i found her in pieces /
i found her / live
bleeding / i found her
in the crevices of trees / on the streets
like splintered bones / i found her
in the empty sheets of our beds /
in our house / in our city / in the places
where we hid / i found her
dead / in pieces
i. laura sends him off to school.
she works nights and mornings - first a shift at the nightclub ("titty bar," she says, the first time he wakes up in the morning to find her covered in glitter and sweat, "for this, we could have gone to chicago." he tries not to wince at the way the words fall, sharp, from her tongue) and then as a barista at some coffeeshop that all the columbia kids love.
she says, "i hate college kids," and he doesn't mention the fact that she dropped out the second semester of her sophomore year. he doesn't mention how much she loved the campus at reed college, or how interesting she found their dual-degree programs, or how the weekend that their family was killed was one that she was supposed to come home for.
he lets her sign him up for whatever GED testing he needs. he can't say he's a beacon hills graduate, but he'd applied to nyu on a whim back in october. he'd gotten accepted, so when they get to new york in late march, roughly two months after the fire and subsequent fallout, there's a tiny apartment rented to them from the malabe pack in the bronx, and then laura's getting everything he needs for school figured out.
the phone calls to nyu are terrifying. they shouldn't be something he needs, but he calls the admission offices anyway, and reads through the notes that laura painstakingly wrote out, recites them like he's expected to.
yes, he is an admitted student. no, he is no longer in high school. he dropped out. there were extenuating circumstances. most of his family is dead. he will be taking the ged certification in april. he has received a confirmation email.
"alright then, derek," the admissions officer says, "then all you need to do is accept the school's offer, and send your results to us once you take the test. is there anything else i can help you with?"
"no," derek says, watching laura vigorously scrub dishes, as if he didn't know she were eavesdropping, as if she didn't know his dream had been californian sun. "that's all."
ii. the malabes are not their friends.
at least, not as a whole. their alpha makes it clear that the apartment they're staying in is only theirs for the summer, and laura thanks them before nearly breaking the cheap couch that had already been in the living room when they moved in. they'll find a new place, of course they will, but it's the principle of the matter.
"are you dorming?" one of the malabes ask, when laura drags them over to speak with their matriarch. the one asking is named mireya, and she's the alpha's niece. she's about a year older than laura, and by all accounts gets along with her pretty well. she's got a constant predatory look in her eye though, one that derek instinctively shies away from.
"i haven't decided," derek says, even if he already has. he isn't going to leave laura. he'll commute, whether it takes him fifteen minutes or two hours. they'll find a place that works.
"dorm," mireya says, and shakes her hair out. she has tight curls, and dark eyes, and a smile like the cheshire cat. "val says it's useful."
"val?" he says, and she practically beams.
"my sister," she says, "valencia. she's studying education or something. has to do with kids. she's a freshman at cazenovia."
"cool," he says, for lack of anything better to say, and recedes into the living room, where a couple of the alpha's sons are willing to ignore him. they don't view him as a threat quite yet. when they leave, laura's tense, and she clutches at his elbow like she's afraid to lose him. they spend the weekend cooped up inside their apartment.
they end up in a one-room in the upper east side, 1000 a month. laura gets a job at a bar, and a coffeehouse. she tells him please, for the love of god, don't get an english degree, freelance isn't worth it when he passes his ged test with ease. he ends up in their fine arts program, instead.
.
.
.
a/n: I, an American university student, have no idea if what Derek does is like, a plausible thing that could happen. Please take uni info with a grain of salt, I graduated hs and applied to uni according to the "approved college time frame" so. Also! Obligatory disclaimer: I own nothing.