and get himself killed, he needed to keep her attention.

“You’re a psycho,” Derek snarled, heart pounding in his ears. Why wasn’t Stiles retreating? He was approaching, his lacrosse stick clutched in both hands. “Are you gonna torture me or are you just gonna talk me to death?”

Kate snorted derisively. “Oh, sweetie, I don't I don't wanna torture you. I just wanna catch up. Remember all the fun we had together?”

“Taking on teaching jobs just to stalk underage kids, fucking threatening them and photographing their families and climbing through their fucking windows at night? What about the time you tried to burn my family alive? You’re sick.”

Stiles was twenty feet away, fifteen, ten --

“I’m not sick,” Kate promised him, her voice sugary sweet and eyes shining bright in the darkness. “I’m just a cougar.”

Air whistled sharply past Stiles’ lacrosse stick as he brought it down with a heavy crack against the back of Kate’s head -- and then all hell broke loose.

Kate grunted and crumpled like a puppet whose strings had been cut, catching herself on one knee and teetering dangerously. The gun hit the pavement and skittered, firing off a single shot into the darkness. Both Derek and Kate threw themselves in its direction.

“STILES!” Derek shouted, elbowing Kate in the jaw as he scrambled for the weapon.

Kate’s pretty features were cut by an angry snarl, her fingernails slicing into his forearm as they tussled. Despite Derek’s flailing her fingers closed around the gun half a second before his, leaving him to scrabble ineffectually against the back of her palm. She whirled on them, raising the gun again.

Derek snarled and righted himself, his ratty Converse sneakers finding just enough purchase against the sidewalk to launch his body forward. He drove one shoulder into Kate’s midriff, one of her fists jamming into his ribs as they twisted and hit the pavement. He grunted and rolled, pinning her beneath him as he grabbed for her wrists, the gun firing off into the darkness twice more.

His fingers caught the sleeve of her jacked and he twisted it as hard as he could, dragging the weapon’s muzzle almost completely vertical as two more shots rang out, bouncing off the brick walls of the school building.

“You fucking--!”

Kate began to thrash, slamming her head into his as Derek brought his free arm up and began to jackhammer his fist into her stomach over and over and over again. A sick surge of adrenaline flooded his veins as each hit landed stronger than the last.

How dare she come here, how dare she threaten him, how dare she point a gun at Stiles--

Then Stiles was beside him, kicking the gun out of Kate’s hand and sending it sliding into the bushes that lined the sidewalk. He snagged Kate’s other wrist and began to twist it, growling furiously as she began to thrash and swear at him.

Then, suddenly, strong hands were hauling Derek backwards and Sheriff Stilinski was beside him, gun aimed squarely at Kate’s chest.

“Is anyone hurt? Son?”

“I’m fine, Derek, are you-- Derek!”

Derek’s brain wouldn’t turn off-- his body was tugging and struggling against the arms bracketing his shoulders until he recognized the voice attached to them.

“Derek! Calm down, we got this, it’s cool, buddy, Derek!”

“Scott, pull him back until I have her cuffed,” the Sheriff ordered. “Hale, if you can’t reign it in I’ll slap a pair of these on you too, for your own safety.”

Scott -- the guy holding him back was Scott. He must have come running with the Sheriff and…. oh.

Derek blinked in surprise, realizing that half of the lacrosse team, including both Danny and Coach Finstock, were standing around them in a circle of gawking, sweaty teens.

Derek let his arms fall to his side, his chest heaving against Scott’s as the tension drained out of his body.

“Dude,” said Scott, eyebrows arched in surprise. “You’re kind of scary when you’re pissed.”

“Who knew,” Derek answered dryly, wiping his bloody mouth on his sleeve.

Scott moved aside just enough that Derek could stare down at Kate’s furious face, her bloody lip and scraped up elbows as one of the on-duty deputies from the game tugged her hands behind her and cuffed her.

Then he tore his eyes away, a swell of panic rising in his chest.

After a heart-stopping moment of frantic searching, Derek’s eyes picked Stiles out. He was standing on the other edge of the growing crowd, one hand pressed to his chest, his sweat-slick hair sticking up every which way. Lydia was standing next to him, their hands clasped tightly together… but when Stiles met Derek’s gaze he dropped her hand and took one halting step forward.

That was all the permission Derek needed. He jerked past Scott and skirted Kate’s thrashing legs, throwing his arms around Stiles and tucking him in close, digging his fingers into the mesh of his lacrosse uniform. His mouth pressed against the sweat-damp skin behind Stiles’ ear, his arms locking him in, pressing the full length of their bodies together.

The lacrosse pads jabbed awkwardly into Derek’s collarbone and Stiles’ lacrosse stick was knocked to the ground as they came together... but when Stiles turned his head and pressed his hot and soft and perfect mouth to Derek’s it was difficult to care about anything else.

“Dude! You dick! You absolute dick!” Scott shouted, jumping up and slamming his fists against the table in shock. “This is so unfair!”

“It’s your own fault, Scott,” Stiles informed him, laughing. He beamed at Derek over the top of his new GM screen -- a hand-drawn black and white illustration that Derek had finished just in time for their one month anniversary. “It was a terrible roll. There’s no way you beat Derek to Peter!”

“You’ve doomed me to an eternity of star-crossed bullshit with my imaginary girlfriend!” Scott whined, running his hands through his hair until the dark curls poked up every which way.

“However will you survive?” asked Allison, perching her pretty chin on her pretty hand and beaming over at him. This was kind-of-sort-of-technically their third real date, and they were ludicrously adorable.

“Miserably,” Scott informed her, face getting that soft, vaguely-mushy look it did when he found himself at the center of Allison’s attention.

“You’re ridiculous,” she informed him, sweetly.

“Ridiculously amazing?” Scott tried, hopefully. Allison giggled and laced their fingers together.

Derek rolled his eyes at the saccharine display and then glanced over at Stiles, gaze catching on the upturn of his lips and the crinkle at the corners of his eyes. He swallowed, momentarily suffused with the desire to touch and taste and --

It was possible that he didn’t didn’t have much of a leg to stand on. Glass houses and all that.

“So what exactly does this mean?” Jackson drummed his fingers on the table, glancing from Derek to Stiles with one eyebrow raised.

“It means,” Derek decided, grinning toothily at his friends, braces and all. “I’m the alpha now.”