Chapter Text
August. "Could you bring home groceries? We're all out of lettuce."
42nd street blinks at him from a McDonald’s he’s standing outside of, and Derek once again wonders why the hell this city looks like it’s constantly on some type of hallucinogen. New York invented lights that were brighter than bright , and even back when he and Laura lived here in a shoebox condominium for years, he never got used to how otherworldly it looked here.
He's got a burlap sack filled with Trader Joe's food items because Stiles would have a conniption if he dared use plastic for their shopping, a cupcake box suspended precariously from the ground in his right hand. He's struck with the ridiculous feeling of looking too hipster to feel this old.
He's tired, is the thing. Maybe it's the hustle and bustle of this place. You learn a lot of things weaving in and out of the city that just won't goddamn sleep, and Derek, a Californian born and bred in the toy of a town called Beacon Hills, finds himself staring sleepily at Times Square every night.
For all he thought it would transform him, New York sure does make him feel like a perpetual tourist.
Sometimes it's the most freeing thing to live in supernaturally-neutral ground where eleven million people couldn't give more of a shit if he was a packless Alpha. No one cares; the commercial models rushing to make it to their next casting don't give him a second glance, nor do the teenagers recklessly attempting to skate through the narrow walkways. The city pulses with life so different from the Nemeton, and Derek loves the way he can blend into it as if he weren't one sibling shy away from being the last Hale werewolf.
" Shit, sorry, kid!" Heat soaks the front of his cotton shirt. When he looks down there's an entire take-out bowl's worth of clam chowder splashed on it.
Derek scowls at the woman looking at him with equal disdain, before grumbling about dinner and turning on her heel to walk away. Chunks of scallops run in globs over the top of the cupcake box.
Most times the city is an escape, but times like this it's a sloppy bitch.