Chapter Text
When high school comes to an uneventful end and his circle of friends realise they will soon be scattered across the United States, Stiles decides on a whim to defer for a year. Even though he was accepted into all of the schools he applied for (and Scott tells him it’s on account of being awesome - okay, academically awesome) he just isn’t feeling it. Maybe it’s burn-out from working his ass off all senior year, but Stiles feels like he just needs a break. He wants to experience something new before he commits to the academic world once again.
He isn’t surprised when Lydia gives him a look of disapproval after he announces his decision to defer a year. It’s during a beginning of summer party they have, though the term ‘party’ is used loosely - it’s just himself, Lydia, Allison and Scott - not this major bash like Lydia had wanted. Stiles remembers all of the parties Lydia has thrown in the past and how huge they were. He really doesn’t want the entire senior class at what is supposed to be an intimate gathering.
When Scott and Allison take off to do their own thing for the night, it leaves Stiles at Lydia’s to help clean up. She again displays her disapproval and he again tells her why he’s deferring. It shows him just how much has changed in a few years - if this was junior year, Lydia’s disapproval would have bothered him but he has long since moved past his crush. It was purely by accident that he found out he is bisexual, and now, her disapproval just makes him joke that she’s mom-ing him. She cares about him only as a friend, just as Stiles does her and it’s a far cry from when she was pretending he didn’t exist in her world at all.
Allison decides to defer a year as well, wanting to travel with her dad. She was always intrigued by the fact that her aunt Kate had been a weapons distributor, and when kids at her old high school joked that her dad’s job was a man’s job, it had made Allison more interested in it. Kate had shown her that weapons weren’t a man’s thing. By the time she was seventeen, Allison already knew how to assemble and disassemble a myriad of weapons, but it was a skill she kept quiet for awhile. When the death of her aunt Kate and then her mother’s suicide became too much, Allison stopped caring what other kids thought of her. She pursued her hobby on the weekends and eventually, after breaking up with Scott, she drew the attention of Isaac Lahey, who would go with her into the preserve and watch her practice with her crossbow.
Without a relationship to distract him, Scott makes the decision to attend a local veterinary school on the weekdays and on weekends he continues to work for Dr Deaton. Stiles jokes that Scott would make a cute nurse but Scott reminds him of the failed ‘take your kid to work day’. Scott had gone to work with his mother one evening and accidentally saw what went on in the trauma OR and threw up in the hallway. It was then that he realised seeing someone getting their own innards stitched back into their body wasn’t for him. It wasn’t any easier seeing animals who had been hit by cars brought in, but he never threw up in Deaton’s office, so there was that.
Lydia and Jackson had broken things off shortly before sophomore year and while they remain friends, no one is surprised when Jackson takes on a modelling gig in London, England. He was willing to trade lacrosse for money it seemed, even though his family had more than enough, and sometimes he would send them all autographed head shots. Stiles keeps the ones he gets in a box labeled ‘NARCISSISM’.
After Jackson leaves, Lydia is the next one of their group to leave. She had stayed home for half of the summer after graduation but since she refuses to live on campus and declines a sorority (it would interfere with her studies, she had reasoned and Stiles was surprised she was blatantly showing off her intellect now) she had to apartment hunt and it was difficult to do that from another state. So she left in July and found herself a place within a week.
Allison and her dad pack up shortly after that, which leaves just Scott for Stiles to pester. The remainder of the summer is a lot of drinking beer in the preserve and accidentally-on-purpose running into Coach Finstock in town. They find out where he goes for dinner in the summer and join him on the restaurant’s patio, getting drunk and flicking straw wrappers and ice cubes at him until they are kicked out. Their former Coach complains that the two are more annoying than Greenberg and changes restaurants. Shortly after, Scott becomes busy with orientation and classes, which leaves Stiles to his own devices.
#
Stiles didn’t want to move to New York City at first. It had been a bit of a spur-of-the-moment decision. He had been helping his dad keep his case files organised when Agent McCall - Scott’s father - had come into town. He stirred up enough shit to leave everyone pissed off and as a joke, Stiles had said that he was pretty sure Agent McCall had been kicked out of wherever he had been working in New York. Stiles’ dad had pointed out that the FBI wasn’t stationed in NYC but run out of Washington and Stiles just shrugged it off.
What it leads to is Stiles going home and looking up the police services and such in New York City. One link led to another and soon, Stiles was looking at photos of brownstones converted to apartments and dreaming of living in such a diverse city. He joked about moving there and by the time November came around, Stiles was serious about it. He took a weekend trip up to New York City and secured an apartment with what was supposed to be college money, but he wasn’t going to be able to move in until January. That was okay - it meant he would be moving in when it was cold, rather than when it was hot, so no sweating involved. What Stiles didn’t count on, was the weather.
#
A series of text messages Stiles sends Scott the night after he secures his apartment, before he heads back to California:
You need to be here. NYC is made for anyone with ADHD. And a thing for knock-off handbags
I went to Trump Tower. It’s all gold and mirrors in the lobby and I was kicked off of the elevator for trying to collect a toll each time someone stepped on.
I think I saw Jay Leno… rather, his chin. I was two blocks away though - can’t be sure.
The subway smells like a body is decomposing. I sent a text to my dad asking if this is normal. He didn’t find it funny.
Times Square feels like one giant orgy with everyone touching you.
I think my neighbour is one of those ‘I hate everyone’ types. I’m fucked.
I’m guessing he won’t like it when I play that ‘music to drive to’ playlist Jackson made me… his eyebrows were judging me in the elevator LIKE THEY KNEW.
I bought you something to remember me by. Who’s the best friend there ever was? Me, that’s who!
Stiles doesn’t think much of it when he leaves his new apartment. He has just signed the one-year lease and is feeling pretty good about himself, looking down and reading the papers over again when he runs into his neighbour - rather, walks into him quite literally - at the elevators. It earns him a solid shoulder into his own. He’s sure it will leave a bruise in the morning and even though it’s his own fault, he is about to protest when he takes one look at the man’s face.
He goes from wanting to protest to closing his mouth. It’s a rare thing, indeed, but the guy looks like he’s either had a hell of a bad day or maybe he’s just one of those people cursed with a permanent bitch face. Stiles reaches around the guy and presses the lit-up elevator button again, as if somehow it might make the elevator get here faster.
When it does arrive, the entire elevator ride is uncomfortable. They reach for the ground floor button at the same time and when Stiles goes to step back, the guy is already taking up the back of the elevator and Stiles steps on his foot. It earns him another look and so Stiles presses himself into the corner between the elevator buttons and the side wall. It’s either the slowest elevator in history or time is purposely moving slowly so Stiles pulls out his cell phone and texts Scott. He’s tempted to try and take a sneaky photo of the guy but with his luck now, his flash or volume would accidentally be on and he’d get caught.
Instead, he tries to describe the guy to Scott and when the elevator door opens at the lobby, Stiles waits as the guy leaves first. He takes a left and Stiles glances up on the pillar that stands between two short sets of stairs that lead into the main lobby. A sign points the way the guy went and says ‘Underground Parking’. Now he’s glad he parked on the street.
When he leaves the building he is too busy reading Scott’s text message reply to look where he’s going and he jumps nearly a foot in the air as he hears a car horn honk. He looks to his right and realises he just walked in front of a black Camaro that was trying to leave the building’s underground parking - and through the windshield of the car is the guy, again. As Stiles continues on, he’s pretty sure the man’s expressive eyebrows are still judging him, even as he speeds past on the street and Stiles climbs into his Jeep.