Archive of Our Own

It’s seven o’ clock in the morning and Stiles is about ready to crash. He’s been up since three a.m. painting posters, waiting for the posters to dry, printing pamphlets, making badges on a badge machine he forgot he had, and definitely not drinking seven cups of coffee. Really, not even one cup of coffee has been consumed since he woke up. Stiles is kind of sensitive to caffeine and he’d never do anything as irresponsible as drinking seven cups of it, no matter what his dad would claim. It’s just been a long morning, is all. By now his hands are shaking (from excitement, not from over-exposure to a particular beverage) and every surface in his bedroom is covered with election campaign apparatus. Everything in sight bears catchy slogans such as ‘Martin to Win!’ and ‘Vote Lydia!’ and, Stiles’s personal favourite, ‘Trust Your Heart in Lydia Martin’. 

The Sheriff must see his bedroom light on under the door, because he pokes his head into Stiles’s room before he leaves for his morning shift. “Since when are you interested in politics?” he asks, raising an eyebrow at his son.

Stiles shrugs.

Honestly? Stiles isn’t interested in politics at all. But when Lydia Martin asked him to help organize her election campaign he couldn’t say no. Seriously, he couldn’t. Lydia Martin may be his friend and everything but she is still terrifying. If she wants him to do something then he’ll damn well do it, no questions asked. Which is why Stiles gets into school at half past seven on a Wednesday morning, an hour and a half before he needs to be there, just to hang up a bunch of posters for her.

He hangs them up in the locker room, on the doors to bathrooms, outside classrooms and inside classrooms… anywhere he can find a blank bit of wall, really. The corridors are mostly empty, apart from the occasional music student come in early to practice, and as long as they stay that way and Stiles doesn’t get distracted he’ll be able to cover the whole school before Lydia gets here. That’ll make her proud.

Damn, he’s the best PR person she could have wished for.

Stiles whistles as he works. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and everything is going according to plan. At least it is until he hears the dull thump, thump, thump of a basketball bouncing against the ground.

He rounds the corner and, just as he expected, Derek Hale is here and trying to cause a ruckus in the hall. For once he is without his gang of basketball cronies, but even the lack of audience doesn’t stop him from acting like an entitled douchebag. Not that it bothers Stiles that people like Derek Hale think they don’t have to abide by simple school rules like only play sports outside.

“Excuse me,” Stiles says, stomping past to pointedly hang his largest banner on the wall directly in front of Hale. Being the aloof asshole he is, Hale ignores Stiles and continues to bounce the ball. “You’re meant to practice on the courts,” Stiles snaps at him. “Throwing heavy things around in such a narrow corridor is a health and safety hazard and you are putting people at risk.”

At least Derek deigns to look up at Stiles now. “We’re the only people here,” he says in his stupid monosyllabic way. “If you stay out of the way then no one will get hurt.”

“Are you threatening me?” demands Stiles.

“I—what? No! I’m just saying that, you know, this wouldn’t be an issue if you went and did your poster… thing somewhere else.”

“You have no right to force me out of this corridor,” says Stiles, glaring at him. “As a student of this establishment I have a right to hang my posters wherever I choose and I will not let you tell me otherwise.”

Derek’s face flushes and he stops bouncing the ball. “Dude, I didn’t mean to—”

“Save it,” says Stiles, aggressively straightening out the banner so it’s crease-free. “All you jocks are the same. Just because you’re popular, rich and attractive, you think you run the school and everyone in it. Well, let me tell you this. You don’t run me.”

“I wasn’t trying to run you!” Derek sets the ball down and takes a cautious step toward Stiles. “Look. I’m sorry. I didn’t think me practicing basketball in here would be such a big deal to you, man. I’ll stop.” He opens an unlocked locker, presumably his own, sticks the basketball inside it and then turns to Stiles. There’s a small smile on his lips. The asshole probably thinks that this is a joke. “D’you want some help hanging things or whatever?”

Stiles narrows his eyes at Derek. “Why would I want the help of some dumb jock? Because while I appreciate the offer, dude, I need these posters hung straight. I’m pretty sure you don’t learn how to do that in basketball training, so...”

“Right,” mutters Derek, and his face turns stony. Stiles wonders if this means he’s going to get his ass handed to him now. He’s the Sheriff’s son, so he’s never had too much trouble with bullies, but he’s seen enough crap teen movies to know how this goes. Derek is probably going to drag him to the bathrooms and flush his face down the toilet to teach him a lesson about respect or whatever it is jocks care about these days. Except he doesn’t. He just frowns at Stiles and says, “Never mind then.”

“I mean, don’t take it personally?” says Stiles. “This campaign is important and I need to get it right. You wouldn’t understand.”

Derek’s frown deepens. “I wouldn’t understand,” he repeats slowly. “Because I am incapable of understanding simple things, like how to hang a poster up right.”

Well, now he’s getting it.

Stiles shrugs. “Elections aren’t for jocks,” he says. “It’s cool.”

Derek is full-blown scowling right now. His lips are pursed and his eyebrows are hunched in a low V-shape over his eyes like they’re trying to meet in the middle. “Fuck you, Stilinski,” he hisses, and slams open his locker again. He grabs his basketball pointedly and storms off with it, feet slapping angrily against the linoleum as he goes.

Okay, since when does Derek Hale know his name? They share a couple of classes this year, sure, but they don’t talk. In fact, Derek Hale actively pays no attention to him. He doesn’t even react when Stiles embarks on rambling monologues during English, while everyone else (including Scott, the traitor) groans and rolls their eyes. Derek just doodles or something and pretends like no one is talking. Stiles knows this for a fact because he sits two tables behind Derek. So why does he know Stiles? Kind of weird. But that’s beside the point.

“Asshole jock,” Stiles mutters to himself once Derek has disappeared from sight. With that all out of his system, he goes back to the task at hand: Lydia-fying the school before homeroom, which doesn’t start for almost an hour. Man, this is gonna be awesome.

---

Lydia loves the posters and the banners, but not half as much as she loves the badges and the pamphlets. When Stiles shows her them she actually kisses him on the cheek. Right there in the middle of the corridor. It’s the closest that she’s ever come to admitting they are friends in public. “Whoa, whoa,” says Stiles, laughing. “Enough with the affection. You’re gonna turn a gay man straight if you’re not careful.”

She tosses her hair over her shoulder and grins. “We both know you’ll always have a soft spot for me,” she says, kissing his cheek again. “I was your first love.” 

Stiles pulls a face back at her. “We were nine. I didn’t know what I wanted.”

“Whatever,” she says, pulling away from him abruptly. “Look, I’m setting up a table outside the cafeteria at lunch so I can make my application early. That might scare off the competition.” A freshman walking past unsubtly stops to check her out. Lydia pauses, briefly, to wink at him. Stiles nudges her and mouths ‘fourteen’. She rolls her eyes and carries on, “I’ve already got thirty signatures, so we only need twenty more. I’ll meet you there after Chemistry?”

He mentally runs over his schedule then says, “Sure.”

There’s nothing better to do. He finished all his homework last night, and Scott warned him this morning that he, Isaac and Allison are eating lunch together today so they can talk things out. Not a conversation that Stiles particularly wants to be present for. Boyd and Erica are working on a group project in the library, and Danny is following a weird lunchtime lacrosse training schedule that Stiles isn’t going to pretend to understand.

“I’ll see you there,” he tells her as the bell rings for next period.

Stiles really likes Chemistry, even though his teacher hates him. Mr. Harris is a dick to everyone, sure, but he hates Stiles with particular venom. Probably because Stiles called out his evil nature from the first day of class when he circulated a note around the room saying ‘Harris will kill us all’. Harris found it after class, matched Stiles’s handwriting to it from a homework assignment, and has persecuted him for it ever since. Whatever. That doesn’t stop Stiles from liking Chemistry. The experiments are fun enough to compensate. He gets to burn stuff and make it explode in a controlled environment. Stiles likes destruction in a limited way. So sue him.

Five minutes into the lesson, Derek Hale skulks into the room. He’s late and Harris doesn’t even chew him out for it. If that had been Stiles he’d have landed himself a week in detention, but Derek the jock is Harris’s special favorite or something. It makes sense, Stiles figures, that a mean teacher would get along well with a douchebag student like Derek. Still, the blatant favoritism annoys him.

What annoys Stiles even more is that Derek spends the majority of lesson glaring daggers into the back of Stiles’s head. Stiles can actually feel the hostility rolling towards him in waves. His lab-partner Erica must sense the bad vibes too, because halfway through their experiment she turns to Stiles and whispers, “Stilinski, what did you do to Hale? Stab him with a pencil?”

Stiles narrows his eyes at her. “Is that a Twilight reference?”

“No,” says Erica. “But seriously. Why is he looking at you like he wants to decapitate you?”

“Dunno.” Stiles sighs. He doesn’t exactly have a deep insight into the mindset of jocks. “I told him to stop playing basketball in the corridor this morning. He’s probably still sulking about that.” He chances a glance back at Derek who is, predictably, still glaring at him. “Oh well.”

Erica raises an eyebrow at him. “Wow,” she says. “Mature.”

He doesn’t know if she’s talking about him or Hale, so he drops it and neither of them bring up Derek and his stupid scowl again. The bell signaling the end of the period goes just as he’s finishing up writing the results of the experiment so he stuffs his books in his bag and leaves.

Lydia is waiting for him by the cafeteria. She’s arranged the badges and pamphlets on the table in front of her next to the large box of chocolates she’s also procured. Some guy makes the mistake of trying to snaffle one as Stiles approaches. Lydia catches his wrist before his fingers even brush the chocolate and says, “No treats before you’ve signed.”

The kid bows his head and scribbles his name down on the list with his free hand. Only then does Lydia let his wrist go. He snatches a chocolate and all-but sprints away.

“Nice,” says Stiles.

Lydia smirks. “I know.”

After twenty minutes of them standing there, they already have over two hundred signatures nominating Lydia. They only needed fifty. By now they’re out of chocolate, badges and pamphlets, so they exchange a high five and pack their shit up.

It’s all running like clockwork.

Of course that’s when Derek Hale appears. He’s carrying a banner of his own. There are little splashes of paint all over his clothes and the paint is still dripping from his cardboard banner, leaving a trail of blue mess on the floor in his wake. He stomps over to one of Lydia’s banners and hangs his own over hers. 

‘HALE’S LESS STALE’, it reads.

Stiles wants to punch him. Sadly, Derek is much bigger and stronger than Stiles is and it’s not even worth trying it. Instead he strides over and hisses, “What the fuck is this?”

Derek shrugs. “I’m going to run for Student President too.”

“You’re going to do what?” Stiles says, incredulous.

Lydia appears beside him and puts her small, manicured hand on his arm. It looks like a gesture of solidarity from a distance, but the reality is far from it. She grips his arm unnecessarily hard, digging her long nails in, and whispers in a taut icy tone that he needs to calm the hell down before she makes him. Stiles brushes her off.

“Run for Student President,” Derek repeats, very slowly. He has one eyebrow raised in an expression of infuriating aloofness as he looks from Stiles to Lydia to Stiles again. The corner of his mouth tilts up into a smirk.

“But you’re—” Stiles gestures at him inarticulately, because there’s no simple set of words that encompass what Derek Hale is that can be used without causing offence.

“Just a dumb jock,” Derek finishes for him, and the smirk becomes more pronounced. Stiles wishes he’d stop. Smirking is only okay when Lydia does it. “I know.”

Stiles sneers back at him. “Well, you have no chance of winning.”

“We’ll see about that.” He waves some papers at Stiles and, to Stiles’s dismay, there’s already a decent amount of signatures on them. He raises his other eyebrow up at Stiles, like he’s challenging him to an eyebrow duel or something. Which is totally unfair, because Derek has power-brows and Stiles’s are only average. “You wanna sign?”

“No, I don’t want to sign your fucking—”

Lydia reattaches herself to Stiles’s arm. “Shh. Don’t make a scene,” she says, gentler this time. Before he knows it she’s towing him away from Hale before he can do something irrational, like actually throwing a punch. “It’s bad press, and we do not need bad press right now. Come on. We can regroup at mine later and figure out a plan.”

---

After school Stiles drops a very melancholy Scott home and then heads over to Lydia’s. He sprawls himself across her bed, one arm theatrically thrown across his forehead, and mumbles, “What the fuck is his problem?”

“Scott?” asks Lydia. “Probably that his ex-girlfriend and his second best friend are now dating and he’s half in love with both of them. Boo-hoo. Next question?”

Stiles sits up to throw a pillow at her. “I meant Derek, smart-ass.”

“Oh, Derek? That’s easy. His problem is you.” Lydia points at him accusatorily, because she’s nothing if not painfully honest. “Erica told me about the glaring in Chemistry. It’s not hard to put two-and-two together, is it Stiles? That’s irrelevant, though.” She spins to in her swivel chair so she’s facing away from Stiles. “We’re going to treat him like we’d treat any other opponent, and we’re going to crush him.”

They already have a plan in place for dealing with any opposition, of course, because it’s not like they expected Lydia’s position in the election to be uncontested. Beacon Hills has a large student population. Lots of them must aspire towards being leaders; the figurehead of their peer group, or whatever it is Finstock advertises the Student Council President position as.

The plan to keep the opposition weak is a simple one. They’ll read over the opposing candidates’ policies and smash them one by one, either by making superior promises or using statistics to undermine them. There’s only one problem.

“We don’t know what Derek’s policies are,” says Stiles.

“We’ll know next week,” says Lydia. “After the candidates make their speeches.”

Stiles raises an eyebrow at her. “That’s ages away! Lydia, he’s a popular guy. Who knows how much damage he can do between then and now? We’ve got to get at him while he’s still weak and—”

“He’s the only person running against me so far,” Lydia points out. “And believe me, Stiles, I can take him. Relax, okay? We’ve got this.”

---

The next Monday, every student at Beacon Hills’s high school is crammed onto the bleachers in the gymnasium. It reminds Stiles of that scene in Mean Girls, except there are boys here too and their Principal doesn’t have Carpal Tunnel. Anyway, the candidates are each presented with a microphone to make a speech. They’re lined up in a row like cattle at a farmer's sale, all four of them: Lydia first, then some creepy kid called Matt D-something, who has a fancy camera around his neck, a pretty girl called Paige, and Derek.

Lydia makes the leading speech. Stiles has run it through with her at least fifty times, but it’s different hearing her deliver it to a crowd. She’s good. Really, really good. Future world leader levels of good, and Stiles is glad he filmed it on his phone because one day this footage is going to be valuable as hell. He’s convinced of it.

As soon as she steps down the crowd goes wild. Matt D-whatever looks unnerved by that as he shuffles to the center of the make-shift platform they’re using as a stage. “Um,” he starts nervously, and then he stutters his way through a whole lot more. Every sentence he gets out is interspersed with fillers. “I, uh, would, um, like you all to—uh. Vote. For, um, for me,” he concludes after a torturous few minutes. He gets a few pity claps, but that’s it. Stiles mentally strikes him off the list of real competition.

Paige is much better than Matt. That doesn’t take much, but still. She’s a music student, and she talks about making reforms to the marching band that have people up on their feet cheering. Her campaign has limited appeal, though, and she only receives a moderate applause after. Stiles doesn’t think she’ll be a genuine threat.

Then it’s Derek’s turn, and Stiles doesn’t know what to expect. Probably for Derek to shout a few aphorisms about his passionate love of soccer and leave it at that.

“My mother Talia was the finest Student President this school has ever seen,” says Derek, and he smiles winningly at the crowd. Damn him, he’s all charisma, and Stiles is so surprised by that he nearly falls out of his seat. “In fact, it was her idea to have a Student Council in the first place. Since then, my uncle Peter and my two elder sisters, Cora and Laura, have all held the position of president. Peter is the man who got a vending machine placed outside the canteen.” Derek pauses, and there’s a loud cheer. “Laura made sure swimming lessons were non-compulsory.” Another cheer follows. “Most of you will remember Cora,” Derek continues with a small smile. “She was here two years ago. She’s the one who got Gerard Argent fired.”

The last part is a masterstroke; the crowd goes wild. Gerard Argent was the former Principal of the school and he was an absolute tyrant. If he didn’t like you, he’d suspend you for no reason. Stiles hated him. Everyone did.

“I’m not asking you to vote for me based on family’s achievements, though,” Derek says once the crowd has quieted down again. “I want to make an impact on this school in my own right, and I want to do that by listening to you. See, I believe in democracy. Why should I dictate what you want to change about the school? You all have better ideas than I do. If you vote for me, I can help you actualize them. You want more materials in the Art department? I’ll fight for them. Better sport facilities? You got it. Lacrosse training? Sure. New books in the library? I’m on it. I believe that no cause is too small to fight for if it means a lot to you. That’s why you should vote for me. Thank you.”

Stiles is the only person in the crowd who doesn’t cheer for him after. Even Lydia is clapping politely behind him, smiling at him like she’s impressed. Lydia is never impressed. Stiles grits his teeth and tries not to grimace.

Derek can’t win this. He doesn’t deserve to. Not when Lydia has been working for this her whole life. He has to come up with a plan.

--- 

“We’re not sabotaging his campaign,” says Lydia. “Stiles, I’m serious. I want to win this election fairly or not at all.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “I didn’t say we should sabotage him exactly. I just suggested we should up the stakes a little. Isn’t that what all real politicians do? Because I saw Obama’s commercials last election and they were nothing if not slanderous and while I’m not comparing Derek to Mitt Romney or anything, he—”

“No,” Lydia interrupts firmly.

“Fine,” agrees Stiles, rolling his eyes. Then he does it anyway.

---

“What the fuck is this?” demands Derek, storming over to Stiles’s desk at the start of English class. He waves a leaflet at Stiles, one eyebrow cocked suspiciously.

So maybe Stiles circulated a bit of anti-Derek propaganda. It’s not a big deal or anything. Real politicians do it all the time. All’s fair in politics et cetera. Except Derek looks kind of angry over this, like he doesn’t know that it’s normal to slander your opponents.

As the son of a Sheriff, Stiles is thankfully used to evading the blame for things. He’s learned, over the years, that the best tactic when confronted is denial, so he widens his eyes innocently. “I don’t know what you mean, Derek,” he deadpans. “What is it?”

Derek sighs and begins reading it out loud. His tone is low and resigned. “Derek Hale does not care about you or your future. He wants the power that comes with the position of Student Council President and nothing else. Apart from maybe something to bulk up his stupid college application that isn’t sport-related. If he is even going to college.”

Stiles smiles smugly back at him. “Are you going to college?”

“Yeah, I am. I got accepted into Berkley last week,” Derek replies waspishly.

Stiles can feel his jaw drop. “Whoa, dude,” he says. “Did you get a sport scholarship?”

“Academic,” Derek growls back. The tips of his ears are flushed red now, probably in anger, and he slams the leaflet down on the table between them. “I don’t get it,” he says. “What the hell have I ever done to you? So I like sports. That doesn’t make me stupid or dumb or whatever else you think. You don’t even know me and you still make all these—” he waves his arms around a little, looking for the right word. He looks like a penguin. Stiles has to bite back his smirk. “All these judgments,” Derek settles on eventually. “Bullshit about me being a mindless jock when you don’t even know me and I have literally no idea why.”

Now it’s Stiles’s turn to flush. “I don’t know what you mean,” he says.

The bell rings then and the rest of the students file into the room, cutting their conversation short. Thank fucking god. Stiles tries not to think about Derek when Ms. Blake starts talking, but that’s pretty impossible with Derek sitting two rows in front of him, shifting about in his seat like he wants to claw his way out of his skin or something. Watching him makes Stiles want to fidget too, but he has some self-control. And there’s the Adderall he took this morning. He’s a stronger man than Derek is. He sits still.

So what if Derek isn’t a total airhead? Stiles didn’t know that before now and, in his defense, Derek did think it was okay to bounce a basketball around indoors. Granted, that was in an empty corridor right next to his own locker at seven thirty in the morning when there was no one else about, as his traitorous mind supplies. But that’s not the point.

The point is that Derek was still the one breaching health and safety protocol, damn it.

---

When the bell sounds Derek leaves the classroom faster than a bullet. He all but sprints out of the room. It’s kind of annoying, because after an hour of staring at the back of his head Stiles kind of wants to talk to him. The conversation they were in the middle of isn’t over, okay?

Stiles sighs, bundles his books into his bag as fast as he can and follows. He stops to ask a few people he passes, “Did you see which way Derek went?” to make sure he’s headed in the right direction, because that kid can move fast when he wants to. 

He finds Derek a few minutes later, hunched over the sink in the men’s room.

“Wow,” says Stiles. “This is like that one scene in Harry Potter where Harry finds Draco crying by the sink.”

Derek glances up at Stiles through the mirror and pulls a disapproving face. “I’m not crying,” he points out. “And there’s no dark overlord trying to make me kill the Headmaster.”

“Semantics.” Stiles shrugs and heads to the sink next to Derek’s. “Look,” he says. “I know I’ve been a bit hard on you over this whole election thing.”

Derek snorts. “Understatement of the year.”

“Hey!” says Stiles. “I’m trying to apologize here.” He sighs. “Listen, dude. I’m sorry for saying all that stuff. I don’t think you’re an airhead, it’s just—”

“It’s fine,” Derek says, but he doesn’t look or sound like it’s fine at all. He’s still frowning. In the harsh light of the bathroom, he looks sadder than he does angry. Something in Stiles’s gut twists. “I get that you don’t like me or whatever. And that’s fine.”

Stiles holds up a hand in protest. “No, dude, listen. I don’t dislike you,” he says defensively. “I just don’t really know you.” He shrugs helplessly. “You never talked to me before this whole campaign bullshit happened, apart from over the basketball thing, which was, you know, kind of a disaster as far as first conversations go.”

Derek sighs. “Maybe I didn’t know what to say to you before all that.”

“Well, that’s cryptic.” Stiles hates it when people are cryptic. “What’s that meant to mean?”

“Nothing.”

Derek wipes his hands on his jeans, even though they aren’t wet, and leaves. The door swings shut behind him and Stiles is left standing alone in the bathroom.

--- 

The next day, Derek withdraws his candidacy. “I’m captain of the basketball team,” he says in an apologetic tone over the school tannoy system during the morning announcements. “I realized that I don’t have time to do both, and sport is my priority right now, so…”

He trails off mid-sentence, and then the Principal’s voice resumes. Stiles stares down at his hands guiltily. He can’t help but feel like this is somehow his fault. Lydia must have the same thought, because she appears behind him the next instant and thwacks him hard on the head with a textbook. “What the fuck did you do?” she hisses.

Stiles grimaces. “I don’t know. Tried to call a truce, I think?”

Lydia rolls her eyes. “Sure you tried to call a truce,” she says sarcastically. “At any point in the conversation did you happen to accidentally use the words ‘quit while you’re ahead’ or ‘you may as well give up now’? Because I know you, Stiles, and—”

“I didn’t tell him to do anything,” Stiles protests. “Seriously. I just apologized to him for being a dick about his intellectual capacity.”

Lydia tilts her head thoughtfully and ‘Hmm’s. Stiles hates it when Lydia ‘Hmm’s. It usually means that she’s figured something out that he really ought to know.

“What?” he says. “Lydia, what? I know that grin. You’re up to something and I—”

She smiles at him sweetly. “You should go and talk to him,” she says.

Stiles huffs. “I don’t know what good that’s gonna do. He probably hates me or whatever.” Still, after homeroom he waits for Derek by his locker. Because when Lydia Martin deigns to give you advice you take it, no questions asked.

When Derek sees Stiles waiting around he startles. His eyes look panicked and his cheeks go red. For a moment, Stiles thinks he’s going to turn around and run away. He doesn’t, though.

“What do you want, Stilinski?” he says instead, taking a cautious step closer.

In turn, Stiles takes a small step away from Derek’s locker. To his amusement, that prompts Derek to take another step closer. Stiles snorts at him. “What are you doing here, getting your books or some kind of dance? Come on, Derek. Get over here. You’re not going to catch anything from standing near me, I promise."

Derek mutters something under his breath and shuffles closer. He unlocks his locker and that stupid basketball that started everything rolls out. Stiles picks it up for him and the tips of his ears turn a visible shade of red as he roots around in his locker for his books.

“What are you doing here, Stiles?” he asks, head still buried inside his locker.

Stiles shrugs. “I want to know why you withdrew your campaign I guess.”

Derek withdraws his head from his locker and shoots Stiles an incredulous glance. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Well, yeah,” says Stiles, scuffing the toe of his shoe along the floor. “But not actually.”

“Right. Because that makes perfect sense.” Derek rams his books into his satchel and slams his locker shut again.

He looks about ready to take off again, like he did in the bathroom, and seriously. Stiles isn’t going to chase him through the school again to get this conversation over with. So Stiles corners him against the lockers, puts the basketball down and settles his hands on either side of Derek’s shoulders, effectively caging him in with his arms.

“Yesterday you said you don’t get me,” Stiles says. “Well, I don’t get you either. One minute you’re trying to make things hard as hell for Lydia and me to win the election for no apparent reason, and the next you’re pulling your campaign because you thought that’s what I wanted. What the hell, dude?”

Derek is bright red now. “Look, Stiles,” he says. “I get that you don’t, um.” He shifts, and his arms come up like he’s going to push Stiles away. He doesn’t go through with it, though, and both of his hands curl around Stiles’s elbows instead. “You don’t really care about who I am and before this election thing I was completely off your radar. And that’s cool. But, you know. I’ve liked you since freshman year and I—”

“Wait,” says Stiles. “You’ve what?”

“You heard me,” says Derek, jutting his chin up. “I’m not saying it again.”

“No, dude, you have to because I’m pretty sure I misheard. Like, for a second there I honest-to-God thought I heard you say that you liked me and that—”

“I do like you.”

“—is so beyond the realms of likelihood it’s off the scale of unlikelihood and… wait, wait. Hold up a second because, what? Are you fucking with me right now?”

“No.”

Stiles blinks at Derek. “You like me?”

“Yes, Stiles. I like you.” Derek’s using his most put-upon tone of voice, like every word is a burden to say. “You knew that. Everyone knew that.”

“Uh,” says Stiles. “No they didn’t? And, more importantly, no I didn’t.”

Derek frowns. “What about the way my friends make fun of me every time you walk past?”

“I thought they were making fun of me,” says Stiles.

His entire high school experience flashes before his eyes as he tries to catalogue every time a jock has called out some jeering remark as he walked past in the corridor. It’s happened a lot, sure, but he always figured they were being dicks and paid them no mind. But now he things about it, he can remember the way the basketball team always ribbed Derek if he walked past, and the way Derek’s head always dropped down in embarrassment as he avoided Stiles’s eyes.

Now Derek is watching him cautiously. “How about the valentine’s day card I gave you last year?” he asks. “That was practically a declaration of love, and you didn’t even say anything—”

“Wait a minute. That card was from you?” asks Stiles incredulously.

“I handed it to you, Stiles.”

“Yeah, but inside it was signed ‘from your secret admirer’ and you looked angry as hell when you gave it to me. Also, you didn’t say anything when you handed it over.” Stiles shrugs helplessly. “I figured that someone put you up to it or something. I don’t know, man.”

“Oh.” Derek looks away. “Well, yeah. That was from me. But I get it that you don’t… and it’s fine. I’ll get over it eventually, so you shouldn’t feel obliged to…”

Stiles can see where that sentence is going. “Stop,” he says. “Don’t say that I shouldn’t feel obliged to return your feelings or whatever crap you’re about to come out with.” Derek’s face scrunches up weirdly, like he doesn’t know what to do with it, but he keeps his mouth shut. “I’m going to kiss you now. Or you’re going to kiss me. And then I’m going to tell you about the mammoth sized hate crush I have on you and your stupid muscle car and your stupid eyebrows and how you’re the only reason I go to those stupid basketball games and—”

Derek closes the distance between them and kisses Stiles, and as he kisses him his hands slide down Stiles’s waist to settle around his hips. His lips may feel a little dry and chapped against Stiles’s but it’s warm and soft and nice. Although the kiss is only chaste, because it’s their first and they’re in the middle of the school corridor and Stiles has some sense of decorum, thanks, he lets Derek drag him closer by the hips.

“Please tell me you don’t only like me on an aesthetic level,” says Derek when he pulls away, and Stiles goes cross-eyed trying to decipher his expression when he leans in and gently rests their foreheads together. “Also, what the hell is a hate crush?”

Stiles grins at him, leans in again to presses a quick kiss to Derek’s cheek. Down the corridor, someone wolf-whistles at them and shouts a loud, “Yeah Derek! Fucking finally!”

Without looking away from Derek and his stupid blue-green eyes, Stiles flips them off over his shoulder and mutters a low curse about fucking jocks ruining the moment. Derek laughs, hiding his face in the crook of Stiles’s neck, and Stiles holds him there.

“A hate crush means you’re the guy I love to hate. I got mad every time you did anything because, you know, it gave me an excuse to think about you all the time,” says Stiles. “Except it’s been harder to hate you recently since you started talking to me and everything.” Derek makes the scrunchy face at him again. It’s somewhere between confused and annoyed. “And no, before you ask again, I don’t only like you for your hot bod,” Stiles says, and it’s true. Derek is hot as hell, yes, but he’s also smart and funny and beautiful when he smiles.

“So you do like me,” says Derek, eyes narrowed, like he still doesn't believe it.

And that's when Stiles realises he has been way out of line. Way, way out of line. Sure, he felt guilty when Derek withdrew his campaign, but that was an abstract kind of guilt because he figured, you know, that was Derek's decision. But here's the thing. Just because Derek's friends laughed at him when he walked past, that doesn't mean they're all bad people. Or maybe it does. But he shouldn't have written them all off as dumb because of it. Especially not Derek.

So Stiles levels with Derek and tells him something honest.

“Yeah, Derek, I do. I just haven't done a great job showing it." He pauses, chewing his lip. "Let me take you out to dinner to prove it?”

“Sure,” says Derek shyly. He’s smiling so hard it looks like his face is going to break in two. Stiles smiles back at him, automatic, and god. It’s so much easier to smile at Derek like this than it was to glare at him. “Fucking hell, Stiles,” he says. “You're such an asshole. I thought you’d never ask.”

--- 

That Friday, after Lydia inevitably crushes Matt D-hoozit and Paige in the election, Stiles rolls up to the Hale house to pick Derek up for their first date. It’s eight o’ clock, on the dot, and he’s been texting Derek frantically since seven to please open the door because Stiles is not ready to meet the family yet. 

Of course, because this is his life, the infamous Cora opens the door. She raises an eyebrow at his plaid shirt, messy hair and skinny jeans.

“So you’re the Stilinski kid,” she says. “Wow, you’re not at all what I was expecting. From the way Derek talks about you I thought you’d be more of a—”

Derek comes bounding down the stairs and barges her out of the way. He’s trying to look annoyed, but the smile on his face is too wide for it to work at all. “Shut up, Cora. Stiles is perfect,” he says, and Stiles beams back at him.

“Maybe I’d have caught a clue sooner if you’d been this nice to me before,” says Stiles as he leans forward to drop a kiss on Derek’s cheek. Derek turns his head slightly so his lips catch the corner of Stiles’s smile instead. Cora makes a loud vomiting noise behind them. Stiles laughs and unwillingly pulls away, making a loud lip-smacking sound to embarrass her further. “Come on,” he says, tugging Derek out of the door. “Movie starts in half an hour and you’re driving.”

He tosses the keys to his jeep at Derek, who catches them with one hand and Stiles’s hand with the other. He laces their fingers with this sappy little smile and Stiles rolls his eyes. “You are such a sap,” he tells Derek, shaking his head.

“You like it,” says Derek with one of his stupid, superior-to-you smirks and a wink that looks more like an eye-twitch than it’s meant to. Stiles laughs, squeezes Derek’s fingers between his own, and doesn’t even try to disagree.