Chapter Text
Beacon Hills.
I've never really liked Beacon Hills, you know. It's all—tiny, and quiet, and—whatever. I grew up in Escondido, which—yeah, it's not fuckin' Sacramento, I guess. But it's bigger. Beacon Hills is diminutive. A lot of people? Don't even know it exists. Because it's in this tiny valley and surrounded by hills and trees and shit. There is no Wal-Mart in Beacon Hills. The downtown consists of two clubs I'm not old enough to go in (one's a gay bar, though, so good on you, Beacs), the post office, the police station, and a pawn shop.
So, uh—I never liked Beacon Hills. I used to spend, like, summers there with my dad, but then he started spending summers down home instead, since I bitched about it. So I haven't been back up there since I was like eleven or twelve, but now I'm—uh, I'm moving up there, because my mom… well, my mom did this thing where—where she died, and—
Anyway. Beacon Hills. Hills that are beacons. My dad's the sheriff there. It's pretty great. It means that he comes to pick me up in the cruiser, which I wish I could say I was mortified by like every other sixteen-year-old guy on the planet, but nope. Just as pleased as when I was six. I love my dad, and I love my dad's job, and I love my dad's job's car, and I just really like vehicles with radios and flashing lights and that divider thing behind the front seats. So I'm sitting in there and Dad's slapping my hand away from all the buttons when he goes, "I found a great car for you, Stiles."
A car for me! My dad got a car for me, just for Stiles. I don't get to ride in the cruiser every day, but I get to drive myself everywhere! I'm getting all excited in my head when I realise it's definitely not in my head, and—yep, saying everything out loud. Dad smirks wryly at me. Whatever. I hug him and he goes, "Dammit, Stiles—I'm driving!" But he hugs me back. As best as he can. That's how Stilinskis roll: Illegally.
We get there and it turns out Dad got me this used, blue Jeep. It's from, like, the 70's or something. First thing I do is hug that fucker. It's so perfect. It's beat up and second-hand and ignored and loud and clunky and awkward. This Jeep is me. I love it more than curly fries, I'm serious. "Dad. Dad, this is the best. Dad, this is the best thing," I tell him until he smiles and claps a hand on my shoulder and goes, well, I'm glad you like it, son, and heads inside.
Next thing I do is carry my, like, bag and a half of stuff up to my room. I don't have much stuff, which is weird. (I should probably supplement my winter wardrobe at some point, since it's known to snow here. If it snowed in Escondido, the world would end.) Then I tell Dad I'm gonna take a nap. Then I hide under my blanket and miss my mom so much I feel physical sensations of loss. Like my arm is gone or something. Or my torso. My eyes.
It isn't fair.
My mom wasn't perfect. She was in her late thirties. I think she was gonna turn forty in a year or two. She had brown eyes, like me. We argued sometimes, and I think it might have been because I remind her of my dad. I'm too curious and too hyperactive, and I have a lot of useless information to thrust on her at dinner. Did you know vampires were originally written to share characteristics with rats? Bram Stoker was the first to romanticise them into studly gentlemen! Bram Stoker was the original Stephenie Meyer, right down to the (not-so-)subtle enforcing of strict gender roles. Mom always sighed and shook her head when I told her that shit, but she never told me outright, "No one cares, Stiles," which is pretty much the catchphrase of my entire high school back in Escondido.
My mom wasn't talkative or fun-loving, I guess. She grated on my nerves sometimes because when she did talk, it would be rude for me to interrupt, but she focused so much on details that it took her for-goddamn-ever to tell a story that I didn't marginally care about in the first place. My attention span is already shitty enough without forcing myself to pay rapt attention while my mom tries to remember what color her coworker's car is. But I'd make myself do it, and she would always ruffle my hair and thank me for putting up with her. And I'd squirm out from under her hand and she'd laugh at me. Or roll her eyes, depending on if she had one of her headaches.
My mom wasn't skinny like me, she was sort of overweight, until she got sick. She had shoulder-length blonde hair until then, too. Her favorite food was carrot cake. I forgot her birthday the year before last, because I'm an airhead and a terrible son, but I made up for it by baking her a big-ass carrot cake from scratch, which was not easy, let me tell you. She forgave me and we ate the cake together. The entire thing. See, my mom wasn't perfect, but she was my mom. My mom. She's gone now.
She's gone now.
Anyway. Beacon Hills. And I do this thing where I sort of maybe cry myself to sleep. But you're not allowed to tell anyone.
.
The next day is my first day at school, which—like, I'm outgoing, I guess, and I'm pretty damn funny, if I do say so myself. But that doesn't make me good with people? I had friends in Escondido, but we argued a lot. Social cues and Stiles aren't always a hundred percent compatible. So I'm not expecting social success and hordes of friends or anything. I get there in my rad-as-hell blue Jeep, and sort of blunder out into the parking lot, and basically everyone ignores me. That's what happens. The anonymity is actually sort of soothing despite my extroversion; I'm used to it. It's like home, being ignored. I'm used to people not seeing me.
I sort of coast through to the main office and get handed a schedule and some tall guy in a football tie and pleated khakis drags me to my first class and plunks me down into an empty seat.
In front of and to the left of me is this kid with dark hair. He turns and gives me this crooked grin and hisses, "Hey."
I nod.
"I'm Scott."
"Stiles," I say. Then I add, "is my name," because I am aware that that doesn't really sound like a name. It sounds like a plural noun. "I am Stiles." The girl behind Scott, an angular, raven-haired beauty, makes a face at my awkward, which—hey, par for the course. 'Sup, ladies, need a man who can vaguely unnerve you? I'm the guy for the job. Weirdo, that's my name, don't wear it out.
But the Scott guy just grins sunnily at me, so okay. "You're Sheriff Stilinski's son," Scott says. "My mom's coworker was talking about you."
I brace myself for the I heard about your mom, I'm sorry that I got from three different people in administrative faculty positions and two students while I got myself set up this morning, but Scott just goes, "She said you're wicked smart."
Definitely wasn't expecting that, and I'm torn between the urge to preen and the embarrassed red that shoots into my face. I split the difference and combine a squirm with a "Well, I guess I get some grades or something," and he shakes his head, eyes wide.
"I don't get any grades, ever."
I grin. "They just trap you here and refuse to give you assignments," I nod. "I know that feel." And that's how I somehow score a lunch buddy.
"That's Lydia Martin," Scott says in the hallway on the way to the cafeteria later, pointing at this fucking goddess with wavy, light red hair and pristine legs and a plaid skirt. "She's really popular." There's a Ken Doll wrapping his tentacles around her perfect, shapely hips and pressing his sucker-mouth onto her face, and I should be the president of mixing metaphors.
"It's weird that she brought her pet octopus to school," I say.
Scott snorts. "That's Jackson, her boyfriend. He's captain of the lacrosse team. I heard you play."
"I do," I say. "But I'm not playing on a team that's led by an aquatic creature."
"He's not an octopus," Scott admonishes firmly, but he's grinning again. "He's a jock. But I'll admit they're really similar."
"Practically interchangeable," I concur.
He leads me into the cafeteria and that's where I see them. They are these fuckers that roll into lunch late, order full lunches, eat nothing, and lounge around their table staring at people. They are weird as shit and I don't like them. They taste evil. Their heads are evil.
There's four of them, a guy and three girls. The guy is this serious, brown-haired fucker who looks sort of old to be in high school. As for the girls, there's a girl with a dark brown pixie cut and a terrifying glare on her face; the girl that sat behind Scott in class, with curled black hair and dimples; and a girl with long, honeyish brown hair and a smug look on her face.
They're right in the fucking center of the cafeteria, so that the other tables seem to orbit around them. They sort of radiate power, so like about all things that are beyond my lowly touch, I get curious about them. "Who are they?" I ask Scott, bobbing my head in their general direction.
He looks up. "Oh. Uh, those are Mr. Argent's kids. They're all adopted or something." He forces a handful of fries into his mouth, and then talks around them, which sort of makes me love him; seriously, are we related? "The guy is Chris. The pissed-off girl is Victoria. She and Chris are sort of—a thing." He swallows, gulps his Coke, and then goes on. "The extremely beautiful girl with black hair is Allison. She's a real-life angel." I nod understandingly. "And then the last one's Kate. She's captain of the girls' swim team."
I wonder half-aloud how she looks in a bathing suit.
"Pretty good," Scott says.
Just then, Kate flips her hair over her shoulder and looks at me. Her adopted siblings smirk. They were totally talking about me right then. I stare, unabashed, because, like, that's what you get for being a weird, dating, adopted orgy cult with pale-ass skin and angular jaws and shit. Kate grins at me.
Scott doesn't notice them all looking because he's scraping his mashed potatoes into a heart. "Not as good as Allison, though," he muses.
It's probably my notably active imagination, but Kate's grin appears to falter.
.
My next class goes very predictably: Kate Argent is in it, and the only empty seat is next to her. I'm about an inch away from throwing my hands up and just being all like, "Really, author of my life? This is what you came up with? Dramatic convenience?" But Kate's kind of hot, so I'm okay with it. In fact, the class is rife with hot girls: I notice immediately that Lydia's in the front row filing her nails, and her hair glistens like the north star, and I totally have a crush on her. And I can't take stock of how many other attractive ladies are in my class because basically the list will always begin and end with Lydia. So the class is rife with two hot girls. That's more than enough for me. I'd have been thankful for just the one. I flounder my way down the aisle and into the chair next to Kate, and she looks startled by me and claps a hand over her face. I myself am startled, Kate. The feeling is now mutual. I, Stiles Stilinski, have been rendered speechless. Call Guinness.
I gape at her, her weird and sudden violent aversion to me. She returns with what I can only describe as a horrified, vehement glare, eyes black as sin and spitting hate. Then I direct a feeble "oh dear god" at the front of the room and pointedly do not look at her for the rest of my entire life. Her fingernails dig into the desk and I can tell how fucking tense she is. Do I smell or something? I sure as shit do not. I'm a clean motherfucker. I'm clean as tits. So what is her problem?
Kate's out of her seat and out the door before the first sound wave reaches my ear from the bell, and I watch her sail out the door and all I can think is, autobots, roll out!
Followed by a much more coherent "Good riddance, freak."
.
After school Scott convinces me to try out for lacrosse, even though I just got to Beacon Hills, like, thirty seconds ago. Jackson "Sea Creature" Whittemore performs for the world like the beauteous ballerina he is. His leaps and whirls take my breath away. By which I mean I hate him more with every passing second, and I'm startled to find it has little to do with his requirement of Lydia Martin's rack for survival. After he deliberately crashes into us and calls out, "'Scuse me, nerds!" for the third time, Scott calls him Asshole O'doucherson, which I find more amusing than I probably should.
The practice itself, independent of Jackson, is difficult because Coach Finstock willed it so. I've been to lacrosse tryouts before, and they're—well, lacrosse tryouts. But I don't think I've ever had a coach so bent on shouting inane things constantly like his life force depends on it.
Scott and I both make second string.
"Hey, you just started today, didn't you?" asks this perfect specimen of a guy in the locker room afterwards.
"Uh, uh-huh," I say. I'm talkative, that doesn't mean I always have things to say. I just say them anyway. "Yep, just today. Yep." See?
"Cool. I'm Danny." He flashes blindingly white teeth and flexes and shows off his tan skin and shakes around his black hair and doesn't actually do any of that aside from standing there and looking cool.
"Stiles. Is me." While I go ahead and do the opposite of that.
"Uh, all right. Cool. Hope you like it here." I open my mouth and then close it. Then I grin like an idiot. He gives me this polite smile and takes his dimples and perfect pecs back to whatever heavenly land he descended from.
"Here I go, human social mistake," I say, turning back to the locker. "I am the conversational equivalent of thinking there is one more stair than there is and having your foot shoot down through the air and startle you into momentary horror."
"I feel like it's not your fault," Scott says, pulling on a t-shirt next to me. "Danny's really cool. Everyone likes him. He makes everyone suck in comparison."
"You're too kind to me," I reply. "While he is clearly The Coolest, I feel I deserve credit for at least some of the sheer ruin that went down in that interchange."
"Okay. You get full-ass credit for the 'Stiles is me' moment. That was all you."
.
When I get back from school, I'm ready to begin Hide Under Blanket And Cry Tears Of Pure Desperation Episode 2: Depression Kicks Back, but I get waylaid by life, which—wow, thanks, Obama.
See, it's dinnertime when I get back and my dad rolls in and suggests In'n'Out. And while that's a really good idea, it's absolutely not because I saw the little handouts on how to eat and live heart healthy on the counter from his doctor and I know how shit should be going down if I don't want to be an orphan.
So I basically tell him to suck a dick and I start making a casserole out of spinach. He grumbles the whole time I'm making it (so that I have to start a rousing performance of music from the Legend of Zelda: Song of Healing might help his heart), but when it's done and he puts it into his face, his eyes light up from within, like—like—shit, I don't know. Like something whose eyes light the fuck up, what am I, the light-up eyes catalogue? Jesus. Anyway, my spinach casserole is a hit, and Dad congratulates me warmly.
"Thanks, dude," I say, carting the dishes to the sink. "It's important that you live forever, so I hope you'll eat things that don't make you stop doing that."
"I work late a lot and don't have the time, energy, or skill to cook myself healthy dinners," he replies, pouring himself a glass of whiskey. "So maybe I'll just—get extra lettuce on my burgers or something."
"Christ, Dad," I say, rounding on him. "Don't—no. I'll just. I'll just make dinner from now on, okay? I'll bring you lunch when you work on weekends or something. Just—Just no."
He looks at me for a second like my reaction was unwarranted, and I feel myself go a little red, realising I just shouted at him. I haven't shouted at my father, like, ever. But he spares me by putting a hand on my shoulder and agreeing to it. I have this ridiculous urge to cry, then, that I suppress valiantly. Then, to ruin me, he adds, "Oh, and speaking of Stiles descending from on high to save lives with his healthy meals, you should wrap up part of this and bring it across the street."
I stare at him, dull-eyed. "What, is there a—a spirit that needs sacrificing to?" I immediately regret saying this and sort of wince, but if he notices, Dad doesn't say anything.
"No, to the house, Stiles. Across the street there is a home, and in it lives a young man that you probably remember from when you were a kid. Derek Hale? Dark hair, whatever eyes?"
Of course I remember. Well, I'm pretty visual, so I remember what he looks like, at least. "They were green or something."
Dad nods. "Yes, green or something. Anyway, Derek, ah—he lost his family in a house fire about six years ago, and he very recently lost his sister, Laura. So he's kind of on his own, son, and I think it would be nice if you brought him some of your food."
He had me at 'lost his family.' I'm already dishing the shit into a Gladware for Derek by the time Dad finishes the request. "Okay, but you owe me," I say, even though I don't mind at all.
.
Derek opens the door in a leather jacket, shoes on and everything. It's really weird. He looks unhappy, deeply unhappy, and also frankly terrifying. He's older than I am, if I remember correctly, just a few years. He's about my height—I'm 5'11", just saying—but he's wider than I am. Not in, like, a fat way. He's sheer muscle mass. Shoulders. I push the container at him. "Hey, I'm Stiles, I live across the street now, and I'm feeding you this dinner," I rattle off. I'd planned it in my head, but it still didn't quite come out right.
He takes the food without looking at it; he's puzzling at me. "Across the street. You're Stilinski's kid."
"That's what it says on my driver's license," I reply, nodding sagely. "Stilinski's Kid."
He almost smirks. "I remember you. You used to come here when you were just little." He peers at the food, then, trying to see it through the cloudy, clear plastic. Then he looks back at me, and his eyes are definitely green, no something about it. "Thought you had a different name."
"I did. But I've since morphed into a different man, Derek. I've evolved. Now I'm Stiles, baker of spinach casseroles."
"Is that what this is."
"Yep."
He holds it and looks at me, and I stick my hands in my pockets and look at him, and we sort of nod at each other. He knows why I'm here in Beacon Hills, I can see it on his face. And he knows why I'm on his porch feeding him, too. So there isn't really anything to say. We sort of just stand there and accept each other for much longer than anyone else would let me stand in front of them. But if anyone is good at sensing phantom awkward in a situation and overcorrecting, it's me. So at some point I flush and go, "Well, I hope you eat it and stuff. You can bring back the container thingy whenever." I step back and stumble on the steps, an action of suave perfection that I'm sure takes his breath away. "Let me know if you like it, and if you do, I'll, uh—" I shrug. "Make you a different thing to eat."
His face doesn't change, except it gets a little more open, if that makes sense. Then, he adds a "Thanks" as if by afterthought.
.
That night, I wake up from a dream with a muffled shout. I heave wracking gasps and shudder terribly in the wake of images of ruined, wasted corpses reaching for me from shadowed hospital beds, tears running from their cavelike eye sockets.
I'm coated in a cold sweat that sticks me right through my t-shirt to the sheets, and I bury my anguish in my hands.