Title: Old Friends
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Characters: Stiles, Derek, Lydia, Scott
Rating: G
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: This is so jossed it's wildly AU. Set ten years before "Wolf Moon".
Author notes: I watched the pilot and this happened in my brain before I talked to anyone about how the timeline actually works in the subsequent episodes. I wrote it anyway. Enjoy!

Summary: "That's Derek Hale--you remember, right? He's only a few years older than us. His whole family, they burned to death in a fire ten years ago."




His mom gave him a big squeeze and kissed the top of his head and then let him wiggle away, out of the car and over to where his new teacher was meeting all the kids. Mrs. G had a nametag for him, and he remembered what his mom had told him about being patient with people and didn't make her write in the stroke on the Ł even though it was important. Then he remembered that maybe it wasn't important today, because he had a new name to tell people--except he already had his name written on his nametag, so maybe he couldn't tell people the name he'd come up with. Maybe he was just stuck with everybody saying it wrong and making up their own nicknames for it for another year.

As soon as he had his nametag on, a big kid came over to him. He was wearing a bright red t-shirt with a cool symbol on it and he had his dark hair cut really short. Probably no one ever ruffled his hair and told him how cute he was. He had a nametag on, too, and it said Derek Hale.

"Hi," Derek Hale said, holding out his hand to shake. "I'm Derek, I'm your fifth-grader. What's your name?"

"Um," he said, putting his hand in Derek's. "Stiles?"

Derek smiled. "That's easier to say, huh? Do you like being called Stiles?"

"Yeah," Stiles said firmly, because Derek hadn't said, No, that's not your name.

"Okay, Stiles," Derek said, and turned his hand around so they could walk side-by-side, holding hands. All the other kids in Stiles's class had big kids with them, too, and they were starting to form into a line; Derek had pulled Stiles right to the front. "I'm gonna walk you to your classroom, and then I'll come get you for lunch and recess, okay?"

Stiles nodded, grinning up at Derek. He was going to like being a first-grader.

***

At lunchtime Derek took Stiles to sit at the fifth-graders' table, and when they unpacked their lunches they both had sandwiches and carrot sticks and juice boxes, and they each had a sandwich bag full of homemade cookies.

"My mom gave me extra ones to share," Derek said, making the cookies into two stacks and pushing half toward Stiles. They were chocolate chip.

"Mine too!" Stiles said, dumping out the ginger cookies his mom had made the night before. "These are for you, too, you can have lots."

Derek counted Stiles's cookies and took half, so it was exactly fair.

***

At recess they ran really fast--Derek pulled Stiles along faster than he had ever run and didn't let him trip and fall--and they got to the swings before they all filled up. Stiles hopped on and Derek said he would push. A bunch of the other kids in Stiles's class were hopping on swings with their fifth-graders, too. Derek pushed Stiles really high--as high as his dad did--but all of a sudden as Stiles swung back toward Derek the girl next to him came flying toward him all sideways and screaming and Stiles squeezed his eyes shut and jerked away, thinking they were going to crash--and then Derek caught him and caught Lydia, too, setting them both down where they could put their feet down on the brand-new fresh woodchips.

"Hey," Derek said, not really even loud, but all the other big kids, who Stiles saw now were grabbing the first-graders and throwing them forward on the swings--they all looked at Derek, and they all caught the kids and settled the swings down.

The only boy with hair curlier and crazier than Stiles's--Scott-who-has-an-inhaler--jumped off his swing. Right next to Stiles, Lydia said, "That was fun! I want to go again! Let go, you're not my fifth-grader."

Derek let go of Lydia's swing and looked down at Stiles. "Want to keep going?"

Stiles looked over at Scott again--he wasn't using his inhaler or raising his hand like he needed help, but he was scuffing his feet toward the jungle gym even as his big kid called him back to the swings. Lydia went flying past, and Derek pulled Stiles over to the side a little bit. Stiles jumped down as Lydia swung back the other way, yanking on the chains of the swing to make herself twist all over the place, and he didn't have to say anything at all before Derek took his hand and they ran over to the jungle gym.

***

Derek let Stiles sit on his bike until Stiles's mom came to get him. He opened the car door and helped Stiles get his backpack off before he got in.

"Hi, Mrs. Stilinski," Derek said. "I'm Derek, I was Stiles's buddy today. He did great!"

Stiles held up his hand and Derek gave him a high five before he shut the door. Stiles watched out the window as he got on his bike and rode away, and they were halfway down the block before Stiles's mom said curiously, "Stiles?"

***

The next day they didn't have their buddies anymore, but Stiles looked for Derek anyway. He saw lots of fifth-graders talking to their first-graders or waving to them, even pushing them on the swings, but he didn't see Derek anywhere. He sat with Scott at lunchtime instead, and played with him on the jungle gym, and watched carefully to see if he needed his inhaler.

His dad hugged Stiles real hard that night when he got home, and his jacket smelled smoky--not like cigarettes, like a campfire. That smell stuck to it for months, long after Stiles found out why Derek never came back to school.

***

"So, hey, wait," Scott said, after they'd walked back out of the woods and driven halfway back to town. "How did you recognize Derek Hale? We were just little kids when their house burned down, I don't think I ever met him."

"Oh," Stiles said, rubbing his hand over his short-cropped hair and remembering the big kid who smiled at him and let him choose his name. "Me and Derek were tight, back in the day. Best buds. Before you and me, there was me and Derek."