Chapter Text
...An undisclosed number of years ago...
There’s this kid. Well boy. Maybe a man, though he’s wearing a Transformers t-shirt so it’s hard to tell.
Okay. He has to be at least 16. Man-child perhaps? Not everyone is like Derek. Not everyone has a face that's constantly being mistaken for 10 years older than he really is. One time he was mistaken as Laura's dad.
Either way, he’s wailing on the snack machine in the lobby of the hospital. Derek looks up from his phone at the shocking sound of the boy’s fist on the side of the machine. His face is scrunched up, eyebrows drawn together in anger, and his checks are flushed red. He runs a hand across his shorn dark hair in frustration.
Derek goes back to his text, shrugging. There’s no one around besides the tired looking nurse at the station near the emergency room entrance. She’s on her phone too, playing Candy Crush. Derek doesn’t blame her, if he could just get Laura to log onto Facebook and send him a ticket he could have made his way across to the Easter Bunny Hills a long time ago. After a few weeks he’s beginning she’s holding out on him just to spite him over the Words With Friends debacle last Thanksgiving.
The kid’s muttering to himself now, too quietly for Derek to really hear.
Derek puts his phone away, when it lands in his pocket there’s some change at the bottom that jingles.
There’s nothing else to do in the middle of the night besides watch the Slap Chop infomercial playing on the small television in the corner. So Derek leans back in his chair and observes, much like Jane Goodall with the gorillas. The kid across the lobby is going through his pockets now. He’s getting even more frustrated, patting down the pocket of his flannel shirt. A few candy wrappers fall out of his pocket when he pulls his hand out of it. They flutter to the ground unnoticed.
The kid balls his hand up into a fist and slams it in to the metal side of the machine in anger. He recoils, face twisting in pain. It’s actually fascinating. Derek hasn’t seen a reaction to an injury like this since Yosemite Sam shot himself in the foot.
The nurse looks up, her hand reaching for the phone in a move that Derek recognizes from an episode of Law and Order where there was a hostage situation in a bank. He pins her with a look. She puts down the phone.
Laura was wrong. His broody expression is good for more then intimidating liquor store cashiers into letting them buy beer. And he resents that Laura told him he looks 35 in a good way.
The nurse puts down the phone, rolling her eyes. She probably pulls up Monster.com on her computer so that she can look for a new job where manchildren in Optimus Prime shirts don’t abuse vending machines.
The boy’s still standing at the vending machine. Only instead of punching it again, he’s standing still with his forehead pressed against the glass.
Derek doesn’t know why he does it. But he finds himself standing and crossing the lobby. There’s a bag of sour cream and onion chips stuck on the metal spring thing inside the machine, hanging by its silver corner on the cusp of falling.
Derek pulls the quarters out of his pocket, feeding them into the machine on autopilot. The other guy doesn’t so much as move. His breath is totally fogging up the glass. He looks kind of pathetic.
He presses the A button and then the 3, watching as the metal coil turns, freeing the first bag of chips from its trap and then another. They both land with a soft sound at the bottom of the machine. Derek leans down and pulls them out of the machine with a soft crinkle.
“Here.” Derek says, extending one of the bags of chips towards the boy.
A pair of wide, brown eyes appear as the boy turns his head. He’s still pressed against the machine like it’s the only thing that’s keeping him standing. He squints at Derek’s face and then the bag of chips in his hand. His mouth moves open and closed but no words come out.
“Just take the chips.” Derek grumbles. This is awful. All he wanted to do was stop this situation before it ended in broken glass and a trip to the emergency room across the hall. Now he’s standing awkwardly close to this guy who refuses to take the chips he had been so adamant about freeing.
This is why he refuses to leave his apartment. This is why he has a subscription to Netflix and Hulu Plus.
Because when he leaves his apartment he ends up standing in an awkward silence with his hands full of junk food.
The guy extends a cautious hand and curls his fingers around the bag. Derek lets go, taking a step backwards.
It should end there. Derek should go back to his seat and see if Laura texted back about her flight in to town. Instead he just stands there. And in the background there’s a guy on TV talking about the wonders of homemade salsa.
The boy turns around, leaning his back against the vending machine. And he just kind of melts. Literally, his body goes rubbery and he slides to the ground. Derek looks down. This is completely not his area of expertise. Not even Laura would know what to do in this situation. She would just playfully punch him on the shoulder and hand him a beer.
There’s no beer here.
The boy sighs. “You saved my chips.” He says, his voice sounds watery.
“It was nothing.” Derek says dismissively.
“It wasn’t nothing.” The kid disputes, opening the bag of chips with a crinkle that echoes through the room.
“It kind of was.” Derek says, opening his own bag of chips just so that he has something to do. His lip curls at the smell of artificial chives and he remembers just how much he hates sour cream and onion chips. “Is your hand okay?”
He looks down absently at his hand, shaking it. “It’s fine.” It sounds dismissive. But his knuckles are red and might be swelling already. Derek’s punched a few walls in his time. He knows how much it hurts.
“It’s not.” Derek says, “You should get some ice.”
The guy rolls his eyes. “Stiles.”
“Excuse me?” Derek asks, raising an eyebrow. He’s never leaving the house after this.
“You saved my chips. My name is Stiles.”
“Okay.” Derek says, frowning. Takeout forever. Not leaving the house even for food. He’ll ask Laura to bring him toilet paper. She wouldn’t want him living in squalor. She’d do it. “I’m Derek.”
Stiles stands up slowly. His eyes are wide and a little crazed looking. “Thanks for the chips, Derek.”
Derek shrugs. Stiles sighs, but it stutters in the middle like it catches in his throat. His smile twitches as it stretches across his face. It’s like he’s putting on a mask, getting ready to face the world. There’s this line of moles on his face that almost look like the little dipper.
“Are you sure you’re okay? You’re good.” Derek asks.
Stiles sighs, shaking his head. He shrugs. “Define good?”
“You aren’t going to assault any more vending machines?” Derek asks.
Stiles holds up his injured hand. “Not until this heals.”
There’s another even more awkward silence.
“Well,” Stiles says. “This has been strange. I’ll see you around.”
Derek watches as Stiles turns around and walks down the hall, his shoulders slumped, the toes of his Converse make a squeaking sound on the linoleum. The bag of chips is still untouched in Derek’s hand. He walks back to the desk where the nurse has switched to Flappy Bird. He holds out the bag towards her silently. She takes it.
His phone vibrates in his pocket. Laura says she’ll be there in a few days. Just long enough for Derek to slowly lose his mind at Peter’s bedside. Hopefully not so long that people start to recognize him and ask him where he’s been all these years.
And definitely in time to spare Derek another run in with Stiles. He’s never seen anyone so emotional over a snack.
Derek goes back to Peter’s room in time to see the Sheriff walk in with a bag of fast food in his arms. He catches Derek’s eye at he passes by, but Derek doesn’t think he’s recognized him as the boy he pulled out of the wreckage of Derek’s parent’s totaled car a number of years ago.