Word Count: 2661
Economics has taken a turn for the worse. They're beyond simple things like supply and demand now (despite the fact that his professor continuously claims that everything relates back to it.)
He'd like to know what short-term and long-term aggregate supply curves have to do with that, but whatever; if he can make it through this week, he'll have spring break.
He spends the afternoon after classes end studying in the library and writing a paper. It's weird for him to devote so much time to school work, but this isn't high school any more, and he can't bully his teachers into giving him a good grade.
Not that he did that before. It was actually easier to charm them, honestly.
He's about two hours later than usual when he finally makes it to the diner, and maybe he sees Erica shoot him a relieved look while he seats himself, or maybe that's wishful thinking.
He observes the menu carefully and decides that today seems like a good day to reward himself with something that will actually taste good, and that the California Burger is probably the best choice.
He doesn't like repeating dishes, but here the best choice seems to be "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Or whatever.
He kind of nods to himself and waits for Erica to come over to his table to take his order. In the mean time, he pulls his phone out and texts Danny. "Got the tix. we partyin or what?"
Danny doesn't reply for a couple of minutes, which means he's either with a guy or he's doing homework. Based on the tone of his texts recently, Jackson would guess homework.
Sure enough, he texts back three minutes later. "Cool. I can take you to the best gay clubs in town. ;)"
Jackson snorts. "I thought we decided I was a horrible wingman."
"It's because of your mouth," Danny replies, and then adds a couple seconds later, "And the freckles don't hurt."
"Is that a thing?" Jackson types back, but before he can hit send, Erica is at his table.
"Hi," she says, and this time her smile is less predatory and more welcoming. "I thought you weren't coming."
"Worried about me?" he asks with a smirk.
She rolls her eyes. "You wish. I actually just thought you found a better place to eat."
Her heart doesn't skip, but somehow he can't help but think she's lying. That doesn't make sense, but...
"What can I get for you?" she asks, smirking like she knows what he's thinking about. And maybe she does.
"Coffee," he says, and he's wondering if she'll give him free coffee again and if that means anything and then if he even wants it to mean anything. Because he barely knows her beyond the basics.
"I'll have that right out for you."
He hits send on the text message to Danny after she walks away, and his phone buzzes back, "Ha, not really. They're just cute. Lydia liked to talk about them."
Lydia again. Jackson almost wonders if Danny is trying to pull the truth out of him, if he's been trying since Jackson left.
He ignores it the same way he's been doing it for the last five years and replies with his old adage. "I think the truth is that I'm everyone's type."
"Right, except mine," Danny answers.
"You're a part of everyone," Jackson points out.
"Do you want me to be attracted to you?" Danny asks. The first time he asked, Jackson was pretty sure he was serious. But even then, they'd been closer than brothers and completely disinterested in anything beyond friendship.
Danny knows the truth now, of course. Or, you know the truth about what Jackson feels for him. Not the truth about the full moon. Which still sucks.
So Jackson can tease. "Of course. It's good for my ego."
"Your ego doesn't need help," Danny answers.
"Here you go," Erica says, setting a mug of coffee in front of him. "Ready to order?"
"The California Burger," he says.
"An excellent decision," Erica says decisively.
"My options are severely limited," he says drily.
Erica rolls her eyes. "What do you expect? We're not exactly the finest establishment."
He looks around the place slowly, pretending to weigh that out in his mind. "You're right. No idea why I keep coming around." He gives her a pointed look.
She taps her chin. "Hmm," she says. "So today is a flirting day. Is there a schedule to this? Closer to the full moon you get hornier and start looking for a mate or something?"
"Do you?" he asks, feigning interest. Definitely feigning.
She flashes him a razor sharp grin. "Are you volunteering?"
"Are you holding auditions?" He wonders how long he can keep turning her questions back on her, and suspects that it won't be long.
"Oh sweetie," she says, winking at him. "You don't have to audition." She walks away without a backwards glance.
He swallows drily, remembers he has a mug of coffee, and drinks a large gulp. It doesn't help to soothe him at all.
Finally, he reads Danny's text again—and of course he's taking a shot at his ego. He thinks about Erica's comment and realizes he clearly needs more people to compliment him, if he's this affected by a girl he barely knows. He texts Danny a half-hearted, "Who needs anything? Any economist could tell you that everything is based on wants."
He can collect what he knows about Erica on one hand.
She's a werewolf who ran just as fast as him on the elementary school playground, until she started having seizures and became a social outcast. Boyd saw her die when they tried to escape the alpha pack, but she isn't dead. She's an alpha werewolf pretending she doesn't exist, working at a diner where she scrapes together tips to get by.
But she still does her makeup the same, and she's in control of her life, or at least it looks that way.
He shouldn't want to know more.
Except that everything he just listed is incredibly interesting and he wants to know why she is the way she is.
His phone buzzes in his hand, and he realizes he's been staring off into space. He looks at the text, from Danny.
"Don't act like you're smart," it reads.
Jackson relaxes, because whenever the going gets tough, Danny is there. "Dude I have so much to tell you," he says, instead of rising to the bait. He thinks Danny is pretty used to that by now. Jackson fronts around a lot of people, but really, the only person he consistently lets his guard down around is Danny.
"Right now?" Danny asks.
"Nah, next week," he answers, just as Erica sets a plate in front of him.
"Refill?" she asks, pointing at his coffee.
"Yeah," he says. "Thanks."
"Sure," she says, and walks away to retrieve the coffee pot.
Danny replies, "Okay. Thinking about BH?"
"No," he types out. "Not really."
"How is Danny?" Erica asks while she pours the coffee.
"How did you know it was him?" Jackson wonders. He's staring at her hand, he realizes suddenly, and he's not sure why.
She shrugs. "I just guessed."
"He's not my only friend," he points out.
She raises an eyebrow. "I never said he was." She pauses, setting the coffee down on the table. "Besides, he's your best friend." Her gaze is really intense, then.
Almost petulantly, he shrugs. "But not my only friend."
"But I was right," she says, picking up the coffee again. "He was the one you were texting."
"Yeah," he says. "He's good, I think. Single, so I guess he's upset about that."
"I never thought of Danny as the type who would need a relationship to be happy," she says thoughtfully.
"He's not," Jackson says. He doesn't really envy it in Danny, because it's not like he wasn't just as happy without Lydia as he was with her (okay, admittedly, that's a lie.) "But I think he's happier when he is in a relationship. Looser."
"Hmm," Erica says. "I wonder what that's like." She freezes immediately after saying it, and Jackson files away another fact about Erica. (Has apparently never been in a relationship.)
"I thought you and Boyd..." He lets his voice trailing off.
She blushes. "Um, not really."
"Hmm," he says, regarding her with interest. "You are just full of surprises."
"Is that a good thing?"
He shrugs and picks up his burger. "Could be." He bites into the burger and licks a crumb off of his lip. When he looks up, Erica is staring at him, cheeks still pink.
He would smirk at her if his mouth wasn't full, but she's already walking away, returning the coffeepot to its spot, and greeting another customer. A deep feeling of satisfaction settles in him.
So he guesses the answer is yes: he wants Erica to like him and to want to know more about him. He wants to erase whatever preconceived notions she has about him, that he's just a jock, just a bully, just a sheltered rich boy who doesn't know what real suffering feels like.
He's never been so contemplative while eating fast food before, but there's a first time for everything.
His phone buzzes again, and he figures that Danny must really hate whatever he's working on. He's not usually so talkative when he's doing homework. "Is this about a girl?"
Jackson wipes his hands on the single napkin Erica provided and then tapped out a quick reply. "Maybe." He erased it before sending, and wrote, "Yes." He doesn't bother to pick up his burger again after that, because Danny will want to know more.
Sure enough, the reply comes seconds later. "A girl who's not Lydia, I guess."
"Right," Jackson sends back. He doesn't say, "It hasn't been Lydia for a while," because some things need to be said in person.
Maybe Jackson is being ridiculous but he's actually incredibly excited to see Danny in person. It's not like he needs Danny to be around, because he doesn't need anyone. But he wants to see Danny in a format that isn't Skype.
Danny's next text says, "You aren't going to tell me anything else, are you?"
Jackson sends, "Basically," and returns his attention to his burger.
Erica returns to his table after a while. Almost everyone is gone from the diner, and when Jackson looks at his clock, he realizes how late it is. He eats notoriously slow, or at least slow enough that it used to piss Lydia off.
She doesn't ask him to leave, though. "Do you need a refill?" she asks.
His mug is still full. "No," he answers.
"Anything?" she asks.
"Nah," he answers.
"Then leave," she suggests, and the catty look is back.
It's almost disconcerting to think she could kill him easily. The story of how she became an alpha is one he wants to know, but he thinks they probably aren't there yet. In fact, it would probably be safest, for now, if he just automatically submitted to her.
"Actually," he says instead, smirking right back at her. "I'd like some pie."
The grin she gives him now looks like the kind of grin Stilinski used to give him—the kind that says, "I'm restraining myself from strangling you." He appreciates the sentiment, really.
"Apple, I suppose," she says.
"Naturally."
She sighs and looks around. Now Jackson really is the last customer here, but she nods. "Fine, fine. I'll be back with the pie and your check in just as minute."
"Thank you," he says pleasantly, and finishes his fries while he waits.
She returns with the entire pie and a tub of whipped cream—he's gratified to see that it was indeed homemade. "Mind if I join you?" she asks, but doesn't wait for his answer as she slides into the booth across from him in the booth. Her knees brush his, and he automatically sits up straighter to pull them closer, and then regrets it.
Which is stupid, because he's not in middle school, having his first crush again. He is better than this.
"I would be delighted," he says, even though she's already seated across from him.
She hands him a new fork, cuts out a slice for him, and then one for herself. She dumps liberal amounts of whipped cream on both, and slides his plate across the table. "I don't know about you," she says. "But the whipped cream really completes the pie for me."
"It is really good," he agrees, and bites into the pie with relish. He savors that first bite, because it's just as delicious as he remembered it.
Erica grinning at him, eyes half-lidded as she chews her own bite. "Sasha makes it," she explains after swallowing.
"Are we eating this whole pie?" he asks.
"If we don't, I have to throw it away," she says.
"Well, in that case," he says, shrugging. "Let's do this."
They gorge themselves on pie slowly, and Jackson has never been more grateful for werewolf metabolism.
"So you're at the university here?" Erica asks sometime after his third piece.
"Yeah, studying pre-law," he says. Strangely the pie's taste hasn't become less appealing, even in the middle of his fourth piece.
"I thought you wanted to play professional lacrosse."
Jackson rolls his eyes. "In, like, the ninth grade. Things change."
Erica licks the whipped cream off of her fork. "Yeah," she says slowly. "They do." Her eyes are on him, but she almost seems to be looking through him. She blinks and twitches after a second, and seems to come back to herself.
He wants to ask. He stops himself.
"So what's my tip going to be today?" she asks in mock boredom.
He looks at the tip. "42%," he says, and he smiles at her because he wants her to like him. He does. It's not like he's trying to buy her affection, because he knows that won't work. But a smile from Jackson Whittemore has been enough to get the girl before, and even if it doesn't work here, it will move him in the right direction.
He wants more than just her attention, he wants a crush, he wants...
Erica smiles. "Is it because I gave you free pie and free coffee?"
"Nah," he says. "It's the company that really sold me."
The pie is all gone now, but neither of them move for a long second, just looking at each other. Erica's smile is the softest he's ever seen it, which isn't too difficult to accomplish, because Erica isn't soft . She's all rough edges of sex appeal and fear and strength and damage and power.
So he's smiling back at her, and he thinks the smile is probably just as soft as hers but he can't bring himself to regret that.
Then she yawns, and says, "Okay, pay up and get out, dude. I'm tired."
"Yeah, okay," he says, rolling his eyes at her. So the moment is over, but he pulls out his card, adds the tip to the total, and hands it to her.
"How do you do math that fast?" she asks, seeming vaguely impressed.
He shrugs. "Boarding school."
"Okay," she says, and she smiles as she walks away to charge his card.
When she brings it back, he's leaning against the table, waiting for her.
She doesn't stand closer than normal, but he reaches out and tugs on one of her curls, watching it stretch out straight, and then releasing it. It springs back into a curl, and he smiles.
"Just like a kindergartener," she says, punching his arm. It's not a gentle punch, but it's not like she used her full strength either.
Even so, he rubs his arm. "Rude," he says.
She rolls her eyes. "Get out."
He does.
Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Wolf.
A/N: So I lied and this is going to be probably more like four parts oops. Oh well more for you guys amirite?
Eugh I hope you guys feel like I kept Jackson in character this time. I feel like I did? Because Jackson can be soft when he wants. We all saw how he acted around Allison when he wanted to take her away from Scott. I think it's completely within his characterization. I hope so.