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Derek Hale is a bit of a legend at college. Stiles had heard his name even before he set his foot in his dorm room, where he spent his first year, before he and Scott managed to get an apartment to share. However, actually seeing Derek Hale appears to be a lot more complicated. Stiles decided to Facebook him, after hearing so many stories about the guy’s ridiculous face, and judging by the Facebook profile picture (the only one available for Facebook stalkers to look at, sadly) they were no exaggerations.
Derek Hale’s known for arguing with everyone in his classes, including the professors. Apparently he’s also a werewolf, which makes his ability to call people out on their bullshit a scary asset of his. Stiles is torn between wanting to see the guy in person once in his life, and thinking that he’s lucky that he hasn’t.
However, when Stiles sits down on the second row for his first class this semester, he sees a familiar face diagonally in front of him. Holy shit. Derek Hale looks like he’s at least thirty, which, maybe he is, because Stiles is twenty-four, no matter how much he tries to tell himself that he’s still seventeen every morning. The henley Derek’s wearing is making those shoulders look sinful.
It takes a second, before Stiles realises that Derek’s turned around in his seat and is staring at him. Well, more like staring back at him, because Stiles’ ogling isn’t especially discreet.
“Uh,” he manages. “Hi. I’m Stiles.”
Derek’s eyebrows raises a notch, and then his gaze slides over Stiles’ form once, then twice. “Derek,” he says finally, before he turns around again.
Stiles isn’t able to catch much about what his professor is talking about, because he feels oddly sweaty all over, and like his heart is beating just a little bit too fast during the rest of the class.
It’s odd, attending class on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, knowing that Derek will be there. It’s a little bit like suddenly realising that X-Men are real. The rumour about Derek is true. He questions pretty much everything their professor tells them, which is entertaining at first, but after a while it gets mostly annoying.
“When it comes to social constructionism, isn’t it possible to argue that the issue itself isn’t real, either?” Derek says today, and Stiles actually wants to get past the third slide of the Power Point presentation for once, so he decides to speak up.
“Maybe he’d be able to talk about that if you didn’t interrupt him every second?” he sighs, perfectly audible for anyone in the first three rows, and assumingly even more so to Derek’s supernatural hearing.
The silence in the room is deafening, and Stiles’ leg starts to twitch nervously when Derek turns around in front of him. For a moment he’s certain that he’s as good as dead, or perhaps he’s going to lose an arm. Derek stares at him, and then his eyes flash blue and Stiles makes this embarrassed sound at the back of his throat, because this is it. This is how he dies. Just as he’s about to close his eyes and pray that Scott remembers that he’s promised to clear Stiles’ browser history, Derek inhales sharply and nods.
And that’s all that happens.
Derek inhales and nods, and then he doesn’t say another word until their professor dismisses them. Stiles has absolutely no idea what happened.
He asks Scott about it when he gets home, and there’s a weird pause, before Scott replies:
"You told him off?”
"Well, what was I supposed to do?! I’m there to learn, not watching Derek Hale argue with my professor!"
"And he didn’t even…like growl at you or anything?”
"What? No. He’s not feral, Scott." Stiles pauses, remembering Derek’s eyes flashing pretty clearly still. His hands get a little sweaty from just thinking about it. "At least I don’t think he is."
Scott scoffs. “Of course he isn’t feral. We’re at college, not at some bar in a village in the middle of nowhere, with a population of twenty-five, including the cats.”
“I’m sure that’s offensive on some level,” Stiles mutters, but he’s secretly relieved that Derek isn’t feral. That decreases the risk of him killing Stiles. Unless he’s a sociopath.
Aw, damn.
“So, do you know him?” Stiles asks carefully, allowing Scott to win (he totally did it on purpose, alright!) just to warm him up a little.
“Naw, not really. It’s not like all werewolves know each other.” Scott shrugs, fiddling with the controller, before he continues. “The only thing I do know is that he used to be an alpha, but when his younger sister got seriously injured by a psychotic hunter, he sacrificed his powers to help her survive. They belong to their aunt’s pack now.”
It’s difficult to see Derek, who looks homicidal on a good day, doing something so selfless. On the other hand, from what Stiles has been able to tell from the rumours at least, Derek’s sister is the only close family he’s got left. Whatever happened to the rest of them is debatable. One rumour says Derek killed them all, when he found out that he only got a B on an exam, but Stiles is pretty sure that one’s not true. For one, Derek probably only gets A’s, and two, even though Derek is kind of rude, he doesn’t come off as someone who’d kill his entire family. Especially since he decided to spare Stiles’ life just this morning. Other rumours talk about poachers from Europe, where the laws are different. The only thing hunters are allowed to do here is to find feral werewolves and bring them into custody. The kind of hunting that involved actual killing stopped a long time ago, and even then, it was only legal to kill rabid werewolves.
He suspects that the rumours about Derek’s family being killed by poachers are closer to the truth.
“I guess that’s nice of him,” he says, after realising that he’s been lost in thought for too long.
“Yeah.” Scott nods, and then eyes him carefully. “Why so interested in Derek all of a sudden?”
“I don’t know,” Stiles confesses, shrugging. “It’s just weird to me. I mean, I expected at least a death threat, but he just flashes his eyes at me, sniffs the air, and then nothing.”
Scott opens his mouth as if to say something, but then he closes it again. “Huh.”
Stiles has no idea what that means.
The next time Stiles sees Derek, it’s outside of class. He’s standing two spots ahead of Stiles in the line to order coffee, and goddamn those jeans shouldn’t be legal. At all. Not that Stiles is complaining, though, because he’s got a great view.
“Very great view,” he repeats to himself under his breath, and instantly regrets it when Derek turns around. Werewolf hearing. Why does he always forget? Well, they can’t read minds, so Derek won’t know that Stiles was eyeing his butt.
Stiles tries smiling, but he’s sure it looks like he’s in pain, so he glances at the clock on the wall instead. If the line doesn’t start moving three times as fast in a second or two, he’s going to be late for class.
He can’t help but sigh when the guy in front of Derek starts to ramble a very complicated order that the barista has to ask him to repeat at least twice. There goes his morning coffee. For a moment, he contemplates missing the first ten minutes of the lecture, but then he thinks better of it. As he leaves the line, he glances over his shoulder and accidentally catches Derek’s eye. He shrugs and taps his wrist, hoping that Derek will understand his message. Not that he knows exactly why he feels like he needs to explain to Derek why he’s leaving the coffee line.
However, he didn’t really count on a mug being placed in front of him, two minutes before class starts. Stiles startles, looking up, and finds Derek standing very close to him.
“Uh.” He glances at the mug. “Is that for me?”
“I figured you stood in line to buy one,” Derek says. His voice is much softer like this.
“Yeah,” Stiles says slowly. “I did. I just didn’t have time. You didn’t have to buy one for me.”
Derek shrugs. “It’s no problem. You might fall asleep without it.”
“What? Don’t want me to miss my chance to tell you to shut up?” Okay, so maybe that only happened once, but it still feels like something Stiles wants to point out. Much to his surprise, the corner of Derek’s mouth quirks upwards.
"Is this seat taken?" Derek asks two weeks later, and nods towards the one next to Stiles.
"No?" He isn’t exactly expecting Derek to sit down next to him, because there’s something obsessive about the way Derek always chooses the same seat in the front row. But not today, apparently.
"Did you figure out a subject for the paper?" Derek asks, surprising Stiles yet again.
"No, I haven’t even bothered with finding someone to write it with, to be honest. We still have another month, and I’ve been focusing on the presentation we had last week."
"Me neither." Derek pulls out his laptop and opens it carefully beside his steaming coffee mug. "We could do it together. If you’d be okay with having me as your partner."
For a moment, Stiles thinks about saying no, because he doesn’t really know Derek and it feels like there’s this weird thing going on, since Scott has been avoiding the subject altogether since that first time Stiles brought it up. On the other hand, he doesn’t exactly know anyone else in this class either. Except for Danny, but he’s definitely working with Ethan. Traitor.
"Uh, yeah. Sure. We could go to my place after class." When he sees Derek hesitate, he starts wondering if werewolves don’t like being in other werewolves’ houses. "Or, you know, I could come to you. Wherever you live."
Derek smiles at that. “It’s no problem, we can go to your place.”
Stiles hates the feeling of not knowing exactly where he stands with someone. He’s often been paired up with people he hasn’t previously known in the past, but the fact that they didn’t know each other was always clear. With Derek it’s different. They’re not exactly strangers, but they’re definitely not friends. The short walk to Stiles’ and Scott’s apartment is silent, and it feels like everyone is staring at him. Or maybe they’re staring at Derek. The jeans he’s wearing today are definitely stare-worthy.
Scott isn’t home, and Stiles mentally lets out a sigh of relief. Derek doesn’t seem bothered by the fact that there’s another werewolf living here, at least, so that’s always something.
"Do you want coffee?" Stiles asks, dumping his bag on one chair.
"Please."
Derek looks a little out of place, sitting down on the pink chair with white dots that Stiles painted when he was drunk once. It’s a good choice, though, because that one’s the most comfy.
“So, what subject should we pick?” Stiles asks, as he puts the mugs down on the table.
Clearing his throat, Derek pulls out a stack of papers from his bag. “I’ve been thinking about empty labor. It’s an interesting concept, and we could argue from the perspectives of both social constructivism and–”
And Stiles just has to say something. “I really don’t like that subject.”
Truth is, he knows nothing about it. He just doesn’t like the fact that Derek wants to decide everything. This was probably a bad idea, being paired up with someone who spends his days questioning every lecturer on campus, except for the one responsible for the class Stiles shares with him.
Derek frowns, opens his mouth as if to say something, but then he closes it again and nods. “Okay. What do you have in mind?”
Shrugging, Stiles blurts the first thing that comes to mind. “360-degree feedback.”
Derek seems to contemplate that for a moment, before he nods. “Okay, we can go with that.”
There’s this itch under his skin, that Stiles always gets when he knows someone’s holding back on him. When he expects a reaction, but doesn’t get it. “No, let’s go with empty labor,” he says. Mostly because he doesn’t know anything about either subjects, and by choosing Derek’s suggestion, most of the responsibility will be on him. Stiles is like a fifteen percent freerider in cases like these.
“I thought you didn’t like that subject?” Derek questions, looking utterly confused.
“Changed my mind.” Stiles shrugs.
“Okay…” Derek says slowly, and then pushes the stack of papers toward him. “This is what I’ve managed to find.”
As it turns out, the four weeks of working on their empty labor project are the most interesting four weeks Stiles has had since he started college. It’s not only because empty labor is a very fascinating subject, but also because Derek’s very interesting. There’s something odd with the way he always backs out of an argument, whenever Stiles starts pushing for his opinion. Other than that, he finds out that Derek is extremely smart, kind and funny. And snarky.
Not to mention the hotness factor. It feels odd, when they hand in their paper, knowing that they don’t have any other reason to spend time with each other now. Stiles has grown accustomed to Derek’s company, and maybe he’s been working a little slower on purpose so that they wouldn’t be finished a week ago. It’s going to feel weird, not having Derek leaning into him to see what Stiles is typing on the computer, or when he makes a frustrated sigh through his nose whenever Stiles refuses to choose the word he likes the most.
“We should celebrate,” Stiles says, when they’re leaving class together that day. “Also, I spy a very large A with a million plus for us on this paper.”
Derek snorts. “That sounds like a good idea. Where?”
Stiles rattles off the name to a bar he’s been to many times. It’s just off campus, and it’s a popular spot. There’s no way Derek will ever think that Stiles is asking him out on a date, this way. That is also something that’s at least partially unfortunate. It’s not like Stiles would say no to that, if it happened by accident. Not at all.
He finds Scott in the kitchen when he gets home. “I’m going to have a drink with Derek, you wanna come?”
Scott gives him a funny look.
“What?”
“So maybe I didn’t tell you about Derek’s weird behaviour before. Like, what it means.”
Stiles halts on his way to the fridge. “What it means?” he echoes.
“It’s a werewolf thing.” Scott shrugs. “I wasn’t sure at first. Not until I saw you interact. It’s a– sometimes when we’re interested in someone, we let them win, to get to know them. Wolf puppies do the same thing; the male puppies let the female puppies win, just to get to know them.”
That makes absolutely no sense. Zero. Sense.
Scott makes a frustrated sound. “I think that, when you told him off during your class that one time, that maybe he didn’t talk back on purpose. And when I saw you interact during your project for school, it was so obvious. He wanted to get to know you.”
“That’s stupid,” Stiles says, and he feels a little drunk already, as though it’s extra hard to connect the dots this time.
“Sometimes werewolf things are kinda stupid,” Scott confesses. “I just want you to keep this in mind when you have a drink with him tonight. If you’re not interested, you should just let him know. Nicely.”
Not interested? Stiles hasn’t even thought about that in a realistic sense. Like, he might have had a few fantasies and stuff like that, but he’s never seriously considered going out with Derek. Or making out with him.
He’s twitchy and nervous, when he steps through the doors to the bar. Derek isn’t here yet, because he texted ten minutes ago, saying that he’ll be five minutes late. Stiles finds them a booth, orders himself a beer and sips slowly.
“Hey,” Derek says suddenly, and slides into the booth opposite of him. He looks goddamn perfect.
“Hey,” Stiles replies, and then he just puts it out there. “So maybe you could ask me out, grope me in inappropriate places and kiss me against your car, instead of letting me win every argument.”
Derek stares for a long while, and Stiles is starting to wonder if maybe Scott was wrong. But then Derek’s shoulders relaxes slightly, and there’s a glint in his eyes that makes Stiles feel too big for his skin.
“Okay,” Derek says finally.
Sometime halfway through beer number four, Derek has slid over to Stiles’ side of the booth, and there’s a hand on the inside of his thigh.
Derek crowds him against the passenger door to his car later, when Stiles’ skin is buzzing and his fingers feeling a little numb, where they grab onto Derek’s shirt, as they kiss for the first time.
Just before Derek lets him out of the car, when they’ve parked outside Stiles’ building, he grabs onto Stiles’ hand and stops him, and Stiles is a lot more sober now than he was three seconds ago, because of the look in Derek’s eyes.
“Go out on a date with me,” Derek says, because it’s not really a question.
“Yes.” Smiling, Stiles leans in for another kiss. “What took you so long?”
He can feel Derek smiling against his lips.
“I had to get to know you first.”