Chapter Text
Part 1: Freshman Year - Pranks and Hatred
"Aww, c'mon moppet. It's just a building."
The way that Beacon Hills High loomed above them, Derek wasn't so sure. It was easy enough for Laura to say. She'd spent the summer regaling him with high school horror stories. Stories about lacrosse dicks who roamed the halls like a pack of alpha werewolves, pillaging everything in their path. Mean girl zombie hordes who followed in their wake, weaving their aroma of disdain and decay everywhere they went. Psychotic teachers just looking for a reason to flunk students, and bloodthirsty administrators who openly fantasized about shoving knives into their teenage charges.
No, there was nothing to be worried about at all. Derek stared apprehensively up at the building in front of them. Laura was a junior, she had everything figured out already. She ran Track and decimated the competition in Debate club, and had been Class President three years in a row. She knew who she was, and she was completely comfortable with herself.
Derek, on the other hand, didn't have a clue. He'd spent the summer agonizing about whether or not to sign up for football, only to second guess himself at the last minute and skip the tryouts. Now it was too late. Any of the freshman who'd tried out would walk in their first day with a ready made group of friends. They'd know where to sit in the cafeteria, they already knew who they'd partner up with in Biology, they had it figured out, too.
What's wrong with me? he wondered. He didn't normally get anxious like this. But now he couldn't even figure out what to wear on his first day. Okay, yes, he over-analyzed things sometimes. But his mom said that was something to be proud of. ”I see too many people who don't do enough thinking about their actions," she said. She always compared him to Garrett, his eldest brother. He was at MIT, a fact that he never let anyone forget. He had barely been in his dorm for an hour before the signature on his email was changed to 'Sent from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.'
"I'm not scared," he lied. And then, irritated, added, "And don't call me moppet. I don't want anyone hearing you."
Laura smiled her indulgent, big sister smile. The one that she gave their mom when she was instructed to take and return her younger brother every day from school. Otherwise, she could kiss her car privileges goodbye. "They're gonna give you a nickname at some point, little bro. At least moppet is cute." She took a minute to check her makeup in the rear view mirror, then climbed out from the Camaro. It had been Uncle Peter's castoff, but had barely cooled off before Laura commandeered it.
Derek, reluctantly, followed a few seconds later.
It wasn't like Derek was completely friendless. He'd been friends with Boyd since the sixth grade when he moved to Beacon Hills to come live with his grandmother. And Isaac was still sort of a friend, right? Just because they hadn't talked much over the summer didn't mean anything. Right?
"There she is!" Lydia sauntered up from behind the Camaro, her friend Danny in tow. Danny was her ex's friend, who had graduated the year before and promptly dumped her. Somehow, in the divorce, Lydia had gotten custody of Danny, despite the fact that he and the Ex had been best friends since they were in diapers.
Lydia was Laura's BFF: best frenemy forever. Their friendship was the legendary coupling of two alpha females who spent the majority of their freshman year systematically trying to eradicate the other from the face of the earth. Somehow, amidst all their clawing and scheming, a friendship actually developed. No two friends were closer, or fought with such epic Defcon Five level hazards.
"Oh," Lydia added, sounding suddenly disappointed. "You brought the moppet."
Derek lunged for his sister. This was exactly what he was talking about. Danny covered his mouth with his hand, but Laura looked suddenly, and shockingly, abashed.
"Don't," she said with a shake of her head. "Derek is nervous enough as it is."
Did she really have to tell everyone that he was nervous? Was that really any of their business? Lydia shrugged, already bored with the conversation. She waved away Laura's concern and immediately forgot about Derek's entire existence. Which was exactly how he liked Lydia most of the time. "Whatever. Anyway, there's a new girl. Mr. Flutie said that you were here when she came in to get her schedule and everything? Tell me everything: is she pretty? Pretty like Danielle Arbor or pretty like she shops at Sears? I heard she's a gymnast. Is she looking to upstage the rest of the cheer squad?"
Laura laughed, the way she always did with Lydia. She was the only person who didn't seem to be afraid of her, well, other than Danny. "Allison. Sophomore. And I don't think she's the cheerleading type. But you'll like her. I already told her she could join us for lunch."
"Without Lydia's approval first?" Danny raised a skeptical eyebrow, and winced when Lydia turned her she-devil powers on him. "Kidding!"
"Well," Lydia said, turning back to Laura. There was a moment where she let the word hang in the air, like she was sizing Laura up all over again, deciding whether or not to continue their arrangement. "I suppose you have good taste. Some of the time."
"If I were a more spiteful person, I'd point out that your good taste is currently shaming his family name at Yale," Laura replied coolly.
Derek was frozen in place, scared of what might happen if either one of them realized he was still there. Danny looked like he'd realized the same thing, because he was similarly as still. The only thing more dangerous than getting on either Laura or Lydia's bad side was getting between both of their bad sides. Derek's dad was obsessed with Shark Week every year, and Derek had seen enough to know what happened when there was blood in the water.
"Hmm." Lydia canted her head to one side. "I got Danny and he got...carpal tunnel. Yeah, I'm okay with that trade."
Laura laughed, and just like that, the tension between the two of them faded. She started to walk off with her friends before stopping abruptly, like she just remembered. "Der, you know where you're going, right?"
He nodded. First period Biology. Lab partners. Dissecting stuff. Laura's worry changed to relief, and she nodded. "You'll be fine," she lied. Like she hadn't just spent the last three months actively trying to make him terrified for his life. "I'll meet you back here after school, okay? Text me if you find a club or something you want to check out."
"I will," he said. Though he doubted it. If he wasn't going to be a jock, then he had to pick his after school activities very carefully. What he joined would immediately tarnish his reputation for the next four years. His entire high school career hinged upon what happened to him in the next five days. So for the thousandth time, he started planning. Which clubs he could deal with, and which ones he wanted to avoid like the plague.
He was so busy going through the clubs that Laura had told him the school had, along with their reputations that he wasn't paying attention to where he was going. (Not that he entirely believed Laura - he'd looked up the list of clubs on the school's website and then interrogated both his sister and their older brothers about what they remembered from their days in high school.) He stepped out between two of the cars when he was nearly mowed down by a car that came flying around the corner like a bat out of hell.
"Whoa!" He jumped back out of the way as the Jeep flew through the parking lot and swerved into a spot at the end of the lane just managing to cut off the silver Toyota that was coming for the spot from the opposite direction.
It took Derek a second to realize that he'd almost been hit by a car on his first day of school. Before his first day of school! He hadn't even made it into the building yet and the school had tried to kill him!
No, wait. Not the school. Some douchebag student. The faculty had their parking lot on the other side of the building. This was the student lot, which meant that he went to school with some psycho behind the wheel.
Derek had every intention of flipping out on the other guy...for all of the ten seconds that it took to stalk towards the Jeep. And then just before he would have really let him have it, the Jeep's door opened, a tall kid with a buzz cut tumbled out like some sort of circus performer.
"Stiles, dude. You've only had your license for a week," his passenger complained as he climbed out.
"I know, buddy. Isn't it awesome?" Buzz cut turned a beaming, goofy smile at his friend.
"That's not what I meant?"
Derek lost his nerve. Instead, he shifted the backpack higher up on his shoulder and continued storming past the Jeep. He even muttered a condemning, "Dick!" under his breath as he passed.
"No harm, little man," the kid laughed. Laughed! Like he was so much better than Derek because he had his license and a car. Or that he didn't even care that he'd nearly committed vehicular manslaughter right in the school parking lot.
The anger stayed with him, and it was hours before he realized he wasn't as nervous anymore.
***
Two periods down, and I haven't looked like an idiot yet. His plan going in was simple: tow the line between being too cool to participate and too eager. The fact was that, for most subjects, Derek was an excellent student. He'd tested out of Spanish completely, and he'd always been good at memorizing facts for History. English, though, was his favorite. It was the only AP class he'd agreed to - Beacon Hills had an entire AP curriculum, but being in all those classes meant missing out on classes with the rest of his grade. He didn't want to be pigeonholed with the smart kids.
"Isaac!"
The childish delight caught Derek off guard the moment he saw his friend after a summer apart. He and Isaac had been friends all through middle school, but with Isaac shuttled back and forth between his parents' for the summer, and Derek's own tendency to stay home and read, they'd drifted a bit.
Just relax. Pretend it's no big deal, he coached himself. Isaac was easy to spot in the crowded hallway - he was at least a head taller than almost everyone else in the freshman wing. Boyd was already super tall, and now Isaac, too? Did everyone get a growth spurt over the summer other than Derek? How was that fair?
Isaac was surrounded by a trio of other guys, none of whom looked familiar to Derek. It took him a second to realize that two of them were identical. He'd heard there were a pair of twins on the football team.
"Who's the kid?" one of them asked with a sneer.
Isaac glanced lazily in his direction, and Derek couldn't help his tentative smile. But Isaac' s expression was blank - like he'd forgotten the years of sleepovers and hikes in the woods behind Derek's house. "I think some middle schooler got lost," Isaac said lazily.
The guys all laughed while Derek's feet turned to concrete. Be cool. Don't let them see you get upset. Derek schooled his face into indifference when an arm slung over his shoulder and started pulling him forward.
"Ouch. Guess little Isaac turned into a dick over the summer," Danny said casually. He led Derek around the group of guys and down the hall before his hand dropped and he patted the freshman on the shoulder. "It happens to the best of them. Jackson tried that freshman year, too."
Derek wanted to look back, to see if Isaac was really being serious or if maybe this was some kind of elaborate joke, but he forced himself not to. "So what'd you do?"
"Tossed his phone in the pool. Couldn't fight him - if anyone damaged his face, Jackson would never forgive them. A phone can be replaced, though."
Isaac didn't have a great phone, but it was incredibly sentimental. It was his brother Camden's, passed down when Camden joined the military. All their friends had upgraded in the last two years, but not Isaac. He'd have that phone until Camden came back.
"Yeah, I don't think that's going to work," Derek said. "And he's bigger than me now. He'd probably kick my ass."
Danny looked him over briefly and then shrugged. "You never know. Sometimes, being smaller gives you the advantage. Didn't Matt or Spencer ever teach you to fight?"
Derek shook his head. "Laura was always the one roughhousing with them. The three of them liked picking on me more than wrestling."
Danny laughed. "That sounds like your sister. Did she ever teach you to fight?"
"No," he replied. "She just likes to remind me how short I am." From the teasing moppet to comments about how Derek was 'not tall enough to ride this ride' that morning before he tried getting into the Camaro, it was always something with her.
That was the real issue at the heart of Derek's frustration. Everyone knew the Hale's around town. From Garrett to Spencer to Laura and even down to Cora, all of the Hale's had their mother's dark hair and their father's green eyes. And with the exception of Derek (and Cora, who was only nine) they were all gorgeous giants. Derek was pretty sure that Laura didn't even get breakouts, her skin was flawless all the time. And Garrett and Spencer barely worked out yet they had the same muscular build as their dad. Everyone else looked like a runway model, and Derek looked more like a starving orphan out of Les Mis, shrimpy and malnourished. He was barely five-five, and that was if he wore the tennis shoes with the thick heel.
He'd tried to talk about it with his dad, but all his "everyone grows up at their own pace" BS was demolished by fifteen minutes with the last few Beacon Hills yearbooks. Garrett was already a giant as a freshman, and no one in their right mind would compare themselves to Spencer. Spencer was the all star athlete, he'd been born with a six pack. Garrett was a brain, but he was a brain that liked to run and swim. He'd gone head to head with Camden Lahey all through their senior year - it was part of the reason that Isaac and Derek had become such good friends.
"Maybe you should think about taking some martial arts or something," Danny mused. "I've got a friend who takes Tae Kwon Do downtown."
That was why he liked Danny. He was the only one who treated Derek like he was an actual person. No mockery, no shame. Danny was cool. He was never just Laura's little brother, Danny acted like they were actually friends, too.
"Think about it," Danny said, clapping him on the back one more time. "And stop stressing about the first day. It's never as bad as you think it will be."
And in the very next period, Derek got paired with Scott McCall, and proved Danny totally wrong.
***
Derek had walked into freshman biology to find a giant sign scrawled across the blackboard - SEAT ASSIGNMENTS ARE NOT NEGOTIABLE. There was no sign of the teacher, the Mr. Harris that Laura had warned him about, but there were note cards on each one of the tables in the room. Derek had quickly scoured the room until he found his - being one of the first to arrive, at least he didn't have to be that awkward kid who had to find his chair while everyone stared at him.
"You've got to be kidding me!"
No, that luxury was reserved for his lab partner, whose offended tone caused the class to turn and stare at them both. Derek looked up at the face that had nearly been a passenger to his homicide that morning. Stiles' friend. He looked across the table at the place card. Scott McCall.
"Uhm...no offense," Scott muttered, not meeting Derek's eye.
There was a helpless sort of panic that welled up in Derek's chest, the fruition of every moment of worry he'd had all summer long. This was exactly what he didn't want to happen. Already, other kids in the class were starting to giggle, and his nerves couldn't take it anymore.
"Whatever," Derek said flippantly, his mouth moving before his brain could catch up. "Aren't you a sophomore? This is freshman bio." It was the kind of remark that Laura or Spencer would have made - they were the sarcastic ones in the family. Not Derek. Derek was normally too quiet to be considered funny.
The giggles turned into full fledged laughs as Scott's face darkened so quick it was nearly purple. He slumped down on the other side of the table. Derek looked around to see people smiling at him in earnest for the first time all day. He got the head nod from a couple of kids he'd known in middle school, established jocks who already had a place in the high school hierarchy.
"McCall," a derisive voice announced from the door, "I suppose it was too much to hope that I could escape both of you this year."
"Then you shouldn't have failed me last year," Scott muttered under his breath, loud enough that only Derek could hear him.
Mr. Harris strolled into the room, pinched face and constant sneer making him everything that Laura had said and more. He stopped at Derek's table, looming over Scott, who kept his head ducked down. Harris lingered there for almost a minute, as if waiting for a reply that he would actually be able to overhear. Scott, however, wisely kept his mouth shut.
Laura had told Derek stories about how Harris loved to put students in their place. He'd loved her, of course, because everyone did. But she told him stories about students who spent more time in Harris's detentions than they did out of them. He gave them so frequently, and so consistently, that the school had to require him to host his own detentions, separate from the rest of the school. Something that Harris had taken to with glee.
But Laura had also said that Harris liked students who were actually studious. He should be fine, she'd assured him. Plus, science had always been one of his easier subjects.
As the class continued, Derek realized that everything that Laura had prepared him for was nothing like what Harris was actually like! He seemed to have a radar for the students to target - Scott being one of his favorites. Derek got an easy question ("Oh, you're a Hale" Harris had said with as close to a smile as he could get) about kingdoms and phylums, while Scott got the follow up question ("Mr. McCall, what's the difference between Felis rufus, and Felis concolor?").
"They're...uhm, different?" Scott's face had never really lost the red-faced embarrassment all class long. As Harris' sneer started to widen, he hastily added, "They're different animals, I mean."
"Yes," Harris replied, "I suppose a bobcat and a cougar are different. Maybe even as different as you and Mr. Stilinski. At least he managed to pass my class."
Dick, thought Derek. Scott couldn't possibly look more miserable, and Derek felt like crap that he'd inadvertently contributed to it. So he waited for class to be over before he shifted in his seat to at least make an attempt at amends. "I'm actually pretty good at science stuff," he said. "The syllabus says that there's a lot of group work in this class. So you should be okay this year."
All that got him was a heated glare, however. "You think Harris cares about that? He passed Stiles and failed me all because he could."
Yeah, well Stiles is a dick. But with the angry look on Scott's face, Derek decided not to press his luck. He started gathering his things, as the rest of the class has already bolted out of the room. Even Harris is already gone, leaving only Scott and him.
But by the time Derek has everything back in his bag, Scott was at the door as someone rushed in and closed the door behind him.
"Not again," Derek muttered, pointedly ignoring Stiles and his beaming idiotic face.
"Scotty, Scotty, Scotty. This is perfect." Stiles was saying as Derek approached the door. "Harris has to go out for his one o'clock cigarette, so his classroom's going to be empty. Every. Day. This is genius. You couldn't have set this up better if you tried."
"You mean I couldn't have set this up better if I failed," Scott fired back. "C'mon, dude. You promised. My mom's going to lose it if Harris fails me again. I told her this year was going to be different. My dad gave her shit all summer about my grades."
"Yeah, well your dad is a dick, and if we could sneak into his office on a daily basis, we'd be torturing him instead. But Harris is the only asshole in our radar. So he has to be the proxy for all the other assholes in our lives."
"Excuse me," Derek tried, but the boys were so caught up in their conversation - and in blocking the door - that they didn't even realize he was in the room.
"We gotta keep it random," Stiles continued. "Big stuff followed by a bunch of lame things. Harris will never know what's coming for him. I bet we can make him quit by the end of the year."
"I'm not okay with this," Scott replied, and thank God one of them had a little common sense. Everything Derek had ever heard about Mr. Harris had him as one of the biggest hurdles to survival at Beacon Hills High, and Stiles was just going to...was just going to...
"Can I just go?" Derek interjected, just before Stiles sucked in a breathe to keep arguing.
"C'mon, Scott. Be a man. Live a little. It's just a harmless little prank."
"You want to coat his desk with honey," Scott said. "That's not harmless. That could get us suspended."
"Ahh, but you've missed the brilliance of my master plan, buddy. We're not going to get caught."
"I have a class to get to," Derek said.
Stiles pulled a mason jar filled with amber honey out of his bag. "C'mon, we've got at least three more minutes before Harris finishes sucking down his nicotine for the day. I almost got him up to two packs a day last year, there's no way he'll skip his chance for a break."
"I don't know," Scott said dubiously, but his conviction was wavering. Derek had a feeling Stiles was used to talking others into doing whatever he wanted them to do.
"Just move away from the door," he grunted, trying - and failing - to move past the two of them. They still weren't paying attention to him. It was like he'd turned completely invisible.
"It's going to be so sweet," Stiles said, finally moving away from the door as he headed for Harris' desk.
Unable to help himself, Derek turned to watch what was about to happen, the same as Scott did. Stiles sauntered towards the teacher's desk with a flail of arms and legs, prancing like some sort of strange Nutcracker doll brought to life with limbs that suddenly moved. Derek turned his head, about to ask Scott why his friend was so...odd when he noticed the shape looming in the doorframe.
"Step. Away. from the desk, Mr. Stilinski," Mr. Harris snarled.
Stiles froze in place, his eyes widened and completely, irrevocably guilty. "Huh. Mr. Harris. Long time no see. I...thought you'd be out for a smoke. Y'know, sucking down a cancer stick. Getting a little puff action going. Stoking the nicotine dragon."
"I quit." Harris announced with angry eyes. "So sorry to disappoint."
"Huh," Stiles didn't look afraid at all. There was nothing but quiet contemplation on his face, as though he'd never even thought that was a possibility. Needless to say, he didn't show an ounce of remorse when he added, "I guess I should have factored for that."