Chapter Text
Derek actually has the nerve to look shocked, when he sees Stiles on campus for the first time.
Very shocked, as a matter of fact. He is in the middle of saying something to one of his new buddies, glances at Stiles for a fraction of a second, and then does a double take, his words dying in his throat when they meet eyes from fifteen feet away. Derek stares at him, like he’s checking to make sure this isn’t just an extremely convincing Stiles lookalike – it’s long enough that his friends are asking him what’s he looking at, glancing over at Stiles and then around him, trying to find something that could possibly be so interesting.
For his part, Stiles just grips the straps on his backpack and keeps walking. He knew he’d be seeing Derek far more than he’d ever care to, and he had mentally prepared himself for it. For months, he’s been gearing up to seeing Derek Hale again. He won’t say that it’s nothing to him, because Derek looks the same and different at the same time, because Derek looks at him like he’s never seen him before, but…he keeps walking.
Derek says something to his friends, a new group of football assholes that Stiles will likely learn to detest just like he had in high school, and starts coming right for him. Stiles has this thought of breaking into a sprint and high tailing it across campus to his first class, but he knows beyond any shadow of a doubt that he cannot outrun Derek Hale. Not a chance in hell.
So, when Derek is only five feet away, there’s not a whole lot that Stiles can do about it.
“Stiles,” Derek says, like he literally cannot believe it, still. Stiles is an apparition to him, a ghost from another time, materializing in his new shiny life like it’s been possessed by his presence. “What are you doing here?”
That stops Stiles in his tracks. He stops, all the way, and turns to face Derek head on, his eyes staring right into Derek’s. He cannot be serious. He has to be fucking kidding. But, Derek is not kidding. He is genuinely baffled by Stiles’ existence, here on this particular campus that Derek has apparently declared his. “You’re kidding.”
Derek blinks. He says, “are you –“
“Did you really think that I would up and decide to not go to Beacon just because you would be here?”
The silence and the baffled look on his face says, yes, yes that is precisely what I thought.
Derek has this weird ego thing about him, Stiles learned during their time together. Where he thinks he’s this piece of shit who doesn’t deserve anything, is terrible and awful and everyone should hate him, but at the same time, he is convinced the world revolves around him and that everyone should bend to his every whim. It was a bizarre, contradictory part of his personality that Stiles learned how to navigate over time; now, seeing it again in the flesh, Stiles is taken aback to see how much Derek really has not changed since the last time they saw one another the previous Fall.
Stiles scoffs at him. “Right,” he starts to walk away, to be done with the entire thing, and then he turns around and goes at him again. “I’ve only spent my entire life working toward coming to this exact fucking school, but fuck it, my ex will be there, time to go to San Diego fucking state.”
He’s making a scene, right in the middle of campus, right where Derek’s friends can see the entire god damn thing, and Derek is immediately talking a step away from him. “Okay, so you’re here,” he is using a tone that perhaps is meant to de-escalate the situation. It is not working. “A heads up might’ve been fucking nice.”
“You knew I was going to go here,” Stiles reiterates, because he did, he fucking did, he has always known that. Even back when they were bitter rivals beating each other senseless, it was not a secret to either of them that they would be at the same college together if everything turned out the way that they wanted it to. Everything did turn out, after all. Derek got his full ride thanks to football and Stiles got his scholarship thanks to working his fucking ass off for four straight years, and now here they are.
But Stiles would not say that everything turned out how they wanted it to.
“…and now you really have the balls to stand in front of me like you can’t believe it?”
“I just thought…” Derek trails off, like he’s trying to find the right words. Behind him, one of his friends calls his name, and Derek turns and waves them off all agitated, before turning back to look Stiles in the face again. “…I figured you wouldn’t want to see me, so –“
Oh, Stiles does not want to see him, not even a little bit. The breakup wasn’t what one would quantify as awful or terrible, not necessarily, and that’s only because Stiles had taken it like a world class fighter takes a punch. Derek broke up with him, citing different environments and different phases of life and all this other bullshit in spite of what he had said the numerous times Stiles raised concerns about those exact things, and Stiles didn’t make a scene. He didn’t pitch a fit or key Derek’s fancy car or beg him to reconsider or anything like that, because he didn’t want to be pathetic.
He had accepted it with all the grace of a prince. They have not spoken to one another since, have not laid eye on one another since, none of it. Now, here they are, in a different school under a different set of circumstances.
“I don’t care whether I see you or not,” Stiles lies, but he’s gotten good at that, so Derek believes it hook line and sinker, and he has the gall to be taken aback, like the words have struck him. “Your friends are waiting.”
With that, Stiles walks away from the conversation. He keeps his eyes dead ahead and his posture stiff and sure, so Derek does not get the impression at all that Stiles has been rattled by the meeting or even that he’s remotely upset by it whatsoever. Derek doesn’t follow him or call his name or anything, so he must just go back to palling around with his fuckoff friends. Stiles goes to class and sits there waiting for it to start, arms crossed over his chest, frowning.
He cannot believe, cannot fucking believe, that Derek was surprised to see him. It’s offensive, on some level, that Derek would ever think that Stiles would go to a radically different school just on the basis of avoiding him. And on another level, it’s hurtful, deeply, because it was clear to Stiles that it’s exactly what Derek wanted him to do.
Hell, he’d been banking on it.
**
In the dining hall, Stiles sets his plate and silverware bunch down, drops his backpack on the ground beside the table, sits, and then gives Allison a very serious look. She is in the middle of a bite, chewing as she greets him with a hurried wave, so when Stiles says, “I ran into Derek earlier,” she nearly chokes on the bite in her mouth. She coughs, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes as she forces the bite down her throat. “Yup. There he was, dead center of campus.”
With her windpipe clear, Allison takes a big breath and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear – she looks shocked. Like she somehow believed that Derek would be walking around with an invisible cape on, or something. “What happened? Did he say anything to you?”
“Oh, did he say anything,” Stiles picks up his fork and begins maliciously attacking his salad like it’s personally offended him. “Did he ever.”
“Well?” she gestures, totally invested, like her favorite television show just got renewed and she’s hunkering in for the latest episode.
“He stood there and was like, uh, what are you doing here, why are you here, what, you go here? What?” Stiles’ Derek impression consists of a deep voice that sort of verges close to what someone who has smoked pot nonstop for fifteen years would sound like. “As if my whole scholastic life hasn’t lead up to me fucking going here.”
“Wow,” she raises her eyebrows, nodding like she’s implicitly on Stiles’ side, because of course she is. When everything first happened and Stiles had to go into school the next day and admit to his friends that Derek had broken up with him, they had seen through the ‘taking it in stride’ act that Stiles was putting on and treated him like a baby bird that needed to get nursed back to health. They had felt really bad for him, because they knew how much Derek meant to him.
And, dude, to be tossed aside like that so that Derek could go chase the new interesting people at college? That was fucking rough. It is still rough, whenever Stiles really lets himself think about it.
“That guy is such an egotistical sack of human waste,” she says, biting into her sandwich. Around a mouthful, she goes on. “I mean, it’s one thing to be surprised at seeing you, but what did he expect?”
“He thought I’d go to my second choice. He’s probably been sitting around with his fingers crossed, hoping I wouldn’t get in.”
“He’s so gross. You really are better off without him,” she gives him this all-knowing, very intense look – right into his soul. As though she is checking to make sure that Stiles isn’t pining after someone who likely would not care whether he lived or died. “There’s no use being concerned with him, when there are, like, thousands of boys at this school. You realize that, right?”
Thousands of boys, indeed. It’s actually sort of startling the sheer number of boys there are to ogle at, as a matter of fact. Every day Stiles sees at least thirty or so unbelievably attractive boys just walking around like it’s not a big deal at all – after eight straight years of middle and high school staring at the same hundred dumbass boys every single fucking day, Stiles feels like a kid in a candy store. The best part about it is that he doesn’t even really have to spend too much time hemming and hawing over who’s gay and who isn’t; all he has to do is go to his LGBTQ+ meetings and he’s set.
It would be insane, completely bonkers, for him to sit around wallowing over Derek stupid fucking Hale, when there are dozens of boys here who would actually be interested in him. Who wouldn’t, like, use him for their gay awakening and then push him away as though the whole thing meant nothing to them anyway.
“I just want to hook up so bad,” he confesses, pushing a tomato around on his plate. “I want to meet some random guy and just – have mindless sex with him and not care about it.”
“There’s the spirit,” she smiles, though she fully does not get it. In spite of the fact that Scott had gone to a different college than either of them to pursue a veterinary degree, he’s less than an hour away, and they seem to be doing fine with the distance. They see each other minimum three times a week, and although the semester is only just getting started, Stiles truly does not foresee them breaking up anytime soon. Allison will not be having mindless sex with strange boys for the hell of it, like Stiles completely plans on doing.
Relationships, he has decided, are not worth his time, right now. He’s taking five classes, all of which he intends to get A’s in. He’s going out for the school paper, which is viciously competitive and will likely consume all of his free time, anyway. To be honest, he doesn’t have time to sit around waiting for a boyfriend, and even more to the point, he doesn’t have time for Derek fucking Hale to ruin any of this for him.
“I can’t believe you ever dated him to begin with,” Allison says, while Stiles keeps pushing his tomato around, thinking about the look that Derek had gave him out there – that panicked disbelief. “He was never really very nice to you, anyway.”
Well, he was, actually. Allison wouldn’t know that. But, he was.
**
Stiles half expects Derek to materialize at one of his LGBTQ+ meetings, but he never does. Stiles would’ve figured that being the only not-straight member of the college football team and being so open about it would lead him straight to this club, but apparently, Derek doesn’t have time for silly things like clubs, just like he didn’t have time for silly things like a high school boyfriend. Too much practice, too much class, too many parties.
It is surprising the sheer number of not-straight people that do come to these things, though. Stiles had expected maybe at most ten or fifteen people to be here, but the real number is closer to a hundred. It’s overwhelming the first day when he walks in and sees all of them, because truth be told he does have a shy bone in his body, but everyone else was new as well and nice enough, so after the first few it’s not so scary anymore. They do mixers, with ice cream or a sandwich bar, and they do intense meetings where everyone sits around and listens to other people’s coming out stories, and they do game nights and things like that. It’s actually…fun.
Classes are good, he makes a new friend or two, and he convinces himself that avoiding Derek is not high on the list of his priorities. Because if he makes a big deal out of it, if he mentally gives the energy towards him, it means that Stiles isn’t over it. And of course he is. He had done the long, hard, laborious work of wallowing and feeling sorry for himself. He had let himself cry a couple of times and even almost lost his title of Valedictorian on a History mid-term because focusing was proving itself to be difficult; but dammit, he had done it.
He had graduated. He had won Valedictorian anyway. He made it here. He will not spend any time thinking about Derek fucking Hale, as god is his witness.
The problem with avoiding Derek, however, seems to be the same problem he had with it when they were in high school. They loved him and hated him in high school, revered him and despised him in equal amounts. And as luck would have it, the reputation of Derek Hale here in college is almost a mirror image of what it was in the tighter, smaller halls of Beacon Hills High School.
College football is a way, way bigger fucking deal than high school football could ever be, especially considering that Beacon is renowned for being one of the best football programs and churns out major league players like it’s nothing. The games are televised and the crowds are triple what they would be on the Beacon Hills High field, because there’s an actual honest to god stadium on campus. There are billboards on the side of it with notable players, and wouldn’t you know it? Even though Derek is only a second year, he’s already made a name for himself.
When Stiles goes to C lot to get in his car for work or errands, the billboard leers at him. Derek and his serious eyes and set jaw and dead expression. Stiles has fantasies, vivid and lifelike, of scaling up the side of the stadium and spray painting over Derek’s face with red, just so he’ll stop staring at him all the time.
This may or may not be evidence that Stiles isn’t as over it as he claims to be.
To get on the school paper, Stiles has to submit a series of works and pieces that hopefully beat what all the other kids are turning in. The first month of classes is absorbed almost entirely by his other schoolwork and the obsessive fine tuning of his articles – to the point where he only makes it to the dining hall for one meal a day. A white chocolate americano becomes his lunch nearly every single day, in the library by the fountain where it’s easiest for him to concentrate and do his work.
He’s standing in line futzing on his phone, making an organized schedule of what assignments he has due over the next couple of weeks, when a throat pointedly clears from behind him. He barely looks up, thumbs still working as he does so. When he sees it’s Derek, backpack on, a brand new letterman with different colors and different pins, he immediately averts his eyes back down to his phone and frowns.
“Yeah?”
Derek seems to be startled by the curtness of Stiles’ tone. He blinks and then pulls down on the hem of his jacket – Stiles remembers that as being one of Derek’s trademark hard to spot nervous tics. He had learned that Derek did, at times, get nervous, in spite of seeming impervious to all normal human emotions other than intense self-loathing. “Just wanted to say hi.”
“Uh huh,” Stiles focuses on typing in his paper due on Wednesday for Psych.
The line moves forward. Stiles takes two steps, and Derek follows suit right behind him. They’re quiet for a long time – nothing but the sound of the steam wand and the grinder, the girls behind the counter communicating drinks to one another or laughing, some jackass in a backwards hat talking about hiking with his buddies a few people down the line from Derek. Then, Derek clears his throat again. “If we’re going to be existing in the same space, you could at least not be a total dick about it.”
That gets Stiles’ attention. He looks up and really takes in Derek for the first time since this altercation began. His jacket is purple and white, the Beacon colors, and the pins stuck into it are of a six pack of beer, more than one taco, a unicorn perhaps because he thinks it’s funny, and infuriatingly enough, a rainbow flag. Stiles wants to rip that pin clean out of his jacket so bad, so fucking bad, to the point where he has to ball his hand into a fist to keep himself from doing it. “Oh, am I being a dick?” His voice is sarcastic, beyond sarcastic, so cutting Derek is again taken by surprise. “Sorry, I don’t have time for small talk with you.”
“Right, because you must be so busy,” Derek matches Stiles’ tone easily. “Drowning in class work, as usual.”
This is an eerily familiar conversation, to one they had in the halls of Beacon High two years ago – staring at one another, two strangers who knew each other their entire lives, trading insults instead of doing what they really wanted to.
It’s Stiles’ turn to order, and the girl at the register looks at him expectantly. But, he takes ten seconds to look Derek dead in the eyes, and really let him have it. “It would be in your absolute best interest to fucking avoid me,” Stiles informs him, keeping his tone even. “You fucking asshole.”
“Since when are you all mad at me?” Derek demands, but Stiles ignores him. The barista is clicking a pen and looking between the two of them like there’s a good show on television, because something tells Stiles that drama like this is not so usual in the coffee line. As Stiles is ordering his drink, Derek is storming off, vacating his place in line like he never really cared much about it, anyway. Stiles gets the idea that Derek saw Stiles in here, and feigned any interest in getting a drink himself just for an excuse to corner him and be an unbelievable cock. Derek never drinks coffee, ever. He’s fairly certain it’s not part of his strict football man diet.
As he stands off to the side waiting for his drink to come up, by the little area with the sugars and stir sticks and a cream pitcher, Stiles catches two girls seated at a table laughing and whispering to each other. He gets the idea it’s about Derek being a dreamboat, an absolute snack, and he crosses his arms over his chest and feels like he’s sixteen years old again.
It was not supposed to be like this. Here Derek is, ruining yet another thing for Stiles, almost completely effortlessly. Stiles convinces himself that it doesn’t bother him, will not get to him. He’s over it. He is completely and totally over it.
**
Stiles makes the paper, by what feels like the skin of his teeth. As it turns out, being super smart in high school means almost nothing when you get to college, because you’re surrounded by other people who either actually are super smart, or have been pretending they are their entire lives and are tricking everyone into believing it. The other kids are just as good as he is, and Stiles only gets on by sheer fucking luck, he’s certain of it.
Of course, the senior staffers get most of the really enviable assignments, like art and features and all of the things that people actually fucking read from the school paper. Stiles half expects to be given something absolutely ludicrous like covering the cleanliness of the campus bathrooms, as he approaches the cork board in the news room where the assignments are posted. He scans down the list of names with his finger, comes across his, slides it over to his beat, and –
Oh, no. Oh, no. No, no, no.
He laughs out loud. God just cannot be this fucking cruel.
Immediately, he turns on his heel and makes a beeline for the editor’s desk, set up at the head of the room, all the way through countless other desks and bodies that Stiles has to navigate around, almost frantic. There’s a girl sitting there drinking coffee out of a bright yellow mug, reading something off of a matching yellow notepad, glaring at it, almost.
Stiles says, “you’re the editor,” to her, and she does not look up.
“Sure,” she agrees.
“Uh, so, you put me on sports.”
She still will not look at him. “I sense you’re here to beg for another assignment.”
“Well, the thing is –“
“What’s your name?”
He adjusts the straps of his backpack, clearing his throat. “Uh, Stiles. Stilinski. Stiles Stilinski.”
“Stilinski,” she repeats – she turns the page in her notebook to reveal more writing, as though she is somehow carrying on this conversation and managing to retain information that she’s reading at the same time. “You know that the sports beat is a pretty coveted assignment, especially for a freshman.”
“Be that as it may –“
“I thought your writing was good. I don’t care if you don’t know anything about football.”
Stiles hesitates. She strikes him as someone who is not willing to make exceptions or to change her mind willy nilly, and once she decides something, it’s set in stone. All the same, he pushes forward. “I actually know far more about football than I’d care to admit, but that’s only because –“
“Then what could possibly be the issue? I know you’re not here to clamor for a feature. Freshmen never get features. Don’t delude yourself.”
He bites the bullet. “Derek Hale is my ex-boyfriend.”
This, for whatever reason, is what finally gets her attention. She sets her notebook down and turns slowly in her swivel chair, giving Stiles her full attention. She presses the tips of her fingers together, right in front of her face, as a slow, deliberate smirk crosses over it. She looks like a cartoon villain on Nickelodeon. “You’re fucking kidding.”
It would appear that Stiles had been right; Derek Hale does already have a reputation here on campus, even as a lowly sophomore. “I am dead serious. We dated for a…for a long time. And –“
“So that guy really is bisexual,” she taps her chin and grins, all teeth. “You know, we were starting to think he just said that for clout, or something.”
Right. Being bisexual or anything but straight in football. For clout. That makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? Straight people are always saying things like this.
“I mean, I’ve never heard of him being with a guy,” she goes on, looking Stiles up and down like she’s trying to imagine Derek screwing him. It’s unnerving, so Stiles shifts uncomfortably and thinks about making a break for it. “It’s all cheerleaders and sorority houses for him as far as I know.”
“Christ,” Stiles mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose. That is a really, really fun piece of information to receive about his ex-boyfriend, really, it really fucking is. Truly. “Look,” he finally glances at her name plate, emblazoned in gold at the front of her desk. “Charlotte. I cannot do this beat.”
“Of course you can, are you kidding me?” She’s doing that up and down thing again, practically vibrating out of her seat with mirth. “Finally, someone that won’t suck Derek Hale’s dick. I take it he’s an unbelievable asshole and he ruined your life, right? You’ve got that look about you.”
“He didn’t ruin my life,” he hisses, because the idea of Derek ever having that much power over him is embarrassing, now.
“But he is an asshole,” she is still smiling. She is really not a pleasant person, it’s becoming crystal clear. “And you won’t wax poetic about how he’s the next Tom Brady or Aaron Rogers in every paragraph, like every other staffer we put on sports winds up doing.”
“No, but –“
“Well, then. I don’t see the issue,” she shrugs, like this conversation is over and done with, nothing more to discuss. “A hot take about how Derek Hale is already on his way to being a has been because liquor and unprotected sex with co-eds has consequences. Now, there’s something about football I would actually read.”
Her face is back in her notebook, the conversation done, Stiles completely out of her mind’s eye. Stiles stands there for maybe ten entire seconds, staring blankly down at her desk, and then he sucks in a deep breath and accepts his fate. She will not give him a different assignment, that much is for fucking certain, so he turns tail and gets out of there, to go to his dorm and hide for the rest of the day.
**
Stiles goes home the following weekend in October, nothing but his laptop and a small bag of clothes in tow. As soon as he’s in his kid bedroom, he dives face first into his old bed and breathes it in – the familiar smell of his dad and the laundry detergent, all mixing together to create the perfect blend of home. The room is weird to be in, because it’s all emptied out and the walls bare, like he doesn’t even really live here anymore. Technically, he doesn’t.
When he did used to live here, Derek used to come over all the time. They’d play video games together and Derek would benignly allow Stiles to win every now and again, because of course he excels in all games, even digital ones. They would kiss and hold hands and talk to each other about everything, everything under the sun, and now being here again, with the bare walls, and no Derek, he wants to fucking scream.
Derek is a big guy. He leaves a big empty space when he goes.
When his dad gets home, he comes in without knocking and assesses the situation. “I was not expecting to see you here at least until Thanksgiving,” he says, stepping inside with his heavy shoes and hovering over where Stiles is still strewn out on his bed. “What are you doing?”
“Hiding,” he says, voice muffled by his pillow.
“From?”
“I’d rather not admit it.”
There’s a long, heavy sigh, and then the bed is dipping on the side with his father’s weight. “I think I can guess it has something to do with sharing a campus with Derek Hale.”
Stiles’ father may be the only person on earth who knows what Stiles actually went through post-breakup with Derek. For his friends, he was stoic and cold about it, even when he admitted it hurt him he did so almost in a way that made it seem more ironic than anything else. For Derek, he simply cut him out of his life entirely and made it his mission to pretend that he did not exist. But Stiles’ dad was there, through the whole thing – at the dinner table with Stiles barely touching his food, in the hall outside Stiles’ bedroom listening to him cry about it while blasting sad music, the whole pathetic lot.
It sucked, those first few months. Stiles spent so long making Derek a focal point of his life. It is hard to just…start over, after something like that. Even for stupid high school romance, Stiles thought that they had something sort of different. Apparently, Derek had not felt the same, in spite of everything he would say that led Stiles to believe that in the first place.
Stiles sits up, pulling his face out of his pillow, so he can look his dad directly in the eye. “You know what he said to me the first time he saw me?”
The Sheriff just blinks at him. He likely cannot imagine it.
“He acted like my being there was this…annoyance he had to deal with more than anything else,” he hisses, shaking his head.
“Well,” his dad clears his throat and is probably thinking about all the really awful things he could say about Derek. He could say that he thinks Derek is a scum lower than dirt, lower than the bugs that live in the dirt, lower than the crusts of hell. He could say that he thinks Derek is a waste of Stiles’ time, energy, and thoughts. He could say he always believed those things, even when Derek was at the dinner table most Friday nights making a half decent effort of getting along with the man. Instead, he chooses the high road and says, “you’ll just have to avoid him, kid.”
“Oh, I would love that, believe me. I made the paper.”
As one would expect, considering the sheer amount of time that Stiles spent chewing his dad’s ear off about how badly he wanted to make it, the immediate reaction Stiles gets is genuine glee. He pats Stiles on the back a couple of times and says, “that’s great!”
Stiles gives him a look. “You’ll never guess what the editor assigned to me.”
“Uh –“
“She wants me covering the god damn football games.”
His dad blinks at him, and then he rubs at his jaw, again and again. It’s just like in high school, when Stiles and Derek were constantly thrown into each other’s trajectories by fate or the devil or both – forcing them to be around one another when all they wanted to do was pretend that the other didn’t exist.
“That’s…difficult,” his dad admits, because it would be hard to say anything else about it. Difficult doesn’t even begin to cover it. Stiles is going to have to go to the games, football games, which he has learned to associate exclusively with positive memories of he and Derek’s relationship. He is going to have to stand there and listen to people go nuts for him, talk about how he’s a prodigy, a fucking legend. He will have to go home and write about it, about how great he is, how everyone wants to be him, everyone wants to fuck him.
It is beyond unfair. It’s a fucking injustice.
“But you spent your entire high school career working towards this exact goal. You wanted to be on the paper, and now you are. So what, if you have to write about Derek Hale?”
He does have a point. This is Stiles’ dream job. Well – not being on the Beaconian specifically. But working on the Beaconian is the kind of thing on a resume that sets him apart from other people going out for the same exact job as him. In the dying industry of journalism, you can’t put a price on something like writing about the beloved and famous Beacon football team. Not to mention, if Derek does wind up becoming someone like the next Tom Brady, having written about him in college is like a gold nugget in a haystack. It makes him memorable.
Stiles puts his face in his hands and grits his teeth. “I hate that fucking guy,” he says, and he does. He does, he does, he does.
And what he hates the absolute most about him, more than anything else, is how much he doesn’t.
**
“I cannot believe we’re doing this,” Allison says, clutching onto Stiles’ arm so he doesn’t wind up getting lost in the crowd. “I cannot believe we’re doing this.”
Stiles glowers and stuffs his hands into his pockets. If he had his way, he’d be back in his dorm room with a microwaved hot pocket and a six pack of beer, doing the readings for one of his classes. Hell, he’d even take lying in his bed staring at the ceiling for three straight hours rather than being here right now.
The energy is insane. The number of people here is insane. Stiles equates it to something like going to a moderately sized concert venue – they have to stream in one of the several entrances based on where his ticketed seats are, in a sea of people wearing purple and white proudly and talking and yelling and laughing. There is a stand off to the side selling beer, and Stiles has never wanted a fake ID more in his life than at this exact second. Oh, to be blasted drunk and to not have to remember that he was ever here, at all…
A bouncer type guy takes a look at his tickets, and honest to god stands there checking to make sure they’re not fake. Like they’re in line to see an actual football game, or something, not just the fucking Beacon Badgers and some other hick school Stiles has never heard of. The issue is, Stiles has always had a tendency to undercut the extent to which people really give a shit about these sorts of things. Some people, some of the very people he’s standing among as a matter of fact, eat sleep and breathe college football. There are genuinely people out there who would fake a ticket to get in here and watch these kids play. Stiles can’t help but wonder how much of that is due to Derek.
They make their way to their seats after Stiles insists on stopping for a hot dog and a gigantic soda to pour liquor into, and wouldn’t you know it – they’re actually pretty good seats. Stiles gets them for free from the paper, thank god, because if he didn’t he’d be forking over fifty god damn dollars every game. And that would add up ridiculously fast. Stiles does still have his shitty grocery store job, but it would not cover that kind of an expense.
Stiles eats his hot dog and Allison looks around them with wide eyes. She says, “I cannot believe how huge this place is. Look at the size of this place,” she looks like she might actually be trying to calculate how many seats there are. “It’s like Madison Square Garden.”
That, it is. There are megatrons for fuck’s sake, that currently are displaying ads for the on campus tutoring department and the pizza place in the cafeteria that’s too far from Stiles’ dorm for it to ever be worth it. “I wonder how many people here even know what a touchdown is,” he comments, “or if they’re all just here to ogle at the spectacle of it.”
“Up until very recently, you did not know what a touchdown was,” she reminds him with a raised eyebrow. “Yet, there you were.”
Stiles chews, swallows. Takes a huge sip of his Mountain Dew and pocket-rum concoction. “So, you’re saying there are a bunch of people here for the sole purpose of seeing Derek play.”
“I would bet you all the money I have in my purse.”
“Ten cents and a lip gloss, then.”
“Ha, ha,” she nudges him playfully.
The big screens start showing pictures of the players alongside meaningless information about them – like, how much they weigh, what their position on the field is, their team number. It goes on and on, hot guy after hot guy with the occasional hoot and holler from people that know them, Stiles guesses. When Derek’s stat card comes up, a picture of him looking miserable right next to his height and weight and the word quarterback emblazoned like a badge of honor, more people clap and cheer for him than any other player.
Stiles sits there with his hot dog, listening to this, and he feels sixteen again. Only, worse.
The cheerleaders materialize down below, smiling almost ruefully as they dance around and wave shiny pom poms at the audience – they’re more impressive than the Beacon Hills High cheerleaders, at least. They do cool acrobatics and cartwheels and flips, and they are all very pretty. They chant things and try and get everyone in on it, and Stiles never stops being surprised at the fact that people actually join in on these types of things. At least they don’t start chanting Derek’s name, Stiles thinks, but it doesn’t really matter either way.
The players arrive on the field and people act like they are gods among mere men. They seem like it, too – they are huge and loud and fast. Stiles doesn’t actually know or remember Derek’s number, so he has no idea how to spot him, at first. It is a blessing, to have Derek be lost in a sea of purple jerseys. It becomes a lot more obvious which one he is as soon as the first play happens.
Stiles didn’t memorize all the rules and regulations of football during his time with Derek – but he did learn the basics. He knows what a running back is and he knows what the quarterback does and how to win the game, so when the ball winds up in a particular set of hands and then is thrown with a very specific type of flourish that Stiles remembers, he knows that it’s Derek Hale. He knows it even more when that exact throw leads to a touchdown.
At halftime, he and Allison sit and stare blankly down at the field, Stiles’ hot dog long gone, his drink still half full. Allison says, “wow.”
“Yeah,” Stiles agrees, rubbing at his face, like saying this brings him great pain. “They’re really good.”
It must be embarrassing to be the other team. Apparently, the Beacon Badgers are undefeated. It’s still early in the season, so that could change at any time – but an 8-0 record is still pretty impressive. Stiles wishes he had another hot dog, really he does. Something to wash down the fact that he has no choice, none whatsoever, other than to go back to his dorm and write some glowing review of this shitty and stupid fucking team.
Derek has no idea that Stiles is out here, in the stands, because there are so many people here he’d never hope to catch sight of a specific person in the crowd. Not to mention, he would most likely assume that Stiles would never in a million years show his face here, if he ever even gave it a thought at all. But Stiles can see him just fine; can see him when he’s on the sidelines drinking Gatorade with his helmet off, covered in sweat, saying something to one of his teammates. Stiles tries not to look, really he does. He has tried a million times to not care about that kid.
Still, Stiles’ eyes follow him. Derek is fast and untouchable, an effortless way in how he moves and throws that’s like watching a master artist instead of a stupid football player. Stiles always knew that. He just hasn’t seen it for a long time, the way he moves. A natural. Or, someone who had greatness beat into him from a young age.
At the end of the game, once everyone is filing out and chattering about how awesome it all was, Stiles has had just about enough of this. He wants to go home and eat his fucking hot pocket and be by himself now, thanks – but of course, right as they’re stepping into the aisle with the steps that will take them out and away from here, Stiles is accosted by a familiar face from the newsroom; a girl named Kira he’d say he’s on friendly terms with, but not quite yet friends.
“Stiles,” she grabs him by his arm, a big smile on her face, as though she’s genuinely shocked to see him here. “I didn’t know you liked football.”
“Oh, I don’t,” he smiles, unhappy about it. “I’m on sports, remember?”
“Ohhh,” she smiles back at him because she reads his as genuine. In the few conversations that Stiles has had with her, she has struck him as rather guileless. He remembers that Allison is standing right next to him, so he makes the introduction. They shake hands and exchange brief small talk, while Stiles scans his eyes down the rows, to where Derek is still standing, wiping sweat off his brow on his way to the locker rooms to shower.
“…have to come. It’s going to be really fun,” Kira is saying when Stiles tunes back into the conversation.
“Uh, yeah, I want to go,” Allison agrees enthusiastically, and then nudges Stiles hard in his side. “Right, Stiles? We have to go.”
“Go?” He repeats, baffled. “Go to…?”
“The party.” Kira’s voice is way too excited when she says this, and Stiles immediately shoots Allison a look like she’s the biggest traitor that he has ever met. Not a party after the football game. Never a party after the football game, on a Saturday night of all nights, absolutely not.
See, Stiles has been to many an after party for the football games in his life. Way too many, if you ask him – and there is not one, not a single one, he has ever been to that has ended in anything good. Or, there were a few that did end pretty decently. But now, looking back on them, Stiles would rather chew glass than ever go to another one. “You know I can’t go to that,” he tells Allison, voice just south of pleading.
“Stiles, come on,” she pushes, grabbing his arm and shaking him a little, as if to shake the hesitation right out of him. “You can’t very well avoid him forever, not if you’re going to be covering the games. And you deserve to have fun, right?”
Kira does not understand this interaction. She is probably confused at Stiles’ obvious reticence, his tight shoulders and frown – why Allison has to practically beg him to go to a party. “Why can’t you go, Stiles?” She asks, and Stiles says not a word.
Luckily, Allison is there to clear things up. She says, “Stiles used to date Derek Hale,” waving her hand like it’s a non-issue, and Kira’s smile goes crazy.
She sort of rears her neck back and blinks, looking between the two of them as though she is waiting for a punch line. “Did you just say he used to date Derek Hale?” She cannot believe it. As though it’s really all that shocking, actually. Like to her, and maybe to many others here, Derek is an untouchable person.
Stiles runs his hands down his face and wishes to evaporate, completely disappear.
“There’s kind of some bad blood,” Allison says, “but like I said, you can’t avoid everywhere he is. It’ll be so packed you won’t even see him. And besides, didn’t you say he was drinking less?”
Towards the end of their relationship, Derek did seem to barely be drinking at all. But that was…well, Stiles had figured it to be on account of him and him alone, or maybe the anti-depressants as well. He thought that he was the one who had helped Derek out of the hole that he was digging for himself. He thought that he was the one who made Derek want to be a better person. As it is, Stiles has no idea what Derek does or does not do. Not a fucking clue.
“He may not even be there.”
“He’ll be there,” Kira immediately says. Then, at the two of them staring at her, her cheeks color and she ducks her head a bit, shyly. “…he’s kind of a topic.”
Of course he is.
“Stiles, you cannot hide from him. Don’t you want to go to a party and have fun?” She’s giving him those big brown eyes, and Stiles has to look away, shaking his head. “It’s a frat house. You cannot let me go to a frat house alone, can you?”
“God dammit,” he mutters under his breath. He knows that on some level, Allison is right. He cannot spend his time in college hiding in his dorm eating hot pockets and not going to parties – he’ll never have any fun, that way, and he’ll never make any friends, and he’ll never be able to turn his high school reputation around.
The one where he thought he was better than everyone and never got invited to anything.
“Fine,” he says through grit teeth. “But I reserve the right to complain the entire time.”
**
Kira knows exactly where to go – apparently, she’s a bit of a social butterfly. It’s within walking distance of campus, so they leave the stadium and follow a fairly decent sized line of people walking in the same direction, off campus, toward the surrounding neighborhoods. Everyone is talking about the game, most people have on school colors, and Stiles thinks about when he used to show up to games in his debate team sweatshirt because it was the only school oriented thing that he owned.
Now, he’s in a plain purple t-shirt he got from Target years ago, because it was the closest thing he owned to a school color. Go figure.
The house is, indeed, a frat house. The symbols are plastered on the outside of it in gold, but Stiles has no idea how to decode the old Greek system, so he just rolls his eyes at it as they walk up to the front door. Inside, it’s loud, like all house parties tend to be. There is music playing and people everywhere, so close it’s basically like being packed into a can of sardines, and the place reeks like vomit and liquor.
There’s a film of smoke in the air, from cigarettes and other things both, Stiles would guess. They spill into the kitchen, where all the drinks are – next to the cooler where the white claws and beers are being housed, there are a couple of cheerleaders still in their uniforms, murmuring to one another. When they catch sight of Stiles coming right for them, they quiet down, shooting each other a look.
Stiles bends down to get a beer, and they’re still looking at him. To be polite, he says, “hey,” and they say hello right back. As he straightens up, he catches them looking at one another again, a silent communication that he can’t quite catch onto. He figures that they think he’s attractive, like he’s learned that girls do but boys never seem to, and gives them another friendly smile before turning to find his friends again in the crowd.
He finds the girls making mixed drinks at the counter across the room, and apparently, they’re becoming very fast friends, practically glued to one another’s side. “The cheerleaders want me,” he announces to them, leaning against the counter as he pops open his beer. “Women really do want what they can’t have.”
“Of course they do,” Allison tells him earnestly, nudging him. She’s always doing that to him; nudging, pushing, hugging, you name it. She’s a very tactile person, even with friends. “Maybe you’ll get a chance to meet someone tonight?”
Stiles drinks his beer and shrugs. In spite of all his big talk about wanting to meet some guy to fuck and then forget about, Stiles has yet to actually…do it. After Derek, he hadn’t really been with anyone. He never kissed anyone else or went on a date or anything, for the rest of high school and the summer after it. Now, here he is in college, and still, when he really puts his mind to finding someone else to screw around with, something stops him every time.
It isn’t because of Derek. He tells himself that, at least. It’s just…maybe he’s not actually the hook-up and forget about it type.
Stiles wishes he could say that there were any notable differences between the parties he went to in high school and this one – but honestly, they’re the exact same. People drink and hook up and the music is too loud and usually bad. There is a game of beer pong in the basement that gets louder and louder every ten minutes as more people descend below to watch for something to do, and Stiles walks into the bathroom to take a piss only to discover a couple very intensely going at it on the sink. He has this fleeting thought of whipping it out and going anyway, but decides better of it and winds up outside in the bushes.
All in all, nothing of note happens for the first half of the night. Kira gets a little too drunk a little too fast, the way college freshmen who haven’t drank very much before tend to, but it’s Saturday and both Allison and Stiles stay with her the entire time, so it’s not that big of a deal.
Stiles has had three beers, just tipsy enough to take it in stride, when Allison grabs him by the arm and says, “look, it’s Isaac!”
Ah, yes. Isaac. He had gotten into Beacon as well, only on a partial scholarship, because he’s good, pretty good actually, but nothing like the way Derek is. Of course he had come, because he and Derek are as close as anyone can ever really get to someone like Derek, and it’s always nice to have a friendly face in a brand new place. After all, Stiles can’t be grateful enough for having Allison here with him, honestly.
He’s in the living room leaning against the wall, freshly showered and clean from after the game, and he looks almost exactly the same as he had the last time Stiles had seen him. Which would’ve been…last September, Stiles thinks. He and Derek had broken up in November of last year, and then it’s weird to think about how long it’s actually been, and Stiles feels weird and sad about it.
He honestly expects Derek to be right there with him. But then, he’s still nowhere to be found. Stiles hates that he’s relieved and disappointed at the same time.
“Hey,” Isaac says to Allison, pretty genuinely, and then his eyes land on Stiles, and something weird touches his eyes. His smile falters a bit, eyes tightening. “Stiles,” he says. Shocked and dismayed, it would seem. “This doesn’t seem like your thing.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Stiles never actually learned to like Isaac. Tolerated is a better word for it, but that was when he and Derek were still together. Now, he has no reason to be nice to him, especially since Scott isn’t around. “You don’t have to pretend like you don’t hate me anymore.”
“Okay,” Isaac narrows his eyes and makes a face, like Stiles is a little bug he wishes he could crush. “I never hated you, but all right.”
“But you certainly never liked me.”
“I always thought we had similar personalities,” he says, honest – perhaps he’s drunk. He’s not usually so forthcoming. “So, you get on my nerves.”
That makes sense, actually. Allison and Kira are uncomfortable with the exchange, edging away from it like they’re trying to escape into the next room, but Stiles ignores that in favor of considering what Isaac had said. They’ve never once had what one would quantify a pleasant exchange, not by a long shot, and maybe it really is just because Stiles sees himself in Isaac’s hard exterior and nasty attacks of sarcasm as a defense mechanism against feeling out of place.
“Well,” Isaac sips his drink. The girls are halfway across the room, now, so it’s just the two of them, hovering in the corner of the living room, off to the side from everyone else. “How’s class?”
“Fine. How’s football?”
“Obviously good,” he gestures, to the party at large, like this is all the evidence anyone would ever need of things going well for him. “We can’t seem to lose.”
“That’s nice.” Stiles drinks his beer, so they’re standing there together in silence for a moment. Then, Isaac stiffens and straightens up to his full height, pushing himself up and away from the wall.
“Uh,” he starts, and Stiles turns to follow his eye line – wishes he hadn’t done that.
Stiles definitely knew that he’d catch a glimpse of Derek at this party. He had sort of been hoping it’d be a quick glance across the room before Stiles skirted away into the next one or just plain left the entire thing altogether, but unfortunately, it’s this instead. Derek walks in through the back door, takes five or so steps, sees Stiles and Isaac standing there, and stops dead in his tracks.
He looks between the two of them, like he’s making sure he’s really seeing these two particular people standing there together. Stiles can tell, even from all the way over here, that Derek has had too much to drink. It’s always obvious, with him. It’s in the way he moves, as he walks over to them. The way he’s got his beer dangling limply in his fingers when he pushes people out of his way to get to them. The way he looks mad, seriously pissed, instead of just placidly unhappy.
Stiles has this thought of running away. Really making a break for it. He thinks of leaping out the open window next to Isaac into the lawn, making it to the road, and just running all the way back to his dorm room, just to get away from this conversation. On his way over, Derek inadvertently knocks into Allison, who turns around to perhaps say something like uh, excuse you, but instead her face goes slack with shock when she sees that it’s Derek.
Derek walks right up to him. He looks at Isaac, who for whatever reason is still stiff as a board like he’s been caught in the act, and then at Stiles, who’s just…standing there. Honestly, fight or flight alarms are still going off in his head, his body desperately trying to choose between the two of them. They haven’t seen or spoken to one another since that encounter at the coffee place in the library, and that was weeks ago, now.
“This is a surprise,” he says, and Stiles swallows. “For you to be here.”
“Well,” Stiles begins, then doesn’t finish. What the hell is he supposed to say?
“I’m just gonna –“ Isaac finally moves. He slips behind Stiles, practically going with his tail between his legs, while Derek watches his every single move. From the way he looks at Isaac, Stiles would almost think he’s more mad at him than anything else. And for what? Talking to Stiles? Is that off limits?
Derek takes a big, long sip of his beer. Finishes the entire thing, and then lets it dangle from his fingers, like he’d let it slip right out and smash on the wooden floor under their feet, and just not care about it. This is Derek in rare form, Stiles remembers exactly what that’s like – and Stiles remembers most importantly that it tends to be when Derek is at his most unpredictable. “You never answered my question the other day.”
“…the other day, as in, several weeks ago?”
Derek waves his hand, like that’s not the issue, and says, “why are you acting like I did something to you, all of the sudden?”
Stiles grips his beer very tightly, and this makes him angry, very angry, for Derek to ask him that particular question. Although, Stiles must admit that Stiles’ bitterness towards Derek may just reasonably take Derek by surprise, if only because when they had actually broken up, Stiles had just sat there and barely said anything, let alone anything along the lines of anger.
In that moment, he truly wasn’t angry. Hurt beyond words, yes. But angry? Angry had not come along to the party, just yet. Derek never even knew that Stiles eventually got angry because they stopped talking to one another altogether. Christ, Stiles had unfollowed Derek from Instagram and deleted him off of facebook, erased his number and their text thread. It was a complete shut out.
Now, Derek stands here and asks Stiles why he would possibly be mad. It’s fair, and unfair, at the exact same time.
“I’m leaving,” Stiles decides aloud. He takes two steps, three, and then Derek latches onto him with big hands. Stiles had forgotten just how big he is, just how strong he is, so he’s startled by how easily Derek manhandles him back, so they’re standing face to face again.
Stiles swats his hand away and says, “don’t touch me,” in a tone that’s more dismissive than anything else.
There is an entire party of people behind them, many of them who know exactly who Derek Hale is but not who Stiles is at all, and they’re all seeing this right now. Stiles remembers when they used to have to argue behind closed doors – now that Derek walks around with a rainbow flag stuck to his jacket, Stiles figures they’re free to argue wherever they damn well please.
“What’s your problem?” Derek demands, stepping closer to him. Stiles moves back, towards the wall in line with Derek’s own steps, keeping the distance of at least a foot between them.
“My problem,” Stiles repeats back to him, “is that you are the most self-centered, egotistical asshole I have ever met in my life, and I regret having ever given you the benefit of the doubt.”
When Stiles is mad, his words aim for the heart. Derek knows this about him, remembers it from all the way back when, but still. His face falls slack, like he can’t believe Stiles of all people could say that to him. That he regrets what happened between them, that he wishes he could take it all back. That’s a really shitty thing to say, but Stiles would say it again. And again.
It’s either lucky or not that someone else walks up before Derek can think of anything to say back to that. Derek is opening his mouth, Stiles would bet to say something truly unforgivable in retaliation for what Stiles had just said, but he’s cut off by a slender hand on his shoulder, a pretty girl with long blond hair and a very, very low cut dress.
She says, “Derek, who’s this?” From the tone of her voice, Stiles can tell that she’s not asking to be nice. It’s saccharine sweet, but in a way that reads distinctly false – like what she really wants to be saying is who the fuck is this stupid troll you’re talking to?
Derek looks at her, then looks back at Stiles, as though he expects the two of them standing here together to put a hole in the space time continuum or something. Stiles is waiting for him to come up with some bullshit lie about who Stiles is, or maybe even simply a half-truth; like he’s just someone from high school, he’s just some kid I used to beat the shit out of a couple times a week, he’s nobody.
Instead, Derek surprises Stiles by saying, “he’s my ex-boyfriend.” The liquor has made him brutally honest, again.
The look that this girl fucking gives him in the wake of that... She looks at Stiles, up and down, head to toe, and it’s the single meanest look Stiles can honestly say he’s ever been given. This girl would give Lydia Martin a run for her money in the Bitch of the Year competition. She looks, like Stiles is a disgusting little bug, and actually has the nerve to snort. To laugh. “You’re kidding,” she says, and Stiles has had just about enough of this.
This is clearly the latest girl he’s fucking, and Stiles could not care less about her at the same time that he absolutely hates her. He says, “right, that’s my cue to leave.”
Even though Derek had every intention of having a conversation with Stiles, when Stiles starts to leave this time, Derek lets him. Why wouldn’t he? He’s got his latest squeeze there with him, all his football buddies, and he just won the game. What possible use could he have for Stiles anymore?
When he gets back to Allison and Kira, who likely had been standing there watching the entire thing with rapt attention, he barely says a word to them before he starts heading for the front door to get himself out of this house and out of this situation and as far from Derek Hale as he can possibly get. They follow, murmuring to themselves and patting Stiles on the back about just forget him, just forget about him, wow he’s an asshole, wow we hate him.
Stiles gets outside into the fresh air of the night and he feels like screaming. Or crying. Or both. The person he just spoke to in there was not the Derek that he had known when they were together – that was another person entirely.
That was someone else. Stiles had thought Derek had done the work to be better, to do better, to be who he wanted himself to be. Not just what everyone thought of him as.
But the old Derek is apparently back, maybe even worse than before.