Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Have you ever been on a road trip and passed through a town that made you wonder who was living there and what job they were working and whether they would spend their whole lives here, even be buried here?

And that looked quiet and peaceful and so archetypically normal that something just felt off?

Beacon Hills is a town like that.

With its neat rows of family homes, slightly run-down downtown area that’s dangerous after dark, four baseball fields, three discotheques, two high schools, a bunch of shady bars, and an animal clinic. Its citizens are neither too bright, nor too dull, their cars are neither too fancy nor too shabby. It’s the embodiment of mediocrity.

And Stiles is the new kid.

He moved here today to live with his dorky dad.

His mom died when he was very young and since then he’d been living with his grandmother who was really old and the best person Stiles has ever known. But she had a stroke two weeks ago and even though it was a light one the doctors decided it would be better for her to move to a home and no way would she be able to care for her grandson. So there he is now, a sixteen-year-old kid from L.A., a little too pale and a little too awkward, doomed to spend the rest of his teenage years in this hellhole.

He is strolling down the street, grocery list in his right pocket, glaring at the SUVs parked on the side of the road, at the soccer moms and Beware-of-dog-signs and even though he’s never visited before – his dad had come to see them in L.A. every single time – he felt like he already knew every goddamn mailbox and every single fucking street lamp from here to the next grocery store. This street and the whole town around it was so fucking boring, it wasn’t even funny anymore.

Stiles Stilinski, newly citizen of Beacon Hills, surrounded by nothing but miles and miles of scenic woodland, in the middle of fucking nowhere.

Beacon Hills...

What kind of a name is that even supposed to b-

There is a deafening roar like a hurricane rolling in and Stiles stops short and jerks his head up from the ground to stare ahead at what is happening in front of him.

What the –

What the literal hell is going on here?

Stiles’ eyes are wide with shock and he is staring at the scene absolutely rooted in place, frozen, jaw dropping but he cannot comprehend what it is that he’s seeing.

There’s two guys in front of Stiles on the sidewalk and one is currently slamming the other into the brick wall on Stiles’ left and the wall cracks – fucking cracks – and pieces of it are raining down onto the ground. The guy who is going feral is wearing a black leather jacket and is tall and buff and his hands are fisted into the other dude’s t-shirt whose face is bloody and he looks unconscious because, yeah, five seconds ago he was knocked into a fucking brick wall.

Stiles doesn’t know what to do.

He swallows and moves his fingers. His legs are still shaking from the shock of these two freaks appearing in front of him out of literal nowhere like they just peeled out of the asphalt.

He should do something, he can’t just stand here and watch leather jacket beat up what looks like a high school kid – tall but sort of lean with blond curly hair. He could at least let them know that he’ll call the cops or – or something like that. Well, he could but then leather jacket who is currently punching the fuck out of curly hair’s face might notice him.

Holy hell, this maniac is going to kill the other dude right in front of Stiles’ eyes so he must, absolutely fucking has to, do something.

But just when Stiles has made up his mind to yell Hey! or Hello?! – he isn’t quite sure yet – unconscious dude suddenly opens his eyes and his mouth and hisses at leather jacket.

And not just that – Stiles who is close enough to discern his facial features can see that his mouth is full of spikes all of a sudden but that can’t be true, he must be imagining this, he shouldn’t have watched Alien 3 last night and, holy God, he must still be fast asleep in his bed in L.A. because yeah, curly has fangs and his eyes are glowing – actually glowing yellow and when he snarls Stiles is positive that his heart just stopped beating for two seconds.

This must be a practical joke.

Like a trick or some kind of stunt or something.

Sure, this town is nothing special, like 20.000 citizens maybe? But leather jacket could be a Youtuber or Viner or something? Some of these dudes do really crazy shit. You don’t have to be in a big city for that.

Meanwhile, curly hair has pushed himself off the wall as if it were fucking nothing, as if leather jacket – who must have nothing but muscles underneath that stupid pretentious jacket – didn't still have his fists around the fabric of his t-shirt.

And just as expected – there’s a tearing sound and leather jacket is clutching shreds, and curly hair, now with naked upper body and, oh my God, that guy isn’t lean at all, he’s fucking ripped, and he leaps – leaps – over the sidewalk and onto the black car that’s parked in the curb and Stiles can’t even right now.

That must have been at least six feet.

Curly hair is squatting on the roof of the car like Spiderman and his face looks really strange now, distorted, eyes still glowing, canines protruding over his lips, and then leather jacket reacts and despite everything Stiles has seen so far he could not have seen this coming.

No fucking way.

So, leather jacket, okay?

He ducks down, opens his mouth and lets out a low, reverberating growl and it’s the single most inhuman sound Stiles has ever heard, and he’s watched a lot of horror movies. Then his face is changing in front of Stiles’ eyes, features distort, hair is growing in places where there abso-fucking-lutely shouldn’t be any hair, and canines drop out of this mouth looking longer and more deadly than those of curly hair and his eyes start glowing fucking red.

Stiles wants to raise his hands to rub his eyes but he can’t move.

This can’t be happening right now.

He’s sweating and shaking and staring at the two guys but he still sees what he sees, nothing changes, no matter how often he blinks.

Except now of course curly hair, yes? He takes a jump at leather jacket, claws – claws?! – raised high in the air, and leather jacket doesn’t even blink, he just slams curly hair single-handedly into the sidewalk.

Stiles can’t help it, he lets out a very unmanly squeal and stumbles a few steps backwards, almost lands on his ass, and the two dudes freeze in place, leather jacket who’s squatting over curly hair with his right hand on his bare chest and curly hair who’s on his back, arms and legs sprawled out like he’s afloat in a pool, except he isn’t, from the looks of it he’s in a goddamn fight to the death, oh my God.

And now they know Stiles is here, too.

Leather jacket lifts his red glowing monster eyes up from the ground and looks Stiles dead in the eyes and Stiles feels like he’s going to faint.

‘This can’t be happening, this isn’t real, this can’t be happening, what the fuck is happening?!’

What happens then is the most bizarre thing yet and that’s saying a lot.

Leather jacket’s monster features melt back into his face like a fucking freak show in reverse, like there’s a little dude sitting in his head who’s just reeling the monster back in, going ‘Oops, sorry, you shouldn’t have seen this, my bad,’ his eyes stop glowing and he jumps to his feet, eyes never leaving Stiles’.

Meanwhile, curly hair picks himself up from the ground, cranes his neck in Stiles’ direction, jumps to his feet - to his hands and feet, he's really on all fours - and then swiftly takes off, galloping across the road, and Stiles is pretty sure he sees him leap over a fence out of the corner of his eyes.

Leather jacket opens his mouth and Stiles wants to fucking run but he’s still too shocked to move.

He can't process this, any of this, and now everything becomes even more confusing because a raspy and very upset sounding voice is saying, “Derek Hale, how often do I have to tell you to leave my wall alone? Mother Mary in heaven, just look at it!”

An elderly lady has come shuffling across the lawn to Stiles’ right, the one that is separated from the sidewalk by the low brick wall. Pieces of it are disseminated over the asphalt in front of it in a four-feet-radius, red clay dusting leather jacket’s leather shoes. Stiles’ jaw drops even lower when leather jacket turns to her and raises his right arm but instead of striking the old lady, which - that wouldn't have been too far off, right, considering?

But no, nothing of the sort.

Instead, he runs it through his hair like he’s embarrassed all of a sudden.

“I’m truly sorry, Mrs. Allen, I’ll send someone to fix it.”

The old lady is waving her finger in his face, a bun of grey hair bobbing up and down on the back of her head while she’s nodding angrily.

“You better! This is the fourth time in two months and I can’t have construction workers bustle about this place for another week, slow as Johnny’s men always are. I have to have my peace and quiet in this goddamn loony bin. It’s why I put the wall up in the first place.”

“Good thinking,” leather jacket mutters under his breath and the old lady flicks her eyes up from the ground and gives him a piercing look like she wants to melt his skin clear off his bones.

“You watch your mouth, Derek Hale. Just because you’re the alpha in this town doesn’t mean a spark like me can’t take you on with a single flick of my fingers.”

A what, what?

Stiles is working his jaw, mouthing 'alpha' and 'spark', but his mind is a total blank.

He hasn't even heard any of these words before.

Not in a way that would make sense in this situation anyway.

Leather jacket whose name seems to be Derek, just nods, averting his eyes and Mrs. Allen turns around and hobbles up the short path to her house, throwing a hostile glance at Stiles before slamming her door shut behind her.

Derek now looks over to Stiles who still can’t fucking believe this, any of this, and says, “Sorry I startled you,” totally matter-of-factly as if he were apologizing for being 5 minutes late for work.

Startled?!, Stiles is screaming in his head. More like, I almost peed my pants, sweet Jesus!

“You’re new here.”

Not a question.

Stiles nods his head up and down, still can’t find it in him to speak.

Derek scrutinizes him for a few moments and then says, “I’m Derek Hale.”

Yeah.

Yeah, Stiles got that.

“S-Stiles. Stilinski. Call me – Stiles.”

Derek’s eyes widen with surprise and recognition.

Then he nods.

“Right. You’re the sheriff’s kid. He said his son would come and live with him. I didn’t know it would be so soon.”

“Y-yeah,” Stiles says and his voice is still way too shaky and he blushes – which doesn’t matter at all since his whole face is probably still bright red from having been almost scared to death earlier. Derek who looks kind of cool must think he’s a total douche.

But yeah, it doesn't matter really, because all things considered, Stiles is not entirely sure whether he isn’t dreaming.

The whole monster thing?

Seriously.

A killer effect, like, totally badass, but - no real, certainly.

It just - whatever just happend the images raging around in Stiles' brain right now, of sprouting hair and glowing eyes and fangs and claws, can't have anything to do with it. Completely and totally imaginary, all of it.

Plus, now that he can see this guy’s face properly Stiles is almost positive that he’s too good-looking to be real. This Derek guy’s face looks like it was chiseled out of a block of marble by Michelangelo, for God’s sake.

Stiles swallows and quickly flicks his eyes at Derek’s broad shoulders, his leather jacket that is spotless despite the way he beat curly hair’s face into an almost unrecognizable mush. Stiles thinks that underneath his clothes, Derek’s body probably fits his face.

So all things considered, yeah. No way, José.

This isn’t real.

This is just a very, very vivid dream.

Derek is still looking at him, hands in his pockets and a nonchalant look on his face like he’s perfectly comfortable with long drawn silences.

Which totally goes with the rest of his smug exterior.

“I – I should. Go,” Stiles finally manages to get out and turns an even brighter shade of red. Even if this is a dream, he can be mortified by his own douchebaggery, ok?

Also, Derek really freaks him out.

So when Derek nods and says, “Alright. I see you around,” perfectly civil and polite, Stiles turns around and starts moving in the opposite direction and away from Derek who’s still standing there and watching him like he has literally nowhere to be and nothing else to do.

There’s not a single thought in Stiles’ brain this entire way back. A complete and total blank but his hands are still shaking.

Thank God, his legs haven’t forgotten how to walk. He wasn’t too certain about that anymore for a second there.

When Stiles slams the front door closed behind him he is greeted by his dad’s voice that’s coming from somewhere in the house. Upstairs probably.

“Stiles, do you want your bed by the window or next to your desk?”

Instead of answering, Stiles walks over to the sofa and flops down thinking that, maybe, he’s really been here all the time. Maybe he’s dreaming right now. Maybe his meemaw didn’t have a stroke and when he wakes up he’s back in his old room in L.A., waking up from an afternoon nap, one of these nasty ones when you just fall asleep for an hour and have really vivid nightmare.

Which would be so crazy.

Stiles has always wondered how people in movies could confuse being asleep and being awake because the two feel nothing alike.

Now, he isn’t so sure anymore.

“Stiles?” his father says, coming down the stairs.

“Mmh,” Stiles answers from the sofa and his father frowns.

“Are you alright? Did you put the milk in the fridge?”

There’s a pause, a long and heavy sigh and then Stiles pushes himself up from the sofa, puts his feet down on the yellowish rug.

“I didn’t get any...”

“You,” his father blinks, “didn’t – get any?”

Stiles shakes his head.

“So, you’re saying you... wait – you’re not a vegan, are you? Or... ha, did you get lost? It’s really right down the street. Come on, we’ll take the car and I show you. It’s the same way you’re gonna be taking to school tomorrow.

“Dad?”

Sheriff Stilinski who has already fished the car keys out of the bowl by the door turns to look at him, going “Mh?”

“Dad, the reason I didn’t – I didn’t... there was something – strange...”

“O-oh, strange? So,” his dad clears his throat and says, “what seems to have been the matter, son?” a little too quickly.

Stiles turns to meet his eyes in surprise - this is not the reaction he expected and is that - does the man look guilty somehow?

But his dad keeps his gaze averted, staring down into the key bowl that contains all the keys to the house, and garage, and garden shed and, inexplicably, about two dozen small rubber fish that fill the bowl almost to its entirety which is why Stiles had to literally dig for the spare set of keys earlier.

Not keyring pendants, either.

Just little green fish made out of rubber with blue specks and yellow and orange stripes.

“Yeah, strange. Like I’m-not-sure-whether-I’m-dreaming-strange. Peculiar. Befuddling.”

“So what – what happened?”

Pointedly not looking Stiles in the eyes.

Seriouly, how did this dude ever manage to get anyone to vote for him anyway?

Stiles’ dad has picked up one of the rubber thingies and is sniffing it.

“So I’m just walking and minding my own business and, all of a sudden, right? These two dudes come darting, like, shooting out from between two parked cars and before I know it they're crashing into a brick wall,” flailing his arms and imitating the movement like a lightning, “like, directly in front of me and I – I swear I almost wet myself.”

“A brick wall?” the sheriff says, looking up, “not – not Mrs. Allen’s brick wall?”

Stiles nods.

“The very one. But the thing is-”

“Oh no,” his dad rolls his eyes up to the ceiling, lets them linger on a cobweb for a few seconds, “she’ll come in tomorrow morning to file a complaint and I’m gonna have to call Talia Hale again and – that woman just gives me the creeps...”

Stiles furrows his brow.

He swears to God, he doesn’t even know where to start.

“How did you know one of the two freaks was this Derek-guy?”

His father stares at him, mouth hanging open and cheeks slightly red.

“What? Didn’t you say that?”

“No? I most certainly didn’t?”

“O-oh then. I just figured. You know because... what were they doing did you say?”

“Fighting? Like, to the death, from the looks of it?”

“Yeah, that’s just Derek, you know. That guy’s trouble. Just – keep away from him.”

“That’s what I thought at first but then he seemed kind of nice,” Stiles says.

“Oh yeah, he’s a good guy,” his dad says, picking up a rubber fish and closing his fist around it, giving it a good squeeze so its eyes well out between his fingers.

“Didn’t you say he was trouble?”

“Mh?” his dad says, “yeah, he definitely is. Steer clear of all things Derek, okay? Okay. I’m gonna go outside and – water – the – gravel-”

He opens the door and all but darts out, right hand still kneading that ridiculous fish and leaving his son behind in the living room, open-mouthed and blinking wildly like he just realized he slipped out of reality a few hours ago.

Insane.

This was completely and utterly insane.

Derek Hale, curly hair, Mrs. Allen, even his dad?

Fucking nuts, all of them.

When Stiles is standing at the bottom of a classroom in front of the blackboard, thirty pairs of eyes staring back at him, the feeling of being oddly out of place still hasn’t completely vanished. Right now, who Derek Hale is and why Stiles’ own father has been dodging all of Stiles’ questions so far, is not as urgent as the question of whether he’ll be the odd and douchy kid again.

Because Stiles isn’t just the new kid in town.

He’s also the new kid at Beacon Hills High, junior year, and he has just been introduced by the Econ teacher who strangely calls himself Coach Finstock.

Introduced is also more of a euphemism.

Coach Finstock had barked “Bilinski?!” as soon as Stiles’ right sneaker had touched down on the floor of his classroom and when Stiles had nodded shyly he’d dragged – literally dragged – Stiles into the room by his t-shirt which had excited a few malicious snickers from the boys and girls already seated.

And, fucking great, Stiles just loves spending the rest of the year going, “No, my name is really Stilinski, with a ‘st.’ Like stab.’”

“Over there! Sit!” Finstock says now like he’s scolding Stiles for peeing on his most expensive rug. Finstock never seems to form entire sentences either, and Stiles wonders how on earth he’s going to be teaching a class like that.

But he’ll see, right?

It’s not like he’ll be going anywhere else anytime soon.

Stiles walks over to an empty seat by the window and drops his bag on the floor below the desk. The guy next to him is wearing a worn grey sweater, has brown curly hair and meets Stiles’ anxious gaze with a wide, friendly smile on his face, and Stiles –

Stiles instantly decides to like him.

At least one face that isn't eyeballing him like Stiles is some kind of parasite daring to set foot into the hallowed halls of Beacon Hills High.

Shabby classrooms that are way too small, walls painted in odd colors that don't match, and supply closets that smell strange, like someone vomited in here in 1978 and it got never really completely cleaned up.

So, this seems like a perfectly regular high school and Beacon Hills your standard small and boring town but Stiles still can’t fully convince himself that none of it had been real – that he’d just dreamed this dude called Derek Hale transform into a monster in front of his very eyes.

That he’d just imagined his dad’s evasive behavior, the way he’s managed to wriggle out of every single fucking question Stiles asked him about it like a goddamn eel.

In fact, Stiles hasn’t gotten much sleep in his strange, new bedroom that still reeks of fresh paint and cheap furniture, so he’s had ample time to think about the whole thing and come up with an explanation. Or five, to be precise.

He's scribbling them down into his notebook right now because all Coach Finstock is doing is curse and suspect a guy called Greenberg of eating all fifteen pieces of chalk, he counted them himself, just to spite him.

-----------

One – Derek Hale is the creator of a radically new kind of prosthetics for horror movies, or is testing them for someone else.

This is the most reassuring and down-to-earth explanation Stiles could come up with.

Two – it’s his dad’s douchy way to say ‘welcome to Beacon Hills!’ and while Stiles would certainly have to take his hat off to an elaborate prank like this, he’s also going to have to murder the old man for almost scaring him to death, Sheriff or no sheriff.

Three – Beacon Hills is located in some sort of warp in the timespace continuum and Stiles has slipped into a parallel dimension where people can just let their faces distort grotesquely and slam other monster-dudes into brick walls with superhuman force.

Four – the most daunting explanation and, sadly, the most logical one: he is schizophrenic and he’s starting to have visual hallucinations and first bouts of paranoia.

Five – The Truman Show is real.

-----------

Stiles is staring down at his writing and thinks, One. Definitely one.

It just has to be one.

And maybe he'll come up with other exlanations in the course of the day. It's not like classes are going to occupy his mind so much. Stiles usually has ample capacity to day dream, even during exams, so. Yeah, he'll be certainly wracking his brain for the next couple hours. Not the worst way to spend the first day at your new school, right?

He's had worse - like, head-in-the-toilet-worse.

As soon as first period is over – Stiles is still blinking in surprise at what must have been the angriest Econ lesson he’s ever had to sit through – the boy next to Stiles turns to him and says, “I’m Scott McCall. Nice to meet you.”

He extends his hand and beams at him like Stiles is a relly big strawberry pie.

Seems like a nice dude - and also, somewhat odd and awkward, Stiles thinks.

Like himself.

Perfect.

He takes Scott’s hand and smiles gratefully back at him. For some unfathomable reason, Scott seems genuinely happy that Stiles is here and that feels nice for a change. So much better than the vaguely disinterested glances everyone else is throwing him – or the Hey asshole!s and Pevert!s he’d gotten in his old school.

Back in L.A., he’d been the dorky and awkward kid and while there’s always a bunch of those, he’d been the only one who’d been caught making out with another dude, Jay Kensington (hurtful nickname, Gayjay), behind the school two weeks after everyone had seen him sucking face with a completely wasted Maggie Sonderburg at a party, the senior who had a reputation for being easy and into younger guys. Suddenly, Stiles had been the weird kid, the one who’s neither gay nor really hetero but slips through all fixed categories, who won’t be pigeonholed, and yeah.

They didn’t know what to make of Stiles and people hate that. It messes with their carefully arranged categories in their neatly-stored everythings.

So when Scott says, “You’re new here, mh? I bet you’re, like, overwhelmed right now,” Stiles nods and decides then and there that he won’t spoil it for himself, this time. Leaving his grandma had been hard but leaving his old school not so much. He hadn’t had any friends anyway and he could do without the constant bullying and being shoved around. Stiles would just try and play it cool.

Be a regular teenager in this regular town.

Plus, Scott doesn’t strike him as one of the popular kids with his ratty sweater and messy hair so maybe he wouldn’t catch on to the fact that Stiles really wasn’t cool at all so fast and hate him for it.

Or maybe, just maybe, Scott can already tell from the way Stiles’ hair is cropped way too short which, as Stiles has told his grandma probably a thousand times now, gives his head this odd shape, but she always insisted on the haircut.

And the way he fidgets around in his seat, too, and jerks his head when he’s addressed like a spaz, not like James Dean or something.

So maybe Scott can tell but doesn’t care about it.

Stiles knows that there is always a reason for an empty seat in a classroom, why no one wants to sit there, you know, and thinking about it now makes him relax a little. Maybe Scott doesn’t have any friends either and Stiles isn’t surprised when Scott says, “Come on, Math is next. You can sit next to me there as well, if you want to. I sort of – usually sit by myself.”

Stiles smiles, nods, says “Yeah. Cool.” and feels like they’ll understand each other just fine.

And then Scott goes ahead and ruins it by saying, “And don’t worry, I won’t – bite. At least,” and he’s grinning from ear to ear and actually fucking winks at Stiles, “not unless you mess with my Pokémon collection.”

Stiles sighs and leans back in his seat.

Case clear, Scott’s a complete and total dork but then, so is Stiles, so that’s fine (and he may or may not have a part of his Pokémon collection arranged neatly on top of the dresser in his new bedroom right now).

But there’s just something about the way Scott is still grinning silently at his history book ten minutes later that makes Stiles – feel odd again. The way he emphasized ‘bite’ with this gleam in his eyes. Stiles keeps throwing Scott confused glances but Scott doesn’t seem to notice and that makes it even – weirder.

Like the whole freaking town is in on a conspiracy.

Stiles is listlessly chewing on what must be the worst sandwich he’s ever had – it’s just two slices of stale toast with a piece of lettuce stuffed in-between (and that’s not even talking about the rubber squid his dad had slid into the paper bag next to an apple and a banana) – and wondering about the teachers at this school. As a matter of fact, Coach Finstock is not the strangest one of them, not by far, and that is sort of – unsettling.

Their English teacher Jane Hinako is 4 feet 2 and looks like she’s ten years old (she had pink and purple bunnies in her hair and a horse on her sweater, for God’s sake).

The Music teacher, Mrs. Rodriguez, didn’t really talk but sort of chirped and the sound of her voice started giving Stiles a serious headache fifteen minutes into the period.

Then he’d caught a glimpse of the principal in the hallway, an old dude with a head full of silver grey hair, but who was also wearing a Hawaiian shirt, bright red and with a yellow pineapple pattern, as well as brown shorts reaching only down to the middle of his hairy thighs, and flip-flops – yeah, it’s warm here, it always is, it’s California, but they’re not at the freaking beach – and when he asked Scott why Mr. Lindon, the Math teacher, had jingled with every step Scott had just shrugged and said, “Tambourine, obviously,” like that explained everything.

“So... I bet it was really hard to leave your grandma behind,” Scott is saying now around the big bites he’s taking from an over-sized pretzel, and Stiles puts down the miserable excuse for a sandwich, swallows hard and nods.

“Yeah, I get it...,” Scott looks sad for a second. “My father left when I was twelve and I still miss him sometimes.”

Dude, tmi considering that they’ve only known each other since Econ but then again, Scott doesn’t seem to care about boundaries. Like, seriously never because his next question is, “Did you have a girlfriend in L.A.? I bet all the girls in L.A. are fashionable and cool...”

Stiles frowns.

“Not really... besides, I didn’t live in like... the cool side of L.A. More like... Pasadena.”

Scott nods with wide eyes as if Stiles had just told him that he’d spent a year hunting crocodiles in Australia or something.

“Most people here don’t, like... leave,” he’s saying now, slowly, furrowing his brow as if he’s trying to think of a reason. “I don’t really know why, I guess they just like it here, is all...”

Stiles nods as if he understands which he really doesn’t and then something outside the window catches his attention.

They’re in the Chemistry classroom which is on the second floor and overlooks the parking lot so from where Scott and he are standing right now by the window, he has a good view at the occasional car pulling in or out. And it just so happens that a super fancy sports car just slid into the parking lot, stops, and a moment later two people get out, and what are the odds that Stiles would actually know one of them. Slamming the driver’s door closed and shoving a pair of sunglasses into his face is none other than leather jacket.

Derek Hale.

The dude from the day before, the very one who’d been beating the shit out of a guy and looking like he stepped out of a freaking horror movie one moment, and then had politely asked Stiles about his father the next.

“Scott, do you know this guy?” Stiles nods over to the window and Scott turns to flick his eyes over to the sports car.

“Yeah, of course, dude, that’s Derek Hale,” and he says it like, Yeah, of course, dude, that’s George Clooney.

“Of course?”

Stiles furrows his brow and the feeling that he’s missing something here grows even stronger.

Like he’s somehow not seeing the big picture.

And then he recognizes the other guy, the one who just got out of the passenger seat and is clutching a backpack to his chest and glancing awkwardly past Derek at the school.

But – that can’t be...

No freaking way.

It’s curly hair.

No doubt about that, Stiles is absolutely, 110% certain.

It’s the same guy Derek almost beat into a bloody pulp the day before, the guy who’d vanished tail between his legs as soon as Derek had stopped punching him. His hair is tousled like he just got up, his skin is somehow, weirdly, inexplicably, unbruised, at least from what Stiles can see at this distance.

Not like someone had smacked him repeatedly but like, you know. No one had smacked him repeatedly. Like he’s just another, regular and slightly awkward teenager.

What the literal hell...

“A-and who,” Stiles has to clear his throat to get the words out. He feels like a part of the stupid sandwich is still stuck somewhere in-between his mouth and his stomach.

“Who is the other one?”

“That’s Isaac. Isaac Lahey. He’s a junior, too. Dude's a mess. He's late, like, almost everyday, so Derek's driving him to school a lot.”

“But – Scott, yesterday, I – I met Derek before, er, that was yesterday when I was supposed to get groceries for my dad and, I sweat to God, he beat the literal shit out of this guy. Out of – Isaac.”

Stiles doesn’t dare mention the way both Isaac and Derek had dropped canines out of their mouths and let their eyes glow in different colors. Red, Derek, and Isaac yellow. Maybe he’d really been hallucinating.

To his utter surprise, Scott just shrugs, nods and says, “Yeah, you know, he’s in his pack, so Derek would teach him, like, a lot.”

Stiles flicks his eyes from Derek back to Scott, unsure of how he’s supposed to react to that. Maybe Scott is making fun of him.

“In... what?”

“There’s only two people in Derek’s pack, Isaac and Erica. Erica’s a senior. It’s, you know, really exclusive. How big is the Los Angeles pack?”

Stiles blinks.

He feels like Scott and he are having two entirely different conversations.

“W-what?”

Then Scott smacks his own forehead all of a sudden which causes Stiles to jump.

“Ah, shoot, sorry, I’m not making any sense here, right?”

Stiles nods, relieved.

No sense, nope, just sounding like a lunatic but okay.

Scott would surely explain it all to him now.

The joke or whatever.

“You don’t even have an alpha in Los Angeles, right? So you wouldn’t know how big a pack usually is.”

Okay, that makes even less sense.

What on earth is Scott talking about?

And that’s the second time someone has called Derek an ‘alpha.’ Maybe Derek is some kind of politician? Presidential candidates have a superpack, so maybe a local politician has just a regular pack? But that doesn’t even begin to explain the fangs and the claws and the glowing eyes – or does it? After all, political campaigns also always involve a lot of showmanship.

Stiles opens his mouth to say something but then Scott sighs, shakes his head, rolls his eyes and says, “Aaaaand here we go.”

“Here we go?” Stiles manages to get out before his jaw drops and he’s staring out the window, completely mesmerized, because down in the parking lot, all hell is breaking loose.

It starts with what sounds like a hundred people stomping and pushing chairs and tables around in the classrooms over their heads and below their feet, and on their left and right. One of the guys in the classroom who’d just been sitting there peeling a banana peacefully a minute earlier even stormed out the door, leaving the half-eaten thing behind on his desk.

Then students start crowding in the parking lot, and not just students.

Stiles recognizes their dainty looking English teacher boxed in-between, from the looks of it, broad-shouldered seniors. Some of them have apparently grabbed brooms on their way out, and a few are even yielding baseball bats and what looks like lacrosse sticks.

Right, Beacon Hills has a lacrosse team which Stiles was really excited about because he’d been playing in a team for two years now back in L.A., but that does not explain why students would be waving their sticks at Derek Hale right now, not even a little bit.

“What the-”

But before Stiles can get any kind of explanation out of Scott who isn’t even watching anymore but is leaning back in his chair with a comic book, the crowd attacks.

Literally, attacks.

As in, this is war.

They are all running at Derek, at least fifty people like one giant tornado, fists and bats, and sticks raised, hollering and shouting, and Stiles thinks he can discern sentences like “Down, Derek!” and “I’ll get you today, Hale!” and “Say your prayers, alpha!” even through the closed windows.

Stiles can’t believe this is fucking happening and that’s twice within 24 hours.

What the literal hell is up with this town?

“Oh - God, we need to call someone – call my - my dad, they’re going to kill him! They’re going to rip this dude to shreds!”

Stiles is already fumbling his cellphone out of his pocket but Scott yawns demonstratively and flicks over a page in his comic book, an exceptionally bored expression on his face and says, “Naaah... I really doubt that, Stiles...”

Stiles cannot fucking believe Scott.

“How the hell can you say that, there’s huge dudes with baseball bats down there, for God’s sake! And how can you even sit there all calm and relaxed like that when-”

Scott puts the magazine down in his lap and looks at Stiles, an earnest expression on his face now. “Nothing’s going to happen, they’re not even going to put a dent into Derek’s car. Derek is really particular about his car...”

When Stiles opens his mouth to protest, Scott says, “Just look out the window, Stiles,” and Stiles does.

Whatever thing he'd meant to shoot Scott's way, like 'See, I told you' and 'God, I think he's dead, it's too  late!' - when he moves his jaw nothing comes out but a sound of complete and utter surprise.

He has to rub his eyes to be sure he’s not imagining things because down in the parking lot, the students are already piling up around Derek’s feet, apparently unconscious, limbs twisted in very unhealthy looking angles, shirts and pants torn and bloody. Derek’s eyes are glowing red and he’s throwing boys and girls around like they’re stuffed animals, baring his fangs and roaring every time he throws a punch.

And Derek isn’t the only one.

Each and every pair of eyes in the crowd that’s gradually growing smaller and smaller is glowing, most of them a shade like orange, gold or yellow. The English teacher looks especially creepy with her tiny claws and luminescent blue eyes and what the – just, what the...

At the side of the parking lot, the guy called Isaac is leaning against a tree, watching, his expression almost as bored as Scott’s who has taken up his comic book again.

“Great, now I don’t know where I was anymore...”

Usually Stiles would say something like, It’s a twenty-page comic book, how hard can it be, but right now he feels like he’s going to freak out. Like he’s gone crazy – or wait, no. Like he’s the only sane person here and – didn’t Mrs. Allen call this town a ‘loony bin’ the day before? Stiles is starting to see her point.

“What the fuck are they doing? What is Derek doing? Why are they attacking him?”

“Ah, here,” Scott says and scans the page he just opened. And, to Stiles, “They’re trying to take away Derek’s alpha power. You know, you have to defeat an alpha to take his or her power and being the alpha of Beacon Hills is kind of a big deal.”

And, throwing Stiles a look over the pages of his comic book, “So whenever Derek as much as shows his face anywhere all the betas sniff their chance, but it’s completely futile, if you ask me.”

Stiles has no idea what an alpha is supposed to be, but he can clearly see that trying to defeat Derek Hale is a pointless undertaking, clear as day, about as promising as asking a brick wall to prom. Ms. Hinako, the English teacher, is literally the only one standing at this point and Derek just picks her up like a log of wood and throws her across the parking lot and she lands on a heaving pile of bodies that are strewn around Derek, groaning and squirming, in what must be at least a thirty feet radius.

“That’s why people don’t really talk to me... because I’ve never taken a shot at trying to become the alpha,” Scott is muttering now. “These douchebags end up with twisted limbs and a busted nose almost every single fucking day, and I’m the crazy one here, yeah right. It’s just so stupid. I don’t get why they can’t accept that Derek’s the alpha and live with it. It’s ridiculous.”

“Wise decision, Scott McCall,” a girl is saying now. She has stepped up to the window and joined Stiles in watching Derek leap at one of the students who is currently trying to get back up.

Stiles throws her a side glance.

He doesn’t have to know anything about Beacon Hills High to know that she’s the boss around here. The one who is sexy but also kind of cute, who is wearing expensive brands and has hair that looks like it was done up professionally. Who tells you that she is somebody and you are nobody, just from the way her eyes are looking into yours. If at all.

The one every guy wants to date and every girl wants to be.

The most popular girl in school.

She’s rather short and very pretty, with full lips painted pink, and a tight dark blue dress that barely reaches down to her thighs. Her strawberry blonde hair is silky and long and put into neat curls. All in all, she looks like she’s prepared to step out into paparazzi flashlight any second.

She flicks her eyes down at her IPhone and sighs, a dreamy look on her face.

“Less than five minutes. This must be a new record. Derek is just invincible. And... isn’t he handsome?”

“You mean – this has happened before?”

Stiles stares at her. The girl throws her head back and lets out a melodic laugh.

“Well, whenever Derek comes to school to drop his pack off or pick them up at least. So yes, most days... That reminds me – has anyone seen Erica Reyes today? She still owes me ten dollars. Where is everybody anyway?”

“All out there probably, watching,” Scott mutters.

“But what is he?” Stiles says now, eyes still wide with shock as Derek’s monster mask melts back into a handsome human face with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes. Derek is panting and wiping off blood from his face, nose scrunched up in disgust. Stiles realizes that he must have gotten rid of his leather jacket somewhere in-between knocking people unconscious, probably to avoid having it ruined.

The girl has turned to face Stiles.

She is scrutinizing his face, a knowing smile playing around her lips.

“Right, you’re the new kid. What was your name again?”

“Stiles,” Stiles says and extends his hand.

“Lydia Martin,” the girl says, flicking her eyes down to Stiles’ hand but not taking it. Stiles pulls back after a moment, cheeks reddening.

“Mh,” Lydia says. She tilts her head to the right as if that’s giving her a better look at Stiles’ face. “You’re kind of cute, I guess.”

Stiles opens his mouth and closes it again. For some mysterious reasons no one in this goddamn city seems to want to answer any of his questions concerning the big fat elephant in the room.

“What’s up with these people anyway? What’s an – an alpha?” he tries again.

There’s a rustle when Scott jerks his comic book down so fast that Stiles jumps a little. Well, he’s really tense right now, considering – considering the big pile of bodies down in the parking lot and the handsome dude who’s still standing, looking like a young Marlon Brando, running his hand through his hair and putting his sunglasses back on.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“N-no?”

Lydia Martin is just standing there, arms akimbo.

Smirking like she knows exactly what Stiles’ problem is, but is far too entertained right now to be coming to his rescue.

“But – your dad’s the sheriff, didn’t you ever wonder why he carries around all these weapons?” Scott is saying and he gives Stiles an incredulous look.

“What weapons?” Stiles says meekly, feeling more and more stupid.

“Like, super strong tasers and stuff. Wolfsbane guns. It’s really the only thing you can do to break up a werewolf fight, taser them long and good.”

There’s a snicker from Lydia and Stiles knows exactly why. He must look incredibly douchy, the way his mouth is hanging open and his eyes are wide and there’s this blank expression on his face. But he just can’t help it.

He’s like 60% sure that Scott just said werewolf.

“And,” Stiles clears his throat. He seems to be doing that a lot, lately. “A-and... w-werewolf? So, that’s what Derek is – a werewolf? You’re bullshitting me.”

Somehow, however, Stiles gets the strong feeling that Scott really isn’t.

That he’s, in fact, dead serious.

Scott furrows his brow.

“What – do you want to tell me you’ve, like, never met a werewolf?”

Stiles can’t even shake his head at that.

He just can’t.

Physically impossible.

This is nuts, all of this.

But, wait! Maybe...

Okay, how about this.

Maybe ‘The Werewolves’ are some kind of super popular rock band in Beacon Hills. Or an orchestra or something, if Scott seems to think that Stiles surely must have met one of them before.

Or...

“...is that the, er... Beacon Hills High lacrosse team? The... werewolves? Like.... Go, werewolves! Bear down, wolves?”

Scott stares at him for a second, and then he throws his head back into his neck and lets out a loud and roaring laugh, more like a bark, really, and Lydia Martin chuckles.

“Scott, stop tormenting him. He really doesn’t know,” she finally says.

“Werewolves,” Scott says. “Like this.”

His eyes find Stiles’ and all of a sudden, they are glowing like someone just turned on a flashlight in his head. Up close, it’s not bright yellow but more of a light amber shade. Yellow fading into a warm brown with specks of orange.

It's the most incredible thing Stiles has ever seen.

He is completely and totally awed.

But he must also have turned a little pale because Scott laughs, eyes dark brown and normal and just - human - again and says, “Relax! I’m not going to rip your throat out. No werewolf will, and there’s a lot of us in Beacon Hills. All betas, of course. Alphas are super rare. There’s only one around here.”

“There’s only one in California,” Lydia corrects with pursed lips.

“Derek Hale,” Stiles says and his voice comes out raspy and thin.

He feels like he’s going to faint.

Seriously, any second, just drop dead right there on the floor in front of Lydia Martin’s fancy black and white heels. Chanels, from the looks of it.

“Dude, your heart is racing,” Scott says which really doesn’t help at all because that's just a fucking creepy thing to say.

And then, “You didn’t know this?”

Stiles can only shake his head and Lydia snorts.

When she speaks she has gone from sweet and smiling to snarky hag. Classic high school queen.

“Where is your brain, McCall? Have you even been listening at all in History? The supernatural is not generally known anywhere. Only in Beacon Hills and a few other places, maybe a dozen all over the planet.”

“What, you serious?” Scott says, eyes wide with surprise.

Lydia rolls her eyes like she can’t believe she’s even having this conversation.

“God, you’re dumb... no? Or why do you think you’ll never hear a sentence like ‘The question is, What’s wolfsbane alcohol, Alex,’ on TV? Mh?”

Scott gives her a look as if she just told him that Azeroth isn’t a real continent.

“No way... I- I just thought it wasn’t simply that interesting. Like, we’re only a minority anyway, right? I haven’t ever seen Native Americans on TV either.”

“Thick as a plank,” Lydia mutters under her breath, shaking her head in disbelief.

“A-and, are you a – a werewolf, too?” Stiles is saying now, his voice almost a whisper.

Somehow his tongue doesn’t quite want to wrap around the word yet. Like he tried to say, ‘That’s going to be a pound of unicorn meat, please’.

Wait.

There’s no such things as unicorns.

Right?

God.

What’s happening.

“Are you referring to me?” Lydia says and Stiles nods.

“I,” she pauses, probably for the dramatic effect, “am a banshee. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Scott repeats with a snort like there’s something about Lydia that’s just so banshee-like.

“Obviously,” Stiles mouths.

Maybe he should just go home for the day.

“Banshees,” Lydia starts explaining, correctly interpreting the look on Stiles’ face as utter confusion, “are pretty rare.” She smiles haughtily and flicks her strawberry red hair back over her shoulder. “Every third person in Beacon Hills is a beta werewolf but there’s only about fifty banshees.”

“Give or take,” Scott interjects who is reading his comic again. “Feels like a thousand sometimes. In this very room alone.”

Lydia glares at him.

“Banshees are cultivated. We don’t solve every problem with brute force like werewolves and other shapeshifters.”

“No, you just shriek. That’s so much more sophisticated,” Scott says but Lydia ignores him. She lets her gaze wander through the classroom that is starting to fill up again.

Stiles checks his phone. It takes him a few seconds until he can actually read the numbers, his hand is shaking that much.

Alright.

The sixth period is almost over even though the teacher hasn’t even shown up yet.

Three guys and a girl are presently stumbling back into the room and they all look pretty bad, so they must have been among the bunch of people who Derek Hale just beat up. They are covered in bruises, one girl is clutching her wrist and a guy is bleeding profusely from a wound on his forehead. Stiles can’t help but stare at him and wonder if anyone has even told him about it yet. He’s holding his chest and looks, all in all, pretty battered just like the rest of them. As soon as Lydia Martin spots him, she darts over to his desk.

“Jackson, didn’t I tell you to practice?” she hisses, flicking her eyes to the wound on his head with a cold look on her face.

The boy called Jackson mutters something that Stiles can’t hear and Lydia shrieks, “Because starting senior year, I’ll be dating the alpha!”

God, there’s really something nerve-wracking to her voice. Like a thousand nails scraping over a blackboard.

Jackson works his jaws, seems really angry now, and looks up at her.

“Sucks to be you then, Lydia,” he grits out, “because last time I checked Derek Hale paid you as much attention as the town ghoul.”

Stiles can hear Lydia suck in a deep breath from all across the room and thinks, Uh-oh.

As expected, Lydia throws her hair out of her face furiously and starts hissing at Jackson, absolutely outraged, but Stiles can’t hear a single word of it because people all around them are now chattering and laughing and saying stuff like, “Aiden threw a punch that was not too shabby, did you see that?” and “Man, Hinako is never going to give up, the old hag. How can someone so little be so strong?”

“What’s up with those two?” Stiles says, watching Lydia screw up her nose at the blood that is pooling on the desk in front of her.

“That’s Jackson,” Scott says and puts his comic book down.

“God, she must hate him,” Stiles mutters with a look at Lydia’s face who’s watching with a mixture of disgust and hostility as Jackson wipes down his blood-smeared desk with a paper towel.

Scott shrugs.

“Jackson’s her boyfriend but yeah, you might be right...”

“Her boyfriend? What the... and - where are you going?"

Scott, who had been stuffing his comic book and water bottle back into his bag looks up.

“Don’t we have Chemistry?”

“Unlikely,” Scott says. He gets up and shoulders his backpack. “You haven’t met him yet but Mr. Willoughby is a really nasty beta... he’s usually one of the first to jump at Derek and one of the last to go down so I bet he’s in his office, licking his wounds right now...”

“Does that happen a lot?” Stiles says, the same question he’d already asked Lydia, but he still can’t believe this.

Any of this.

He starts throwing his books into his bag, copying Scott.

“Relatively speaking... I guess, yeah,” Scott is saying now. “It’s like Lydia said, whenever Derek so much as shows his face anywhere people want to beat the shit out of him. People envy him because an alpha’s like, you know... crazy powerful, but I think it must really suck to be one.”

“Suck?”

“Yeah, like – everywhere you go people just want to shove your nose into the dirt. Doesn’t sound like fun to me.”

Stiles nods. No, that definitely doesn’t sound like something he’d enjoy doing.

It sounded like a lot of hard work.

“Come on, let’s grab lunch,” Scott says, nodding over to the door.

When they walk out of the room, Stiles throws a side glance at Jackson who has his face buried in his hands while Lydia is still fuming and spitting out insults, at least judging from the words Stiles can pick up on his way out like ‘moron’ and ‘incompetent’.

Stiles is still trying to wrap his head around everything he just heard – and saw – so he’s really glad to have Scott show him the way to the cafeteria and then steer him through the crowd. The cafeteria is pretty big, with about four hundred students trying to get their hands on the last couple of French fries or the last burger for the day.

“Ugh, what is that?” Stiles nudges Scott in the ribs who puts a bowl of mashed potatoes onto his tray and then flicks his eyes over to the ghastly looking brownish mass that Stiles is pointing at and that exudes a strong smell like blood and – avocado?

“Oh, don’t touch that,” Scott says and Stiles thinks that he wouldn’t even if he were starving.

“It’s for windiigos only.”

He taps his index finger against a sign above the stainless steel bin and two others filled with a similar looking goo that says Gluten-free, Lactose-free, Vegetable-free – Windiigos Only.

“Looks nasty, right?” Scott says and he lowers his voice, “Well, you should see the windiigos then... these guys give you the creeps...”

A skinny and very pale boy with raven-black hair and dark circles around his eyes who was just scooping ladles full of the greyish-brown matter into a bowl on his tray throws Scott an icy look.

Scott motions for Stiles to follow him, mouthing, “See? Creepy!”

Soon they are wedged in between other students who couldn’t care less about them and even though, aside from Finstock’s “This is Bilinski! God that’s a stupid name,” Stiles can’t say that the day has been too bad so far, he’s not exactly comfortable either because, come on.

Werewolves?

Banshees?

And he’d rather not give in to his curiosity and google windiigo because the creepy, pale kid just took a seat at the table behind Scott and even though Stiles tries to keep his eyes either on Scott’s face or on his own plate, he can just tell that the dude is staring him down.

What kind of place is this anyway?

“So, Derek Hale is an alpha and that’s why everyone wants to fight him.”

Scott is already shoveling spoonfuls of mashed potatoes into his mouth and nods.

“Because when you defeat an alpha – you become the new alpha?”

Scott nods again, swallows and says, “Yeah, used to that people thought you have to actually kill an alpha to get his powers. But it’s really enough to just beat him senseless. Or her. Defeat them, you know?”

Stiles frowns.

“But wouldn’t he die anyway? I mean, if you hit someone hard enough...”

“Nah... we heal,” Scott says, mouth full of steak, “or do you see anyone in here who still looks like they’re hurting?”

Stiles throws a surprised look around and, as a matter of fact, can’t spot anything but a few shredded t-shirts here and there, and dried droplets of blood on pants and jackets.

“And do you – do you turn into a wolf every month?” Stiles says. The girl next to Scott lifts her eyes up from her smartphone and throws him a pitiful look like she can’t believe Stiles would ask a question like that. But Scott just laughs and starts digging into his chocolate pudding.

“No, dude, not really. I mean, full moons do have an effect on us but it’s more like – mood swings.”

Stiles frowns.

Scott leans back, eyeing Stiles’ untouched soup.

“Are you eating that?”

Stiles shakes his head. He’s far too excited to get anything down right now and, quite frankly, he’s still a little nauseated from smelling the windiigo food – and the way that pale kid behind Scott is slurping up the grey mass in his bowl very audibly isn’t making it any better.

“You can have it, if you want.”

“Neat,” Scott says and beams at him.

“Scott, how come no one knows about all of this but here in Beacon Hills... everyone seems to know?”

Scott drops the spoon into the empty bowl before him and laughs again.

“Yeah, crazy right? I keep forgetting about that... I don’t really know. I just know that in Beacon Hills, it has always been like this. Everywhere else, supernatural people are, like, pretending to be regular people, I think. Beacon Hills is the only town where creatures who can’t really hide their supernatural powers very well get a decent job – like nymphs or ghouls.”

“G-ghouls?”

“Yeah, they’re pretty messy. In Beacon Hills they’re in charge of garbage removal...”

“Garbage removal?”

“Yeah, they pick up, like, household waste and stuff.”

“Pick it up? You mean, with trucks?”

Stiles can’t help but just repeat every fucking sentence Scott is throwing at him.

This is just too unbelievable and the most bizarre thing is really the total matter-of-fact tone in which Scott is talking about this. Like he’s trying to explain to Stiles step by step how quidditch works.

“Yeah, they come pick it up like every other week or so and er... then they, er... eat it.”

“What?”

“They eat it. And they make one hell of a mess doing it, so it’s pretty hard for them to hide, right?”

“Right,” Stiles says feebly. “So ghouls eat trash. How many are there?”

Scott shrugs.

“I don’t know – hundreds? No idea.”

Someone tsk-tsks and Stiles turns around. It’s Lydia Martin who is now waving her finger at Scott.

“You might really want to pick up a history book now and then, Scott McCall,” Lydia says and Scott looks like he can’t believe that she has spoken to him twice now in one day.

“Ghouls are rare, almost as rare as banshees, and most of them live in places with huge waste deposits, in big urban areas that produce a lot of trash. But there’s fifteen in Beacon Hills. Sixteen, actually. I heard the Johnsons had a baby.”

And, because Stiles must still have that big question mark on his face, “Family who runs the Beacon Hills Waste Management Company. It’s private owned, you know.”

Yeah, right. Because that’s the thing Stiles would have questioned about her story.

“Move,” Lydia says now and the two girls next to Stiles shoot up from the bench, throwing Lydia shy and admiring glances. She takes a seat and her boyfriend Jackson slams his tray down next to where Lydia’s purse lands on the table.

There’s still a markedly sour look on his face.

He doesn’t even acknowledge Stiles’ and Scott’s presence but starts munching his fries in gloomy silence and Stiles thinks that Jackson is really handsome. He looks like a male underwear model with his classic features and buff body – or he would if he put on a friendlier, or at least more neutral, face.

Then again, he just got the shit beaten out of him by an alpha werewolf, so Stiles should probably mind his own business.

“Aren’t you hungry?”

Stiles just realized that Lydia didn’t bring a tray. Lydia lets out a tsk-tsk-tsk again, like Stiles is being particularly stupid right now.

“Oh, sweetie. I don’t have to. You, see – I’m Lydia Martin.”

Scott is shaking his head and grinning and Stiles watches with wide eyes as Lydia goes, ‘I have such a craving for pudding,’ and hands shoot out to her from all over the table, shoving strawberry pudding, and vanilla and peppermint and chocolate into her line of sight, one guy even reaching around Stiles’ shoulder silently and really fast, and making him flinch in surprise.

Lydia smirks, satisfied, and picks strawberry. Then people start literally throwing spoons at her and Stiles wonders if everyone in the cafeteria is carrying additional plastic spoons and forks and knifes just to get a brief smile and approving nod from Lydia Martin.

Jackson snorts but doesn’t say anything and Lydia jerks her head in his direction at light speed.

“You were saying?”

He shakes his head and Lydia narrows her eyes.

Scott and Stiles exchange a look.

Jackson is in a pretty bad fix now. Not say anything and Lydia might go ballistic on him. Say what he wants to say and the same thing will probably happen.

Stiles decides, it’s time for a mental note. Do not, under any circumstances whatsoever, mess with Lydia Martin.

He needs to remember to ask Scott how powerful banshees are and if they’re more or less dangerous than werewolves. Derek Hale looked pretty damn dangerous to him but then he wouldn’t know what other creatures can do. On a side note, the windiigo kid is apparently done eating and now just sits there staring at Stiles and he gets what Scott meant by, they give him the creeps.

He really, really gets it.

In fact, the more attentively Stiles is looking around now, the more certain he is that Scott and Lydia are really telling the truth which also means, thank God, that he is not losing his mind. All these people around him look like regular people and, Stiles thinks, most of them probably are.

But there’s a girl with her hair pulled back into a blond ponytail at the bottom end of their table who’s painting her very deadly looking 2-inch-talons with pink nail polish, and Stiles really wonders why, considering that they have such a pretty blue glow to them and all.

Lydia and Jackson are still glaring at each other.

Then Jackson turns to his cheeseburger, opens his mouth, but before he takes a bite, he says, “As if an alpha would mate a goddamn banshee, especially when she’s such an attention seeking bitch. He'd rather pick Mrs. Allen, I bet...”

The whole table, at least fifteen people, goes dead silent. The blond girl stops painting her nails, brush suspended in mid-air and dripping pink liquid onto the table, and throws Jackson an incredulous look.

Stiles makes another mental note. Ask Scott about supernatural hearing.

Lydia is actually rendered speechless and Stiles thinks that this can’t be a good sign. Jackson obviously does so as well because he quickly adds, “Lydia, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

“Jackson, that was low,” Scott interrupts him and Jackson glares at him.

The corners of his mouth twist downwards even more, and he spits out, “Shut the hell up, you – filthy omega.”

A silence, more deadly than the one before.

Stiles watches with amazement as Scott gets a stony expression on his face which looks really odd on a dude like him who is basically constantly smiling. Apparently, Jackson just said something extremely insulting.

“Come on, Stiles, let’s get some – air,” Scott grits out. “It’s just too – dumb in here.”

Stiles swipes his tray off the table and hurries after him.

Scott slams his tray onto the counter for used dishes with such force that Stiles is convinced he heard something crack.

A minute later, they can still hear Lydia yelling at Jackson through the closed cafeteria doors.

Stiles follows Scott down the hallway, not sure what to say.

“Jackson’s really an asshole,” Scott mutters after a while and Stiles is relieved to see the corner of his mouth pull up into a faint smile again. “But I guess it’s not so surprising. He’s been trying to get into Derek’s pack for ages and Derek manages to knock him out every single time. He’s probably sick of spending half of his time in high school with his ribs knitting themselves back together and really just mad at himself and that’s why he lashes out...”

Stiles throws Scott an admiring glance. No matter what Lydia says, Scott doesn’t strike Stiles as stupid at all. On the very opposite.

“But Lydia seems ok?”

Scott shrugs.

“She’s not a bad person, I guess. But I swear, today was the first time she ever really talked to me. It’s really weird, how she called me Scott earlier, too. I didn’t even know she knows my name. She seems to like you.”

“What – me?” Stiles says and blinks. “That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

Stiles takes a deep breath as soon as they’re outside.

The weather is nice and it feels good to get away from the noise in the cafeteria. Get some space to digest the huge discoveries he’s made today.

Like a veil that’s slowly being pulled back from reality in front of his very eyes and he – right now, he’s too agitated, too unsettled altogether to be thrilled about it, to really feel what’s going on here.

But it’s just a matter of time.

For the moment, however, he keeps asking questions, carefully storing away every new piece of information in his memory for later use.

To put the pieces together when he’s alone in his room and has time to think.

“Is Lydia dangerous, somehow?”

“Well, if you ask me, definitely. Her voice can shatter glass, I’ve seen it, you know? Boy, and heard it, too. Jackson bought her this really crappy Valentine’s Day’s gift last year...,” Scott says and he’s grinning at Stiles as they flop down in the shade of a tree.

“She yelled at him for ten minutes straight. We were all down under our desks and hands over our ears like this,” and he clutches his hands over his ears and grimaces to show Stiles what he must have looked like, “but I swear, when I came up again, I saw Jackson bleeding out of his ears. He had to go to the nurse's office right away. Man, that was trippy. You just don’t mess with a banshee. And you don’t give Lydia a fake Gucci watch for Valentine's.”

“Uh, okay. Noted. So she is dangerous. Like – a Derek Hale kind of dangerous?”

“No one’s dangerous like Derek Hale,” Scott says. “Lydia is just the most popular girl in school and that already makes her dangerous, no supernatural powers necessary, right? And, hey – Derek Hale seems to be really stuck in your head,” and he laughs because Stiles is shaking his head a little too vividly now.

“He’s not, it’s just – this is really crazy. All of this. And why does everybody seem to know an old lady called Mrs. Allen?”

Stiles suddenly remembers that his dad had immediately known whose brick wall it had been that Derek had slammed this blond kid into the day before.

Like there was only one house in all of Beacon Hills surrounded by a brick wall.

“Mrs. Allen... well. That’s because – ok, where to start... and you really never heard anything about the supernatural before?”

“Well, I’m a big fan of Supernatural...” Stiles offers and, because Scott frowns, not quite getting it, he adds, “The TV show.”

“Oh,” Scott says. “Okay.”

“So, Mrs. Allen.”

“Right,” Scott says and fishes a Snickers bar out of his backpack. “Want half?”

Stiles nods and Scott unwraps the bar, splits it into two pieces and hands one of them over to Stiles.

While Scott just throws the whole piece into his mouth, chews once, then swallows, Stiles bites off a small piece and takes a deep breath.

Sitting here in the grass, in the shade of a tree behind the school with Scott McCall who is as weird as Stiles, only in shabbier clothes, the sky light blue with a few grey clouds hanging above them like cotton balls in a porcelain bowl, like it might rain later that day, and waiting for Scott to continue what is probably the most exciting story Stiles has ever heard in his whole life, the fairy tales his mom used to tell him included, he thinks – he’s thinking that for once, taking everything into consideration, life is pretty good right now.

“Okay, wow, where to start.... werewolves – okay, no. Wait. Okay – alphas are like, incredibly strong. Alright? Only werewolves have alphas and they’re like natural leaders among supernatural creatures. They’re basically the most powerful creatures on the planet, if you don’t count – okay, I’ll tell you about that later,” and while he’s talking he’s gesturing wildly and Stiles thinks that Scott really is a lot like him.

Yeah, Scott is awesome.

Stiles is really hoping they’ll become friends.

Maybe they’re friends already, Stiles wouldn’t really know about how that works, if it usually takes more than half a day to become friends. He’s never really had friends before, if that’s what you call people you hang out with and who’d care if you died.

“Alright, first, about alphas. Used to be more of them in the olden days when every pack really needed an alpha to survive. Today though alpha power is sort of dying out. Getting extinguished – I mean, it can never really vanish completely, that’s not how it works, I think. Like – all the supernatural is connected and there has to always be a leader. But all in all, I think they’re just not needed so much anymore, so there’s less and less children born with it and more alphas just taking their power to the grave.”

“So Derek was – born like this?”

Scott shakes his head.

“No, he was born a beta, but then he fought his mother for it and defeated her when he was sixteen years old. The alpha in California has always been a Hale for centuries. Er, I think,” he furrows his brow like he’s thinking, then says, slowly, “Probably, yeah. Sounds right.”

“What? Sixteen? Are you sure?”

I’m sixteen, is what Stiles is thinking.

“Yeah, since the fight is a legend around here... pretty sure, man. But in any case, he's a born wolf.”

“Wow... and he’s been the alpha here since then.”

Scott nods.

“And from what Deaton tells me – er, Alan Deaton, that’s my boss – Derek’s the strongest alpha he’s ever seen, so that means – pretty strong. People come from everywhere just to get a shot at defeating him, his power is so unique apparently.”

“But – why? And what’s so special about Beacon Hills anyway? This town looks pretty boring to me...,” Stiles says, but it’s not with displeasure this time, just stating a fact and he looks up to the blue sky, then lets his gaze wander around the almost empty school yard and to the place beyond it that is halfway shielded off from sight by wooden structures like an amphitheater. That must be the lacrosse field.

Mental note. Ask Scott about lacrosse.

“Yeah, well...,” Scott is saying, “Beacon Hills is like – I don’t know, I mean, you heard Lydia, it’s one of a couple of dozen magic towns around the world. You’d have to ask Lydia for the exact numbers though. She’s doesn’t look like it but she’s kind of a nerd.”

Stiles lets out a snorting laugh. He can’t think of any single person who looks less like a nerd than Lydia Martin.

“And what does that have to do with Mrs. Allen?”

“Right,” Scott says eagerly. He seems to really enjoy being listened to. Stiles suspects that that doesn’t happen too often and he wonders why. Scott is a really cool guy.

The fact that he doesn’t want to join the rest of the school in trying to tear apart Derek Hale couldn’t possibly be the reason.

Or could it?

Is that – a supernatural thing maybe, like a law that Stiles doesn’t know about yet?

“So there’s only one alpha in California.”

Stiles nods, yeah.

Yeah, he got that.

“Derek Hale.”

“Exactly, Derek Hale. There’s like fifteen or so more in the U.S. and probably a couple of hundred all around the globe. I don’t really know, again, you’d have to ask someone else for the numbers.”

“Right,” Stiles says.

“And Lydia has been crushing on Derek for years. Most girls probably have, to tell you the truth.” And his face darkens a little.

“Can’t blame them,” Stiles mutters and Scott sighs.

“Yeah, well... the love life for a beta werewolf in a town with an alpha is pretty tough. It’s like a natural power thing. Every supernatural creature feels instinctively drawn to that kind of power. And then, Derek just...”

“...looks the way he does,” Stiles finishes his sentence.

“Yeah,” Scott says, grinning at Stiles. “Every other alpha I’ve ever seen just looks like a hobo who works out 24/7, but Derek – yeah. You should hear the way people are talking about him, like he’s some sort of God. But if you ask me, I don’t know. That leather jacket is kind of douchy, don’t you think?”

Stiles shrugs.

Douchy isn’t really the word that comes to his mind when he pictures Derek Hale in his leather jacket. More like drop-dead gorgeous.

Scott doesn’t sound jealous either, the way he said it. More matter-of-factly, really.

Like he’s the only person around who is inexplicably immune to the charms of Derek Hale, alpha.

When Stiles flicks his eyes over to Scott, Scott is lifting his eyebrows at him and Stiles quickly says, “Yeah. Douchy. Totally,” and clears his throat.

“So back to your question. The reason why Jackson really insulted Lydia when he mentioned Mrs. Allen is a little complicated to explain – it has to do with werewolf mating rites and I guess that would be kind of – too much for a virgin of the supernatural like you.”

He’s grinning at Stiles and Stiles has to laugh.

“Please don’t call me that.”

“Alright, Bilinski,” Scott says and Stiles nudges his shoulder in mock-outrage.

Yeah, this really is a good day.

An extremely strange day, too.

But a good one, nonetheless.

“But the thing is, if an alpha werewolf were to pick a mate, er – a mate is a partner, basically, a partner for life, not necessarily in a sexual way – so if an alpha were to mate, he’d probably rather pick a beta werewolf than a banshee because they’re more alike. And rather than a beta, he or she would probably pick a spark. For tactical reasons, you know.”

“Spark?”

Where has he heard that term before?

He feels like it was very recently, too.

But that can’t be possible.

He has only known about the supernatural since after fourth period.

“No matter what Lydia says about which supernatural creatures are the rarest – everyone knows that it’s sparks.”

“And Mrs. Allen is one?”

Scott nods.

“And so is my boss, Dr. Deaton,” he adds, proudly. “He’s the vet at the animal clinic of Beacon Hills. I work there in the evenings.”

“Cool. So you work with animals?”

Scott nods his head.

“Yeah. I always wanted a dog but my mom thinks it’s too much work since, you know. We basically already have a dog problem,” he says, grinning again. “And when I wanted to get a bike, I started at the clinic. And it’s a really cool job, too, Dr. Deaton’s the best.”

Stiles nods. “Cool. Sounds cool.” And, a little guiltily because he should clearly ask Scott about his mom, about his job and all, but is so curious about this new world that he feels like he might explode if he can’t get anything else out of Scott, “Who are the other sparks? Are there some at school?”

And he lets his eyes wander about the schoolyard and over the scattered groups of teenagers camping out in the sun, eyeing them expectantly as if any one of them might just jump up and yell, I’m a spark!, any second.

“No, I told you, sparks are rare. Incredibly rare, not like, banshee-rare. There’s only two sparks in all of North America – at least from what we know – and both live in Beacon Hills, and that’s Dr. Deaton and Mrs. Allen. Sparks are the only creatures that can, like, single-handedly, defeat alpha werewolves, you know, and basically anything else. They have all kinds of powers but without the anger issues of werewolves. And to mate a spark is like – the ultimate power boost. Like marrying into the royal family. Even if you're not an alpha - okay, maybe even especially if you're not an alpha but weaker - that would be a huge thing.”

“So if Derek – mated with a spark...,” Stiles starts, and he tilts his head a little to the side like he’s thinking, trying to get accommodated to this new language, “He’d become even stronger? But – Mrs. Allen must be like – a hundred!”

Scott snorts out a laugh.

“Yeah, funny idea, isn’t it? But, you know, hypothetically... I know for a fact that she still gets a lot of offers from all kinds of supernatural creatures. An alpha from Brazil once sent her a box filled with tarantulas.”

“What? He did what? An alpha from – Brazil?”

“Yeah, because, you know, there’s this prejudice that sparks throw all sorts of creepy crawly things into the potions they’re brewing. He probably just figured, Hey, she could use a few of those...”

“So they’re basically witches.”

“Not really,” Scott says, “but, as I said, there’s a lot of prejudices about sparks and the right ways to, like, court them. I guess that is because most supernatural creatures have never even seen one. Whenever someone’s spark powers start showing, they like... go down in history. In supernatural history, anyway.”

“Did Derek – court Mrs. Allen, too?”

At this, Scott actually throws his head back and lets out a roaring laugh that makes him almost fall over.

“God, Stiles... No. Totally and absolutely, no. Really, definitely not. And Dr. Deaton isn’t the kind of mate I could picture with Derek either.”

“Because he’s a guy.”

“What? No! That doesn’t really matter in - our world. More because Deaton’s a loner. And a really wise man. I couldn’t picture him with a hothead who beats dozens of people into a pulp of flesh every day.”

Scott is wiping away tears of laughter now, has calmed down again a little bit but he’s still chuckling.

“Tss, Derek and Mrs. Allan... ha, what an idea. No, and about Dr. Deaton, you’d know once you’ve seen them together. Whenever Derek shows up at the animal clinic he gets really mad because he can’t make Dr. Deaton just give him a lotion or cast a spell. Dr. Deaton and Mrs. Allen are the only people who don’t cater to Derek Hale’s every whim.”

“Cast a spell?!,” Stiles repeats breathlessly but Scott says, loudly, “What is it, Erica?” and Stiles stops and stares at him.

“I – I’m Stiles. Remember?”

Scott laughs and shakes his head.

“He was talking to me,” a low voice is saying and Stiles turns around. A very pretty girl in black high heels and a leather miniskirt is leaning against the tree trunk behind them. She has long, wavy blond hair, smoky eyes and, there’s just no other word for it, looks totally badass.

Stiles hasn’t even heard her coming but, apparently, Scott knew she was there all along.

“Erica Reyes,” she says, leans over and extends her hand. Stiles stares down at her blood red nail polish and then, hesitantly, shakes her hand and when she closes her fingers around his an odd image shoots into his head, of a mouse trapped between the paws of a big black cat.

“So, you’re the new kid.”

Stiles nods.

“Stilinski’s son?”

Another nod.

“What do you want?” Scott says testily as if he knows from experience that Erica strutting over usually means something unpleasant is about to happen.

“I heard you talking about my boss all across the school yard so I thought... I should throw in a few words on his behalf.”

She lifts her eyebrows and it’s a completely different kind of haughty than when Lydia Martin does it. Lydia is adorable, no matter how arrogantly she flicks her hair back over her shoulder. Erica Reyes, in contrast... seems dangerous. Powerful and deadly. She’s the second most predatory looking person Stiles has ever seen, superseded only by Derek Hale.

“Yeah, right. Because you care so much about anything anyone’s thinking,” Scott says sarcastically and Stiles can’t help but admire his courage. He’s pretty sure that even a thistle would wither away under the nasty look Erica is giving him right now.

“Come on, Stiles, let’s go in. The next period starts in five minutes.”

They just leave Erica standing under the tree and glowering at their backs which is, if you ask Stiles, an incredibly uncomfortable feeling, and hurry back to the building because five minutes isn’t really that much.

“By the way,” Scott says when he’s holding the door open for Stiles to slip inside, “most supernatural creatures also have supernatural hearing so – if there’s anything you’d like to keep private, just don’t mention it anywhere near school.”

“How was school?” is the first thing his father says when Stiles pushes the front door closed.

Stiles drops his backpack onto the floor and glares.

“How was school?!”

“Yeah,” his father responds. “How was school? Did you make any friends yet?”

“Do you mean among the werewolves or among the windiigos?!”

“Windiigos? These guys give me the creeps... er, I mean. What?”

“Yeah, drop the act. So you knew about this. All of it?”

He looks at his father with a piercing gaze as if he’s trying to stare a hole into his head and John Stilinski sighs.

“I’m the sheriff of this place, have been for eight years now and working here for all my life before that. Your mom was born here, you know? In the Beacon Hills hospital and when I met her, I came to live with her here. So what do you think, Stiles? Being called to break up an act of domestic violence and then finding a windiigo on the kitchen floor who has accidentally swallowed half his mother is something that can’t easily be un-seen... so what would you say? Do you think there’s a chance that I couldn’t have caught on to the blatant supernaturalness of this town within my first week on duty here? My deputy is a hellhound, for God’s sake.”

“You’re not the one who’s allowed to throw rhetorical questions around here,” Stiles hisses, deciding to ignore the fact that he really wants to yell, A hellhound?! A literal hound out of hell?!

“So you knew that this town is a goddamn freak show and you just thought, ‘Oh, let Stiles just find out for himself, oh, he’s going to have so much fun.’”

His father considers at him for a moment.

“I’m sorry, son. Quite frankly, I didn’t think you’d believe a single word I could have said. Are you very mad at me?”

Stiles snorts out a breath and flops down on the sofa.

“No...,” he says after a moment, “No, I’m not.”

His father sits down next to him, an earnest expression on his face.

“Are you scared? You can tell me, son. There’s another school in this town with a lesser percentage of supernatural students, we could-”

“It’s fine,” Stiles says quickly. “I – I was just – really freaking surprised, is all...”

More like, shocked out of his mind.

His father smiles. He’s fingering what looks like one of the silly rubber fish, and Stiles watches for a few seconds as his dad lets its eyes well out and get sucked back in again, out and in. Out and in. It’s sort of a soothing thing to watch.

“So there’s werewolves...”

“All kinds of weres actually. Werewolves are only the most common because they are the strongest. Pretty tough to deal with, I can tell you. 35% of Beacon Hills’ population are werewolves. But there’s also were-coyotes, were-cats, were-bears. I even met a were-squirrel once. Polite little guy but really annoying to talk to.”

“Wow...”

“So... what do you think?”

“...It’s... it’s actually pretty cool,” Stiles admits and his dad’s smile widens.

“That’s my son.”

“Yeah, yeah...,” Stiles says and jumps up from the sofa. The man is his dad but they’re not really that close yet. Sure, they’ve talked on the phone every week but Stiles has only ever seen him about twice a year. And there was a time when he had – resented him for basically dumping him at his grandma’s four weeks after his mom had died.

His dad had moved back to Beacon Hills, his deceased wife’s hometown to be closer to her memories and Stiles – had had to come to terms with the loss of two of his parents.

So yeah.

He’d need some time to get accustomed to his dad, all this supernatural craziness aside, so he just averts his eyes from his dad’s smiling face and goes, “What’s for dinner?”

Like a real teenager.

“Salmon,” his dad says and gets up as well, “but I still have to fry it and maybe peel a few potatoes...”

“Cool,” Stiles says following his dad into the kitchen, “and what’s with you and seafood anyway?”

***

When Stiles is drawing close to Mrs. Allen’s the next morning on his way to school, the old lady herself is crouching on the sidewalk, a bucket with plaster next to her.

Oh, great, Stiles is thinking. He is tired because that was the second night he couldn’t really sleep. There were too many things whirling around in his head, so he got up again at 2a.m. and started scribbling everything he remembered from his conversation with Scott down, hoping that having it all written out would finally put his mind to ease.

So he’s tired and somehow has the strong feeling that the old lady will not let him pass without a snide comment. Plus, now that he knows that Mrs. Allen is some kind of witch and literally one of two people in this whole town, the whole world even, stronger than Derek Hale he’d rather not hover.

“Good morning,” Stiles says politely and walks a little faster.

But, of course, it’s pointless.

Mrs. Allen lets her head snap up from the wall she’d been working on, flicks her eyes over to him and yells, “Hey, Stilinski!”

Stiles freezes and turns around very slowly like the girl in a horror movie who just realized that the monster has been behind her all along.

Mrs. Allen has picked herself up from the ground and is rubbing the fabric of her ugly flower patterned apron over the lenses of her big glasses. Apparently deeming them clean enough after a few seconds she shoves them back into her face and starts scrutinizing Stiles who can’t shake the image of the big bad wolf eyeing him and snarling, So I better can see!

“I know your father,” she says in her harsh tone. If Stiles didn’t know any better he would say that she is related to Coach Finstock, the way she’s bossing people around constantly and yelling at everyone.

“Has a windiigo devoured your vocal chords?”

Stiles quickly shakes his head, then goes, “No. Ma’am. No, ma’am. Er... fixing your wall?”

She harrumphs and flicks her eyes over to the spots of fresh plaster and Stiles has to admit that she did a pretty good job.

“Fourth time in two months. You would think Derek Hale would have learned to defeat these clowns without having to make such a mess every time by now.”

 She looks Stiles up and down.

“Where you going at 7:30 in the morning?”

“School,” Stiles mutters and when she narrows her eyes, quickly adds, “Ma’am.”

“Don’t you have a car like all the other spoiled teenagers? You would think that at least the supernatural kids would be walking what with their superhuman strength and speed and all, but no. Brats, all of them.”

Then she stares Stiles down, brow furrowed which, for some reason, makes Stiles think of a thunderstorm. She’s obviously expecting an answer.

Stiles clears his throat, says, “Y-yes. I do have a car, er... a Jeep. I drove to school yesterday but today it wouldn’t start, er... It’s pretty old, too, and I can’t get it to work half of the time, so...”

“The engine wouldn’t start and so you have to walk?”

“It’s not that far. I can get to school within 20 minutes or so. 15 if I run a little. At least, that’s what my dad said.”

Mrs. Allen looks him up and down for a few more seconds, then she nods and barks, “Off you go!”

Lovely.

Really lovely.

Ten minutes later, Stiles can see the school building and the crowd of students gathered in front and thinks, gloomily, ‘Great, now everyone sees the new kid walking here, because I own the literally biggest piece of shit Jeep on the surface of the planet...’

“Stiles!”

Stiles turns and sees Scott wobbling in his direction on what looks like his great-grandmother’s bike. He gives Scott a wide smile and Scott is beaming back at him.

“Did you walk here?”

Stiles nods his head up and down.

“Yeah, piece of shit Jeep wouldn’t start. Once again. There’s always like a fifty-fifty chance that it will, so I’m usually more or less prepared to walk...” He takes a deep sigh.

“At least you have a car,” Scott says with a friendly smile and Stiles immediately feels a pang of guilt.

Maybe Mrs. Allen was on to something.

Maybe he is spoiled.

They walk over to the bike rack and Scott crams his bike in between two others that look a lot nicer and newer.

When Scott is turning away and starting towards the school building, Stiles says, “Aren’t you going to lock it?”

Scott lifts his eyebrows.

“At a school where like 40% of the pupils have fangs and consider a chain and a lock some sort of a challenge? Not really, man.... besides, even a four-year-old werewolf could pop anything I could ever put onto this thing and I mean, look at it... I highly doubt mine would be the first bike anyone would take...”

“Ok, I get it.”

Scott gives him another one of his friendly and wide-open smiles and says, “Have you digested the whole the supernatural exists thing yet?”

“Not sure, man... when I woke up this morning I was dead certain I dreamed the whole thing for like five minutes... then I packed my bag for today and – our book for biology is called The Bestiary? I mean, seriously? Does this school have like a different curriculum?”

Scott shrugs.

“I don’t really know but I guess – most of the stuff is, like, pretty regular. But in Chemistry we’re looking at kanima venom right now. And, you know, draw the ts-molecule and stuff... but since we didn’t have Chemistry yesterday, I guess you wouldn’t know...”

“What molecule?”

“Oh, something this one dude, F. Hopper Argent, discovered in the 50s or something, and that’s the reason for the paralyzing effect of kanima venom, er – I really don’t know, I studied really hard for the last exam but I suck at school. I got like the worst grades.”

“What’s a kan - ah, wait a second. Argent...,” Stiles is saying slowly as they start walking towards the school. “That name kind of rings a bell...”

“Yeah, it should. Half of our school books were written by Argents. And our principal is one, too. Gerard Argent.”

“Right,” Stiles says as recognition hits him. “The Bestiary, volume 3, by John E. M. Argent.”

Scott nods and shrugs, “Probably. Sounds right. I never really looked at the name, I guess. But the Argents are an old hunter clan – you know, humans who have studied the supernatural for centuries and know a lot about it and, occasionally also have to keep it in check. There’s a lot of Argents in the police force, too. I think outside of Beacon Hills, they still hunt down and kill werewolves...”

“Kill? And... wait, the principal? That dude in flip-flops?”

Scott nods his head.

“And Hawaiian shirt, yeah. He’s sort of... a little crazy...”

“Figured,” Stiles says.

Suddenly, Stiles is being shoved out of the way with such force that he stumbles backwards and lands on his ass. There’s a snicker from a group of boys. Stiles recognizes Jackson who, haughty smile on his lips, is saying, “Move, Bilinski.”

“Fuck off, Jackson,” Scott snarls and extends his hand to help Stiles up again.

“You okay?”

Stiles nods, dusts off his pants and picks his bag up from the ground. When he lifts his head to look at Scott though, Scott’s eyes aren’t brown anymore.

They’re blazing yellow, gold even, and his mouth is full of white and very sharp looking canines, and Stiles – he just jumps, he can’t help it. And swallows.

Just – just how weird is that?

Seeing Scott so – Scott who has probably the nicest smile in the whole school looking so – feral, there’s no other word for it. Yeah, it creeps him out.

At least, Stiles is a hundred percent certain now that Scott has been telling the truth.

Not that he’d really doubted him before but, you know – this is just too crazy to immediately believe without at least the tiniest flicker of a doubt.

Scott is staring at Jackson and what Stiles mistook for the low sound of an approaching car is really coming out of Scott’s mouth.

Stiles swallows again but Jackson’s smirk becomes just a tinge more condescending, his look even more icy.

“McCall, always the loudmouth. But everyone knows you’d never fight me – because you can’t. Filthy omega.”

Stiles can see that Scott is panting and working his jaws – and are those claws? And protruding over his lips like the most authentic alloween prosthetics Stiles has ever seen - fangs?

Yep, most definitely, claws, fangs, the whole package – and he thinks Jackson must be crazy to assume Scott wouldn’t try and punch that smug grin out of his stupid face so he jumps to his feet and, hesitantly and, admittedly, a little scared, touches Scott’s shoulder.

“Scott... he’s not worth it.”

“Listen to your sissy human friend,” Jackson says and Stiles is surprised at how he manages to look even more arrogant now.

Scott was completely right.

Jackson really is a dickhead.

Judging from the vein that is pulsating dangerously on Scott’s throat Stiles thinks that Scott might really have hurled himself at Jackson and his gang if a fancy black sports car hadn’t just pulled to the side of the road a few few away from where they're standing. Stiles hears a car door slam and the whole crowd in front of the school fall silent for a split second, like they’re one enormous creature inhaling, getting ready for the leap.

“Out of my way, McCall. Hale is here,” Jackson says and lets his canines drop out of his mouth and this time – this time, Stiles saw it clearly, the whole thing.

The white shards really legitimately shot out of his gums, in front of his human row of teeth. Stiles is swaying a little and there’s this feeling of weakness, of instability, in his knees, like someone swapped the bones with rubber all of a sudden.

Wow.

That’s just.

Wow.

Holy shit.

While he’s still wondering how long it will take for him to be able to watch a werewolf transform in front of his very eyes without having shudders run down his spine, Scott retracts his claws and fangs again and it takes just a second, like a click and then they’re gone, and his eyes literally extinguish, like someone dumped a bucket of water over the torch behind his eyeballs and the fire just goes out.

Stiles' heart is beating, just from seeing all of this happen close-up, and knowing what it means, too.

That it's real.

Holy shit, it really is real, true.

“Yeah, right, jackass” Scott is saying now and even though he’s back to human, it comes out with a snarl, a low growl, “Better hurry because you definitely have a shot today...,” and his voice is all but dripping with sarcasm and Jackson lets his eyes flare up bright yellow at him – his color seems to be a shade lighter than Scott’s anyway, is that possible? – and is working his jaw for a moment, but then pivots on his heel all of a sudden.

Stiles blinks and Jackson is already halfway there, dashing in the direction of Derek’s sports, to the place where the man – the alpha – himself must be standing, or, squatting, already drowning in heaps of limbs and sports equipment.

Stiles is almost certain he saw a badminton racket stick up from the sea of heads and claws.

“Why does Derek even come here every morning when this is what happens as soon as he shows up?” Stiles says. They stand back and let the roaring and hollering hordes of students stampede past them.

Scott shrugs, “Mh, I don’t really know for sure but... just think about it – if Derek didn’t come here all these guys and girls would still want their shot at defeating the alpha. And if I were him, I’d rather get it over with within a few minutes every morning than have these morons literally jump at me in the grocery store or at the gas station.”

“Right,” Stiles nods. “Makes sense.”

They watch in silence for a few moments as Derek knocks the first ten students down without even blinking or moving around much, just smacks them unconscious single-handedly. Then, when Jackson and his crew come running at him – three of them wielding lacrosse sticks – he ducks down and his eyes flash red and Stiles swallows. Derek exudes vibes of power so strong that Stiles wonders what that must be like for the betas when even he as a human can sense it. Because for a wolf to have the superior creature of your species, your boss, practically, go feral is probably some tough shit, right?

And indeed, he can see a bunch of younger looking kids pale and hesitate. A couple of them turn around and walk back to the school building, shoulders pulled up to their ears, looking all ashamed and meek, and Stiles thinks he can practically see the tail between their legs.

“Mh, he’s taking longer today than usual,” a girl who has been walking up to them is saying with a look at her cellphone and Stiles is surprised to see Scott’s cheeks redden almost immediately.

“H-hi Allison,” he stutters and the girl gives him a sweet smile. She’s really pretty, with long brown hair and dimples in her cheeks.

Why does almost everyone in this school look like a freaking celebrity? Is Stiles the only awkward kid who’s not drop dead gorgeous?

Well, he and the windiigo boy, obviously. Even though - come to think of it, the kid had had sort of a delicate beauty about him. Pale and frail looking but pretty, somehow, with regular features.

Despite his messy hair, Scott is handsome as well with broad shoulders and it’s obvious that he’s ripped, even though the brown sweater he’s wearing today is even more hideous than the grey sweater from the day before.

The girl extends her hand in Stiles’ direction and Stiles shakes it.

“Allison Argent,” she says and Stiles answers, “Stiles Stilinski.”

“Nice to meet you,” Allison says and Stiles frowns. “Argent...?”

“Yeah, the principal is my grandfather,” Allison says, grimaces like well, you got me there, and laughs nervously. “And I apologize in advance for everything.”

“For... everything...?” Stiles repeats, astonished. Yeah, the old guy looks funny but what could she possibly have to apologize for?

“He has his – moods,” Scott says now and he’s grinning but his cheeks are still pink.

It’s an odd sight, considering that not even Erica Reyes seemed to have been able to impress him yesterday. Stiles was beginning to think that Scott was the real badass around here, but right now, he looks definitely less than cool, more like the awkward teenager who’s fidgeting around nervously in front of his crush, cannot form coherent sentences and tries so obviously to no look at her rack, or her hips, that it’s almost funny to watch. He’s keeping his eyes glued to what must be Allison’s left ear now, and Stiles wants to smack him. It’s like he can literally feel Scott cringe on the inside, going, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid!

Boy, this is painful to watch.

“But it would be really boring otherwise, right?” Scott finally offers and looks relieved to have gotten out a full sentence.

 “Yeah, but would it really...,” Allison says as she’s watching Derek take on four guys with baseball bats.

“When did you move here, Stiles?”

“Sunday,” Stiles says and jumps when Derek slams Jackson onto the asphalt.

“Sweet Jesus...”

That was an awful crack, like nauseating, but the others aren’t even listening.

Allison has turned to face him, looking honestly interested, her big brown eyes like marbles, and Stiles thinks they make her look warm, somehow, and soft. Like velvet.

“From...?”

“Los Angeles,” Stiles says and Allison nods.

“I can imagine that all of this must be a bit overwhelming.”

“That’s an understatement,” Stiles mutters as he watches Jackson pick himself up from the ground, literally drenched in his own blood. It’s a miracle that he’s even standing right now, and, judging from the look on his face, that’s exactly what he’s thinking, too.

“Jackson just never knows when he’s had enough,” Allison says who has followed Stiles’ gaze, shaking her head because Jackson takes another run at Derek and Derek grips him by his shirt and slams him onto the ground once again in one smooth, elegant movement and Jackson hits the asphalt with another most unhealthy noise.

“Just look at his clothes, Lydia will be furious...”

“So, Allison,” Scott blurts out like it took him all this time to think of something to say, “How was your weekend?”

“Oh, really nice. Went to see a movie with Lydia and Jackson. The two weren’t talking but other than that... but you asked me that yesterday already. Remember? When you wanted to know what I had to eat and what to drink and whether I thought the seats were really comfortable, but not for longer than one and a half hours tops?”

Scott blushes more deeply than Stiles would have thought possible at this moment, his mouth agape like these were exactly the questions he’d meant to ask and Allison had just pulled them out of his head leaving behind a miserable emptiness.

“What kind of movie?” Stiles says quickly, thinking that Scott probably couldn’t be trusted to say anything during the next minute or two.

“New Tarantino,” Allison says, “I forget the name... er...”

Apparently Scott has recovered enough because he says, “Tarantino? Neat. I like Tarantino.”

“I think Tarantino is overrated,” Allison says.

“No, totally. Totally overrated, you’re right.”

She lifts her eyebrows at Scott and Stiles has to scrape together every last shred of self-control to not crack up at the stupid expression on Scott’s face.

He’s really sorry for him, too, because he knows Scott can’t help it. Stiles is exactly the same way around someone he has a serious crush on and with him, a crush is always serious. So yeah, he’s really feeling Scott’s pain right now.

“Uh, Lydia looks mad,” Allison says who just spotted the red-haired girl under a tree next to the big double doors. She’s leaning against the trunk watching the last of the fight and yes, even from here Stiles can see that she’s fuming.

“I better run. Calm her down before she can tear poor Jackson to shreds. Uhm. Those parts of him that are still whole, I mean. See you around Scott. Nice to meet you Stiles.” She waves at them and hurries away in Lydia’s direction.

“You’re drooling, man,” Stiles says with a grin and Scott quickly shuts his mouth. “And ‘poor Jackson’? I think I never met a bigger dickhead. And I’ve had to deal with a lot of dickheads...”

“Yeah, well... Allison’s Lydia best friend, so... I guess she has to say that about Jackson.”

“Or,” a sharp voice is saying behind them, “Argent’s just as dumb as the rest of them and she just doesn’t see it.”

Erica Reyes is chewing on a pink bubble gum. She’s wearing 6-inch-heels and a super short dress that pushes up her cleavage in a way that makes Stiles wonder how she can still breathe.

She’s really all legs and hair and boobs.

“Well, she must be, if she hasn’t caught on to your pathetic offers of puppy love yet, McCall.”

Scott flicks his eyes over to Erica, cheeks still red and apparently at a loss for words.

Erica snickers. “What, you thought it wasn’t obvious, even for a human like Allison Argent? God, McCall...”

She pulls a thread of pink gum out of her mouth and starts twirling it around her index finger.

“Stop that, that’s disgusting.”

Someone smacks Erica across the head and Stiles’ jaw drops.

How the hell did he get here so fast, and why is he even here and – just – what the hell?

It’s Derek Hale.

Erica shoots him a peevish glance but stuffs the gum back into her mouth immediately.

Stiles stares at him with wide eyes.

He really didn’t see Derek walk across the school yard but apparently being super sneaky is a werewolf thing.

And how come Derek just fought off about fifty people with claws and fangs and still looks like he fell right out of a Vogue cover? There isn’t even so much as one drop of blood on his shirt. Apparently, Scott was right – none of the teenagers and occasional teacher here seem to be a real match for him.

Derek meets Stiles’ wide-eyed gaze and when he lifts his eyebrows, Stiles quickly averts his eyes. He tries to think of something to say but can’t come up with anything and in his mind he can see himself blush and staring ahead stupidly, exactly the same way Scott had done a minute ago.

See?

Stiles is exactly the same way and he doesn’t even have to be legitimately in love for it. Someone as handsome as this dude’s already doing the trick. Derek’s ridiculously good looks suffice to unsettle him deeply and then there’s the alpha-werewolf thing and all.

“Stiles, right?” Derek says and Stiles just nods his head up and down. “And you are Scott McCall.”

“Yup,” Scott says, very obviously considerably less impressed by Derek than Stiles which doesn’t go unnoticed because Derek says, “Looking for someone?”

Scott goes, “Mh? No,” and Stiles can’t suppress a smile. Of course Scott was looking over to where Allison and Lydia are talking to Jackson who is wiping the blood off his face. Just like the day before. Stiles wonders whether he always brings a set of spare clothes. He probably does. Jackson looks like a guy who pretends to be all spontaneous and chill but then really likes being prepared.

“How come Jackson looks worse than the others?” he blurts out, then blushes. It’s probably something blatantly obvious to werewolves and he’s just being stupid again.

“I told you, Jackson really wants to win,” Scott says, and then snorts, shaking his head. “Idiot.”

Derek flicks his eyes over to Scott with something like – surprise? – on his face.

“Stiles, we should really get going... first period is Econ again, and you do not want to be late for Finstock’s class... that reminds me, if you want to try out for the team, Coach said tomorrow would be good...”

Scott already turned around and Stiles can’t help but admire him for his nonchalance when everyone else is throwing Derek secret glances. Especially the younger kids seem to be having a hard time to even speak as long as he’s in hearing range.

“Bye,” Stiles says to Derek who responds, “Say hi to your dad. Erica, you should get going, too. No, don’t argue with me,” because she opened her mouth to respond, “You spent more time in detention than in school last week, so get a grip already. You’re being childish.”

Erica lets out a long drawn sigh but turns around and follows Scott and Stiles into the building but not without muttering complaints under her breath. Rather than turning the corner with them in the direction of the classrooms though, she vanishes in the ladies’ room and as soon as he hears the door swing shut behind her Stiles whispers, “I still don’t get the whole alpha thing, I mean – is Erica like his daughter, or something?”

Scott lets out a laugh. “No, Derek’s far too young for that, he must be like – 27 maybe? Don’t know... but pack is very much like family and to have an alpha in your pack – makes you stronger and alphas are natural providers, it’s in their blood to look out for their pack. Protect it, you know? They’d even, like, sacrifice their life for them. But then most packs are beta-packs – for obvious reasons.”

“Because there’s only two people in Derek’s pack and he’s the only alpha here?”

“Exactly.”

“So why doesn’t Derek pick more werewolves to be in his pack? I mean – didn’t you say Jackson is trying to get in or something?”

Scott nods. They stopped in front of the lockers and Scott is taking out his books for the day while trying to keep the junk in there from spilling onto the floor. Stiles’ locker is still empty, so he just stands there waiting, and looking expectantly at Scott.

“Jackson would just love to be the boss of this town, so he really wants to be alpha but, realistically... you know, getting into the Hale pack would also be a big step for him in terms of status, I guess... so I think he really tries to impress Derek.”

“How long has he been doing that?”

“Literally, always, from what I know...”

Stiles stares at him.

“Isn’t he sick of getting his nose busted almost every day?”

Scott shrugs.

“I told you. He’s a moron. And so are the others. Completely delusional if they think they can get Derek to acknowledge them this way. You wouldn’t believe the elaborate plans some people come up with...”

“So – how do you become a member of Derek’s pack?”

Scott shrugs again and slams his locker closed.

“No idea, really... Derek had been without a pack for years – except for his family, of course, I guess they’re his pack, too... you know, his mother and sisters and their kids. And then, last year, he picked Erica and Isaac and turned them and – it was kind of a scandal, really. Wolves are rarely bitten, most of them are born and no one understood why Derek would rather turn humans – and total outsiders, too, you should have seen Erica before – than pick one of the born wolves. And Derek Hale could have picked literally anyone, and not just from Beacon Hills. Anyone.”

“What’s wrong with someone who got bitten?”

Scott sighs.

“Nothing of course – people are just stupid. There’s a lot of prejudice against bitten wolves... like, they’re instincts aren’t as good and they’re not as strong and harder to teach and all... and looking at Erica and Isaac sometimes you might even think there’s some truth to that... there isn’t of course. It’s total bullshit.”

There is a pause when Allison Argent and Lydia Martin pass them by on their way to the Econ classroom and Allison smiles at Scott. Stiles watches Scott’s serious expression just fly out the window and get replaced with a goofy smile.

Still, he thinks, maybe Scott’s chances aren't so bad – Allison seems to like him and it’s like Erica said, she can’t really be oblivious to the fact that Scott has a huge crush on her.

Stiles can see Lydia give Scott an annoyed frown, as if wanting to say, You’re not even good enough to look at her. As if providing him with a reason for her condescending look, her eyes demonstratively drop down to his awful sweater, the saggy brown pants, then to his worn sneakers that are more grey than white even though someone clearly cleaned them carefully because they’re otherwise spotless.

Then, when the two girls have vanished into the crowd of students and Scott seems lost in thought and uneager to speak, Stiles lets his gaze wander and catches sight of a boy staring at him.

It’s the pale windiigo kid.

The one who had been staring at him the day before in the cafeteria.

Right now, he is looking so hard into Stiles’ eyes as if he were trying to talk to him telepathically.

“Er... Scott?”

“Mh?”

“What did you say it is that windiigos eat?”

“You don’t wanna know, man. Especially not before Biology. Come one, I think Finstock just locked his office and it sounded angrier than usual.”

The windiigo kid gives Stiles a gloomy look and vanishes into the classroom behind him.

Stiles thinks he already knew what windiigos ate – what they are, really – even before his first biology lesson with Mr. Harris who distributes a graphic of the human heart and then explains the parts to them as if he were talking about a four-star-menu.

And, needless to say, Mr. Harris is a windiigo.

Stiles already knows before he even flopped into his seat next to Scott at the back of the classroom. There is just this eerie similarity in looks and demeanor to the windiigo kid Stiles just saw out in the hall.

But he very much doubts the boy could be as creepy because then the period starts, and, with it, starts Mr. Harris' lecture on human anatomy and even though his voice is barely more than a soft whisper, it seems to reverberate off the plastic skeleton, and desks, the students themselves and off the very walls that are covered in blown-up sketches of inner organs.

“The heart is a muscle that pumps... blood through the human body – if you listen closely enough you can hear its – moist beat right now. Mmmh...oist. Such a delicate sound... werewolf hearts... on the other hand, are bigger... and stronger and more – adaptable than human hearts and their sound is – less moist and more – like taking a bite from an apple. Crunch-crunch... crunch-crunch... Listen closely, wolves – listen to the difference...”

Biology is soon turning out to be the creepiest class on Stiles’ schedule – and he’d had a teacher back in L.A. who would constantly unbutton her sweat-drenched blouse in front of students. Stiles is evidently not the only one who is feeling that way. The whole class, even Jackson and Lydia are making a point of staring down at their notes and trying hard not to meet Mr. Harris’ gaze, not even when he calls their names to answer a question.

“Who can tell me the name of this part...,” he says with this thin voice of his that so much fits his pale exterior. Stiles is wondering whether all windiigos are translucent when Mr. Harris says, slowly, “Stilinski....” and Stiles jerks his head up, so fast that he can hear something click in his neck and he blushes.

“Yes?”

And he meets Mr. Harris’ gaze.

Big mistake, of course, and he doesn’t need Scott kicking him in the shin under the table to know it.

“The new kid... your dad is- the sheriff of course. Let’s see how much you know about the difference between human and werewolf physiognomy...”

Nothing, Stiles wants to yell. Diddly-squat.

But he just shifts in his seat uncomfortably, waiting for the question to hit him.

“When a werewolf assumes his beta-form... what happens to the heart throughout the process?”

Stiles can’t find it in him to avert his eyes.

“I – don’t know.”

“When the chest transforms and widens, the werewolf heart pushes out a third ventricle to be able to – deal with the additional amount of blood... that is needed to supply the growing muscle mass in the whole body and – ensure an instantaneous shift... It’s the most – powerful organ known to us today, more powerful than the lung of a nymph or the jaw muscles of a ghoul. A true – miracle, if you will...”

A soft and very disgusting smile is playing around his lips as if he were talking about his favorite pet and describing the special sauce he intends to put over its deep-fried little body at the end of the day and a shudder runs through the room. Stiles thinks he can see Scott swallow out of the corner of his eyes. Behind Mr. Harris’ back, Jackson who is sitting next to Lydia, has scrunched up his nose, clearly repulsed by his words.

“And,” Mr. Harris continues, “How much blood does a – male werewolf body contain... on average in comparison to a human male adult. Stilinski?”

“No idea, Sir,” Stiles mutters and wonders whether it would be more or less unsettling to be interrogated by Count Dracula himself right now.

“Didn’t deem it... necessary to borrow last week’s notes from McCall, mh...” Mr. Harris whispers and screws his index finger in Scott’s direction.

“S-sorry, Sir,” Stiles mumbles, heart pounding in his chest, uncomfortably aware of the fact that Mr. Harris can probably hear its ‘deliciously moist beat,’ let alone all the werewolves in the room. He can see Allison throw him a pitiful look from behind Mr. Harris’ back and mouthing a number that is probably the correct answer but, lacking the werewolf super hearing, Stiles has no fucking clue what she’s trying to say.

“On a second thought, don’t borrow McCall’s notes, if you ever – intend to learn anything -,” Mr. Harris starts anew but stops dead when Stiles’ open biology book flutters off the table and lands with a rustle on the ground in front of his feet. Stiles is staring at Mr. Harris who flicks his eyes to the floor and then up to Stiles’ face. All the other heads turn to look at him in surprise, probably thinking that Stiles just chucked the book at their teacher. Or wiped it off the table with an accidental jerk of his arm.

But whatever just happened – he definitely didn’t touch it.

“Class... dismissed,” Mr. Harris says in his low whisper, still staring a hole into Stiles’ head as if he very much wished to crack his skull open and take a closer look at his brain.

“Class dismissed,” Allison mocks a minute later, imitating Mr. Harris’ breathy whisper. “You ok, Stiles?”

“Yeah, thanks... Do all windiigos look like vampires?” Stiles mutters and throws a nervous look over his shoulder and indeed. Harris is standing in front of his classroom and if Stiles didn’t know any better he’d say that he is following them with his eyes.

Can probably hear them, too.

“Somehow – yeah, they do,” Scott says and Allison gives Stiles an empathic smile. “But it was pretty daring to throw your book at his feet...”

“I didn’t touch it,” Stiles says immediately and Scott nods. “He really didn’t. I saw it.”

“I saw it, too,” Lydia says who is walking next to Allison now. “Very strange.”

And she gives Stiles a long, scrutinizing look.

They stop in front of the Chemistry classroom.

“Maybe someone came to my rescue?” Stiles says, shrugging.

They all frown at him and Scott doesn’t even look confused at the fact that both Allison and Lydia are talking to them right now. His eyes are set on Stiles’ face in something like – worry?

“There’s werewolves and windiigos and banshees and ghouls and whatnot... doesn’t any of you guys have, like, psychic powers to move objects and stuff?”

There is a pause during which the others look at him in silence.

Then Allison says, carefully, “There’s only – one kind of – of creature that might be able to move objects without touching them or, well, screaming at them the way a banshee would, I think...”

“What, Harry Potter?” Stiles says in the attempt to crack a joke but then again – for all he knew, wizards could be real, too, and, gosh, how cool would that be, on top of all the craziness going on around here?

“No,” Lydia is saying slowly now. She is still eyeballing Stiles like she’s finally taking a closer look at him for the first time.

“But a spark might.”

Stiles is throwing water into his face and taking deep breaths. Maybe he does need a few more days to get used to – everything.

Mr. Harris certainly freaked him out, but then again, it was good to see that he’s not the only one. Every kid in his class seems to hate the weird way he says moist.heart.beat, accentuating every syllable with a period dot in-between. And Scott reassured him that every beta werewolf is stronger than a windiigo, really, but that Mr. Harris is just exceptionally creepy and mean and they all deemed it wisest not to mess with him. In fact, according to Scott, even the other teachers seemed to avoid him and Mr. Harris usually considered their nervous looks and anxious faces with a satisfied smirk.

Stiles wipes his face with a paper towel, looks at himself in the mirror and then jumps a few feet into the air. Lurking in the corner behind him is the dark-haired, skinny windiigo boy and Stiles pivots on his heel.

Oh great, he thinks.

Another one of those.

He tries to calm down, then decides it’s no use and says, “Why do you keep staring at me like that?,” his voice definitely coming out a lot more raspy and high-pitched than he’d meant to.

“S-sorry,” the boy mutters and lets his gaze drop to the tiled floor instantly.

Stiles takes a deep breath, then thinks that, maybe, the kid just can’t help it.

“A-are you – hungry?” he says but as soon as the words are out of his mouth he realizes that that was probably the single most stupid and insulting thing he ever said to anyone.

“I’m sorry, I don’t really-”

“It’s okay,” the boy says quickly, lifting his dark eyes up to look at him again. “Most people think we’ll just go ahead and eat their brains out if they make a wrong move. You’re new here, it’s okay for you to ask. And most people don’t ask, they just – assume...”

“Well, Mr. Harris,” Stiles starts but the boy shakes his head and lets out a snort that’s somehow, oddly, shrill and very inhuman, like he has four nostrils instead of two – Stiles really doesn’t dare to look right now – and that makes the hair on Stiles’ neck stick up.

“Mr. Harris is a jerk. It’s because of people like him that – that people like me are not really accepted anywhere. Not even around here.”

“Sorry?” Stiles tries. “Er... I actually have Chemistry right now, so...”

“Wait,” the boy says. “What’s your name?”

“Stiles Stilinski. Junior year.”

“I’m Corey Pearson. Freshman. I should be in History right now, but then I smelled you come in here.”

Smelled him?

That must be the second creepiest thing anyone ever said to him, right after the stuff Mr. Harris just did.

Stiles nods, not sure what to say – Er, cool, yeah totally? – and Corey extends his right arm.

Damnit.

Just as expected.

Up close, Corey really looks nice and pretty harmless but Stiles can’t shake the feeling of discomfort at the prospect of taking his hand.

He’d really, really prefer not to.

“It’s ok,” the boy says, smiling half-heartedly and Stiles feels a wave of empathy wash over him. He can’t imagine what it must feel like to be shunned and bullied and avoided just because of what you were born to be. Ok, maybe a little bit – it’s like he can still hear his classmates chant Bilinski, Bilinski, boy or girl, he isn’t picky, and did he mention that he really hates Coach Finstock accidentally calling him that name, too?

So he takes Corey’s hand and – it happens instantly.

He looks up just in time to see Corey drop two rows of thin, sharp canines out of his jaw and transform his mouth into something that looks a lot like the gigantic plant-thing into which Boba Fett is thrown in Star Wars and definitely not like a human mouth anymore. As if that weren’t enough, his pupils seem to roll back into his head to leave his eyes clear and milky white. Needless to say, within an instant, Corey looks like something that dropped right out of a horror movie and into a Beacon Hills High bathroom.

Stiles pulls his hand back at light speed, lets out a yell of horror and almost face plants onto the tiles in his attempt to get out of there as fast as humanly possible.

“No, wait! Stiles! I really need to tell you s-”

But the door has already swung closed behind him and Stiles is hurrying down the hallway, back to the classroom.

Jesus Christ, so that’s what a shifted windiigo looks like?

Stiles is pretty certain that he could have gone his whole life without knowing that.

“He wouldn’t have eaten you, I swear – at the utmost, he’d just have chewed on your arms for a while. Windiigos are said to be really picky, everyone knows they prefer hearts to-”

“Scott,” Stiles hisses to cut him short, “could you please, please cut it out already?!”

Hours later, Stiles still refuses to recall the scene in the bathroom and even though Scott assured him during Chemistry – once again, their teacher failed to show up – that not much could have happened to him over and over again and that, sometimes, windiigos just like lurking in bathrooms or broom closets to scare other students shitless for no reason whatsoever, Stiles isn’t fully convinced.

Corey looked pretty deadly to him and, as a matter of fact, so does Mr. Harris.

Oh God.... it only occurred to him that Mr. Harris probably has the same shifted face, the same canines and white eyeballs, reading to suck poor humans empty whenever no one is looking. In a futile attempt to calm Stiles down, Scott had explained to him how exactly windiigos take in food to illustrate why everything Stiles had described to him didn’t fit the picture.

“He was probably just nervous – used to happen to me too. Every time I got agitated, I accidentally shifted.”

Stiles is shaking his head again when someone slaps his shoulder and he jumps at least a foot into the air.

They’re standing out in the hallways, so someone tapping him on the shoulder or just bumping into him wasn’t a completely unlikely scenario but – Stiles is just tense right now, okay?

Scott rolls his eyes.

“Danny, can’t you see that this isn’t a good time?”

The guy called Danny smirks. He is tall and has broad shoulders and Stiles recognizes him as the guy who’s usually sitting next to Jackson.

“Stiles, right?”

Stiles nods yes and Danny extends his arm – not for Stiles to shake it though. Rather, he is fanning out what looks like a dozen photographs for Stiles to examine and says, “Five dollars the set.”

“Not interested,” Scott says right away but Stiles picks up one of the photos and turns it around in his hand, his heart beating more slowly again now. He’s taking a closer look at the picture.

It shows a guy in a very familiar leather jacket reaching for a milk carton in what appears to be an aisle in a grocery store.

“Is that – is that Derek Hale?”

Danny snatches the photo out of Stiles’ hands and replaces it with another one in which Derek is exceptionally handsome, even more than usual, wearing a black t-shirt, turning his head to the left and staring gloomily at something in the distance.

“Did he know you took this photo of him?”

“Not your taste? Ok, then – one of these maybe?”

He digs into the pockets of his jacket and comes up with another stack, this time polaroids. Stiles takes a look at them while Scott is rolling his eyes, and shifting from one foot to the other impatiently.

It’s Derek again, this time in front of the school. Derek glowing his red eyes. Derek wolfed-out. Derek raising his claws.

Derek picking up Jackson, about to slam him down onto the ground hard.

“Hey, this one’s not bad,” Scott is saying now, frowning, and Danny nods.

“Yeah, they’re all from this morning’s fight – these four are the last ones, so... better decide quickly. 10 dollars for all of them.”

Stiles looks at him, not entirely sure if he’s joking or not.

Danny, obviously misinterpreting Stiles’ hesitation, says, “Or rather one of the girls?”

“Girls?”

“Allison? Or Lydia?”

He’s eyeballing Stiles as if asking, what’s your deal?

“I have this classic of Lydia Martin. It was taken last year but still a big seller.”

He holds a photo up in front of Stiles’ face. It shows Lydia in a light yellow dress, clutching a pink rose and smiling vaguely into the camera in front of a comic book blue sky.

“Is Lydia ok with this?” Stiles says, frowning.

“Well, she sold it to me,” Danny shrugs, “so...” And, looking up into Stiles’ face, “No? Not a Lydia fan? Alright then. You know what? You can keep this because you’re new here – special treat.”

He nods at the photo of Derek that is still in Stiles’ hands and Stiles opens his mouth to protest but Danny quickly says, “And maybe one of Erica to go with it? 3 dollars each.”

He raises his right hand and shows Stiles the stack that is labelled ‘Erica Reyes, 6”x9”’

God, the guy must have a whole archive in there.

“You’re such a creep, Danny,” Erica says who must have heard her name and immediately came strutting across the hallway and over up to them like the creepy and dangerous girl she seems to be. She is leaning onto Stiles’ shoulder which does not particularly help him relax right now. Also, she’s sort of tall and heavy because she's all muscle, Stiles can just feel it. He stands there stock-still, letting Erica use him as a human walking cane. Well, what else would he be doing.

Erica, for her part, tries to snatch the stack of photos of herself out of Danny’s hand but Danny quickly shoves them back into his pocket.

“I’m not taking the photos. I’m just selling them,” he says, smirking at Erica.

“Either way. Creep!,” and she takes the weight off of Stiles’ shoulder – good thing because his feet were starting to hurt and, man, he really needs to start working out, “No girl would want that, so you better watch out. You might just get mugged and lose your fancy little collection.”

“Well, Lydia happens to be one of my best clients,” Danny says, grinning from ear to ear, “She buys every new photo I take of her so – I beg to differ.”

“Tss... whatever. Not surprised at the queen of narcissists. But if I catch you distributing these photos of me in a bra again, I’ll punch your stupid human face into a pulp...”

Danny snorts. He turns around to face her fully now, looks her up and down for a moment.

“First of all, I don’t distribute, Erica, I sell. Secondly – try and put on a smile once in a while, will you? That would really help the business. Seriously, I sold more photos of Jackson last week than I did of you.”

Erica stares at him, wide-eyed.

“Wha- really?”

“Well, maybe if you were a little more outgoing... I happen to know a guy who’d pay fifty for a photo of you smiling.”

“I am outgoing,” Erica says immediately.

“Well, if you look at some of these though,” the stack of Erica polaroids is in his hands again, and while this dude is apparently human, Stiles can’t shake the thought that he somehow knows a few magic tricks, “I wouldn’t be too sure about that. People only like ‘hot mess’ if you can also show your softer side, you know...”

Danny eyeballs the photo on top and shakes his head in dismay.

“Let me see.” Erica tries to jerk them out of his hands again but Danny is quicker.

“10 dollars the set – just because you want to see them so badly.” He gives her a wide grin.

“That’s outrageous! Total rip-off!”

“Really Erica? About your own photos?”

Erica harrumphs and sticks her hand into her leather jacket. Stiles can hear the clutter of keys as she rummages around in it for a few moments. Then her hand reappears clutching a crumbled twenty-dollar-bill that she shoves into Danny’s face.

“Give me back 10.”

Danny is stuffing the photos back into his pocket.

“Sorry, I don’t carry any change around.”

Erica narrows her eyes at him.

“Ok, fine! I take two sets.”

She drops the bill into Danny’s left palm. He counts four photos into her outstretched hand and Erica glares at them.

“What? A set means two? You’re such a cutthroat, Danny...”

They watch Erica dart off huffing and puffing and cursing under her breath. Danny looks down at the bill, then puts it into his pocket, a wide grin on his face.

“Tss... amateur...”

“This guy is secretly taking photos of Derek Hale? Suicidal much?”

Last period is over and Scott and Stiles join the stream of students that’s slowly making its way out of the school and into the afternoon sun. Stiles is still staring at the photo Danny gave him, at Derek’s high cheekbones, his strong arms and broad shoulders.

“Well, you don’t strike me as someone who just hates to have gotten his hands on a photo of Derek.”

“What?! That’s not-”

“Alright, alright. He basically forced you to take it. So just put it away already,” Scott says, grinning at him and Stiles refuses – refuses to blush.

Danny did shove it into his hands and it would be rude to throw away a gift, right?

“Danny Mahealani is a genius when it comes to all things money. I think he must be running a pretty good business selling the photos, and for a human, yeah – it’s pretty damn daring to sneak up on Derek Hale, too, if not to say impossible. I don’t know where Danny gets them but he does, and new ones every week. His famous Derek-Hale-topless collection is a classic... probably risked his neck assembling it, too.”

“I’m starting to think everyone at this school is just...bat-shit crazy...,” Stiles mutters. He takes out one of his school books and slides the photo in-between the pages, completely lost in thought like he’s not even aware of what he’s doing.

“Are there photos of you as well?”

“Yeah,” Scott barks out a laugh, “And you should hear how he’s trying to sell them. ‘Any Scott McCalls anyone? Fancy the homeless chic’?”

Stiles snorts.

Homeless chic – it’s actually a quite fitting caption for Scott’s sense of fashion.

“I very much doubt he’s sold even a single one, yet.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that...”

“Mh? What – what do you mean?” Scott says immediately, almost as fast as Erica before.

“Well... Allison is smiling at you a lot, isn’t she?”

“You think?”

“Yeah and it’s like Erica said – she would be a total idiot to not get how much you like her...”

Scott runs his hand through his wild curls. “I’m not being very subtle, am I...”

Stiles slaps his shoulder.

“I don’t think that’s the problem, dude. Just ask her out...”

Scott’s face relaxes into a goofy grin and Stiles lets out a deep sigh wanting to add, Just lose the hideous sweater. But Scott wouldn’t hear a word he’s saying anyway. Stiles has known him for only two days now but long enough to be sure that Scott is far gone right now, probably imagining something wild and daring. Like Allison holding his hand. Stiles is pretty certain that if he turned Scott’s bag upside down right now, at least one photo of her would flurry to the ground.

“Stiles? Stiles!!” someone is yelling from somewhere behind them and Stiles grabs Scott’s arm and quickly yanks him through the big double doors and out into the sunlight.

“Huh? What?”

“That’s Corey... I really don’t want session two of the windiigo freak show right now.”

Scott frowns but lets Stiles drag him through the crowd.

“That’s pretty hurtful, you know that, right? He really can’t help it.”

They stop by the bicycle rack and Stiles looks down to his sneakers, embarrassed.

“Yeah, I know... sorry.”

“It’s alright, man, I know this is all new to you. Just – give him a chance to explain when you’re ready. Okay? It can really hurt to have something like that bottled up inside and not getting a chance to apologize. Believe me, I would know.”

Stiles nods his head up and down and wonders when exactly he’ll really be ready.

But Scott is right.

He should get a grip.

This was only day two and something tells him that a windiigo shifting in front of him doesn’t rank too high on the Beacon Hills scale of bizarre.