Word Count: 3508

Notes: Erica is back!

"I don't want to leave," Jackson tells Danny.

Danny rolls his eyes exaggeratedly. "I told you you should have just come to New York with me. Think, you could have gone to Columbia or something."

"I should have," Jackson says irritably, only he knows that was never going to happen, not after everything. He missed Danny almost all the time, but it's easier to lie about werewolves she he's got a couple states between them.

Danny pulls him into a tight hug and says, "Maybe the airport isn't the best place to tell you, but the guy you think I'm pining over is in my theoretical mathematics class and he wears glasses."

"Of course he does," Jackson answers and pushes Danny away. "You be careful, okay? If he breaks your heart I'll break his foot, okay?"

"Of course you will," Danny placates, petting Jackson's shoulder. "I'll let you know if that happens."

"It'd be stupid," Jackson tells him.

"You'd think I'd have better luck with college boys, now that I'm actually in college," Danny laments.

"It's a matter of time, man." Of this, Jackson is sure. Danny has always been the perfect mix of snark and genuine concern for the people he loves (which, granted, was a small list. Jackson and Danny were friends out of that same sense of entitlement as much as they were friends through circumstance. Of course, Danny was always more snarky than cruel, and that's where they'd differed.)

Danny's eyes are soft now and he grins at Jackson. "Thanks."

Jackson just rolls his eyes and points at Danny's face. "The dimples, man. Hit him with the dimples."

"I know how to attract people," Danny huffs, but he's clearly trying not to laugh.

Jackson smirks. "Come visit this summer, yeah? Just not at the same time as my parents."

"Dude, no way would I be there then," Danny says, wrinkling his nose. "I love them and all, but you get pissy when they start asking questions."

"Shut up."

"You get pissy at everything, actually," Danny continues thoughtfully. "But yeah, I'll be there."

"Good," Jackson says. He glances at his watch and sighs. "I gotta go through security, still."

"Text me when you land," Danny says.

"We can skype next weekend," Jackson offers. "You can tell me about your new boyfriend—"

"He's not my boyfriend yet," Danny says, scowling.

"Exactly, yet. I expect a progress report, is what I'm saying," Jackson answers. "And maybe I'll tell you something about Erica. Maybe."

"And maybe you could text Lydia some time," Danny snipes.

Jackson groans. "Ugh, why?"

"Because she's still expecting something from you? You should clear things up."

"Fine, Mom," Jackson says. "Now give me a hug and kiss good bye. I have a boo-boo on my heart."

"You're such an idiot," Danny says, but hugs him regardless. "I'm not kissing you, though."

Jackson laughs and shakes his head ruefully. "Okay, okay. Bye."

"Bye!" Danny calls, and Jackson has to walk away or he won't ever leave.

Well, that's not true, he thinks later, when he's staring out of the plane window, watching the runway go by. Danny is his best friend, but Erica presents a new challenge, something to distract him when his teachers are being more boring than usual.

And he'd be lying if he said he was comfortable with missing her at the diner this week.

So, so dumb.

Jackson takes a taxi from the airport when he gets back to Chicago. He could have walked home without problem, but he has luggage and didn't feel like it.

He texts Danny on the way, "Made it okay. Make sure to hit him with your dimples."

Danny sends him a picture of his middle finger in front of a New York style pizza, and Jackson laughs in the back of the cab for a full minute.

When he gets back to his apartment, he puts his duffle bag down and wanders around, making sure Scott didn't do anything stupid while he was here. Everything appears to be in order—lifting the couch cushions reveals no candy wrappers—and nothing is missing.

He thinks about unpacking or taking everything down to the laundromat, but honestly he doesn't feel like it, and...well, his stomach is growling.

He wants to go to the diner immediately, to say hello to Erica, but then he reminds himself that he doesn't owe her anything, shouldn't owe her anything.

(He just wants to.)

Instead, he decides to go get Chicago style pizza. In the restaurant, he sends Danny a picture of his own middle finger in front of the pizza.

Danny sends back, "Imitation is the best form of flattery, xoxo."

Jackson snorts into his pizza.

Okay, so he goes to the diner a couple minutes earlier than usual. Like thirty. Okay, an hour early. But it's seriously not a big deal. He brought his textbooks with him and he's reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason when Erica approaches the table.

"Where have you been?" she asks, hand on her hip.

"I was with Danny in New York. Miss me?" he asks with a grin that does not come across as hopeful. He hopes.

"Little bit," she offers. She smirks at him as she pulls her notebook and pen out. "Mostly your tip."

"You can buy affection," he says in faux wonder.

Erica snickers before asking if he knows what he wants yet.

"Let's just start with coffee," he says.

"Okay," she says. "Maybe I'll charge you this time."

"Damn," he sighs. "Miss one week and suddenly you hate me."

She shrugs. "Keep trying, maybe I'll change my mind."

Challenge accepted, he thinks, but he definitely doesn't say that out loud. He kind of loathes memes and the idea of anyone knowing that they have any headspace at all actually pains him.

He reads Kant with a frown on his face while he waits for her and wonders if there's another way to read Kant. He thinks about what his professor said about German Kant scholars reading the translated (and abridged) version of Kant's books and decides that there's not.

"What are you reading?" Erica asks when she sets down the coffee.

"Kant," he says.

"Don't sound so happy about it," she suggests.

"No one likes Kant," Jackson mutters. "Not even Kant scholars like Kant."

She laughs about that and shakes her head. "You know what you want?"

"The rotisserie chicken," he decides on a whim. He ate so healthy in New York, because Danny, unlike him, actually had to work at maintaining a physique. It's unfair, but in his favor, so what does he care? Tonight, he can eat a whole chicken.

"Someone's hungry," Erica says as she writes down the order. "I'll have that out for you in a few minutes."

"Thanks," he says, and drinks the coffee tiredly. Classes still suck. He really, really gets what Danny was saying that first night. Law is interesting and he's always wanted to be a lawyer, since he knew what that entailed. It's not about the money, which he has plenty of, thanks to that insurance settlement. He just likes that there are rules people have follow, and he likes the idea of knowing them well enough that he can find all the loopholes.

What Kant's ramblings about transcendental deductions have to do with law, he might never know.

He's rereading a single sentence over and over, trying to make sense of it when Erica returns. "Don't strain yourself," she says as she sets down the plate. She has that look on her face that Lydia used to get sometimes. The one that said, "We all know who the real dumb one is here."

He'd been really willing to ignore those looks most of the time. He'd never bothered to compare that to how she normally acted—dumb and ditzy but controlling. Lydia has always been visibly smart, if you bother to pay attention. He never had.

So he can't blame Lydia for the love not being enough. At least not totally.

He brushes it off this time because he honestly has no gauge on what level of intelligence Erica has. He also has a stinking suspicion that Erica's education ended back when they were sophomores, when she ran away and was subsequently kidnapped.

"Thank you, darling," he says snarkily. "I'll keep that in mind."

"Fair warning," she says as she refills the coffee. "The chicken is just all right."

Jackson nods before trying a bite. He grimaces and nods. "We're back to where we started. It doesn't make me want to vomit."

"Such a high class palate," Erica simpers.

He rolls his eyes. "Obviously." He eats a few more bites, and since Erica hasn't left the table yet, he says, "Fair warning. Sometimes Scott and Isaac come to check up on me."

"Are you a little rebel?" Erica asks. Her tone is teasing, but it has a bite that wasn't there before. "Disobeying Daddy alpha? He has to send your big brothers to check on you?"

He rocks back a little, hackles raising. "No, he just freaks out because I'm so far away."

"Exactly," she says drily.

"What's wrong with you?" Jackson asks, because for some reason she's angry now, and he doesn't know what to do.

"Nothing," she snaps. "Just, don't even think on it." She starts to walk away.

"Did you see Scott last week?" he asks, desperate to keep her there, to understand.

Her eyes are dark when she looks back at him, but she says not a word.

He pays for the coffee.

Jackson spends the next few days trying to figure out what he did wrong and how to fix it. He honestly had been trying to warn her, and he can't figure out why even the mention of Scott or Isaac would upset her so much.

Well, maybe he understands why she wouldn't like Scott. From what he understood, Scott and his girlfriend had both beat her up more than once, and Scott had apparently rejected her advances a few times. It was all weird and he'd never cared enough about the pack drama to really bother understanding.

But Isaac and Erica had been close, he thought. Isaac was still in mourning for Erica even though it had been four years.

He wonders if she wishes she had seen Isaac instead of Scott last week, because he gets the feeling that Scott did catch a glimpse of her.

But mostly, he wants to know why Erica is here, not there. Why she's hiding from the pack. Why she's pretending to be dead.

He wants her to tell him.

"So did he fall in love with you yet?" Jackson asks absentmindedly. He's skyping with Danny while doing homework, and any distraction is a blessing. This Kant paper is killing him.

"No," Danny answers. "But he does seem interested in me, now."

"Of course he is," Jackson says. He erases a sentence that trivializes his argument and sighs. "It was the dimples, huh?"

"Maybe," Danny answers, and then his fingers are flying across the keyboard, tapping loud enough that Jackson switches back to the skype window.

"Are you playing a game?" he asks.

"Yeah," Danny answers.

"Are you trying to get out of telling me about him?"

"Don't be nosy, Jackson." Danny continues playing the game.

Jackson groans and goes back to his paper. For a few minutes, the only sound is of typing—Jackson with his paper and Danny with what Jackson guesses is an online version of Galaga, if he knows Danny at all. (Hint: he does.)

"I think Erica hates me," he mutters.

The noise of typing stops abruptly and Danny looks at him. "What'd you do?"

"Don't really know," Jackson admits. "Mentioned people from her past and she freaked out?"

"She is pretending to be dead. Maybe she's just worried that they'll find out, and the gig will be up."

"You're probably right," Jackson sighs.

"I'm always right," Danny says, rolling his eyes. Then with a wide grin, he adds, "Lydia and I have that in common. Have you talked to her yet?"

"Nah, I'll probably just avoid her until she gets the hint."

"Dude, you're only hurting yourself. Lydia might love you, but I think she'd be okay if you never came back. She's tough," Danny points out.

"I know," Jackson says. "Obviously I know that. There's a reason I liked her, okay?"

Danny shook his head and yawned. "I gotta sleep. Hurry up and finish your paper."

"Yeah, yeah," Jackson mutters. "I'll talk to you later."

"Bye," Danny says, and closes out of Skype.

Jackson does not want to talk to Lydia. He wants to fix things with Erica, though.

He wishes he was still in that place where he got everything he wanted.

Jackson's maybe a little nervous when he goes to the diner. He halfway expects her to send a different waitress over to his table, so he's brought his textbooks again as a contingency plan. If she won't talk to him, at least he'll get something done.

But Erica walks up to the table just like normal. She looks a little defeated but not annoyed. "Hey," she says quietly.

"Hey," he answers just as softly, and he wants to apologize and give her flowers and candy until she says she's okay and he can stop, and then he wants to keep going with that.

He stomps on that line of thinking, because it's ridiculous and he's above begging. Probably.

Definitely.

Maybe?

"Do you want coffee?" she asks, and her hands fist around the hem of her skirt briefly before letting go. "I could probably give it to you free tonight."

He nods. "Yeah, I'd...I'd like coffee."

"I'll have it right out," she says, and then practically runs from the table.

He thinks about how it must feel to be her. He never made fun of her while they were in school—a part of him would always remember climbing trees with her on the playground, before she had seizures, and anyway, she'd never pissed him off, not like Stilinski. Or Scott. Still, he knows who he was in high school—a stuck up jock who wasn't nice, who taunted people who crossed him, who put himself first. He wonders if she's scared that he'll do something like that now.

Because the thing is...the thing is that Erica might be strong now, alpha strong, but inside? He doesn't think much has changed. She's still the girl that got mocked for things she couldn't control.

With that thought in mind, he schools his face into a more gentle smile when she returns with the coffee. And she does relax a little when she sees the face, and suddenly he's worried that she spent the whole week thinking he hated her.

He certainly hates that idea.

"Do you know what you want to order?" she asks.

"My usual," he says, smiling warmly at her, even though it feels foreign. He's not used to coddling the people he likes, but right now, he thinks she needs it. And...he needs it, too. From her. Logically, you give what you get. So maybe...

She smiles back, and it's genuine now. "California Burger." No teasing today, and it feels wrong, but he can do this, if it's what's necessary.

"Yeah," he says. "Thanks."

"Sure," she says. "I'll bring it out in a few minutes."

He nods and then buries his head in a textbook. He's just starting to understand the quantity theory when Erica reappears with his food.

"Look," he blurts, and she starts, staring at him with wide eyes. "I realize that I've been a jerk to you. And I wanted to say that I'm sorry. I pushed you and I shouldn't have."

"No," she agrees with a sigh, "You shouldn't have."

"Yeah," he says. "You must really, really hate me."

"No, not at all," she offers quickly.

"You sure?" he asks.

"Positive," she answers. "I was...upset last week because I don't like to think about Beacon Hills. I can usually ignore it when it's just you, but when it's you and them, it's...harder."

He wants to ask what's wrong with Beacon Hills, but he can answer that himself, so he just nods. "Yeah... Do you want me to...stop coming around? I mean, if it's bringing up bad memories."

She shakes her head.

"Oh, good," he says, relaxing. "Because I really want you to like me." He almost cringes at how desperate that sounded, but he thinks it's working, he thinks he knows how this will play out. She'll smile and things will still be a little awkward, but they'll click eventually.

"Luckily for you," she says, "I do like you." Some of her old swagger is returning, and the words come out a little more sexually charged then he expected.

It's not unwelcome, of course, and honestly it's more like the way they were at first. It's relaxed and normal. He finds himself grinning back and leaning toward her a little.

The coffee is free, and Erica gets a 45% tip.

"So how is Danny?" Erica asks the next week. "I forgot to ask."

"He's great," Jackson says. Smiling into his coffee. "This guy he likes, Luke, finally asked him out and the semester is almost over, so life is pretty great for him right now."

"Well, you could be in New York," Erica points out. "That'd probably make his life better."

"But yours worse," he says in mock sorrow. "Oh, the sacrifices I must make."

"Shut up," she says, but she's laughing. When she brings him his food, she asks, "Seriously, why did you choose Chicago instead of New York? Surely you could have gone to Columbia."

Danny knows why he's in Chicago instead of New York, Jackson thinks. So do his parents, and probably even Lydia. The people he cares about? They know.

But they're all people who have been in his life so long that he almost can't imagine life without them (except Lydia, although it feels like she's still there, most of the time, tapping her foot while she watches him study). He cares about Erica, but she still has the veneer of shiny newness that screams at him not to trust.

But to get trust, he reasons, you have to give it. He wants to know why she's here, and maybe the road to that is telling her why he's here.

"My birth father went to school here," Jackson offers carefully, because it's better than saying, "Chicago is far away enough from Derek that I don't have to see him, but close enough that I could go back. If I wanted."

"And that's more important than Danny? Or Lydia?" she asks.

Why does everything come back to Lydia? Jackson laments mentally. Outwardly, he just shrugs. "Lydia and I aren't...anything any more."

"The it couple, broken up. High School dreams are crushed," Erica sighs.

That's almost annoying, but he ignores it for the time being. Erica is trying to rile him up and he doesn't really want anything to do with it. He thinks about telling her that Chicago just felt like the right place, like being here now is important. But he doesn't say that because he doesn't really believe in intuition, at least, not the kind that tells you where you should move or whether you should wear a blue shirt today.

Maybe Erica has picked up on his vague irritation, because she offers suddenly, "Chicago was mostly just a safe place to hide, you know? everything closer seemed too dangerous, and everything further seemed like too far from home."

He chews a french fry slowly and contemplates that. It's weird to hear her synthesize his own thoughts, albeit hers are focused on safety and his are focused on pack. He picks at the word home carefully in his mind before asking, "Is Beacon Hills your home?"

The smile on her face freezes for a second, and then she shrugs. "Not any more."

He understands that.

She leaves the table then, to attend to another customer, and when she comes back, she has an air of melancholy covered by a forced smile.

He wants the genuine smile back, so he says, "I want pie."

"Of course you do," she says, and he can see a little of the tension ease out of her shoulders.

"A whole pie," he corrects, and she laughs a little.

"I'll get that for you," she promises, and when she returns, she brings the check with her.

He makes sure to brush her fingers when he takes it, and he feels like a kid again when he gets a giddy rush out of it. He tries to remember the last time he touched someone he genuinely liked (not counting Danny over spring break) and draws a blank.

Maybe it makes sense that his fingers are tingling while he writes in the 46% tip, or maybe he's just being ridiculous. He can't bring himself to care.

Disclaimer: I still don't own anything but I KIND OF want to be captain of this ship.

A/N: Gersh this is adorbs. And a little sad. But not too much. :)