Human Like You

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/1326193.

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Categories: Gen, M/M
Fandom: Teen Wolf (TV)
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, sterek - Relationship
Characters: Derek Hale, Stiles Stilinski
Additional Tags: A Boy and His Wolf, Wolf Derek, Alternate Universe - Canon
Divergence, Developing Relationship, Beacon Hills High School,
Drabble, Time Skips, Art, Clumsiness, Meet-Cute, Alive Hale Family,
Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire
Language: English
Series: Part 4 of A Boy and His Wolf
Stats: Published: 2014-03-17 Words: 1,604 Chapters: 1/1
 Human Like You
by orphan_account, twobirdsonesong

Summary

After the second day of high school, Stiles runs into upperclassman Derek Hale, someone
he's not friends with but still feels a strange, deep connection with.

Notes

A Boy and His Wolf is a collaborative project between heavenorspace and myself.

It will be a series of vignettes, out of chronological order, set in a world where Derek, in the
form of a wolf, first encountered Stiles when he was a toddler playing in the woods. Derek is
under strict pack orders not to reveal himself as werewolf to the human boy and must only
interact with him as a wolf. When Stiles is a child, their relationship is strictly platonic and
protective in nature. As Stiles grows older that begins to change.

Each drabble will be accompanied by a piece of art drawn by heavenorspace.

(art by heavenorspace)

Stiles doesn’t mean to run into anyone on his way home from school. His dad is going to let
him get a car when he gets his license, especially since so often the Sheriff is too busy to pick
him up, but until then he has to walk. He doesn’t mind. It gives him time to think. And it’s
probably better than being the freshman whose dad picks him up from school in a police
cruiser.

He’d planned to walk home with Scott again, like they had the day before, but it’s only the
second day of school and Scott is already head over heels for some girl a year older than
them named Allison and he’d told Stiles to go on without him after 6th period bell had rang.
Scott had been leaning against his locker and staring moonily across the hall at the tall,
willowy girl putting her own books away. Stiles didn’t need to be a genius to know he was
probably going to be walking home alone quite a lot. He’ll be fine.

It’s not that Stiles doesn’t have any friends. He has friends. Scott is his friend. Lydia is his
friend, even if she doesn’t always make eye contact with him. He’s pretty sure he’s going to
be friends with Danny, the big guy in his English and gym glasses who smiles at him with
dimples in his cheeks and doesn’t seem to be put off by the way Stiles normally acts. Not the
way everyone else is. Stiles doesn’t mean to be annoying, but he can’t help the way his brain
fires a million miles a second along four different tracks at once. He can’t help that his legs
bounce and his fingers twitch without him even thinking about it. He doesn’t mean to write
essays about subjects so barely tangentially related to the topic at hand that his teachers can’t
even properly grade him on it, even if his writing is excellent and his facts are spot on. It’s
just that he catches the thread of something and he has to follow it to the end. He’s always
been that way.

Besides, the wolf is his friend. His best friend.

Stiles smiles as thinks about the big black wolf that sneaks into his house and goes for walks
in the woods with him and sleeps at the foot of his bed with his dad is working overnight.

He turns the corner, eyes cast down on his shoes, and naturally runs smack into the solid
body of someone else.

Stiles flails and splutters and only manages not to drop the books he’s carrying like a shield
in front of his chest because that someone else is holding them almost the instant they slip
from Stiles’ hands.

Stiles looks up, gasping for breath at the shook of the impact, and finds himself staring into
pale green eyes that he swears flash gold in the sunlight.

“Derek,” Stiles blurts out automatically, looking into the passive, unfairly gorgeous face in
front of him.

Stiles knows Derek Hale. Well, he knows of Derek.

He knows he’s the upperclassman with the big family who live out in a massive house in the
woods. He knows Derek takes Physics in third period and AP English and AP History and
sits with his young sister during lunch even though it’s really not cool to sit with your
younger sister at lunch. Not that Derek ever seems to care about being cool. He doesn’t have
to care. He just is cool; he exudes it from every pore in his broad body. He’s tall and has
dark stubble shading his sharp jaw that really shouldn’t be allowed on anyone still in high
school. And he’s way too muscled for someone who doesn’t play any sports. Not that Stiles
has noticed how well Derek fills out his t-shirts and his leather jackets and snug jeans. (He’s
totally noticed.)

Stiles is scrawny. Stiles is long and gangly and he trips when he gets out of cars and he
knocks things off shelves just by looking at them. Derek looks like it would take a hundred
men to even knock him off his feet. He stands with a surety Stiles doesn’t think he’ll ever
master.

“Hi,” Stiles says because Derek still hasn’t said anything. He’s just…standing there. Staring
at him with those crazy intense eyes as his nostrils flare sharply. “Uhm, I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Derek asks.

There’s something so oddly familiar about him, about the way he stands and holds his head,
but Stiles can’t even begin to place it.
“For running into you.” Stiles mimes their crash with his hands, jerking his head wildly, and
then wonders why the fuck he just did that. Derek blinks, but doesn’t look freaked out by
him. That’s new.

“It’s not your fault,” Derek protests softly.

This is not the conversation Stiles is expecting to have, not that he ever expected to have a
conversation with Derek Hale. So far Stiles is pretty much ignored at the high school, which
he’s used to after three years of a middle school career that pretty much entailed aggravating
his teachers on a daily basis and getting weird looks from his peers every time he opened his
mouth.

“Uhm. I wasn’t looking where I was going. And I was probably walking too fast, which is
something I do. Sometimes. Because of my legs, which are long. And sometimes completely
out of my control. Hopefully I’ll stop growing at some point and relearn how to walk like a
normal human being.”

Derek’s eyebrows twitch in a way that’s so impossibly familiar that it stops Stiles’ short. He
blinks. The twitch reminds him, bizarrely, of the way the wolf looks at him sometimes, when
Stiles is pacing around his bedroom ranting and raving about something completely stupid.
But that’s insane. It doesn’t make any sense.

“I should have been paying more attention too,” Derek says and there’s something about it
that kind of feels like a lie but Stiles doesn’t know why.

“Okay, so next time we both inhabit the same sidewalk at the same time we’ll make sure to
keep our eyes up! Eyes on the road and all. At least you’re not a little old lady that I could
have knocked over and killed. My dad’s the Sheriff and I’m pretty sure he’d have to arrest
me if I killed a neighbor via reckless walking.” Stiles knows he’s babbling, but Derek looks
like he’s almost starting to smile. That’s also new. Usually his rambling annoys the fuck out
of people who aren’t his dad.

“Uhm, thanks for grabbing my books,” Stiles says, looking down at where Derek is still
clutching his history and math books to his stomach. He’s really glad Derek apparently has
Spiderman-like reflexes because he did not want to have to explain to his dad why his books
are all scuffed up and dirty on the second day of class.
“You’re welcome,” Derek responds, gruffly, like he’s not used to talking. But Stiles has seen
him chattering away with his sister, Cora at lunch the last two days. And he’s seen Derek
around town over the years, talking to clerks and his parents and even the Sheriff. So maybe
he does weird Derek out. Except it really doesn’t feel like way. Stiles knows what it looks
like when someone is desperate to get away from him. And Derek is not.

“So, uhm…how’s school going?” He asks inanely.

Derek tilts his head just so and that reminds Stiles of the wolf too. It’s such an intimately
familiar gesture, one that he’s seen from his wolf over and over again that Stiles can’t even
beginning to process. But he feels it in his gut that he’s seen it before, a hundred times over.

Stiles wants to say something stupid, something like, “I feel like I know you,” but that’s
ridiculous. Even though it’s true. Derek doesn’t feel like a stranger to him even though he
sort of is. All these years living in Beacon Hills together and Stiles has never really crossed
paths with Derek. They’re at least three years apart – Cora is closer to his age but she is way,
way too cool to talk to him. He’s seen Derek around town, but that’s about it.

There’s no reason for him to have this feeling in his bones like they’ve known each other for
years. But that doesn’t make the feeling go away. It sits there in his bones and his gut, a
puzzle he doesn’t even begin to know how to solve.

Stiles rubs absently at his chest, where his heart is beating just a little too fast. Derek’s
nostrils flare again, like there’s a particular strong scent in the air, but Stiles doesn’t smell
anything unusual. “Can I have my books back?”

Derek looks down at the books like he didn’t even realize he was still holding them, before
thrusting them out to Stiles.

“Thanks,” Stiles says, taking them and juggling them into position. “Uhm, see you around?
Maybe.”

Derek nods jerkily and Stiles carefully steps around him. So Derek is a little strange, but he’s
nice, Stiles thinks as he continues on his way home. Nicer than most people anyway. Stiles
smiles to himself, clutching his books tighter to his chest. He feels lighter and happier than
he has in weeks.

“Eyes on the road, Stiles!” Derek suddenly calls from somewhere behind him.

But when Stiles turns around, a huge doofy grin on his face, Derek is gone. Stiles smiles all
the way home.
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