Sterek AU - Hale Academy
The faint scritch-scratch of Derek's fountain pen against paper is the only sound in the enormous cavity of the headmaster's office.
His office, he reminds himself pointedly.
He's still not used to referring to himself by the title his mom had held all of his life.
Just as he isn't used to the excessive amount of air-conditioning she had preferred be funneled directly over her - now his - headmaster chair.
No one has had the chance to tweak the room to his preferences yet. (No one has had the time, more like.) He won't bother the staff with it. The succession has tripled everyone's workloads, including his own. Besides, he doesn't actually believe the change would help.
He hasn't stopped feeling cold since they found his mom's body.
But it's easier here where he can close himself away and know that no one will bother him unless invited inside, the pillars of books and half-filled boxes around him providing him a sense of security no where else has been able to.
Still.
He wishes he were out in the sun.
It pours through the high window of the stone wall behind him to wash the astoria grand desk in a dreamy glow that he doesn't feel, and he can hear what sounds like the entire student body accumulating outside to soak it up.
Hale Academy so rarely gets sun, hidden deep in the forest as it is.
Derek's pen resumes scratching over his work. He’s going through the class schedules, and eyeing the new additions to the roster. There are only two new students this year and this one - Lydia Martin, a newly presented banshee - he'd been rooting for.
It's always so gratifying when he and the academy can agree on things.
He signs off on her class schedule - an impressive ten classes requiring his personal approval - as his mind wanders to the other new student joining them.
He can't for the life of him understand the logic of inviting a human.
Derek sets his pen down to glance over towards the double doors on his left.
He rubs at his neck, tense and stiff from pouring over his work all morning, and decides - fuck it. He could use a break.
He pushes up from the desk and heads towards the sleek ebony doors. They fall open under his hand to an open stone balcony, magnificent carved pillars permitting the heat and light to pour through.
Derek's balmorals echo faintly as he walks to the end of it, where he relishes spreading his fingers over the sun-warmed stone of the balcony edge. They tingle and turn to butter, melting slowly back into liquid instead of frigid popsicles.
He sends his gaze out over the student body scattered across the school courtyard. It instantly zeros in on one student in particular.
Their newest enigma, and only human.
Stiles Stilinski is lounging luxuriously in the dead center of the grass, hands perched behind him so that his long, pale neck can tilt back, back, back.
His eyes are closed and there's the smallest hint of a grin on his lips.
He looks how Derek's fingers feel. Warm and malleable.
Derek wonders if he misses the weather from his home.
"Who is he?"
"Some kid from California," Cora had said, the first time Derek saw 'human' on their new student roster, "S'been a while since we've had one of those. The majority of packs run in the east."
"He's human," Derek had pointed out, believing the single word was explanation enough for his disbelief on the kid's admittance into the academy.
Cora had simply shrugged. "The academy chose him."
Derek's fingers start to go cold again.
Looking down, a shadow has begun to cross over the square. He glances up and watches the clouds bleeding across the sky, blotting out the sun, and unthinkingly, flashes his gaze back down to the grass; to that long, pale neck.
And feels his heart slam against his ribs to find the eyes that neck belongs to already watching him back.
Derek's hands tighten reflexively on the balcony.
Far below him, the spill of shadow has reached Stilinski, and when Derek doesn't look away from their met gaze, the human smirks and raises a single eyebrow.
Then, to Derek's utter disbelief, winks at him.
With forced grace, Derek turns from the balcony to head back to his office, a flutter in his stomach and a single, resounding thought in his mind saying: "He's going to be eaten alive."
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