Derek could pinpoint the exact moment his life going from college finals are going to fucking kill me crazy to I'm actually not going to be surprised if I see a goddamn white rabbit in a hat batshit. It was the moment he first made eye contact with Stiles Stilinski in his 8am lecture on a Tuesday morning in October. The guy was nothing special, crazy brown hair that stuck up at every angle, all long gangly limbs that he sprawled across the table like a couple of dropped pencils and big brown-gold eyes that looked like warm caramel in the sunlight.

(Not that Derek knew what the guy's eyes looked like in the sunlight, jeez. But he learned, later, and looking back it was a fact worth noting. Stiles had nice eyes, everyone acknowledged this. Lydia even acknowledged it.

Fuck, Deaton acknowledged that Stiles had gorgeous fucking eyes, okay, it meant nothing, Peter, shut up.)

But that was the moment Derek became aware that his classmate was into some weird shit. At first it was just to notice that sometimes he missed class and at other times he was late, but mostly he noticed that Stiles (at the time only known as Did You Stick Your Finger In A Light Socket To Get That Hairstyle Or What) mostly slept during their 8am class, no matter what day it was. He almost always looked rough, like he'd been tossed around like a baseball all night and sometimes he even came in bloody. It made him curious, morbidly curious, so much so that he took to paying more attention to Stiles sleeping each morning than he did to his instructor.

Which was why, when he overheard Stiles assure someone across the hall one afternoon that he would check out the Bronze that night he may or may not have gone to the Bronze with the intention of finding Stiles and asking him to dance. That made it entirely his own fault when a goddamn wolf-man thing threw him into a pool table.

As far as introductions to the wild world of the supernatural it was a little more easily handled than most, or so Deaton said. The monster threw him into a table, lurched over him, breathed on him with its nasty muzzle breath while a pretty red head strutted onto the scene. She flicked her hair over one shoulder, said hey, ugly and cut off its head, splattering him with blood and toppling the body onto him. He wheezed and the red head rolled her eyes before strutting off, snapping stilinski out like a war general giving a command.

Looking back on it, there was very little screaming or panicking in general. That itself should have told Derek everything he needed to know about this crazy ass town and how fast he should have transferred out of it, but he didn't. He just dropped his head back on the pool table and stared at the ceiling until another body jumped up onto the edge and leaned into his vision, smiling a little bit sheepishly.

"I'll make you a deal," Derek had told Stiles then, jumping the whole explanation shebang in the face of Stiles', well, face. The other man made a curious noise, gesturing him on. "Tomorrow I get to nap while you take notes, okay?"

Stiles had bitten his lip over him and his eyes had shown like stars, which was a comparison Derek was going to forever blame on his possible (actually nonexistent) concussion. "Oh yeah, big guy? What do I get out of the deal?"

"Every set of notes I've taken since the start of the semester."

"You're my new favorite super hero," Stiles had promised and really, that was it, Derek was sold.

Four months later and Derek wasn't quite sure he regretted making that offer. He was pretty sure he could have walked away from their increasingly weird group of friends before he had even become a part of the Scooby Gang (as Peter insisted on calling them, because he was a terrible not-person), but he hadn't and while he was a little better at handling the supernatural situations that popped up every couple of days he was still deeply tired of the bruises that occurred.

He was also deeply, so fucking deeply tired of being thrown into pool tables.

"Fuck," he wheezed, trying to roll off of the table and only managing to lodge a ball into the small of his back. He was only just wobbling upright again when the fucking vampire they were supposed to be distracting until Allison or Lydia arrived threw Stiles into him. He knocked his head against another pool ball, dragging a breathless groan out of his battered body.

"Remember the time that werewolf threw you into this same table," Stiles gasped, proving that he probably had another broken rib. Whoopee. "Fun times, right?"

"Good job, kids," Peter said from the second floor of the Bronze. Fucking useless bastard. Derek could hear him grinning.

"You're a right damn useless prick, you know that, Peter?"

"The same could be said about you when you do try, Stiles, dear. Also, look out."

Fuck, Derek thought. He wrapped his arms around Stiles and rolled off the table, putting everything he had into getting both of them the hell out of the way. They popped off the edge and plummeted, Stiles' elbow knocking into his hip and his chin into Derek's shoulder. A stray chair broke their fall, cracking into pieces beneath their combined weight, but at least the vampire missed them completely. That meant, however, that they were still flat on the ground, limbs tangled and sore, when the vampire regained its footing and leaned over them, fangs bared, face uglier than fuck.

"Uh, kids," Peter started to say, but then the windows broke and two twenty year old girls tumbled in, hair perfect despite the chaos.

"How the hell do they keep their hair so perfect," Stiles wondered into the skin of Derek's throat. He tried to ignore how good that felt while at the same time Derek wondered how the hell Stiles knew what he was thinking. Derek also wondered how the hell they always ended up bloody and beaten on the floor, pressed together like a couple of hookers fighting off the cold.

"You're talking out loud, Derek," Peter said, gleeful. Derek sighed.

"I hate vampires," he grumbled while Isaac rushed in to help them off the ground. He had to take cover, however, when Lydia flipped over the table and kicked their arms aside to grab at a leg of the chair they broke with their fall. Isaac grinned at them from under the pool table, a scratch high up on one cheek and lips still stained blue from his snow cone three hours earlier.

"Hi guys," Isaac said, cheerfully. For a former vengeance demon he was surprisingly, actually, no, scratch that, Isaac was everything he should of expected from a former demon. He took way too much glee in bodily harm, alright, it was unsettling and awful and tiring. Especially when he was only gleeful and happy to see other people hurt, but unbearably whiny and bitchy when he got hurt. That scratch on his cheek was going to warrant a three hour pity fest, Derek just knew it.

"Hi Isaac," Stiles said, still pressed against Derek, mouth against his neck.

"Close your eyes," Peter sing songed from above them. Half a second later dust rained down on them, getting in Derek's eyes and mouth, tasting like everything awful that had ever existed ever. He tried to spit the dust out, but then Stiles shifted and he swallowed compulsively. He made a face at the ceiling that had Peter laughing helplessly, a bit like a senior in college after his last final. Derek hated Peter, so, so much.

"Oops," Allison said. Unlike Lydia she sounded actually apologetic. Lydia never sounded genuinely apologetic when they got vampire dust all over them in the name of her Slayer cause. That was why Allison was his favorite Slayer, hands down.

"You're my least favorite vampire," he told Peter and Stiles laughed before Isaac reached over and pulled at him, rolling the other man off of his chest.

"You're a terrible witch," Isaac told Stiles plainly as he helped him up. Stiles made an affronted noise, swatting away the blonde's hands from his sides. He puffed up like an upset kitten, his nose scrunched up, lips pulled back in his version of 'ferocious snarl'. If Derek's heart skipped a beat when he made that face, well, no one but Peter could hear it. Which was unfortunate, because he could already see the smirk curling Peter's undead lips, despite not being able to actually see him.

"Is it too early for me to protest keeping Peter at my place again?"

"Yes," Lydia and Allison chorused from opposite sides of the room.

"Damn."

Scott burst in through the front door, wielding an axe that was facing the wrong way and screaming at the top of his lungs. Derek sat up and watched, with no little amount of amusement, as Deaton followed behind his Watcher-in-training with the expression of the parent whose child had eaten a mud pie for the third time that week. It was an expression the man wore a lot around Scott, though the guy meant well.

"My hero," Isaac and Allison said at the same time, before turning to grin at each other like the weird threesome freaks that they were. (Derek tried hard not to think about how that relationship worked out. It involved too many weapons and threats of violence for his peace of mind and every time the topic was mentioned Lydia shuttered a little bit.

Lydia was never horrified, especially about sex. Derek really, really didn't want to know.)

By the time Derek was upright and standing on his own two feet Allison and Isaac were in the middle of assuring Scott that they were sure that he would have saved the day while Deaton tried, repeatedly, to tell them that Watchers weren't supposed to ride in and save the day. Peter heckled the lot of them, making a lot of unnecessary kissing noises that were going to haunt Derek in his nightmares. Derek found himself feeling warm and fuzzy for these maniacs, which was kind of great. He had been lonely before this mayhem, even if they almost died, like, three times a month.

"Boyd and Erica always miss all the fun, eh," Stiles said as he dropped to lean against Derek's side. He was a warm, bony weight in bad grunge plaid and torn up jeans. Stiles was just as tall as Derek, but he was stick thin compared to him, but it was comforting nonetheless, the feel of him, his hip pressed against Derek's, his elbow tucked behind Derek's own.

Stiles Stilinski and his freaky magic, which more often than not went haywire at the most inopportune moments and was honestly no more freaky than the weird Slayer thing both Lydia and Allison had going on, despite the spiel Deaton had given him about 'one girl in all the world', probably more than made up for almost getting bitten by a werewolf. He probably could have lived without Peter, though.

"C'mon, Stiles," Derek said, curling his arm around the guy's surprisingly broad shoulders. "Let's go get your ribs checked out. I think I heard something crack earlier on the table."

"And then curly fries?"

"Sure thing, Stilinski. Curly fries."

"I want curly fries," Peter said, appearing almost as if out of thin air. And god, had he been happy to hear that at least that myth was complete bullshit.

"Shut up, Peter," they chorused together, grinning a little at each other with malicious glee.

"Rude."