#sbabo

Laura beamed at him. The routine blood test, the one that everyone took on their sixteenth birthday, would confirm whether or not his sister was Alpha or Omega, but people usually had some sort of idea of their orientation anyway. “Alpha, I think,” she said, like that was some massive surprise. Nearly all the Hales were Alpha; only Derek’s father and his uncle Peter were the rarer, prized Omegas.

Derek pushed out his bottom lip. “It sucks that I have to wait another two years to find out,” he pouted.

“Aw, poor little Der-Bear,” Laura giggled, ducking away as he swatted her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Der, at least you find out before Cora.”

*

PART ONE – NINE YEARS LATER

It was Laura’s wedding day, and Derek was supposed to be happy for her. He was happy for her. Of course he was happy for her. She’d found her soulmate, her other half, the Omega that was meant for her like he’d been designed exactly to fit her, and after five years together, they were finally getting married.

He was happy for her. Like, at least 90%, to borrow a Friends quote. Maybe 85%, at a push.

It was just… watching Laura and Keith together… kind of sucked. In a big way. They fit so, so well together; that was the whole point. Keith was the perfect match for Laura. Apparently, when she’d met him, it was like the whole world exploded with fireworks. He was her Omega, and no matter what happened, they could never be anything less than perfect together.

That was the blessing of being Alpha and Omega. You could find your perfect match; you could use those heightened senses to discover your soulmate.

And that was the curse of being Beta. That you couldn’t.

Derek still flinched when he remembered his sixteenth birthday. He’d been so excited, so enthusiastic to find out what he would Present as. Unlike Laura, he’d had no real sense one way or the other. One the one hand, he’d always been shy, less dominant than his two sisters, so he thought he might be Omega – but on the other, he was, in Laura’s words ‘annoyingly headstrong’, so he could just as easily be Alpha.

He wanted that moment that Laura had described to him. He wanted to feel the world coming alive around him, to be able to sense the presence of his soulmate, to have heightened senses and raunchy exciting heats like everyone else. He’d seen it happen all around him; he wanted to feel it.

He’d waited, breath held in anticipation, for the results of the test. And they’d come, unmistakeable.

He wasn’t Alpha or Omega. He was a Beta.

Betas were incredibly rare; it was akin to being born with some sort of physical defect. A freak occurrence of biology. All the special extra senses that everyone else had were missing in him. He would never get to experience any of it.

He was just… ordinary.

He would never have a wedding like this.

“Hey, dude, watch out, massive tray of glasses coming through,” sang out a voice behind him, and Derek turned to see that yes, there was the most enormous tray covered in very precious-looking glassware being wielded by a skinny waiter wearing thick-rimmed glasses and a big smile. He jumped hastily out of the way, and the waiter put the tray down on the table behind him.

“Thank fuck,” the waiter said in relief. “Sorry, man.”

Derek lifted one shoulder and lowered it again awkwardly. “No problem.”

The waiter squinted at him. “Are you in the wedding party?”

“Bride’s brother,” Derek said.

“Cool,” the waiter said. He looked around the large reception room; there was a collection of waiters and waitresses laying the tables, putting out silverware and napkins and carrying in enormous table displays of peonies and lilies. “Looks like it’s going to be a good day.”

Silence fell, because Derek didn’t particularly feel like agreeing with that. It did look good – the flowers were elegant and beautiful, the tablecloths pristine, the cake – standing on its own table in the corner – absolutely stunning. He knew that once the ceremony actually started, he would be able to put down the morose jealousy that he was feeling and just concentrate on giving Laura the best day possible, but until then, he was giving himself license to be as grumpy as he wanted.

“I’m Stiles,” the waiter said. Derek turned in surprise; he hadn’t actually realised the guy was still there.

“What the hell is a Stiles?” he said before he could stop himself. The waiter – Stiles, apparently – snorted.

“Trust me, my real name is worse,” he said. He paused. “And you are…?”

“Oh,” Derek said awkwardly. “Derek. Derek Hale.”

“That was very James Bond of you,” Stiles observed. “Though if you were going to make it really authentic, you would have said, ‘Hale. Derek Hale’.” He chuckled lightly at his own joke; when Derek was a little late joining in, he said curiously: “No opinions on the Bond franchise?”

Derek shifted uncomfortably. “I liked Sean Connery,” he said, and then felt stupid for saying it. Social interaction had never come particularly easily to him.

Stiles, however, didn’t seem to have noticed his awkwardness. “Yeah, Connery’s the original,” he said easily. He grinned salaciously. “Daniel Craig, though…” He winked at Derek, which had the effect of completely flooring him.

It wasn’t like Derek had never had a relationship before. There’d been Paige, an Omega he’d dated on and off through high school, and Kate – but he wouldn’t think about Kate – and then a brief fling with Duke – an Alpha – at college. But it had never led to anything serious. How could it? They had their soulmates to find. Derek had no one. So now, faced with this lanky waiter that was, Derek was starting to realise, stupidly attractive, he found himself completely tongue-tied.

“Yeah, he was hot,” he managed to say, his voice wooden, and Stiles laughed like he’d said something hilarious. Which he hadn’t.

“Stiles!” a voice called from across the room; one of the waitresses, a pretty red-haired girl, was gesturing impatiently for him to get back to work.

“Coming!” he called. He looked at Derek. “Gotta go,” he said, and was it Derek’s imagination, or did he actually sound regretful about that? “Maybe I’ll see you later.”

“See you,” Derek said, too late, because Stiles was already gone.

*

FIRST INTERLUDE

Kate had always smiled at him at school, even when he and Paige were involved. She must have known he was Beta – everyone knew he was Beta – but she always acted like it didn’t matter. Like maybe she could like him anyway.

It was during one of his and Paige’s ‘off’ periods that she approached him. She was an Alpha, and it showed; she was confident, cocky really, marching around school tossing her beautiful blonde hair and smiling with those white, white teeth at him. She made excuses to touch him, stroked his chest, kissed his cheek. Touched his hair. For the first time since he’d found out his Presentation, he actually felt like someone could love him. Like he was worth something.

He lost his virginity to her in the back of Laura’s Camero, which thankfully was something she never found out about. She was pliant and soft in his arms, gasping his name, and afterwards they lay on the leather seats with their sweat sticking them together and their legs tangled up.

She told him he was special, that she cared about him.

And then she never spoke to him again.

He’d thought, at first, that it was some mistake. Perhaps she’d thought he was an Omega. Perhaps she’d mistaken him for her soulmate. Perhaps – his heart leapt at the idea – he really was her soulmate, but she wasn’t certain because of his Beta Presentation.

Then he heard her talking to her friend Julia behind the school. They were laughing as Kate recounted how she had slept with him. ‘Fun’, she called it. Just light-hearted fun. Something to pass the time. Julia snorted in amusement as Kate ruthlessly described how emotional he’d been afterwards, how she’d pretended that it meant something to her just to play with his poor inexperienced heart. Now, she said, she could cross ‘sleeping with a Beta’ off her bucket list.

He never knew if she meant him to hear or not. It didn’t matter. He just slipped away, trying to pretend that his heart wasn’t cracking into a thousand pieces, and he never, ever let himself get attached to anyone else ever again.

*

PART TWO – NOW

Derek was drunk. Drunk was nice. Drunk was comfortable. He could dance when he was drunk, and his limbs actually moved with some fluidity rather than looking as though he was being manoeuvred by a particularly unskilled puppeteer. He could talk to people when he was drunk.

Right now, he was talking to Stiles.

“No, no, no,” he said, probably too loudly, but he didn’t care. “It’s… what’s the word? Edgier! DC is edgier than Marvel. Everyone knows that.”

Stiles, although not drunk, was just as involved in the conversation. “Which one has the enormous movie franchise behind them? Which one has, like, eight TV shows and a billion movies?”

“DC has loads of stuff too!” Derek exclaimed, his hands waving around in the air. A little bit of wine slopped over the edge of his glass. “Arrow, and Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow…”

“None of which even compare to Jessica Jones,” Stiles argued. “And none of which have Chris fucking Evans, man, come on!”

“Ew, you have the hots for Evans?” Derek said in disgust. “If you’re going to pick someone, at least go for, like, Bucky Barnes.”

“Yeah, you like him?” Stiles said in amusement. He’d said he was on break, but they’d been talking for at least an hour and a half, so Derek was suspicious.

He nodded woozily. “Yeah, he’s all, like, cute,” he said. “He’s got cute eyes and a cute smile.” He paused, considering. “Like you!”

Stiles grinned at him. “Like me?”

Derek nodded firmly. “Yup.”

“Derek,” Stiles said, and then hesitated, biting his lower lip. He looked especially pretty when he was doing that. “Do you want to… I mean, would you like to go out? With me? Like, not here?”

And just like that, Derek felt like all the effects of the alcohol had been removed, like someone dropping a sledgehammer onto his chest. Carefully, he put his wine glass down.

It had been so nice to forget, just for a while.

“I can’t,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“Shit,” Stiles said. “Did I totally misread this? I’m so sorry, dude. Are you straight? Are you with someone? Man, I’m a douchebag—”

“I’m not straight and I’m not with anyone,” Derek interrupted, because he had to put Stiles out of his misery. “It’s just… you’ve probably figured out that I’m Beta, and I – I’ve had enough of it.”

Stiles was looking closely at him. “Enough of what?”

“Of being the in-between guy,” Derek said honestly. “One day you’ll meet your soulmate, and that’s great, but I don’t want to be the guy that gets his heart broken when that happens.”

“Derek—” Stiles began, and then stopped. He took a breath. “Don’t you think the whole soulmate thing is a bit… antiquated?”

Derek blinked at him. “What?”

“I mean, I know it happens,” Stiles said hurriedly. “And I’m not, like, dissing anyone that finds someone that way. I mean, look at your sister. But don’t you ever think that, like… I mean, I don’t want to be with someone because some freaky otherworldly sense tells me I should be. I want to be with someone because that’s what I want.”

Now Derek was starting to feel annoyed. “It’s easy to say that when you actually get to choose,” he said angrily. “I don’t have that option. No one will ever want to be with me when their actual soulmate is out there somewhere. I’m a freak.”

“You’re not a freak,” Stiles said. “Just like I’m not a freak.”

“Of course you’re not a freak,” Derek said bitterly. “You’re normal. Fuck this, Stiles. I have to go.”

*

SECOND INTERLUDE

He could still remember the only other Beta he had ever met.

He’d been out having lunch with Laura, and she’d suddenly squeezed his arm and gestured frantically to the retreating back of the waitress who had just served them.

“She smells like you,” she’d hissed excitedly. “Derek, she’s Beta!”

He knew why she was so eager. His only chance of happiness would be with another Beta, with someone else like him. She was desperate for him to approach the waitress, to introduce himself, to fall in love the old-fashioned way.

He didn’t. It just felt too… pathetic. Settling for some girl that he didn’t even find particularly attractive, just because of her Presentation.

He never saw her again. And he never met another Beta.

*

PART THREE – NOW

Derek had never had a worse hangover in his entire fucking life. His head literally felt like it was being hammered by several thousand rocks; his throat was raw from throwing up multiple times in the night, and his whole body was shaky and exhausted.

“You’re a mess,” Cora told him, sounding extremely unimpressed, which was easy for her since she didn’t drink. She shook her head at him. “What even happened to you last night? I didn’t see you leave.”

“Felt sick,” Derek croaked, reaching out with a trembling hand for the glass of water by his bed. The glass was cool against his sweaty skin.

Cora laughed, very cruelly in Derek’s opinion. “I did see you talking to that cute waiter,” she said. “Want to tell me about him?”

“Not even slightly,” Derek said firmly. Cora grinned.

“Are you going to see him again?” she asked.

Derek struggled to sit up, sipping his water. “Of course not,” he said dismissively. “You know I can’t.”

She stared at him. “Why not?”

“I’m not dating anymore,” he told her. “I’m sick of waiting around for the people I date to find their soulmates. It’s too exhausting.”

It was Cora, so it wasn’t like he expected a lot of sympathy, but still it was a surprise when she said bluntly: “Well, that’s just pathetic.”

“What?” he said stupidly.

“It is!” she exclaimed. “He was cute, and he obviously liked you. Are you going to spend your whole life worrying about, like… biology… or are you going to just get out there and live it?”

Derek thought about it. “Fuck,” he said. “I’m an idiot.”

“Yeah,” Cora agreed fervently. “You really are.”

“Hey, Cor,” he said persuasively. “You think you could find the number for the catering company for me?”

*

THIRD INTERLUDE

“There are Alphas and Omegas who turn their backs on their soulmates and just fall in love,” Derek’s mother told him, which quite honestly sounded like exactly the kind of bullshit someone who would never have to worry about it would say. “Not everyone meets their soulmate. It is possible to find love, Derek.”

Derek didn’t believe a word of it. Paige had told him, regretfully, that she needed to focus on her studies now that they were all leaving for college; he knew that what she really meant was that she needed to focus on finding the person she was supposed to be with. “Lucky me,” he said to his mother. “I get to be someone’s consolation prize.”

“Derek,” Talia said firmly. “You are no one’s consolation prize.”

*

PART FOUR – NOW

There was an insistent knocking on Stiles’ front door, persisting even after several minutes of alternately ignoring and yelling at it. Finally, still grumbling under his breath, he swung out of bed and shuffled through the apartment to the hallway.

“What?” he snapped as he swung the door open. Only to stop talking abruptly, his mouth hanging open.

Standing in front of him was Derek, the incredibly cute Beta he’d spent all night talking at the wedding he’d worked, before he’d been firmly rejected on the basis of fucking biology.

“Hi,” Derek said awkwardly. Stiles had to stop himself from smiling; he found Derek’s social awkwardness ridiculously fucking endearing.

“Derek,” he said cautiously. “How… What are you doing here?”

Derek shifted nervously from one foot to another. “Your co-worker gave me your address,” he said. “Lydia. She also told me she’d kill me if I pulled another stunt like last night.”

“You should believe her,” Stiles told him.

“I do,” Derek assured him. There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Then Derek said: “I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

Stiles bit his lip. “Which part?”

“The part where you said you wanted to be with someone because it was what you wanted,” Derek said in a rush. “I thought… I’ve never had anyone want to be with me, Stiles.”

“I do,” Stiles said, which was probably way too much for, like, the second time they’d even met, but fuck it.

Derek didn’t seem to mind; he flashed a blindingly beautiful smile at Stiles. “Me too,” he said shyly. He ducked his head. “And I don’t… I don’t care if you’re Alpha, Omega, or anything in between. I just want to give this a shot.”

“Yeah?” Stiles said. Derek nodded. Stiles’ cynical mouth said: “I thought that meant you were a freak.”

“I’m not a freak,” Derek with certainty. He looked fucking… strong. And beautiful. Stiles grinned.

“So who are you?” he asked.

Derek gave him a crooked, lovely smile. He was blushing.