Insufferable Teacher's Pet

Chapter 3

Stiles didn't really take school all that seriously. He wasn't even sure what he wanted to do with his life, but Scott, Lydia, Malia, and Isaac were all going to college and he wasn't about to get left behind. He'd convinced everyone to go to Beacon Hills University, well, aside from Lydia who ended up going to MIT. He'd even lucked out getting a dorm room with Scott. But everyone had a plan, they all had ideas for what they wanted to do. Scott wanted to be a vet, Lydia was doing some STEM program, Malia wanted to be an archaeologist, and Isaac wanted to be a teacher. But Stiles just didn't have a clue. When he was younger he thought he wanted to be a cop like his dad, but realizing the corruption of the police system changed his mind on that pretty fast.

First, he'd considered archaeology like Malia. Why not, right? Stiles liked history...kinda. The idea of finding cool ancient artifacts was neat. But upon taking archaeology and anthropology, he realized there was very little actual discovering ancient artifacts and a whole lot more reading. Then he tried taking some criminal justice courses, thinking about being a private investigator. He loved solving problems and helping his dad with cases, so maybe that was a way he could solve crime without being part of law enforcement. That didn't work out too well, either. Then it was law, then psychology, hell he even tried accounting – mainly because he knew they made bank – but nothing felt right. So now here he was, 21 years old, about to graduate with a general associates degree, and no idea what to get his bachelor's in. Should he even continue school? If he didn't, he'd be the only one in the group who wasn't continuing their education. He really didn't like that idea.

The classes in his final semester weren't very many; he only needed English lit, a few electives, and one science class left to graduate. He opted for astronomy because space was cool and took chemistry as well so he could have an extra class with Scott. Unfortunately, the only English lit class that had two spots left open was at 8 AM. The early morning classes were always the last to fill up because nobody wanted to wake up for them. Stiles was included in that group, but he'd dicked around and waited until the last minute to pick his classes, so he didn't have a choice.

Turns out, that 8 AM English lit class was the best decision he ever made. His professor was hot. Really hot. Like 'I don't know how the hell I'm gonna be able to focus on what you're teaching because you're so distracting' level of hot. But it seemed that Professor Hale didn't really like his jokes or quips. The guy definitely had a chip on his shoulder, so maybe Stiles could eventually get it off and get him out of his shell. Stiles was hilarious, people couldn't help but love him!

It was dumb, crushing on your teacher. Stiles knew that. He knew nothing would ever happen between them for a multitude of reasons. One: Professor Hale seemed to hate him. Two: a guy that attractive probably wasn't single, and three: he was also probably straight. He was completely unattainable, which meant having a crush on him was safe.

Yeah, it did seem safe. Right up until he was getting to class early Monday morning to hand in his new essay and overhead Professor Hale and Mr. Argent, his former anthropology teacher, arguing in the classroom. They'd slept together. So that meant Professor Hale wasn't straight. Which created a problem for Stiles, because now that made him a little more attainable. In Stiles' mind of course, this was both a good and bad thing. Scott kept trying to remind him it was a very bad thing and he shouldn't, under any circumstances, try to sleep with his teacher. When Scott was being the voice of reason, that should've been a big indicator of just how bad an idea it was. And Stiles wasn't gonna act on it...probably. Mostly because he was maybe a little bit afraid of Professor Hale. The guy was intimidating as hell, which of course only made him even more attractive. Chemistry sucked, it was so boring, and Scott meeting Kira and being all googly-eyed over her in class meant barely interacting with his best friend. Seeing as there was no reason for him to even be taking that class, Stiles begged his dad to talk to the Dean about letting him drop the class and take a different one. And when he saw Professor Hale's Latin 1 class not being full and conveniently being at the exact same time as Chemistry? Well, that just felt like fate.