#a garbage person

It didn’t seem to be something that could be helped, either—staring away from the screen helped his supernatural healing kick in, sure, but the irritation came back as soon as he was looking at his laptop.

Old Jackson would have probably shut up and stared at his laptop screen until he went blind, because he was NOT one to deal with things in a healthy manner. 

New Jackson was.... a little better, in that it only took him a few weeks before he asked Derek what the fuck was up. 

As it turned out, blue light was an issue for werewolves, so that was cool. 

It was an easy fix, but that didn’t mean that Jackson was thrilled about it. He had never had to wear glasses before—he had kind of hoped that becoming a werewolf was going to head that off at the pass before even age would affect his vision—so he was less than looking forward to the next pack study session. 

As usual, he was one of the last people to show up to the huge table they had basically claimed in the Darling Law Library (it was his week, next week would be in the Biomedical library for Lydia), and he slunk to the furthest end of the table before pulling out his glasses, glaring daggers at anyone who dared to make a remark.

They weren’t bad looking, of course. Jackson had basically picked out the nicest designer frames he could find, ignored anything having to do with a prescription, and paid extra for the blue light filters. The result was something he could live with—a nice dark frame, thick enough to add credibility to his profile without being bulky, stylish in a timeless way instead of something trendy that would be out of season in a year.

By the time Stiles showed up, they had already broken into their little teams—Allison and Lydia were flipping flash cards at a frankly impressive rate, Scott and Isaac were busy working on translations that neither of them were getting quite right (seriously the formal vous was not that difficult) and Jackson was nearly buried behind a pile of books. 

Truth be told, he had literally taken less than a minute to forget about the glasses—the relief from his headache was great, but nothing he could really focus on. So when Stiles sat beside him and Jackson looked up, catching his gaze, he literally had no idea why Stiles cut himself off and started to gape at him like a fish.

Jackson did the worlds slowest double take when, typing up several more passages from law textbook, he saw Stiles still staring at him. He moved to push his glasses up, and—oh fuck, that’s right, he was wearing glasses—and suddenly Stiles’ staring took on a whole new tone. 

“Can I help you?” he snapped, his self consciousness coming out in a sneered whisper that would probably have been much curler sounding if he had any volume in his voice. Stiles, for what it was worth, seemed to shake out of his stupor.

“No, no, Jackson, you just... I mean... you have really nice eyes. I can’t believe I didn’t notice before.”

Jackson frowns, scanning the heartbeat for a lie, but Stiles is being honest... and that’s something that he’s not sure how to deal with quite yet, so he just shrugs it off. 

“All of me is pretty, Stilinski, now get to work.”

--

As Stiles was so fond of saying, once was an incident, twice was a coincidence, and three times was a pattern, and Jackson was pretty sure that he was up to six times and counting where he had adjusted his glasses, or pushed them up into his hair, or even tapped at the side of the frame, and had Stiles immediately snap his attention to him. 

Which wasn’t a bad thing, he figured. He was man enough to admit that he had definitely grown to appreciate how Stilinski grew into himself over their first year of college—gone was the awkward, s scrawny teenager, and in his place was a more confident, self respecting, young adult...

... who just seemed to revert back into a teenager whenever Jackson did something like, take off his glasses. Or clean his glasses. Or push his glasses up. Stiles would always falter in his step, or trail off in his speech, or—as Jackson noted, pulling his glasses off as he pretended to read and sticking one of the arms in his mouth—literally walk into a doorways.

And it just. Kept. Happening.

It got to the point where Stiles got a B on his midterm (which was NOT the end of the world, like Scott kept reassuring him, but for a perfectionist like Jackson... well, he could definitely relate to how stressed out Stiles got about it). 

He even started to try to leave his glasses at home when he could, but that was always a recipe for disaster. Because now that Jackson had noticed Stiles looking at him, it was all he could notice, even without his glasses off. The only difference was that he now had a headache, so he was already irritable, which meant he usually started snapping between the second and third time he caught Stiles staring at him, which meant that there was more than one study session where Lydia had sent them all home early.

The most recent of which ended in Jackson, sitting in his car, rubbing his temples and growling, as if that would help the headache. He had all but threatened to gut Stiles if he looked over one more time, and Lydia had taken a minute after declaring the session was over to mentally shake Jackson to death. 

“You two get to study alone next week until you can play nice. Whatever the fuck is going on, fix it. With him. Immediately.”

Jackson hated Lydia. Mostly because she was always right.

--

Since they had been banned from the library by She who Wields the Table Reservations, Jackson had decided to announce that they would be taking a study break—Stiles only seemed too happy to oblige, especially if Jackson’s idea of a night off was terrible food and bad movies. He had threatened Stiles under risk of bodily injury to secure the good couch on the fourth floor of the student union while he went and picked up far too much fast food for two growing boys, even if one was a bottomless pit and one was a werewolf.

“So, are you finally going to ask me out or what?” Jackson asked, an hour into their “study session” where neither of them had even attempted to crack a book yet. After giving up on forgoing the frames, he had started wearing the glasses more and more often—even when there wasn’t a laptop in sight, just a couch and a table littered with wrappers from their greasy, delicious haul.

He figured it was the safest way to address the tension between them. Either Stiles would snap at him and storm off, or laugh about it and shrug things away, or they could actually fucking get somewhere like adults—Jackson wasn’t picky, he just wanted something to fucking progress.

Stiles promptly choked on a curly fry, looking at Jackson like he was crazy, opening his mouth to prepare for what Jackson knew was going to be a protest—so he was surprised when Stiles closed his mouth again, tilting his head. 

“Fine, but you better be taking me somewhere nice.”

Jackson laughed and threw another fry at him, shaking his head. “Fucking finally. Here I thought you just liked me for my glasses.” he said with a smirk, looking at Stiles over the rim of his glasses in a way that he knew would have Stiles blushing so prettily in no time flat.

Stiles tiled his head a little at that, a small smile on his face. “Don’t get me wrong, the glasses look is definitely... I mean, it’s.... god, you’re so pretty, but dude, just ask Lydia. I’ve been gazing longingly at you ever since you announced you wanted to go into family law to help make sure no kids wind up in your situation.”

Jackson frowned—that was at the beginning of freshman year, just over a year ago, there was no way—but Stiles heart was ringing true. 

Oh. 

“Oh.”

Jackson pinked up, and Stiles crooned.

(On Halloween, Stiles talks Jackson into doing a couples costume—Batman and Superman. Jackson shows up to Stiles’ apartment in a suit, tie, and his glasses, and Stiles—clad in his Batman suit—is pissed. All Jackson has to do is open his button down shirt to reveal the big “S” underneath and Stiles has to pick his jaw up off the floor.

“My hero.” he breathes.