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College is weird.
It’s not bad, but Stiles can’t put another name to the feeling that follows him around campus. Nothing’s wrong, exactly – it’s just not quite right. He goes to class, eats horrible dinners in the cafeteria, buys overpriced coffee, studies in the library and sleeps in his dorm room, just like everyone else, but it feels… off. Slightly left-of-centre, not quite right, unsettled. He's wary of everything and everyone, darting glances out of the corner of his eye when there's a sudden movement. He must have trusted people once, but he can't remember what that's like now.
His roommate, Seb, is fine. He’s from suburban SoCal and is so laid-back Stiles sometimes wonders how he stays conscious. Fortunately for Stiles Seb’s relaxed attitude extends to everything – he accepts Stiles’ eclectic collection of dusty foreign books as extra course reading, the mountain ash powder he lays across all thresholds as ‘for, like, protection?’ and the jagged scar across Stiles’ abdomen as an appendectomy gone wrong.
Stiles gets good grades, doesn't make new friends, and keeps the whole college thing at arm's length.
So everything is fine, and not fine, all at the same time.
-
“Hey, man, how’s everything going?” Scott asks him every week over Skype. Stiles answers noncommittally, and Scott pretends he believes him, and the routine carries on. Scott dutifully passes on information about his dad’s diet, talks about community college and the pack, and they act like it’s all normal.
This far away, Stiles can’t even feel the Nemeton at all, just the constant dull ache of the scar where the Nogistune cut him open.
-
It’s midterms, and Stiles is sick.
Seb brings him Gatorade and every brand of phlegm expectorant the pharmacy had, and hightails it to his buddy’s room. “I cannot afford to get what you’ve got, bro, I have to pass my Chem exam or I’ll lose my scholarship,” he says, backing out the door.
Stiles hadn’t even known Seb had a scholarship.
He spends the night before his Latin exam coughing so hard his abs start to cramp, and his scar is aching so much he wants to cry.
Instead, he conjugates. Moneo, monere, monui, monitus. Monent, monebant, monebunt, monuerunt, monuerant, monuerint.
-
He wakes in the morning and his fever is broken. He feels different. Settled, like something out of place has been put right.
The feeling lasts until he notices the line of mountain ash across his window is disturbed, his curtain billowing gently in the morning breeze.
-
“Stiles, calm down.”
“I’m not calming down, Scott, there’s something here, okay, something has been in my room when I was asleep!”
Stiles chokes the words out and they taste wrong, but he can’t think for the fear. His scar isn’t hurting today. Everything is wrong.
“Look, I told him you were feeling sick and he said he’d come see you,” Scott says, and Stiles takes a breath.
“Who? Who was here?”
“Derek. He was talking to an emissary nearby for me and he said he’d check in.”
Stiles laughs, hoarse and strained after three days of coughing. “Well he didn’t. He’s back to his creepy break-and-entering ways.”
Scott sighs. “I’ll call him.”
“No, I’ll do it,” Stiles says, and shivers.
-
Stiles never calls, but Derek shows up anyway. Stiles is eating dinner alone at the cafeteria when Derek takes the seat across from him.
“What do you want?” Stiles asks.
“How are you feeling?” Derek asks back.
“Fine. You can go now. You’ve checked up on me. Duty done.”
Derek doesn’t reply, just stares at Stiles in that unsettlingly unreadable way Stiles hates so much.
“What?” Stiles hisses, hunching over his food.
Derek stares for a few seconds more before he starts talking. “You haven’t been sleeping well. You’ve lost weight, and your immune system is obviously compromised.”
Stiles takes a sullen bite of pasta. “Verdict, Doctor Hale?”
“You’re homesick.”
Stiles scoffs. “That’s not actually a thing.”
“It is for you. You miss your dad, Scott, the pack, probably even the gas station on Main street,” Derek says, impassive but still the sarcastic shit that Stiles remembers.
Stiles pushes his spirelli around the bowl. He would pretend he’s glaring at Derek, but he’s too exhausted for self-deception.
“So what do I do about it?” he finally asks, and his voice is embarrassingly small in the din of the cafeteria.
Derek shrugs. “You’ll adjust. With time we can get used to pretty much anything.”
Stiles hears the echo of what Derek’s not saying, and he breaks the eye-contact. “Sure.”
“Or,” Derek continues, breezy in a way that Derek Hale is never breezy, “you could keep something around you. To remind you of home and keep the edge off.”
Stiles looks up again and squints his eyes. “Come again?”
Derek shrugs again. Grabs a napkin and starts toying with it. Derek is fidgeting. Stiles is so confused but his stomach feels bubbly, like it knows something he hasn’t twigged to yet. “I mean, some people don’t have to be anywhere. They could, you know, stay in the area. Get a place. Be around. If you needed them.”
The bubbles in his stomach burst and travel up his throat, and he laughs them out. “Are you kidding me?”
Derek looks gutted but Stiles isn’t done.
“Of course I need you, idiot. I just… you took away my pain when I slept. Who even does that?”
Derek ducks his head, and Stiles thinks he sees the lightest tinge of pink on his ears. “You were all tense. I didn’t want to wake you but you were hurt, what was I supposed to do?”
Stiles is grinning so hard his face hurts. “Social skills just completely elude you, don’t they?”
“Shut up. You’re no social butterfly yourself,” Derek grumbles, but there’s a tiny smile on his face and he’s relaxed back into his chair.
They’re both awkward, suddenly, and darting happy, shy glances at each other. Stiles stuffs his mouth full of pasta and tries to chew through his smile.
His scar doesn’t hurt at all.