#tumblfics

[Note: This is a deleted scene from a fic I was writing. It's ModernAU where magic is legal but not liked, and Merlin and Arthur like each other, but Arthur is being a stubborn prick because of his father's values blah blah and GO]

The living room smelled like sugar cookies and pine, and the TV played old Christmas carols on a channel that only showed a burning digital fireplace. The floor was littered in wrapping paper from the festivities earlier, when the room had been filled to the brim with friends and family and Merlin had insisted no one help clean because he was the host and he would do it later. But now, in the quiet aftermath, Merlin was nodding off on the couch with one hand clutching tightly to a glass of wine. The world faded in and out gently as he tried to fight sleep, so when the sound of footsteps crunching over the wrapping paper reached his ears, he wasn't quite sure if he was hallucinating or not.

He wasn't.

Skateboarding bros. Pretty sure that's tposey & dylan o brien's real life vocations. Your writing is supa gnarly dude.

Stiles crests the top of the halfpipe and tips his board over the edge, kicking it up to his waiting hand. "You lazy motherfucker," he says, dropping to a squat, shoving up at Scott's side. "You brought enough to share, right?"

"Yeah," Scott coughs out, the words lost in the hazy cloud of smoke. "Duh."

Stiles takes the burning joint from between Scott's fingers, sucks sweet, skunky air into his lungs. He's been skating for the better part of the last hour, and he's sweaty and exhausted. I deserve a break, he tells himself, knowing it's not true and not caring. 

"We should peace," he says. Puff, puff, pass. Scott smokes contemplatively, doesn't respond. "Before Derek Hale and the Leatherettes get here and he catch you smoking." Scott hands the joint to Stiles, who takes one last hit. His vision is already starting to turn bright and fuzzy, palm trees bleeding into blue sky behind them, his knees and knuckles getting rubbery and loose. "Before he tries to recruit you onto the Creep Squad," Stiles adds, speaking through smoke.

Scott nods, once, one hand absently rubbing against his belly, rucking up the hem of his tee shirt. It isn't his fault that he got hot this summer, anymore than it's Stiles' fault that he's still growing, and his too-long limbs means he sucks at skateboarding just like he sucks at everything else. Scott is his best friend, the best friend a dude could have and Stiles doesn't want to resent him. It's hard, though, when Scott is sprawled against the concrete like he just doesn't give a shit, stroking the cut of his own abdomen, palm flat there, familiar. 

I need punk!sterek so bad scout so bad!!!! You would make my horrible day so much better.

Derek recognizes that feeling weird about his body is ridiculous. It is the kind of body that most dudes would kill for: tall, broad, chiseled, whatever. It's just not the kind that he wants. Or not the kind that the men he's interested in seem to want, especially when he goes to shows and watches a million lithe, beautiful scene boys eyeing him warily, wondering what kind of meathead asshole he's going to turn out to be.

He almost skips the Firestarters' show; he's had a long, shitty week and he doesn't feel like getting eyed up one way or the other. It's only the call of the pit, the idea of slamming into a bunch of bodies for a few hours and walking out wrecked and exhausted, sweaty and lightheaded and numbed, deafened, buzz-headed and calm that tempts him through The Den's front doors. 

They've just started playing when he arrives. Derek makes his way through the swaying outer layers of the crowd and his breath catches in his throat: their lead singer is some skinny punk wet dream, shirtless and ivory-pale where he isn't covered in tattoos, sharp knees bare through the rips in his skintight jeans, dark mowhawk already plastered with sweat. His voice is one long, rough, low yowl, and Derek feels it in his bones. 

He does feel better by the time it's over, so sidles up to the bar for a drink. "Told you," Laura yells cheerfully, talking without breaking the smooth rhythm of her work. 

"Told me what," Derek shoots back, settling in on a stool that's magically opened up in front of him. Sometimes looking like an intimidating jackass works to his advantage. 

"That Stiles was your type," Erica says. She swoops in to take Laura's place, sliding him a sloshing shotglass of cheap whiskey.

"I don't know who you're talking about," Derek says primly. He takes the shot in one long, burning swallow.

"Me," someone says, way too near his ear, and when he brings his chin down he finds the Firestarters' singer has crowded up into his space; he, apparently, isn't afraid to get his hands on Derek, palms resting warm and intent on his thighs."Tell me they were right," he goes on, an endearingly awkward smile curling at the corners of his mouth. "Or this is about to get really embarrassing for me."

"They-- weren't wrong," Derek says, leaning back to signal for more drinks. Erica's got him; two more shots are sitting at his elbow. He hands one to Stiles, takes the second for himself.

Are you still taking request? I want Isaac to go to Derek and be all like "WHATS UP YOU + STILES??" and Derek's all like "DUDE HE WAS A VIRGIN HESA GONNA DIE" and Isaac's all like "IMA VIRGIN TOO WAH." And then Derek HAS to take care of Isaac cause it's an alpha thing.

So it turns out that fuck-or-die is a trope that-- like any kind of actual predestined matesfic-- I am totally happy to read but completely unable to write. Instead, here's this, which is set just after 3.03 when Isaac still would have had reason to believe that virgins were the target, and was still speaking to Derek:

Stiles is stumbling his way out of the loft when Isaac gets home, and he has the brief, surreal desire to ask him where he thinks he's going, young man. Technically they've both been out all night, and they're both in bigger trouble than that and it's not-- Isaac is so not anybody's father. It's just-- Stiles looks worn out and he smells exhausted, frayed, like old cloth rubbed too thin. "You okay?" he asks instead.

"Sure," Stiles says automatically. He pauses, though, sweeps a hand through the thicket of his dark hair. "Isaac you're-- fuck, I'm sorry, you're not a virgin, right?"

"Um," Isaac says. "No. No. Why?" 

"Doesn't matter," Stiles says. "If you aren't, anyway. Okay. I gotta go. Dad's gonna be up in a few hours." His pace is slow and even down the hallway, tread heavy. Isaac frowns at his retreating back, trying to figure out how to take back the lie. He pushes into the loft, finds Derek sitting on the couch, looking-- oddly bereft, hands open, empty at his sides. The lingering tang of arousal hangs, fading in the air. Stilinski's crush on Derek never gets less desperate or obvious, which is comforting, almost, an eternal baseline of pathetic for Isaac to measure the rest of his messy life against. 

-

He's taken to spending the nights out, running. He used to love to run, the way it would work his body into euphoria and then exhaustion, quieting his mind for hours at a time. Now it's automatic and his body could go on forever but he hasn't lost the habit. It's easier to keep doing it than to admit that he can't sleep.

So it isn't until too late that Isaac realizes that Derek thinks he isn't home when Stiles comes over, presses him up against the loft's doors, says "we don't have to, okay, I want to, please," and Derek says, "I want to, fuck, I--" and kisses Stiles, twisting his hands into Stiles' hair, hauling him in so close that even Stiles has the good sense to look a little afraid.

They make out against the door; at some point Stiles gets his hand down Derek's pants, and Isaac has the uncomfortable realization that he's been watching for-- way too long, now, beyond any kind of normal prurient interest and into full-on creeper territory. The history project he stayed in to work on sits abandoned at his side as he peers down the stairs, watching them work against one another, listening to the noise they make, pants and little choked-off moans, they way they keep whispering each others' names like a litany, an incantation, like a prayer. 

 -

Isaac can't stop thinking about it, after: Stiles dropping to his knees, pulling Derek's dick out, sucking it 'til everything was shiny and slick with his spit. Derek with his back to a wall and his neck arching up, hips thrusting forward, vulnerable and lost, kissing Stiles' come-covered mouth, dragging him into the bedroom, the sounds they both made. How eventually he gave in and got his own dick out, jerked off listening to it. It's not the most fucked up thing he's ever done. 

-

When he asks Derek he's expecting the no. What he isn't expecting is Derek's eyes getting wide and worried, saying "you're-- Stiles said you weren't-- he said he asked."

"I lied," Isaac admits, trying to sound bold and careless. "I didn't think it mattered."

"It does," Derek says. "It-- you could die, Isaac."

"So fuck me." Isaac puts a hand on Derek's knee and feels him flinch at the contract. He draws back and twists his fingers together in his lap.

"I can't," Derek says.

"You did it for Stiles."

"That wasn't-- it wasn't like that."

"He wasn't a virgin?"

"It wasn't because of that."

"So what, he's your-- boyfriend now, is that it, you can't cheat on Stiles?"

"I don't want to," Derek says. "You're my beta, I'm responsible for you, I can't-- I just can't, okay, please don't ask me."

"This is taking care of me," Isaac argues. "This is-- the best way, how can you not see that?"

"I can't," Derek says again. For a minute Isaac hates him, his stupid, useless attempts to be noble now, when he's always been such a grade-A shoot now ask questions later fuckup. 

"Fine," Isaac tells him. "Fine, then, maybe I'll find an alpha who will."

-

Scott isn't technically an alpha but he's a very soft touch, and Isaac knows how to play this game. "I feel weird asking," he says. "It's just-- I'm so scared, Scott and Derek says he won't, and I can't-- I don't know who else to ask."

They're sitting on the edge of Scott's bed, Isaac giving him just enough distance, a kind of friendly-but-intimate amount of space. "What would this entail," Scott asks slowly. "Because I'm, uh, there are some things--"

"I don't think we'd have to-- you know," Isaac says, letting himself shift and blush, wondering whether he should let on that he'd do this anyway, that since he turned he's been pretty much permanently semi-hard and that he's always wanted to see what Scott McCall, golden hero, looks like when he's needy and desperate.

"There aren't rules or anything?"

"I don't know," Isaac says, the corner of his mouth curling up into a smile. "But I figure it's better than nothing. Whatever-- whatever you'll give me."

Stiles has been strictly instructed to stay away from the loft tonight, which is probably the stupidest thing Derek has ever done. He feels the urge to be contrary in his marrow; on any other night he would have been more than happy to avoid full moon shenanigans but now he’s practically being forced to find out what’s got Derek so wound up this time. That’s what he tells himself, anyway, as he makes his way along the corridor that leads to the loft’s double doors. He’s not being rude, he’s being inquisitive, there’s a difference.

He gets the doors a third of the way open before Derek’s grim face appears between them, eyes wide, hair wild. “Stiles no,” he says, even as he’s reaching out to grab Stiles by the wrist and pull him into the loft. 

Whatever he was expecting it just— it so wasn’t this. Derek’s downstairs bed is covered by his betas, Cora and Erica semi-discreetly cuddling at the head while Erica strokes Boyd’s scalp with her fingertips. Boyd is side by side with Isaac, who’s curled around— Scott, which is maybe the most surprising thing of all. Scott’s been keeping his own counsel since he leveled himself up by killing Deucalion but Stiles is pretty sure that being an alpha means he’s not technically part of Derek’s pack.

"Fuck," Derek says, manhandling him towards the bed. "I specifically told you not to do this, Stiles, and now you’re—"

"You told him not to?” Scott asks. “I mean that was your first mistake, Derek, Stiles is like, the single most defiant person who has ever lived. You should have invited him over for dinner or like—”

"Just told me what the fuck was going on," Stiles cuts in. Derek has pulled them both so that they’re sprawled across the foot of the bed, and Stiles doesn’t have a lot—okay any experience, really, with cuddling, but he’s pretty sure that spooning isn’t supposed to be this aggressive.

"Supermoon," Cora says, Erica nodding sagely at her side. "The closer it gets the more it affects us."

"So shouldn’t you be like— howling around town in a mad rage?" Stiles asks, and then flinches because, uh. Cora and Boyd did exactly that not all that long ago.

"The rage thing happens when wolves aren’t well connected to their packs," Cora explains. "This is the alternative option."

"And I’m—"

"Pack, apparently," Derek mumbles against the back of his neck. He doesn’t sound thrilled about this development.

Stiles wiggles himself around so that he can face Derek; once he realizes that he’s not trying to escape, Derek lets him, his iron-tight grip easing up enough that Stiles can flip over and re-situate himself. “And Scott?” he asks first, trying to find a more neutral topic.

"Things are complicated for Scott," Derek allows. "With— Isaac. And me. We didn’t have a lot of time to sort things out. It’s okay for tonight."

"And me being here? Did you know you’d want me to—" Stiles gestures at the space between their curled bodies, which is almost surreally small. Derek’s face is maybe six inches from his own. 

"No," Derek says. Cora kicks him; he kicks her back. "Kind of," he says, then. "When the moon started rising I could— I could feel that you were missing."

"Oh." Stiles takes a minute to think about this. It’s fucking weird, even by the weird standards of his life these days, but not necessarily a bad kind of weird. If he’s going to have to be in the middle of supernatural messes for the next few years— and that just seems unavoidable, given the circumstances— he’ll take the parts where they all lie down together in the dark, in the quiet, giving and taking comfort. He’ll take knowing that Derek wants him around, against his will and his better judgement, that the pack feels his absence when he’s not there. He turns again, folds himself into Derek’s arms, curls his fingers through Derek’s where his hand is resting flat against Stiles’ belly.

They lie like that for a good long while, talking softly, the rest of the pack drifting to sleep by degrees, so that Stiles is never quite sure when he realizes that it’s just him and Derek awake in the loft. The moon is huge through the windows, bearing down on them with oceans of soft white light. He stirs himself, trying to get a better look at it, realizes that Derek is— hard, behind him, at half-mast in his jeans. 

"Shit," Derek says. "Um. Sorry."

"I get it," Stiles says, probably too quickly, unwilling to untangle himself. "It’s— the moon, it’s an alpha thing, it’s not—"

"It’s not the moon," Derek mutters, even though Cora isn’t awake to hear the lie.

Stiles has vague, hazy memories of the Hales before the fire: they were homeschooled, the whole sprawling pack of them, but they were all just insanely, surreally gorgeous, hard to miss driving around town in a fleet of expensive black cars. He remembers particularly getting ice cream with Scott some summer evening, probably not long before it happened. They sat outside on a bench, licking their dripping cones, arguing about who would get first crack at the comics they’d pooled their allowances to buy, when Derek’s car careened into the open parking space just in front of them, tires almost actually smoking from the friction of the skid.

"Jesus Derek, brake much?" Laura asked, tripping out of the car, her long legs soft and tan in tiny cutoffs. She was eighteen, then, breasts spilling out of a low-cut tank top, hair piled up in a loose, shiny topknot.

"I live dangerously," Derek said, surly even then, slamming his door with too much force. Stiles was so intent on their bickering— on Laura’s sharp, mobile mouth and Derek’s arms, his calves—that he almost didn’t notice Cora crawling out of the backseat and following them in.

She was just as pretty as Laura but shy about it, still, so skinny that her lankiness verged on gawky, the knobs of her knees and elbows too prominent on her frame. She smiled at them on her way in, blushing, almost tripping over her own feet when Laura called out to her to hurry up already, come on.

Stiles watched them inside: Derek picking out pints to take home, Laura teasing Cora gently about something, conferring with her seriously about ice cream choices. She got a cone to go, rainbow sherbet, rainbow sprinkles, offered Derek a lick. That’s what he remembers, really: Derek Hale and his baby sister on that hot, slow afternoon, a glimpse of their private lives, the soft way Derek’s face could look when he was being kind and he knew it.

Now Cora is huddled on Derek’s terrible salvage couch, bloody and exhausted, breathing hard. “You’re up,” Stiles calls from the kitchen. “Everyone else is out but there’s—food and stuff, if you want it.”

"I can’t," she says, voice breaking, already standing to leave. Stiles feels panic crawl up his throat, cold terror: he can’t stop her if she tries to run. "He’ll find me, Stiles, he knows, he always knows—"

"Deucalion?" Cora flinches at the sound of his name. 

"Derek is out covering your tracks," he says, trying to sound soothing. "Peter is— on it, he’s doing something, you’re safe, okay, you’re safe, I promise."

Anonymous asked: derek/ms blake: bonding over something they have in common

Derek drives Jen home, because it seems like the normal thing to do. The whole point of the Volvo was to have a car without bloodstains rubbed deep into its seats but he resigns himself without thinking about it too much, wishing he at least had a clean shirt in the back to change into.

She’s quiet most of the way, except to give directions. It’s only when they pull up outside of her building— modest-to-crappy but close to Beacon Hills’ downtown, such as it is— that she turns to him and opens her mouth.

“Werewolves,” she says. “Are we gonna talk about the werewolf thing or what?”

“Or what,” Derek says, startled. “I mean— what— you— werewolves—”

“Get out of Oregon, they said,” she goes on, agitated, now. “California is quiet, no wolves for decades, weres don’t hang out there, don’t like the lack of cover, it will be quiet, Jen, move to Beacon Hills. This is such utter fucking bullshit. I refuse to get involved in another territory dispute, not even if the kids are— the kids aren’t involved, are they?”

Derek allows himself a moment to appreciate the righteous surety of her anger, the flush in her cheeks, the bright sharp focus in her eyes. 

“It’s not a territory dispute,” he says. “I’m not sure what it is.” 

“The birds,” she says. “That’s— I was hoping they were unrelated. Are you kidding me? Not just feuding werewolves but ominous, nonspecific supernatural portents? This is— man, this is bullshit.”

“You can leave,” Derek says. “I can ensure you safe passage, I can—”

“My contract’s not up ‘til the end of the year,” she says crisply. “I’m not going anywhere. And I’d say I’m not getting involved but—”

“You don’t have to.”