#and sterek has this natural chemistry that makes it even better

[patolemus]

Sterek fic recs: Fake Dating AU Edition

Because @oldefashioned requested a fake dating rec list, here it is. These are all very funny, as fake dating fics ought to be, so I hope you get a good laugh out of it.

1. Not Your Disney Romance by Wrennefer (Wrenegadeone)

After a long-forgotten agreement of an arranged marriage between Derek and the daughter of another pack's alpha resurfaces, Stiles takes it upon himself to become the most amazing fake fiancé that a clueless, desperate alpha werewolf could wish for.

Notes: Domestic pack, my beloved. Stiles and Derek are precious here, I LOVE THEM!! The visiting pack, not so much, but who cares about them?? It's all pretty lighthearted, all things considered. It's completed.

2. Electricity In the Contact by ladyblahblah

In which Derek has been invited to the Greater Pacific Northwest Alpha Symposium (that's not what it's called, Stiles, stop saying that), and showing up unattached would mean an arranged marriage. When the rest of the pack objects, he agrees to let Stiles come along to pose as his mate. Derek is reasonably sure that he's not going to make it out of this weekend alive.

Notes: Werewolf convention fics are so good! I actually haven't found all that many, considering how common a trope it is, and it's a tragedy because they're always so well done! This one is no exception, and the mini-world building is also great! It's completed.

3. can’t be hateful, gotta be grateful by HalfFizzbin

"Be cool, Dad, we've decided to con Grandma." (Or, the one where the Stilinski men drag Derek to Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma's and she gets the right wrong idea.)

Notes: this one is just *cheff´s kiss* wonderful! It's all pretty domestic and the humor is on point. College student Stiles and the Sheriff are strong armed into spending Thanksgiving with Stiles' grandma, and they find nothing better than to bring Derek with them. Pining and misunderstandings ensue and thus comes the fake dating. It's completed.

4. Gravity’s Got Nothing on You by zosofi

“Three weeks,” Derek says. “Still don’t want to,” Stiles says. “I’ll pay you,” Derek says, and that… that has Stiles interested. Alf’s Antique’s may be a great job, but it’s not a high-paying job, and half of Stiles’s tuition is coming from financial aid, so… “How much,” Stiles asks, “are we talking here? Because I know your family, dude. And it’ll be kind of awkward after.“ “My family thinks you’re some sort of fucking gift to the world,” Derek seethes, like he’s jealous, “they’ll probably be pissed at me when we break it off, so don’t worry about that. Five hundred bucks.” “A thousand,” Stiles says, because screw ethics. Also, the Hale family is loaded. Derek can deal.

Notes: this had such a chokehold on me when I first read it. Absolutely wonderful. Enemies to lovers?? Maybe. Assholes to assholes-in-love, is a better descriptor. There's werewolves, and magic, and it's awesome! It's completed.

5. He’s Not Mine by Sonnee

Derek comes home to find an abandoned werebaby on his front porch and Stiles volunteers to help him out. Surprisingly, that is just the beginning of his problems.

Notes: again, it's all very domestic, like most fake dating fics ought to be. It's a kid fic, Sterek are mates, we have all the love. Not much else I can think to add... it's completed.

6. Real life isn’t a movie (life doesn’t make narrative sense) by dearericbittle (dutchmoxie)

Somehow accidentally insulting a hot guy in a coffee shop leads to pretending to be his boyfriend in front of a house full of werewolves. Stiles Stilinski is living his best life and making the most of his Hallmark movie moment.

Notes: this one had me cracking up because it's so funny! Stiles is living his best life, for real. Derek... suffers. But it's okay, because he gets a boyfriend out of this whole thing! They are disgustingly sweet in that assholish way they have. It's completed.

7. You look like my next mistake by Vendelin

“So, are you dating someone new? Someone who doesn’t mind that you’re frigid?” Kate cocks her head to the side, smiling as though she just asked him about where he bought his shoes. His entire body sighs in defeat as his shoulders grow square. Just as he opens his mouth, someone comes up to stand beside him, snaking an arm around his shoulders. When he glances to his side, expecting to see Isaac, his brain seems to malfunction. Because it isn’t Isaac. It’s Stiles Stilinski, the lacrosse talent of the year, a senior who Derek has seen multiple times from far away, but never ever talked to. In which Derek is a nerd jock, and Stiles is a frat guy, and Derek falls for him even though he knows he shouldn't.

Notes: this one had me HOWLING it's so good!! Frat boy Stiles, my beloved. It's technically not fake dating because it turns into an actual relationship pretty quickly, but it starts as fake dating so I'll take it. Stiles is an absolute sweetheart in this one, I love him! And Derek is shy, and insecure, but he's so great, and everyone gets a happy ending except Kate, which is always a good thing. It's completed.

8. All’s Fair In Orgasms and War by bleepobleep

AVN BREAKING NEWS-- DIAMOND VISTA RIDGE BREAKS HIS CONTRACT WITH HALE HOUSE "We haven't seen much of our favorite rock hard stud from Hale House ever since that indie twink dethroned him as champion in Orgasm Wars, but it's just been confirmed that Diamond will no longer be working for the legendary studio famous for producing some of our favorite werewolf-on-human works. Don't fret, Diamond fans, it looks like he's been spotted cozying up to True Alpha Studios! Apparently he couldn't get enough of that one human and then followed him home. Could it be true love? Keep your eye on this studio-- us at AVN think we're about to get a lot more of Diamond in a very new way!" ~ The one in which (almost) everyone is a porn star, and Derek just wants to curl up with his fluffy blanket and watch the Hallmark channel, but work and falling in love gets in the way.

Notes: okay but is this fake dating? Maaaaaybe. It's kinda complicated. Basically everyone here is a porn star and the pack has this studio where they cater to werewolves and have a whole thing about established relationships, which is where the fake dating comes up. It's surprisingly very fluffy, considering this is a porn au, and Derek is the softest goober in this one. Stiles is completely enamoured. It's completed.

9. Wanted from the You Are series by Asterekmess (Livinginfiction)

With the Hale pack finally settled and safe, it only makes sense that something would happen to screw it all up. To top it all off, Stiles has to pretend to be Derek's mate, or face a pack of angry Alphas. He's doomed.

Notes: Alright so this series is wonderful. The world building done for the Alpha pack is also great, and that's the center of the second part (which has the fake dating). I do recommend reading the first part before jumping on to Wanted because it is a direct continuation. Also, it's an amazing au! It's completed.

10. For Love is Not Ours to Command by weathervaanes

Where Derek's skills at thinking on his feet mean that he and Stiles have to act. For the sake of Stiles' dad, of course, for the sake of the pack. No personal interest interference at all, whatsoever. Right. -0- “Why does my dad say that you and your boyfriend are a bad influence on me?” “What?” “Yeah, what boyfriend? Dude, you are not allowed to not tell me crap like this. You didn't think I'd like be a douchebag or something. Right?” “No, wait, what? I have no boyfriend.” “He says you were with him at the police station.” Stiles blinks. “Uhm. Oh shit.”

Notes: Stiles just wanted to find dirt on Raphael McCall to blackmail him. Somehow, he got himself a whole ass boyfriend. It's complicated. That's it, that's the fic. It's completed.

11. Stiles Stilinski, Boyfriend Extraordinaire by MareLoup

“Beacon County Sheriff's Department, this is deputy Mahealani speaking.” “Oh thank god!” “Stiles?” “I, uh, I need some advice.” “Advice?” “Yeah. So, hypothetically, say you met your boyfriend’s mother and sister for the first time ever. Completely by accident. In the grocery store. And they convinced you to help them make a dinner to surprise aforementioned boyfriend when he got home after work. What would you do?” Danny paused, and then, “Stiles, you don’t have a boyfriend.” “That’s not the point! And I said hypothetically.” “Stiles...what are you doing right now?” *** Stiles never imagined he’d be in Derek’s kitchen cooking a surprise dinner with Derek’s family while they waited for Derek to get home from work. Partly because their visit was a complete surprise. But mostly because Stiles didn’t have a boyfriend. Or even know who Derek was. But he’d already come this far and Papa didn’t raise no quitter!

Notes: this is to date one of my favorite Sterek fics. I laughed so much while reading this, I'm not even joking. The whole thing is a comedy of errors gone right. Stiles somehow finds himself pretending to be Derek's boyfriend, only he has no idea who Derek even is and why his family knows Stiles at all. His inner monologue is one of the funniest I've read, and his slow descent into (good natured) madness is wonderful. It's completed.

12. Love Like An Ache In The Jaw by Anonymous

“So let me get this straight,” The sheriff massages his temples, “You found a magic book, and performed a magic spell that has backfired and magically bound you to Derek Hale, rendering you both in agony if you’re not in the same room.” Derek and Stiles exchange a look. “Um. Yes.” Stiles says sheepishly. “Right. And just to be clear, when we’re talking agony… exactly how agonizing is the agony?” Derek clears his throat. “Sir, I’ve had a pole stabbed through my chest and held there for an hour. This was… similar.” - In which boredom, magic and dumbassery come together to produce a Christmas miracle slash disaster. Oh, and Stiles' grandmother who knows absolutely nothing about the supernatural happens to be in town. Oops.

Notes: another hilarious one. Stiles does Stiles things and ends up magically bound to Derek. No one is amused except Stiles' grandmother, who's having the time of her life, here. It's completed!

[imagine-sterek]

So i’ve been rewatching the nanny lately, which naturally made me start imagining a sterek au. It’s not a perfect 1:1 conversion, but uh...

Derek, the hot older widow still grieving the death of his first love, is struggling to juggle the demands of his high pressure job and raising his three children, boyd, erica, and isaac, when he somewhat impulsively hires stiles, the witty, streetwise guy who shows up at his door one day, as his new nanny.

Stiles is immediately attracted to derek, especially that salt and pepper beard he’s rocking, and derek is reluctantly enthralled by stiles’ flair and the way his ass looks in those red pants, but they don’t really get along at first.

Derek’s so grumpy and authoritative and stiles isn’t great at following orders or figuring out all the weird new social rules he’s supposed to be adapting to. Stiles injects a metric fuckton of chaos into a previously static environment, creating quite a ripple effect in his wake, and derek absolutely hates this at first. They argue a bunch in the first couple of weeks and stiles threatens to quit at least twice; derek definitely threatens to fire stiles way more than twice.

Things start to settle down, though, when stiles realizes that under all that bluster, derek’s actually a softie who would do anything for his kids and derek starts noticing just how beautifully the children are flourishing under stiles’ care. His eldest, boyd, always so shy and quiet, has started opening up more and has even started bringing friends home after school. Erica, suffering a textbook case of middle child syndrome, chills out some when she sees that unlike the other nannies, stiles remains unflappably calm in the face of her pre teen rebellion. Young neurotic isaac, still coming to grips with his mother’s death, decreases his angst by at least 50% after stiles convinces him to replace a couple of his daily therapy sessions with playdates instead.

Since the children are doing better and the whole house has settled into a nice groove, stiles is able to round out his social life by hanging out with his lifelong doofus of a best bro, scott; bantering his way to bff status with the whip smart butler, lydia; dodging mostly harmless barbs from derek’s blonde ice queen of a business partner who’s obsessed with getting stiles fired, jackson; and occasionally visiting the old neighborhood to obsess over his father’s diet.

Overall, things are going pretty fucking well. The children are great, lydia’s content being the smartest person in every room, jackson’s miserable which makes everyone else happy, but derek and stiles. Derek and stiles are really great. Really, really great. They get along so, so well. Shockingly well. Stiles makes derek laugh like he hasn’t in years, and derek helps stiles take the important things more seriously.

And they talk, like all the time, constantly with the talking is them. Derek hasn’t talked this much since his wife died. Stiles is always barging into derek’s office while he’s trying to work, plopping down on the edge of his desk, and drawing him into these random conversations that derek accidentally loses whole hours at a time to. Because this talking? It’s easy, easier than either of them can believe, natural even. They just get each other in a way no one else does.

Derek and stiles have come to rely on each other so much that they’re both absolutely terrified of acting on the simmering chemistry between them. They have a good thing going with the kids, and the house, and the friendship they’ve developed that means everything; why risk all that for something as fleeting as lust? No, gotta keep that shit locked down platonic as hell. It’s for the best.

So everyone – the kids, lydia, scott, stiles’ dad, jackson, everyone – is forced to watch as stiles and derek engage in a frustrating dance of denial and repression for years. For. Years. Derek and stiles spend actual literal years pretending that it’s normal for a professional relationship to consist of casual eyefucking over waffles at the breakfast table every morning, popping semis while sublimating their passion into biweekly screaming matches, and wishing violent death on every single one of each other’s romantic interests.

Everyone knows they’re so completely, hopelessly in love that it’s actually pathetic. Boyd and erica keep hinting about hypothetical wedding bells, and isaac’s been calling stiles “dad” for a couple years now. Scott is perpetually confused over why derek and stiles aren’t already together. Lydia is so team sterek otp that she’s about to lose her goddamn mind with this bullshit. Stiles’ dad doesn’t even try to be subtle anymore during his routine interrogations over why derek hasn’t proposed to his son yet. Jackson, even jackson, just wants the misery to end at this point.

What’s funny, is it’s actually a near death experience that finally forces the issue. Stiles and derek are both staring down the face of possible imminent death, side by side, as usual, when they finally break. The prospect of dying without ever saying “i love you” is too much, even for them.

Things happen, of course; it takes longer than it should for those “i love you”s to stick, but they do eventually get married. And it’s beautiful. And everyone is happy, including/except for jackson, which really just makes it all that much sweeter for everyone.

[collaborationandresearchproposal]

Thursday 29th April, Research Report: Lycanthropy and the hays code

Notable points * lycanthropy seems  to be synonymous with homosexuality- parallels between Teen Wolf and Buffy The Vampire Slayer's respective coming out scenes. * The Queer-ness of the character Remus Lupin from the Harry Potter books and film series. Many fans head cannon and write slash fics about Remus and Sirius' romance and relationship, reading the characters as queer. The ship, named 'Wolf Star' is quite popular and well known within the fandom. Many fans feel there is enough evidence to build this relationship on; Remus and Sirius' ghosts stood next to each other in the resurrection stone, mirroring Harry's parents,  a canonically married couple. They also bought Harry a joint present for his birthday and know the intricacies of each others personalities. Dumbledore also infamously told Sirius to 'lie low at Lupins.' But the problem here, as the article points out, is that Rowling doesn't acknowledge Lupin as queer, despite the homoerotic cues in the writings,  and instead gives him a female love interest and admits that Lupins Lycantrhopy is a metaphor for AIDS/HIV. She has further dismissed any alternative readings of the character, disappointing fans' hopes of there being a shred of representation in a queer monster who is actually queer. This sort of behaviour from authors and creators is what turns Queer-coding into the more harmful and frustrating Queer-baiting. A large majority of queer representation comes from connotations and interpretations. the clues are there and queer audiences do pick them up. However this grey area allows allows straight culture to use queerness for pleasure and profit in mass culture without admitting to it. Modern examples of this are CW's Supernatural and BBC's Sherlock. I can't personally speak for Supernatural but having watched Sherlock with the advantage of a queer eye, I can say with confidence that it is a prime example of queer-baiting. there is clear homoerotic subtext between Sherlock and John and even Sherlock and Moriarty. I Personally think it's entirely romantic as I head cannon Sherlock to be Asexual or at least on that spectrum but the point is, it is not just wishful thinking or pushing of a narrative. It's manipulation. Queer-baiting takes advantage of an already vulnerable group of people by preying on their desire for representation in the media.

In modern media werewolf's are often portrayed as having chiselled bodies and looming over each other. The 1985 Teen Wolf received a television reboot and it's fair to say it got reasonably more progressive.  It seemed interested in queering the werewolf narrative and in a sly moment of gender-bending the traditional Little Red Riding Hood narrative, protagonist Scott receives the Bite from a male werewolf while wearing a Little Red Hoodie (‘Wolf Moon’). Additionally, the show features LGBTQ characters while Scott’s human best friend Stiles visits a gay bar and makes friends with a group of drag queens in startling contrast to the gay panic of the 1985 film’s version of Stiles. By midway through the show’s second season, the slash pairing that had proved dominant in the fandom was Stiles and wannabe-Alpha Derek Hale. The two characters, who operate in the narrative as belligerent and begrudging allies, rapidly became a slash phenomenon, due, in part, to the chemistry and comic timing between actors Tyler Hoechlin and Dylan O’Brien. The narrative is further subverted when Derek is raped by an adult  human woman.

The pair 'Sterek' gained so much traction that it caught the attention of MTV and the cast and crew behind the show. So much so that they released a video of Hoechlin and O'Brien cuddling on a boat, asking fans to vote for Teen Wolf for this  years Choice Summer TV Show at the Teen Choice Awards. This  was big as it acknowledged fans and slash flics and the pairing itself as a possibility and many queer voices who watched the show felt heard and validated. However this didn't last long. MTV released a video on the official Teen Wolf Facebook, this time featuring O’Brien asking fans to vote for Teen Wolf in a TV Guide Poll. O’Brien joked that if fans did not vote, then the show would kill off its sole remaining gay character and one of the few remaining non-white characters on the show, Danny. The Teen Wolf Facebook released the video with the following caption: ‘Keep #TeenWolf in first place! Heed Dylan and Linden’s advice or we might have to. #KillDanny’ (Teen Wolf). The show’s social media team then attempted to make the #KillDanny tag go viral on Facebook and twitter, but fans, understandably, were not amused, primarily using the tag for outraged tweets to MTV (Baker-Whitelaw).Such blatant disregard for fans’ concerns about queer representation on the show alienated a large number of fans, especially when coupled with Jeff Davis’ more frequently dismissive and condescending comments about the Sterek pairing where he had been enthusiastic and even encouraging of the ship. As seasons wore on without any indication that Sterek would indeed become canon, it became clear that MTV and Jeff Davis had been queer-baiting Sterek fans as a marketing technique and that the unique interplay that fans had enjoyed with Davis, which offered a new kind of truly interactive fandom had, in fact, been something of an illusion. ' serial killer Hannibal Lecter and his love interest Will Graham in Hannibal, and reanimated gay corpses Kieren, Simon, and Rick in In the Flesh. Notably, both series have received an overwhelmingly positive response from fans and critics who have applauded the series for taking their queer monsters beyond mere coding and into explicit text. The warm reception of Hannibal and In the Flesh’s handling of queer representation by fans, and the continuing frustration with Teen Wolf’s queer-baiting and the appropriative nature of Remus Lupin’s narrative in Harry Potter, belie a desire not only for better queer representation, but also for more complex re-articulations of queer monstrosity' the symbolic and narrative trappings of monsters are often used as metaphors for queerness without actually acknowledging the positive behind that queer identity or even confirming the queer identity at all. Another positive example is the miniseries Good Omens. Based on the book of the same name, written by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Pretty much the whole fandom believe That the two leads, Crowley and Aziraphale are in a romantic relationship. They've known each other for centuries and perhaps what was the main fuel to this ships fire was the episode 3 cold open. Even fans who have only read the book seem to support these two as a couple and what's perhaps even more amazing is Gaiman’s response on twitter. "I wrote it as a love story. They acted it as a love story. You saw it as a love story. How much more proof do you need?" and "I wouldn't exclude the ideas that they are ace, or aromantic, or trans. They are an angel and a demon, not as make humans, per the book. Occult/Ethereal beings don't have sexes, something we tried to reflect in the casting. Whatever Crowley and Aziraphale are, it's a love story." It's beautiful because not only does it confirm that they are in love but it also leaves room for interpretations of what kind of relationship they have together.

https://dialogues.rutgers.edu/images/Journals_PDF/2017-18-dialogues-web_e6db3.pdf#page=164

In the year 1922, when cinema was gaining traction and popularity, The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA) hired a devout Presbyterian, Will H. Hays as its head. Eight years later, in 1930, the MPPDA ratified the Motion Picture Production Code. Also known as the Hays Code, these guidelines were set up as “a list of rules that studios could follow to avoid the censors’ wrath” one specific line read “sexual perversion or any inference to it is forbidden” This era in censorship set the stage for a culture in which the stereotypical behaviour of homosexuals, or any behaviour deviating from the traditional gender roles, is seen as dangerous, evil, and even fatal. By representing coded homosexual characters as depressed, perverse, and succumbing to punishing ends, it shifted social subconscious beliefs of LGBT individuals in real life to those represented on screen. Media often teaches us how to feel about others and ourselves – e.g., it promotes specific body types and clothing styles. In the same way, by promoting gendered behaviour and banning homosexuality, it spread a message that homosexuality was not fit to be viewed openly. Although themes of homosexuality were banned they were definitely alluded to and that continues today.

[dust1feather]

This is basically my declaration of love for Sterek, the best ever OTP, and for the amazingly talented Sterek fandom which has given me so much joy and happiness throughout the years. Here's hoping the years post-canon will be even better and brighter. #eternalsterek

Big thanks to @halekingsourwolf for the beta! (Also on AO3 here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/12178566 )

For Sterek

You meet for the first time on private property – 147 pounds of pale skin, fragile bones and sarcasm, and a majestic wolf with bunny teeth in a too big leather jacket.

Derek Hale: you're the king on Stiles' chessboard, his anchor, the prettiest alpha with the flower crown and Stiles your flower queen. You're the alpha of Stiles' heart.

Stiles Stilinski: you're Derek's anchor, his second in command, the emissary in training, the most loyal member of his pack. You're Derek's mate.

Mieczysław and cousin Miguel. You meet each other in a thousand different ways, in a thousand lifetimes. You impress each other with your Polish roots and fluent Spanish skills. Together you suffer through endless family dinners and visits to Grandma's only to be interrogated about your intentions. You'll have your informal occasions, too: relaxed get togethers and movie nights and bbqs in the backyard, letting the pack and your respective families mingle. You're no strangers to loss but the tragedies of the past make you appreciate your self-made families all the more.

Perhaps you're orphans and make your own families. Or you meet as kids and become instantly inseparable. Or you meet in school but have a hard time fighting through your different social cliques to reach out and make your special brand of jock and nerd work, connecting through mutual love for pop culture or music or literature. University fraternities may try but they can't keep you apart forever.

Sometimes you meet later in life, when you already have kids, but all that friendly neighbourhood DILF will charm your pants off. Often enough you get to have your kids together, carry your own pups and join your beautiful everything (Herald being the infamous exception, of course).

You communicate via notebooks full of scribbles in sparkly pens, you text and sext and skype and type and call using few words or none. The anonymous postcards are instantly recognizable and always welcome. And when you're not using words, you know to interpret each other's eyebrows and the eyerolls. Your love translates without sound or sight, with a simple sign or touch.

You're studying for your exams, learning anatomy bone by bone while lying in bed. You connect the multitude of moles, admire all those brilliant tattoos covering each other's bodies, magical and ordinary alike. You make having gray hairs okay because getting them means growing old together.

But first you're still young and you meet in the forest, lay on a rock and share a smoke. It's a club –  it's always a club – dark, loud and full of people invading your space. You leave the wolfsbane laced drink and craft beer behind and move to the dancefloor where your sweaty bodies gyrate together, following the beat of the music while you learn each others' curves and angles by heart. Later you're in no hurry, you're vegging indoors, tangled on the sheets, kissing and watching the smoke twist and curl up, up, and up in lazy patterns. Taking turns shotgunning your spirits and dreams from lips to lips. You lose your virginities together... maybe you lose it to save your life, to avoid becoming the next sacrifice, but it always, always means something. Because you're soulmates, your innermost thoughts and desires appearing on your skin, helping you to find your missing piece, connecting you two old souls time and again.

Then the wildest dreams of your high school band come true and you love and play and break up and make up while touring and conquering whole continents. You give and take dance lessons, to seduce and be seduced; you clash your classic and street style backgrounds, a strict follower of rules and the other forever bending them, creating something altogether new just for the two of you. You paint each other like one of the French girls; you do portraits, make sculpture and pottery and nude drawings, sometimes in secret and sometimes in plain sight. You participate in the theater club, and the whole audience will get to witness your first kiss.

You travel the world with your magical circus; you are firemen, enjoying their pies. You meet as police officers and delinquents, as actual superheroes or vigilantes. You're PIs or FBIs. You're cowboys on a ranch, vagabonds, florists and tattooists, doctors and patients, bakers, chefs, sportsmen, football players representing rival teams. You're hot mechanics getting down and dirty under the hoods and jeeps. You're thieves, magicians, horse trainers, students and teachers and professors. You own a bookshop, magic shop; you work in a library, you're a TA. You drive a tow truck and you have a thing for your dispatcher who is calculating the shortest distance from you to him. You're a rentboy surviving on a stranger's kindness; you're a rich sugardaddy who starts with all the material goodness and ends up giving his heart and soul. It's omegaverse and neither of you believes in the society's unyielding hierarchy, yet there you both are, reluctantly taking part in the annual heat run.

The UST between you two is legendary and it burns hotter than a thousand suns. And when you finally snap, you do it against the wall, in and on the Camaro, in every single room and on every available piece of furniture to christen your new apartment. You do it on a motorcycle in space despite the raving zombies all around. You do it in captivity, not minding Derek's beta form in the least. You do it in secluded cabins in the woods, surrounded by snow, far from the rest of the civilization. Knotting is your thing. And despite what anyone might think, your BDSM and private club performances and role plays are fifty shades of okay.

And when it comes to porn, you're naturals. Made for recording videos online, letting the camera love your angles. It really is all about Neckz'n Throats. And in a real studio, you're famous stars colliding but doing it like professionals all the same. You have a good time, many many times, several times in a row, in several different positions, and yet it's the undeniable power of human love which penetrates you the deepest.

Everyone else sees what you have before you do. The witches teach you a lesson. You have to narrate your own life or you can only talk by singing or you are forced to speak your mind or you can only speak the truth or hear each other's thoughts or you are physically bound together until you learn better. And even if magically stolen away, your love will grow back organically, like the plants in the strong earth of the garden because there is no stopping such a force of nature.

You're involved in politics: the first son and his long suffering but lifesaving bodyguard. You're celebrities, you're famous models and authors, actors and larger than life movie stars returning home and given another chance at making things right. You're bloggers and vidders. You're food critics. You own restaurants and bars and work in diners and cafes and make coffees as black as your soul with a lot of sugar and extra cream.

You're royalty throughout the ages. In modern day, you hide from paparazzi and try to reign in your desire in the face of social expectations and pressure from the media. In ancient times, you struggle with archaic laws and wars, fighting for your countries and sending your most trusted knight or assassin to turn the course of war for you, to win the war for you and it's the biggest sacrifice every time. Or you're heirs or less important sons needed to seal the alliance of your kingdoms, to be wed to maintain the peace and strengthen the union of your countries. You've only ever seen a portrait of your intended, a horrible troll of a creature, and you can't believe your eyes when your fiancé turns out to be love at first sight. Or it's regency and you hesitate with even the slightest touch; you barely dare to dream of holding hands and yet a single look across the room makes everyone else disappear, leaving just the two of you with your unparallelled chemistry.

Stiles, you're Squirrelinski, a fennec fox, you are the fox to Derek's wolf. When you're given the bite, you become the most natural beta ever, challenging Derek's alpha at every turn but matching him step by step. Derek, your seedwolf makes the most adorable minifriend Stiles has ever had. And then there are sheepgoats and bunnywolves, androids being built and mermen coming ashore. There are demon creatures summoned and adopted. There's more than enough to handle in one set of you but sometimes it's either the Stilinski twins or a Derek's doppelganger and the only available option is to groupsex it away.

You're possessed by demons and chased by hunters. Even death can't keep you apart. You make a perfect werewolf-vampire couple or haunt each other as ghosts, or go to purgatory and back to fix it, to prove everyone you're not done yet and that you never will be. You're driven together by a curse, magic or fairies make you do it. It's fate or chance or accident. But that's only the beginning. It's what happens after, when you learn from each other, show respect and understanding, trust each other, and inevitably and irrevocably fall in love. Every single time.

And even when the whole world is on fire, you serve through the World Wars to see each other again. It's the apocalypse and the zombies are roaming the earth, they have spread all over the galaxy and you're fighting for your survival, still not letting each other go. Werewolves are known, there's slavery, you're kidnapped and held in captivity. You join forces, start a revolution and fight against the oppressors. You are each other's lifeline, you pull each other through it all and end up saving your city, your nation, your world, the universe while re-discovering your humanity with your love. And when you return to civilian life the war has left its mark on you, as the veteran with PTSD, you have your scars and battle wounds but sometimes the invisible scars can only be seen without sight and you manage to mend them together.

Your love transcends time. You travel back and forth through different timelines, you cross multiple universes just to be together. You chase after hurricanes and want to start all over. You take a gap year, you go on a roadtrip to see the world but the further you drive, the closer the two of you get and all that breathtaking scenery pales in comparison with your self-discoveries and budding love.  

So, just so you know, Derek, Stiles is not afraid of you and he hasn't been for a long, long time. There's no need for ripping any throats out with teeth. Though it's still Stiles' house and Stiles' rules, buddy, whenever he's harbouring your fugitive ass. And Stiles, if one of these days you get lucky, Derek will show you that big ol' fist and you can be sure it's not the only big thing the big bad wolf has in store for you. But, most importantly, you trust each other now and you still need each other to survive, still keep each other alive and won't ever let go.

You're drift compatible, you fit together in every possible universe with every version of yourselves. You're Diego and Sid, the abominable snowman and sourwolf, you're big bad wolf and not so little red with the trusted baseball bat or the lacrosse stick. You two make a pretty good pair.

You belong to fandom. You belong to no one. You belong to each other.

Stiles and Derek. Derek and Stiles. Your love is eternal.

Canon is closed. You're finally free.

Long live Sterek.  

[thecitrinefox]

Foundations

(8.4k fic for sterek week ‘17, day 1, alpha/emissary, warnings for brief language and violence)

“What the fuck.”

Derek thinks he’s probably seen this kid around town for years. He has vague recollections of seeing him at holiday parties or town events, fidgeting next to the Sheriff and his wife before she died. Maybe he got invited to one of Cora’s birthday parties at some point, since they’re in the same grade. Hell, the kid is a sophomore now like Cora and Derek is a senior, which means they’ve been going to the same school for over a year so chances are they’ve been somewhere in the school at the same time. But despite this, apparently they’ve never met because surely, surely if they’d ever spoken or touched, or looked into each other’s eyes, Derek would have noticed this.

This being the buzzing across his skin, the loud thump of his own heartbeat, in time with the rhythmic beating in the chest of the kid in front of him, each of their eyes wide with shock. Derek can’t quite get himself to drop the kid’s wrist where he’d grabbed it after bumping directly into him in the crowded hallway of the school’s math wing.

“What the fuck,” the kid hisses again, but doesn’t pull his arm away. Can’t seem to tear his eyes away either, and Derek thinks they have at least that in common. They’re crouched in the middle of the hallway, a textbook and notebook spilled haphazardly on the floor between them, and students awkwardly around them. Derek thinks a couple of people say something to them, telling them to move, but it sounds like it’s coming from miles away so he ignores it

“Are you okay?” Derek asks, because he doesn’t know what else to say, and the kid is staring at him like Derek is the one who’s done something wrong here.

“Am I okay?” the kid parrots, almost angrily. “Am I okay?? What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything, we just bumped into each other,” Derek points out.

“Then what the hell is…” the kid trails off, spastically waving his free hand between them instead of finishing his sentence.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Derek says. He jumps the same time as the kid does, when someone puts a hand on the kid’s shoulder. It’s one of his friends, Derek thinks vaguely, although he doesn’t know his name.

“We’re gonna be late for chemistry,” the friend says, and the kid jerks his wrist almost violently out of Derek’s hand, finally. They both look down at their own hands, and Derek thinks that he must’ve thought that letting go would get rid of that weird feeling too, but it hasn’t stopped, has gotten worse maybe. Derek picks up the books on the floor and hands them over and they both stand, awkwardly.

“We’ll continue this later,” the kid hisses even as his friend drags him off, and Derek wants to say ‘what this’, but even if he doesn’t know what this is, as the buzzing of his body increases the further away he gets, he thinks that maybe the kid is right and it’s not something they can ignore.

XX

He doesn’t see the kid for the rest of the day, although during lunch period he skips out on the cafeteria and instead tracks down last year’s yearbook in the library. Stiles Stilinski it says, and it’s weird, but could be weirder. His own parents gave his sisters rhyming names, so it’s not like the Hales are in a place to judge. The freshman year photo is goofy as all get out, and makes him kind of want to avoid him entirely, but clearly something happened, possibly of a supernatural nature and he thinks that these things tend to get worse, not better if ignored, so he should probably track this Stiles down and try to figure it out, or at least convince Stiles that there’s some kind of perfectly reasonable, not-supernatural reason for their electrifying first meeting.

XX

“I’m thinking this is just some sort of freak atmospheric thing,” Derek says. “Static electricity maybe? You said this hasn’t happened with anyone else?”

“Static electricity, really, that’s what you’re going with,” Stiles says, crossing his arms and looking unimpressed when Derek manages to corner him behind the gym after school the next day. “If it was static electricity it would’ve been a brief shock, then we’d be done, but I’ve felt like I was crawling out of my skin for the past twenty-four hours in a way that’s extreme even for me. And if it was atmospheric I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have happened to just us in the middle of a crowded school hallway. Do better.”

“Look I don’t know what it is, maybe it’ll wear off,” Derek says.

“Just admit you did some kind of freaky werewolf thing to me, okay,” Stiles says, leaning in and lowering his voice. Derek forces himself to stay still and not jerk back.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Derek says awkwardly. He’s usually pretty good at covering up any evidence of his being a werewolf, but then again he’s never been directly accused of it either.

“Look,” Stiles says. “Don’t you think we’re a little past the point of you playing dumb? Whatever this...thing is, it has something to do with your werewolf shit, okay. Everyone knows Beacon Hills is weird, and it didn’t take long for me to realize that the Hales are at the epicenter of it. At first I thought maybe you guys were mobsters or something, like some sort of organized crime family gone suburban...”

Derek scoffs.

“Don’t even,” Stiles warns. “You guys are crazy rich, super hot, and involved in everything. Your family is weirdly codependent and loyal, and even you have to admit that your uncle Peter is sketchy as shit.”

“Okay well you have a point there,” Derek admits, thinking about how Peter has been acting even more squirrelly than usual lately.

“So...werewolves,” Stiles prompts.

“Fine,” Derek says, feeling the situation spiraling desperately out of control. His heart rate is increasing, and even though Stiles looks calm he can hear it increase to match. “We’re werewolves, you got me.”

“Okay that’s great, but like I said I already knew that. Weirdo family that lives in the woods, reports of howling even though there are no wolves in California, years ago there were a bunch of suspicious animal attacks, it wasn’t that hard to narrow down once you knew what to look for,” Stiles says.

“Most people wouldn’t immediately jump to something that is widely known to be mythical like werewolves,” Derek says.

“Well I’m not most people,” Stiles says.

“I’m getting that,” Derek says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Okay what do you want to know.”

“What the hell is going on,” Stiles exclaims. “What was that, that...vibration or shock or whatever the hell you did to me when we collided. I’m pretty sure you can’t turn people into a werewolf just by touching, and besides I’m the same weak scrawny human I always was, but you did something.”

“That wasn’t me,” Derek says. He rolls his eyes when Stiles groans. “No really. I have no more idea what that was than you do. But I agree, something happened. Ever since we touched it’s like...”

“Like a constant buzzing that only goes away when we’re near?” Stiles says, looking away and blushing. “Like you can’t stop thinking about me? Like you can hear my heartbeat from across the school?”

“Yeah,” Derek says. “So wait, you feel it too? You can hear my heartbeat? That shouldn’t be possible.”

“Werewolves shouldn’t be possible,” Stiles snarks. “Do better. C’mon, man. I only realized werewolves were real like a year ago. I’ve been researching as much as I can, but I’m pretty sure at least seventy-five percent of what I come across has been bullshit and it’s not like I have someone I can just ask. Hey, what about your mom. I mean, she’s the Alpha right, I got that much at least after sorting through a lot of really questionable internet content. If she’s the leader of your pack she has to know what this is.”

“No,” Derek says firmly. “Whatever this is, I want to know more about it before we even think about going to my mom. She can be pretty...intense about stuff. And also...”

“You don’t want her finding out about your secret human girlfriend?” Stiles asks. “Yeah I know about Paige. And I know you guys think you’re being sneaky, but if I noticed, odds are other people have too. Although people are pretty unobservant, so who knows, maybe not.”

“Shit,” Derek says. “Look, it’s not like we’re completely banned from dating or being friends with humans, but it always makes things more complicated. Keeping what we are a secret is the most important thing we learn. I’m not sure how my mom would react to you knowing, and I’m not sure how to talk to her about it without telling her you’re feeling this stuff too. Besides, I know I said I didn’t do anything, but you’re human and I can’t help but feel like maybe this is my fault.”

“Okay well having been to your house for some of your mom’s fancy Christmas shindigs I know you guys have a freaking library in it. There has to be something in there that can help us,” Stiles says. “Like maybe on the shelves that have locked screens over them?”

“If my mom catches me stealing books I’m not supposed to be looking at, she’ll kill me,” Derek says.

“Well I’ve seen the way you guys sniff everything, there is literally no way I’m going to be able to sneak in and steal something, I’m guessing one of the many many werewolves who live in your goddamn mansion will smell a human from a mile away,” Stiles says. “Dude, you gotta work with me here. Do you want to figure this out or not.”

“I do,” Derek says. Right now his whole being is humming with a weird combination of excitement and content, but he knows as soon as he and Stiles split up that the weird buzzing, the headache, the loud thump of Stiles’ heartbeat even from a distance will spark up again and he knows they can’t live this way indefinitely.

“Okay, so try to find some kind of books that might help us figure this out. You don’t even have to read them, just bring them to me, I’m good at research,” Stiles says.

“I’m not an idiot, I can help research,” Derek says defensively. “I do well at school, and I do know a lot about supernatural creatures, I just haven’t learned about this.”

“Fine, okay,” Stiles says, holding his hands out placatingly. “So I have lacrosse practice right after school, and you have basketball tomorrow evening right. There should be like an hour or two between them, we can meet in one of the French classrooms, they never lock those cause there’s nothing to steal in them. If you can get some books on, I don’t know, weird werewolf magic or whatever then we can try to figure this out, okay? Maybe your mom, or heaven forbid, my dad, never even need to know about any of this, we can get rid of it on our own.”

“Okay,” Derek agrees grudgingly. It’s not like he has a better idea.

“And try to be sneakier about it than you are when you’re meeting up with Paige,” Stiles says with a smirk. “Unless you want everyone to think you’ve got two secret lovers.”

“Please don’t ever say that word again,” Derek says, turning and leaving without saying goodbye. He can hear Stiles chuckling at his own joke behind him and rolls his eyes. Of all the people to get some weird link to, it has to be Stiles. What did he do to deserve this.

XX

“Dude, you’re late,” Stiles grumps, his feet swinging and hitting the legs of the desk he’s sitting on.

“Sorry, I think Peter knows about Paige,” Derek says, dumping the heavy bag of books he’d managed to grab onto another desk. “He’s been creeping around the school and he keeps asking me weird questions. It took a while to shake him. I’m meeting her later tonight, but I think he thought I was going to meet her now, I don’t know he kept making vague insinuations about what I’m up to. He definitely knows something. I got the books though, and I don’t think anyone noticed.”

“Great, well hand ‘em over, we don’t have a lot of time,” Stiles says, hopping down and making gimme motions with his hands. Derek splits up the books, and they sit, beginning to flip through them. Stiles whips out a notebook and starts taking notes, which Derek ignores. He can’t imagine what his mom would say if she knew Derek was sharing this information with some random human, but somehow it feels right, the two of them sitting here and working together. The time flies by and before he knows it, his phone alarm is going off, letting him know he has to get to practice.

“I have to go,” Derek says. “I didn’t find anything useful. You?”

“Maybe,” Stiles says. Derek tries to take the books from him, but Stiles grabs one back, clutching it protectively to his chest.

“Stiles, my mom’s gonna notice if these books are missing,” Derek says, packing the others up.

“So put the others back,” Stiles says. “I think this one will be useful, just let me have it for the night and I’ll give it back tomorrow.”

Derek thinks for a moment. His mom really will kill him if she thinks he’s been stealing books from her library that he’s not supposed to touch in the first place, but he’s already running late for practice and he doesn’t have time to argue with Stiles. Plus they really do need to figure this out and between practice, family dinner and meeting up with Paige he won’t have time to read through the book himself.

“Fine,” Derek says. “But you have to give it back to me tomorrow, okay. And let me know if you find something.”

“Of course. I’ll see you tomorrow then. Same Bat-time, same Bat-place,” Stiles says with a grin.

“Ugh,” Derek says, half-heartedly as he rushes out the door.

XX

The next day when Derek gets to the classroom it’s empty. He sits on one of the desks, waiting, thinking about how he could be spending this time with Paige rather than waiting about for some random sophomore. She’s been patient with him, about his need to keep their relationship a secret. Sometimes he wonders if maybe she’s so patient about it because she’s embarrassed to be seen with him but he quickly squashes down that thought. She likes him, he knows she does. But he knows he doesn’t make it easy, and the more times he has to make excuses that he can’t see her the worse it’ll get, he thinks.

He’s just about to give up, and text her to see if maybe they can’t make out in his car for a while in the school parking lot before basketball practice when Stiles stumbles, wheezing into the room. Derek should’ve known Stiles was getting close when the tightness in his chest eased and his skin stopped crawling quite so much.

“Oh thank god, you’re here,” Stiles says, collapsing into one of the chairs. He fumbles at his bag and hands over the book, which Derek checks over and then puts in his own bag protectively. “Sorry, just took me a while to photocopy the whole thing. Lots of nickels, and man, those old texts just don’t copy well, lemme tell you.”

“Well?” Derek demands, feeling less and less patient by the second. “Did you find anything or didn’t you?”

“I mean, maybe?” Stiles hedges. “Okay, so I’ve only read the thing once, and it’s not like, super clear about everything, plus it’s kind of old timey so the language is strange....”

“Get on with it,” Derek grumbles.

“Okay, okay,” Stiles says. “So this book mostly focuses on Emissaries, you know what those are?”

“I’m a werewolf, not an idiot,” Derek says. It’s weirdly freeing to be able to say that kind of thing, and his chest loosens even further, despite himself. He tries to ignore the feeling. “Every pack or Alpha has their own Emissary, someone, generally a human, who can do magic and guide and help them when they need it. They keep the balance.”

“Right,” Stiles says, nodding. “Okay so this is like, totally crazy, and might be wrong, but so far the only time I’ve seen stuff in the books about some kind of weirdo meeting between a werewolf and a human is in the book about Emissaries. Apparently sometimes when an Alpha meets their Emissary they feel it physically. Because the Emissary’s spark doesn’t totally come online until they meet maybe? I don’t know it wasn’t totally clear, but it sounded kind of like what happened to us maybe?”

“I’m not an Alpha,” Derek points out. “And last I checked, you coudn’t do magic.”

“Look, I didn’t say it was definitely an Alpha-Emissary thing,” Stiles says. “Just that it was the closest thing I’d found and we should look into it more.”

“Fine,” Derek says, writing down his phone number and email address and handing it over. “Send me copies of the pages you copied. We’ll look into it. Anything else?”

“Other than your attitude problem? No,” Stiles says, although he smiles as he looks at the slip of paper, and immediately taking his phone out to add Derek’s number. Derek sighs, already regretting the decision. But it’s not like they can meet up every day, he knows it’ll be easier to just text. His phone buzzes, and he sighs heavily as he checks it.

HEY ALPHA

“I’m not an Alpha,” Derek says, walking out. “And you’re not an Emissary.”

XX

Derek may not be an Alpha, but the more they research and the more Stiles learns, the less convinced Derek is that Stiles isn’t an Emissary. They maybe meet face to face once or twice a week, but Stiles texts Derek constantly, making him realize that Stiles probably doesn’t have too many friends outside of Scott, who he mentions occasionally, and who Derek sees him with in hallways occasionally. Derek would try to keep their meetings to just text and email, but if they go too long without standing close to each other, hands brushing as Stiles gestures while talking, then they both get too irritable, too on edge. So they meet a couple times a week between practices to check in and to exchange books. So far Stiles has been like a sponge when it comes to soaking in information about the supernatural world, but despite their continued research they still haven’t come up with anything more convincing than an Alpha-Emissary bond. Stiles has an uncanny knack for understanding how magic works though, and while he hasn’t done anything too impressive yet, at least to Derek’s eyes, occasionally he can make sparks just from snapping his fingers, and has almost encyclopedic knowledge of herbs, stones and other materials that an Emissary might use. Derek thinks he’ll almost be disappointed when they inevitably find out the truth of what’s going on, that this was just some sort of freak occurrence, and the bond is broken.

Paige is beginning to realize something is up as well, Derek thinks. How, he’s not sure, because he was already keeping the werewolf thing a secret from her, so what’s one more thing? But Paige is sharp, and observant and actually a lot like Stiles, when Derek thinks about it, which he tries not to. He wonders if they’d get along if they ever met, or if they’d be so similar that their clever sarcastic natures would clash too much and they’d hate each other. Derek isn’t sure which situation would be worse, so mostly he’s just grateful that he’s managed to keep these two parts of his life separate.

He does feel a little guilty that Stiles knows about Paige, when Paige doesn’t know about Stiles, especially since Paige is his girlfriend. He tries to justify it to himself that he didn’t tell Stiles about Paige, Stiles figured it out, and also technically, if Stiles really is an Emissary, that falls under the category of Werewolf Stuff, and so really the Stiles secret is just another part of the original big werewolf secret he’s been keeping all his life.

It’s maybe a shitty way of justifying it, but Derek doesn’t know what else to do.

The autumn months fly by, and Peter is getting stranger by the day, Paige is beginning to get impatient with him, and even Derek’s mom is beginning to look at him like she’s trying to figure out what’s going on. He’s been pulling away from his family a little, he knows, and he knows it’s probably raised questions but he can’t outright lie to any of them, they’d be on him in a heartbeat. Still, talking to them like nothing is going on is becoming harder by the day. He’s beginning to think that maybe he should just tell his mom what’s been going on, and accept the consequences, but the longer he goes without telling her the worse it feels.

And then suddenly it’s December and the winter holidays are upon them and everyone is busy busy busy with the end of semester and holiday stuff, and Derek thinks maybe this will give him a brief reprieve from everything he’s been hiding. He knows Paige will be busy with her family, and he shouldn’t feel relief about that, but he does. He needs to get her some kind of present but he thinks maybe he can give it to her in January, once things settle down. Stiles has been bugging him for more books to read as well, more stuff to learn, but Derek can’t risk taking more from his mother’s library. He thinks maybe after the holidays are over if they can find a day to sneak off, he’ll drive Stiles to a bookstore he knows carries supernatural tomes a couple hours away and buy him a couple volumes of his choosing, ones that Stiles will be able to keep, not just hastily make crappy photocopies of or hurriedly rush through before Derek has to put it back.

After the holidays, he thinks. And then he’ll think about telling his mom. About Paige, about Stiles, about all of it. She’ll be mad, but she’ll know what to do. He knew things didn’t just go away when you tried to ignore them, and this experience is definitive proof. Not that Stiles agrees, of course, the less his dad knows about his problems the better, according to Stiles. Sometimes he’ll make jokes about being a burden, either to his dad or to Derek, and Derek thinks maybe they aren’t really jokes but also he doesn’t know what to say to that, so usually he just rolls his eyes and changes the subject. He guesses that Stiles thinks he’s a burden to Derek because he makes Derek spend time with him and steal books, and makes his heart feel anxious and his muscles buzz when they’re apart, but then what will Derek do, he thinks sometimes, when they do manage to fix this and all that goes away? When he and Stiles no longer have a reason to see each other?

It hasn’t happened yet, so he puts it out of his mind. Between school and research and Paige and his family’s Christmas preparations he just doesn’t have the time to dwell on that.

XX

The Hale’s Annual Holiday Party happens a couple days before Christmas this year. Winter break has started, and normally Derek loves these things, but Paige and Stiles are going to be there with their parents this year and Derek’s imagination has been going wild with all the ways that this could go wrong.

It’s fine at first. His family loves the holidays, so does the town and so as people filter in and the Hales get to let loose a little, and just be normal, everyone is in a good mood and it’s infectious. The tightness in Derek’s chest and the anxiety buzzing through his skin starts to ease, and he enjoys himself, right up until the Sheriff and his son show up and are re-introduced to everyone and Derek realizes just why that is. Paige, and her parents, show up less than ten minutes later, and even though Stiles’s presence has eased the physical tension he’d had, he can’t help but let the anxiety creep in as he tries not to watch either Paige or Stiles circulate the party.

Derek spends an hour ignoring both of them until all of a sudden he wonders if maybe his avoidance is suspicious in and of itself. He tracks down Stiles, idiotically finding him lingering by the punch bowl, underneath one of the plastic mistletoe’s that have been scattered about the place. To his relief he doesn’t even have to pick a fight, Stiles just launches into a rant about the poisonous qualities of mistletoe and the consent issues arising from from the kissing tradition associated with it which he’d apparently only really become aware of when he’d tried to kiss someone named Lydia under it a couple years ago and been slapped and had a drink thrown in his face. He’d only been trying to kiss her cheek, and they’d been about fourteen at the time, but still, it had left an impression. Derek is about halfway through his own rejoinder on how nobody has to kiss anybody they don’t want to, it’s just a decoration and since it’s plastic it’s unlikely to poison anyone, but then he sees Paige, trying to catch his eye from across the room, before disappearing out the back door. Derek looks around, but nobody seems to be paying them attention. Thankfully Stiles just rolls his eyes, then nods at the back door where Paige had disappeared before helping himself to more punch.

Derek goes.

Paige is waiting for him on one of the benches out in the garden. They don’t get much snow in California, even up north, but it’s cold, the ground hard and frozen, and Derek can see Paige’s breath as she shivers slightly.

“Sorry,” Derek says automatically as he sits down next to her. He thinks that this is the sort of situation where he should offer her his coat, but he’s only wearing a button-up shirt and he can’t give her that. Stupid, he thinks. He never plans stuff out like he should.

“Are you cheating on me?” Paige asks, bluntly.

“What?” Derek exclaims. He glances back at the house, but the party inside is slightly raucous at this point and he thinks nobody should be able to hear them out here, not even with werewolf hearing. “No, what?”

“Don’t act dumb, I know you’ve been sneaking around with the Sheriff’s son,” Paige says. She doesn’t even look that angry, but there’s a glint in her eye that defies Derek to contradict her. “I mean, if you’re having some kind of crisis here about Stiles being a boy, I get that, but I don’t understand why you’ve kept things going with me, it’s not like I’m a beard since nobody knows about us.”

“Oh god,” Derek says. “No, okay, I know how it looks, but I swear there’s nothing happening like that between me and Stiles. I would never cheat on you, you have to believe me. I’m not like that.”

“Okay so why are the two of you sneaking around?” Paige says, then pauses. “Is it a werewolf thing?”

Derek feels his jaw drop.

“What,” Paige says with a shrug. “You guys are really not as subtle about this stuff as you think you are.”

“Yeah but most people don’t see shifty behavior and immediately think werewolves,” Derek hisses, not even bothering to deny it. This is his life now, he thinks resigned. Hales have kept their secret for hundreds of years, and he’s been on this planet for less than eighteen years and yet Derek has already fucked it all up. God he’s the worst. Two humans figuring out his secret in less than six months, that’s gotta be some kind of record.

“Okay so what’s going on then? Stiles isn’t a werewolf, right? But he knows about you guys? Sometimes at school he stares at me, like he knows something I don’t, but I do know, so he has to know,” Paige says, grabbing Derek’s hand. “There’s always weird stuff going on in this town, are you guys like, detectives.”

“We’re not detectives, jeez,” Derek says, although he laces their fingers together, feeling a swell of relief to tell the truth, along with some kind of strange strange swell of something else, like he doesn’t quite want to tell her about Stiles, even though it’s not what she’d thought. “Something has been happening to Stiles. We’re trying to figure it out. It’s not a big deal, and it’s not really my story to tell.”

“Okay,” Paige agrees, although she seems disappointed. “But the werewolf thing is why you don’t want to tell your family about us, right.”

“Yeah,” Derek reassures her quickly. “I mean, that and they’re pretty nosy and overbearing, it’s the worst. Look, if you want me to, I’ll tell them about you. We can go in right now.”

“No, it’s okay,” Paige says, untangling their hands and standing up. “Let’s not rush into things. But you can talk to me about stuff, you know. I can keep your secrets.”

“Thanks,” Derek says, feeling unsure. Not about whether he can trust Paige, he thinks he can, but unsure about whether he wants to tell her about things. About Stiles. Whether he should tell his family about his girlfriend anyways, even if it complicates things. He thinks maybe he should want to, at least, but he doesn’t.

He stays outside while she goes back in to her parents. He can’t hear her voice once it’s swallowed up by the noise of the party, but he can track Stiles’ heartbeat as he moves about the house, then eventually leaves with his father. He’s feeling more and more tense as the distance between them increases that he almost misses it when Peter joins him in the garden.

“Interesting party,” Peter says. “Interesting guests.”

“Sure,” Derek says, although he isn’t sure about what Peter wants. He wonders how he could have ever hero-worshipped Peter as he’d done when he was younger. Too naive, maybe, to see the kinds of games his uncle was so fond of playing. Even now that he knows they’re there, he still can’t always evade their traps.

“Love is the most important thing in the world, most people think,” Peter says, gaze heavy on Derek’s face. “Most people would do anything for it, right.”

“I guess,” Derek agrees. “Excuse me.”

He walks inside, but feels Peter’s eyes on him for the rest of the night.

XX

“I have to say, the school wouldn’t have been my choice of romantic rendez-vous spots for New Years, but I’ll take it,” Derek says. It’s a week later, and he’d finally managed to slip away from his family’s New Year’s Eve celebration to meet Paige in the hall outside the music room at the school. He’s not sure why she’d texted him to meet here of all places, but after their last awkward encounter he thinks he should make an effort regardless.

“What do you mean it wouldn’t be your choice, Derek, you chose it,” Paige says. She’s dressed comfortably, like she’d been planning on an early night and not like she was here on a romantic date with her boyfriend.

“I didn’t choose it,” Derek says slowly. “Wait, you didn’t text me?”

“You texted me,” Paige huffs. “Wait, if you didn’t…”

Paige breaks off as a distant growl rumbles through the halls.

“Please tell me that this is just a prank, and that was somebody in your family just having some fun welcoming me to knowing about werewolves,” Paige says, grabbing Derek’s hand. He pulls her closer, placing his body between her and the noise from down the hall. He can hear the distant screech of claws being run over the metal of lockers, and he herds her with his body further down the hall.

“I really wish I could,” Derek says. “Run!”

Paige, thankfully, doesn’t hesitate. Derek doesn’t usually think of Beacon Hills High as being exceptionally large, but right now the hallways seem endless as they run down them. He can hear the strange werewolf behind them, gaining on them. It sounds large, steady, and Derek thinks it must be an Alpha. He doesn’t know what it wants with them, but clearly no Alpha would confront the son of Talia Hale alone at night if they didn’t mean some sort of ill will.

Derek is so pumped up with adrenaline, his claws and fangs coming out unbidden as he prepares for fight even as they choose the flight option, that he almost doesn’t notice it when the usual buzzing starts to dim again. It’s only when he hears Stiles’ heartbeat twin with his own that he realizes that he’s here at the school too.

“No,” Derek grits out. He’s beginning to realize they can’t outrun the Alpha behind them so he’s started considering his options for hiding Paige or fighting, but then there are claws raking down his back, and he tries to push Paige forward, but she falls too, a couple feet ahead of him.

“Run,” Derek shouts at her, even as he tries to turn and swipes his claws across the Alpha’s chest. The Alpha is even larger than Derek had realized, and barely even flinches, digging his own claws into Derek’s soft exposed belly. Derek screams, can’t help it, but the Alpha seems less interested in him, gripping his throat and tossing Derek to the side. Derek tries to catch his breath, struggling to sit up and before he knows it Paige is by his side, helping him up.

“You need to run,” Derek rasps at her as the Alpha moves towards them.

“You must be the girl,” the Alpha growls, and Derek feebly tries to push her behind him. He thinks maybe if he attacks the Alpha with all he’s got, he can distract it enough that Paige can get away, only the steady beat in his ears is getting louder and before Derek can move, the door behind the Alpha is swinging open and there’s Stiles. Derek can only look on in horror as Stiles hits the Alpha across the head with baseball bat. The Alpha is temporarily stunned, long enough for Paige to haul Derek up and help him move down the hall slightly, but then the Alpha is turning behind him and grabbing Stiles, his claws digging mercilessly into Stiles’ shoulder before tossing him aside too.

“No,” Derek shouts before he can help it. The Alpha is once again heading towards them and Derek tries to shield Paige, but Stiles is forcing himself up and reaching out, tossing something into the air and Derek has one brief moment where he thinks maybe Stiles is trying to douse the Alpha in wolfsbane, only then Stiles claps his hands together, one pale but strong, the other dripping with blood from his injured shoulder. It doesn’t seem to make a difference though, because the ash he’d thought was wolfsbane is actually mountain ash, something that becomes apparent when it sails past the Alpha’s head and lands in a perfect circle around Derek and Paige, protecting them.

I didn’t know he could do that, Derek thinks dumbly.

“Paige, whatever happens, you guys stay in the circle,” Stiles shouts at them, collapsing onto his knees. The Alpha slams a fist towards Derek’s face, and Paige flinches behind him, but the circle holds strong, and the Alpha’s fist stops half a foot away from them, the barrier sparking slightly as it’s hit.

“Stiles,” Derek shouts helplessly, putting his own hand out and hitting the barrier. The Alpha in front of him smirks, like he just gave something away.

“I was promised a new beta, and I’m gonna get one,” the hulking Alpha says, turning back towards Stiles.

“Oh god,” Derek hears Paige gasp behind him, but his whole body feels like it’s on fire now. He pounds against the barrier keeping him in as the Alpha walks down the hall, grabbing Stiles roughly by the arm and dragging him back in front of where Derek is trapped.

“If you touch him, I’ll kill you,” Derek screams. It feels like he’s burning up from the inside out, but the barrier almost feels like it has some give to it. Like he’s moving in slow motion, but he’s moving.

The Alpha slams Stiles down on the ground in front of them, a loud crack resounding through the hall as Stiles’ arm snaps and Stiles screams. Paige is crying behind him and Derek thinks he’s going mad at this point, beating wildly against the barrier.

“He’ll make a good beta, a good pet,” the Alpha says with a smirk. “If he survives of course. These kinds of turns often don’t.”

“Stay in the circle, Derek,” Stiles says, and there’s blood on his mouth and he’s crying, probably despite himself. “It’s not your fault, please, just…”

The Alpha opens his mouth, fangs glistening, and Derek can’t watch Stiles be hurt by this Alpha, can’t watch him get turned against his will by someone else, can’t watch him die if he rejects the bite, as it happens when someone with a strong will or conflicted nature gets bitten when they don’t want to be.

Derek looks down and meets Stiles’ eyes. Stiles looks calm, staring back, like he wouldn’t rather be anywhere than here, protecting Derek.

The mountain ash barrier snaps, Derek can feel it bend to his will in an instant and then he’s through, tackling the Alpha to the ground, several feet away from both Stiles and Paige. The fight is fast and mean, and Derek thinks he doesn’t care what happens to him, as long as Stiles and Paige are safe. The Alpha has a grip on his throat that he just barely manages to break away from and he takes a couple steps back to catch his breath, feeling furious and more wolflike than he ever has before, his eyes glowing. The Alpha looks up and falters.

“What…” the Alpha says, staring at him. “Not possible.”

“If you touch them I’ll kill you,” Derek growls, and he feels powerful, more powerful than he ever has, and he wonders if that’s what all this with Stiles was. Some kind of power they’d both tapped into without being able to access it. Well he can feel it now. He wonders if Stiles can feel it too.

Derek lunges at the Alpha, feeling invincible and the Alpha must see that in his expression because he turns and runs. For a second it feels like victory, then it just feels confusing.

“Derek!” Paige shouts, and Derek turns and jogs back to where Paige has managed to haul Stiles into the ash circle. He’s bleeding, his eyes unfocused, and Paige only looks marginally better, her face bruised, hands bloody where they’re pressed against Stiles’ chest.

“Call your mom,” Stiles says, weakly. Derek nods, because yes, his Alpha needs to know about this other Alpha who was on Hale territory, attacking their Pack. He leans his head back and howls, the reverberations deeper and louder than he’s used to.

“I meant like, call her on your cell phone, but okay,” Stiles jokes.

“Break the circle,” Derek commands.

“You break it,” Stiles replies childishly. “You did before, and how the fuck did you do that dude, I thought werewolves were kept out by that shit.”

“I...don’t know,” Derek admits. “Add that to the list of things we don’t know.”

“Ugh, I hate not knowing things,” Stiles says.

“Yeah I know,” Derek says. He reaches out his hand though, and finds he can wave away the mountain ash, creating a hole he can lurch through in order to touch Paige’s face, making sure she’s okay, before putting his hands on Stiles, trying to take as much pain as possible. His arms are lined with black, and he feels guilt roiling through him. Neither Stiles nor Paige would be here tonight if it wasn’t for him, he thinks. He may not have been the one to call them here, but they never would have even known about werewolves otherwise.

“Derek, your eyes,” Paige says, reaching a hand out to his face, before pulling it back.

“What?” Derek asks, glancing down at Stiles, who is also staring at him in wonder.

“They’re red,” Stiles says.

In the distance Derek can hear his Pack getting closer, the uneven sirens of police and ambulances not far behind them. Their reckoning is here.

XX

Derek ends up having to wear a bandage and a sling. He’d been covered in too much blood when the authorities had shown up, to reasonably pretend he hadn’t been injured, and while they’d managed to keep him from being seen by a doctor, thanks in part to an amiable nurse named Melissa, they’d still needed some visual representation that he’d been hurt and was healing like any other human, and so Derek had been convinced that wearing his arm in a sling for a while was the easiest way to do that.

Derek had thought that talking to the police (especially the Sheriff, Stiles’ father) would be the hardest part, but it turned out that other than omitting a couple salient details, telling the truth in their statements was the easiest way of this whole thing. Derek and Paige were secretly dating, yes. They had met up at the school to make out on New Years Eve, yes. They were violently attacked by some man, yes. They didn’t know him, no. They didn’t know why Stiles showed up, no, but Stiles was odd, wasn’t he. He turned up where he wasn’t wanted sometimes. They didn’t know what that man wanted from them, no. They thought he had a knife maybe, he was crazy, who knew why crazy people did things.

It was all pretty straight forward. Talia even said she thought maybe the Sheriff would be an asset, if he was in the know about werewolves, they’d have to think about it, and put it to a Pack vote.

Derek didn’t know how he felt about that.

Stiles had to spend some time in the hospital. He’d had a collapsed lung, and they’d had to put pins in to set some of the bones broken in his shoulder. While he was in surgery, after they’d made their statement to the police and they’d watched the Sheriff pace aimlessly and anxiously around the waiting room before being ushered out for coffee by Melissa, the nurse with knowing eyes, after Paige had been dragged out of the hospital by her parents who’d given Derek dark looks, that he thought he deserved, he finally turned towards his mother.

“This is all my fault,” Derek says, burying his face in his hands.

“Did you hurt Stiles?” Talia asks beside him. “Did you give Paige those bruises? Put that fear in her eyes?”

“No,” Derek says immediately. “I’d never hurt them. But I didn’t tell you I was dating Paige. I didn’t tell you something was going on with Stiles. If I’d told you this wouldn’t have happened.”

“Maybe,” Talia says. “Derek show me your eyes.”

“No,” Derek says, covering them with his hands. But Talia reaches out, turning his chin so he can’t look away. He finally opens his eyes, letting their true color shine through.

“A True Alpha isn’t something to be ashamed of,” Talia says after a moment. “It’s something to be celebrated.”

“You aren’t mad?” Derek asks, feeling small despite everything that had happened that night.

“I’m not going to tell you that I’m not upset that you hid all of this from me,” Talia says, releasing him and sitting back. “But part of that is on me. You didn’t feel safe coming to me with this. Either with your relationship or your bond with your Emissary. I guess I wasn’t expecting these things from you, but that’s no excuse. You should have felt comfortable coming to me with these things, and you didn’t. Derek, you’re so responsible most of the time, sometimes I forget how young you still are. I’m sorry I made you think you had to hide these things.”

“I should have told you,” Derek says. “I don’t understand why I am an Alpha, I messed everything up. Stiles and Paige almost died. I never wanted to be an Alpha in the first place.”

“The best Alphas never do,” Talia says with a sigh. “I think that’s why you got this power. You were willing to give up your life to protect them. That meant something.”

“Is Stiles really my Emissary? And how come we formed that bond before I was even an Alpha?” Derek asks.

“I don’t have all the answers,” Talia says, putting her arm around his shoulders. Derek leans against her. He may be an Alpha now, but Talia is still his mom. “I just know that this was meant to be. We’ll take it one day at a time from now on. And I promise you, whoever set this up with this Alpha will pay.”

“Now that I do believe,” Derek chuckles. He can hear Stiles’ heartbeat, steady even in surgery and listens, grateful he has this proof even across the hospital that Stiles might be okay.

XX

It’s two more days before Derek manages to talk to Stiles or Paige. Sheriff Stilinski has apparently been let in on their supernatural secret and taken it basically as well as they could have hoped for. Derek had thought maybe it would make the Sheriff hate him, but instead he finds the Sheriff slapping him on the shoulder and telling him he hopes that maybe he could use his supernatural powers to keep Stiles out of trouble.

“Honestly, of the two of you, I’m more worried about you in this whole magical partnership thing,” the Sheriff says, and Derek doesn’t really know what to say to that. For the first couple days Stiles is hopped up enough on pain medication that Derek can’t really talk to him. Instead he manages to sit down properly with Paige, now that everything is out in the open.

“Look, I like you, and I don’t even mind the werewolf thing,” Paige says, sitting on her living room couch with him, her parents lingering in the kitchen nearby. “But it seems like you have a lot of stuff to figure out now, and my parents will feel better if I’m somewhere safer than Beacon Hills. I can focus on my music, and you can learn to be an Alpha. Just not together. But I want to stay in touch, if that’s something you’d want. It’s okay if you don’t, but I figured, if you needed someone to talk to, who knows about werewolves but isn’t in your Pack, I could be that person.”

It’s well...it hurts. To put it bluntly. It’s Derek’s first real break-up and it hurts, but part of him thinks it should hurt more. But Paige is alive, and mostly unharmed, and Stiles is alive, and less unharmed but healing, and Derek thinks all things considered they got lucky. And if that means that Paige needs to go live her life, whole and healthy somewhere else, well, he can’t be too bitter about that. She kisses him on the cheek, and he flashes his eyes at her as he leaves and she just laughs, delightedly. She’s not afraid of him, not any part, and he thinks he’s glad to have her in his life, in whatever capacity he can have her.

It’s another day before the Sheriff lets Derek know that not only is Stiles finally properly awake, but he’s been complaining all day about Derek’s absence in his hospital room. It takes Derek most of the morning to convince himself to go visit, nervous even if he doesn’t quite know why.

“I cannot believe you,” Stiles complains as soon as Derek walks into the hospital room. “You guys told my fucking dad while I was too unconscious to argue with it?”

“Well telling the Sheriff that werewolves are real and that I’m the reason you got so hurt wasn’t my first choice,” Derek protests, dropping into the chair next to Stiles’ hospital bed. “But apparently becoming a True Alpha at seventeen doesn’t actually give you that many privileges. This is still my mom’s territory and it’s her choice I guess.”

“True Alpha, huh,” Stiles says, rolling his eyes as Derek flashes his red at him. “I’m sure that’s not going to go to your head at all. Whatever happened to that whole ‘Oh Stiles you can’t be an Emissary because I’m not an Alpha’ thing, huh.”

“Things changed,” Derek says, shrugging.

“Thanks, by the way,” Stiles says, looking away. “For, you know, uh, saving me.”

“I think you saved me first,” Derek points out. “And besides, who would do research for me, if you weren’t around anymore.”

“Oh is that why you’re keeping me around?” Stiles asks. “For research purposes? I thought maybe it was my badass mountain ash throwing skills.”

“Those weren’t too bad,” Derek admits, taking Stiles’ hand in his own. The unsettling buzzing from before is gone now, he thinks, now it’s more just a gentle hum of anticipation. “So does showing up and protecting me with mountain ash mean you’ll be my Emissary? It’s your choice.”

“Dude, I’m pretty sure I made my choice back when I hounded you into stealing your mom’s books for me,” Stiles scoffs. “Like I’d let anyone else look after you. You’d get yourself killed. Dumbass.”

“Of all the people I could have developed an Emissary link to,” Derek says fondly, pressing his cheek to Stiles’ hand. “What did I do to deserve you.”

“Must’ve done something really good in a past life,” Stiles says. “Since you’re not that impressive in this one.”

“Yeah, must’ve. Well in that case, Emissary, if you’re fully on board, looks like we’re in it for the long haul,” Derek says, relief and anticipation pouring through his body, the link between them humming happily.

“Can’t wait,” Stiles says with a smirk. “Alpha.”