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Explicit Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con M/M Teen Wolf (TV) Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, background Allison Argent/Kira Yukimura, background Lydia Martin/Jordan Parrish Stiles Stilinski, Derek Hale, Scott McCall, Erica Reyes, Malia Tate, Lydia Martin, Jordan Parrish Alternate Universe - Soulmates, that's right it's a soulmate au, a celebrity soulmate au, with dystopian themes but still set in the current day, brief suicide tw, Dysfunctional Relationships, Threats of Violence, Emotional Abuse, annddd lots of arguing, the non-con is soulmate typical so don't worry, Domestic Violence, and there is a happy ending Published: 2015-02-17 Completed: 2015-02-18 Chapters: 4/4 Words: 63746
Playing God by standinginanicedress Summary
"You think the soulmate thing isn't real. Right?” Derek nods back at Stiles, slowly, up and down, like he's unsure of where this conversation is going. “But you admit you're attracted to me. Right?” A brief pause, but then another nod comes, this one even more reluctant than the first, and a thrill goes through Stiles' body before he can stop it. “Then if the whole soulmate thing is fake anyway, if it's all just smoke and mirrors and test tubes,” he takes another step closer to Derek, so close he could reach out and touch him if he wanted to, “then who cares what we do? Right? It's just – sex.”
Notes
I know soulmate au's are the most overdone trope to ever exist on earth but there's a reason. And that reason is because why the fuck not I fuckin' love soulmate au's SO...god damn..much... I have been wanting to write a soulmate au ever since I knew how to read and write (I just didn't know it until like last year). And in that vein I knew that when I actually wound up writing one it would have to be as different as I could possibly make it from the other 10 million soulmate au's out there while still keeping the essentials of the trope in tact. I literally feel like I am sending my son off to college right now, this fic is LITERALLY my fucking son. I spent quadruple the amount of time on this than any of my other fics, I had it beta'd (do you know when the last time I had something beta'd was? It was my VERY first fic...eight fuckin fics ago lmao), I literally almost failed a test because instead of studying I worked on this fic. What I'm saying is, I really, really, really hope you like this as much as I do. Okay? Okay. Also I'd like to say I'm not like a physics major or a chemistry major (or whatever major I'd have to be to understand some of this in its entirety aha) so have mercy on my soul in regards to some of the more scientific stuff. edit : at the bottom of this chapter in the end notes, there are some in-depth trigger warnings and explanations of some things certain people might find disturbing in this fic. Some things I can't really tag - but a lot of people have commented saying they were surprised (sometimes unplesantly) but how dark this thing can get lmao so if you're wondering and you want some warnings that are as unspoilerific as I can make them, take a look at those before continuing on with the story!
Soulmates for Dummies Chapter Notes See the end of the chapter for notes
“Stiles and I,” there's a pause. The cameras zoom in extremely close on Derek's face, so everyone can see as his pupils dilate, as he starts to sweat around the top of his brow, as he physically has to restrain himself from leaping up out of that chair. The dead air drowns on – the woman across from him shifts uncomfortably in her seat, the audience coughs, and Derek swallows, lowering his eyes to the ground. “We thought we could control it. We thought – I thought I had the upperhand over my own body. I guess we learned our lesson, in the end.” ---It began, as most shitty B-list movies begin, with a mutation. Some weird combination of genes and chemistry and test tubes and women and men in lab coats poking at fucking petri dishes – and never for ten seconds did anyone stop to think that some things weren't meant to be messed with. People's lives, for example, their fucking futures and their choices, were not things that could be boiled down to tubes and chemical reactions. None of that particularly mattered to anyone. No one ever imagined how anything could ever, ever possibly go wrong. People thought you know...wouldn't it be super fucking tubular if we actually had soulmates? Like in the moving pictures? Golly! Bills were passed, signed off on, with the vast majority of people seeing absolutely nothing problematic with the proceedings. Because, what could be wrong with love, right? What could be wrong with making sure that every human to be born on earth would be granted the permission to give and receive love? Like they say – the greatest thing you'll ever know is just to love and be loved in return. Right? Everything was flowers and hearts and goo-goo eyes; people weren't thinking right. Anyone who actually stepped up, back then, to suggest that maybe there was something weird about playing around with people's DNA to force them to belong with another person, was ignored. Any complaints whatsoever were ignored altogether. So, it happened. People were voluntarily injected with the serum, and within days people were finding their soulmates. Their other halves, as they said. It was a mistake. It was a horrible, awful, mistake – and every thing went to shit within a week. Just a single week and it was like the zombie fucking apocalypse hit. Because what the serum actually did wasn't just like some love potion, it didn't just make you feel a little bit sad if you went without your mate for a couple of days – it made people fucking obsessed. It made people, for lack of a better word, deranged.
They didn't test it enough. They didn't take all the precautions they should have taken, and everyone was too blinded by that fleeting idea of true love that they thought the pros far outweighed the possible cons. Some people reacted fine. Some people found their soulmate, searched the entire world over for them, and fell in love, and had a happily ever after. The perfect vision that everyone had came to pass. The problem was that these people were in the vast minority. For every one perfectly matched couple, there were, give or take, a hundred others who...didn't have the right response. People didn't always react right. Not everyone could possibly have the same reaction, they should've known, but the extent to which it all backfired was unprecedented. No one could've predicted that shit. People died. A lot of people fucking died because of this – because the serum turned them borderline feral. It made them insane with jealousy, with possessiveness, to the point of actually killing their own soulmates to get the feeling to go away. To get it out of them. A week. One single week, and over half the people who chose to receive the injection were dead. The same scientists holed up in an underground lab somewhere and worked tirelessly to find an antidote, to find something to flush it out of the bloodstream, so any children conceived by the well adjusted soulmates, anyone who was actually left, wouldn't have the mutation. It worked, more or less. Antidotes, not elective this time, were distributed out to everyone who signed up for the initial injection – and it was weird, everyone always says, when they came out of the stupor, and looked at the person who had been their soulmate only twenty minutes earlier, blinked, and felt nothing for them anymore. Every thing that they liked about that person, from their looks to their personality, it meant nothing. Like the serum didn't just find someone who you would actually wind up with anyway, someone you actually cared about. It just shoved you and someone together, and forced you to love them. Forced them to love you back. It didn't matter, anyway – it was a dark mark for the history books, everyone thought. Bury the dead, hold the incident up as a reminder and a warning for future generations, move on. But some people. Some people didn't get the gene washed out well enough. The serum was still running through their veins, however undetected – getting passed down to the next generation. This was rare; this was incredibly rare. The statistics back then were something like you have a billion to five chance of being born with the mutation, and a two billion to five chance of having a match for you born with the same mutation. But they existed. No one was really sure how it was going to present itself in the next generation; would it be the same, would there be just as much chaos as the first time around, should the couple dozen or so kids growing up with a soulmate forced upon them be allowed to walk around in society like normal people, like ticking time bombs waiting to explode the second they met their soulmate? People were concerned that they were going to be worse, more out of control, because the antidote wouldn't work on them. Like it was just a part of them that couldn't be removed, like trying to get rid of someone's heart. But, it was tamer, the second time around. Whatever the antidote did the first time around, however
much it diluted the initial serum, it made the mutation less...aggressive. A handful of them found their soulmates, wound up on the news, wound up as huge celebrities, and both pairs were happy and healthy and assured the cameras and the public at large that they had absolutely no urges to ever kill each other, and they were in love, and as soon as they met their match after eighteen years of wandering around feeling empty and lost, they felt complete again. Everything was...okay, for the most part. None of the mated-born particularly liked being sideshow attractions for the public to gobble up, and it created weird prejudices against them, being in the limelight like that – some people were still afraid of them, afraid that one day the serum would make them go insane. The only negative physical side effect of being born that way was that it left strange red markings on the skin. Like shallow cuts in a strange pattern; for some of them, it looked like nothing but a mess of tangled webs, for others it did sort of look like a picture (like criss crosses and zig zags and veins), but the one unifying factor was that, if you were mated, your soulmate would have the exact same markings on their own person, somewhere. That's how you would know. It didn't work like it used to; it wasn't an undying need to tear the world apart searching for the other half – it was more like a dull ache in the back of the head, sometimes. Late at night. Stiles' mark is an ink-splotch looking thing – about six inches in length, branching out like a tree along the bottom of his jaw, down his neck, disappearing underneath the collar of his shirts. “What the fuck is that on your neck?” Stiles doesn't even blink at comments like this anymore. He usually covers his mark up with make up; it's part of his daily ritual. He wakes up, showers, brushes his teeth, covers his mark. It takes so long, however, to cake the foundation on top of the red marks (that are so bright they refuse to be covered with just a single layer) that sometimes he wakes up too late, has to forgo covering it up in favor of actually eating a meal before taking off for work, and...people stare. Like he said. People treat the mated-born as a sideshow attraction. The names of the children born with the mutation are kept under pretty tight lock and key, mostly to keep them all from seeking each other out to “kill each other”, and aren't released as public figures until they're already mated away happily – so he enjoys a life of anonymity. Unless he doesn't cover his mark up. “Vicious fight with a bear,” Stiles says back, handing the guy his change out of the register without looking him in the eye. “Trust me. He doesn't look as good as I do.” The dude just stares at him; at his mark, tracing it with his eyes a couple of times, even though there's a line behind him in the mini-mart and he already has his soda and his change. “Oh,” he says finally, scrunching his face up in what is easily disgust. “You're one of them.” Stiles blinks at him, cocking his head to the side. Feigns innocence. “One of who?”
“He's one of those mutt kids,” a woman in the line behind him says, eye-balling Stiles like he's a piece of meat. Stiles has been called a mutt probably a zillion times in his life. He's a whacked out science experiment, he gets it. He's not normal, he's not average, he's not like everyone else and it makes people uncomfortable. Some people. Not everyone fawns and coos over the other mated-borns that become celebrities; they have attempts made on their lives about once a week, live under intense security, hardly ever come out of their holes out of fear for their own lives. And Stiles thinks it's fucking funny how these anti-mated groups go on and on about how dangerous Stiles is, how he deserves to be put down like a dog, while they're the only ones going around killing people. “The politically correct term,” Stiles says in an even tone, mostly just so his boss won't come out here to find him freaking out on a pack of customers ganging up on him, “is mated.” The man scoffs, takes his drink and his change, and hightails it out of the mini-mart like Stiles has some kind of infectious disease he doesn't want to catch. The woman who called him a mutt puts her chips back on the shelf, gives Stiles a dirty look, and leaves as well. Which just leaves a teenage girl holding a candy bar. She approaches the counter warily, staring at Stiles' mark like it's going to leap off of his skin, sprout legs, and come at her with a fucking knife. Stiles sighs. This is just how it is. It's why he can't get any job better than a cashier at a shit corner store, can't rent his own apartment, can't get a credit card, can't go out in public without being harassed or sneered at. Sometimes he fantasizes about meeting his mate, and not for the lovey-dovey horse shit, but so he can become famous for being mated, become a fucking celebrity in LA where people might not respect him but will at least not treat him like a walking, talking zombie apocalypse waiting to happen. Where he could actually be a human being, for ten fucking seconds. At the end of his shift, after being called mutt fifty times, losing about twenty customers, and getting vaguely threatened a few times, his boss, a super old dude who lived through the first serum, corners him in the break room before he manages to sneak out the back door, and narrows his eyes at him. “Why is that not covered up?” Stiles swallows, nervously running his fingers over the mark. “I didn't have time to cover it up this morning. All right?” His boss sighs through his nose, runs his eyes over the mark like everyone always does, and shakes his head. “You know I don't have a problem with that,” which is why this is the only place that would hire him, “but other people do. I can't have you scaring away customers with your disease, kid. If it happens again, I'll have to fire you.” Disease. Stiles nearly laughs. There's nothing wrong with him, he's not sick. He was just...he just
came out wrong. That's all. He just fucking didn't turn out like everyone else, and now he has to suffer the consequences of his mother and father's shitty decision to get injected to begin with. But he can't say any of that. People don't see it that way. So he nods, zips his hoodie up as high as it goes, pulls his hood up to cover the mark, and steps out into the parking lot to drive himself home. Most of the time, he tries not to think about what he is. Most of the time, he doesn't think about the fact that there might be some other person walking around out there with the exact same mark as him, maybe in another country, or another state, but existing. Someone who's been called mutt just like him, someone who spends twenty minutes every morning covering themselves up so no one will know what they actually are, someone who has to work at a shitty gas station and drive a shitty car and live like an invalid because people don't accept them. Stiles doesn't think about falling in love. He never has before – he's never even been kissed. People find out about what he is and want very, very little to do with him, like Danny, who recoiled back so hard when Stiles dared to show him the mark that he smacked his head on the lockers after practice, or Caitlin, who slapped him in the face when some of his make up smudged off and revealed it to the open air. So he's a twenty-two year old virgin in every single aspect of the word. And he doesn't think about it. He doesn't care if he never meets the one, he doesn't care if he never meets anyone. But he thinks it would be nice to have someone who understands what it's like, you know? The fact of the matter is, it's highly unlikely that he'll ever meet that person. It's highly unlikely that they're even out there, at all. His mate could be dead, already. Or they could've just never been born at all, and Stiles is just half of a person walking around looking for something that never even fucking existed. Or, they're out there. Waiting, like he is. Even then. What are the odds of ever finding them, in a world this big?
How to Pretend You're Not a Soulmate Chapter Notes
edit : I am so fuckin mad I didn't say this when I first posted it because it's a necessity for this fic - but blasting I Know Places by Taylor Swift while reading this is strong recommended honestly it gives you the full effect
When Stiles is covered up, nearly every single day of his life, he'd be lying if he said he didn't feel inherently safer. It's nice to just blend in with everyone else and not be looked at for any longer than absolutely necessary; to be treated like he just belongs here with everyone else, like there's nothing weird about him whatsoever, and he wasn't born fucked up and strange. There's also another part of him, though, that just feels like a fraud. Like an alien playing dress up with human's skin. It's the loneliest feeling in the entire world, sometimes. Scott is really the only person he knows who know about him, aside from his father. Or, at least he's the only person who found out about him and didn't go running for the hills out of fear that he'd, you know...go insane and start killing everyone around him. Which, can he point out, is a completely misconstrued stereotype – if anything, he'd kill his fucking soulmate. And none of the next generation, few as they are, have done that! It doesn't appear to matter to anyone, no matter how many times this exact thing is pointed out. People are only ever going to feel comfortable around him once he gets his mate (and even then, only if he doesn't go batshit and stab them in the neck. Which...Stiles thinks is pretty fair, actually.) Then he'll get super famous and everyone will love him and he'll get death threats in the mail daily. Can't wait! Until that day, he has to put on his cover-up, pretend to be perfectly normal, and walk undetected among the rest of the population. Which is exactly what he's doing behind the register the day he meets his soulmate – blending in. Crouched down low behind the register, scrubbing fruitlessly at a large stain from a slurpee he dropped back here two weeks ago and tried to get away with not cleaning up. Now, look what he fucking got out of that – if he had just cleaned it up in the first place, he wouldn't be down here on the ground, covered in bleach, scrubbing at an impossible to lift stain. Someone clears their throat above him, and then there's the distinct sound of something slapping down onto the counter. “Does anyone fucking work here?”
Stiles grits his teeth. People who come into gas stations are about a million times ruder than any other people on the face of the planet – most of them are tired, disgruntled, and hungry, and they take it all out on poor Stiles just for being the person behind the counter. “No, it's a ghost-mart, smartass.” The guy makes a huffing sound, that could either be a very annoyed sigh or a slightly amused laugh. “I don't have all god-damn night.” Annoyed sigh, then. Stiles rises from his crouch, eyeballing the still-prominent stain with a grimace, ripping the rubber gloves off his hands. He's never going to get that stain out, no matter how hard he scrubs, and his boss is probably just going to take it out of his pay. Which really, really sucks because he only makes nine dollars an hour as it is, and is barely keeping up with his car payments and cell phone bill. With a sigh of his own, he raises his eyes to look at the guy for the first time, and nearly vomits all over the counter. That's the feeling he gets. He feels like fucking projectile vomiting all over this guy's face, or maybe gouging his own eyeballs out, or leaping over the counter, grabbing him by the neck and just fucking him right then and there while his boss watches. Which is a really bizarre thought for Stiles to have, because, again, virgin. And he just...knows. It's the strangest feeling he's ever had in his life. It's like when he used to take tests in high school, read the first question, and know exactly what the answer is. That's what this guy is like. He's the fucking answer to a question Stiles has spent his entire life trying to answer. He's got these eyes and these cheek bones and the – the muscles and the hair, and he's looking at Stiles like he's thinking the exact same thing that Stiles is and for about two seconds the entire world stops spinning. There is no gas station. There is no mini-mart. There's no one else in the entire world, nothing else in the entire world, except for Stiles and this stranger that's making his virgin mind wander off into unfamiliar territory. “Fuck.” Stiles says, finally. It's not like he had some speech written for this moment or anything – not like he was about to pull out a worn, folded up piece of paper and recite word for word some love poem. Because he never actually thought...you know. It would happen. His father, when Stiles was just a little boy, sat him down and looked him dead in the eye and said, point blank, do not expect to meet your soulmate, son. There was every chance in the world that they didn't even fucking exist; and in all the wildest dreams that Stiles allowed himself to have, they didn't meet in a fucking minimart on the outskirts of town with a can of Monster sitting on the counter in-between them. The guy – his soulmate – says, “I'm – sorry?” And turns around on his heel, beelining for the door as fast as his legs can take him. Which is pretty fucking fast, actually. Stiles blinks, looks down at the energy drink, blinks once more, and then leaps over the counter. “Hey!” He calls, charging out after the guy, abandoning his post at the register, because fuck everything right now, he just – he just! His entire life has been leading up to this god damn moment, and the guy is just going to run off on him? He's just going to fucking run out the mini-mart without even saying more than two words to him? Not on Stiles' watch. No sirree bob. He's spent the last twenty-two years of his life as some
kind of fucking freak, and finally, there's an opportunity for him to prove to the world that he's not a murderer, and the guy is just going to run? And also, maybe he loves him? Stiles doesn't know, dammit! He charges out into the night air, sees the guy climbing into a sleek black Camaro, and starts hollering. “Don't you fucking drive away from me, asshole!” The guy slams the door closed, starts the engine, right as Stiles skids to a stop right in front of the car, holding his arms out, blocking his path. Through the windshield, he can see the interior of the car, this man's face lit up by the buzzing fluorescent lights above their heads, can see when he switches gears. Stiles immediately assumes it's reverse, and leaps on top of the hood. He winds up starfished on the hood of an expensive car at eleven o'clock at night in the parking lot of a gas station, climbing up higher so that his face is pressing up against the windshield. He narrows his eyes in at the guy, who has a fucking dropped jaw and huge eyes, and says, “turn. The car. Off. Now.” His soulmate freezes for a couple of seconds. Like he's actually deliberating over whether or not he should try driving off with Stiles on top of his hood, whether he has a shot of doing this without winding up in a jail cell somewhere for murder or attempted murder. He makes the right choice, in the end. Shuts the car off. Stiles says, “keys out the window.” “What?” “Throw your keys out the window!” That perfectly sculpted face contorts in annoyance, his green eyes flashing at Stiles through the glass, and then clink. The keys land in the gravel of the parking lot. Stiles slowly climbs down off the hood of the car, his soulmate watching every single movement of his limbs, and positions himself right next to the half rolled down window on the driver's side, peering in at the tan skin and green eyes. “Let me see it.” He swallows, avoids eye contact. “What?” So he's going to feign ignorance. Right! Like Stiles doesn't know beyond any shadow of a doubt that what Stiles is feeling right now – jittery, wired, like fucking Superman (he jumped on top of a car, for fuck's sake) is exactly what this guy is feeling. That lightbulb that went off in Stiles' head when they made eye contact went off in his too and Stiles isn't going to let him weasel his way out of it. “I know it's there, asshole, so just – show me.” There are a few seconds of dead silence. A car pulls up to a pump six feet away from them, and another pulls up to the air station. Car doors slam. And Stiles and his soulmate stare at each other, like they're mapping each other out. Finally, a tan hand raises up, swipes down his own neck a few times, up and down, up and down, until the red lines start to become visible. Stiles' breath catches when the entire thing is out in the
open, when the exact. Same. Mark. That he's been seeing in the mirror for the past twenty-two years, the one he's had to cover up, the one that's made his life a living fucking hell, is sitting on this man's tan skin. Stiles doesn't hesitate to tug the collar of his shirt down and rub away his own make up, to show this stranger that they're the same. The man's breath catches, and then he snaps his jaw shut. Like he didn't want that sound to come out, like he's humiliated by it, somehow. Stiles smiles at him, somewhat awkwardly. “Stiles.” The guy stares at him for a few seconds, before frowning intensely, like this entire conversation is a tax on his life and he would rather be just about anywhere else. “What?” Pretty much the only word he's said the entire night is what, and also in the same tone of voice, with the same growl under his breath, the same terse downward curve of his lips. “My name,” Stiles says, narrowing his eyes just slightly. “Stiles.” A beat. “Are you going to kill me?” A long suffering sigh comes from inside the car, but for a second it looks like he's actually thinking about it. Like hmmm...should I kill this kid tonight? Should I kill my soulmate? Do I have the urge to maim and murder on this jolly good evening? “I don't think so.” His voice is strained, measured. “That's good,” Stiles nods. “That's – that's good to hear. I don't think I'm going to kill you either, for what it's worth. So...good start?” He looks older than Stiles. Closer to thirty, maybe, with a bit of stubble and a nice fucking car. He must have money. And if he has money then that must mean that he probably also has a nice house, and Stiles really wants to go and see what it looks like, wants to know what his bedroom looks like specifically, because, again, he's getting this primal urge to just jump on top of this guy and get naked, and he doesn't even know his name yet. Before Stiles gets the chance to ask him, there's a shuffling sound behind them, and then a gasp. “Holy shit.” Stiles turns around to see Jackson Whittemore, his biggest bully from high school, standing there in his designer jeans and snotty button down shirt, with wide eyes flickering between his soulmate and himself. He's just about to open his mouth and tell Jackson to go off and find some hole to curl up and die in, when the kid raises his phone, snaps a photo, and says, “I'm going to be so fucking rich.” Stiles knits his eyebrows together. “You already are rich, dumbass?” Jackson grins, snapping another photo, and behind him he can hear the guy shifting nervously in his leather seat. “Not that rich.” A couple of things fall into place all at once. For starters, Stiles' mark is out in the open for all to see. For seconders, the guy in the car's mark is out in the open for all to see. For thirders, they match. And, finally, Jackson just took a picture of the two of them with their marks out. Which means that
Jackson Whittemore just got the first picture of the fourth mated-born pair, which means that he's probably going to go straight to TMZ, sell it for god knows how much fucking money, and Stiles won't be that anonymous marked kid anymore. He doesn't even get the chance to try and tell Jackson to fucking not, with that, to probably wind up having to beg him, because this is too new and he's not in the mood for being dragged off to jail because of it, when he feels the door to the Camaro pop open against his legs. Then it pushes once, twice, three times, gently at the back of his legs, until Stiles finally gets the hint and staggers out of the way. A flurry of motion, where Stiles realizes that his soulmate is tall and broad and huge as fuck, and then Jackson's phone is on the ground, getting stomped on by big booted feet. “What the fuck, psycho!” Jackson caws, staring down at the shattered and scattered remains of his phone on the ground, while Stiles looks on with an unhinged jaw, in complete and utter dis-fuckingbelief. “You're paying for that!” “Thought you were rich. Get in the car, Stiles.” Stiles blinks, a zing going through his brain at hearing that voice say his name. “Wh- what?” He bends down and picks up the keys to his car from the dirty ground, ignores Jackson cursing him out from behind, and then grabs Stiles' upperarm when he straightens up. An electrical charge goes through him, just like with his name, and the other man must feel it too from the way he freezes for a couple of seconds – it feels like...Stiles isn't sure what it feels like. It feels right, but he can't think of another way to describe it. Just perfect. It's cheesy, and he wants that hand to stay on his arm forever. And also, other places on his body. Definitely...other places. Yeah. The hand retracts though, shoves him around to the front of the car. “In the car.” Stiles, shakily, confused, follows orders and rips open the passenger door to the camaro. “I'm not even off the clock,” Stiles says once he's settled into the comfortable seat, glaring out at the minimart and Jackson shaking his fist in anger at them. “I'm probably going to get fired.” A non-committal noise comes form the other side of the car as it gets put into gear. “Put your seatbelt on.” Then they're zooming out of the parking lot, out onto the main road, leaving Stiles' job and his Jeep behind. Stiles doesn't think anything of it, honestly; he has no fucking complaints. He'd rather be in here, sitting in this car, with this man, than be anywhere else on the face of the planet. It's not a scary feeling, like he always thought it would be when he imagined being assigned to another person without his permission or consent, but it's...it's comforting. It's nice. And he kind of smells good. The car smells good, and he smells good. Like a really expensive cologne. “So.” There's no response; just the car accelerating a little faster on the empty road.
“You broke Jackson's phone.” “Would you rather that picture got out?” “I didn't say...” “You know what's going to happen to the two of us now, once this gets out. Don't you?” There's no question of if it'll get out. There's no question of when. Breaking Jackson's phone bought them maybe five minutes, at most. Jackson knows who Stiles is, saw the mark, saw that this guy had the exact same fucking one, and he's going to do exactly what any other normal person would do with that information. He's going to spread it around. The Sheriff's son is a fucking mated-born, and he just found his mate. They've really only got, maybe, until tomorrow morning. Until... “Is that such a bad thing?” Stiles asks him, brow furrowing. He gets a look like Stiles is the stupidest fucking person he's ever had the displeasure of meeting, glances across at him with a set jaw, and nods. Once. “Yes, Stiles. I don't particularly like people knowing my fucking business. If you had just let me leave...” Stiles turns his body as much as he can in the restrictive seatbelt, and gapes at the profile of that beautiful fucking face. “But...we're...you? I?” A short laugh comes out of his throat, something not particularly nice or forthcoming – something mean, as a matter of fact. “You don't really believe in all that shit, do you?” Stiles hardly knows what to say. From where Stiles is standing, it's not a matter of believing in anything, or buying into some preconceived notion about what soulmates are supposed to be. It's in their fucking DNA. It's about the fact that he can physically feel something, here, and it's not all in his head, and he's not making it up. He feels like – he doesn't know what he fucking feels like. But it's unlike anything he's ever felt before, and his brain is having a really hard time catching up to everything that's already happened in the course of under an hour. “It's all bullshit,” he continues on, like he can't tell that Stiles is having a mental breakdown in the passenger seat. “You know that. Right?” Stiles doesn't know that. He doesn't think that at all, whatsoever. He knows, love-sick shit aside, that it's a visceral, physical reaction. He knows that this guy has to feel that – and is baffled by how he's acting like he's not. “I...” “Where do you live? I'll drive you home.” Stiles finally finds his voice to direct him to his house, using a quiet, unsure voice, looking at his soulmate from the corner of his eye every chance he gets. But he just sits there and stares straight forward the entire time, his hands gripping the steering wheel so tight his knuckles are turning white, his jaw set hard. Stiles doesn't know what to fucking think about any of this – one second he's found
his soulmate, and the next, he's being driven home and the guy won't even fucking look at him. This is not what Stiles thought was going to happen, at all. This is...shit. To say the least. Stiles points to his brick house, and the guy pulls over on the side of the road, raises his eyebrows. “Um, okay,” Stiles says, unsure, unbuckling himself and popping the door open. “I'll – er?” “It'd probably be best if we didn't see each other again.” And it's said with such finality, such fucking detachment, that Stiles feels like he's going to cry, or something. Which is – he knows that's just the mutation talking, and that it's absolutely ridiculous to be this torn up about someone whose name he doesn't even know. He knows that, logically. But, emotionally, he just...can't handle it. If the guy can tell that he's upset, he doesn't make any show that he's aware of it. He just grips the steering wheel even harder, doesn't look at Stiles, doesn't say a word. Stiles feels like punching him in the face. Maybe I should've fucking killed him, he thinks, because for the first time he gets why those soulmates from the 80's all killed each other. I just had to do it, he recalls reading in his history textbook in high school. I just had to – to get that feeling to go away. I didn't see any other way. ---“Do you have the urge to seek out your soulmate, right now?” Stiles glares dead ahead, refusing to look at the police officer. The second he came inside the house, told his father what happened, he was dragged into custody. It's not his father's fault, exactly; it's his job to call in mated-borns encountering their mates. If he were to try and shirk that responsibility, just because it's his son, he'd probably be taken into custody himself. Definitely fired from his job of Sheriff, possibly sent to federal prison for a very, very long time. Of course he's never had the need or opportunity to call in a 2654 until that exact moment. “Yes.” “If you were to find your soulmate, what do you think you would do, Mr. Stilinski?” Turning his wrists around as much as he can while they're handcuffed behind his back, he sighs through his nose. “I – I'm not sure.” “Do you feel violent, son?” “No.” “Are you having any thoughts of suicide?” “No.” “Have you had any urges to hurt yourself or those around you?” “No.”
“Have you been having hallucinations, vivid nightmares-” “It just happened two hours ago. I haven't slept since then.” The officer raises his eyes from the clipboard for the first time since he was put in this interrogation room, and sweeps them up and down Stiles where he sits in an uncomfortable metal chair across from him. “Okay. One more question, for the last time,” he slaps the clipboard down onto the table and glares at Stiles as if he's a criminal, “what's the name of your soulmate?” Stiles grits his teeth. “I told you. I don't fucking know.” “You don't know the name of your soulmate?” A short laugh, just like all the other ones before. “Why do I find that so hard to believe, Mr. Stilinski?” “Um, because you're an idiot?” “If you're protecting them-” “Oh my God!” Stiles throws his head back and tries for the trillionth time to rip his way out of the handcuffs out of frustration, to absolutely no avail. “I'm not protecting him, all right?” “Him? It's a him?” His pen clicks again, and he starts writing furiously across the page. “Yes, Christ. He – I can give a physical description. I know what kind of car he drives, but I just...don't know his name.” Because he never fucking told him. Luckily, the next morning, after he's been released and declared dangerous but non-lethal, whatever the literal fucking Hell that means, things blow up exactly as they both thought they would. Even without Jackson's picture, it didn't matter. He told them Stiles' name, they looked him up, got permission to check his medical records, confirmed what he was, and dragged out his fucking baby pictures with the mark on full display. It's on every single channel – real news stations, MTV, E! News; his name in huge red letters accompanied by headlines like Mated At Last! and The Wait is Over! As for his soulmate, it didn't take much more than a physical description from Jackson, it would seem, to get an identification on who the hell he was, to get his medical records, to get his baby pictures up on the screen right alongside Stiles'. Derek Hale. That's apparently his name. Derek Hale, Derek Hale, Derek Hale – Stiles has been rolling the name around on his tongue all day long ever since he first heard it, trying to decide how it feels within his own mouth. It feels – good. Of course it does. He's been genetically predisposed to think that it feels good. It feels like he should've been saying it his entire life, should know how it sounds in a breathy moan in the quiet of his own bedroom, or standing in front of a crowd while he slips a gold ring on that tan finger. That's just his genes talking, though. “But it would appear that our newest soulmates are a bit camera shy!” The woman on the television
screen is saying, grinning falsely out at Stiles with perfectly painted lips. “No current pictures of the two together have been snapped – but I'd say it's only a matter of time before we see these two out and about like lovebirds!” The baby pictures change on the huge screen behind her head, and suddenly there's Stiles' fucking senior photo from high school staring at him – he looks like a gawky teenage idiot and he wants to curl into a hole and die from humiliation – while, fucking meanwhile, the picture they used for Derek looks like a mugshot that they cropped strategically to not look like a mugshot. Who is this guy? “Dad?” His father has pretty much just been seated on the couch in a state of near paralysis ever since Stiles came home and told him that he met his soulmate – leaving out the part about him being a huge fucking dick – and has watched every single minute of footage they've got on Mategate (yes, that's literally what they call it whenever a new mated couple springs up) with a downward curve of his lips and a narrowed pair of eyes. Stiles doesn't know what his father's reaction to him being born mated was. He imagines that it was a lot like this, though. Numb, almost. “What's Derek Hale been arrested for?” And Stiles knows that his father knows – that he looked it up the second he heard that name on the television accompanied by that picture. The Sheriff is silent for a few seconds, before clearing his throat and, without taking his eyes off the screen, saying, “breaking into the records room in the hospital. Probably because...” ...because he wanted to get rid of the sheet of paper that says he's mated. He probably would've found one of those chop-shop doctors that works out of an old car garage to remove his mark for him, put skin grafts over everything, pretend like he was born normal. Like everyone else. Never meet Stiles. “What did you two talk about?” His father's eyes finally leave the screen, settle on him, searching his face. Stiles shrugs his shoulders and leans back into the couch, feels a hot blush of embarrassment flood up his cheeks, because Derek didn't fucking like him, at all. That's how god damn horrible Stiles is – even his soulmate, the person who is predisposed to love him, can't even bother to say more than ten words to him before shucking him off to the side of the road with a sneer and a set jaw. For the second time is as many days, he feels like crying; wants to tear into the mark on his own skin. “He – he's shy.” “Shy?” The Sheriff looks back to the picture of Derek on the screen right as it flashes to a low quality video of Derek actually being taken into custody by the police earlier today, probably for the same evaluation Stiles went through last night – his hands cuffed behind his back, his mouth a smirk as he glares directly into the camera – and he hmphs. “Wouldn't have thought he'd be the quiet type.”
“You've nabbed yourself a bad boy!” Scott snickers later on in that same day, punching him in the arm about a zillion times, while shoving pizza rolls into his mouth with the other hand. “This is so great, dude. So great. Now you don't have to cover up your mark anymore!” Stiles smiles at him and goes along with it – decides not to mention the one little flaw in this entire thing (the flaw being that he hasn't actually nabbed anything because his mate doesn't actually want anything to fucking do with him) because, once again, it's terribly humiliating. And he doesn't want to see whatever pitying puppy dog look Scott will give him for being so terribly pathetic, like he's been doing since they both met. “You can get a better job!” A good point, since Stiles lost his job last night in all the excitement of getting a soulmate. “You can get a better car! You can move out of your dad's house! Isn't Derek Hale, like, rich?” Stiles nods, yes, Derek Hale is fucking rich if his leather interior Camaro is anything to go by. “Dude,” Scott emphasizes, “you've got a sugar daddy.” “Oh, my God...” “Seriously, though!” When Stiles doesn't respond except to stare blankly at the carpet, his mouth a grim line, Scott grabs his best friend's arm with pizza roll fingers, shakes him a few times. “You don't seem that happy, Stiles,” his eyes go wide, understanding, “are you getting...the sickness?” The sickness refers to something that happens to soulmates when they've been separated for too long after meeting, is completely made up and doesn't fucking exist, and it's not Scott's fault that he's so ignorant. He wouldn't know, would he? The only things he's heard about the mated-borns are creepy stories in history class about how they're medical anomalies, mistakes, burdens on society, and so on and so forth. The sickness is just one of many lies perpetuated about Stiles and others like him that Scott mindlessly believes in because he doesn't know any better, not even after being a best friend to one of them for so many years. “When's the last time you saw him?” Stiles huffs out a breath, scratches at his cheek. “I'm not sick, Scott. I'm – confused. Worried. It's not...as black and white as I thought it would be.” Scott looks like he doesn't get it. But he nods like he does, shovels another pizza roll into his mouth, and says, “when do I get to meet him?” A loaded question, since Stiles himself doesn't even know when he's going to be seeing Derek Hale again. So he just shrugs, puffing his lips out, rolling his own pizza roll around in his palm. “Soon, I guess.” After Scott goes home, he goes upstairs to the bathroom, stares at himself in the mirror. He stares at the harsh red splotches of his mark, pokes at the raised skin with his fingers, remembers how different it looked on Derek's tan skin as compared to Stiles' pale skin. How much darker it looked on him. Better, Stiles thinks. It looks better on Derek.
Derek is good looking. Which, he doesn't need to be the guy's soulmate to be able to cuss that out, so it's not really anything to get worked up about. He's good looking, and he has money, and, okay, he's been arrested before, but...it could be worse? Stiles could've been mated up with one of the unstable mated-borns, he could have his head cracked open on the pavement outside of the mini-mart right now, bleeding out surrounded by police tape. Stiles isn't naive enough to think that all the matedborns are well adjusted, that they're all perfectly safe and civil; he always thought, in the back of his head, if he had to go, getting murdered by a soulmate would be the best possible way. Crime of passion, right? Now he guesses he doesn't have to worry about that anymore. What he does have to worry about is the fact that Derek seems pretty determined to pretend like none of this ever happened. But...Scott's right about one thing. Stiles could get a job. He could get an actual job. Or maybe not – maybe he'd be like one of the famous paired mated-borns, release a line of socks or a book or a perfume, make millions of dollars off of his birthright, buy a mansion up on a hill somewhere far away from everyone else, and live comfortably. He could get a new car, he could...he could pay off the hospital bills from his mother. He could be something, other than a mutt that people curl their lips up at. That's all he's wanted his entire life. All he's ever wanted, watching the famous mated-borns smile and twirl each other around on television, give ridiculous interviews about how in love they are, is to be like them. Not in love. But just – just better off. He wants to get what he can out of the fucking curse; milk every last penny out of it, make something of himself. Derek can say what he wants. Stiles has done enough research to know how soulmates really work, now; he's read the books put out by the real ones, he's studied extensively the original effects of the serum as compared to what little data there is on the effects of the new generation, and he knows. Even if Derek genuinely wants to resist the pull, even if he thinks Stiles is disgusting and gross and he hates him...he doesn't have a choice. It's like trying to resist the urge to eat, or the urge to drink; it's a part of what makes the two of them human (as much as people try to dispute it, they are both human.) Stiles doesn't cover his mark up. He pulls his hood up over his head, puts on a pair of sunglasses, and asks his father for Derek's address at the station.The Sheriff raises his eyebrows at him, and Stiles just puts his hands on his hips and fixes him with a stern look. “He's my soulmate, dad. Not some fucking stranger.” Even though a stranger is exactly what he is. His father sighs, pulls out a file on Derek Hale, and rattles off the address for Stiles to type into his phone. He stares at it as he walks with slow steps back out into the parking lot. Beacon Heights – fuck, that's the nice side of town. The side of town where Stiles has always been too afraid of going, because people who live up there...well. They really don't care for Stiles' kind around there. It amazes Stiles that Derek would be so comfortable living up there, given what he is. Something tells Stiles, though, that Derek never goes out without his cover-up on. Ever.
When he pulls up outside of an upscale apartment building, Stiles checks the address six times over to make sure he's actually at the right place. He gazes upwards, at the huge glass windows and the modern design of the place, the doorman standing outside, and lets out an incredulous laugh. It looks like the kind of place Derek would live in, that's for damn sure. When Derek pulls open his door, his entire body jolts at the sight of Stiles, and Stiles' does the same at the sight of Derek. There are several seconds of dead air, where Derek's eyes roam up and down Stiles' body, landing on his exposed mark for much longer than is appropriate, before settling on his eyes. That hard look from last night slowly comes back – though it takes a few seconds to make a reappearance. “How do you know where I live?” Stiles smiles at him, leaning against his doorframe, ripping his sunglasses off of his face. “I asked my dad.” Derek frowns. “I told you that we shouldn't see each other again.” “Are you going to invite me in?” “Stiles...” “Look,” now Stiles slaps his hood off his head, unzips the hoodie completely, so the mark is really out, and Derek just eyeballs it even harder. “You can't just get rid of me, Derek. Have you turned your fucking television on at all, today?” His soulmate sets his jaw, looks back up into his eyes. “I don't have a television.” Stiles doesn't even know what to say to that. He sputters for a few seconds, mouth opening and closing in disbelief – who the fuck doesn't have a television? Is this 2015 or not? “But you know what I'm talking about-” “Yes, Stiles,” and he says his name like a curse word, or something stupid, and it pisses Stiles right off. “I told you this would happen, didn't I? Because you couldn't leave well enough alone.” Stiles stands his ground, puffs his chest up, and says, “invite me into your home, please.” “You're not-” “Would you rather have this discussion in front of all your neighbors, Derek? Would you rather someone snaps the first current picture of the happy new couple together while we fucking argue?” Stiles can see the headlines now – Trouble in Genetic Paradise? Derek's jaw twitches, and he looks like he's imagining exactly what Stiles is, right now. There's a stalemate for a few moments, where all they do is stare at each other – Derek with that intimidating glare, Stiles with a smirk and raised eyebrows. Then, Derek steps aside, thrusts his arm back towards his apartment, and Stiles steps by him. As they
pass, Stiles' shoulder brushes against Derek's chest, and just like the last time they touched, a spark rustles against their skin and Stiles shivers. Derek slams the door closed behind him, and Stiles looks around at Derek's boring, minimalist apartment – at the dirty dishes in the sink, the shoes waiting beside the front door, the curtains closed tight to keep the sunlight out. He feels a pinch at satisfaction, unwelcome and completely unintentional, at finally getting to see how his soulmate lives; what his home looks like, where he keeps his things. Getting a little peak into the life of a person he knows nothing about but – but wants to know. “Nice place.” No response. Stiles turns around to meet Derek's eyes, finds the man staring at him a little too hard all over again. “You should see the mugshot they're showing of you on-” “What are you doing here?” He cuts Stiles off before he can start in on how totally tough they're making Derek out to be on TV. “You know I don't believe there's anything different about me than with anyone else.” Stiles snorts. “Except for the fact that you have a genetic mutation? But, whatever, I guess.” “I don't have any fucking mutation.” This man is in denial. Stiles sees that for what it is, now. He understands why he's acting this way, acting like he doesn't even like Stiles, when...when of course he does. He has to. It's not a fucking choice. But he's fucking balls deep in an ass full of nothing but denial. He has the fucking mark of the disease on his body, in plain sight for anyone to see, just like Stiles', and he somehow thinks he's just like everyone else? Oh, holy God. Stiles really won the genetic lottery with this guy. “Okay,” Stiles concedes, understanding that there's no point in trying to convince Derek otherwise. “But that doesn't change what you think about me.” Derek gets a blank look on his face, forcing his features down into something that can't be defined as any particular emotion at all. “What I think about you.” He repeats it like he doesn't understand. “You're attracted to me.” “I'm-” “We were born to be attracted to each other, Derek. Don't fucking dance around the subject, don't say I don't feel that, because I know you do.” The older man keeps his face as blank as he can make it, but Stiles can see his jaw ticking. He can see how white his knuckles are down at his sides, balled into fists. Victory, Stiles thinks. “There are millions of people out there who would pay good fucking money to see us together,” Stiles points at Derek's drawn curtains, as if what's on the other side of the glass is the entire population at large. “Do you understand what kind of opportunity we have, here?” “What opportunity? To be turned into a pair of circus freaks?” “To turn this,” Stiles pulls his shirt collar down to reveal his red ink splotch in all its glory, “into something useful, for once.”
For a few moments, Derek just stares at him. He stares, and crosses his arms over his chest, and breathes in and out, slowly. Stiles lets go of his shirt collar and waits, looks at how huge Derek's arms look crossed like that – and wonders idly how much the man could benchpress. Probably double what Stiles could. His mind starts drifting, again, to how good looking his mate is, how fucking hot, really, and“So what you're saying is, you want to do the soulmate thing to get money out of it?” The word soulmate comes out like a dirty word, the same way Stiles' name did. They're one and the same now, anyway, so Stiles' guesses that makes sense. “Kiss for cameras, and hold hands, and make eyes at each other. That sort of thing? You want to be in love for money?” “I didn't say anything about being in love, Derek.” “That's what this is-” “Who says that we have to have some kind of fucking – harlequin romance?” He steps closer to Derek, and the closer he gets, the more he feels that charge of something rippling in between them; the unseen currents of what they were put on this earth to be to one another. “Who says we need to be fucking Lana Del Rey about this?” “Lana Del Rey?” Stiles waves his hand in the air and sighs. “You know – I'm nothing without you, I'd die without you. That type of shit.” A pause. “Do you seriously not know who Lana Del Rey is?” Derek blinks at him, completely confused. There's no fucking way this idiot is his soulmate. He doesn't have a TV, he doesn't know who Lana Del Rey is, he lives in the single most boring apartment known to man...this man is from another planet from Stiles altogether, yet a cruel, unforgiving God has forced them together. “That's – okay. Okay. Not my point, though. My point is, you think the soulmate thing isn't real. Right?” He nods back at Stiles, slowly, up and down, like he's unsure of where this conversation is going. “But you admit you're attracted to me. Right?” A brief pause, but then another nod comes, this one even more reluctant than the first, and a thrill goes through Stiles' body before he can stop it at a man this fucking good looking finding Stiles attractive. “Then if the whole soulmate thing is fake anyway, if it's all just smoke and mirrors and test tubes,” he takes another step closer to Derek, so close he could reach out and touch him if he wanted to, “then who cares what we do? Right? It's just – sex.” At the word sex, the sheer thought of it, Derek's body jerks the same way it did when he first laid eye on Stiles outside in the hallway; but he doesn't try to back away from Stiles, or push him away. He has a look in his eyes like he wants to – like he knows he shouldn't but he...can't help himself. “Do you want to?” Stiles asks, trying for the whole husky, breathy voice thing, like he sees in movies sometimes. Virgin, remember?
Derek swallows, his adam's apple bobbing up and down. “What happens if I say yes?” “What do you think? Like – sex happens. Sexual things happen. You and I, we have sex.” “After that, Stiles,” Derek rolls his eyes at him, and Stiles can sense that that's something that's going to be happening quite a bit from now on. “After that,” Stiles finally takes the last step he has to take until Stiles and Derek are chest to chest, so Stiles has to angle his jaw up a bit higher to look him in the eyes, “we take them for everything they've got. If they want us to be their real life science fiction novel, then let them buy the fucking books. Right?” Soulmate stares down at him; and it's not exactly the look of trying to make up my mind. It's the look of my mind is made up and I really, really wish it wasn't – Stiles knows that for as much as Derek tried to deny it, his mind was made up the second they looked into each other's eyes at the mini-mart. “Have you ever even kissed anyone before, Stiles?” The question should offend him – maybe if it were anyone else, it would have. But Stiles just smiles, tilts his head to the side a bit. “No. Have you?” Derek swallows, his eyes going closed off for a fraction of a second. “Yeah. Yeah I have.” Like there's a story there, somewhere – and the mutation desperately wants to know that story through and through, know the introduction and the climax and the dramatic ending – Stiles beats the desire down internally like see? I can do this. I can control this. It's just science. “You know how, then,” Stiles carefully takes one hand, lays his palm flat against Derek's face and feels the current pass between the surface of both of their skin, quaking slightly from how good it feels, from how Derek unconsciously juts forward towards him the longer he keeps his hand there. “Teach me.” He doesn't hesitate. One second they're both standing there letting the thrum of their skin touching get them both ready, wanting, desperate, and the next, Derek is pressing his mouth against Stiles and pushing his tongue inside the younger man's mouth. Stiles doesn't know what to do. It's a weird feeling, he thinks, having someone else's fucking tongue in his mouth; but for as much as it feels like an intrusion, it also feels...welcome. Very, very welcome, because if he thought just brushing up against Derek's skin felt nice... He tries putting his hand against Derek's chest while they kiss, tries to gently rub it up and down around his pectoral muscles (which are unbelievably fucking amazing, by the way, and Stiles could stand here rubbing his hands all over Derek's fucking chest for hours), tries moving his fingers around Derek's neck, where the mark is. Derek seems to like every thing Stiles does, or he at least doesn’t hate it because he never tries to stop him. He pulls off of Stiles' mouth, and starts pressing his lips along his jawline, down around his neck, back up again – and Stiles is rock hard against Derek's leg, and since he's never had another person this close to him before with their tongue circling around his face, he doesn't really expect his own body's reaction.
Stiles, embarrassingly, starts rubbing himself off against Derek's leg; biting his lip and groaning the entire way through it the way he usually does when he's alone with himself in the shower while his dad's out at work. Holy shit he chides himself mentally as Derek shoves him back from his leg and starts undoing his pants for him, don't think about dad right now, pervert. “I don't love you,” Derek says as Stiles' pants slide down to his ankles, “this isn't – I don't need you, like that.” “Okay,” Stiles says, breathing out through his mouth as he staggers backwards to flop down onto Derek's leather couch; and he knows what Derek means. He knows that Derek is willing to believe that his feelings are just hormonal or just testosterone or just something else – nothing having to do with the fucking inhuman serum running through his blood stream, the same one that deformed a patch of his skin on his neck. Stiles, on the other hand. Stiles understands the serum and what it does probably better than anyone else does after all the time and energy he's spent trying to figure a way to get it out of him. For him, this is all chemical. The way it feels to touch Derek, the way it feels to have Derek looking at him, the way Stiles gets a rush every time he sees him, it's all real but it doesn't come from himself. And since it doesn't come from himself, it's a third party that Stiles has control over, and nothing more. Not anything that dictates what he does. That's what's easiest for him to believe. If he and Derek weren't mutts. If they weren't born deformed. Then they wouldn't be doing this, Stiles know that beyond any shadow of a doubt. This isn't them, this is...this isn't love. All the same. They are what they are. Derek gets his hand around Stiles' dick, and the fucking pressure, that energy shift, whatever it is that exists between them for being born with the same exact coding and the same exact mutation, has Stiles seeing stars around the edges of his vision. He knows that Derek is barely even fucking moving his hand and that this is a gross exaggeration of what's going on right now, but he...can't help it. It feels so fucking unreal, like nothing he's ever felt before. He tosses his head back and doesn't care about being quiet for the neighbors; he's wanton and shameless and Derek isn't stopping him, isn't taking his hand off of him, so he keeps going. “Derek, I'm going to fucking come,” Stiles hisses between his teeth, words coming out in a harsh rush, “I can't – I can't -” The hand falls off of his dick and Stiles whines, whines, reaching forward for Derek's body almost aimlessly, his limbs turned to absolute jelly. He feels like he can't fucking move; which is just ridiculous since he hasn't even come yet and is still strung up so tight he feels like he could burst at any second with adrenaline. Next thing he's cognizant of, there's a weight plopping down on the couch beside him, and a calloused hand grabbing at his own. “Do you want to touch me?”
Stiles focuses his eyes on Derek to find him playing with Stiles' fingers absentmindedly – he nods. Of course he wants to touch Derek, no questions asked. Derek places Stiles' hand on him, wraps his fingers around his dick, and Stiles just immediately starts pumping without having to be told. Derek's own hand comes out shakily, while he's making small, desperate noises in the back of his throat, to return to working at Stiles; so they're sitting side by side on the couch, staring into each other's faces, jerking each other off, moaning in tandem like they aren't sitting in a very well populated apartment building in the middle of the day. It doesn't appear to matter to either of them. It's just that fucking intense. Stiles comes first, so hard and so earth shatteringly good, that he goes absolutely limp – and Derek has to put his own hand over Stiles' to get himself off because he's absolutely useless post-soulmateoragsm, as it turns out. Just completely wrecked on the couch, lying back into the cushions and staring at the ceiling, letting Derek use his hand and arm to finish. Derek comes all over Stiles' hand and arm with a surprised groan, and then they're both spent and finished. Done. Immobile. They pant on the couch for what must be minutes; neither one of them moves a single finger, not even to brush any of the come off of themselves. That, Stiles thinks, is soulmate sex. Suddenly he understands why people wanted this fucking injection so bad – it's like the big bang or fucking stars colliding, and that wasn't even actual sex. That was just handjobs. Stiles doesn't think he's going to survive the real shit. “What now?” Derek asks after a while, pushing his body up into a sitting position on the couch. Stiles shrugs as best as he can in his state, running a finger absentmindedly in his own come on his stomach. Derek watches the movement with huge eyes, as his tongue comes out to swipe across his own lips. “My best friend wants to meet you.” ---After the sex, it takes close to an hour to talk Derek into leaving his apartment with his mark showing – Stiles has to physically lunge at him, hold his naked body down (no easy feat, since the man is built like a fucking eighteen wheeler) and scrub at the make-up he was using to cover it up; even then, Derek yells at him and tries to run back into the bathroom to get his concealer out again. Stiles winds up throwing the bottle over the edge of the balcony of his fourth floor apartment, and Derek looks at him like he's reconsidering the whole not killing Stiles bit. “Do you want this to be believable?” Stiles demands as Derek tries to find a turtleneck in his drawers, growling under his breath. “People are going to scrutinize every single thing we do, Derek!” “I don't get the fucking point,” Derek pulls out a black polo shirt, slamming his dresser drawer closed so hard it shakes the wall. “It's not like we're pretending to be mated. We're just –“
“...pretending to like it?” Stiles supplies; he's unsure of the terminology of exactly what they're doing himself. He knows beyond any of shadow of a doubt that while Derek and Stiles might share the same mark, they're not exactly like Lydia Martin and Jordan Parrish – the last couple that came forward about being mated together about five years ago. Lydia is cold and prim, and Stiles has always found the way her eyes scan crowds with a detached expression while sitting in the middle of an interview or at a book signing a little bit more than unnerving – like she doesn't actually have any discernible emotions other than the ones she displays for Jordan, like the entire world is this thing that she endures and suffers through rather than actively participates in. For his part, Jordan is friendly and full of smiles, always willing to stop and sign autographs for fans, while Lydia tugs impatiently at his arm and scowls at anyone who dares to approach her with a camera. Stiles wonders what they'll write about he and Derek, now; what descriptors will be used in the first magazine articles, what fairytale they're going to concoct in their heads about how the two of them finally came to meet after so many years of wondering. Derek pulls the polo on, and glares at himself in the mirror. The mark is barely covered at all, still playing along his jaw and down his neck prominently. “Don't you think it kind of looks like someone chewed on a red pen only to have it pop open all over them?” Stiles asks him, wondering at how fascinating it is to see the mark on someone else. “I've always thought that. It looks -” it looks like an accident, is what it looks like. Like something that was never meant to happen in the first place. “I think it looks disgusting,” it's barely more than a murmur under his breath, but Stiles hears it all the same. He gets this feeling in the pit of his stomach, one he used to get in elementary school when he didn't understand why his mother would hold him down every morning and rub cream all over his neck and jaw, why he had to hide his mark, why no one else had one like he did. “Because you're not like anyone else,” she would say, pinning his wrists down while he scrunched his face up and tried to pull away from her hands. “I think your mark is beautiful, Stiles, but not everyone sees it that way.” That's the feeling. That distinct otherness. He guesses it's nice to finally have someone else who knows what that feeling is like, but it's not so nice to hear Derek be so...negative about it. He was expecting to bond over ice cream and gab sessions about how shitty everyone else is about the whole soulmate thing. He was not expecting his soulmate to call their mark disgusting like everyone else does. “It's like a birthmark,” Stiles defends, narrowing his eyes as he watches Derek fiddle with his collar in the mirror to try and surreptitiously cover up as much of the mark as he can. “It's not any different from anyone else's birthmark.” Derek scowls in the mirror, flashing his eyes to meet Stiles' in the glass, and then changes the subject. “We don't have to act any differently. We're already mated, so we can act-” “People are going to be disturbed if you look at me like you want to wring my fucking neck, Derek,” which is exactly how Derek has been looking at him ever since the afterglow from the sex wore off –
but it's not like Stiles can give Derek a handjob every time he wants him to smile for the cameras. “I'm not going to gaze longingly at you, Stiles.” Stiles rolls his eyes. “You are making this way harder than it needs to be. The only thing we have to do is walk out there like two normal people – no scowling, no glowering, no yelling at me in public. I'm not asking you to fucking suck my dick in the lobby!” “You are seriously making me question why I even agreed to this,” he runs his hands down his face, several times, inhaling and exhaling in perfect succession. “You agreed to this,” Stiles points a long finger at him accusingly, “because this is our ticket to not being treated like second class citizens anymore. Do you enjoy living like this, Derek?” He holds his arms out to the apartment, to the walls devoid of any picture frames or personal effects, the boring bedspread and the closet filled with monochromatic clothing. “In hiding?” From the look on his face, Derek knows that pretty much anything is preferable to the way he's been living thus far. Even if he has been managing to hide his mark from people, to walk down the aisles in the grocery store and not have anyone give him a second glance, he still has to admit what he is on job applications under penalty of law. He still has to spend thousands of dollars a year on the concealer, still has to walk around with a driver's license that has MUTATION written in bright red text underneath his name. Stiles even wonders how he managed to get such a fancy apartment, where he's gotten all his money from, his fucking car from – because other mated-borns do not live like this. Look at Stiles, for example. Derek grabs his keys off his bedside table with a jingle, glares in Stiles' general direction. “We're taking my car.” “As you wish it, soulmate.” “Don't fucking -” he sets his jaw as he passes by Stiles on his way out the bedroom door, breathes out through his nose. “Don't call me that.” Tense words from a dude who had his hand on my dick two hours ago, Stiles thinks to himself as he follows Derek to the front door of his apartment. Derek just stands there for a second, his hand on the doorknob, hesitating. Stiles stands behind him, arms crossed over his chest, and waits. He knows from personal experience that the first time walking outside with the mark on display for anyone to see is nerve wracking – it's like walking outside without any clothes on at all. Stiles isn't sure if it's the first time since Derek was a little kid, or just the first time since ever, but it doesn't matter to him either way. He stands back, and waits. Doesn't pressure him at all. It's hard, and he doesn't have any place to judge, considering all the times he only made it as far as his Jeep before running back inside to cover himself up. Eventually, after what feels like a good solid two minutes of listening to the sound of the wall clock ticking, his soulmate closes his eyes, pulls the front door open, and steps outside into the hallway of
his floor. Stiles joins him outside, blinking around to see that there's not an entire crowd outside the door waiting for them like he had kind of expected. Honestly, the sooner those first pictures get out...the better. The first time will probably be the worst. When the door slams closed, Derek jumps so hard it looks like he's been shot, glaring all around himself, backing in front of Stiles in a way that doesn't feel entirely conscious. “Um,” Stiles meeps as he smacks back against the wall to avoid getting crushed by Derek's back, his head twisting in all directions. “I don't think there's anyone here, Derek.” The body in front of his tightens up; the shoulders hunch forward guiltily, like he's been caught in something he wasn't supposed to be doing, or as if he's been found out. It's a couple of seconds until he backs away from Stiles, scratching awkwardly at his forehead, probably just for something to do with his hands. “Sorry,” he mutters, choosing not to look Stiles in the eye. Stiles suppresses a smirk to the best of his ability, trying to keep his voice completely free of any giggles. “No, I get it. I'm smaller, so.” So Derek's natural automatic impulse as his soulmate is to...push him back against walls and stand in front of him so no one can get to him. He does get it, because it lines up with pretty much every thing he's read about the mutation, but all the same. It's funny to see Mr. None-Of-This-Is-Real acting exactly as he should. There are a couple of seconds of awkward silence, Derek glaring at the wall above Stiles' head, Stiles running his thumb across his mouth to make sure there's not even the barest hint of a smile on his lips, and then Derek is thrusting his head towards the elevator at the end of the hall. Stiles trots along beside him, steps into the elevator, watches as Derek's tan, muscular arm thrusts out to jab his thumb on the floor button; when the doors slide closed, Stiles tries to keep his eyes trained dead ahead on his own reflection in the gold doors, tracing his own mark with his eyes, pretending like he's not locked into a seven by seven box with his soulmate. His eyes keep flicking over to Derek's reflection, completely against his will. He observes that Derek is only a couple of inches taller than him, but wider, bigger, stronger, the way Derek stands with his hands balled down into fists at his side, the intense furrow to his brow that doesn't appear to ever really go away – and, most importantly of all, the way Derek seems to can't keep from looking right back at Stiles. What does he see, Stiles wonders, in his lanky frame, in the moles dotted around his mark, in his wild mop of brown hair on top of his head? Does he see someone that he doesn't know, not at all, or does he see someone that his blood recognizes? At one point, their eyes meet in the reflection, blurred and unfocused, but contact all the same – and Stiles thinks he sees something aside from a scowl in Derek's face for the first time since they met; he thinks he sees something searching, in the reflection. Like Derek is trying to figure something out, trying to make up his mind about something. The doors slide open. The eye contact breaks. They both seem perfectly content to pretend like that
never happened; and it's not like they have any time to stand there talking about their feelings or some shit like that, because within a minute of them stepping out into the lobby, all hell more or less breaks loose. At first, it's all right; because people don't notice anything. Just two dudes walking along, one of them with a facial expression akin to that of someone being tortured in an underground bunker, the other shifting his eyes all around nervously, breezing along the white tiles on the ground – for a couple seconds, Derek starts drifting off towards a gaggle of potted plants against the wall. As if he's seriously considering leaping into the leaves to hide himself and his mark from the population at large; and Stiles puts a stop to that right quick by grabbing onto his arm, pulling him back against his side. That's when people start to notice. Because at the skin to skin contact, the first since the frantic handjobs upstairs in Derek's apartment about two hours earlier, both men nearly jump out of their skin; it's like the sexual contact from before, combined with how long it's been since they last touched, puts the sensation on absolute overdrive. Stiles almost moans out loud, while Derek grunts as if he's been punched in the stomach. To put it explicitly, the touch goes straight to Stiles' fucking dick. Right there in public. Stiles feels like grabbing Derek, shoving him against the wall, and rutting against him right where everyone can see them. From the look on his face, Derek seems to be following the same train of thought as Stiles'. They stand there, dead stopped, in the middle of a crowd of people who are slowly starting to stop themselves (noticing the marks, the way Stiles still hasn't taken his hand off of Derek's arm, the way Derek is making absolutely no moves to pull away) staring at each other like they're both trying to decide whether or not it would be a good idea to fuck right here, right now, consequences be damned. Stiles has read about his. Of course he has. The thing is, reading about touch-starvation between soulmates and how intense it is, and actually experiencing it...two different things. Two completely different fucking ballgames. After the first sexual contact is made, Soulmates often practice the sexual act of touch-starving, in which they allow themselves to go prolonged lengths of time without touching each other, usually hours, or even days, in order to make the physical contact between them amplified and much more pleasurable. That, compared to the way Stiles can feel Derek's dick hardening against his thigh, the way Stiles' fingers are literally humming against Derek's arm – nothing could've prepared him for this shit. It's by the grace of God, the absolute fucking mercy of the lord, that a teenage girl screeches, “it's Derek Hale and Stiles Stilinski!” (his last name pronounced completely and totally wrong, by the way); snapping Derek, at least, back into reality enough to rip his arm out of Stiles' fingers, breaking off the contact, breaking the fucking stupor. Stiles pulls away, as if he'd been burned by Derek's skin, blinking again and again to get his mind right. A wave of murmuring and whispering starts up in the lobby, and not a single person is walking anymore. Everyone is frozen solid in place; as Stiles looks around, nervously, he sees more than one dropped jaw, several phones held in front of faces taking videos or pictures, and a whole lot of staring. He isn't sure what to do in this situation. Run? Stand there and cater to the masses? Start up his comedy set like he always dreamed about doing when he was a little kid?
He is honest to God about to open his mouth and crack so how about that airline food with a wave of his finger in the air, to ask Derek to back him up with a ba dm tss sound effect, but, luckily, Derek gets his wits about him much sooner than Stiles does. “We need,” he says in a low voice, as if he's worried of someone overhearing, “to get the hell out of here.” Stiles agrees. The pictures have been taken. They've been spotted – it'll be all over social media within twenty minutes. Their job here is done. Plus, he might not know that much about Derek yet, but something tells him definitively that he would not be willing to play Andy Richter to Stiles' Conan O'Brien, soulmates or not. Stiles almost reaches out to touch Derek again, but thinks better of it, this time around – choosing instead to point in the direction of the row of glass doors. Derek nods, tries to get as close as he possibly can to Stiles without touching him, and starts leading the way between the crowd. It's not that hard, actually. They all step back without any hesitations about it, wide-eyed. One girl has her phone pressed up against her ear, staring at Stiles as if he's the resurrected Jesus Christ. “He's looking directly at me, right now,” she says slowly into her phone, and Stiles doesn't even know how to react to that; he feels like maybe laughing, or saying something to her, but can't think of anything aside from his airplane food joke. He turns to Derek instead, to find him staring straight ahead with his jaw clamped down so tight Stiles is surprised that his teeth aren't cracking underneath that amount of force. Stiles can feel an incredulous smile on his face, keeps glancing down at his feet in a way he thinks will come off as bashful to everyone looking at him – and it's pretty much been solidified in stone that Derek is Lydia and Stiles is Jordan. Of course, after a while, they'll just be Derek and Stiles, completely unique and incomparable. “This is going well,” Stiles says to him once they're almost at the doors – the flashes of cameras and the murmuring gets louder the closer they get to the exit. Stiles is half tempted to turn around to see if anyone's actually following them, he wouldn't be surprised in the least. “Your definition of well,” Derek begins, shoving one of the glass doors open and motioning for Stiles to go out first, “is vastly different from mine.” Stiles grins at him, or, maybe leers would be a better word for it, and winks. “Opposites attract, right?” The walk outside in the Summer time sunlight to where Derek's car is parked and waiting in the building lot is filled with more flashes of cameras and more whispering and more head turning, exactly as Stiles expected. Derek unlocks the Camaro, Stiles jumps in, the doors slam. “Jesus Christ,” Stiles hisses as he glares out the tinted windows to see people probably taking pictures of Derek's fucking license plate number to stalk him, and, by extension he assumes, himself.
“Holy fucking shit.” Derek starts the car up with a purr, throws it into reverse, adjusts his rearview mirror. Stiles can tell even from this angle he's trying to decide whether or not to just straight up run over anyone who gets in his way. “Put your seatbelt on.” Stiles pulls his belt on, clicks it, and it's a good thing he does – Derek slams on the gas with a screeech, and then the brake; so hard Stiles flaps against the seatbelt with a grunt. “Jesus fuck!” Derek ignores him again to peel out of the parking lot fast enough to elicit a few shrieks from the onlookers. Stiles wonders what the fuck that's going to end up being written as on the internet – Derek Hale Has a Need For Speed, and that's the first character trait they'll be able to pin down about him. Maybe that and a refusal to smile for the cameras. “I'm reconsidering,” Derek says once they're a mile away from the apartment building, glaring in his rearview mirror every few seconds like he's checking to make sure there's no one following after them. There probably is someone following after them. “This was a horrible idea.” “I hate to tell you this, Derek,” Stiles notices that the girls in the Toyota in the lane next to them are staring through the windows at him with a look that could only be described as awestruck, “but I think it's a bit too late for that.” “I know,” he says through grit teeth, shifting into a higher gear to speed forty miles faster than the speed limit, overtaking the Toyota and leaving it behind. “I just felt like saying it so I'd feel like I have some control over the situation.” His touch-starved boner is all but gone, now; he can only pray to God that it's not visible in any of the pictures people got of him. It wouldn't be the worst thing in terms of the publicity, but...it would be the worst thing in terms of his pride. “We should do that again,” he suggests. “We'll probably have to do it every single day.” “Not the people and the pictures – the, um,” he feels a hot flush creep across his face, “you know.” Derek does know. It looks, at first, like he's going to try and argue with Stiles about how it's a horrible idea, I'm not some kind of a freak it doesn't have any effect on me, and on and on and on – but then his facial features go closed off, controlled, and he stares straight ahead, shifting slightly in his seat. Doesn't say anything back. Stiles grins to himself, privately, considering that a victory for himself. “In private, though,” he adds on, smirking at the way Derek's hands grip the steering wheel even tighter. When the Camaro pulls into Stiles' driveway, Scott leaps up off the porch step and squints in through the windshield at Derek, a frown tugging the corners of his lips down. Stiles had texted him come to my house if you want to meet him when they were about ten minutes away, and from the looks of it, Scott practically ran the six blocks from his own house to get here on time. “He's my best friend,” Stiles says to the side of Derek's face as he's undoing his seatbelt. “So, like,
any and all attempts at not being a huge cumdumpster to him would be much appreciated.” “Cumdumpster?” Derek repeats it with the single most disgusted facial expression he's ever seen on another human being. “What the hell is that?” “It's what you are.” Stiles fires back without a beat, popping his door open before Derek has a chance to counter attack. He climbs out of the car with his long legs, slams the door closed behind him, and then Scott is upon them – still squinting at Derek like he's from another planet altogether. Stiles raises his eyebrows at his best friend, cocking his head in Derek's direction; silently asking so what do you think? Scott purses his lips at Derek. “He's a lot older than you. Like – an old man.” “He can hear you, you know.” In testament to this, Derek says, “I'm only six years older than him.” He sweeps his eyes up and down Scott, as if he's sizing up who would win in a fight, or something (Derek would, and he looks like he knows it, and Scott does too). Scott sighs through his nose, gives Stiles a long look, before holding his hand out in Derek's general direction. “I'm Scott.” Derek doesn't hesitate to take the hand in his; they shake once, and then they're all three of them standing there awkwardly in Stiles' driveway. Stiles thinks about airplane food, again, thinks about how he really needs to get some better material if his stand-up career is ever going to take off, pointedly does not think about how nice Derek's skin looks in the sunlight, or the fact that every time Stiles looks away, Derek stares at the side of his face. It's...weird. Every thing is so fucking weird. It's surreal to be standing here with his childhood best friend and his soulmate. Scott starts staring at Derek's mark, and then at Stiles' mark, flicking his eyes in between them again and again as if he's making sure they're actually a match. “Nice car,” Scott says finally, jutting his chin in the direction of the Camaro. Derek turns around and looks it over, as if forgetting what his own car looks like. “How'd you afford it?” Scott knows as good as anyone else how hard it is as a mated-born to get any job – much less one that would pay well enough for Derek to be able to afford a car this nice. “Trust fund,” he says simply in response. No further explanations. “So you do have money,” he affirms, switching his eyes over to waggle his eyebrows in Stiles' direction. “Nice.” Derek doesn't look impressed by the direction this conversation is going at all, if the way he stares at Stiles like I want to fucking punch this kid in the teeth is anything to go by. He jumps on the opportunity to change the subject while Scott is still quiet. “Anyway, this is – you know. Him.” Scott and Derek stare at each other for a few seconds – Derek looking bored out of his mind, Scott looking like he'd gladly grab a rock to lob at Derek's head, and Stiles all in all considers this meet and greet a success. “Well,” Scott starts out, finally flicking his eyes to look back at his best friend.
“What, like, happens now?” Stiles glances at Derek. “Um – what do you mean?” “Like...are you guys going to move in together and all that?” Another glance between the soulmates, this one a bit more panicked. Because for all their talk about taking over the system and making the public their bitch, Stiles never actually considered the whole part where they'd have to actually, for all intents and purposes, be in a relationship with one and another. Do couple things. The other two pairs of soulmates out there on earth right now both moved in together, got married, consolidated their assets, within the first week of meeting one another. Stiles didn't think about that. At all. From the look on Derek's face, he can sense that he really hadn't been thinking of it either. “Well it's, we just, like – we just met, and stuff, and I'm...you know, my dad and – Derek's totally anal about his...toothpaste.” Stiles babbles on, only to be awarded with Scott tilting his head to the side like a confused puppy. Derek mouths toothpaste? at him over Scott's head, shaking his head in disbelief. It's not like he's helping Stiles out in this, or anything. “Derek needs to find a bigger place,” he decides on, finally, this time with more confidence. “After that we're going to...tie loose ends.” Tie the knot. Jesus fucking Christ. Scott leaves with a suspicious glance for Derek, leaning into Stiles' neck to whisper you'd tell me if there was something wrong – right? Stiles knows that Scott couldn't possibly mean what's actually going on – because never in a million years would Scott be able to come up with what's actually going on in his own head. Stiles and Derek denying the fact that they're by nature meant to love each other, engaging in a carnal relationship to utilize the sexual satisfaction of whatever physical ties they have, all while sucking as much fame and fortune out of it as they can possibly get...Scott couldn't come up with that shit. He knows that Scott means if Derek is abusive or if Derek is acting like he might try to kill him or if Derek has some kind of mental disorder; all the typical mated-born problems. More important than all of that, though, is the fact that he knows he can't tell Scott the truth. Just like Derek and Stiles are going to be pushed into a spotlight, the second that the media picks up on who Stiles' childhood best friend is, a microphone is going to be pushed under his uneven jaw, and he'll be asked all kinds of questions like what are the happy couple like when the cameras aren't on them and how romantic is Derek, really, he seems so manly and tough and what about you and Stiles, you guys never dated you never even kissed but isn't he sooo cute and aren't you sooo cute? It bothers him. More than anything else about this fucked up situation, lying to his best friend bothers him. He smiles, pushes Scott's shoulder playfully, and says, “I'm in love, and he's great, Scott. Promise.”
As Scott disappears down the road, glancing over his shoulder again and again to glare at Derek with as much power as he can muster, Stiles turns to Derek; he's leaning up against the hood of his car, staring right back at Stiles with his arms folded across his chest. He looks – he looks good. How many times has Stiles already mentioned how fucking attractive Derek is to him? Not enough, apparently. In that stupid polo shirt with the collar messed up to block the view of his mark, his stupid dark jeans, his ridiculous tan skin and his even more ridiculous muscles and cheek bones and – fuck. Derek sweeps his eyes down Stiles' body himself, but a bit more discretely than Stiles is doing. Probably because he's still trying to play the whole I am not a slave to my mutation thing; which is fine. Stiles know better, anyway. “Wanna have weird soulmate sex later?” He winks. Derek throws his head back, rubs his eyes, and exhales, “christ.” There's a pause, wherein Derek keeps his hand over his eyes, and Stiles happily stares at the lines of his fucking six pack straining against the polo. “In your room?” He says it like he's trying to make it sound like he hates the idea; he fails. “Whoa!” Stiles laughs, holding his hands out in front of him. “I meant later later, eager beaver. Like...tomorrow. The longer you wait, the more-” “Okay, fine,” Derek cuts him off before he could get any more explicit, and Stiles smirks at how Derek's cheeks turn red. He spends a couple of seconds staring up at Stiles' house with an impossible to read expression; something crossed between intense pain and...something else that Stiles doesn't exactly have a word for. He clears his throat, turning away from the house with his entire body as if he's forcing himself, and walks around to the side of the car. “Am I driving you back to your car, or what?” Stiles holds his place for a moment, glancing between his house and Derek climbing inside the car. He thinks about how desperate he was last night to see where Derek lived, what his place looked like; thinks about how incredibly satisfying it was to finally step inside of Derek's personal space and be a part of something that was just Derek. “All right,” he says, finally, letting the moment pass. Neither of them bring up the whole – moving in together thing, or the getting married thing, and Stiles knows for him that that's more about not wanting to listen to Derek rant and rave for another twenty minutes about how this is all a load of horseshit and what does it matter if we're actually mated we can be different from everyone else and blah blab blah; for Derek it must be because he doesn't particularly like talking about anything or bringing anything up himself. It's probably best to let that subject lie, at least for a couple days, anyway. While they're getting used to being...whatever it is they are now, at least. Every thing else can come along as it has to. When people start asking them about moving in together, then they will. When people start asking them about getting married, then they will. This isn't about what either Stiles or Derek personally wants. This is about the illusion, and the money, and the freedom.
When they pull up to Derek's building, people are waiting for them. Now that everyone knows where the Derek Hale lives (and now he is the Derek Hale and Stiles is the Stiles Stilinski), he guesses this will be a regular occurrence; to pull up into the parking lot to come face to face with a small crowd of people that gasp when they see the Camaro, a few professional photographers flashing their cameras so the light bounces off the sleek black paint of the car. “I never fucking understood this shit,” Derek growls as he tries to navigate through the small crowd, going under five miles an hour, inching slower than a snail. “Why are people so god damn obsessed with the soulmate bullshit?” Stiles smiles in spite of himself, squinting against the flashes of the cameras as the Camaro finally pulls to a stop right next to Stiles' Jeep. “People like love stories.” Love stories are what got humanity into this mess to begin with – love stories are what invented the serum, what prompted anyone to go out and get injected, why Stiles was ever born at all. Stiles asked his father once, why he wanted the injection; because he wanted to understand why he was the way that he was, why he was different. He had smiled at him, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “I wanted to know what it would feel like to be sure.” Stiles didn't understand that, back then; the way people constantly second guess themselves, disappear the night before the wedding, break up. That sense of what else is out there? People like the idea that there could be such a thing as knowing, without question, that the person in front of them is the one. That's why the soulmates, the new ones that don't kill each other, are so famous. They represent the hope that came out of a tragedy. Derek doesn't look at him, when he answers. He just stares blankly out the front of his windshield, hands still sitting on the wheel. “You and I aren't a love story, Stiles. We're the product of humanity's failure at playing God.” He throws his own door open, starts shouting. “Back the fuck up, all right? Thirty feet, back, back, back,” while Stiles sits in a daze in the passenger seat, frozen by Derek's words. He never thought of it that way; but now that he's heard Derek's take on the entire thing, it's hard to see it any other way. What Derek and Stiles are, what they have, even if they were buying into the entire soulmate thing entirely with kisses and love and the whole thing, it's not romantic, not in the least. Science experiments. That's what they are. Derek pulls open Stiles' door, motions for him to get out, shouting over his shoulder. “Did you fucking hear me, asshole? Do you want me to break that camera?” Out Stiles climbs, standing inches away from where Derek is threatening a photographer, and the flashes only get brighter, more intense. He can't feel what his face looks like, knows that it's probably not what he wants it to look like for everyone to see; doesn't particularly care at the moment. He hates them all, suddenly. He fucking hates the people that invented the serum to begin with. Hates the way they treated him when he was growing up, hates the way they treat him now.
He pulls open the door to his Jeep, and Derek is trying to fight his way through the crowd to get up to his building, and they don't even say goodbye to each other. ---Would a rose by any other name truly smell as sweet? In the case of Derek Hale and Stiles Stilinski, the newest mutation couple to come out to the public, we're thinking not. Derek Hale is rude, abrasive, and loves getting physical with pretty much anyone who pisses him off (anyone who pisses him off boils down to, essentially, everyone.) He doesn't have a problem smashing our cameras on the ground, and by extension, apparently, doesn't have a problem writing us thousand dollar checks every other day (sorry, but, c'mon, Hale – our tech ain't cheap.) When we tried to stop him outside a restaurant in his hometown of Beacon Hills earlier today, he in no uncertain terms, told us to f**k off. Specifically, what he said was 'f**k off before I rip your motherf**king throat out with my teeth', while Stiles laughed maniacally in the background. Speaking of Stiles Stilinski, the younger half of the duo...although he's certainly the lesser of two evils, he's not exactly doling out sunshine and puppies at every corner, either. While his beau is more actively an asshole, Stiles is more passively an asshole – he doesn't stop Derek from shoving our cameraman against walls, doesn't tell Derek to try being nice (for once); for the most part, he's happy to flash smiles at the cameras and giggle whenever Derek goes wolf-man on us. Occasionally, we've seen him start yelling at Derek the second the car door slams behind them and we're out of earshot, which would mark the first time we've ever seen soulmates argue with one another – plus, considering the fact that Derek could probably snap Stiles' neck with a flick of his wrist, we find it interesting that Stiles is normally the one instigating problems with his soulmate. Case and point, the duo isn't anything like the other two mutation couples in the public eye – they're not sweet, they're not nice, they don't want to sign autographs or kiss for the cameras. They hardly touch at all, as a matter of fact, which only fuels the gossip that the pair like to engage in the bizarre act of touch-starvation (how much f**king money would you pay for a porno of Stiles and Derek doing that) (seriously...look it up and try not to cream yourself). All of these factors combined are probably what's lead to them becoming the most talked about celebrity couple – not just in terms of mated couples, but in general – in just the two short weeks we've known them. They're sexy and mysterious and something about the way they act like they hardly tolerate each other has mass fan appeal. (The Power of Sterek - Malia Tate, MuttPop.com) “You're not reading that shit again, are you?” Derek asks from the edge of the bed – his bare back is to Stiles, triskele tattoo on full display, while he makes a big show out of his putting his clothes back on. “Don't pretend like you're not curious to know what they say about you,” he says in return, eyeballing the picture that accompanies the article. They're outside Derek's apartment building, probably from the day that Derek literally grabbed a camera out of a man's hand and threw it down onto the ground hard enough to shatter it into about ten separate pieces. Stiles is staring directly into the camera with a whisper of a smile, mid-step, while Derek has his eyes on the back of Stiles' head a few paces
behind him, lips drawn down into a tight, terse frown. “Like I've said a million times,” Derek grumbles, tugging his shirt over his shoulders, “I don't give a fuck.” Stiles presses his lips down, and rubs his naked body deeper into the sheets on Derek's bed, laptop perched on his lap. The last two weeks have been nothing but a media frenzy; there are camera crews waiting outside every single day, and it's gotten to the point where the building, happy for the free promotion, has set up barriers and hired security to mill around twenty fours hours a day. It's nerve wracking enough to look out over the balcony to be met with screams and cameras flashing; actually descending into the madness is like throwing himself to the dogs. It doesn't help that every single time Stiles tries to leave Derek's place, Derek insists on coming with him and creating a god damn scene. Because he can't just walk Stiles out, make sure he gets to his car safely, and then go back inside. No. Derek doesn't do the easy, obvious thing. He fucking tries to attack people that get even a little too close to Stiles, breaks cameras, curses everyone out, and in general makes an ass of himself. People love it. It drives Derek insane. It makes Stiles laugh – he tries so hard to be this brooding alpha male that nobody understands and he just winds up as this fucking bad boy heart throb. When they're not battling off the cameras and the interviewers (who they have thus far refused to even acknowledge or grace with an answer to any of their questions) they're exactly where they are now, having weird soulmate sex. Stiles enjoys it, and Derek enjoys it. While it's happening. Afterward, though, after every time they have sex, they get crabby with each other. Which Stiles thinks is funny, because aren't orgasms supposed to relieve stress and tension? With Stiles and Derek, every single time they make each other come, the way they talk to each other after the fact gets worse. It's like, somehow, someway, them having sex is screwing with their relationship a lot more than it's helping. Derek snaps at him, and Stiles snaps right back, and Derek threatens to push him out onto the balcony butt naked for the camera crews to see. Maybe Ms. Tate should come along and film them having sex; I'm sure the public would love to actually hear one of the fabled Sterek arguments during the pillow talk portion of the video instead of just watching Stiles' lips flap at Derek in low quality videos, his face illuminated by the flash of a dozen cameras. Those fights, by the way, are all pretty much just variations of the same thing. “You are such a fucking asshole,” Stiles will hiss the second his door is closed, before slamming himself back into his seat and crossing his arms over his chest. “Would it absolutely kill you to just smile and wave just fucking once?” “I told you from day one I wasn't going to be lovey dovey with you, Stiles,” Derek will snarl back as he throws the car into drive, “put your god damn seatbelt on.” “If you're so opposed to this entire thing,” he puts his seatbelt on and glares out at the flashing lights,
“then why don't we just put a fucking stop to it here and now!” “Sounds good to me; I'll get some peace and quiet for the first time in weeks.” Then Derek will drive him home, park right alongside the Jeep, and say, “should I pick you up tomorrow, same time?” and Stiles will say “yeah, perfect,” and they repeat the cycle over again. Cameras, sex, argument, baseline. Cameras, sex, argument, baseline. Again, and again, and again. Somewhere deep inside of him, in a pile with all the other qualities of the mutation that Stiles is pretending he never feels, he knows what it means that Derek and Stiles can't stay truly mad at each other for longer than an hour. It's – it's scary to think, and even scarier to know, but it's there all the same, lurking in the back of his mind whenever he and Derek make eye contact during a fight and just stop. They can't fucking stay away from each other. Stiles chalks it up to the sex; the sex is just that good (and by sex, he's not talking about Derek's penis going inside of him – that hasn't even fucking happened yet – he's talking about the...you know), Derek is just that good looking, and that's all there is to it. It's not anything more than that. It's animalistic, at best. At worst, it's something Stiles and Derek don't have any control over. It's like trying to catch smoke, sometimes, when Stiles tries to hold on to the anger, or the annoyance, or the desire to say fuck this and not answer the phone when Derek calls from outside in his driveway to tell him to get down here. The farthest Stiles ever gets with any of that is a solid five seconds of squeezing his hands together to stop himself from picking up his phone – only five seconds. Stiles imagines that Derek paces around in his apartment for hours at a time, wearing down the tiles in his kitchen and muttering under his breath again and again about how he's completely in control of the situation. He's completely and totally got a handle on every thing that's going on, and he's not doing anything he genuinely doesn't want to. He's fine, and Stiles is fine, and this is all – fine. It would explain why whenever Stiles clicks through the pictures of Derek coming out of his building on his way to pick Stiles up, his eyes are bloodshot like he hasn't slept and he's even more aggressive than usual. There's only so much self-control two people can exert, you know? Freaks or not, they're still human beings, no matter what anybody writes about them. Like everyone else, they draw upon that limited resource inside of them, the one that keeps them away from each other, for only as long as they can. If Stiles was smart, and if Derek was smart, they would just sit down and look each other in the eye and say this is out of hand. This has been out of hand. Pushing it away is only making it worse. They're not smart, though, and Derek is stubborn, and Stiles is stubborn – and they don't believe in soulmates. Science experiments, Stiles reminds himself. Science experiments. Right now, Stiles and Derek are in the denial-fight stage of their continuous, endless cycle. “You're rubbing come into my sheets, Stiles.”
“It's funny how you don't give a shit where I come when we're in the middle of it,” Stiles slaps the laptop closed and tosses it away from him, sending it sliding across Derek's crisp white comforter (he has to wash the thing every single day, now.) “What's funny,” Derek picks Stiles' shirt up from the ground and throws it as his face – Stiles sputters for a second as he tries to unfurl the thing away from his eyes, “is the way you don't ask before using my toothbrush.” “I was right about the toothpaste!” “Toothbrush.” “What's the big fucking deal?” Stiles pulls his own shirt on with flailing arms and a sigh. “We practically have the same, like, internal whatever, and you've had my come in your mouth before, so is my saliva really that much worse?” “It's disgusting!” Derek counters, keeping his back dutifully turned to Stiles, perched on the side of the bed, head down, rubbing at his forehead – like he doesn't want to turn around and look Stiles in the face. Like he knows if he does, this will all dissipate, and he won't be able to be mad anymore, and...they'll make out or have sex again, or something. “I don't want cheeto and Mountain Dew breath all over my fucking toothbrush, Stiles.” “Ha!” Stiles rolls his eyes and puts his feet off the ground, rising from the bed to pull his pants back on angrily, the denim flapping as he does so. “Like your beef jerky and extra-rare meat diet tastes so good in my mouth!” “Then don't use my god damn toothbrush!” “You know what!” Stiles swings around to face Derek, forgetting for a second who they are, what they're doing, what this is, that they're not two normal people having a normal argument, and looks him dead in the eyes. Like a switch goes off in both of their brains, Stiles freezes in place where he is; Derek's shoulders, which were a tight line of tension and annoyance only seconds before, lower and deflate like the anger has just gone completely out of him. The eye contact lasts, seconds drag on, and Stiles knows the shine of Derek's eyes so well he thinks he could draw and color them from memory on a piece of paper, if he were ever asked. A ring of brown right around the iris, fading out to a crisp yellow into a bright green, especially in the sunlight or in the flash of a camera. “You should – you should pack a bag, for next time,” Derek says quietly, not taking his eyes off of Stiles'. “Extra clothes and a toothbrush and...whatever else you want.” Stiles swallows the lump in his throat, nods. “Okay.” Silence, heartbeats pounding in both of their chests, and a ripple of something that Stiles doesn't quite understand yet, despite all the reading he's done on the mutation, passes between them. Like an ocean wave crashing them back together after they'd been wading alone and separately in the open water on opposite sides of an island. “Do you – do you want to drive me, home, or...” please say no, let me stay, I want to stay, let me stay, let me stay...
“No,” Derek's voice is even quieter now, strained. “I don't...want to. We can order some pizza, if you want.” Back to baseline. Just like that. It happens nearly every single day. They spend a solid hour, usually, on good terms with each other – being nice, smiling, telling jokes, watching Netflix (because Stiles had forced Derek to buy a god damn television) and gorging themselves on food, ignoring the outside world altogether. And, for just a little while, they're not just in this for something. It's hard to explain, and Stiles doesn't want to explain it, because he knows what the end result of any examination of their behavior would turn out to be. And, again. It terrifies him. Probably terrifies Derek. Neither of them ever bring it up. Halfway through his second slice of pizza, as the credits are rolling after an episode of Law and Order, Stiles phone buzzes on the coffee table, vibrating towards him with every pulse. He wipes some grease off on his jeans (something that would make annoyed-Derek call him nasty or disgusting, but that soulmate-Derek just watches without a word), observing the unfamiliar number glowing at him with a Beverly Hills area code. Frowning and curious, he puts the phone to his ear and says, “hello” around another mouthful of pizza. “Moszek Stilinkski?” It's the first time he's heard his actual, given birth name since his mother passed away – or, at least, the first time he's heard it pronounced correctly. It rolls off the stranger's tongue like she had practiced it several times before calling to make sure she'd get it right. “Um – yeah?” Stiles says, giving Derek a perplexed look. “Are you with Derek Hale?” Stiles meets Derek's eyes, gets sidetracked temporarily by the connection between them, and then clears his throat, looking pointedly away. “He – yeah?” “Would you mind putting me on speaker?” There's a pause, where Stiles knits his eyebrows together; he drops his pizza down onto the napkin on the coffee table (another thing annoyed-Derek would get on his case about). “Who am I talking to right now?” “Erica Reyes – put me on speaker, Mr. Stilinski.” Erica Reyes. He tries to think if he's ever heard that name before; he doesn't think so, but she says it like he's somehow supposed to know exactly who she is. With one last quizzical glance in Derek's direction, he taps his thumb on the screen and holds the phone in his palm, right in the middle of where he and Derek are sitting. “Okay...” “Once again – I'm Erica Reyes.” Derek doesn't react to the name with any more recognition than Stiles had – a blank stare at the
phone, and then he goes back to munching on his pizza. There's a sigh on the other line. “I used to host the talk show Soulmates?” Oh. Oh. That Erica Reyes. The tall, leggy, blonde woman who never leaves the house without six inch heels and a pop of red on her lips – she did, indeed, used to the host the talk show Soulmates. It was this bizarre hour of television where she'd sit in a completely whited out studio (white walls, white floors, white background, white couches – like a fucking asylum) in a cherry red dress, leering with her disturbingly false grin at Lydia Martin and Jordan Parrish. It was like a newlyweds show, in a lot of ways. Erica would grin wolfishly, holding a stack of large white cards in her hand with question after question for the couple, while Lydia would answer them as icily as possible and Jordan wound up carrying most of the conversation. This went on for about four months – once a week, the tacky intro music would play, Erica would come sweeping out in her red dress and heels, wink at the camera while murmuring something like and how's our favorite couple doing this week? Watch and find out into the camera. Stiles only watched about three episodes of the show, because the questions she would ask were...to put it lightly, disturbing. Do you ever – you know – think about just strangling her during sex? Snapping her neck, or something? Does it ever hurt? The mark, I mean. It looks like blood, you know, so I'm just wondering! Would you ever consider making a sex tape? She'd laugh her trademark cackle, throwing her head back while Lydia looked about two steps away from snapping her neck, and Jordan smiled nervously and tried to look like it didn't bother him. We want to know what soulmate sex is like, you know! Nothing that anyone else batted an eyelash at, of course, because treating the mated-borns like they're subhuman sociopaths is just something that comes naturally to the public at large. Like what Malia Tate wrote about Stiles initiating fights with Derek – how Derek could snap his neck if he felt like it. Something tells him they'd like that, quite a bit; but only if someone managed to get it on film so they could watch themselves as Derek kills his own fucking soulmate. The ratings of Soulmates were higher than any other show in television history, but a show like that can only last so long. There are only so many questions you can ask a single pair of people before it becomes trite. It's been a graceful five years since the last time there were any new Soulmates to drag onto the show, so of course, Stiles wouldn't recognize Erica's name immediately. She hasn't done anything else since, and why would she? She probably has enough money from those four short months to buy her expensive red lipstick for the rest of her life. Stiles clears his throat, doesn't need to look at Derek to know he's probably gritting his teeth and remembering the show just like Stiles is. “If you're calling to ask us to do that show, then-” “No, no, no,” she laughs; something a lot more sincere and genuine than her cackles from the show.
“That was a once in a lifetime experience, right? A show like Soulmates only works the first time around, is what I mean, people get bored, you know,” she talks a mile a minute, like there's something really exciting going on in the room beside her and she's anxious to get along with this conversation so she can join in on the fun. She doesn't say that show was incredibly tacky and demeaning, and probably honestly doesn't think it was. She probably thinks she changed the fucking world with that trash. “Then, what's-” “I know you don't have representation,” it sounds like she's chewing bubblegum, “and I know you don't honestly expect to walk around punching cameramen in the face without any grip on what you're actually doing, right?” “Representation?” Stiles repeats the word like he doesn't understand what it means – and he more or less doesn't. Derek looks just as lost as he is, pizza sitting long forgotten in his hand, eyebrows furrowed as he stares at the phone in Stiles' hand. “Public representation,” more smacking of gum – she waits for their response. Neither one of them say anything. Another sigh. “Publicity, boys. I know you don't have a publicist. I'm offering – well, demanding – to give you my professional services.” Stiles imagines the scene. He imagines that Erica Reyes is sitting in her asylum white office with an empty plastic container sitting beside her that once held a ceasar salad with lowfat dressing. He imagines that there's a huge window behind her overlooking Beverly Hills in its lavish entirety, palm trees and mansions, imagines her in her high heels and blonde ringlets, pressing her phone against her ear with her shoulder while she taps a business e-mail out to whoever the Hell she does business with. How fucking bizarrely different that is from what Derek and Stiles are doing right now. “Why would we want to do that?” Derek asks as he finally starts eating his pizza again – like he's completely checked out of this conversation now. “Because you'd have to be an idiot to not do that.” “Really?” Derek rolls his eyes and munches on his crust. “I'm an idiot to not want some socialite demanding I make a sex tape for her?” Erica laughs again. “I knew you'd be the trouble, Mr. Hale.” “I don't particularly want to have a publicist either,” Stiles interjects to back Derek up; since allowing Derek to continue this argument with Erica will only wind up with Stiles' phone smashing onto the ground, or something of that nature. “Do you two have any idea what I'm actually offering here? You seem to think I'm calling to ask you to put cameras in your bedroom.” “Isn't that exactly what-”
“I'm trying to help you get your public careers started. You know – money? Fame? Lydia Martin and Jordan Parrish's multimillion dollar mansion?” “What does you being our publicist have to do with-” “You get paid for magazine interviews, Stiles,” she sounds like she's losing her patience. “You get paid for appearing in segments on E! News, you get paid for pretending to laugh at Ellen's jokes – do you want to make money off of this, or are you happy to work at a gas station for the rest of your life?” Stiles turns to look at Derek. He's finished his pizza, now, and is just sitting stock still, avoiding eye contact with Stiles by staring straight ahead, hands balled into fists where they're resting on his knees. Quietly enough that he knows Erica won't be able to hear anything aside from some unintelligible murmuring, he says into Derek's ear, “this is exactly what we were talking about.” When this whole thing started – the entire reason they agreed to this to begin with, was the money. The multimillion dollar mansion, the endless career choices (he could literally release a line of faux-fur panties like Elle Woods from Legally Blonde and make a fucking fortune off of it, just for being Stiles Stilinski, at this point), the cars, the cities, the every thing. The brand new lease on their shitty, fucked up mutt lives. Derek doesn't turn to look at him; he sets his jaw even tighter, his knuckles turn white, and it looks for a second like he's going to whip around and punch Stiles directly in his fucking face. Instead, he says nothing, does nothing, and the silence drags on. “That's what I thought,” Erica hums happily on the other line, “should I come to meet you or the other way around?” Stiles is pretty much in this, now. Any reservations he might have about Erica herself, or how Derek is reacting right now, or how there's something inherently wrong with what they're doing, get mowed down by the sheer prospect of it all. Maybe it's not every little kid's dream to become famous for being a freak of nature, or to have his entire existence treated at some kind of free show for everyone to partake in and gawk at. But it's definitely the dream of every mated-born living today (Derek included, no matter how mad he chooses to get about having to work with Erica) to have their lives turned into something besides hiding and barely scraping by to make ends meet. “Let them buy the books,” Stiles reminds him even more quietly; opting to not reach out and touch him or even look directly at him, to not activate the soulmate bond that has them caring more about each other than any sum if money. “Right?” His soulmate remains still for another few seconds – closing his eyes and exhaling deeply through his nose. Then, in a raw, gritty voice, he says, “we'll come to you.”
Erica Reyes' office is in a high rise in the dead center of Beverly Hills. It isn't white, like Stiles had assumed earlier, but a pale gray color, like every thing else in the room. Stiles starts to think Erica just gets off on being a pop of color in the middle of a dull room, the way she insists on wearing the brightest reds while surrounding herself with dull, blank décor. She has a picture of Allison Argent and Kira Yukimura sitting on her desk, and when she notices Stiles staring at it, she clucks her tongue. “Aw, aren't they adorable? I love them!” Kira and Allison were the first publicly mated couple. They probably got...the worst of it. It was the first time, since the fucking last time with the murder and the death and the...bad. So, naturally, when pictures surfaced of them running into each other in a mall in the middle of New York City, both of them on vacation, in the same place, at the same time, traveling from completely different parts of the world (Kira from her study-abroad in Japan, Allison from Missouri), people went a little...nuts. There was an outpouring from the public to have them taken into custody, as soon as possible, to hold them off in a mental institution until they could be sure that they weren't going to absolutely lose their minds. Allison, for her part, spent a good three days in a jail cell because the police found a series of hunting bows and shotguns in her family household, while Kira was put on house arrest for just as long. Stiles remembers being ten years old and watching this unfold before his eyes; watching as people like him were treated like criminals or mental patients. Something to be wary of. That's what Allison and Kira represent for him; no matter how many times they sweep across red carpets in floor length ball gowns, smiling and twirling and kissing, Stiles can't shake that first, hellish week from his head. Although, he guesses they were lucky, in the grand scheme of things, being a same-sex female couple – the second Lydia and Jordan got together, Lydia was dragged against her will into a hospital room, put under anesthesia, and sliced open for a tubal litigation surgery. Like Erica says – soulmates are a once in a lifetime type of thing. “Totally,” Stiles agrees amiably. Two annoyed looking lawyers are hovering off to the side, behind the desk, glaring at Derek and Stiles like they'd like nothing more than to have them arrested for something – and Erica points to them, “legal representation? They've looked through the contract, you know. They'd tell you if something's wrong.” Stiles thinks they wouldn't bother mentioning if there was a slavery clause written somewhere in there, honestly. Erica slaps a contract down onto the glass surface of the desk, right in between where Derek and Stiles are sitting and starts thumbing through the pages for them, pointing at specific paragraphs and saying things like ten percent of every thing you make and I reserve the right to report any incidences of Derek being physically abusive towards you and court of law and mandatory psych evaluation and more percentages and numbers and by the end of it Stiles' head is spinning so hard that it's all he can do to reach out and take the pen from Erica when it's offered to him.
As he's leaning forward to sign it, Derek leans forward at the exact same time – they almost brush their arms against one another, but Derek pulls back so hard he nearly knocks himself out of his chair. Erica watches this, cackles, and says, “the rumors are true!” Stiles tries not to think about what Erica is going to do with that information, choosing instead to stare directly at Derek's neck. Derek, for his part, must be staring somewhere in vicinity of his lips, and this is generally how they look at each other to avoid the pull. “Second thoughts?” He asks, not caring that Erica and the lawyers can hear him. Derek swallows, and Stiles watches his adam's apple bob up and down with the motion. “No. Fine.” Without further adieu, Stiles signs a business contract with Erica Reyes, socialite, busy body, coldblooded – he listens as Derek signs his own half of the paper, and then it's done. They both drop their pens down onto the desk with clicks, and Erica claps her hands excitedly. “Excellent,” she says, ripping the contract away – Stiles draws a parallel, perhaps an unfair one, between her and Ursula in the Little Mermaid after Ariel signs her voice away to the sea witch. She hands it off to one of the lawyers, flips her blond hair over her shoulder, and places herself primly in her own desk chair. “Now, be honest with me – the contract's already been signed, so don't worry – are you guys deranged?” Derek makes a noise in the back of his throat, maybe an incredulous laugh, maybe an annoyed chuff, and Stiles just drops his jaw and stares at her, unsure of how to even begin answering that. “Um...? This isn't what you meant by mandatory psych evaluation, is it?” Erica point blank asking them if they're, quote unquote, deranged might be a time-saver, but not exactly the most efficient way of determining the mental health of either of them. Erica smiles at him, shrugging her shoulders. “I'm required by law to do something. Frankly, I could give a shit whether you're nuts or not; to be brutal, if one of you ends up gutting the other like a fish, it wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen.” She blinks. “At least, not if a security camera managed to catch it.” He doesn't have to look at Derek to know that he's gritting his teeth and glaring his best death glare at Erica right about now; all the same, Erica runs her eyes over Derek once, twice, unimpressed, and then turns her attention back to Stiles. “Can I take that as a maybe from him?” After their psych evaluation, which consisted of Erica staring long and hard at them each for seconds at a time, shrugging her shoulders again, and saying, “works for me,” in a cryptic tone of voice, she hands them a tentative schedule of events and pops her gum right in Stiles' ear as she leans over him and points her cherry red finger nails to individual time slots. Good Morning America, The Today's Show, MTV News, Entertainment Tonight, Cosmopolitan magazine, TMZ – and that's just one fucking week. Stiles asks her how much they'll be getting paid for each of them, and she pops a number out of her mouth that Stiles has never heard beside the word dollars in his life, lets out a deep exhale. Fucking hell. This is real. This is happening. They're really fucking doing this; in a no-turning-back-
now type of a way. He can't tell Derek's reaction to any of this, of course, because they can't look at or touch one another, but he imagines it's something along the lines of annoyed surprise or annoyed excitement. A typical Derek type of emotion. “You two need to start talking to the ridiculous paparazzi outside your apartment,” she clicks on her hardwood floors, to the corner of the office where a copy machine is sitting. “For your own good.” “What?” Stiles whines, thinking about those nasty, sweaty guys that yell disgusting questions at Stiles and Derek as they walk past them. “We're already talking to more people than I even knew existed, why do we have to-” “Because it's your candid image,” she rolls her eyes and presses several buttons the machine, tapping her foot on the ground. “No matter what you say on television, or in interviews, or in magazines, everyone knows that shit is edited. Everyone knows you guys are caked with make-up and done up and told what to say and do – what you say to the paparazzi is who people think you really are.” “Well...” Stiles resists the urge to look to Derek for help, as if he'd be any help whatsoever either way. “What do we say?” “I don't give a rat's ass what you say, except -” she pulls out the two copies of the schedule, clicks back over to them and presents one each to the two men sitting in front of her desk, “...the one thing I insist you absolutely have to say – is, listen up,” she puts her hands in the air, dramatically, “...we're not like other mutt couples.” “The politically correct term is soulmates,” Derek growls under his breath, and Stiles remembers when he said a variation of the same thing to a disgruntled and disgusted customer at the gas station, weeks earlier. “Call yourselves fucking aliens from another planet, or circus clowns, or whatever, I don't give a shit, so long as you say it. Say anything else you want, tell everyone to go fuck themselves, explain in explicit detail what your dicks look like, I could care less – people seem to really dig that attitude problem you have, anyway,” at this, she points in Derek's direction. “That's our image, then?” Stiles asks, eyeballing the schedule again. “Not like other soulmates?” Erica nods, a grin spreading across her face. “You're not Jordia, and you're not Kallison, you're...Sterek.” She says it like it's something magical or enchanted, and Stiles grimaces. “Totally unique. I don't even wanna change anything about you two you're just so...” she motions in between them a few times, and Stiles wonders what she sees there. Maybe she sees the fact that Stiles and Derek have this proclivity to seem aloof with one another, to snap at one another and glare daggers at each other, only to come back together for small moments of closeness that aren't particularly romantic but make people go awww all the same; that Derek is hard and rough in the obvious, bad boy way, while Stiles is just sarcastic and obnoxious, and somehow, bizarrely, they complement each other. “I don't know what it is,” she decides on, pursing her red lips together into a tight lipped smile. “But they're eating it the fuck up.”
As they're walking through the lobby of Erica's building, back out to the parking garage to climb back into the Camaro and possibly scream and air-five over the absurd amount of money they're getting paid for pretty much just being born, Derek is silent – until he snorts out a laugh. Stiles glances at the side of his face, dangerously choosing to focus on his eyes for a fraction of a second before finding the willpower to look away. “What?” He asks, lips pulling up into a smile. A few cameras flash, a few gasps, some whispering, and Derek says, “it's just – Sterek.” “Oh, I know,” Stiles snickers back at him, relishing in the way Derek is actually laughing at something for once instead of being an absolute sourpuss about everything. “I fucking hate that, too.” ---COSMO : you two don't really seem to mind what anyone says about you. SS : what's there to care about? All anyone says is that Derek is mad all the time and I'm rude – is that not true? DH : that's true. SS : it's true. COSMO : but what about the...you know. SS : (laughs) I don't know. COSMO : are you going to make me say it? SS : for a magazine that advertises 500 new sex positions every month... COSMO : fair enough. The touch-starving. Is that the right term? (SS nods, DH glowers) Is there any truth to that? (COSMO notes, here, that SS and DH have not touched once since the interview began – just saying.) DH : what do you f**king think? COSMO : (nervously, as that particular glare DH gives off is even scarier in person than it is in the pictures) well, it's just that the other two mutt couples don't seem interested in practicing it much at all. (pause) SS : well, we're not like them. We're not all the the f**king same, you know. ---Stiles and Derek sit in chairs next to each other every single morning for a week straight, in shared dressing rooms backstage at some huge television studio in LA or Beverly Hills or Hollywood or wherever the fuck Derek's GPS winds up taking them on any given morning. They get make-up painted over the faces except for over the mark, which always gets emphasized, touched up, rubbed with some kind of weird oil that makes it stand out more against their skin. Derek does crossword puzzles and doesn't say a word to Stiles. Stiles sits glaring down at his phone, and doesn't say a word to Derek. If the hair and wardrobe people think there's anything weird about this, it's mostly just raised eyebrows at each other while they think neither of the boys are looking at them, probably thinking these two kinky fuckers and their bizarre kinky sex – not that Derek and Stiles speaking or not speaking has anything at all to do with how good the sex winds up being.
The reason for the silences has more to do with the fact that anything and everything they say can and will be used against them by anyone who happens to be listening in; it's not something that Erica ever told them or warned them about, but it's something that Derek and Stiles say to each other every morning before climbing out of the Camaro. “Last words?” Stiles will wink in Derek's general direction, careful not to look directly at him. Derek will huff, rip the keys out of the ignition, and say something like, “don't let them comb your hair back,” or “try not to stand so close to me this time,” or “if you keep staring at the side of my face, it makes me want to look at you, and...” And, they can't look at each other. They have not looked directly into each other's eyes or laid a hand on one another in days – four days, to be exact. Not that Stiles is keeping count or anything. Derek is constantly annoyed with Stiles, constantly badgering him for this that and the other thing, and Stiles constantly has to resist the urge to whirl around, look him dead in the eyes, and say fuck. you. while waving both middle fingers in the air right in front of his face. Like a fucking old married couple in a sexless, loveless marriage. None of this, however, would go very well if anyone were to ever overhear it. If it were to ever get around that Stiles Stilinski grabbed a glass ash tray off the sink in their dressing room, smashed Derek Hale over the head with it and let him bleed out all over the floor...well, it wouldn't go over well. That's pretty much the only reason Stiles doesn't do it, at this point, and that whole soulmate thing has more or less...faded. He doesn't love Derek. He doesn't even fucking like him and he hates the Camaro and hates the way Derek eats his food and hates the sound of him fucking muttering under his breath while he does his crosswords – hates him. If the way Derek balls his hands into fists every time Stiles pulls out a bag of cheetos or laughs too loudly at something or zips and unzips his hoodie again and again is anything to go by, Stiles would say that Derek isn't exactly loving Stiles these days, either. Stiles cannot fucking imagine how Kira and Allison or Jordan and Lydia are keeping this shit up – he starts genuinely believing every thing he's read about soulmates is a complete and utter farce of massive proportions. It's a fucking ruse, all of it. In their dressing room backstage at Entertainment Tonight, Stiles cracks open a mountain dew, and from the corner of his eye he can see the way Derek twitches at the fizzle of it – curling his hand tighter around the arm rest of his seat. He takes a sip, glug, glug, ahhh and Derek's knuckles turn white. “What's your favorite flavor or Mountain Dew?” He asks the man rubbing gel into his hair, meeting his eyes in the mirror, because he has to talk to someone – he's a social person, all right? “Can't say I've ever had it, Stiles,” he says back, laughing under his breath. “I like Code Red best, I think.” “Hmm.” “Original is good, too, though. Voltage – I can respect it for what it is, but-”
“Gee, is there a fucking Star Trek convention you're going to be fucking late for?” Derek's voice startles him so bad he very nearly turns to look at him – almost meets his god damn eyes in the fucking mirror reflection, and it's only by the grace of God his stylist pulls his head in the opposite direction at that exact moment. Stiles, unable to stop himself, not giving a fuck that there are three other people in this room right now who are going to hear this, bites back, “is there a fucking stick-up-the-ass convention you need to be at, fucker?” A stifled laugh comes from somewhere to his left, and Stiles whips around to see Derek's stylist hiding her face inside her make-up kit. “Let me ask you something,” Derek starts saying to her, angling his body towards her – she looks up at him, hand over her mouth, and nods to let him know she's listening. “Don't you think my soulmate here needs a couple more layers of concealer to cover those unseemly moles?” “Don't you think my soulmate could use a couple more layers of shut the fuck up!” “Oh, good one!” Derek mocks sarcastically, and Stiles just knows he's rolling his eyes. Stiles only manages to keep himself in his chair and restrain himself from roundhouse kicking Derek in his fucking stupid face and his ugly fucking cheekbones because his stylist puts his hands down on his shoulders at exactly the right second. There are a couple seconds of dead air, where Stiles is just breathing heated, angry breaths through his nose, staring at himself in the mirror, fantasizing about castrating his soulmate; and then someone says, “so it's really not all that perfect, huh?” Stiles wants to steal Derek's keys, drive the Camaro to the hardware store, buy all the supplies he'd need to build a homemade bomb, drive back, build the bomb, plant it in the basement, and blow every single person in this building sky fucking high. That's how agitated he is right now – he's agitated enough to know that he wouldn't even fucking second think something that premeditated, he wouldn't even cool off halfway through. He'd go all the way with that shit. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly why they decided it'd be better if they didn't speak to one another. It's easier when the lights and cameras are on them, when the make-up is on – with an interviewer goading them to answer questions a certain way, leading the conversation in a certain direction. Derek stands at least six inches away from Stiles, and when he tilts the microphone towards his soulmate's face, he makes sure his hand is all the way on the bottom of the handle; no contact, whatsoever. No accidents. The rumor mill flows, obscenely explicit fanfiction gets written in spite of the fact that no one has ever actually seen what touch-starved sex looks like (but oh, holy shit, do the young writers of the internet have some unbelievable imaginations – like, that bizarre tentacles are somehow involved?), and Stiles and Derek don't start arguing until the limelight is off of them once more. “You two –“ the interviewer points in between them, grinning and glancing to the camera, “it's so
funny, it's hilarious, that you two act like you hardly even like each other!” “Well,” Stiles side-eyes Derek, jabs a thumb in his direction, “what's to like?” The audience laughs. Stiles is dead fucking ass serious right now – what the fuck is there to like about Derek Hale? Honestly? Can anyone tell him? - and they all think he's joking. “Tell me about the first time you met,” it's only a story they've told oh, about, five thousand fucking times now, “of course you liked him then!” Stiles scrunches his face up dramatically, shaking his head. “Nah.” Again, the audience laughs – it's Stiles' best comedy routine and he's not even fucking trying. Beside him, Derek shifts uncomfortably, before huffing. “He was wearing that ridiculous vest.” “Right – with the slurpee stains all over it.” “He reeked of bleach and he called me a smartass.” “He swore at me, first.” "He dented the hood of my car and still hasn't paid me back." How interesting it is that this legitimately sounds like some startoff to a romantic comedy; that people are gobbling it up, that someone, somewhere, is copying this all down to use as inspiration for a Lifetime movie based on their actual lives, when Derek and Stiles are literally bickering live on television and no one can even fucking tell because they're soulmates. Soulmates don't bicker – they tease each other fondly. There's nothing fond about this. Humorous as it may be, Stiles feels like standing up right then and there, ripping his microphone pack off of his body, storming off set and yelling dramatically at Erica through the phone about how dealing with that piece of shit wasn't in the fucking contract, Erica, I refuse to be in the same room with him. But, again. That wouldn't go over well. The audience laughs, the camera zooms in on them, Stiles forces a smile on his face, they don't look at each other, they don't touch each other – as soon as they're alone in the Camaro, pointedly ignoring the flashes of cameras, Stiles fucking starts in. “Fuck you!” He all but screams as Derek revs up the engine, slamming his fist into the dashboard. “You are so fucking lucky I don't gouge your eyes out right now!” “You are the one who goes out of your fucking way to drive me insane,” Derek growls as he maneuvers through the barricades and photographers. “Put your fucking seatbelt on.” “I opened up a soda! I didn't fucking insult the way you look! If you remember that, fuckface!” “As if you wouldn't, given the opportunity? Seat. Belt.”
“Okay, you wanna go there?” Stiles pulls his seatbelt across his chest with a jerking movement, buckles it in, and takes a deep breath. “Your front teeth look like they belong in the mouth of Bugs fucking Bunny.” “Your nose looks like someone smacked you in the face with a shovel.” “When your hair is pushed back your ears stick out of your head like Dumbo-” “What is it with you and the god damn cartoon insults?” “Because you look like a freakish cartoon character!” They go back and forth like that for five more minutes, until Stiles throws his hands up and yells I'm not doing this anymore, and Derek goes fucking good, and they sit in chilly silence for the rest of the drive back to Beacon Hills. Stiles sort of thought that was as bad as it could possibly get – what could be worse than being trapped inside of a car with someone he genuinely despises, sitting in horribly awkward silence because they're both too stubborn to reach out and turn on the radio for some background distraction noise after they just spent five straight minutes bickering over who's uglier? Until they slide into Derek's normal parking spot outside his building. Stiles left his laptop up on Derek's bed somewhere midst the sheets, which is the only reason he's even here to begin with – if he had his way, he'd be home already ranting and raving in private with no one except for walls to listen about how fucking much he despises Derek Hale and every thing he stands for. They climb out of the car, met with the usual and expected fanfare and flurry of commotion, and Derek walks a good three paces in front of Stiles, his shoulders a tight, tense line. Stiles glowers at his back and imagines punching him in the back of the head. Every thing goes by pretty normally – until it goes horribly fucking wrong. Some guy, some fucking kid, breaks out of the barricade. He comes leaping over it, somehow, someway, and the security guards are too busy trying to wrestle a pack of teenage girls back from the fences to take notice of it. One second Stiles is glaring pointedly down at the ground, just trying to make it through another horrible fucking walk of shame, and the next... He's getting jumped on by a guy about three times his size, knocking him clean over onto the ground with a huge mass of a body pinning him down onto the concrete. For a few seconds, Stiles is dazed – he hears the flashes get louder, a few screams of get off him and Stiles are you okay!?, and he doesn't have time to really take notice of what's happened to him at all before the body is being torn off of him and tossed unceremoniously off somewhere to the side. Stiles is greeted by the dimming light of the Summer twilight, rolls up onto his knees with a groan and a hand rubbing at the back of his head. Yelling, click click click click click, and Stiles focuses his attention on where he can see Derek doing exactly what anyone would expect Derek Hale to do in this situation.
Grabbing the kid, seventeen years old at he most, by the back of his shirt, cocking his fucking fist for a punch. “Derek!” Stiles scrambles to his feet, trips over himself a couple of times in his hurry, and launches himself as fast as he can to where Derek is literally about to make a complete fucking mistake. Punching a seventeen year old kid as a normal dude is one thing – a felony if he decides to press charges, a night spent in jail, a fine paid, whatever. Punching a seventeen year old kid as a possibly mentally unstable mutt, however...a different fucking ballgame altogether. The worst possible thing that could ever happen. And, yes, maybe Stiles really hates Derek right about now; but the fate that befalls mated-borns who break the law or act the way everyone else fears they will act isn't something he'd wish on even his worst fucking enemy. So, he acts. He does the only thing there is to do. He runs at Derek, and grabs his arm to stop him from throwing the punch. A couple of reminders ; first of all, Derek and Stiles have not fucking touched in four days. Four. Days. That's the longest they've ever gone without at least brushing up against each other on accident. Second of all, they haven't even so much as looked at each other's faces in the same amount of time. Picture the scene – Stiles grabbing onto Derek's arm with both hands. Derek jerking and whipping his head around in shock to stare directly in to Stiles' eyes. Physical contact made, eye contact made, after four days of nothing but arguing and bickering and repressing the soulmate instincts and repressing their own instincts. The perfect fucking storm. Stiles comes pretty much instantaneously, intensely and with the single most pornographic sound he thinks he's ever made in his life, without breaking eye contact, so he gets to watch as Derek comes right after him with a low grunt. Neither of them move. They can't. They actually, physically, can't. Stiles isn't so sure what Derek's thinking right now, or what he's feeling; but he's got a pretty good fucking guess, if how he's doing is anything to go by. He should've known, of course he should have. He more or less did, remembering all the literature he's read, but he was hoping that they would get the chance to remedy the situation when they were alone. When fresh soulmates go for too long without any sort of physical contact, the ties between them begin to sever. Right – they begin to sever. Stiles wasn't entirely sure what they meant by that, and there was no follow up paragraph about what it's like to do that to themselves and then...come back into it. He wasn't thinking about that while the severing was actually going on; he was just thinking about how much he fucking hated Derek. Now, though. Every thing comes rushing back to him all at one; the fact that, oh yeah, right, he doesn't actually hate Derek, and, hold on a minute...actually, he fucking loves Derek? A lot? And he
doesn't understand why he ever disliked him, even for a second, why they ever argued, why he said all those terrible things to Derek in the car; it almost doesn't feel like it was actually him that said and did all those things. It couldn't have been. Stiles loves Derek so – so fucking much, and his skin feels so fucking good and his eyes are so fucking perfect, he just... Comes. Again. Derek comes. Again. In front of a dozen professional photographers, a representative from MuttPop with a huge video camera perched on their shoulder, and fifty or so screaming teenagers. Moments like these, in the movies, usually everyone goes quiet. The entire world goes so quiet you could hear a fucking pin drop, and everyone has dropped jaws, and no one moves a single inch. Stiles thinks he would've preferred that, honestly, to what actually wound up happening. It would've given them some time to recuperate, separate away from each other on their own terms. As it went, Stiles and Derek literally sat there feeding off of each other's energies, recharging each other with whatever they had run low on during their time without touching one another like this, brazenly giving in to what they had been avoiding, for a solid thirty seconds. Hardly cognizant of anything that was going on around them, staring into each other's eyes. Until security had to literally rip them away from one another; Stiles actually elbowed one of them in the face, kicked another one in the fucking crotch in his desperation to try and get back to Derek, who got treated way more violently than Stiles did. Erica slams her laptop down in front of them on her desk the following day, screen facing them, a huge picture of Stiles mid-orgasm staring straight back at them. Stiles' cheeks heat up so much he thinks he should catch fire, and Derek sighs. Erica taps her finger slowly, dangerously, on the glass of her desk, staring them both down with a type of intensity typically reserved for math problems as she leans back against the front of the desk, right beside where the laptop is sitting. Stiles doesn't speak – he has no fucking idea what he would even say. Sorry for orgasming in front of a huge crowd of underage girls? Fuck. Derek doesn't talk most likely because he hardly ever does to begin with; Stiles is always the one carrying the brunt of the conversation when there's a third party in the room with them. So pretty much they're just waiting on Erica. She parts her lips, inhales, and narrows her eyes. “Have we learned, now, that kinky sex just isn't worth the price, boys?” Squirming in his seat, Stiles tries to look anywhere but at the laptop screen, anywhere but at his flushed cheeks and dropped mouth, eyes screwed shut tight. “Shall we watch the video?” “No!” Stiles shrieks at the same time Derek chimes in with “absolutely fucking not.” All the same, Erica's index finger slides across the touch pad and smacks the enter key – and the video starts. Stiles covers his face with his hands, listening to himself yell Derek!, the distinct sound
of more than one person gasping in unison, and the shiver-inducing sound of himself coming all over himself followed up by Derek coming all over himself. Screaming that Stiles hadn't heard while he actually lived through it (too caught up in Derek's skin, Derek's eyes, Derek's Derek to notice anything else), so fucking loud that the sound quality turns more into a fzzzz noise than any discernible sounds. It lasts for a good fifteen seconds, that loud screaming, and Stiles knows for a solid fact that he personally came a second time at some point during that interval – probably around the time the screaming pulses a bit louder for a moment. Stiles peeks through his fingers to see himself being manhandled by a beefy security officer. Sees himself start fighting with more than one beefy security officer, while another pulls out his taser and zaps Derek in the middle of trying to run back to Stiles, smacks him over the head with a night stick until he's lying slack and pliant on the ground. It's got to be the single worst thing he's ever laid eye on in his entire life, the single worst thing that could've possibly ever happened in the history of ever. First of all, everyone knows what he looks like when he has an orgasm. Second of all, everyone knows what he sounds like when he has an orgasm. Third of all, he came in front of fourteen year old girls. Fourth of all – Christ, should he even go on? This was...bad. “Is this the punishment?” Derek asks her with a dark look; Stiles traces the bloody lump on the side of his head, the stitches he had to get, and frowns. “Forcing us to relive it?” “Relive it?” She raises her eyebrows, hits the enter key to pause it before the video starts going on a loop. “I don't think either of you had any fuckin' clue what planet you were on while it was actually happening.” Very, very true. “Then what's the-” “This shit,” she taps the screen, where the video is paused on a knocked out Derek being dragged off to a police car, “can't fucking happen again. Sexy as it is,” so few things were sexy about what unfolded, it's fucking unbelievable, “as good for publicity as it is...you two can't go around fucking each other in broad daylight.” Stiles finally uncovers his face completely, his cheeks still as hot as fire. “We were both...clothed?” “You were both fucking wanton sex animals,” she corrects, slamming the laptop closed hard enough to crack the screen. “You can't be doing that shit! No more of – that.” “You're going to tell us what we can and can't do in the bedroom?” Derek sounds petulant and exhausted; makes sense, considering he spent the night in a jail cell down at the station for 'attacking an officer' with Stiles' father staring in at him with his hand on his holster the entire time. Stiles, for his part, was carted off to a hospital room with his hands cuffed behind his back, asked question after question about his sexual activity and if Derek touch-starves him as punishment and so on and so forth. It was dressed up like the doctors actually gave a shit about his well-being, or like they were checking to make sure he wasn't being mistreated by his much bigger, much stronger, much
angrier soulmate. The reality is, they just wanted to probe into the “bizarre” sex lives of mutations as subtly as possible. The single worst night of his entire fucking life, Derek's as well most likely, and people everywhere are probably getting off on it. Nobody mentions the way Stiles got backhanded across the face hard enough to bruise by a police officer. Nobody mentions Derek having to get stitches, or the disturbing jolt of his body as the taser hit him in the chest. Nobody fucking gives a shit. “You're complaining that I'm asking you to touch each other?” Erica snaps back at him. “Christ – have normal sex like normal people. Hold hands or something, I don't fucking care! So long as I don't have to sit here running damage control with the dozens of pissed off mothers whose children were present at the time you two shitheads ejaculated.” Suddenly the reasons for why Lydia and Jordan and Kira and Allison don't practice touch-starvation in spite of how fucking amazing it feels – it clearly is dangerous. That's crystal fucking clear, now, after his night in a padded room getting questioned by an uncomfortable looking doctor. “And stop doing that freaky thing where you don't look at each other,” she waves her hand in the air in annoyance, scrunching her face up. “People are starting to notice, and ask questions.”
How to Fuck Everything Up Chapter Notes
Okay I'm about to get real on you guys but I just want everyone to be as clear on this as possible - it's really hard for me, as the writer, to know and understand how disturbing someone else is going to find something. I wrote it and read it and re-read it and edited it to the point where I'm more or less completely blase' to every thing in here; tags can only get you so far lmao there are some things in this chapter I wouldn't know what to tag as. A spoiler free warning is that this follows the darker themes of prejudice, police brutality, Hollywood's dehumanization of its celebrities, and the biochemical themes pretty deeply and I don't want anyone to be shocked out of their socks or anything just because I suck at tagging This is the chapter with the domestic violence tag as well, which is probaly the most triggering thing in this fic, so if you're interested / nervous / turned off, I'd suggest going to the end notes for an in-depth explanation of what's going to happen
See the end of the chapter for more notes
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, dogs, cats, caterpillars, trees...it's finally happened. We finally know after years of wondering what the f**k touch-starvation actually looks like. And holy s#!t buckets, I could not have dreamed up a better way to find out. Professional Analysis of Touch-Starvation Gate : I want to fuck Stiles Stilinski. Derek Hale is, without question, sex incarnate. The man oozes it. He drips it. I'd love to follow him around for a day and lick the ground his feet touch while he verbally berates me; he could literally punch me in the face and I'd say oh, thank you, thank you very much, sir. He's so fucking hot, as a matter of fact, that it's easy to forget that Stiles is there in the background, wandering around on his lanky legs and scratching absentmindedly at his rosy cheeks. He's, you know – cute. He looks like he likes to cuddle. He's Niall Horan, Baby Spice, Bubbles, to Derek's Zayn Malik, Scary Spice, and Buttercup. After watching him have an orgasm, though. Excuse me – just a second. I need a minute. Just...give me a second...After watching Stiles Stilinski throw his head back, moan and babble incoherently for a full five seconds, body shuddering...f**k. There are no god damn words. I've gone speechless. Heaven can't help me now, I've become a Stiles Girl. It was like Derek wasn't even f**king there; even after his heroically sexy display of trying to protect his soulmate, even after he flexed his muscles and cocked his fist, after he himself shuddered off into an orgasm, my eyes stayed locked on Stiles' long-ass neck.
But, perhaps more importantly – the implications. We finally know that touch-starvation is not, as previously assumed, some weird form of BDSM torture that mutations partake in at weird backalley clubs with cigar smoke everywhere while creepy Russian techno thrums in the background. Even more importantly than that – we've got several dozen high quality shots of Stiles Stilinski's fucking boner. (Touch-Starve Me, Stiles – Malia Tate, MuttPop.com) Stiles and Derek sit in the Camaro in the parking garage. They sit in the Camaro, blank faced, staring dead ahead, not looking at each other or speaking, for minutes. Up there in Erica's office was the first time they'd seen each other or been in the same room since...that. They didn't look directly at each other, probably out of sheer terror for what would happen if they did. Control, Stiles thinks with a shake of his head. Freedom. Right. They're fucking terrified to even look into each other's eyes, out of fear of what the fucking mutation is going to make them do, of what law enforcement will do to them if they do any of that, and they seriously thought, for even a fraction of a second, that they had any control over any of this? They're the fucking puppets, the remnants of the serum passed down from their irresponsible and impulsive parents are the strings, and there's nothing they can do about that. Nothing, whatsoever. “The mark on your face,” Derek starts, in the first words he's spoken directly to Stiles since the incident. “That's from...” “One of the security guards,” he says back in a raspy voice. “It's not as bad as – um...” Stiles' eyes unconsciously trace over the bruising around Derek's eye and the stitches. Silence again. Derek sits with his hands in his lap, keys not even in the ignition, and Stiles tries not to look at him. He tries to just sit and think, convincing himself they're his own thoughts, they're his own emotions, everything inside of him is his and not...not something he has no control over. “All those fucking people, they act like – they talk like...” Derek grits his teeth, breathes out, and presses his forehead against the steering wheel; he looks more vulnerable and small than Stiles has ever seen him before. “...they all act like I'm some kind of threat to you.” Case and point, Malia Tate making constant references to Derek punching people in the face and snapping Stiles' neck, Erica saying she has the right to report Derek beating on Stiles and not the other way around, the guards treating Derek like a way huger threat and locking him a jail cell while Stiles got to sit on a hospital bed, despite the fact that Derek's injuries were much worse. “Well,” Stiles begins, clearing his throat, “I think it's because you're bigger. Like, when Lydia and Jordan got together, people were...” he trails off, squinting out into the dim lights of the garage. People were initially concerned about what Jordan would do to Lydia, until Lydia's personality became more public knowledge. Now, it's impossible for Stiles to even imagine Jordan Parrish laying anything other than a gentle hand on Lydia's skin, while it's the easiest thing on the face of the planet to imagine Lydia poisoning his food or something. Which probably speaks a lot more to how she's presented to him by the media than what she's actually like. Stiles wonders at how Derek and Stiles are presented. It's been almost a month, and their images are out there. Not like other soulmates, of course, but also, on the individual level - what do people say
about them? Who are they, what are they like, what do they like, who's in control in the relationship? Derek is the aggressor. And Stiles is the victim. Whatever happens, if anything ever goes wrong...they'll put Derek down like a dog, no questions asked. That's – that's... Horrifying. “That's just not who I am,” Derek affirms as he pulls himself back up into a sitting position, straightening his back and shaking his head. “I'm not like that. That's not who the fuck I am, I wouldn't – I couldn't...” Stiles has been staring at the side of Derek's face, just watching him and listening, so when Derek turns his head, their eyes just naturally magnetize towards each other. Hazel-green to whiskeybrown, and the pull starts up again. It's like a rush of blood, something foreign flowing throughout his entire body, circulating around and around like a river running inside of him, and a slow trickle of a warm feeling pools down his neck, to the pit of his stomach. It's not as intense, or as frantic as it was yesterday – but it's strong. “I wouldn't ever touch you like that. You know that. Right?” His head has a mind of its own as it nods up and down, yes. Of course he knows Derek would never hurt him. Of course he knows that nothing like that could ever happen between them – they're soulmates. And that means something. “But I'm scared of what might happen to us if I don't...touch you.” Stiles licks his lips, doesn't even blink, afraid to lose that tug inside of his chest if the eye contact is broken for even a fraction of a second. He's right, he's absolutely and positively right. It's fucking idiotic to do what they've been doing. It's been idiotic the entire time; they're not going to be able to get away with not touching or looking at one another. They can't possibly survive like this, switching back and forth between hatred and intense passion just so they can fool everyone – they can't play the fucking game that way. Are they even playing a game, anymore? Are they even fooling anyone? Is this real? Chemical reactions and nerve impulses and blood circulation mingling with the traces of the serum; is it just smoke and mirrors, or is it...is it not? Stiles thought he knew, back then, when this all began. Now, he thinks he doesn't know anything. All the books he's read about soulmates were written by people who've never experienced what he has, research done based on self-report from Kira and Allison, and – and Derek and Stiles aren't like them. They're not all the same. He doesn't know what he's doing, when he says, “then, touch me,” in a low voice. Derek swallows, audibly, loudly, so loud that it echoes around inside of Stiles' ears, and neither of them breathe for a few seconds. If Derek is fighting against something inside of him, he's not doing a very good job of it; and Stiles is failing just as much as he is at keeping himself in check. There's nothing they can do about this.
Almost like it's happening against his own free will, Derek reaches his hand out, slowly, carefully, like it causes him physical pain to do so, and splays his fingers out against Stiles' chest. It's not skin to skin contact and it's only been under twenty-four hours since the last time they touched, so it's not even a sixteenth of how intense it was the last time. Just a thrum, enough to make Stiles tilt his head back into his seat as Derek breathes shallowly through his nose. Starting out slow, careful, like they always do, easing each other into it. After thirty seconds, Stiles spreads his legs and tilts his hips upwards in a silent plea of touch me there, go farther, go all the fucking way. Derek doesn't move his hand, at first. He breathes for a few more moments before breaking off the eye contact, making Stiles' body jolt in surprise and whine slightly at the loss of contact, there. Instead, Derek trails his eyes down to gaze intently at the bulge in Stiles' jeans – and something about the way he looks at him or the way he bites down on his bottom lip makes it somehow even more incredible than the eye contact was. Stiles feels like he's going to grab Derek's hand and shove it down into his pants himself, but luckily, it doesn't come to that. “Pants down, then,” Derek finally says, his voice a guttural scrape against Stiles' ears. He hops to it instantaneously with shaking fingers – he unbuckles his belt and slides his jeans and briefs down just enough that he's entirely exposed to the humid air of the summer morning. Derek snakes his fingers down Stiles' shirt, slowly, while Stiles twists underneath him, bucking his hips and hissing through his teeth; as he reaches the bare skin of Stiles' exposed hips, he chooses to creep only two fingers downwards towards Stiles' dick. Just two fingers on his bare hip, and Stiles starts panting, Derek's arm starts shaking under the effort it must be taking to not just grab at Stiles' body like an animal, and Stiles thinks that if Derek even paused, or stopped, or took his hand away, he'd lose his fucking mind. The fingers draw down lower, and lower, closer and closer until – Derek cups Stiles' balls in his hand, probably as gently as he physically can, and Stiles keens. He scrabbles for purchase, for something to grab onto, and winds up latching his fingers around Derek's wrist, unintentionally doubling the sensation for the both of them. Derek starts making small, surprised noises in the back of his throat, while Stiles pretty much just lets loose – whining, whimpering, moaning, panting, shaking, all done shamelessly and without any thoughts of how fucking loud he's being. It's like the feeling of a natural orgasm, the kind that Stiles used to have with himself alone in his bedroom at night, but quadrupled over and stripped down to its most basic form. And it's not centralized anywhere, it just runs through him all at once like being knocked over – as if the feeling comes from his blood instead of his dick or Derek's hand. He sees stars around his eyes, curls his toes, loses his grip on anything around him, where they are, what they're doing, except Derek. That's the only thing he's sure of, is that Derek is there, and Derek is touching him, and Derek. He feels like he should be fucking rising from his body in a cloud of mist, that his spirit should just leave his god damn body the sensation is so intense it should fucking kill him – but he also feels bizarrely anchored down. Derek's hand holds him in place, as much as it shakes and as much as Derek looks like he's a half a step away from losing control and floating off somewhere himself,
they're just...stuck together. Safe. When he comes, he latches down onto Derek's arm to hold it down in place, keep him exactly where he is, letting Derek ride out his own release before he warns, “don't let go” in a breath of a whisper. They've never done this before. It's usually just a way to pull carnal pleasure out of each other, entirely wanton and careless and hurry up get off of me, let me off, let me back onto the ground; but this time, Stiles decides he wants to ride the wave out until it peters down and leaves them floating like wreckage from a shipwreck. It kind of fucking hurts at first, the way tugging at an overstimulated dick hurts, except more all over than just focusing in on one place. The ache spreads from where Derek's hand is still on him, where Stiles' hand is on top of his, all the way up to his hairline. It lasts a minute. One minute of dull pain slowly climbing itself into agony, fucking unbearable, almost. Until, finally, it clears. The hazy fog of an ache lifts from his bones and in its place comes a wave of relief, gently ebbing and flowing around inside of Stiles' veins. He knows that Derek can feel it, as well, as he watches the tan arm reaching across the center console relax, as his entire body sags forwards in Stiles' direction. It's never been like this before. Stiles raises his eyes, and Derek's connect with them without pause. Without choice. He pulls Derek's hand off of himself very gently, and then tugs it upward to rest on his stomach, instead – there is no pulsing orgasm on the horizon, no intense feeling of losing control. Just the steady, calming pressure of Derek's skin on top of his. All those other times they touched, like that...how they'd get mad at each other, crabby, hateful, spiteful. The shit they'd say to each other. It's because of the way they treated it like something to get done instead of like something important and sacred and incredible. Stiles gets that now. They stare at each other. Derek's features are softer than he's ever seen them, before; all smooth lines and relaxed jaw, lips parted carelessly and easily as he scans across Stiles' face again and again and again, memorizing it to the best of his ability while Stiles does the same. Stiles runs soothing circles on the back of Derek's hand with his thumb, and it's the most tender he's ever been with his soulmate. He thinks, suddenly, uh oh... and danger, Will Robinson! in the back of his mind, somewhere where the mutation hasn't reached yet; but a wave of blood crashes down on top of it before the thought can even form itself fully. The feeling of doubt disappears. Just like that. After minutes of this, Derek speaks. “So. We – we touch more.” Stiles swallows and clears his throat again, his throat feeling raw and abused from the amount of noise he made throughout that. “Yeah.” “Because...we don't want a repeat of the incident.”
Stiles tries to remember the incident, tries to remember what the actual fuck they're talking about here. “Exactly. No repeats, we want to be all, like, safety first in this. I can't come on camera every few days, right?” “Right. We have to, you know...do this.” “Often.” Stiles tacks on. “Often, yeah. A lot. Because of the thing.” Because of the thing – Stiles laughs, and shakes his head. There is no other reason, though. No other reason whatsoever aside from, you know, not getting beat up by security officers and dragged off into separate holding cells with bloody wounds. There's not a single other reason why they'd want to keep doing this to each other, why they'd want to be this close and touch and look into each other's eyes. It's just – safety first. If there's a changing tide rippling in between them, flowing through his blood, he pretends not to notice it. Derek drives back to his apartment building, and the crowd has doubled since the last time they were here. Stiles can only assume that the reason for that is because last time they were here they had sex in public, as far as sex boils down to orgasms (of which they both had two), and people would probably love a front row fucking seat. Never mind the fact that it's dehumanizing in the most literal sense of the word to have people gather and stand and stare, expecting them to perform for them something that's supposed to be personal and sacred. Even if Stiles thinks the whole soulmate thing is a bit of a stretch and a bit overdramatized, he'd have to be a thick fucking idiot to try and deny how important touching each other is; how there was one fucking thing that they had just to themselves that the cameras couldn't get at, and Stiles and Derek fucking blew every thing. The two other soulmate pairs probably want to hunt them down and fucking kill them for what they've done, here. Stiles has to go home and have dinner with his dad; it's been a long three weeks since the last time he did that, too wrapped up in Derek and sex with Derek and being mad at Derek and showing up on television shows to spend basically any time whatsoever with his father, so once Derek parks the car in its usual spot, they just sit there for a second. Knowing that Stiles will have to leave and they'll be apart. It's loud here, hard to have any kind of special moment with the yelling and chatter of the crowd out in front of the building, but Derek talks over them all the same. “Will you come over, after?” Stiles nods without hesitation, without thinking, unbuckling his seatbelt and locking eyes with Derek. There's no jolt, this time, since they're used to this kind of connection after spending so much time with it this morning and afternoon. The desire to stay rooted in his spot and not get out of the car and, like, not be fifteen miles away from Derek, however, hasn't lessened at all. He only has about three seconds to feel scared of that feeling of needing someone else like that, until Derek is popping open his own door and climbing out, like it's not an issue for him, at all. He slams
the door behind him, walks to stand five feet away and watch Stiles to make sure he gets into his car all right without being attacked by some cameraman, like he normally does. Stiles blinks after him for a few seconds, swallowing, wondering why he's so much more affected by this than Derek has appeared to be, and then climbs out himself with a sigh from his nose. Don't think about it, he tells himself. The decision was to pretend to believe in soulmates – not to actually start believing. As he's pulling open his Jeep door with its usual creak, Derek waves a single hand in the car's general direction. “You should get that thing fixed. It's on its last legs.” “The money hasn't started rolling in yet, Derek,” Stiles says back, snickering, pausing with one foot inside his car. “I can't just go off blowing my life savings on car repairs just yet.” “I'll pay for it.” Stiles blinks at him a couple of times. Aside from carting Stiles back and forth from Beacon Hills, Derek hasn't bought Stiles a single thing. Stiles has bought his own soda and snacks on road trips to Beverly Hills, his own meals the few times the two of them have gone out to dinner, half of the pizza whenever they'd order in, and so on and so forth. So it's a little fucking shocking to hear him so casually offer to spend thousands of dollars on Stiles' piece of shit Jeep, which he's expressed distaste and near hatred towards on more than one occasion. Stiles cocks his head to the side, scrunches his face up. “O...kay?” Like that's all settled now, Derek nods – turns around and walks off towards the front of the building to be met with a handful of screams of Derek! Stiles watches his retreating back as he walks through the crowd, as a handful of reporters try to get him to comment on the incident, as he glares at them and says something that sounds a lot like get the fuck away from me, before vanishing into the building. His father stares at him unapologetically all throughout dinner. Stiles isn't naive enough to hope that he didn't see the fucking orgasm video – of course he did - or, at the absolute least, he heard about it from one of the mouthy deputies, and Stiles doesn't know which option is worse. His father knowing about the existence of such a thing at all, knowing what Stiles and Derek have been doing behind closed doors, knowing that literally millions of people now know what his son's orgasms are like – there's nothing fucking worse than that. Stiles stares down at his lasagna and tries to keep the conversation as far away from Derek Hale as possible. It's pretty tough going, since his idiotic soulmate brain keeps going around and around in circles of wonder what Derek's having for dinner, wonder what Derek's doing, wonder if Derek's wondering about me, Derek, Derek, Derek. So he winds up complimenting the lasagna over and over again, unable to think of a single thing other than what he's eating and Derek, and his father just fucking glares at him without blinking and Stiles starts to feel like a very large fish in a very small tank. “A lot of lasagnas, they tend to be, um, soggy,” Stiles soldiers forwards around a mouthful of food, staring down at his plate with a bizarre level of intensity. “This, though, this is like, perfect. The
pasta is perfectly cooked, the cheese is stringy and melty and-” “Son,” his father cuts him off abruptly, holding his hand out to silence his jabbering child. “You know we have to talk about it eventually.” “Talk about what?” Stiles asks as innocently as possible, slicing into his lasagna so hard his fork clanks against the bottom of the plate. The Sheriff sighs, raises his eyes to the ceiling like he's asking God for the thousandth time why on earth his son had to be born as what he is. “It's not that I didn't assume that you and – you and him were already having...” Stiles' cheeks instantaneously get set on fire, the way any other normal person's does when their parent starts talking about their sexual activity. “I'm not, you know...shocked. Is what I'm trying to say. You don't have to worry about me being-” “Dad...” “I'm just trying to tell you that I'm not going to be weird about that, all right? You're an adult. You can do – that. If you want.” Stiles drops his fork, presses his hands to his face, and wonders how much more fucked up his life could possibly get. Born a freak? Check. World's most humiliating father? Check. Public sex caught on film and seen by millions? Check. What else is there, honestly? “But, Stiles,” now he has on dad voice; and not embarrassed or bashful dad voice, but just plain old, straight up, go clean your room dad voice. Stiles' least fucking favorite dad voice of them all. “I trust that you'd tell me if something wasn't right.” Stiles pulls his hands off of his face, stares directly at his father with moderate confusion. It reminds him of what Scott said way back at the start of all of this, while he stared suspiciously at Derek like he thought at any minute he was going to freak out and start stabbing them both repeatedly in the neck with a knife. “What do you mean by that.” Stiles' voice is even, measured. The Sheriff cuts into his own lasagna. “You know what I mean, Stiles. That man is very – very dangerous.” Stiles gets an unparalleled burst of anger in the pit of his chest hearing his father talk about his soulmate like that. Like the way everyone else has been talking about him, treating him like he's some kind of fucking menace on society, acting like there's only so much time before he kills Stiles and buries the body in the ocean. “I've read what people have to say about him, and he's-”
“What people say about him,” Stiles repeats sarcastically, pushing his half finished plate of food away from him so hard that it almost goes sliding off the opposite end of the table. “Like who? Like Malia Tate or fucking-” “Like everyone, Stiles. He has a criminal record. Every single time I see him on the news he's either threatening to attack someone or actually attacking someone.” Stiles flinches, just a quick twitch of his face as if his father's words physically slapped him, and then grits his teeth. “He's my soulmate, dad.” The Sheriff doesn't look sympathetic, or understanding, or even vaguely interested in the concept at all – how Stiles feels, at all. “He's dangerous.” That just about fucking does it. It's one thing for complete strangers to spread lies around about Derek, and it's one thing for someone whose opinion means next to nothing to Stiles to say shit about him, but it's another entirely for his father to sit there and act like everyone else. To act like he knows what Derek is like, when nobody fucking knows what Derek is really like except for Stiles. “Derek hasn't done anything except for protect me. The people who are dangerous are the ones who are fucking beating us and treating us like public property, dad! Beating me! Your fucking son!” He points his index finger to the bruising on the side of his face, and his father tightens his jaw. “I know you'd lie for him, Stiles.” The statement is so shocking, so fucking startling, so unbelievably wrong that Stiles has to resist screaming at the top of his lungs. “What?” “I know how this works,” he points up and down Stiles' body, as if he somehow embodies whatever it is his father thinks he's going on about now, “you'd lie to protect him, even if meant sacrificing your own safety.” That's...that's brainwashing 101. It's what kids are taught in elementary school, about how dangerous the mutts are, how they're all one step away from snapping and open-firing on everyone, how they're all manipulative and sociopathic, or borderline, or schizophrenic; that they're not to be fucking trusted. It's the kind of thing he expects from the gossip magazines and Erica Reyes. It's not the kind of thing he expects to hear from the man who raised him and knows him better than anyone else – even better than Derek does. Unable to even think of a response, to even stand sitting in the same room with him anymore, Stiles storms out of the kitchen, hissing I'm going to Derek's under his breath, grabbing his already packed bag from beside the front door, and speed walking out into the summer twilight without a glance backwards. Stiles isn't getting fucking sucked in by the soulmate bond, all right? The mutation isn't wrapping its tendrils in his brain; it couldn't possibly make him crazy enough or delusional enough to sit around and stay with Derek even if he hit him or hurt him in any other way. Stiles would never fucking do that, no matter what he is or what's inside of him.
The mutation isn't affecting him at all. No matter what his father says, he just doesn't understand. Couldn't possibly understand. ---“No, I never felt like killing her. I never felt like slashing her throat, or anything like that, um, but...there was a pretty clear moment, maybe about three days in, I'm not sure, where I honestly felt like I was – um - losing my mind. It wasn't romantic, or - at least not the way that the movies and love-songs always made that hair-pulling love seem. It was, frankly, terrifying – and the scariest part about it was that I couldn't do anything to stop it. I liked it, I think. It's hard to remember.” “So you're saying you don't remember some things about being under the influence of the disease. Is that what you're saying?” “I – disease? Um - it's hard to remember. Some memories are pretty clear, but others are fuzzy around the edges, you know what I mean?” “I don't; if you could elaborate, please?” “I just feel like – sometimes...when I look back, it feels like someone else, like I'm watching someone else do what I did. Does that make sense? I remember it like I remember another person's memories, like they don't belong in my head. I don't know. I don't know.” (recorded psych evaluation of a cured soulmate, October 10th, 1989) ---For Stiles and Derek, things get better. A lot better. Better than Stiles ever thought they could get. More to the point of perfect, if he's being honest. It's strange at first, to touch so often, when they used to build it up and wait and hold each other off, pushing it until it would break both of them in half when the time came to flow back together again. Stiles didn't understand, at first, why the other soulmates were so averse to touch-starving and why they were almost constantly touching, when the payoff of the alternative is so much more intense and unbelievable; the most incredible thing Stiles had ever felt before. Of course he would fucking think so, when he'd never had the other option before. Maybe there's no earth-shatteringly incredible orgasms, and maybe it's quieter and softer and less mind-blowing, but it's just...better. In a lot of ways that he can't explain. Like when he runs his fingers down Derek's arm just because he wants to, or when Derek puts his arm over Stiles' shoulders while they watch television, or when they choose to sit on the same side of the booth at restaurants and touch their knees together, knock elbows, hold hands, just because they can. It's hard to imagine the alternative, now; impossible to think that they could ever go back to the way things were, before. They have actual sex, for the first time, and it's slow and careful and there's never a point of time for even a fraction of a second when they aren't touching each other. Derek holds him through his orgasm and runs his fingers down Stiles' back and leaves bruises on his thighs that Stiles can't find it in himself to be annoyed by – just reminders that they were just that close enough, to leave a mark.
Money starts coming in – a lot of money. Stiles pays off any outstanding debts between he and his father, and then spends long hours sitting on his laptop staring at his bank balance, wondering how any one person could possibly spend that much fucking money. He imagines going on vacations to Jamaica, isn't interested. Imagines a private jet, new cars, fancy clothes from Beverly Hills, a new house...isn't interested. More money comes, Stiles stares at his account balance, doesn't spend a single dime of it on anything aside from what he genuinely needs. The Jeep gets fixed, as much as that piece of shit could ever possibly be fixed, and at least it stops making the scrrrrr noise every time it starts up. Derek sometimes glares at the car for minutes at a time with his lips turned down in a frown, before asking Stiles for the thousandth time you don't just want a new car? Something safer, that runs better? It's been a while since the last time Derek tried to attack a cameraman or yell obscenities at them; mostly they just walk through the flashing lights and crowds holding hands, Derek usually pushing forward in the lead, shoving back anyone who tries to get too close to Stiles, while Erica clucks her tongue in the background about how they're boring now. Boring in the sense that there haven't been any new orgasm videos floating around, or videos of Derek being carted off to jail; which Stiles thinks is actually a good thing in spite of the drop in publicity. As much as the publicity can drop. They're still making headlines, several times a week, still having hundreds of pictures taken of them in single days, still doing radio, television, magazine interviews, being invited to the Video Music Awards in Las Vegas; and they do it all, under contractual obligation to do so. And it's not...bad, actually. Vaguely annoying to have to have little to no privacy whatsoever, to have his agency taken away from him, to be speculated about and judged and treated like public property. But he can't find it in him to be bothered, any longer. Derek's hand wrapped around his keeps him grounded and sated. They're getting along much better than they ever were before, as well – even when there's no one watching, no one to prove anything to, they don't let go of each other. They joke around, tease each other, have a couple of inside jokes, spend pretty much every single free second of time they have with one another. Like nobody else exists, at all. Stiles sometimes has a hard time remembering what things were like before all this. And he doesn't think that there's something weird about this. He doesn't stop to think that there's something off with this, that this isn't what he had intended; not what Derek had intended either. They kiss too often, fuck too often, and he doesn't notice. He hasn't called Scott back in an entire two weeks, hasn't even seen him, spoken to him, and he doesn't notice. He hasn't been home in days, almost all of his clothes are in piles around Derek's apartment, doesn't find that odd at all. He doesn't know that he's not himself. Funny, how he spent so much time insisting this was all so fucking fake and overdramatized, like none of it could possibly be that all-encompassing, that much of a wave to come over him, and now he's caught in the undertow, and has no fucking idea. “I'm throwing a party!” Erica says one day from behind her desk with the appropriate amount of verve reserved for a statement like that. Derek and Stiles look at each other, unimpressed; not like they haven't already been to a dozen of Erica's parties already. Her birthday party, which was the most ridiculous thing Stiles had ever been privy to – there were chocolate fountains at every single table, ice sculptures everywhere, huge mountains of food that Stiles has never heard of before. He
kept distracting Derek with kisses, enough to shove him back against the ice, cackling a laugh out every time he'd go Jesus fucking Christ in surprise at the wet-cold on his bare skin. Then there was the Midsummer Night's Dream party; essentially because it took place in midsummer and was midnight themed? Stiles doesn't think she's ever in her life read that play, but he and Derek had fun, nonetheless. He even managed to drag Derek out onto the dance floor, taught him how to do the electric slide, much to his obvious chagrin – but he smiled and laughed with Stiles the entire time, no matter how much he pretended to hate it. And who could forget the Fourth of July extravaganza with fireworks and a rich man-'s version of hot dogs, loud music and, most notably of all, a lot of alcohol. Stiles got really fucking drunk, like, embarrassingly drunk- dancing sensually to Beyonce' in front of a crowd of people drunk - and spent the last half of the night puking into a bush while Derek tried to stop people from taking pictures of him blowing chunks everywhere. Unsuccessfully. “This time, though – it's all about you two,” she leers at them with a disturbingly wide grin. “Like – your love, or whatever. Think of it like a coming out party, or, a debutante ball.” “What, exactly,” Derek leans forward in his chair, raising his eyebrows, “is a debutante ball?” Erica stares at him, like she's trying to decide whether or not she's joking. “It's your debut.” Stiles and Derek exchange another look, this time with incredulous smiles, and turn back to Erica at the exact same time. “Like we've been hiding in the closet for the past two months.” “That's not -” she makes a frustrated noise in the back of her throat. “It's not about whether or not people have seen you. It's the gesture.” Stiles nods and makes an interested noise in the back of his throat, resting his chin in the palm of his hand, makes a big show out of being fascinated by what Erica's saying. “Right, right. So we're being put on the market, in other words.” Erica looks just about ready to take her shoe off to stab Stiles directly in the eyeball with the heel. “I liked you two so much better when you were sexually frustrated all the time.” Stiles and Derek smirk at each other; there is no greater pleasure on planet earth than rattling Erica's cage. “I don't fucking care whether or not you like it – you're doing it. I'm sending out the invitations, and I expect you two there, looking nice and not puking on anything. Stiles.” “I can't make any promises. I have a very overactive gag reflex when it comes to excessive amounts of taffeta.” Derek starts to laugh, slaps his hand over his mouth before it becomes anything more than a surprised noise from the back of his throat. Erica narrows her eyes at the two of them, grits her teeth, and flips her hair over her shoulder dramatically without another word, shooing them out of her office with a flick of her wrist. “Party!” Stiles says in a mock excited voice in the elevator, leaning his shoulder against Derek's. Derek sighs through his nose, a smile playing on his lips. “We should write up the playlist for the DJ
– just a giant list of nothing but Get Low by Lil Jon on a constant loop. And we should pick the food – tater tots and kraft macaroni and cheese. Nothing else. Maybe a couple hot dogs cut up on a paper plate.” “Party of the year,” Derek snickers, running his hand up and down Stiles' back as the car moves down the building to the ground floor. “Do you think she's going to make us wear, like, tuxedoes? Because I was thinking...balloon pants and Aladdin vests.” “And fezzes.” “Yes. Holy shit. No, oh my God – I've got it. I'll be Aladdin, you be Aboo.” “Why do I have to be the monkey?” “Because you look the part?” “Why-” Derek pinches the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger, laughing and shaking his head, “do you always compare me to cartoon animals?” “Would you rather be Rajah the tiger? I wouldn't mind going as Jasmine instead.” The elevator tings to a stop, and Derek intertwines his fingers with Stiles', eyeballing the crowd of people out in the lobby with moderate distaste. “What if we went as that blue bear and the cyclops from Monsters Inc?” “Yesssss!” The conversation carries on that same way for most of the drive back to Beacon Hills; Derek suggests hiring Weird Al Yankovic for the band, Stiles suggests putting up huge banners with plain black print all over the walls that read YOU ARE SOULMATES. like in The Office, and by the time they're climbing out of the car to the sound of delighted screaming at Derek's building, they've decided it's going to be a Saw themed affair, with Stiles as Jigsaw and Derek as a dead body. They're still laughing when they sign a few autographs, still laughing as they ride up the elevator holding each other's hands, as they walk down the hallway, until they stumble through Derek's door with their lips locked together as the incredibly disapproving anti-mutt next door neighbor lady with bleached blonde hair glares at them in disgust. The second the door slams shut behind them, they're ripping each other's clothes off, not caring where it all lands, tripping over each other, bumping into walls while Stiles laughs at the tickling sensation of Derek's tongue on his neck. By the time they're in Derek's bedroom, which is really more like Stiles and Derek's bedroom if the amount of Stiles' things laying around is anything to go by, they're both panting and naked and desperate for the other. “I like the way you look like this,” Derek says to him, pressing him down onto the mattress and straddling his thighs, “I like this.”
“Yeah,” Stiles agrees in a rasp, letting Derek grab him by his hair to push his head backwards, exposing his neck for Derek to run his tongue against; from the end of his collar bone to the tip of his chin, right where his mark ends. “Nobody gets to see you like this, except me,” thick fingers trailing down his chest, down his stomach, back up again in teasing motions. “Nobody.” Stiles wants to say except that one time we made each other come on camera, but he doesn't think Derek would find it very funny, at the moment. So, he just bites his lip and stays quiet save for his labored breathing, angling his head up so he can look Derek in the eyes. “Nobody gets to touch you like this,” his fingers wrap around Stiles' dick, tight, hungry, and Stiles lets a small noise escape from the back of his throat. “I was your first, wasn't I? Your only.” Stiles nods, frantically, while Derek pumps him up and down so hard it almost fucking hurts, gusting thick, wet breaths out against Derek's chest in front of him. He's trapped here, in between Derek's legs, in between Derek's fucking fingers, and there's honestly no place else he'd rather be; no one else he can even think of who he'd rather be with – the only thing running around and around inside his brain is Derek, Derek, Derek... “I'm the only one who's ever made you feel this way.” Stiles closes his eyes and drops his mouth into a silent moan, nodding his head up and down because he can't think of anything else to say or do, can't think at all, like this, with Derek this close to him, with Derek touching him, making him feel so fucking close... “Hey. Hey,” Derek grabs his chin, roughly, pulling his head upwards, “look at me.” Stiles opens his eyes, slowly, to find Derek staring down at him with a look he can't put a name to – intensity and desire and heat and something else that's just wild and unchecked. He isn't sure if he particularly likes what he sees there, just from how foreign and unfamiliar it is, how almost dangerous it feels to him. “You wouldn't let anyone else get this close to you. Would you?” Stiles doesn't answer right away, baffled by the question, mind a haze of pleasure and Derek. “Hey. Fucking answer me.” “Fuck,” Stiles breathes out, swallows, and pants out another breath. “No, Jesus Christ, Derek, of course not.” Derek keeps his fingers gripped around Stiles' jawline, forcing him to look into those hazel-green eyes, into that strange glint in his pupils that looks almost inhuman, bizarrely out of place, until Stiles finally comes all over himself and Derek's hand. After that, Stiles falls asleep near immediately, curling himself up in Derek's sheets; his mind gone completely blank, except for any and all thoughts of his soulmate.
He wakes at three o'clock in the morning; the red numbers from Derek's digital clock blare at him in the darkness, and he stares at Derek's back. He maps the triskele tattoo out with his eyes, following the swirls and curves of it, around Derek's back-muscles, the curve of his shoulders, the tan of his skin. They're not touching. They're not even that close in the bed. And a part of Stiles aches at the loss of contact between himself and his soulmate. He can feel something tearing inside of him – almost like the way a rope frays around the bottom or a tether snaps from too much pressure; and it hurts. Something inside of him hurts, and it's not an ache he can recognize. There's no point of origin for the dull burn, it's just there, the way feeling any emotion at all is just there. His hand itches to reach out and grab him by the shoulder, shake him awake, wrap himself around his other half...but something stops him. A voice in the back of his head. Or a feeling from somewhere buried deep inside of him. Whatever it is, it keeps him from touching Derek, at all, and for a solid hour, he just lays there on his side staring at Derek's back. Watching the rise and the fall of his chest as he breathes, wondering what he's dreaming about, if he's dreaming at all, if he ever dreams about Stiles – like Stiles does almost every single night about Derek. He feels strange. Almost outside of himself. Like he's somebody else, or like somebody else is controlling him, when he says, “Derek,” out into the darkness. There's no response at first. Just that same steady, calming breathing. “Derek.” More forceful, almost desperate; it doesn't sounds like his voice, he doesn't think. Derek stirs; rolling over in the bed, breath stuttering. Stiles watches him for a second, as he rubs his eyes and focuses his eyes in the darkness. “Hey,” Stiles says breathily, and Derek slowly turns his head in his soulmate's direction with a sleepy groan in response. “We should get married.” Silence. It feels like it drags on for minutes on end, not a single noise except for the rustle of sheets around Stiles' restlessly moving body and Derek's stuttering breathing from the other end of the bed. There's a solid two feet of space in-between them, and Derek has made absolutely no moves to close the gap; just like Stiles hasn't. “What?” “I mean – all the other soulmates have. It doesn't make sense that we haven't gotten married yet, Derek. I don't understand why you haven't asked. Don't you love me?” Abruptly, Derek is tearing the sheets off of himself, scrambling off of the bed – Stiles is about to ask him what the hell he's doing, where the fuck he thinks he's going, when the light clicks on. Stiles' eyes blink against the harsh burn; he squints, rubs his eyes a couple of times, and then slowly
opens them up again. When he looks at Derek, he finds that his soulmate won't look him in the eyes. “Stiles,” he says his name very carefully, the way someone might talk to a wounded animal, “I don't think you know what you're saying.” He sits up in bed, balancing himself on the palms of his hands behind himself, and narrows his eyes. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean.” “Put on some clothes, Stiles.” “Derek,” and across the room Derek is already pulling his boxers back on from where they're lying on the ground, “look at me.” Derek raises his eyes, stares at Stiles' chest. No higher, no lower. Directly at his chest, without even so much as blinking. “Look me in the fucking eyes.” “Stiles,” he says his name the exact same way as before, lowers his eyes back down to the ground, and shakes his head. “Just...take a minute.” Stiles doesn't understand. He doesn't fucking – get it. He throws the sheet off of himself, lets the cold air cover his body, and rises from the bed clumsily, on sleep-sore legs. “Why don't you want to marry me? I don't need a god damn minute, I need an answer as to why you're being-” “Fucking don't,” he pulls his shirt on over his head with a growl – pointedly looks away from Stiles' naked body to stare out at the night through his bedroom window. “Put on your clothes, go into the other room, calm down.” A piece of clothing comes flying in Stiles' general direction from across the room, and Stiles swats it out of the air like an annoying little gnat. He feels so – so fucking angry, almost uncontrollably so, at seeing Derek be so fucking nonchalant, to act like he's annoyed by Stiles, to not give him a straight answer, to not immediately say yes, of course, we should get married! It hurts. It fucking hurts. “I love you, Derek, and-” “Oh, my God...” Derek runs his hands down his face, scrubs frantically up and down like if he does it hard enough he can teleport out of this conversation, away into the night. “I'm leaving. I need to get the fuck out of here.” He starts crossing the room, holding his hand out to where his car keys are sitting on the bedside table – and Stiles sprints into action. He jumps on top of the bed, crawls across it impossibly fast, and leaps down in front of the table, blocking Derek's path. “You're not fucking going anywhere until you explain this to me.” Derek, for whatever reason, raises his palms up as if he's surrendering, and takes one tentative step backwards, eyes wide, scared. Like he sees something inside of Stiles that he recognizes as bad, and Stiles can't understand what that is, like this – he's too...upset. “Okay. Okay. I'm – I'm not going.” He swallows, Adam's apple bobbing, his eyes on the ground.
“Look me in the eyes.” Derek doesn't answer. His eyes stay pointed downwards. It infuriates Stiles, the kind of angry that spreads all over the body and takes on a mind of its own, and before he knows it he's lunging at Derek, with the intent to...well. He's not sure what he intended to do once he got his hands on him. He isn't quite sure of anything he's doing, right now. Derek dodges out of the way, away from Stiles' reaching hands, and slams his back up against the wall – he holds his arms out in front of himself, like he's protecting himself, and says, for the zillionth time, “Stiles.” “Stop that!” Stiles snaps, glaring at Derek's eyelids where they're turned down while his eyes stay glued to the ground. “Stop talking to me like that! Like you hardly fucking know me, when – when I love you, and -” Derek growls, grabs his hair with his hands in aggravation.“Don't say that shit again. You don't know me!” For a second, Stiles has a flicker of clarity. For just a second, he thinks that Derek might be right about that. Stiles doesn't know why he's never met or heard about Derek's family, where that trust fund money came from, why there are no pictures on the walls or on his furniture, who it was that Derek had been with before Stiles, where Derek is from originally, how he wound up in Beacon Hills, why he's been arrested so many times...and Derek doesn't know as many things about Stiles. But it's like the concept is too much for Stiles to process, or like his mind straight up rejects the thoughts, no matter how true they might be – incensed, he points to the mark on his neck, hissing, “then explain this! Explain this fucking right here.” Derek's eyes raise minutely to glaze across the red splotch mark, and then they're back down on the ground. “That's not real, you know that. That's not you and I. That's some botched fucking science experiment – we're freaks, Stiles, how can you not see that? Like we talked about?” “Because I don't see it that way anymore!” “The money, Stiles! The fucking money, and the...the freedom. Remember that? That's the only reason we decided to do this, and you're not acting like yourself! Have you forgotten all that?” “I don't care about that anymore. I just want – you. You.” “You've fucking lost it. You have absolutely lost your mind!” “Why are you being this way?” Stiles tries to step closer to him, but Derek jerks back, angling his body in the opposite direction, sliding his back along the wall to get away from his soulmate – and that's what they are. They're fucking soulmates and Stiles is just trying to understand why his soulmate is treating him like he's a fucking stranger. When Derek speaks again, his voice is hoarse – like he's fighting something off inside of himself. “Don't you want someone who would love you for you, Stiles? Don't you want something real and not – not something that someone put inside of you? Not something that someone else fucking decided
for you?” Without hesitation, Stiles spits back, “I want you!” It's quiet for only a second; Derek's breathing coming out more and more labored. “You don't know what you're talking about – this is not what we -” “What we agreed to? That was stupid and idiotic and -” he breaks off – starts crying. Out of nowhere, he's fucking sobbing, his entire body wracked by each intake of breath, and he can't help it. He can't fucking help it. “Whether you want me or not, there's something inside of you, that...that does. You can't just – deny that forever! Don't you love me?” Derek runs his hands down his face one more time, and lets out a longer sigh than the first. His arms are shaking, his eyes squeezed shut tight, and Stiles knows he's fighting it. Fighting what it is inside of him that's making him this way; Stiles knows he wants to be like he was before, last night, before they didn't touch for hours, before Derek refused to look him in his eyes. He can see right through Derek's fucking self-destructive bullshit. “I care about you but it's not – I still have control. I can walk out any time I fucking want to. And – and I need to – leave.” So quick Stiles doesn't have time to try and stop him, not again, Derek zooms out the bedroom – pads down the hallway with quick steps, and slams the front door behind him. ---According to more than one source, including actual photographic evidence (see above), Derek Hale was seen breaking into his own car late last night, bare foot, in nothing but a pair of boxers and a thin undershirt. So, yeah, this would be pretty fucking sexy (just look at that f**king bedhead) if it weren't, you know, mildly unsettling in more ways than one. For starters, Derek Hale is not the kind of guy who would just be stepping outside for some air in his pajamas, barefoot. He also wouldn't be trying to break into his own car, because it's his car. A few people have suggested sleepwalking, but we think from the way he shouted 'take one f**king step closer to me, I f**king dare you, s**thead,' at our photographers, in perfect character and form, that's just not the case. So it leaves only one option. Derek and Stiles got into a fight in the middle of the night, and Derek wound up sleeping in his car, without a blanket, without his own car keys, alone. What happened in between the two entering the apartment at around seven PM last night, and Derek exiting the apartment at around four AM, is entirely up to assumption. For those of you wondering if Stiles was seen at any point, milling around in the hallways of their apartment complex in his own pair of boxers – no one has seen Stiles since earlier yesterday evening. And I do mean no one. Not the neighbors, the doorman, the crowd waiting outside. And, Derek, for his part, probably hotwired his own car and drove it off somewhere, considering it's no longer sitting in its usual place in the parking lot. It's not like he was covered in blood or anything, but...see why that might be a little bit
disturbing? (Saving Private Stiles – Malia Tate, MuttPop.com) ---“I wouldn't care if he punched you in the face,” Erica hisses at Stiles through the phone the next night – he can hear that she's driving her Bentley down the highway from the distant whirr of the engine and the breeze of the wind. “People think he fucking killed you last night, Stiles. You see why that might not be good publicity. You have to see that.” “I thought all publicity is good-” “That refers to sex scandals and unplanned pregnancies, Stiles,” she huffs, “not murder. I cannot have people thinking Derek Hale killed his soulmate, Stiles. They'll give him the lethal injection without any proof if you don't turn up soon, and you know that, Stiles.” Stiles does know that. He is fucking certain that if they think for even a fraction of a second, no concrete proof necessary, that Derek snapped Stiles' neck and buried him in a shallow grave somewhere, all they'd need is one eyewitness testimony claiming that they saw Derek with a huge black garbage bag, and they'd strap Derek down and inject him. Kill him. Like he's said before. Down like a dog. Maybe Stiles is moderately pissed at Derek for what happened last night, even if the details are pretty fuzzy, now – but he couldn't do that to him, no matter what. “Let him inside the apartment, or so help me, God, I will-” “Fine,” Stiles bites out; he ends the call and throws his phone down beside him on the floor– Derek's floor. He's been holed up in Derek's apartment for an entire day, now, all alone, eating whatever food he could scrounge out of the fridge and binge watching shitty shows on Netflix. Immediately after Derek left, Stiles cried for two straight hours, put on one of Derek's shirts so that he could still smell his soulmate, and then cried for another two hours. He felt absolutely gutted. Like a piece of himself walked out the door and took his entire reason for living along with it. It was, in a word, dramatic. Too dramatic for Stiles' tastes. Eventually, though, he woke up. Woke up might be the correct terminology for it. He stopped crying, took Derek's shirt off, and showered in a daze. An ice cold shower to shake his bones back to some semblance of self-awareness. It worked, for the most part; he felt as if he had just come back to himself from something of a mental vacation. For a while he just sat on the couch. Turning the events of last night over and over again in his head, trying to make heads or tails of what actually happened. He remembers pretty vividly that he freaked the fuck out; that would be a hard thing to forget. He remembers feeling horrible, remembers asking Derek to marry him, remembers Derek reacting like he'd just been asked to saw his own hands off, but for the absolute life of him he can't quite remember why. Why any of it. Why he asked that in the first place. Why he felt so fucking out of control of himself. Why Derek
acted like he did. None of it makes any sense to him, no matter how many different ways he tries to line it all up. The answer is obvious and staring him in the face. It's in neon letters inside his head, flashing again and again, fluorescent buzzing floating around his ears, the zap of electricity every time he tries to shy away from the truth. He knows what happened last night. He knows exactly what fucking happened last night. The problem is that, with every thing, with every single thing that a person ever chooses to do, there is a point where there is no turning back. Stiles can't just reset himself, now, he can't just fucking...let go. Derek can't, either. Even if the effects of the mutation seem to be softer on him, less aggressive, less intense, he comes back all the same. He could've kept running. He could've driven out of Beacon Hills, out of California, all the way across the country in his hotwired car, gotten so far away from Stiles that the pull wouldn't even be a thought in the back of his mind anymore. He could've lived up to his promise from the night before, that he could walk away whenever he wanted to. But he didn't. He came back. Stiles knows the second the Camaro pulls back into the parking lot, just judging by the sound of screaming that seeps in through the open doors of the balcony letting fresh summer air breeze through the kitchen and around Stiles' too-hot skin. He knows the second that Derek emerges from the car, can hear the cameras flashing, yelled questions of where's Stiles, Derek? Are you going to tell us? Is he in the apartment? Derek? Mr. Hale? Where's Stiles? When Derek gets outside of his own apartment door, he doesn't have his keys. Obviously since he had to fucking hotwire his own car, he doesn't have his keys – so he knocks. Stiles doesn't answer right away; he just sits on the couch and stares at the door like a monster is going to rip through the thick wood at any second and swallow him whole; in his imagination the mutation is a leering greenfaced, sickly creature, with long nails and glowing red eyes, something that doesn't have a name, or even discernible features. Just evil. Something to be avoided at all costs. “Stiles,” Derek's voice through the door; chopped up, broken. Cracking around the edges. “I know you're in there.” Stiles rises from the couch, and angles his body towards where Derek is standing on the other side of the wall. “Let me in, please.” His fingers twitch, and he takes a hesitant step forwards; then a second step. A third. A fourth. Until he's close enough that, if he wanted to, he could reach his hand out, wrap it around the handle of the door. Pull it open. Something tells him that is the absolute last thing he wants to do. Something else tells him it's the
only thing he wants to do. The debate plays out in his mind for seconds longer, and the door remains untouched. “Stiles...” it sounds like Derek smacks his forehead into the door, his breath ghosting up against the wood on the opposite side. “Please.” “You know what they're saying about you,” Stiles asks him in a loud voice, to be sure Derek can hear from the other side. “Don't you?” Derek is silent for a second, and then he knocks his fist on the wood. “I don't fucking care about that. I don't care. Open the door, or I'm going to break it down.” Because that wouldn't only add fire to the rumors that Derek is a psycho, at all, right? Stiles huffs through his nose, takes two deep breaths, puts his hand on the doorknob. It comes as no surprise to him. Because he knew he was going to open up the door, no matter what happened. The point of no return was miles ago; there are no more exits left on the fucking highway to Hell, and it's just Derek and Stiles zooming down the road at over a hundred miles an hour, something else controlling the steering wheel, the gas pedal. There's nothing they can do about it. When the door opens, Derek has his eyes cast down on the ground. He's still in his undershirt and boxers, barefoot, unshaven, unkempt; hair a fucking mess with dark purple bags sagging down underneath his eyes. Stiles assumes he doesn't look much better himself. “I really, really tried to get away,” Derek says, glaring down at the carpet in the hallway. “I tried to – I tried to...” “I know.” Stiles says. “I know.” “I didn't even make it out of California.” “Yeah.” Derek's eyes lift, and finally, finally, after every thing they've been through in the last day, eye contact. Instantaneously, Stiles is grabbing onto Derek's shirt and pulling him back inside the apartment, wrapping his arms around him, shoving his face into his soulmate's neck – feeling every single one of his nerve-endings light on fucking fire from the jolts of contact in between them. Everything feels right again. The puzzle pieces scattered all over the place inside of his head slowly come back together to form a picture that makes sense – that Derek and Stiles belong together, unquestionably. That there's nothing in the entire universe that could pull them apart from one another. Stiles' orgasm from Derek's touch is sudden, almost automatic – he groans into his neck and holds on to him even tighter. The door is still wide open behind them, but neither of them can find it in themselves to give a shit who sees, this time around.
“I love you so much,” he snuffles against Derek's skin, “I – I love you. Last night, I was...last night...” he can't remember last night. Last night is a distant memory, like it happened a hundred years ago to someone else, like he read it in a history textbook once, instead of actually lived through it only hours before this. Derek's breath is punched out of him, hips stuttering against Stiles'. “I love you.” Stiles shakes his head and lets a choked off noise come through the back of his throat. Stiles is crying, apparently, big heaping sobs, clutching onto Derek's shirt as he holds him against his body as tight as he possibly can, as close as he possibly can. “We fucked up,” he says into Derek's neck, sniffling and gasping out labored breaths. “I think I'm – I think I'm going crazy.” Derek doesn't answer him. Doesn't have to. The feeling is completely and horribly mutual; helplessness. Fear. Unsure if anything he's feeling is really what his fucking feeling, anything he's thinking is really what he's thinking, everything is just...Derek. For Derek, everything is Stiles. There's no questions about it. Nothing they can do. Stiles forgets that there was ever a time when he doubted this, forgets that just last night Derek was doubting it himself. How could there ever be anything to doubt about any of this? “You're not thinking clearly,” Derek agrees, nodding his head and running his fingers through Stiles' ungelled hair. “I'm not thinking clearly.” And Stiles doesn't want to. He doesn't fucking want to think clearly if it means losing this feeling. He lets it fucking drown him. They begin to kiss, almost against both of their wills, and they keep kissing, and they don't stop, until they forget what they were even upset about in the first place. Nothing happened, Stiles doesn't think. Nothing happened at all. ---“And then it'd just be like nothing had gone wrong, you know? Christ, it – it was just like we didn't care anymore. Like he could've broken my wrist or beat me or – or anything – but the second we touched again, none of that really mattered anymore. It was...I don't know. Safe, maybe. Or unsafe, depending on how you look at it.” (testimony from a cured soulmate, October 15th, 1989) ---“You know, I'm really happy Derek didn't actually kill you,” a tan woman says to Stiles, holding a champagne glass in her hand and eyeing him up and down like he's up for sale. “And you look great. For being dead for nearly twenty-four hours, you look fucking great.” Stiles smiles at her, all teeth and crinkly eyes, and nods. “Thank you.”
They don't get to have their Saw themed “coming out” party. Stiles and Derek do not dress up like Aladdin and Aboo, there are no tater tots, and there are miles upon miles upon miles of tulle and taffeta and a fucking orchestra, ball gowns, suits and ties and cherry red lips, dangling diamonds, everywhere. It's not really Stiles' scene. It's not really Derek's either. That much is evident from the fact that even though both of them are dressed in the clothes that Erica forced on them – Derek in a dark blue suit, Stiles in a dark black – they stick out like sore thumbs. Their marks have been done up the way they always are for television, their hair spiked and styled carefully, make up slathered on to cover up any blemishes. Neither of them feel in place, here; Derek keeps his arm on Stiles at all times and refuses to let him wander off. They remain locked at each other's sides when they get drinks and when they find a table to sit down at to shovel food into their mouths. People come up to them, introduce themselves, make oddly uncomfortable comments about how Stiles look like such a little bird compared to you, Derek and can I touch it? The mark, I mean, and the entire night starts feeling more and more like a scene out of the Wizard of Oz. It's the worst of Erica's parties they've ever been dragged to; which is really, really saying something. Probably what's so horrible about it this time around is that the focus is entirely on them. There are huge blown up pictures of them everywhere; everyone who's here came here specifically so they could feast their eyes on the two soulmates in person – some of them to make sure that Stiles wasn't, as a matter of fact, fucking lying dead in a ditch somewhere. Everyone stares at them. Stiles holds on tighter to Derek's hand and forces him out onto the dancefloor during a slow song, to get him as alone as they can be in this situation, for even just a minute or two. “I hate this,” Stiles says with a huge fake smile on his face, scanning his eyes across the party, “we should have burned these suits and done the Aladdin thing.” “Could be worse,” Derek says. But he doesn't elaborate, or offer anything that could possibly be worse than this shit – like he honestly can't think of anything. Stiles can't either, and they both laugh for a few seconds, genuinely for the first time all night. “Or, maybe not.” “Erica seems to be in her element,” Stiles comments, watching with narrowed eyes as their publicist talks and laughs and drinks and in general has the time of her fuckin life, not paying an iota of attention to the two men she's torturing by forcing them to be here. If they tried to sneak out the back door, one of her security guards would notice and drag them both back in by force. If they tried to hide behind a curtain to make out, someone would find them. If Stiles crawled underneath a table under the cover of the long table cloths, someone would grab his leg and drag him back out again. It's so un-fucking-fair. “I think you look good in yours,” Derek comments after a few seconds of Stiles sulking. “If it's any consolation.” It is consolation, actually. It's a huge fucking consolation to know that Derek thinks Stiles looks good. The compliment from his soulmate makes his chest surge with butterflies, and he beams at him –
probably making a pretty good face for the cameras, right about now. He's not thinking about how only days earlier they were screaming at each other, fighting, bickering – Derek refusing to look at Stiles, Stiles acting fucking insane and practically threatening his soulmate; he's just not fucking thinking about it. It simply hasn't been on his radar. He keeps saying he hardly remembers it, which is true, in a lot of ways. It's strange. That's the only way he can think to describe it. Strange, to just act like something that was that huge of a deal never even happened to begin with. People keep making comments about Derek killing Stiles, and Stiles scrunches his nose up and laughs, unperturbed; even though the statement alone should be enough to send a chill running down his spine. All he's thinking about is how happy he is to be here with Derek. How lucky he is that he has Derek by his side. How handsome Derek is and how interesting and funny. It should make him uncomfortable. It doesn't. After the slow song ends, Derek puts his hand on the small of Stiles' back and leads him off the dance floor. Stiles leans into Derek's side, breathes out a sigh of contentment, doesn't care that people are unabashedly eyeballing them up and down, probably remembering the video of the two of them orgasming, probably fantasizing about it themselves. “Excuse me,” a feminine voice comes from behind them, and Stiles turns first. “Mr – um? Stiles? Is that okay?” Stiles recognizes her instantaneously from the pictures on her author's profile on MuttPop.com – the long sandy brown hair, the skin tone, the pretty brown eyes. Malia Tate. The gossip journalist who's pretty much done nothing the past two months except write countless no-holding-back articles about himself and his soulmate. He raises his eyebrows at her, freezes in his steps, and Derek skids to a stop beside him as well. He, for one, doesn't recognize her – wouldn't even recognize the name, he doesn't think, considering how much he tries to avoid the gossip altogether. “I'm – um, Malia Tate.” She holds her hand out, and Stiles can tell that she's shaking. She's nervous. Stiles takes her slender hand in his own, shaking it up and down. Her skin feels clammy, sweaty. Her eyes flick over to Derek, and for a second she appears to shrink back a bit – a flash of genuine terror crossing her face – and chooses not to do or say anything more than a mumbled greeting in his direction. Derek glances at Stiles, and they share a smirk. “It's really nice to meet you. I've been, you know...writing about you since you first came out,” she runs a hand through her hair, smooths out her glittering dress, doesn't make direct eye contact. “Yeah. I've read most of it.” Her cheeks turn bright red. “I thought – I thought you guys didn't...read that kind of a thing?”
“Derek doesn't,” Stiles says, pointing to his soulmate with his index finger, and then to himself, “I do.” “Oh,” she says, sullenly. “Well...this is embarrassing.” When he imagined Malia Tate in his head, he imagined - not this. He thought she would be a firecracker, the kind of girl who would walk straight up to him and ask if he wanted to make out with her for a second while Derek's back was turned. That's the way she writes on MuttPop, at least – like she's confident, crass, and outgoing. Real life Malia seems shy and, to put it lightly, a bit starstruck by the two mutts she's standing in front of right now. Like she can read his mind, she chew on her lower lip, casting her eyes off somewhere behind Stiles' head, and says, “It's my persona. Like – I mean every thing I say it's just...I'm not that much of a nutjob in real life. It's, you know. Dramatized. For readers.” Stiles thinks it's funny. He thinks it's hilarious, actually. That this woman, fucking Malia Tate, who's written such over-the-top exaggerations of who Stiles and Derek actually are, who's made them seem like two people who they most certainly are not...it's just funny that she's not who she seems on her own fucking website, either. Just like Derek and Stiles aren't seen the way they truly are, neither is the person writing them that way. He smiles at her. “Right. I get that.” Stiles goes on to eat his weight in pigs-in-a-blanket – standing right at the buffet, spearing his tooth pick through tiny hot dog after tiny hot dog beside a quiet Derek as the people keep trickling over to meet and greet with them. It's okay, he thinks, if a little weird. Every single one of them eyes Derek like something to be avoided at all costs, and most people don't even say more than a hello to him before focusing their entire attention onto Stiles. Were Stiles in his right mind, he'd probably be thinking about how Derek's not necessarily the one that they should all be worried about; after all, Derek wasn't the one who went apeshit. Derek was the one who had the presence of mind to actually try and get away from the situation before it got any worse. Selfaware-Stiles would think that. Soulmate-Stiles just smiles, and rolls his eyes at the way Derek gets treated, and doesn't think very much of it. After about half an hour of binge-eating, he sees a sight he never thought he would actually have the displeasure of seeing in real fucking life; outside of a television screen or a magazine cover. Lydia Martin and Jordan Parrish. Lydia is wearing a dark black spaghetti strap thing that bares most of her left thigh to anyone interested enough to look, beside Jordan in a matching Armani suit, and they're... “Holy fuck,” Stiles says to Derek around a mouthful of blanket and pig, “that's – Derek. Lydia fucking Martin is-”
“I know,” Derek says with a sigh, “I see them.” Neither Stiles nor Derek wants to have a conversation with them. Neither of them want to have Lydia's cold and calculating eyes directly on them in person – and Stiles starts to seriously consider climbing underneath the table and hiding behind the long table cloths; in spite of the fact that she's already fucking seen them and is already coming over. Stiles clutches onto Derek's arm in a vice grip, opens his mouth to say run, but it's too fucking late. “Well,” Lydia says without preamble, less than three feet away form where Stiles is holding onto Derek for dear life. “You two look nice.” Stiles looks to Derek, who looks placidly back at him, before turning to look directly into Lydia Martin's eyes. She's...you know. Gorgeous. And horrifying. And she's just as fucking blank faced as she always is in interviews and pictures, just as bizarrely disinterested in the world at large as she seems pixelated on television screens. Jordan holds his hand out, smiling warmly at him. “Nice to meet you, finally.” Stiles takes the hand and shakes once, watches as Derek does the same. “Yeah, nice to – meet you,” Stiles stutters out, finds himself focusing on Jordan more than Lydia, out of sheer terror for what prolonged eye contact with Lydia Martin could do to a person's soul. “Nice party,” she trills, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring up at the ceilings and walls, like she thinks it's not a nice party, not at all, but was raised better than to say it out loud. “Um – well,” Stiles scratches at his cheek, “we didn't really...plan it or anything.” She zooms her eyes onto his mark, traces it over a few times, and then flits up to meet his eyes. Her mark, and Jordan's, are usually hidden away, being that they're located right around the hip region. Stiles has seen it in pictures, of course, just like everyone else has – it looks like lightning; red lightning zinging across pale skin. “Hm. People like us don't really plan things. Right?” Stiles has never had the opportunity to talk to anyone except for Derek about what it's like to be born like he was. He's never even met another mated-born aside from Derek, for Christ's sake, so he thinks meeting Lydia and Jordan is monumental for him in the grand scheme of things. And it's startling to him to hear someone talk so candidly about their limitations, about their own problems, that no one else could possibly understand. He swallows the lump in his throat, and nods slowly. “If it were up to us, we wouldn't be having a party.” “If it were up to us,” Lydia cocks her head to the side, glances in Derek's direction for longer than anyone else at the party has dared to, “we wouldn't be doing any of this.” Jordan fits his hand on Lydia's shoulder, but he doesn't say anything. Funny, how in interviews Jordan always carries most of the conversation while Lydia frowns and taps her fingers impatiently. “But, you two aren't really like us,” she narrows her eyes at Stiles in particular, like she's trying to
search for something on the surface of his skin, “are you?” Stiles doesn't really know what to say to that. That's their whole angle to the press; not being like other soulmates, after all, but...that's not how she says it. She says it not like the way Stiles and Derek treat each other publicly is differential from how Allison and Kira as well as Lydia and Jordan themselves treat each other. She says it like...Stiles and Derek are just plain other, altogether. Stiles points to the mark on his neck, and raises his eyebrows. “Aren't we?” Lydia doesn't look impressed by his ink splotch, narrowing her eyes even farther. “Hm.” Silence, for a few seconds. Jordan has flicked his eyes away to watch the band play their instruments, seemingly enraptured in the music, while Derek just keeps his arm nudged up against Stiles', not saying a single word, just listening in to Stiles and Lydia have a very, very strange conversation. “Well,” Lydia starts again, flicking her hair over her shoulder and looking them both in the eyes for a couple seconds at a time, “enjoy your party.” Off they go, dispersing back into the crowd and vanishing among the sea of people that turned up to bear witness to Stiles and Derek's existence. Stiles feels like he just spoke to someone he was never actually supposed to meet. Like, an alternate universe version of himself or something. When he turns to look at Derek, his soulmate has his lips curved down into a deep frown, looking pensively back down into Stiles' eyes. “Weird,” Stiles decides on, not breaking eye contact. “Just...weird.” “Bizarre,” Derek agrees with a nod of his head, flicking his eyes away to stare at the wake Lydia and Jordan had left behind them. It wouldn't be the most bizarre meeting of the night, though. Not by a fucking long shot. Sometime later, he winds up running into Scott. And he doesn't get the warm welcome he's been getting from nearly everyone else from his own best friend. Maybe Stiles shouldn't be surprised. Scott grabs his arm, tearing him out of Derek's grip, and pulls him two feet away from his soulmate. At the loss of contact, Stiles hisses, and Derek narrows his eyes at Scott, looking like he'd enjoy nothing more than to rip his fucking head off. “What the hell?” He barks, trying to pry Scott's hand off of his shoulder; but it's no use. The kid has a fucking death grip on his arm, refusing to let go for anything. He wasn't even aware Scott had been invited to this party, didn't even know he was on the fucking guest list. Didn't know he even knew it was happening, actually, which just goes to show how little he's spoken to his best friend in the past few weeks, since Derek and Stiles stopped avoiding touching one another. “Hey,” Scott snaps, glaring directly into Stiles' eyes, “you haven't returned any of my texts or calls in
weeks.” Stiles flexes his jaw, averts eye contact to find that more than one person is staring at them, eyebrows raised, drinks frozen at their lips. “You couldn't have waited to bring this up? Like, at a time where there aren't a thousand other people watching us?” “Really? What time would that have been? Huh?” He shakes Stiles by his shoulder and glares. “I go over to your house, and you're not there. I try to call you, and you don't pick up. I try talking to your father, and he says he hasn't seen you,” his eyes flick briefly in Derek's direction, something hot and un-Scott-like lurking in his irises as he does so, “I go to his building, and I can't even fucking get in the security is so tight.” Stiles was supposed to put Scott's name on the security clearance list. He was supposed to invite Scott over at some point so he could meet Derek in a better way, while he and Stiles were actually getting along, but then he just...didn't. Forgot. “So you fucking tell me what time I was supposed to get you to talk to me, Stiles.” He finally manages to rip his arm free from Scott's fingers, and he makes a big show of rubbing at the fabric of his white button down, like he's nursing at the bruises forming there. “I've been a little busy, Scott.” “Oh, yeah,” Scott's attempt at sarcasm is just as awkward as it always is, but Stiles can get the point well enough, “you and your soulmate.” The word sounds dirty in his mouth – something to be spat onto the ground like snake venom. “Yeah,” Stiles snaps back at him, “he's my soulmate, Scott. You wouldn't understand.” At this point, the room has quieted considerably. The band is still playing, all the way on the other side of the room, and there's still the clink of silverware on plates, but conversations have died down to nothing more than a low murmur, where before this all began, it was a roar. Stiles wonders if Malia Tate is watching somewhere, listening intently and copying every single word either of them say down into a comically tiny notebook. “I'm sick of you saying that!” Scott comes to stand right in his personal space bubble, anger etched all over his features. “You've been saying that since we first became friends, that I just – wouldn't understand.” “You don't!” And he doesn't. Scott will never know what it's like to have what Stiles has. Scott will never know what it's like to know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that someone was meant for him, that there's no one else out there waiting for him. He'll never know what it's like to be fucking discriminated against for something he has no control over, he'll never know what it's like to be treated like a subhuman freak, like something to be studied and poked and prodded at. “Derek does.” Again, his best friend's eyes flick to where Derek is standing a foot behind Stiles, fingers resting gently on his soulmate's back, and, this time, they harden into a harsh glower. “He doesn't know you, Stiles.”
Stiles snorts, rolling his eyes. “He doesn't. He doesn't fucking know you, like I do.” “You,” Derek speaks, for the first time since the altercation began, looming over Stiles even more, pressing his chest against his back, “don't know him like I do.” Scott stares at him for a second, jaw dropped – before he pulls on Stiles' arm, and the contact of Derek on his back disappears. “Stiles,” Scott whirls him around so that it's Scott's back facing Derek, now, a good three feet away, “he's not – good for you. This isn't you. You know that, right? This isn't you.” Stiles blinks at him, cocking his head to the side, completely confused by Scott means. “What do you mean this isn't me?” “I mean, you're not thinking clearly,” Scott lowers his voice, as low as it can get without going down into a whisper. “He's taken over your entire life. That's not...healthy, Stiles. When's the last time you talked to someone who wasn't him?” He has to look away from Scott's eyes. Away from the intense way he's looking at him – that best friends way where it's like Stiles knows that Scott can see through every last thread of bullshit Stiles tries to weave to protect himself. He flicks his eyes to where Lydia and Jordan are standing, frozen on the dance floor; Lydia stares back at him, like she can hear every single word Scott is saying, and she's curious to know what, exactly, Stiles is going to say back to that. “That's not love. It's obsession.” Stiles flicks his eyes back to his best friend's face, and it feels uncomfortable to him. Strange, foreign. When this is his best fucking friend, and he can't even look in his eyes? He just...can't. So, away, again, to look at Derek. Their eyes meet, whiskey-brown to hazel-green, and Derek looks angry. Stiles isn't sure what he looks like, right now; maybe shocked, or nervous, and he doesn't realize it, not in the moment, but they are their constructs. Derek is angry and distant and cold, and Stiles is nervously wondering what the fuck is about to happen to him, eyes huge and unblinking. Innocent looking. “You would always talk about,” Scott's voice is quiet, careful – the room has all but silenced, now, and Lydia Martin is still fucking staring at him, “how you weren't going to be like them. And now you – you are them, and you're not you.” “I am, though,” Stiles says back, without hesitation, finally taking his eyes off of Derek to stare back at his best friend, a newfound sense of confidence. “You're just jealous because I'm not spending as much time with you, anymore.” Scott's face crumples in disappointment for a split second – into something crushed and upset that Stiles can't say he's ever seen before – and it hardens back down into anger quick as lightning. “That's not true.” “Stiles,” Derek breaks the distance between them, reaching his hand out to grab him, to touch him
again – or tries to. Scott grabs Stiles and whirls him around, almost knocking them both into a confused looking party guest. Away from Derek. “Don't touch him,” Scott warns, low. “I know what you're trying to do.” “What he's trying to do?” Stiles barks out an incredulous laugh, shaking his head. Derek, for his part, sets his jaw and crooks her fingers at Stiles, silently telling him to come here. Stiles moves without thinking about it. Like there's nothing to think about. He only makes it about two steps before Scott grabs him again, pulls him back; this time harder, with intent. Stiles squawks in indignation while he flails his arms in the air, and Scott only tightens his grip on his best friend. “He's controlling you, Stiles, he's – the mutation is controlling you both, just, don't.” This is not the time or the place for this conversation. This is the absolute last place Scott should say anything like that; the idea of the mutation controlling anyone is something that tends to put people into a bit of a...paranoid frenzy. Most people don't hear it, of course; they're talking too low, and most of the party guests are dutifully trying to look like they're not listening by carrying on their own murmured conversations. The only people who don't seem to give a shit if the arguing men know that they're listening are Lydia (whose soulmate keeps pulling on her arm to get her to start dancing again) and Erica Reyes (who's standing next to a cameraman while directing him where to point the thing). There's a break in the music. Papers flutter from the stage as the new music is placed on stands. “You don't know what you're talking about,” Derek insists, drawing forward again, reaching his hand out again. This time, Stiles tries to lean forwards towards his fingers while still restrained by Scott, body searching for Derek's touch like it craves it. Scott pulls him back. Derek growls under his breath, and a few people around them actually take a couple of steps back as if they're premeditating what Stiles has no fucking clue of. “Let. Him. Go.” Scott's arm draws tighter around Stiles' shoulders. “I think you should stay the fuck away from him before you kill him.” Derek does not ending up killing Stiles. What actually happens, happens so fast that Stiles is amazed he managed to catch it at all; that anyone managed to catch it, before it was too late. He lurches forwards and Stiles can feel Scott's body brace up for the attack, more or less uselessly. Derek has an easy fifty pounds on Scott, an absurd amount of anger over Scott, and, well... The first punch probably should've knocked him out cold, and most likely would have if Stiles hadn't been in Derek's way; if the hit wasn't angled so strangely around Stiles' head. Scott jerks backwards, his arms dropping off of Stiles as he stumbles. There's more than one gasp of shock and horror from the crowd; more than one scream, as a matter of fact, but apparently none of that is seen as a deterrent to Derek.
While Stiles bumbles out of the way on shaking feet and in a daze, his soulmate grabs his best friend by the collar of his shirt and punches him, again. Then again, and then, what the hell, a fourth time for good measure. The blood starts gushing down Scott's face from his nose, and if Derek keeps this up he's going to “Derek,” Stiles yells it as loud as can to be heard over the sound of the crowd thinning backwards as far away from the scene in front of them as they can, “stop.” Derek does not stop. Security is having a hard time reaching them through the frantic, frenzied crowd, through the cameras flashflashflashflashing on them, and Stiles can't just fucking stand there watching as this unfolds before his very eyes, doing nothing. He jumps forwards, manages to grab Derek's bloody fist before it flies out against Scott's face once more; from the fucking looks of Scott's limp limbs and slack face, Stiles makes the executive guess that he's been knocked out for at least a couple of hits. Stiles wraps his fingers as tightly around Derek's wrist as he can, and it's a mistake. It's a huge, massive mistake. He should've just stayed back. Things might've gone a lot differently if he had just...stayed back. Because Derek reacts on principle. He reacts at being touched, even by his own soulmate, when he's this fucking wound up; he probably thought Stiles was a security guard, or someone else with a gun or a taser or, or something. Didn't have the presence of mind to notice the shock of electricity from Stiles' fingers. His hand cracks against the side of Stiles' face, so hard that Stiles sees red around the edges of his vision as he loses his footing and falls down onto the ground with a grunt. That's what turns things from bad and dangerous to fucking insanely horrible and near-fatal. For starters, the screams are so loud they're deafening and disorienting to an already disoriented Stiles down on the ground. It's obvious what they think is going on here, right now; they think Derek's gone off the mutt deep-end, is going to fucking kill him soulmate, here and now, or at least make a pretty good attempt at it. Cameras flash. A cacophony of voices start screaming all around him, yelling someone grab him, someone get Stiles away from him, he's going to Stiles looks up into Derek's face, and he doesn't see the murderous rage he had seen only seconds before. He doesn't see the face of a person who has no control over themselves, who's only moments away from snapping someone's neck with his bare hands. He looks horrified. The hand that hit Stiles is held out in front of him as far away from his body as he can get it. Limp. Like he's disgusted by it. And he doesn't move; paralyzed by what he's done. Security finally breaks through the barrier of the crowd, guns and night sticks drawn. From down there on the ground, holding himself up with his hands behind himself, several things occur to him. First of all, Erica is still fucking filming this. She hasn't made a single move towards them throughout the entire thing. Just stood back with a placid smile watching and murmuring directions into his ear,
arms crossed over her chest. Second of all, she made the guest list, she invited Scott, she knew that he and Scott hadn't been talking lately, and it's even possible that...that she might've coaxed him into this. She might've taken him into her office, given him her trademark television worried look, and said you know, I'm worried about Stiles...you know what they say about Derek, don't you? Sometimes the way he looks at Stiles, it's just unnerving, you know? When was the last time you spoke to him? Wow, that's strange, isn't it, how Derek is, like...cutting him off from his family and his friends like that... From the look on her face as she makes eye contact with Stiles from across the room – as security descends on Derek like lions on a carcass in the wild – Stiles can surmise that that is exactly what fucking happened here. “Hold on,” Stiles says, scrambling up to his feet on awkwardly shaking legs, trying to right himself. Derek doesn't put up a fight. He goes limp as they manhandle his arms behind his back and strap uncomfortable handcuffs around his wrists – his face a mask of shock and confusion. “Hold on, it wasn't -” They start grabbing at Stiles, now, all strong unforgiving hands and annoyance, probably bruising Stiles' pale skin wherever their fingers dig in too deeply. “It wasn't his fault! It wasn't his fault, let me fucking go, it -” Hands cuffed behind his back, a huge man's arm wrapping around his middle section so that his legs start kicking frantically in the air as soon as his feet are lifted off the ground. “You don't understand, it's not – it wasn't him it was – put me the fuck down!” Something jabs into his arm and he jerks in pain, grunting out a strangled noise from this throat. He glares down at his arm to see a bored looking bald man holding a syringe against his arm, pressing the plunger down, before pulling the needle out of him. Sedative, then. Great. “No, no, no, hold on, you don't -” he trails off as his limp body is dragged unceremoniously through the cleared crowd, feet scraping along on the floor. “Right, Stiles,” one of the men says, “you're okay, now.” And it's the last thing he's aware of before blacking out. ---I met Stiles Stilinski at the now-infamous and notorious party on Hollywood Boulevard. I know you've all been waiting for me, specifically, to put my two cents into this situation, seeing as how I'm the most read Sterek journalist on MuttPop, and there's a reason that it's taken me a couple of days to comment on what happened. First of all, I was there, and saw it in person. It was jarring and horrifying, and, frankly, mildly traumatizing. Second of all, I had spoken face to face with Stiles only an hour or so before everything happened (more on that later), and he was f**king nice. Like, a decent person who
doesn't deserve to be decked across the face by someone who's supposed to love him – not that anyone does, but you get my point. Taking the soulmate s**t out of the equation and just looking at the facts as if Derek and Stiles were two normal people, what happened that night was just straight up disturbing domestic abuse. Watching a man twice Stiles' size (twice everyone in the room's size, honestly) backhand him across the face hard enough that he was knocked to the ground like he's done it a dozen times before was f**king disturbing, and I'm disturbed most of all that everyone is reporting on this as if it's funny, or something. There's nothing funny about what happened that night. Honestly, I hope they do f**king put Derek down for this. Maybe Stiles will be halved and heartbroken for the rest of his life, but at least he won't be getting beat up by that piece of s**t. (Petition to Half Stiles Stilinski – Malia Tate, MuttPop.com) ---“Mr. Stilinski? Mr. Stilinski, are you listening to me? Can you hear me?” Stiles nods his head weakly up and down, glaring down at his hands where they're splayed out on the metal table in front of him. “Can you answer my question? How do you feel?” He raises his eyes to the ceiling, where the fluorescent lights are blinding and burning his retinas, lets out a sigh. “Terrible.” “Elaborate, please?” “I feel like I'm going to faint. Um – like I'm going to vomit.” The man, Dr. Deaton he had called himself when he first met Stiles a day ago, scribbles something down onto his clipboard and frowns. “I'm sorry to hear that.” Stiles snorts and shakes his head, dizziness setting in immediately. “If you were sorry, you'd let me see my fucking soulmate.” He's been locked up in a place he doesn't recognize for two entire days, now; the first of which he spent knocked out on sedatives in a soft bed inside a room that had no windows. It's not a nasty looking place; it's not a rusty old asylum with chipping paint and restraints tied up to every single chair, and it's also not a gross piss-stained jail, either. He doesn’t know what the fuck it is. It's nice, at least, with comfortable chairs and soothing light blue walls, and nobody's tied him up and beat him, so he guesses he might've lucked out on that front. The first questions he was asked when he woke up, after being forced to eat a lunch of a cheese sandwich and applesauce, were Does Derek hit you like that often, Mr. Stilinski? When's the last time Derek was aggressive towards you, Mr. Stilinski?
Would you say Derek is angry more often than he's not? How do you feel, Mr. Stilinski? Stiles gave his answers, no, he's never been, no absolutely not, like shit, in that order, and Deaton copied it all down onto his clipboard while a pair of college-looking interns stared at him with huge eyes from the corner of the room. When he asked where, exactly, he was, Deaton raised his eyes, looked him dead in the eyes, and said, “I think it's time for dinner.” They still won't tell him where he is. No matter how many times he's fucking asked, they won't tell him. They won't tell him where Derek is, they won't let him call his father or Scott; the only thing he's allowed to do is sit in this room and answer question after question. Every half an hour they come in and shine lights in his eyes, check his vital signs, his heartrate, while Stiles asks what are you doing, what are you writing, what does it mean, are you going to fucking tell me anything – and Deaton just frowns and clucks his tongue, never directly answers any of Stiles' questions. And Stiles does feel like shit. It's been days since he's even seen Derek, and he feels like...he honestly feels like he's dying. He's not sure if that's just the mutation climbing inside of his head convincing him that being without Derek is something akin to death, or if he's actually fucking going to die just from not seeing Derek. Either way, it's scary as all literal Hell, and he's started begging to see Derek every time the doctors burst through that door. Usually, they don't even acknowledge it. This time, however, Deaton nods. “Is that what you think will make you feel better?” Stiles glares up at him weakly through his eyelashes, while one of the interns picks up his wrist and feels for his pulse. She murmurs something to the other, and he jots down whatever she said dutifully, frowning. “You know something I don't.” Deaton raises his eyebrows. “I know a lot of things you don't, Mr. Stilinski.” “I mean about my soulmate. You know where he is.” Cold fingers probe against his neck, more murmuring. “Yes, I do.” “You're not going to tell me, are you?” Stiles' voice is hoarse, weak from disuse and crying and sickness; he's honestly surprised he hasn't just collapsed down onto the ground from exhaustion, at this point. “Stare straight forward, please.” Light shines in his eyes, back and forth, back and forth, before it clicks off. “His reflexes are low,” the female says with a sniff, flipping through papers on her own clipboard. “Vitals slow. Feverish temperature. He's...not doing great.” Not just in his head, then. He's having a physical reaction. A negative physical reaction.
He almost laughs; thinking about how he had rolled his eyes at Scott months earlier, when he mentioned the sickness. He was so sure he'd never be affected by any of this, that he had control over the situation in its entirety...now it's fucking killing him. “That's how many hours, now?” “Fifty-five hours, twenty-seven minutes, forty-five seconds.” “How much time would you say we can squeeze out of this?” Stiles' head starts to spin from their voices; he covers his eyes with his palms, breathes shallowly through his mouth, tries to drown them out, to no avail. “I think we've gotten the sample we need to confirm what we suspected, unfortunately,” Deaton sighs and there's some paper rustling. “It's identical, straight down to the heart rate.” “Good news?” The male intern asks hopefully. Deaton sighs once more, and the papers rustle again. “We won't know until we know. Do me a favor, wheel in the television set, will you?” Pattering of feet, and then the metal door to his certifiable cell opens and closes, making his head throb from the sheer volume of it. He winces, folding himself down over the metal table, pressing his cheek against the surface, relishing in the cold on his skin. Fingers probe around the back of his neck, and he's too weak to sit up and push them away, like he would if he were in any other situation. It's not a bad, hurtful touch; it's actually soft, soothing. Gentle. “I get the sense you see us as the mad scientists from a comic book, Stiles.” Stiles breathes out a laugh. “You wear lab coats and inspect me. So...yeah.” “Believe it or not, we're not actively trying to kill you,” the fingers move up around his neck, tilting his head to the side, and then they're tracing along what Stiles knows is where his mark rests on his skin. “We did, unfortunately, have to run a bit of a cruel experiment on you, and for that, I'm sorry.” Like keeping him cooped up away from his soulmate to examine and study how his body reacts to it? Watching him slowly wither and waste away and die while they record it all in their idiotic records? Cruel is one way to fucking put it. “But you've helped us come to a pretty interesting discovery about all of this. I think you'll be interested to know.” “The only thing I'm interested to know,” Stiles grinds out against the table, “is where. My. Soul. Mate. Is.” Deaton hmm's, as the door opens up again, accompanied by the squeak of something rolling into the room on rusty old wheels. Stiles open his eyes, squinting against the lights from above his head, to see the female bending down to plug an old television set, sitting on a cart and looking like it's from 1999, into the wall. “I'll do you one better, Mr. Stilinski – I'll show you where he is.”
The television set clicks on with white noise that Stiles recalls from his childhood, and the interns jump to back away from the screen to get a better look at what's about to happen themselves. They click their pens out, at the ready, flickering their eyes between Stiles and the screen again and again. The picture comes into focus, and Stiles almost laughs. Sweeping across that stark white stage, against a white background in her cherry red dress, is Erica Reyes. She walks towards the camera with a wink and a grin, throws her head to the side flirtily, and murmurs, I'm baacckkk... It reminds Stiles, eerily, of Poltergeist. They're heerreee... After the swirly red font splashes the word Soulmates across the screen, the camera pans out on a near ecstatic audience, screaming and clapping in excitement, grinning from ear to ear, and then flicks back just as Erica is settling herself down into a familiar white couch and fluffing her hair up with a hand. As the audience begins to quiet down, she smiles, winks. “It's been a long five years since the last time I sat in this chair,” the audience laughs, and Stiles glowers. An excellent five years, if he says so himself. “Last time we were all here together, I was sitting across from Lydia Martin and Jordan Parrish, discussing their one year anniversary. That was the first season finale of Soulmates. Remember that?” A silent video of Jordan and Lydia sitting in that exact studio, talking and laughing, is projected onto the white background behind Erica's head, and the crowd aww's and cheers. Stiles wonders how many hours of footage they had to sift through to find a five second period of time where Lydia was actually fucking smiling on that ridiculous show. “Those were happy, good times. Right?” The angle changes, and Erica turns her head right on time to stare directly into the camera, directly into Stiles' fucking eyes from god knows how many miles away, and she frowns. “Unfortunately, we're not gathered here today to discuss something very happy, at all. I'm sure you all are aware of what happened at Stiles Stilinski and Derek Hale's party in downtown Beverly Hills.” Pan out once more, and this time the projection on the screen behind her is a picture of Stiles and Derek at that exact party, both grinning into the camera, probably a half an hour before...everything happened. Stiles' entire body jerks at seeing Derek's face on screen for the first time in fifty-five hours, his breath catching in his throat. One of the interns grabs his wrist and murmurs a number out to the other after a few seconds, and all Stiles can do is sit there and gape at the image on the screen; whimpering when the camera flicks away to focus back on Erica. “I know, I know,” she's saying, shaking her head sadly back and forth while an upset roar begins in the audience. “How horrible was that? Just awful, right?” What's awful, Stiles thinks, mind slowly clearing of the haze from seeing Derek for the first time, is that she's making money off of what happened, while Stiles is being borderline tortured by way of separation from his soulmate in some underground lab somewhere, and she's just loving every fucking second of it, the cold-hearted fucking-
“I know a lot of things have been said, specifically about – well. About Derek Hale...” the crowd actually boos at the name, and when there's a brief pan onto an audience member, she's got her upper-lip curled up in disgust, shaking her head back and forth. Erica sits there and listens to the disgruntlement for a few seconds, nodding her head in agreement, like she's thinking the exact same thing. “Most of what people are saying is that they all saw it coming, in some way or another, you know? That he was always aggressive, angry looking, and we should have had the two of them separated long before any of this could have gone down. “Don't forget that Stiles wasn't the only one who got a taste of Derek Hale's strength – Stiles' longtime best friend, Scott McCall...” a silent video of Scott starts up behind her head, a microphone shoved into his face that's covered with dark purple bruises. He looks upset. He's frowning, and Stiles wishes he could hear what he was saying, what questions they're asking him, why he looks like he's about to cry. “...was also on the other end of Derek's fist, for a much worse beating, I'm afraid.” The crowd aww's again; which makes sense, to Stiles. It's hard not to awww at Scott whenever possible. “As most of you might know...I happen to be Stiles and Derek's manager and publicist, so I've gotten to know them pretty well in the past couple of months. A lot of people have been asking me – you know, did you see it coming? Did you ever think that -” she pauses, pursing her lips, as if she's upset. “...if I had thought, I never would have had that party to begin with.” Lie. “Stiles is a very kind, gentle person, no matter how it looks in paparazzi pictures. He'd never hurt a fly, so I guess I just don't understand why anyone would ever even think to...” she trails off again, shaking her head sadly back and forth; murmuring from the audience. Stiles wonders if there are fucking neon signs flashing at them somewhere over Erica's head where the cameras aren't pointed that read things like APPLAUSE and LAUGH and MAKE SORRY SOUNDS. “But enough of what I think, right? Why don't we get a first hand account, accompanied by some hopefully good explanations, from Derek Hale himself?” She holds her arm out majestically, pointing to somewhere off screen, and then Derek is emerging from behind a white curtain. He's wearing a dark black suit, emphasizing the red of his mark all the more, and he looks as bad as Stiles probably looks. Except, at least he has the fucking benefit of being done up with make up and hair gel. Stiles can't help himself. He jolts up from his seat, shakily, clumsily, and the three other people in the room watch with intense interest as he hobbles closer to the screen. Uncontrolled, small noises start coming from the back of his throat as he squats down and watches with his face as close to the screen as he can get; Derek's entrance is accompanied by the most dedicated series of boos he's ever heard in his life, but Stiles barely pays attention to it. He keeps his eyes trained on Derek's set jaw, the familiar movement of his limbs as he walks across the stage and shakes Erica's hand, as he sits down and frowns into the camera; it's almost like they're making eye contact, almost, barely, and Stiles presses his forehead against the screen.
It hurts. To be this close, and still so far away from him. Having Derek dangled in front of his face like this, but not being able to touch him. It causes him physical pain; he squirms slightly on the ground, simpering, and says, “Why're you doing this,” in a mangled voice. Hands are touching him. Someone is taking his vitals again, another person is pulling his head gently away from the screen to shove a thermometer into his mouth. Strong arms grab his shoulders and push him away from the screen, not far enough that he can't keep his hand pressed against the screen, but far enough away that they can examine him more carefully, he thinks. Watch his responses. When he tunes back in enough to actually hear what Erica is saying, they've probably already been talking for a minute. “...but we don't really know what your relationship with Stiles is actually like. We just saw you brutalize him publicly.” Derek's jaw tics. Silence drags on. Erica raises her eyebrows into the camera. Stiles wants to fucking strangle the life out of her, thinking about how the only reason Derek is being put through this at all is probably because it was written somewhere in the contract the two of them fucking naively and idiotically signed that Derek be forced up there onto a stage by law to talk about this fucking awful thing that happened. He imagines that Erica sat him down in a chair, while Derek wasted away from being separated from Stiles, smacked bubblegum between her lips, and said something like, if you try to break contract, I'll see to it that you never see Stiles again – how's that sound? Just do as I fucking say, and you'll get to see him again. How does that sound, Derek? Stiles thinks that his comparison between Ursula and Erica wasn't such a shitty one, after all. “That was an accident.” “Huh. An accident. Your hand just – accidentally beat your soulmate across the face.” “You – none of you...” he swallows, grits his teeth, “...you don't understand what it's like. To be – like us.” “Hm.” “You think it's all so simple, and you think you have it all figured out because of the cameras,” he glowers directly into one of them as he says this, and Stiles doesn't need to hear any murmured numbers to know that his heartrate is spiking. “You don't know anything about us.” The crowd boos again. Erica sighs, fluffs her hair, purses her cherry red lips; like she's getting ready for something – the big finale, maybe, or the climax of this fucking shitshow. “As it turns out...” a wolfish grin, and a wink, “there's a lot about your relationship that people don't know about. Is that about right?” “Fever's reduced by two degrees,” Deaton murmurs as he takes the thermometer out of Stiles' mouth. “I – what do you mean?” Derek looks genuinely perplexed; nervous, even. “Well, just that...your relationship isn't exactly how it was broadcast or how you made it seem. At least, not at first.”
“I don't understand what you mean.” “Color is coming back to his cheeks – see that?” A finger strokes down Stiles' face, but he can barely feel it he's so enraptured by Derek on the screen in front of him. “Maybe your memory is failing you – how long has it been since you and Stiles were together? Long enough to start losing your memory?” Derek shakes his head, looking out into the audience with huge, wide eyes; he looks..scared. Sickly, pale, scared. “Hm. You know? Maybe we should just go right on ahead and jog your memory, then.” On the screen behind them, a stock video of a tape recorder rolling is the only thing shown; and Derek's voice starts up, grainy and difficult to understand – luckily, though, they've provided some very helpful captions. “That's not real, you know that. That's not you and I. That's some botched fucking science experiment – we're freaks, Stiles, how can you not see that? Like we talked about?...The money, Stiles! The fucking money, and the...the freedom. Remember that? That's the only reason we decided to do this, and...” It cuts. There's absolute dead silence in the studio. Derek's got his hand pressed over his forehead, glaring downwards at the ground, not moving a muscle. There are a couple of shots to audience members with dropped jaws, confused looks, and then back to Erica, smirking. Stiles feels like he might faint, in spite of the fact that he's gotten considerably better in the last ten minutes than he's felt in days. The thought that – the fact that – Erica set up recording devices inside of Derek's apartment, that she has tapes upon tapes upon tapes, probably, of their private conversations dating back who fucking knows how long, that she's using it against them now, publicly. That neither Derek nor Stiles can do anything about. They're exposed, entirely. No secrets, no fucking lies. “Maybe you want to tell us about that, because, honestly,” she wriggles in her seat, “I'm confused, Derek. Because it sounds to me like you were using your fans for money." On his own couch, Derek looks so small and tired and torn up; Stiles wants nothing more than to leave wherever he is, and go running off to the studio, onto the stage, wrap his arms around his soulmate, make him feel better. The urge is so strong he actually stands up, only to be pushed back down onto his knees again, held firmly down in place. “What did you mean – that's not real? What were you referring to?” Erica prompts him, cocking her head to the side. It's quiet, again, and Derek sighs through his nose. “We – the mutation. We were talking about...when this all started it wasn't...” he runs his hands down his face again, then through his hair, messing up
the style, looking like he doesn't give a shit about that at the moment. Erica waits patiently, flicking her ankle around in the air where it's dangling from crossing her legs. Beyond him, behind his head, a slideshow starts of pictures of the two of them together. Candid shots of them outside Derek's building, from Erica's parties, outside of restaurants, inside Derek's car – and Derek notices. He turns his head, and sees Stiles' face for what must be the first time since that night at the party. His reaction is identical to Stiles'. A full-body jerk, a dropped jaw, and the silence just drags on and on as Derek stares shamelessly behind him at Stiles' face in each and every single picture that flashes across the screen. “Derek,” Erica snaps her fingers, and Derek's eyes flick to her reluctantly. “Focus.” Slowly, as slow as Stiles has ever seen him, he turns his body away from the pictures to focus his attention back in front of himself. He clears his throat, rubs a hand over his forehead; his hands are shaking. “Stiles and I...” the cameras zoom in extremely close on Derek's face, so everyone can see as his pupils dilate, as he starts to sweat around the top of his brow, as he physically has to restrain himself from leaping up out of that chair. The dead air drowns on – across from him, Erica shifts uncomfortably in her seat, the audience coughs, and Derek swallows, lowering his eyes to the ground. “We thought we could control it. We thought – I thought I had the upperhand over my own body. I guess we learned our lesson, in the end.” “Hm,” Erica says, narrowing her eyes. “Control it. By it, you mean...” “The mutation. To be – honest...” he laughs, somewhat hysterically, shaking his head back and forth. “We used to talk about – the freedom of it all. How we were going to finally be free from the stigmas that had surrounded both of us our entire lives. Stiles wanted...he wanted to be like everyone else. I wanted to be like everyone else, and we thought by doing what we did, that we would - we were stupid. There's no real freedom, for people like us; we never get to choose anything, not a single thing.” Stiles knows that's true, now. He knows they were stupid. He's said so about a half dozen times to Derek. That they were playing with something they shouldn't have been fucking playing with. He's reminded, suddenly, of something that Derek said to him, all the way at the start of everything, back before any of this blew up to the level it's at now. We're the product of humanity's failure at playing God. The scientists, he was referring to. Their parents' decision to get the injection at all. The aftermath of all that, their existence – that's what he was fucking talking about. As if Stiles and Derek tried to do anything different. They tried to play God with the mutation, tried to control every thing and use it to their advantage, and just like those who came before them...they failed. They dragged themselves into a horrible situation, made every thing about a thousand times
worse than it would've been otherwise. Stupid. Stupid. “Because of the love,” Erica says earnestly, and the crowd aww's in unison. Derek looks out at them all with an expression he's probably trained to look more complacent than murderous. Complacent in his own dehumanization. How about that? “Love makes people do crazy things, right, Derek? Is that why you did what you did?” “I did not hit Stiles because I fucking love him,” the beep comes too late – bounces over the word love awkwardly, and Stiles imagines there's some dude up in a soundbooth sweating and cursing, seconds away from losing his job. The crowd murmurs awkward laughter, while Erica grins and shrugs what can ya do? “I hit him because this – whatever's inside of me – that's not love. You don't get it,” his eyes scan the audience again, and he shakes his head, “you all think this is some tender beautiful love story? You think we enjoyed a single second of it?” Erica starts nervously laughing, trying to talk over him, but he plows onwards. “We lost our fucking minds,” another beep too late, “and I haven't seen him in days, and I feel like tearing my fingers off my hands or killing myself, does that sound romantic to you?” “You're getting off topic, Derek-” “You know they won't tell me where he is! She won't tell me where he is!” His eyes start flickering all over the place, half crazed, as he points to Erica; who is still laughing with terrified, wide eyes. “They won't tell me where Stiles is, they've kept me from seeing him, for all I know he's -” he breaks off, a choked sobbing noise cracking his voice into bits. The crowd starts looking at each other, with faces like shit, he's right, a roar starting up. From the bits and pieces of it, Stiles can make out where's Stiles? again and again, until it becomes a steady stream of the same question over and over. Erica makes an abortive hand gesture to someone behind the scenes, and then the picture fizzles into a commercial for a restaurant. Just like that, it's over, and Derek is gone. Stiles paws at the screen for a second, like he can somehow rub the screen into letting him see Derek again, feeling like he wants to start crying or...or like Derek said. Ripping his fingers off, or...killing himself. Deaton's strong hands grab him and pull him away from the screen, dragging him along the floor; Stiles just goes limp and lets him, dazed and distraught by every thing he just saw. Too much information for his sickly weak brain to process, and he just...lays himself flat on the ground. The interns kneel beside him as Deaton holds his wrist up in the air, pressing against his vitals. “Dropping again.” “He's starting to heat up, again,” a sigh, “Christ, that fast?” “Stiles? Are you all right? Hey,” fingers snap in front of his eyes. He barely blinks in response.
“Stiles.” He feels cold. Empty. He wants to see Derek again, he wants to look into Derek's eyes, and touch him, and be near him, all the time, always; so badly that it starts a fiery pain in the pit of his stomach to know that they're not going to let him. To know that Derek is probably being dragged into a jail cell, right now, that Erica will make more money off of this then she ever thought possible. He's going to die here. That's all he can think. He's going to fucking die in an underground laboratory on the white tiled floors, without his soulmate, Alone, then. Someone slaps him across the face, and it stings – he grits his teeth, but doesn't respond any further. “Sir...” “What do we do, what do we do?” A pause; labored breathing over his head. “He's dying.” “Help me get him up –“ hands lift him off the ground, forwards into a slumped sitting position – and then he's being dragged back towards the television. “Just play it again. We don't have any other options, for now.” “That'll only work for-” “I know that. I'm not just going to stab a needle into his arm without – just do it, all right? Turn the television on.” There's a sigh, and then that familiar white noise starts up again. Stiles feels his head gently being lifted up, a hand cradled underneath his chin to keep his eyes blearily set on the screen in front of him. The male intern is frowning as he rewinds on the TiVo, starting the show back up again at the exact moment Derek is sweeping out onto the stage to the raucous booing. Stiles blinks his eyes, sucks in a breath – he hadn't even realized he wasn't breathing – and becomes just barely cognizant again. Enough to recognize his soulmate, to stare hazily into his pixelated eyes. He starts to cry. Not sobbing, or weeping; just a slow trickle of tears streaming out from his eyes while he sits motionless in front of the television. He thinks about how Derek didn't have a television, when they first met, how Stiles forced him to get one, to get Netflix – thinks about the way Derek's skin feels underneath is fingers, the way he laughs, the way his car smells, his stupid Bugs Bunny teeth, and his Dumbo ears, everything. This, he thinks, distantly, in the back of his mind, watching Derek frown and sigh and rub his face without being able to be close to him or even touch him. This is what torture is. “Stiles,” Deaton's voice, close to his ear; he's squatted down beside where Stiles is slouched down on the ground. “I'm going to try to explain some things to you. I want you to listen as much as you can. All right?” Stiles nods. Once.
“What I meant earlier when I said you helped us come to an interesting discovery – we weren't sure before but we are about ninety-nine percent sure now. We've been cross-checking data, done some meta-analyzing from – the records from the first wave of the mutation. Do you understand what I mean?” Another nod; Stiles keeps his eyes trained on Derek's face on the screen. “For Allison and Kira, as well as Jordan and Lydia, the mutation was different from the first time around. You've read about that, haven't you? About how the second wave has different effects, less aggression; like the diluted version worked better for what they were actually trying to accomplish. Understand?” Derek is setting his jaw, scanning the audience slowly with is eyes, and Stiles croaks out, “yes.” “Because Allison only had one parent who was injected. Kira only had one parent who was injected. Lydia, one parent. Jordan, one parent. Derek – both of his parents were injected. He has double the mutation, and we weren't sure what that would mean, when this all started...” Stiles didn't know that. Of course he didn't know that – Derek has never, never once mentioned his fucking family to him. While he was soulmate-crazed, he didn't think anything of that. Maybe that would've been useful information for him to know. “The same for your parents. What I'm trying to say is that the mutation presents itself in your relationship as almost identical to the way it originally was, the first time around, because there's just as much of the disease inside of you as there were for your parents. Okay? That's why you're different from the other two pairs.” It makes sense. It makes sense. Stiles watches as Derek covers his face with his hands after the tape recording of them talking alone in his apartment ends, and he knows that it makes perfect fucking sense. Why there were never any physical altercations between the other two pairs, even though there should have been, why there were never any accidents with touch-starvation, even though there should have been. If the mutation was as strong in them as it should have been. It wasn't, though. “Originally, what would happen was that one would kill the other. Right? Because it was too strong; do you feel that the mutation inside of you right now is too strong?” Stiles knows better than to try and deny it – for Christ's sakes, he's half-dead just because he hasn't been near Derek is a couple of days. So he nods. “The antidote doesn't work on the others. It's never worked on anyone else – but no one else has as much of the disease inside of them as you two do. And, I think,” a pause, “...we think the mutation inside of you will be easier for the antidote to find in your bloodstream, because there's more of it. Stiles, we're not positive, but we think we can cure you.” Stiles flicks his eyes away from Derek on the screen for the first time since the show started up again, and gives Deaton a look. He's sure it's weak, unfocused, but his point gets across pretty well enough. “The cure,” he says, dangerously low, “would be to let me be with Derek.”
Deaton blinks his dark eyes at him, like he expected this answer. “He'd kill you.” “Derek would never do that,” he affirms, looking back to the screen, watching Derek freak out for the second time in a row. “He loves me.” “He doesn't love you,” Deaton's voice is very cautious and quiet near his ear, and the interns are rustling around in something behind him; he doesn't look back to see what it is. “He's sick, Stiles, just like you.” “You wouldn't understand,” Stiles hisses, shoving weakly to try and push Deaton away from his side. “You're not like us. You don't know what it's like to know who you're meant to be with.” And Stiles does know, he's certain that he and Derek belong together. There's no one else like Derek, and there's no one else like Stiles, and together is the only thing they should ever be. Always, and no matter where they are. If they won't let him see Derek, then he'll just – he'll just have to fucking kill himself. The thought comes to him from out of nowhere, from the deep recesses of some twisted part of his brain that perhaps isn't thinking the way it normally does; is reacting to the sickness a bit too strongly; but he doesn't think that. All he thinks is yes, I'd have to, no other choice. “You two are very, very unstable. And I'm very sorry,” smooth hands pick up his arm, twist it over so his palm is laying face up against his knee, “but for your own good, I am going to issue you the antidote.” Stiles jerks backwards, weakly, pathetically – Deaton grips his arm so tight that it hurts, keeping it held firmly down in place, and Stiles yells. “Stop it!” The woman is handing Deaton a syringe, filled with that interesting green fluid that Stiles has only ever seen in pictures on the internet and in history books, and Stiles tries to thrash out of his grip. “Hold him,” Deaton says without much emotion; cool, calm, collected, like he's not forcing a needle into a person's body against their fucking will. Strong arms wrap around him from behind, holding him firmly to the point where he can barely move at all. “Again, I'm sorry, Stiles. You'll thank me.” “You can't do this,” Stiles cries pathetically, only able to move his neck, to lift it backwards to glare away from where Deaton is rubbing a wet square against his skin. “I'm – I'm a person, I have fucking – rights, you can't force this on me, I -” “The antidote is mandatory for all those infected,” Deaton murmurs calmly. Emotionless. Detached. Stiles raises his eyes to the television screen; he catches Derek breaking off mid-sentence into a sob, and then the commercial starts again, and the needle digs into skin. He grits a noise of pain out through his teeth; and then he goes slack, pliant against the chest of the man holding him down. “Stiles? Do you recognize him?”
Derek Hale's frowning, angry face glares into his own through the screen on the television; his hazel eyes blink, and then he looks away. “Yeah, that's Derek Hale.” “How do you know him?” Stiles sighs through his nose, rubbing at his sleep-sore eyes, running his hands through his greasy, unwashed hair. He can't remember the last time he had a shower, can't remember how long he's been here in this bizarre fucking underground whatever it is. “He was my soulmate.” “Was?” “You heard me, all right? Can I fucking go now? My dad's probably-” “Just a few more questions,” Deaton flips over a page in his folder, writes something down, grinning to himself. Stiles is sitting at a wooden table in a larger room, surrounded by a half dozen other labcoats, all staring at him with dropped jaws and incredulous smirks. They probably all feel very, very proud of themselves after having finally cured one of the second generation – one of the disgusting fucking mutts, and Stiles curls his upper lip at them all. In front of him is a television, nicer than the one from his shitty little cell down the hall, playing the same exact thing he had been watching only a couple of days earlier. He stares with a frown at Derek, a deeper frown at Erica fucking Reyes, fantasizes about jumping through the screen and chopping her head off with garden shears, and feels nothing more, nothing less than that. “Derek Hale – what do you think about him?” Stiles sighs, long and loud, throwing his head back – cursing every single person in this room to hell and back. All he wants is a shower and a Big Mac. “I don't fucking know! He's just a guy, all right? Is that what you want to hear? Hello, hello, is this thing on? Yeah, I have zero urge to seek him out. We are no longer soulmates. How much clearer can I be about this?” A low ripple of excited laughter flows through the room, and Stiles grits his teeth. “Just one last question, then, Mr. Stilinski -” Deaton puts his pen down, eyes Stiles up and down, and smiles. “Do you love him? Derek Hale, I mean.” “Oh...my God?” Stiles raises his eyes to the ceiling in the most intense eye roll of his life, and snorts out a laugh. “I hardly know the fucking guy. Can I leave please?”
How to Rise from the Ashes Chapter Notes
This is officially the longest fic I've ever posted and written - neat! NEAT! I use tweets in this one around, and I thought like...maybe I should do screencaps of fake tweets? But I haven't been doing that for the magazine interviews or web articles so it would be weird if just randomly did it now lmao so maybe one day I'll come back in and replace them all with caps but until then...
See the end of the chapter for more notes
Stiles Stilinski and Derek Hale are no more. Sterek is f**king dead. Sterek is dead, God isn't real, there is no such thing as happiness, or rainbows, or puppies, and I woke up this morning and discovered my period destroyed my favorite pair of underwear in the middle of the night. These are all most certainly signs of the upcoming apocalypse. I am literally wiping tears out of my eyes as I type this out – as I have done ever since news broke out of the two idiots getting cured. Cured? What the f**k? Who okay'd this? Cured? I want to f**king vomit. I know I said, after that whole fiasco at Erica Reyes' party for them, that I hoped Derek would, like, die or something - honestly, after watching that tell-all on Soulmates...I took it back so hard and so fast that I smacked my head against the wall from how hard I backpeddled. Derek was right, after all; us commonfolk don't know dick about what it's like to be soulmates, about how it makes people go a little bit nutty. So, Derek hit Stiles across the face and then practically cried about it on national television before dissolving into a rant about...um, we're still not sure, actually, what he was going on about. But it was...romantic, right?! Now look at us. Look at where the f**k we are now. In Hell. I am burning in a firepit in Hell, stroking Sterek candids on my laptop screen and cursing God for he hath forsaken us. Stiles shows up on his long legs and walks along like nothing even ever happened. Every time our cameramen try to ask him about Derek, he side-eyes them and ignores ignores ignores, nose going up into the air. And, for God's sake, no one's even seen Derek since it all happened. Derek? Hello? Are you out there? We miss you, buddy! Make out with Stiles, maybe? For old times' sake? (RIP Sterek – Malia Tate, MuttPop.com) Stiles sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night half-expecting to be back in that lab, in the middle of the California desert, with Dr. Deaton hovering over him. He expects the prick of a needle in his arm or the probing of fingers against his wrist, someone murmuring numbers as someone else
scribbles them across a page; he convinces himself that it wasn't a big deal. So, a group of creepy doctors kidnapped him and locked him away to run a fucked up experiment on him and then jabbed a needle in him to cure him of his mutation. Big fucking deal, right? Kind of. Kind of a huge deal, actually. The mark on his neck is still there; faded, so it looks more like a kool-aid spill on a white sheet that's been scrubbed at and washed a couple of times over. Stiles wishes pretty much every day that it would just go the fuck away entirely, so that maybe he could forget every thing that happened. So people would stop recognizing him, so he could shave his hair into a buzz, change his wardrobe, and the camera crews would stop fucking following him around. As it is, the mark stands out on his skin. And everyone, probably straight down to the tribes of the Amazon rain forest, knows who the fuck he is. If he thought he was a person of note when he and Derek were soulmated, it's fucking nothing compared to the level of notoriety he has now. He literally cannot even go to the gas station without someone screaming and demanding a picture; one time, an entire group of teenage girls accosted him with tears streaming down their faces at Sonic, gave him six small orders of tater tots, and wept all over him for minutes on end asking him have you spoken to Derek, have you seen Derek, are you and Derek going to get back together? Stiles had to sigh and say we don't talk, no – we don't really get along when we're not being forced to like each other by some weird chemical imbalance so... like he's had to say to about a hundred different reporters and journalists and other teenage girls just like them, and no one ever fucking listens. People keep asking him about Derek. He thinks that probably for the rest of his life he'll be getting asked about Derek, and it's so strange to think that they only knew each other for a couple of months, but they left such an impact and impression in everyone's minds. Stiles and Derek were the first of the second wave to be cured. He understands why that might be a big deal to people, he really truly does; but they were going to fucking kill each other. No one ever mentions that angle when detailing how tragic and sad it is that Sterek is over; like Derek hitting him never happened. Like Stiles freaking the fuck out when Derek said he wouldn't marry him never happened. Like Derek going soulmate-crazy on national television never happened. Stiles thinks, in hindsight, people prefer to focus on the positives. It might be easier for them to go on as seeing Derek and Stiles as these two starcrossed lovers, driven apart by science, than to see them for what they actually are. What they actually were. Two people forced together against their wills who would've eventually wound up in a murder/suicide pact. That's not romantic. He gets it. Romeo and Juliet just kinda break up and never see each other again doesn't make that much of a good story. Scott finds the whole thing hilarious; he laughs incredulously when they climb out of Stiles' Jeep outside of Starbucks only to be practically jumped by a Soccer mom, when Stiles gets asked for a picture in the produce aisle at the grocery store, when they have to hide behind a tree in the park to avoid a confrontation with a girl wearing a STEREK LIVES t-shirt some odd twenty feet away. “What does that mean?” Scott asked him, snickering quietly while Stiles shushed him, watching
through the leaves as the girl keeps on walking past, oblivious. “It means,” he hissed back, narrowing his eyes, “the absurdity of my life as been made into cheap Hot Topic merchandise.” Sterek Lives is an actual, honest-to-god fucking movement formed by people on the internet who apparently believe that Stiles and Derek are, somehow, someway, secretly dating again. Nevermind the fact that Stiles can't drive a mile down his road without being bombarded by cameras at every turn. Nevermind the fact that Derek probably isn't even in the United States anymore. Whatever, he thinks. They write fanfiction and wear t-shirts and rewatch Derek and Stiles' individual episodes of Soulmates again and again on an endless loop – harmless, for the most part. Speaking of Stiles' fucking episode of Soulmates... When Stiles finally emerged out into the desert sun and fresh air, an entire two days after being 'cured', the first thing he saw was Erica Reyes leaning against her god damn Bentley, wearing a sheer dress, huge sunglasses, frowning at him so deeply he honestly believed for a second that he somehow was the one who wronged her. Over and over again. Publicly. For money. “You look like trash,” she said to him, first thing, puckering her lips. “They didn't have combs in there?” Stiles stopped in his tracks, glared at her with every thing he had in him. “Because I wasn't just tortured for four days straight-” “Oh, don't be so fucking dramatic,” she pushed her sunglasses up on top of her head, probably just so Stiles could see her rolling her eyes. “You and Derek had gone completely off the rails, it had to be done, you're better off now, blah blah blah.” “You are the one who pushed Derek into-” She sighed so loud and with such strength that she practically hacked up a spit wad in the back of her throat. “And you and Derek made more money than you ever thought possible – and?” Stiles glared even harder at her, and she stared back at him, unimpressed, crossing her arms over her chest. “You can be mad at me all you want,” a small smile crossed her face, “we've still got another two years left together.” The contract. Right. Because he and Derek had been fucking idiots and signed a two year contract with the single worst person they could've signed a contract with. “You ruined my fucking life, and you think I'm mad at you?” “I saved your fucking life, depending on how you look at it,” she popped the passenger side door of her car open and motioned to the leather interior with a grin, “as for me, I like to look at the glass as half full.” Which is what lead to him refusing to do an episode of Soulmates, which is what lead to him being
threatened with a lawsuit if he didn't do Soulmates, which is what lead to him being reminded that mutts, no matter how cured they might fucking seem, are not in the business of winning legal battles against anyone normal-born, which is... What lead to him sitting on the ridiculous white couch that Derek had been sitting in only a week earlier, glaring out at the audience in a ridiculous suit, while Erica sat across from him and beamed at the cameras. It was just questions about Derek – back to back to back. Apparently, no one was interested in what happened to him in that lab, what they did to him, what it was like to nearly fucking die on a cold cement floor after being treated like a guinea pig for days. All anyone seemed to care about was what it was like to be a normal person, like everyone else. He's not a normal person, is the thing. He never was a normal person, he was never going to be a normal person; even taking his newfound fame out of the equation, something about him was irreversibly and irrevocably changed from his experience with Derek Hale. Maybe some things only come back to him in fuzzy details. Maybe he feels like Derek is a certifiable stranger, now. But they had something. No one else living right now could ever understand what Derek and Stiles went through when they were together. Not even the other two soulmate couples – like they always had to say, they just weren't like them. Nobody was like Derek and Stiles. No one was ever going to be like Derek and Stiles, again. “But Stiles,” Erica said to him, a mock-upset expression etched all over her face for the cameras and the audience, “don't you ever miss him?” It wasn't real, and it wasn't them. It was something else inside of them, that needed to be taken out for their own good. It made them dangerous. It made them unstable. Some of the worst moments of Stiles' life happened when he and Derek were he and Derek. He'd have to be a fucking idiot to miss even a second of what went on between the two of them. But sometimes. Sometimes... “Not at all,” Stiles said easily, shrugging. “Never.” Stiles wondered, in the back of his mind, if Derek was watching. The thing is, Stiles just wasn't sure if he was supposed to, like – call Derek? Or try to contact him at all? Shoot him an e-mail? He has all of his ex-soulmate's information tucked away in his phone; including the address of the apartment that he apparently moved out of before Stiles was even back from his excursion in the desert. From secondhand information only, Stiles knows that Derek got the antidote more or less immediately after his blowup on Soulmates. Erica got her million dollars, shrugged her shoulders, and said, what the fuck do I care; let them jab Derek with a needle against his will, the same as they did to Stiles. Then, he just...left. Erica knows where he is, apparently, and they're working out some kind of deal for him to fulfill the contract
without ever actually having to be fucking a hundred feet within Stiles, and that's fine. “He's just losing it,” Erica will say to Stiles every couple of days in her office; tapping out an e-mail that Stiles assumes is going out to Derek Hale himself. “Absolutely losing it. Talking to him sometimes is like talking to a god damn mime for all the information I can get out of him.” Stiles sometimes has to resist the urge to stand up and look over her shoulder to read whatever Derek is saying to her – has to physically bite his lip to keep from asking her what Derek is doing, if Derek is doing all right, if Derek ever asks about him. And it's fine. They had a lot of sex together, it's totally normal for him to wonder. Right? If he didn't wonder, it'd be way weirder. If Derek didn't wonder – well, of course he wonders. Of course he does. “Neither of you are as well-adjusted as I'd thought you be,” she'll cluck her tongue, roll her eyes to the sky, like she's wondering why she ever fucking picked them in the first place, and then goes back to her e-mail. “At least you were interesting nutjobs when you were soulmates. Now you're just...sad sacks.” Well-adjusted. As if a person could ever be fucking well-adjusted after getting treated the way he and Derek were; the way they still are. Derek is probably losing it just like Erica says he is. Stiles is definitely losing it – and he wonders how no one can see it in his eyes in the pictures they take of him, in the interviews, in the way he walks. That there's something undeniably other about him now. Different. Changed. Forever. ---To :
[email protected] From :
[email protected] Stiles, I'm not proud of my most recent MuttPop article. I find it indelicate and insensitive to the situation that you're probably going through right now. I wrote you this e-mail to formally apologize to you for the crass way I wrote about you and Derek and the way I made light of a very serious event. It's just that I have a job. You probably know better than anyone what it's like to have a contractual obligation to do things that you're not particularly wild about doing. If my boss knew I was writing you this, she'd absolutely have a meltdown; I'm not even supposed to use your email address at all, but I felt it very necessary. I wrote to Derek as well, but he never answered back; that didn't surprise me. If you happen to see him, if you've been seeing him, (have you been?), could you tell him that I was trying to be sincere? Maybe he's just not the e-mail answering type. Either way. Sorry this is rambling.
To :
[email protected] From :
[email protected] answer your fucking e-mails Moszek am i reaching for the stars if i'm just fucking asking for you to interact with me every now and again to confirm that you are, as a matter of fact, not fucking dead!?!? people are asking questions people are always asking me questions sometimes i feel like you don't appreciate the things i fucking do for you – taking the heat for your! issues! your! psychologyll!!! prboelmsms!! answer! your! phone! your! e-mails! fucking! god! damn! i will come to your house and burst through the door do not test me you have obligations you do not sleep at night i can tell!! you show up reeking of coffee and cigarette smoke (since when do you smoke??? stop!!!!!!!!!!!) and you hardly say ten words at business meetings do I need to remind you? you fucking brat? that if it weren't for me? you would still be scanning sticks of beef jerky at the corner mexi-mart do not push me any further than you already have i swear to fuck i will come. to. your. house~!!!!!!! do you want that? i'm going to fucking slap you don't make me regret saving your idiotic life – and eat something!!!!! people are starting! To notice! Hly fucking hell you have close to a million dollars and you can't find it in yourself to buy a shirt without holes in it? MOSZEK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THIS IS ME AT ABOUT A FIVE. DO YOU WANT ME TO GO TO TEN? BECAUSE I WILL GO TO TEN. I WILL FUCKING GO TO TEN. COME TO MY OFFICE. SHOWERED. IN NICE CLOTHES. AFTER EATING A REAL MEAL. YOU HAVE APPOINTMENTS TO MAKE. YOU HAVE APPEARANCES TO PLAN. YOU ARE A FUCKING PUBLIC FIGURE. DO I NEED TO REMIND YOU????????????? SHOULD I MAKE AN APPOINTMENT WITH A THERAPIST IN BETWEEN MTV NEWS AND MUTTPOP??? YOU FUCKINGFEOIAJ3R0RJ3PRJPOWEEAPKRJGPROWAGKWRPG To :
[email protected] From :
[email protected] I'd very much like to meet with you someday soon. I feel like we got off on the wrong foot at your party – I'd like to talk with you, if that could be arranged. ---“I have absolutely zero problems slapping you across the face,” Erica hisses at him the second he comes into her office, “do you know how many questions I've had to answer for you? How many things I've had to cancel for you? Do you know anything at all, Stiles?” Stiles plops himself down into the leather chair he always sits in – the one on the right, in front of the cat figurine smirking out at him from Erica's desk – and tries not to think about the empty chair on his left. As Erica had requested, he showered, wore his best casual clothes, and ate a burrito on the drive over. He tried not to think about how weird the drive felt in his Jeep instead of in Derek's Camaro. Tried not to think about how he didn't put his seatbelt on and there was no one there to remind him. “You have so many delayed appointments I can't even fucking fathom it – and I'm making you that appointment with a therapist. I swear to God you need help.” Stiles raises his eyebrows. “You're not just going to ask me if I'm deranged?”
“Like I have to fucking ask,” she grits out between her teeth, glaring at him over the top of her laptop as she furiously taps across the keys. He's been dutifully dodging her for almost an entire week, now; letting her calls go to voicemail, her e-mails drift into his spam folder, her furious knocking on his brand new apartment door go completely ignored. He doesn't find it fair, not in the least, that she literally put him through the worst experiences of his entire life, but now she expects him to keep on doing exactly what she wants him to. Unfair, fucked up, contractually obligated. Whatever. Meanwhile, fucking Derek gets to live in some castle by the sea or something (at least that's what he imagines in his head – like a mansion in a romance novel, with waves crashing against the rocks on the beach down below. His imagination has gotten pretty vivid these days) and be some kind of weird hermit that never comes out of his shell. “How come Derek gets to-” “Derek! Answers my fucking e-mails! Derek! Does as he's asked and told! You wouldn't know anything about it,” a hard slap of a finger against her spacebar, “because you never even so much as glance outside your window!” Stiles grits his teeth. So maybe he hasn't exactly been checking the gossip and Entertainment websites as often as he was when he was, you know, nuts. But excuse the fuck out of him for not wanting to read story after story about how much weight he's lost, how tired he looks all the time, how heartbroken he is over Derek. It's vomitous, really. “He already had his interview with Malia Tate,” she's saying now, slapping her MacBook Pro shut and leaning back into her swivel chair. “They wanted it to be a joint interview, you know. I put a stop to that right quick; so don't say I don't care about what you do or don't want.” “Um?” He narrows his eyes and glares at her with as much acidity as he can muster. “You don't care about what me or Derek want. Like, at all.” For a second, Erica just stares at him. She has this particular even gaze that she gives off – an allknowing, all-understanding gaze, like Oprah Winfrey or Dr. Phil; as if she holds the secrets to the known universe, and she's looking at you like this idiot has no fucking clue, none whatsoever. She fluffs her hair out with a hand, sighs through her nose, and avoids direct eye contact. “I get the sense that you and I need to have a conversation.” “We've been having conversations, and I haven't enjoyed a single second-” “I meant about the last week of you and Derek being together.” Stiles glowers down at the floor in her office, eyebrows knit together. They've had this conversation before, of course; a few times, as a matter of fact. But it usually went something like you fucking psycho, manipulative, bitch and I fucking saved your idiotic life and you owe me and I hope you do fucking sue me and take all my money so I can die of starvation and never have to see your
face ever again. So, basically, they haven't been the most productive conversations of Stiles' life. “I'm not going to deny that I controlled the situation in such a way that Scott and Derek would have an issue at your party. I never in a hundred million years thought he would punch you in the face, but...” “Like that makes it any better?” Erica grits her teeth and raises her eyes to the ceiling; takes a deep inhale, then exhales. Calming herself down so she doesn't start up on another tirade about Stiles' mental issues. “No, it doesn't.” Normally, that's where an apology would be; but the silence drags on with the two of them staring at each other, neither one speaking or blinking. “Whatever. It was fucked up. I was just doing my fucking job, and I've got nothing to be sorry for.” “You fucking absolute cold-blooded bi-” “As for the four or five days you spent with Dr. Deaton,” she fluffs her hair again and huffs, “after Derek punched you, I didn't have a choice. They step in like that, okay? They more or less forced me to give you off to them, and – you know they would've killed Derek were it not for me!” Stiles blinks at her, unimpressed. “So you forced him onto your stupid fucking television show and made him into a martyr.” “I made him a half a million dollars,” she shrugs. “I capitalized on the situation. This is Hollywood. This is post-mutation America, and I was sitting on a goldmine when I dragged you two in here to sign my contract. I just cashed it in as soon as the got the opportunity.” He realizes something about Erica, in that moment. Something that he probably should've realized the very second that he first saw her five years ago on that very first episode of Soulmates; because it's in the way she carries herself and smiles fakely and cackles. She's not a good person. But she's not exactly the fucking devil incarnate, like Stiles has been treating her for the past few weeks, either. She is a woman who probably had to claw her way to the very tippy-top of the ladder, crushing friends and family underneath her high heels, willing to sacrifice pretty much every thing if it meant being the best. In terms of reality television, she is the fucking best. In terms of public communications and relations, she is the fucking best. Horrible, evil people do things without motivation or reasons. Erica does things because it's in everyone's collective best interest for success. Not exactly easy or enjoyable success – but she does have a point. Stiles is a millionaire. Maybe he's never going to understand that vicious, Hollywood drive to get money and luxury and fame at any and all costs, but he gets that that's how Erica's mind works. “I'm not here to ruin your life. I'm trying to start it over. All right? You and I cannot be having this conversation every two weeks, Moszek. Bury the fucking horse, put the stick down, do your job.” Stiles blinks at her for a couple of moments, and then says, deadpan, “you know I'm never going to
forgive you.” “I could give a shit,” she rolls her eyes and taps a heel on the ground. “I could've let you rot in Deaton's fucked up science lab, but I came and picked you up. Didn't I? Hmph.” Malia Tate is just as flustered as she was the very first time she met Stiles in person. She smooths her skirt out again and again, runs her fingers through her air while laughing nervously and avoiding direct eye contact, taps her pen against her notebook in an uneven rhythm while Stiles sits across from her and waits patiently for the actual interview to begin. She puffs out a laugh, for the thirtieth time, and scratches at one of her eyebrows. “Um – okay. So, you're single now. Is that correct?” “Yup.” “Had you dated anyone, before Derek? Like – I don't know. A normal person?” “Nope.” She blinks at him, glances down at the tape recorder in-between them, and then back up. “You never dated anyone?” “People take one look at this,” he pulls his shirt collar down to reveal the light red mark, and Malia traces it again and again with her eyes, fascinated, “and they don't want to suck my dick. Believe it or not.” Something about that clearly makes Malia very uncomfortable, if the way she's suddenly fascinated by the yellow lines on her notebook page is anything to go by. “Do you – do you think that's going to be different? Now that you're – um...” Stiles waves his hand in the air, prompting her forward. “...cured?” He sighs through his nose and shakes his head. “Anyone who'd want to date me now, they'd only be interested in whatever public image people are spitting out about me. I'm not interested.” She scratches at her eyebrow again. “You're never going to date anyone ever again? Like...ever?” “Like, ever. Unless I find someone who's not just some weird mutt-enthusiast. The odds of that look slimmer and slimmer every single day.” He pauses, pursing his lips. “And I'm still a mutt.” For a few seconds, it's dead quiet. Malia is looking up from her notebook, wide-eyed, lips parted, staring at Stiles' mark with something akin to wonder. Abruptly, she slaps her hand into the center of the table and clicks the tape recorder off. “Look, off the fucking record – you didn't respond to my e-mail.”
Stiles swallows thickly and looks away from her, out the huge windows of the meeting room, and doesn't say anything. Of course he didn't answer that e-mail. She never should've sent it in the first place. “And I know you know what it's like trying to talk to Derek about literally anything,” she huffs and shakes her head, “so, basically, neither of you have been very responsive and it's literally keeping me awake at night that I think you both hate me, and-” “I don't want to offend you – I really don't –“ Stiles holds his and out in her direction, cocking his head to the side as he scrutinizes her, “but how the literal hell did you get this job?” How the fuck does a person become a gossip columnist on par with Perez Hilton, while walking around being terrified that the people they're writing on hate them? Nothing about that makes sense whatsoever. She huffs. “Good question.” Stiles eyes her up and down, puckers his lips. “I'm not mad at you, or anything. It's just gossip. It's -” “It's horrible, is what it is,” she laughs somewhat hysterically, rolling her eyes to the ceiling and shaking her head, “I wanted to write novels, originally but it's – it's work.” “Like I said. I really don't have any problems with you on a personal level. That article was, um -” she winces across the table, “...colorful. Like all the other ones before it. I don't even think it's worth a conversation, I don't get why you're freaking out about it so much.” She bites down on her lower lip, makes eye contact with him for the first time, before glancing back down at the tape recorder once more, as if she's making sure it's really off. “Where did you go? When you got cured? Off the record.” Stiles gives her a wane smile, pretends like the memory of his days in that place haven't been fodder for his nightmares ever since he came back home. “Do you really want to know?” Malia's eyes go even huger, if that's even physically possible, and she swallows loudly in the silence of the room. She shakes her head no, and Stiles thought as much. Let her imagination come up with something much more tame than what actually happened. Let her think that he was in some hospital being coaxed gently into getting the cure. “That's why it bothers me so much. I don't like being a part of this society that...” she trails off, flicks her eyes off somewhere to the side, “...treats people like that. If Derek was Brad Pitt and you were Angelina Jolie – if you were just two normal people -” “Then your article would've been a lot different. I know that, Malia. I'm still a mutt, and I still get treated like one. It's – I'm used to it.” He's not, though. He's not. Malia stays silent for a few seconds, like she's turning that over and over in her own head. It's the most bizarre thing, Stiles thinks, that the lead writer of MuttPop.com, a site that has dedicated itself to dehumanizing the handful of mated-borns to such a disgusting extent, is sitting here making progressive comments about how mutts are treated. Like a vegetarian working at McDonald's, Stiles thinks in his own head, watching as Malia rubs at
her face like she's trying to psych herself up to keep going forwards with this conversation. Without another word, she reaches forward and turns the tape recorder back on. She clears her throat, smooths her hair out, and says, “and you haven't spoken to Derek Hale. Is that correct?” Stiles sighs. “No. We have not spoken. We probably won't be speaking.” In his head, he hears an imaginary ghost of Derek's voice from most likely only days earlier, sitting in the exact same position as Stiles is right now with Malia Tate across from him and a tape recorder between them, saying, no, I haven't spoken to Stiles, Stiles and I don't speak. Stiles and I will most likely never speak again. “And how do you feel about that?” Malia asks, quiet. Sometimes, Stiles thinks. Sometimes... “I don't feel anything about that.” ---Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to remember and celebrate the life of Sterek. This is the official wake of what once was – the official tearful send off of a beautiful romance, buried deep six feet into the earth. Any and all hopes of a Sterek reunion have been repeatedly and forcefully shot down by Stiles Stilinski and Derek Hale, former lovers, former soulmates, now – as Stiles puts it – strangers. I interviewed them both on separate days in separate locations, nearly fifty miles away from one another, and to be as brutally honest as possible, they both looked like certifiable s**t. Derek for his part looked like he hadn't even so much as stepped outside his cavernous house in as long as we haven't seen him (which would explain that), and Stiles looked sullen and worn out. It was f**king sad. It was like an honest to God funeral at both interviews. “I haven't seen him, he doesn't know where I live, even. All right? I don't know how many times we can say this. There's nothing f**king there anymore. It's like trying to mix oil and water, with us. We don't f**king get along. At all.” Harsh words, from a man who once danced Stiles through a three-song set of slow songs at Erica Reyes' Midsummer Night's Dream party. Is it even worth it anymore to have a Sterek tag on MuttPop? Should we just tear it down out of respect for the dead, or should we leave it up in memoriam? (Taylor Swift is Going to Write About This – Malia Tate, MuttPop.com) ---Lydia Martin drives a nondescript silver Lexus. She has her hair up in a bun on top of her head, sunglasses pushed up onto her face, mark covered up easily by her short dress, as she approaches where Stiles is sitting in the very back corner of one of the least frequented coffee houses in Beacon Hills. A few people had recognized him, when he walked in, but it didn't go much farther than the barista already knowing what name to scribble across his coffee cup and a polite hello.
When she places herself down in the chair across from him, she crosses her legs and sits ramrod straight, refusing to remove her sunglasses even in the dim, atmospheric lighting. Her lips are curled down into a tight frown as she appraises him. “You've still got it, then.” He glances down at as much of the mark as he can see; just the tiny sliver of it that reaches down towards his collarbone. “Like a scar, I guess.” She purses her lips. “Right.” He sips at his coffee for a second, and Lydia doesn't say anything else. It's unnerving, with her sunglasses on, that he can't tell where exactly she's looking. All he sees is his own dim reflection in the dark lenses. “Is there a particular reason you...” “Yes. I'm sorry about what happened at your party.” Stiles shrugs. “Yeah, well it was a shit party anyway, right?” The joke falls flat, and Lydia doesn't laugh. Stiles doesn't laugh either. “I knew you two were different,” she says it without a hint of pride or smugness, not the way people usually say they were right at all. She says it like she fucking hates the fact that she was right. Would've given anything to be wrong. “Just something in the way he looked at you.” He can't fucking stand staring at himself in her glasses anymore, so he looks away. “And how does Jordan look at you?” “Like he loves me,” she says simply, leaning her elbows down onto the table in front of them. “Derek looked at you like he didn't have a choice.” “You didn't have a choice, either?” “It's different. You know that it's different. Was different, I suppose.” “So you're saying it's all great on your end? That you and Jordan are just so in love and there are never any problems, and-” “I don't appreciate that tone of voice,” even through her sunglasses, Stiles can tell that she's narrowing those cold eyes on him, scrutinizing him the way she does interviewers on talk shows and fans at book signings. “What I meant was that it might not be a choice, but it's not unpleasant. It doesn't always feel like it's forced. Can you say the same?” Stiles nods. “There were times – um...” he's been actively trying to ignore these memories, but of course, Lydia Martin has to come in and rope them out of the fucking depths of his mind, “...it didn't always feel forced. But it did always feel – necessary, I guess?” She smiles at him; a thin, emotionless, smile. “Necessary. That's the word. That's what's different. With Jordan and I, it feels natural. Like we could get away with never seeing each other again. We just don't particularly want to.” He frowns, still staring off somewhere past her head. That's not how it was for Stiles and Derek, at
all. All the times that they would try to fight, try to get away from each other, try to spend more than a night apart...it never fucking worked. If he had spent more than ten seconds not being so fucking wrapped up in him, then he would've been smart and tried to get in touch with Lydia or maybe even Allison or Kira. He would've seen it coming sooner. Both of them would have. Things could've turned out differently. There was a completely different storyline he could've lived, a completely different life altogether, and instead he's living this one. And it's shit. “Now I guess you're all better.” This is said with another frown, another detached tone. “Define better,” he laughs humorlessly. “I define it as not being forced into something without your consent, Stiles. How do you define it?” “I define it as not being locked in a lab underground while a team of doctors watch me die. Sound fun?” Her lips purse, hard, and Stiles can tell she didn't know that. Nobody fucking knows that; Stiles doesn't even know how Derek was administered the shot. They probably had to get a team of dudes to strap him down into something, while a doctor just like Deaton flicked his fingers against a syringe, said I'm sorry, but you'll thank me. “You're not the only one who spent some time in a lab, Stiles.” Lydia's forced sterilization is something that no one ever talks about – except in tiny little blurbs, throwaway details in magazines like oh, how said it is she can't have children, how sad Jordan's blonde hair and her green eyes will never be on an adorable little baby. Stiles remembers it, though. He's sure that Allison and Kira remember it. That Jordan and Derek do as well. That any of the last remaining mated-borns left wandering around in as much secrecy as they can remember it. “Right,” he says quietly back to her, flicking his eyes back to stare at himself in the lenses of her glasses. “I didn't forget.” “Me, either.” They share a long look with one another; like they've come to some sort of quiet understanding of each other, one that they probably never would've been able to reach if Stiles had never been cured, if Stiles was still that crazy person who couldn't see anything or anyone else except for Derek and how much he loved Derek. She slowly lifts her hand up to her face and slides the sunglasses off, so Stiles gets a good look at her sea-foam green eyes in person for the first time since they met at that disastrous party. She locks eyes with him, slides her eyes up and down his faded mark, and then, so quietly it's almost a whisper, asks, “what's it like?” Stiles blinks at her. “What?”
“The cure.” “Oh. Um...” he furrows his eyebrows together, trying to think. “Strange, maybe? Not quite like it did before I met Derek, but, um...more normal. I don't know how to describe it except to say that it's like I have no responsibilities anymore, almost. Like there's nothing I have to do. I don't know.” An unidentifiable expression crosses her features; something like wistfulness, wide-eyed and sad. “You don't miss him?” Stiles thinks he's about fucking had it with that question. With the way it makes his heartbeat skip, the way his hands go clammy and his eyes glaze over; the way he has to stop and think for a second, even though the answer should be immediate. Ghosts of Derek's hands sliding down his arm. The memory of the way his eyes would look in the sunlight. The echo of the way he would talk to him when they were alone, and there was no one around for them to prove anything to. In the back of his mind, sometimes, just fucking...sometimes. “I don't think about him, to be honest with you.” Lydia, who could probably smell a lie a mile away if she really put her mind to it, just sighs from the back of her throat and looks like she's imagining it in her own head. “I would love the choice. I would love to pick for myself.” “Who would you pick, if you could?” Stiles pretends not to notice the way her eyes get filmy with unshed tears, or the way her chin wobbles, like she's trying to keep herself from bursting out into tears right here and now. “I can't imagine anyone else except for Jordan. Isn't that sad?” When everyone else on earth, every other normal person alive, has that fear of not being able to know, to never be quite sure what else is out there, looks at their spouses sometimes and questions whether or not they made a mistake...Lydia probably cries more often than not about the fact that she never wonders. She never fucking second-guesses it, she doesn't have the option. Who's lucky, then? Who's lucky, and who's cursed? The nightmares about the lab start to fade, groggily and hazily, into dreams about Derek Hale. Deaton's dark hands grabbing his arms roughly turn into Derek's tan hands running gently along his skin. The harsh fluorescent lights of his cell dim into the moonlight shining in on Derek's bed in the middle of the night, covering Stiles' pale skin and wisping across Derek's face, just enough that Stiles could see the color in them, if he looked close enough. Instead of waking up with jolts, flipping over, terrified, hoping to find his own bedroom – he wakes up feeling cold and disappointed, hoping to find Derek's bedroom. Some nights he lies awake for hours at a time, staring at the ceiling, his fingers drumming against his chest. Terrified to fall asleep and back into those dreams again, terrified to dream of someone he's not supposed to fucking care
about, anymore. In interviews, he smiles, and says eh, I feel like I hardly know him, or like I hardly ever knew him to begin with. He signs autographs and says yeah, I don't know, I just don't really ever wonder about him while the cameras flash across his face. He winks at his father at the dinner table with Scott to his left and says I'm so much happier, now, honestly – I can't believe I ever thought like that or acted like that, it wasn't me at all. Everyone nods, and smiles, and believes him. In his dreams, his mark is as bright and dark as it was the first night he met Derek. It scares the shit out of him. It scares the absolute shit out of him that he's supposed to be like all the others, from the books he's read, but he's just not. He pores through them night after night before he goes to sleep, reads things like I just didn't give a shit about him anymore, like we never knew each other to begin with and exactly like it was before everything, we never even spoke after that and it's hard to think I ever even liked him, so much as loved him, I don't even find him that attractive, and he wonders why he's different. Why does he think about Derek, why does he dream of him, when none of the other soulmates ever had this problem? Lydia Martin cried in a coffee shop because she told him that he was so much better off now. That he has the choice, now. And he wonders. If he has a choice, then why is his subconscious talking to him in the middle of the night, trying to convince him to go back in time to when he had none? One night, he's so fucking terrified, so absolutely disturbed by his own mind, that he winds up using the card that Dr. Deaton had handed to him on his way out of his desert lab. It has his phone number on it, and has spent the last month or so crumpled into a tiny ball in the very back of his desk drawer – he had planned on setting it on fire therapeutically one day, when he deemed himself over it – but...that day had yet to come. So he smooths it out, dials in the number before he can change his mind, and waits. He has to physically restrain himself from vomiting all over his desk when he hears the familiar, haunting voice of Deaton on the other end of the phone. “This is Stiles Stilinski,” he says through grit teeth, and is met with several moments of silence. “Mr. Stilinski,” Stiles winces, “this is quite a surprise.” Really? Is it motherfucker? Is it surprising that I would want to talk to you, after – he grits his teeth again, closes his eyes, breathes. Focuses on the issue at hand. “Is there any – any way that...maybe it didn't work? All the way?” “That what didn't work all the way?” “The fucking cure. What else would I be talking about?” “Didn't work all the way?” He sounds like he'd be laughing, or at the very least smiling, and it pisses Stiles off. “It's kind of a bit of an all or nothing type of thing, Stiles.”
“What does that mean?” “You either have the disease, or you don't. There's no such thing as leftovers. I assume that's what you mean, right?” Stiles pinches the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, jiggling his leg up and down nervously. “But if I was different than the others-” “You were different from the current others. I thought I made myself quite clear.” “Well, sorry if I wasn't fucking on my top level of mental processing, you piece of shit. I don't know if you remember the situation I was in when you were explaining things to me, but -” “You're right. I apologize.” Stiles tries not to remember Deaton apologizing right before he - “What I'm saying is that you and Derek were biologically identical to the soulmates from the first time around. Which would mean that the antidote would work identically, as well. And, like I said – there's no such thing as leftovers.” “Isn't the fact that I exist at all proof that leftovers exist?” There's a pause. “That's an interesting angle to take. Do you mind me asking what this call is in reference to?” Stiles covers his eyes with his hand and shakes his head, wondering if he really wants to share this with him. He thinks that he doesn't really have anyone else to confer with – Deaton is the only person he's ever met that's actually studied this. The only person who would know. “All the other soulmates, from before. They...said it was easy to just...move on. After.” “Right.” “And lately I've been having a hard time. Moving on.” Another pause. “You think you still have feelings for Derek Hale?” “I've been having dreams. Um – dreams. Vivid. Vivid fucking dreams, like reality, all right? And I've just been thinking about it a lot.” “Thinking about him.” “Yes, all right? Every thing is fucked up, I'm fucked up, and I don't understand why, if I'm meant to be cured that this would be happening to me!” Deaton sighs on the other line. “If you had any remnants of the disease still left inside of you, it wouldn't be coming onto you this subtly, Stiles. I can assure you of that. Dreams and thoughts and memories are normal, human things to experience.” Like Stiles wasn't human before he got the antidote? “It doesn't sound to me like you're sick. It sounds to me like you miss someone you used to be close with, Stiles.” “But -” he sputters, in disbelief, “nobody else ever had this problem before.”
“There's nothing I can do for you, Mr. Stilinski. You should get some sleep – you sound tired.” Stiles goes on. He dreams about Derek every other night, wakes up reaching across the bed as if he expects to feel electricity prickling along his fingers, as if he'd find Derek's skin waiting for him on the other end. He imagines that Derek is out there, waiting for him, the way they used to always wait for each other before they knew who or what they were even waiting for. It keeps him sane. Or, maybe, it doesn't. Maybe it drives him absolutely insane. The lines between the two states of mind are starting to becoming more and more blurred – funny, how when he actually was a complete nutter he felt like the most sane person on the face of the planet, so sure. Now that he's cured he has no idea whether he's sane or not, and spends half of his time actively convincing himself and everyone around him that he's fine. Scott calls and asks why he hasn't been around as much lately, and Stiles shrugs his shoulders and says I'm just wrapped up in the promo, you know Erica. Erica calls and asks why he didn't show up for their two o'clock meeting and he says well, Scott had an emergency, so... And nobody else ever calls. The e-mails pour in, day after day, of people asking him to come and join him on their show, Jimmy Fallon and Ellen DeGeneres, and he rolls his eyes to the ceiling and imagines smiling out at crowds and saying "haha, Derek Hale who? Haha, like, I feel like, I don't know, he's just such a blip on my radar screen. Have you seen him, though? How's he doing?" He thinks about Deaton saying he doesn't love you, he's sick, Stiles, just like you and he thinks about Derek saying I don't love you, I don't need you like that all the way at the start of every thing, and he thinks about Derek's phone number sitting in his contacts and Derek's e-mail address waiting to be tapped out into an address line by his fingers, and he doesn't get much sleep anymore. Tries the number. We're sorry, you have reached a number that been disconnected, or is no longer in service. Stiles is just a normal person, now. He's human, and he wasn't before, obviously. He doesn't think about Derek Hale, and if he does, it's just...human. It's normal to wonder about a person he used to be close with. People write songs about it, he thinks, the way it feels to miss someone like this. None of them were ever forced to love anyone, though. “You look like trash,” Erica says to him one afternoon in early October, and he thinks about how an entire Summer has passed and he is someone else, now. Something else, now. “Honestly, I'm starting to, like, worry. And not just as your publicist. As your friend.” Stiles knows he has huge dark purple bags under his eyes, that he hardly ever bothers styling his hair anymore so it all sticks up haphazardly in a mop of brown, that his clothes all have macaroni and cheese and ranch dressing stains because apparently he can't be bothered to go out and buy laundry detergent. He knows that whenever people stop him on the streets and ask for a picture, they give him
side-eye looks, like they're about two steps away from asking him if he's doing all right. “You and fucking Derek, both,” she rolls her eyes and purses her lips at him, “I swear I should've signed Allison and Kira. I should've jumped when I had the chance. Look at what I'm stuck with? The two sad sacks.” “Derek is being a sad sack?” Stiles asks, before he can stop himself. Erica doesn't notice that he shouldn't be interested. She just nods her head and throws her hands up in consternation. “I try to get him to come out into the real world and do real person things, and he acts like a fucking vampire every time I even try to pull open the curtains. He's lucky he's working on that ridiculous book, otherwise, I'd -” “Book?” Stiles asks, and again, it completely goes over Erica's head as strange. “Yeah, he's writing a fucking book. About – oh, I don't know. I don't care. It'll sell. What are you doing? Hmmm? Shall I expect a twelve-song album from you any time soon? Maybe a series of poems? You can write out all your weird emo-feelings into a notebook and I'll peddle it for twenty dollars a copy.” Stiles chews on his nails as he imagines what Derek could possibly be writing about. Maybe he's writing about all the things that Stiles never bothered to ask him, when they were together – all the things that keep Stiles awake at night, wondering. Or maybe he'll be writing about Stiles. “You could design something. You could release a line of t-shirts! I know you like the colorful ones, you could create your own!” But it's not like Derek would ever write about Stiles, because, again. They're not supposed to care about each other anymore. “Or, imagine this : you in a movie. Oh, my God. You on television. In a show. I could get you a role on that ridiculous new MTV show. What's it called? Adult Dog?” “Yeah. Sign me up for Adult Dog, Erica, sounds great.” ----@ster_ekgurl14 I tihn k k I just saw fdeerk hale in beacon hislsl!?!?!? ? ? ? ?RI1P RIP @mrs_stilinski I literally just saw Derek Hale's camaro in the McDonald's drive-thru and I am CRYING @swiftstilinski ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING? IS DEREK SERIOUSLY IN BH? @ster_ekgurll14 hhe was enxt to me a st a stop light I cant see throughmy tears @halestorm1994 he's back to see stiles. He is BACK TO SEE STILES. HE'S GOING TO SEE STILES STEREK FUCKIN LIVES
---Because Stiles doesn't really pay attention to the internet at all anymore, hardly goes on his Ericamandated twitter account, hardly knows who's been updating it with links promoting is interviews and appearances with winky faces and check this out!, he is probably the last person in Beacon Hills to know that Derek Hale came back. He winds up finding out about it when he has the local news turned on as he's making his omelet in the morning; he winds up cracking it in two on the flip when he hears the announcer say Derek's name, nearly burns himself on the pot when he hears back in Beacon Hills. Spaztically, he grabs the remote and turns the volume way up, tripping over himself to get to the couch, leaving his broken up omelet forlorn in the pot on the stove. “...apparently early yesterday evening. He was driving his trademark black Camaro, wearing his trademark sunglasses, and the only thing that was missing was an amused looking Stiles Stilinski in the passenger seat. Witnesses say that he and a huge moving truck both pulled into the lot of his former apartment building, which he hasn't been seen at since late July; his whereabouts for the past several months have been a bit of a mystery, kept under intense secrecy, and no one has even so much as seen him since he received the cure that broke he and his ex-boyfriend, aforementioned Stiles Stilinski, apart.” Stiles sits down in a daze. He stares at the low quality pictures of Derek driving that idiotic Camaro on the screen, at his familiar sunglasses and the familiar set to his jaw. And he doesn't feel that dramatic pull, that dramatic desperation that he felt when he was watching Derek on screen in Deaton's lab. But he feels...something. A twinge. An echo, maybe. It's normal. It's human. He used to know every single inch of Derek's skin, and it'd be weirder if he just sat there and said oh, well, Derek's back, I guess we might run into each other at the grocery store! The problem is that the sheer thought of running into Derek at the grocery store has Stiles freaking out the way he used to freak out at the prospect of talking to a pretty girl in high school. He wants to know, though, he has to know what the fuck Derek is doing back, why he came back now, why Beacon Hills, what was he doing out in this cavernous house, where was the cavernous house, does he ever think about Stiles, does he ever remember them as a thing, as more than just two people who don't even fucking talk anymore? He calls Erica. “What the fuck is this shit, Erica?” “Um!” She sounds guilty as all fucking sin. “I don't know what you're referring to, because it's hard to understand you when you use that tone of voice-” “Derek! Fucking Derek! Derek is back in town and you-”
“I had no idea!” “You...knew!” “I – might've had an idea...” “You fucking motherfucking bi-” “Hey!” She cuts him off with a bark. “I've been begging you for months to move to Beverly Hills! To Hollywood! Where you fucking belong! And you refused to do it!” “Why is he here? Just answer me that. Just tell me why the literal Hell he came back here.” In the back of his mind, Stiles has this tiny voice, hoping that Erica will say something like well, he said he missed you, so of course, he had to come back just so he could see you again. It's stupid, and idiotic, and he tries to silence it. Knowing better than that. “He finished his book, and promo is going to be starting up pretty soon. He had to come back into civilization, and he didn't want to move to Beverly Hills either, so...surprise?” Stiles wishes he used one of those older wall phones, or a phone with a cord, so he could've dramatically slammed the phone down with a smash – but like everyone else, all he can do is jam his index finger on end call and gets absolutely no satisfaction from it. It doesn't matter. It literally doesn't matter. He's never going to run in to him. Beacon Hills might be a tiny little town compared to LA or Hollywood, but it's not like it's a fishtank. Stiles and Derek don't even have the same haunts. Stiles shops at the “pretentious poser real foods store” as Derek would call it, and Derek shops at the place that sells steaks in twenty packs. Stiles get his clothes from local stores and the old guy at the Farmer's Market who sells flannels for fifteen dollars each, and Derek buys five packs of plain white shirts at Wal Mart. Stiles goes to the ice cream parlor, the movie theater, the family owned used bookstore, and Derek buys tubs of ice cream in bulk, uses Netflix, and goes to the library. = There's no fucking way they'll ever run into each other. If they do, it'll be bad. But they won't. So there's no use worrying about it. It'll be like they're always on two completely different sides of the same town. Their paths will not fucking cross. Until they, naturally, fucking do cross. Stiles is ripping a package of macaroni and cheese off the shelf, after spending five minutes trying to decide between Spongebob shapes and Shrek shapes; he wheels around, completely oblivious, as he glares down at the word-search game they've put on the back, and smacks into something huge and solid. “Whoops,” he laughs, taking a couple of steps back, “sorry, man, I-” He blinks up, meets hazel-green eyes, and thinks for a second about turning around and Napoleon Dynamite running his way the fuck out of there.
There's nothing there. Where there used to be an inescapable pull, something he couldn't resist, something that felt like he'd sooner die than try to get away from...now there's just...air. It feels wrong. It feels fucking horrible. “Oh,” Stiles squeaks, taking another step back, for good measure. Derek has a bag of tomatoes dangling from his hand, and a couple of bags of shredded mozzarella cheese in the other. “You – you're...I mean...” “I'm back,” Derek says simply, scrutinizing Stiles, like he's trying to find something. Like he's chasing after the same thing that Stiles is. “Yeahhh...” Stiles scratches at his cheek and squints, like he's trying to look pre-occupied, or something. “That's cool. That's neat. I saw that on the news. Because, you know, you didn't call me or e-mail me to warn me or anything,” Stiles laughs, hysterically, shrugging his shoulders, “interestingly enough, I'd have probably liked a phone call.” “Well-” “And I tried to call you once, but the number wasn't even in service anymore. Which was – you could've given me your new number?” “I wasn't trying to-” “I was just surprised, that's all. I had to find out through a third party and I would've liked to hear it from you.” Stiles doesn't understand where this conversation is going. Why he's fucking saying any of this at all, when he should've just said neat tomatoes and moonwalked his way out of the fucking situation. It should've been that easy, it should've been as easy as walking out on someone he's never even met before. But they're both still standing there, staring at each other. “I didn't think you'd want to hear from me,” Derek says evenly, narrowing his eyes on Stiles. “Funny, because I didn't think you'd want to hear from me.” Derek glances down at the box of Kraft in Stiles' hand, and Stiles thinks he must be remembering the number of times that he forced Derek to eat this crap. How many times Stiles would say it's quick, it's easy, it's cheap, it's yum! and Derek would go please do not fucking say yum like that ever again and Stiles would go yumtown! and Derek would pitch a fucking fit and they'd bicker until looking each other in the eyes and...not, anymore. Now, Stiles looks Derek directly in the eyes, and the annoyance doesn't dissipate. Nobody and nothing but himself can control his emotions and he feels like he's floundering, now, doesn't know how to interact with Derek if something isn't telling him how. “Not like you didn't say you basically didn't give a shit about me in a half dozen interviews,” Derek's
eyes shift to Stiles' faded mark, “but whatever.” Stiles bristles like a taunted blowfish, shakes his macaroni and cheese out in front of him as if it were a weapon, and says, “and I suppose you were out there saying all kinds of charming things about me, right?” A pause. “Not that I fucking read any of it!” “Not that I watched or read any of yours, either.” “Oh, good,” Stiles spits, sidestepping away from him, glaring, “glad to hear it. Glad to see you back in my town eating my tomatoes.” “You own all the tomatoes in Beacon Hills?” “I own this entire town!” Stiles is passing by him now, slowly. “This is my town! My town first!” Derek smiles smugly, raising his eyebrows. “I was born six years before you.” That gives Stiles pause. He had no fucking idea that Derek was born in Beacon Hills. Because, like he always says, they didn't ever really talk to each other when they were soulmates. They just...you know. Had lots of sex and bickered and joked a lot. “Well, good! Old man! Enjoy your retirement home!" Naturally the entire argument winds up as a cover story on MuttPop.com, because of course someone had seen them and eavesdropped on the entire thing and probably recorded it word for word, called up Malia Tate. Malia probably sat in her office, rolling her eyes and wondering when her book deal was going to come along, and transcribed the argument; starting a fucking phenomenon. I own this town became a meme pretty much instantaneously, splattered across irrelevant pictures, a trending topic on Twitter for fucking hours on end, and Stiles sat and watched every thing go down with narrowed eyes and his arms crossed across his chest. How fucking typical. How absolutely the same every thing is to how it was in the Summer time, when he and Derek were soulmates. The gossip, the people freaking out over them being seen together for the first time in months, the laughs at how ridiculous their first conversation was. Stiles turns the conversation around in his head, over and over again, and thinks about why he didn't say what he'd been imagining saying ever since he first started dreaming of Derek again. He wonders why he didn't say you know I actually...kinda missed you or it's actually really nice to see you again, because I've been thinking a lot about you or just anything, anything else than him going exboyfriend on him about how he never called to tell him he was coming back. It was so fucking infantile. It was like those fights they used to get into when they were avoiding eye contact and not touching each other. Completely fucking stupid. Stiles goes on feeling stupid about it for days, and he hopes that Derek is feeling pretty stupid about it, too. He half expects his phone to chime with a text from Derek like my new number, since you wanted it
or an e-mail or a fucking carrier pigeon – but nothing happens. Days. It takes days, something that would've killed them the first time around, for Derek to show up at Stiles' apartment. He's wearing an olive green shirt and dark jeans, looking like he's trying to bring their Summer together back from the fucking dead, and Stiles asks how he knew where to find him. “I asked Erica,” Derek says, staring into Stiles' eyes – because he can do that, now. They can both do that. “I guess people saw me come in...” “I don't care about that,” Stiles says easily, motioning for Derek to step inside his place. “I don't care so much what they say about me like I used to.” Derek does come inside, and looks around himself with interest. Stiles got most of his furniture from estate sales, to give it that eclectic feel, as opposed to the minimalistic and monochrome feel that Derek always tried to strive for. Derek looks at all of his stuff, the fluffy pink couch most of all, with moderate levels of distaste and judgment. “This place looks like you.” “Yeah,” Stiles agrees as he closes the door. “It's my place, so...” “Yeah.” “Yeeahhh...” he scratches at his arm for something to do instead of standing there in awkward silence, “so was there a reason you...” “I just wanted to say,” he rubs at his forehead, sighs. “...I shouldn't have said all that stuff the other day. In the store.” “Me, either,” Stiles agrees easily, “but it's not any worse than anything else we've ever said to each other before.” Derek actually cracks a smile, looking at Stiles in the eyes again. “Right. Like me looking like a combination of Dumbo and Bugs Bunny and the monkey from Aladdin.” Stiles nods, smiling himself, “precisely like that.” Derek's smile fades, and he gets a strange look on his face. One that Stiles can't exactly say he's ever seen on him before; which is really saying something, because, back then, Stiles would've sworn that he knew every single expression Derek could ever think to make. “Do you ever – I mean...” he scratches a bit at his hair, “...think about all that stuff?” It takes Stiles' mind a second to catch up to what Derek's asking. He stands there staring at him for moments on end, face still locked into the smile from earlier, until he starts blinking at his ex-
soulmate. “Um – about what?” Derek gives Stiles a glare. “You know what.” Of course he does. Of course Stiles fucking knows. He hasn't forgotten, even though he was supposed to. He hasn't stopped thinking about it, even though he was supposed to. The silence drags on inbetween them, just staring into each other's eyes, and there are no forces working them together or anything rippling around in the air, but for some reason neither of them can tear their eyes away from the other. “We're not...soulmates anymore, Derek,” Stiles clears his throat, doesn't look away, “you know that.” Derek's facial expression doesn't change, and his eyes don't move from Stiles'. “I'm not here because something is forcing me to be. All right?” He blinks, cocking his head to the side. “I avoided you for almost three months. I can walk out anytime I want to, and I mean it, this time.” “Did you come all the way here just to fucking – try and drag this back out again? Huh?” Stiles finally tears his eyes away, taking a step backwards while glaring downwards at the ground, at Derek's shoes. “Because I've been, like, moving on or whatever. From that whole shitshow!” Derek follows Stiles' every movement with his eyes, an unimpressed look on his face. “If you can walk out, then walk out!” Stiles hisses, and a breath gets punched out of Derek's chest, and he still just stands there, staring at Stiles with that indecipherable expression on his face. Stiles throws his arms out at him, daring to look back into his eyes once more. “Well? Leave!” “I spoke to Dr. Deaton,” he says, casually, like he's just bringing up the weather and not the single worst thing he could possibly ever say. “About a week ago. He called me, and he asked me some pretty interesting questions.” He starts stepping closer to Stiles, and Stiles, on instinct, starts moving backwards. “About whether or not I ever, you know, miss you.” Stiles swallows as the back of his legs smack against the coffee table, as he gets more and more boxed in by Derek's advancing steps. “At first I said what I always say when someone asks me that question.” “No,” Stiles says, raspy, like he's said a million times before, “of course not.” “I never think about him,” Derek parrots himself. “We don't even speak anymore.” “What's there to miss?” Derek scans his eyes up and down Stiles' body, meets his eyes again. “He told me you called him, and that you said-” “I was just...” “You said you wanted to know if there could be anything leftover from the mutation.” Unconsciously, Stiles' eyes flick to Derek's own faded mark; bared to the world, since there'd be no point in
covering it up anymore. “You said you'd been thinking about me.” “I – it's just dreams and stuff,” Stiles defends weakly, as Derek stands only a foot away from him, as he's trapped in-between him and the coffee table, nowhere to run. “Stupid things. I – you know it'd be weirder if I didn't dream about you? Like, we were together for way longer than any of the ones before us, so...” Derek still looks just as unimpressed as he was the first time Stiles tried to talk his way out of it, eyebrows raising in disbelief. The look cracks him. It's like he can fucking just see through Stiles' bullshit entirely, like there's no possible way that Stiles can lie his way out of this one, that he's been discovered, found out. Just one fucking look, and Stiles snaps. “I miss it. All right? Is that you want to hear? I fucking miss you.” Derek's hand comes up very slowly, and he presses the palm of his hand against Stiles' neck. Nothing happens. The hand feels familiar, the skin and the callouses and the shape of it, it all calls back a memory – but nothing fucking happens. There's nothing there, where there should be every thing, and Stiles can't help but...miss that, too. Miss the way the contact between them used to be fucking electric, and is now just so/so. “I can leave, Stiles. I just don't want to.” Stiles closes his eyes. Thinks that this is something from one of his dreams. Feels like as soon as he opens them up again, Derek will be gone, and he'll be alone in his bed again. He opens them, and Derek is still there, and he's still staring at Stiles as he says, “I thought you didn't want to see me again.” “I thought you didn't want to see me again.” Stiles breathes it right back at him, tries to ignore the hand on his neck, but fails, miserably. “Is that why you came back? Did you come back because of me?” Derek smiles, just barely, something tugging at the corners of his lips. “I came back to be sure. And now I think I'm...pretty fucking sure.” He starts leaning downwards, like he's about to fucking kiss Stiles, and Stiles jerks backwards hard enough that he topples over onto the coffee table; Derek blinks down at him, confused and surprised. “Fucking wait a minute, asshole.”The namecalling is familiar, safe territory, and Derek narrows his eyes. “How do we know we don't just miss that thing that we had that – that's gone now? Okay? We don't even fucking know each other, Derek, we don't know anything about each other! I didn't even know you lived here before I met you!” “You want to know me?” Derek asks, glaring down at Stiles. “You want to know that shit? I was born in Beacon Hills. I was born and raised here, and I had a huge family, and nobody here even knew that I was a fucking mutt. No one knew.” Derek must've gone to the school down the river from him. He must've gone to that private school, must've lived off in the preserve on the complete opposite side of town from him. Their paths just...never crossed. Whether it was fate keeping them apart until they were ready, or just the luck of the draw, they lived in the same town for who knows how many years, less than ten miles away, and
didn't even realize it. “The only person who ever found out, she,” he sighs through his nose, scrubs his hands down his face, and leaves his eyes covered up when he speaks again, as if he's ashamed. “...she burned my house down with my entire family inside. I was supposed to die for being a mutt but I wasn't there. I wasn't fucking there.” Stiles stares up at him, wide-eyed. That explains every thing. It explains the trust fund, and the money, and the nice apartment, and the lack of pictures, and why Derek never once mentioned his family or wanted Stiles to meet them, why he would've left Beacon Hills for a while to begin with. Why he's so fucking hard all the time. Rough around the edges. Distant. Cold. The first person he kissed, the other person he'd been with, that must've been... “Is that the kind of shit you want to know about, Stiles?” Stiles swallows, doesn't know what to say. Doesn't know where to fucking begin. “You have the choice now, you know. You can choose whether or not you want to be near someone like me.” He finds his voice in a quiet croak. “Someone like you?” “Someone who's fucked up like me, Stiles. You were trapped with me before and I – I get it if...” Stiles frowns. He furrows his brow and frowns, watching as Derek works himself up into an upset, by thinking that Stiles wouldn't want him after telling him the truth about himself. About his past. For the past three months, Stiles has dreamed about Derek Hale. In the three months before that, he had sex with Derek Hale, got to know every single last inch of his skin and memorized the sound of his voice and how it felt to be wrapped up in his arms. And it was all fake. None of it was real. That was all...someone else. But the dreams. The echoes. The memories. They haunt him, now, follow him around. And if he and Derek were truly like the other soulmates, from before, then the memories would've faded by now. He'd be able to know, unequivocally, that he doesn't fucking want Derek. He'd be able to be sure. He'd be able to know. Like the feeling people chased so much, desired so much, that they were willing to have needles shoved inside of them to get it. Now, Stiles doesn't know anything. He's not sure. When he looks at Derek, he doesn't see a sure thing. He doesn't instantaneously hear wedding bells in the distance and he can't imagine their entire lives together; he just sees a person, like him. He reaches his hand out, and grabs at Derek's hand, interlacing their fingers. “Yeah. I can leave,
Derek,” Derek stares down at their fingers where they're locked together, blinking, “but I don't want to.” "Even after..." Derek clears his throat, tightening his fingers around Stiles', "...everything?" "That wasn't us, you know," he reminds Derek with a wink, "we kind of have to get to know each other all over again." “I guess, ultimately, we were lucky,” Derek says on the couch beside Stiles, smiling out at the audience with just his mouth, before sliding his eyes back over to Stiles. “We weren't one of the ones who were born without a soulmate, and I think I've heard that's much worse.” Erica smiles her lipstick lips at them, nodding like she understands, when of course she doesn't. “A lot of people have been asking, you know – about whether or not you guys are actual soulmates. Not the kind that need injections or anything put inside of you, but real. Do you two think so? Do you think you're real soulmates?” Stiles makes eye contact with Derek. And absolutely nothing happens; but Stiles' lips slide into a smile all the same. “I'm not sure. I guess I just don't know.” “Do you think you guys will be together forever?” They both laugh. How stupid that question seems, now, when before it was the most important question. It wasn't even a question, then. It just was. “We could be. I don't know – it's impossible to know something like that.” “You used to know,” she reminds him gently, raising her eyebrows at the cameras. “Yeah,” Stiles nods, “I think I like it better this way.”
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