for meanttobeabeta: late summer 2013

[wannabebatman]

'Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to--'

Okay, that's it. He can't do this, he can't read this freaking book, every time he tries he just wants to punch this stupid kid in the face, and then his eyes start glazing over and he realizes he's been reading for half a chapter and hasn't retained any of it, and then he has to reread, and its just all too much. "Uggggh," Stiles groans loudly, pulling the open book down over his face as he sprawls on his bed. "I can't do this any more, freaking summer reading is driving me nuts, and this stupid book--" The last sentence is punctuated by him hurling the paperback across the room. And of course, brilliant Stilinski aim has the book flying unerringly right for his window, where a familiar dark head is just poking through the open window, uninvited.

"Crap--"

Sorry, Derek. It's unintentional, he swears.

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[wannabebatman]

The hand on his knee he could ignore. He's starting to adjust to all the little touches, learning to put them all in a little box in the corner of his mind where everything else he doesn't want to think too hard about goes. So he doesn't think about the hand on his knee, ergo doesn't think about the body it's attached to, or the person it belongs to. So, no hormonal reaction, by sheer force of will. At least that's what he's deluded himself into thinking. But the way Derek looks at him? That he can't ignore, feeling uncomfortably exposed as the silence stretches. And still, he can't look away from those eyes he still can't quite figure out. Green and grey at the same time. But they were blue when he wolfed out, when he was still a beta. Eyes that look at him like they almost know what they're looking at.

He looks away just as Derek speaks again, a catch in his voice Stiles can't quite decipher. "Okay, so, tomorrow." Wow, hello puberty, we thought you were over. His voice hasn't cracked like that in...at least six months. The mention of Peter gives him an excuse to try again, clearing his throat and snorting. "Because he's always been a veritable fount of knowledge. But yeah, okay. Anything we can learn is better than nothing, right?" He's always thought that. Information is never a bad thing, just another tool to be used.

[meanttobeabeta]

"He's an asshole and he's not going to tell me anything unless he thinks it'll serve his own purposes," Derek agrees in a low, frustrated snarl. "And even then he'll probably twist it." But he's still the only source of information they have, and right now Derek will take any advantage, however weak, he can manage.

"I'll see you tomorrow, then." He pushes to his feet, squeezing Stiles' knee one more time as he rises.