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“Is that...Stilinski?”
“Eyes on your work, Greenberg! You’ve got another eight pages before that application is done!”
“No, I know, Coach, it’s just…” he trailed off, gesturing broadly towards the windows of the main office.
Greenberg knew he was supposed to be on task. Coach was harsh, and teasing, but he wasn’t unfair and he was taking time out of his day to write recommendations for Greenberg and make sure he completed college applications. He should stay on task.
It’s just...Stilinski...and tall, dark, and gruesome...on the steps.
“What, Greenberg?” Coach barked, “It’s just what?”
He gestured toward the scene out front without further comment. He wasn’t sure what else he could even say.
Coach Finstock stared for a long time, his brow furrowed and fingers tapping against the desk.
“Huh,” he said, finally, “I guess that’s what all those chains in Bilinski’s locker were about.”
“Excuse me, Coach?” Greenberg asked. He must have been sick that day.
“Kid’s got a leather daddy.”
***
Thanks to a half dozen enterprising students, a rivalry with Beacon County Performing Arts School long since forgotten, and one stolen mascot statue, no one was allowed off campus during lunch at Beacon Hills High. Not even seniors, not even with a parent’s permission, nothing. It was a truth universally acknowledged, and one that Stiles was pretty okay with. It meant the Jacksons of the world couldn’t rock up to fourth period ten minutes late with Starbucks and Panera and add one more irritation to the already heaping pile that was his personality.
Still, it did mean that on the days when he forgot his lunch and his debit card at home, he was stuck going hungry until the final bell, and staring mournfully at the lunch trays around him.
“Want a fry?” Scott asked, holding out a beautiful potato based offering.
Stiles sighed like a balloon releasing air, high and whiney.
“No, keep it. You’re actually on the team now, you need carbs to fuel your badassery.”
Scott frowned, and looked like he was thinking about pushing the issue, so Stiles gathered his books into his backpack and stood up from the table.
“I think I’m going to make lemons into lemonade and hit the library. Harris’s tests keep getting more and more convoluted, and I refuse to let him fail me.”
“Okay,” Scott shrugged, finally, and popped the fry into his mouth.
The other thing about the mandatory lunch-on-campus policy is that they’d never had the funds to expand the cafeteria. Even sitting shoulder to shoulder like soldiers on a submarine, they could never fit the whole student body in there. As a result, the hallways were littered with teenagers at lunchtime, most sitting against the wall with their trays on their knees, throwing foil balls at one another. Stiles navigated through the mess, ducking a few times to avoid getting beaned with...well, beans, and made it to the library mostly intact.
Mostly.
Once inside, he was safe, and he ducked into the back reference aisle to avoid the omnipresent judgement of Mrs Heston the librarian and whipped out his phone.
Stiles: I am dying, Derek. And you’ve been elected as a recipient for my whining.
Derek: what
Stiles: I have no food. None. I can’t even eat the books here, not with my pitiful human teeth. Do you feel bad for me?
Stiles: I’m suffering.
Derek: bum food off scott
Stiles: Are you calling me a bum?
Derek: yes
Stiles smiled at his phone, trapped his lip between his teeth. Honestly he wasn’t doing that badly. The adderal made sure hunger was more of an abstract concept for him until it started to wear off at the end of each day. It’s just...he liked to bitch and moan, okay? It was practically a recreational sport. And Derek was really the only person willing to volley back and forth with him when he was in that mood. It was his best quality.
Stiles: I will have you know I am a man of valor.
Derek: ur a man of pallor
Stiles: Is that…
Stiles: Kind of ashamed I had to google it.
Stiles: I’m not *that* pale.
Derek: lose my #
Stiles snorted, and covered his mouth with his hand.
They continued on in that vein, arguing and insulting and intentionally misinterpreting each others texts, for another fifteen minutes before Mrs Heston found him and his phone and Stiles was escorted from the school library. When he reached the front steps of the school and thought to pull his phone back out he was a little disappointed at the silence it held. Derek hadn’t kept the texts up in his absence. Hadn’t even sent a “?” when Stiles didn’t reply to his last one. He was used to relationships and friendships where the other person only interacted when he actively sought it, and he was so over it.
He wandered, eyes mostly downcast, all the way to the curb before stopping short at the sound of a horn, and raising his eyes to the Camaro in front of his face.
The window rolled down slowly, to reveal Derek and his faux-disinterested face.
“Hey, loser,” he grunted, with far too little confidence to pull that kind of slang off. He sounded like a middle aged man mimicking a cheerleader.
Stiles laughed. “Oh, what? Are we going shopping?”
“Just here as your alpha,” Derek said, and then he was throwing a paper bag out the window and into Stiles’ not-remotely-prepared hands, “Eat it.”
“Eat...what?”
Derek sighed. In his arms, Stiles could smell the savory and sticky sweet notes of Chinese food, and he screwed up his face in confusion.
“Eat the food. Don’t die. It’s literally all I ask of you most days.”
Stiles stuck his tongue out but also held the bag a little closer at the thought.
“Fine, but come sit with me. You can park by the fire hydrant, no one on earth would dare ticket you.”
Derek nodded and pulled away, his window still open. Leave it to the alpha to trot out the dramatic display for the tiniest excuse. Stiles, for his part, just trudged over to the steps and sat down rather than react and encourage him. The bag held sesame honey chicken, a few egg rolls, and a bunch of that tangy awesome red-orange sauce, and Stiles groaned and threw his head back before digging in and unpacking it all. At the curb, Derek was parking his car, careful to leave a foot of space between him and his neighbor lest they scratch his paint by accident.
Stiles didn’t look up from his task--namely, stuffing his face--until Derek’s shoes were in his line of sight. He lifted his gaze to the man standing over him and sucked a noodle into his mouth.
“You waiting for an invitation?” he asked.
Derek sat and knocked a shoulder against his, and they started to eat. It wasn’t exactly friendship, and it wasn’t exactly a date, although Stiles sometimes fantasized about a Derek who had gone to therapy and dealt with his shit and would take Stiles on picnics. A Derek whose jagged pieces would match up with all his jagged pieces. He fantasized about a world in which Derek would be interested in him, and know how to love him, and in which Stiles would know how to love Derek.
For now, there was Chinese food. And for all the things it wasn’t, this lunch was good pack bonding, and good pack behaviour. Stiles could live with that.
***
“For god’s sake, stop staring!” Coach snapped.
“I can’t help it!” Greenberg dropped his head into his hands, “What the fuck is a leather daddy? Why do you know what that is? Why is it happening now, here, in front of people?”
Coach chuckled.
“Oh, padawan. I would bet money you end up having intimate experience with what that is.”
“What?” he surfaced to shoot Coach Finstock a confused stare.
“You’ll see. Now, about Gonzaga. You’re going to want a more liberal school. Call it a hunch.”