Chapter Text
Stiles is weirdly nervous and jittery on his first day back at school. More than he’s been since the first day of high school, or maybe even farther back to the first day of kindergarten, before he’d met Scott and he was going in to school alone.
This year, he’s not alone. He swings by Scott’s house as usual to pick him up, and has to honk the horn until Scott dashes out the door with his backpack half-done-up and his shoes untied.
“Sorry, sorry!” Scott says, still crunching on a burnt piece of toast as he slides into the passenger side of the Jeep. The familiarity of it makes something in Stiles’ chest ease a little, but he still wonders.
He wonders if everything that happened this summer was a fluke or a hiatus from normal life, like making endless friendship bracelets with summer camp friends that you’ll never see again.
Stiles was never convinced that anyone in The Breakfast Club actually spoke to each other on Monday, and maybe that’s why he feels the same vague anxiety that he gets whenever he watches the end of that movie. When they had watched it as a pack, Erica had nudged him and said, “Lighten up, it’s supposed to be a happy ending,” and Stiles had answered, “It is?” in genuine surprise.
Stiles wonders, as he makes the familiar turns to the high school, what will happen without the bonds of shared danger to keep the pack together. If they’ll be able to stay over at Derek’s less often on school nights, and if homework or lacrosse practice or whatever the hell Lydia did with her free time will all conspire to make them too busy for each other. He wonders what will happen when danger inevitably comes back.
Peter has been sending postcards with blithe references to things that should ‘stay in Vegas,’ and Stiles has always kinda hoped that he meant it in, like, every possible sense. But lately his postcards have been peppered with pointed comments about coming home, and Stiles is honestly not sure what's gonna happen with that.
“You OK, dude?” Scott asks, shooting him a weirdly perceptive look from the seat next to him.
“Just…thinking about the school year,” Stiles answers, and it’s not even a lie.
***
He doesn’t have classes with anyone but Scott and Allison until right before lunch. They reunite sappily in History like they’ve been apart for years, even though Stiles has it on good authority that Scott’s mom had been on night shift and Allison had slept over the night before.
He’s been texting Derek furiously throughout the morning. Just random things, like:
To: Derek -
english teacher got all intimidating about texting in class. Now I have a challenge :)
To: Derek -
Did you know “mon petit chou” is a French term of endearment?
To: Derek -
It means “my little cabbage”
To: Derek -
New nickname for Derek!!!!!
To: Derek -
Saw Harris coming down the hall. Am definitely now hiding in the bathroom. If I plied you with sexual favors, would you beat him up in the parking lot after school?
But Derek hasn’t answered yet. And neither Scott nor Allison are in AP Bio, so Stiles is sitting alone on his lab bench, checking his phone for responses from Derek for like the twelfth time, when Lydia sinks down next to him.
“You should know, I have an allergy to formaldehyde,” she says, waving what looks like a doctor’s note in his face. “So if we’re going to be lab partners, you have to do all the dissecting.”
Stiles covers his surprise by saying, “Yeah right, like I’m getting within 10 feet of a dead animal after--” he stops and looks around the room. He does occasionally try to be subtle.
After we dumped the bloody corpse of a griffon into a shallow grave? Lydia’s lifted eyebrow finishes the sentence for him.
“…you know,” Stiles finishes. Lydia hums like this conversation isn’t over, and waves to Jackson and Danny, who’ve just come in.
“Hey dude, can I borrow a pen?” Jackson asks Stiles as he and Danny dump their stuff at the table in front of them.
“Only if you promise this isn’t going to, like, cement our immediate soul-bond, and we go all McCargent,” Stiles warns, passing one over.
“Don’t fight true love, Stilinksi,” Jackson deadpans, and Danny gives him a weird look.
“Are we, like, friends with him now?” Stiles hears Danny whisper to Jackson. “Does this have something to do with what you’ve been doing all summer?” Stiles strains to hear Jackson’s answer, and sits back on his lab bench with a smile when Jackson says, “Yeah, I guess he’s OK.”
***
The four of them walk to lunch together. Lydia and Jackson falter slightly when they see their old table, but Erica waves them over to where she’s sitting.
Isaac passes them with a tray, and says, “She’s already gotten me kicked out of one class today,” with an eyeroll.
“Here guys,” Stiles says, grabbing an armful of snacks from his backpack once they’re all crammed at the same lunch table.
“Pudding cups?” Scott asks, wrinkling his nose in confusion.
“No way I’m eating that,” Lydia says instantly. “It looks like paste.”
“Guyyssss,” Stiles whines. “It’s, like, a symbol of our friendship!”
“Why?” Boyd asks the question they’re all clearly wondering. Because months ago you snuck into my bedroom and menaced me, and I had a premonition that we’d all be sitting around the lunch table eating pudding cups. That’s why.
“Because it’s delicious, just like me,” Stiles says instead, with a sniff.
“Dude, I thought we agreed, no stories about sex with Derek. It’s bad enough having to hear the actual thing,” Scott groans, and everyone at the table gives a collective wince. Then they all dive for their pudding cups, like maybe if they do what Stiles says, nobody will get hurt.
“...Who’s Derek?” Danny asks.
That’s the moment when Stiles’ phone vibrates in his pocket.
To: Stiles:
It’s 12:15, and I’m eating this stupid pudding thing like you said. You gonna tell me why? It tastes like heart disease.
Stiles texts back:
To: Derek -
Awww thanks mon petit chou
And grins when he sees Derek’s answer come back two seconds later.
To: Stiles -
That’s not gonna be a thing
Stiles glances up from his phone to see Danny still looking at him quizzically.
“Derek? He's my surly older boyfriend. You may know him as my cousin, Miguel, which is a funny story actually--” he starts.
“Eat your stupid pudding cup,” Erica interrupts. Lightning fast, she dabs some onto his nose with her spoon, and laughs at his squawk of outrage.
Stiles immediately begins plotting revenge.