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Grocery store lighting really did nothing for anyone, a fact that Lindsey Fletcher, who Stiles would normally rate a nine on a scale of one to ten, demonstrated as she waited for him to finish ringing up her chocolate-flavored SlimFast drinks, grapefruits, and diet frozen yogurt. The unforgiving energy-saving lights left her normally glowing skin looking dull and lifeless, and it emphasized the excessive amount of makeup he had never realized she caked on. He gave her a cheerful smile and a wave, and as she walked out the door in her six-inch heels, knocked her down to a seven.
Apparently his summer job was just destined to provide him with boredom and disillusionment. Whatever. He had only taken the job in order to keep up with the repairs which the jeep seemed to demand constantly these days. Just one more way that finding out ‘Surprise: Werewolves are a thing!’ had negatively impacted his life.
He shook himself out of his self-pitying funk long enough to have a mildly entertaining conversation with a middle-aged woman about the public pool closing down in order to deal with some virus, and then sank right back into it after she was gone.
The rest of his shift passed in much the same apathetic haze. It was not until ten minutes prior to achieving freedom that he took a genuine interest in the world around him, precipitated by the arrival of a familiar and well-liked face. “Danny! Hey! What’s up, man?” Okay, so that may have been said with more enthusiasm than was truly warranted, but really, Stiles was bored, and he had not seen the other guy since school let out a few weeks ago.
His teammate ignored the slightly odd behavior with years of practice and the manners his mama gave him and shrugged, holding up two pints of Ben & Jerry’s demonstratively. “Fine. Picking up some supplies before I head over to Lydia’s.”
Grimacing, Stiles nodded in sympathy. “I guess she’s taking Jackson’s move pretty hard?” Just because he had no idea what she saw in the jerk, and mostly hoped his absence would allow the strawberry blonde goddess to see him in a better light, didn’t stop him from wishing Lydia could have been saved from the heartbreak caused by Jackson leaving. At least she had the comfort of knowing Jackson would have stayed if it had been at all possible, but Mr. Whittemore’s firm was expanding, and he was the one chosen to be the head of the new branch.
“What?” Danny asked, tilting his head before the light of comprehension dawned in his dark eyes. “Oh, no they’re fine. They both decided to give the long-distance thing a shot.” Well, there went all of Stiles’s half-formed hopes. Lydia was still every bit as taken as she always had been, and probably always would be, if they could survive Jackson’s douchey behavior during their sophomore year, his time as the kanima, and Lydia having to watch him die - twice - and come back as a werewolf.
To get his mind off of the dull ache of yet another disappointment, and also simply for the sake of satisfying his need to know the reasons behind life in general, Stiles asked, “So, then, what’s with the ice cream?”
Danny looked at him ruefully and admitted, “That would be because of me.”
Eyes widening, Stiles stared at him in disbelief. “That guy you were seeing - Tyler, Taylor, Trevor? Eh. Whoever. Really? He dumped you?”
“Worse, actually.” At his confused expression, Danny sighed and gave him a wry smile. “I caught him cheating on me.”
“Danny,” Stiles started, shaking his head, “how is it possible that all of the guys you’ve been with are such idiots?”
“‘All the guys’?” Danny asked, raising his eyebrows. “Stiles, I’ve only been with three people.”
“And weren’t they all idiots?” he replied, raising his own eyebrows right back.
“To be fair, I should have realized anything I started with a college guy would turn out to be a fling. I mean, I was a sophomore in high school, and I knew he was transferring to a four-year school after he got his Associate’s.”
Well, that was just completely unacceptable. “No.”
“No?”
“No,” Stiles repeated. “You don’t get to make excuses for any of the jerks who were dumb enough to let you go.”
Pleasantly surprised, and more than a little bemused, Danny gave Stiles a much brighter smile than the one from before, and accepted the grocery bag containing the pints which had originally sparked their discussion. “Well, thanks, Stiles. I’ll keep that mind.”
“You do that,” Stiles ordered, hoping he sounded firm and encouraging, rather than lame and, he suspected, slightly out of his depth.
It must not have been too terribly awkward though, because Danny nodded affably and thanked him again before saying a casual, “See you around.”
“Yeah, see you,” Stiles called out belatedly, watching Danny’s retreating back. He spent the remaining two minutes of his shift lost in thought, going back over their conversation in his head. He wondered if there was anything more he could have said or done to make Danny feel better, although thinking back on it, Danny hadn’t really seemed all that broken up about it. A little let down, sure. Mostly he had acted resigned about the whole thing, which actually pissed Stiles off a bit. Danny deserved better than the hand he had been dealt in the dating game.
As he closed out his register and prepared to head home, Stiles decided to do something about Danny’s love life. Although the two of them had never been close friends, they had known each other since elementary school, and last year they were lab partners. Stiles sort of considered Danny one of his people, and if there was one thing about Stiles that could be counted on, it was that he took care of his people.
The question now was how to do it.