Chapter Text
The first thing that Stiles notices is that the house – the house is freaking huge.
Like, absolutely ginormous. Like, obviously he expected a certain level of obnoxious grandeur, and lusciously green, expansively sprawling grounds, and a massive fuck-off mansion perched right at the centre of it all, as that polished cherry on top of this ostentatious cake. But this...
This is even wilder than anything his – quite frankly, excessively vivid – imagination could have ever come up with on the winding, contemplative drive across Beacon County to make his way over here. As he blinks hazily around the impressive landscape composing his surroundings, he knows for sure that his jaw must be hanging embarrassingly slack right about now.
“Holy shit,” he can’t help but whisper to himself.
The second thing that Stiles notices is that werewolves – werewolves need to wear a freaking bell.
A pretty brunette woman bounces directly into his immediate line of sight, eerily silent even as her feet pound onto the gravel below with her jumping movement. She shoves her perfectly straight, perfectly white grin and her light, intensely wild eyes right in front of his unsuspecting face, and he is not even slightly proud of the shrill squeak of shock that escapes him instantly, nor the way he just about leaps out of his own skin.
“Holy shit,” he hisses before he can bite it back.
Clutching a hand over his hyperactive heart, he feels the fabric of his shirt bunching between his tightly gripping fingers, the hammering beat behind his ribcage thumping a whole lot quicker against his palm than he thinks it healthily should be. In front of him, the werewolf tips her head back in a cheerily untroubled, loud bray of laughter.
She slaps a vaguely stinging hand against his bicep as she tilts her chin back down, her eyes flashing a warm, mellow golden colour, just for a moment. That particular ability is one reserved for werewolves only, and that particular shade for just the betas and omegas, and his human eyes do nothing but stay their usual big and brown as hers fade back to lightness, the corners of her mouth wobbling as she attempts, mostly unsuccessfully, to gain control over her giggles.
“Sorry,” she says airily. “I always forget that humans can’t hear us coming.”
His own mouth twitches into something like a smile, one that he hopes doesn’t look as shell-shocked as he still sort of feels. He pushes out a quick, short breath and drops the hand from his chest to hang limply at his side, finding himself rearing back, just slightly, at the way her bright, almost frenzied smile hasn’t dimmed even a little.
“It’s, uh... fine,” he replies. “I’m –”
“Stiles Stilinski, I know!” She punctuates her shameless interruption by darting forwards to grab the overstuffed duffel bag right out of his hand. He can only blink in shock as she curls insistent fingers around his wrist and begins to tug at him. “We’ve been expecting you. Don’t worry about the rest of your stuff – the housekeepers will get to it.”
The grip she has on him is so tight that he has pretty much no choice but to stumble after her on graceless feet. He stares at the back of her head as she pulls him along, practically gaping like a fish, his mouth opening and closing around words his brain is struggling to spit out.
Vaguely, he can’t help but wonder what the hell he has signed himself up for here.
“I really don’t want to trouble anybody,” he tries to protest. “Seriously, I can totally –”
“I’m Laura, by the way,” she cuts in yet again, twisting her neck to flash him another huge, borderline insane smile. “Laura Hale.”
He has to hold back on the impolite snort of laughter that wants to break free from him, at that. Because... uh, yeah, duh. He bites down hard on his bottom lip to keep the string of inappropriate commentary currently running through his brain stuck firmly behind his teeth instead.
Wow. His dad would be so proud. It looks like all of that time they spent preparing him and his typically smart mouth for his summer stint here with the Hales might actually pay off, after all.
It’s just that... well... of course he knows who she is. Everybody knows who she is, so ingrained in the public eye is she, right up there alongside every other member of her ridiculously famous family. He sincerely doubts that there is a single person, werewolf or human, alpha or beta or omega, in this entire goddamn country, and quite possibly even oceans beyond it, who does not know all about the Hales.
Their faces, their stories, pretty much every facet of their present and historic lives – he, and the rest of these united states, have had it all shoved down their collective throats by every news source around since, honestly, long before he can even remember. The Hales have been a prominent family, way up the top of the societal food chain, even as far as werewolves are concerned, for what could honestly add up to eons, at this point.
With an insanely impressive reputation, dating back generations upon generations, they simply exude money, and power, and importance. It’s a little overwhelming to be in the presence of, even if all he has encountered so far has been a pretty face, a manic grin, and a particular penchant for jump scares.
At the top of their current tree, there is Talia Hale: the alpha matriarch heading up the family. Then there is Laura, the beta eldest daughter, and Derek, the alpha only son, and Cora, an omega, just like Stiles, newly fourteen and newly presented, or so the papers reported not too long ago. There was Samuel, too, the beta father, but he passed away, over a decade ago now.
Honestly, he can’t help but find it oddly... endearing, that Laura actually felt the need to introduce herself in the first place, even at all. To him, of all people – to a human omega, of all things. It is decidedly more down to earth than he was at all expecting.
“It’s nice to meet you,” he says, before dropping his gaze pointedly to the fingers she still has wrapped firmly around his forearm. “You’re kind of, um – hurting me a little, though?”
She stops so suddenly that he almost barrels right into the back of her. With a bit of quick thinking, and two much slower feet, he just about manages to catch himself, stopping short before his chest can connect with her shoulder blades. Which is a good thing, he thinks, because a collision like that would serve only to injure a human like him and negligibly inconvenience a werewolf like her.
He watches on with raised eyebrows as she spins nimbly on the balls of her feet, her face all twisted up in a look of actual, genuine concern as she turns to him. Her hand drops from his arm as though his skin has turned molten hot in a second.
“Shit, sorry!” she says, eyes wide. “I always forget that, too – that you humans bruise like peaches.”
The look on her face is so painfully sheepish that he just has to laugh. A soft, kind huff of it as he rubs absently at the red circle of fingertips quickly fading from his pale skin. He keeps his mouth curved into a gentle smile as he shrugs one shoulder.
“Don’t sweat it,” he says. “We’re a fragile bunch.”
She purses her mouth, narrowing her eyes in slow consideration as she tips a nod at him.
“I’ll bear that in mind,” she says, before immediately contradicting any actual absorption of this reminder as she slings a rough arm around his neck and drags him down to her eye-level. “You know, you’re pretty tall for an omega.”
“My dad’s pretty tall for a beta,” he replies, drooping his shoulders to better accommodate her height. “I picked that one up from him.”
Humming her initial response, she tilts her head to the side, fixing him with a long, appraising stare. He can feel his face starting to heat up, flaming quickly beneath his skin, brought straight up to the surface by the intensity of her scrutiny, burning across his cheeks and around the back of his neck. He can only hope that it isn’t as obvious to her as it feels to him.
A futile hope, more than likely; he has seen himself in a mirror before, he knows how splotchy red his face can get. Especially to a keen, close, werewolf eye.
“Your dad,” she says slowly, continuing to peer at him. “He’s the Sheriff, right? Of that tiny little human town just south of here – Beacon Hills?”
“Yep,” he says, nodding proudly. “That’s him.”
“I’ve met him a few times before, I think – at some of the charity galas that Talia has dragged me along to.” She lifts a finger to tap against her chin. “Sweet guy. Pretty cute, too, from what I remember.” She pauses to let a wide, wicked grin split across her face, removing the arm from his shoulder to squeeze none too gently at his flushed cheek instead. “Not as adorable as his son, though. Obviously.”
That pulls a laugh from him, though it is still pretty stunned, fairly star-struck, especially at such close proximity to her. Honestly, he is finding this, all of this, more than a little bit... surreal, overall.
All those years of absently, unconsciously, learning every aspect of her appearance, through countless photographs splashed across countless magazine pages. And now here she is, standing right there in front of him, right in the mostly impenetrable flesh – a whole lot nicer, and a whole lot weirder, than he ever could have prepared to anticipate.
It’s strange, really. He is in the presence of somebody beyond famous right now, but he still kind of feels this warmth of familiarity, this strange sort of ease around her. She is friendly, and she is chatty, and she has been more than welcoming, even if she does apparently find it hilarious to startle him.
In all the weeks leading up to coming here, so much dread had built its way up inside of him, worming its way through his nervous system and surging up to the highest of heights on the drive over. Uneasy thoughts about how awful this could turn out, how terrible this family could be, are likely to be, all things considered. How quickly he might regret ever putting himself forwards for or agreeing to this summer in the first place.
But it all just... fades away, here and now, as he takes in her kind, amused smile.
“C’mon,” she says, taking him gently by the elbow. “Let me show you around.”
They fall into an easy rhythm, walking side by side with one another, the grip of her fingers still carefully, intentionally light against his easily marred skin. He is more than happy to simply follow wherever she leads, taking in every inch of meticulous beauty that they pass with wide, stunned eyes, trailing helplessly along with her as she winds them down paths, dips them under archways, her tender hold on him never wavering.
And he is glad for that, to be perfectly honest. He knows for absolute certain that without her intimate knowledge of these grounds, had he simply been left to his own devices to make his way up to the house, he would have gotten himself instantly and irrevocably lost.
Before long at all, she is turning to peer at him as they stumble – well, he stumbles, she seems to almost actually float – over the threshold of a large, open doorway, finally taking them inside the great mansion.
“They brought you here under the pretence of organising the library,” she says, turning to lift an eyebrow at him, “right?”
Faltering for a moment, his face creases into a frown as he looks back at her. Did she say... pretence?
“Uh... yeah.” He lifts his free hand to scratch nervously at his cheek. “Is that... not...”
“Please,” she snorts, manoeuvring his pliant body around a sharp bend, turning them onto a long, stretching hallway. “Nobody even uses that library, and she brings some poor schmuck of a human in to look after it every freaking year. I swear, it is already the most organised stack of untouched books in the whole goddamn world.”
He lets a beat pass, patiently paused as he waits for her to continue, to elaborate on that. Will he be expected to do... something else, then? He may be an omega, but he’s not exactly a natural homemaker; he is a pretty lousy cook, and his dad often says his cleaning skills leave a lot to be desired. He can’t even imagine the layers of thick dust he would manage to miss in a house of this size.
When seconds move on, and she still says nothing further, he presses, “So... what...”
“It’s optics, Stilinski.” She throws him a wink. “You’re a human, and good and kindly Mama Hale wants to look like she does her philanthropic bit to help out the human population. Hence – offering one lucky, lucky human each year the altogether thrilling opportunity to spend their summer shelving and re-shelving priceless and disused historical literature at the grand Hale manor.”
He blinks, eyes going wide, going shocked, at her... well. At her openly cynical honesty.
Of course, he knew that’s exactly why he got brought here to begin with, why they open up applications to the local towns’ high school seniors at the start of every year. At no point in this entire process has he been under any kind of delusion that the powerhouse family that is the Hales – who could afford to hire a million of the strongest and smartest werewolves in the world for this job, about ten times over – truly require the services of his feeble, human hands for the task of putting their library into order over the next few months.
No way. He knows the real truth here, and he always has. He knows that it simply looks good for the great, important, beacon of werewolf society that is Talia Hale, to open up her home to the less fortunate, the more needy, and the completely human. Namely: him.
Sure, there have been strides made for human rights over the last few decades. The world is a different place for him now as a human than it was for his ancestors, his grandparents, hell, even his parents, to some extent. Laws have changed, and attitudes are shifting, and sometimes werewolves will work alongside humans, and sometimes they’ll be friends, and sometimes, on the rarest of rare occasions, they can even fall in love, get married, pop out a few hybrid kids – the whole shebang.
But that is for regular werewolves and their chosen humans. That is for the general proletariat of society. That is not – and, quite possibly, never will be – for werewolf families like the Hales.
To people like the Hales, to families as famous, as influential, as powerful as them, werewolves will always be on top, and humans will always be beneath them. No matter the progress, no matter the steps forwards for equality, those changes are for everybody else to fall in line with; not for them.
They can make themselves look good by pretending to care, by offering up their home and their resources to a pathetic, lowly human like Stiles. But, just like Laura said – it’s optics. It is simply to appear as though they are moving along with the times, even as they stay rigidly within those archaic ages where humans were nothing more than the dirt beneath their sharpened claws.
Still, though. It stuns him a little to hear a werewolf, a Hale werewolf, of all people, seemingly denouncing it with such staunchly acerbic rhetoric. It makes something hopeful bloom inside of him, that perhaps he won’t have to contend with the kind of attitudes he has faced from the few superior werewolves he has met throughout his life while he is here. Or at least – not from her.
It’s kind of funny, he thinks. Life’s genetic lottery has dealt him the hand of not only being a human in a world so openly led by werewolves, but also an omega in a society that favours alphas above all, and betas a not-actually-that-close second. Werewolves of all presentations look down on him for being human, and humans of presentations above him look down on him for being an omega. There is no escape from it all, it feels like sometimes.
Truly, it’s a little hilarious that he finds himself with the toughest combination of the two. It is just so his freaking luck, he has thought more than once since his fourteenth birthday.
“Uh,” he says, a little dumbly, tripping over how he can respond to her without potentially landing himself in some hot water. “I, um. That’s, uh...”
“But I promise not all of us are as fake as that,” she interrupts to help him out, shining a beatific smile at him. “Some of us actually do want to help. I’m in law school right now, but as soon as I graduate, I plan on working for the top human rights firm on the west coast.”
“Oh. Cool.” He tilts his head slightly to the side. “See, I thought you were going into corporate law after you graduated.” This, he blurts out without thinking, before hissing a sharp wince in through his teeth. He had been doing so well up until this point at not coming across like a creepy stalker, with just how much knowledge he already has on this family’s lives. “I mean, uh...”
But she merely scoffs a dismissive noise as they continue to walk.
“That’s what Talia wants me to do,” she says, leaning in to nudge their shoulders together. “But it’s been a damn long time since I did everything Talia wanted me to do.”
Briefly, he wonders whether she goes around dropping this kind of personal information within what must amount to fewer than fifteen minutes together to just about anybody that she meets. Weirdly, he thinks the answer to that might, in fact, be no, and maybe, just maybe, it is that she actually... likes him.
It’s a bizarre thought, but it still kind of makes something inside of him feel all pleased and warm and fuzzy. He is still smiling through this belief when she pulls a sharp yelp out of him by yanking him suddenly into a nearby room.
Quickly enough, he can figure out precisely where he is and why she has dragged him in here, and he cranes his neck to look all around him, taking in the full room as they stand inside of it: the grand library. Books upon books upon books line the tall, expensively wooden shelves, and he blinks up at all of them in pure awe, his eyes wide and his jaw hanging slack in a way he simply cannot help.
Next to him, she folds her arms over her chest, his duffel still hanging precariously from the delicate curl of her fingers. She looks a whole lot less impressed by their environment than he does.
“Well, here it is,” she drawls, sounding acutely bored. “You’re welcome to read anything in here, it just can’t leave the room. And I really wasn’t kidding earlier – there is not much organising to be done. Honestly, you can mostly just hang out, if you want.”
He pauses, twisting to look at her with both eyebrows lifted. He takes a moment to try and parse that.
“Hang out,” he begins to ask, “in... here... only?”
She flashes him a wide, instant smile.
“Anywhere you want,” she answers, looping an arm through his to join them at the elbow. “These grounds are your oyster this summer, Stilinski. And I’ll be around if, you know... if you ever feel like you could use some company.”
“Yeah,” he says, smiling softly back at her. “I... I’d like that.”
Which is the truth, it surprises him slightly to realise. He truly thought, coming into this, that he was going to spend months with full access to all the historical volumes he could ever dream of, with a nice bit of compensation waiting for him afterwards, a little something to help him and his dad out, for a little while, at least, but with no option but to spend his time here steadfastly ignoring every single member of this prophesised insufferable family.
But – honestly? He can see himself actually enjoying this summer, with her around.
For a few moments, they just stand there, staring and grinning stupidly at one another. The windows, running high all along the very tops of the walls, streak sunlight directly down to beat warmly against his skin, dust particles floating past his eyeline as tiny little moving dots in the golden air. He looks at her, in this large, warm, fascinating room, that is all his to enjoy for all these months, and he feels something settling within his bones, something easy and comfortable.
That is, right up until her face crumples into an abrupt, exaggerated grimace.
“Oh, god,” she groans, dropping his arm with a roll of her eyes. “Incoming. Brace yourself.”
There is barely enough time for him to screw his expression into questioning confusion before the answer reveals itself to him.
“Mr Stilinski. How lovely it is that you are here.”
The voice that floats into his ears is familiar; he has heard it enough times on the radio, and on the television, and anywhere else with audio capabilities, pretty much his whole life. His head snaps towards the open doorway, where Talia Hale herself glides through, all poise and grace and elegance.
Her outfit is perfectly pressed and patently pricey. She wears a smile along with it, thin across her painted mouth, and he senses immediately that it isn’t entirely sincere – mostly from the way it doesn’t quite reach all the way up to her eyes.
Trailing just behind her is the youngest Hale, Cora. Recently fourteen, the first omega of the current ensemble. There is a severe frown tugging down each corner of her mouth, and she scowls resolutely at the floor as she follows along, tucked tightly at her mother’s back.
A sudden awkwardness rushes over him as he finds himself pinned by Talia’s hard, intense stare. He feels this railing discomfort, this churn to his insides, like even though they are toe to toe, face to face, him a few inches taller than her, even, she sees him as beneath her, instinctively and implicitly, no need for the words to be spoken aloud between them for them to still be known.
Really, this is what he anticipated the first time he met a Hale – what he prepared himself for in the time leading up to this very day. It just so happened that the first one he actually met was Laura, and she subverted his expectations pretty much instantly.
Her mother, though – this is more along the lines of reality; historically speaking, at least.
Plastering on a smile to hide the terror she can most certainly scent all over him regardless, he lifts an arm to meet Talia’s proffered palm in a – slightly sweaty, on his side at least – handshake.
“Uh, yeah,” he manages to stutter out, trying not to visibly cringe at the strength of her grip. “Hi. It’s, uh... it’s nice to be here, too.”
Her mouth is pursed as she releases his hand, and he quickly tucks it behind his back, flexing his sore fingers out of sight of her sharply appraising eyes. There is an almost regal posture to her as she stands, her shoulders drawn back and her torso stretched out, her heeled feet standing perfectly parallel to one another.
It makes him want to shrink in on himself a little, to be honest. He fights that instinct quickly back down, though.
“I can only imagine,” she says primly, before letting her eyes drift to the side, landing heavily on her eldest daughter. “And has my darling Laura been behaving herself?”
Not really, he thinks.
“Yeah, absolutely,” he says out loud. “She’s been nice enough to start showing me around the place.”
“You know it,” Laura chimes in. “I’m a regular one-woman welcoming committee.”
Talia hums, narrowing her eyes at Laura for a long, oddly tense moment.
“Yes. Quite.” The corners of her eyes crinkle as she pulls her focus back to him. “So, Mr Stilinski. You graduated high school last month, is that correct?”
He nods. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And you’ll be starting college after your time with us here?” she presses.
“Nursing school,” he amends gently. “I have a place back in Beacon Hills.”
Talia’s smile, entirely perfunctory up until this point, suddenly shifts into something actually close to real. Her teeth flash, brilliantly white, flawlessly straight, this certain wolfish quality to them even as they still look unremarkably human, no fangs dropped down at this moment in time for him to marvel at.
It paints a sinister picture of her that makes his heart want to skip over a petrified beat.
“My son is due to begin medical school in the fall,” she announces proudly, and he does not miss the way that Cora rolls her eyes down to the floor, carefully where Talia cannot see her. “My alpha boy, Derek. I imagine you’ve heard of him.”
She doesn’t bother to pose it as a question, and honestly – she does not need to. Stiles has most definitely heard of him.
As the only son and the only alpha among the children of the family, and with his dashing good looks and notoriously bad attitude, Derek Hale is by far the most well-known of all of the Hale offspring. And that is saying something, considering just how much press time Laura and Cora get.
Oh, for sure Stiles knows precisely who her son is.
Also, he may or may not have jerked off to a shirtless picture or two (or twenty) that the paparazzi managed to snap of the guy at a private beach about a year back, too. Those pictures were printed quickly across every media outlet in the country and made their way even quicker into Stiles’ stash of personal time material, tucked safely away at the bottom of his nightstand drawer, where his dad has learned never to look.
Obviously, he does not say this part out loud to Derek Hale’s literal mother.
“Yep,” he says instead. “That’s, uh... great. For him.”
Her face twists into an instant frown, eyes narrowing to make it almost close to an actual glower as she stares coolly back at him. It is beyond clear that she is decidedly unimpressed with Stiles’ apparent underwhelming enthusiasm at her dearly beloved son’s future career path.
“Yes, it is,” she says, a sharpness to her tone that makes him duck his head, chastised. “Well. I should let you and dear Laura get back to your tour. I do hope you enjoy your stay with us here, Mr Stilinski.”
“Thank you,” he hastens to reply. “I – I’m sure I will.”
With that, the Hale matriarch glides out just as quickly as she glided in, her sullen teenage daughter following hotly at her heels. As soon as they are gone, he turns to Laura with furrowed eyebrows, his mouth opening around an anxious sentence already, but she stops him with a hurriedly lifted finger pulled in front of her tightly closed mouth.
Oh, yeah – right. Werewolf hearing. Growing up in a town as almost exclusively human as Beacon Hills, and with the only werewolf he spent all that much time around being Scott, his best friend, who he decidedly did not care if he overheard him and his big mouth at any given time, he is really going to have to get used to all these little quirks – and fast, if he wants to survive this summer.
After what feels like an eternity of standing around in total, nervous silence, she eventually lowers her finger from her lips. A smile slips slowly back across her mouth, one that tugs him right back into that feeling of ease, and she hooks their arms together once again and drags him out of the library, out into that maze of twisting hallways.
“Well, you survived your first encounter with Talia Hale,” she snarks, laughing softly at the panic that must still be drawn into each one of his features. “Relax, honestly. She’s all bark. All back-handed, passive aggressive bark. You can just ignore her – that’s what I normally do, anyway.”
He sends her a perplexed flash of side-eye.
“Do you and your mom not, like,” he starts, “get along – or something?”
A loud, derisive snort is all the answer he needs – and all the answer he gets – to figure out the full picture there. Animosity is quite clearly the leading aspect of their relationship, and a selfish part of him hopes that stems from her not inheriting her mother’s prejudices.
It’s a nice, hopeful thought. One that is pretty well backed up from what he has seen of her already, too.
Bringing them to a screeching halt in front of a solid wooden door, she unlinks her arm from his and bumps it open with a jab of her shoulder. Her hand quickly finds the centre of his back to shove him through it, and she follows closely behind him, letting the door slip shut in their wake.
The bedroom is well furnished, he notices immediately. An ornate bed pressed up against one wall, a huge wardrobe on the other side. A desk tucked away in a corner, and even his very own private adjoined bathroom. He almost can’t believe his luck as he blinks his way slowly across his surroundings.
She tosses the bag she has been carrying on his behalf onto the floor next to them, snapping his attention quickly over to her as she flings her arms open wide and turns to him with a huge grin.
“Home sweet home,” she says, before jumping backwards to land with a couple of bounces on the bed that will be his for the summer. “Is this okay? We have other rooms if you wanted to shop around a little more before settling.”
Okay, he thinks, barely suppressing an incredulous snort. The bed alone is almost bigger than his entire room back home. Truly – how the other half live, huh. It’s difficult for his comparatively broke brain to really comprehend.
“It’s fine,” he says, shooting her a quick, grateful smile. “Thank you.”
She waves her left hand up in the air in a vaguely accepting gesture. His gaze catches instantly on the huge, sparkling, diamond engagement ring, nestled snugly on the correct finger, glinting impressively in the sunlight streaming in through the windows. It looks even bigger now, here and up close and in person, than it did blown up across all of page six.
“No need for any thanks,” she says earnestly, leaning up on her elbows and folding her hands neatly over her stomach. “All the bedrooms are soundproofed, so don’t worry about being overheard when you’re in here. You can consider this your own little sanctuary away from the insanity of the Hales.”
He raises an eyebrow, mouth curving into a smirk.
“Except for the Hale currently taking up my bed,” he says drily.
Her smile takes on a wicked edge.
“Stilinski,” she practically purrs, putting on a hilariously salacious grin. “I’m a soon to be married woman. You can’t proposition me like this.”
“I would never,” he plays along, cupping a proprietary hand against his chest. “Jordan Parrish seems like a fine young man.”
He really does, too. He and his family are all werewolves – obviously, he is marrying a Hale, after all, so it’s not like there is much actual choice in that particular matter. But they aren’t anywhere near the societal heights that the Hales are. In fact, they are more known for their humanitarian work in improving human rights over the last several decades.
These upcoming nuptials represent a marriage of love, the papers were quick to yell all about. Something not always so common for werewolves of Laura’s stature. As a beta, and therefore non-heir to the family name, he can only imagine she gets a little more leeway than, say, the alpha son like Derek would.
“Oh, Jordan is definitely fine.” Her face scrunches up with her bout of giggles, and he finds himself laughing easily along with her. “You’ll get to meet him in a few weeks, actually. The wedding’s happening here at the end of the summer, and we still have so much bullshit we need to plan – according to Talia, at least.” She pauses, cocking her head to the side and fixing him with bright eyes. “You’ll come, right? To the wedding?”
Well, shit. That is not the question he expected to tumble out of her mouth. He chokes on his very next, shocked breath.
“We, like, literally met today,” he points out, a little disbelieving and a lot pleased, all at once. “Do you... do you really want me at your actual wedding?”
“Absolutely,” she replies immediately, easy, simple and earnest. “You’re cool, Stilinski. I like you. I think we’re gonna be real good friends.”
His mouth quirks into a soft smile as he gazes back at her enthusiasm. He finds himself nodding before he ever really makes the conscious decision to accept. It is what he wants, though.
“Okay, then,” he says. “I’ll be there.”
“Awesome,” she grins back at him.
He meets her excited smile for a moment more before his gaze drifts back towards the closed door. His mind runs all the way back through those long, winding halls, all the way back to that interaction in the library. A pang of apprehension hits him, and he bites down on his lip, knitting his eyebrows together as he turns back to her.
“Your sister,” he begins tentatively, the question of whether this is pushing boundaries lingering heavily over his head as he bolsters himself to plough on. “Is she... is everything all right, with her? She seemed kind of upset, earlier.”
“Oh, she’s fine,” she replies, sitting up and shrugging a shoulder. “She’s just moping because she wanted to present as an alpha, is all. If she had, then maybe our darling mother would actually pay attention to somebody besides her precious Derek.”
He winces. “Golden child, huh?”
She snorts. “And that’s putting it lightly.”
“Not a problem an only child really has to deal with,” he says mildly. “Even an omega like me.”
“Oh, Derek is fine... mostly.” She lifts a hand to wave flippantly in the air. “It’s not his fault, so we try not to hold it against him too much.”
With a click of her tongue to finish her sentence, she springs herself into a standing position and hops over to him. Once she is close enough, she claps him on the bicep once again, just like she did when they first met, but this time around, he is happy to note that she is extra careful to temper her strength and avoid hurting him.
He smiles down at her hand, then up at her face, before working up the courage to ask what he has been wanting to since pretty much the moment he first got here.
“Is he – Derek, I mean,” he begins to ask, failing spectacularly at keeping his voice blasé, “is he... going to be here for the summer, too?”
“He’ll be home in about a week or so,” she answers.
Instantly, both of her eyebrows shoot all the way up her forehead. Her eyes dip quickly down to the tell-tale trip of his heart, missing that very next beat inside of his chest, simply from hearing that Derek Hale, the Derek Hale, will actually be in the very same house as him from just next week.
No chance she didn’t catch onto that, then. Damn, traitorous organ.
Oh, well. His crush on the guy would have become pathetically obvious the second he stepped foot into Stiles’ presence, anyway – werewolves can literally smell arousal, after all. Might as well just go on ahead and get it out of the way with her now.
He fights back on his grimace and tries his best to keep something like a casual, unaffected expression.
“Cool,” he says, coming out more breathless than he would really prefer. “That’s, uh... yeah. Cool.”
She narrows her eyes at him for a moment, but, thankfully, chooses not to press him on it.
“Okay... sure.” The curiosity to the twist of her features melts away in favour of a wide, blinding smile. “Well – I’ll leave you to get settled in!” She dives forwards to press a quick kiss to his cheek. “You haven’t seen the last of me, though – I promise you that.”
He beams back at her, his cheek feeling all warm and tingly.
“I’m counting on it,” he replies.
As soon as the door is shut behind her, he lets himself flop back onto the bed, bouncing lightly up and down on top of the mattress. He stares up at the perfectly white ceiling, his hands clasped behind his head and his mind absolutely racing with thoughts and ideas and even the occasional ridiculous fantasy about what might end up happening to him this summer.
In the end, though, he realises – he has absolutely no idea what awaits him. It’s a terrifyingly exciting thought.
***
His first week at the Hale mansion goes by relatively uneventfully. Just as promised, Laura really is around to fill up a lot of his time – whether she is hanging around the library, badgering him until he gives up on the fleeting pretence of his job to route all of his focus onto her instead, or whether she is tugging him around the rest of the grounds, gleefully showing him all of the ridiculously expensive and ridiculously ugly stuff that Talia Hale has wasted more money on over the years than Stiles will probably ever have access to in his life.
Whatever the reason, she is there. A lot. And – honestly? He wouldn’t have it any other way.
They get along fantastically, like long-lost best friends within just days of meeting. He hasn’t felt this kind of instant connection with another person since Scotty, all the way back in the first grade. Maybe there is something to the fact that he seems to naturally gravitate so quickly to the limited nice werewolves he has ever met in his life; honestly, he hasn’t given it all that much thought.
Plus, it’s been years since Scott’s mom moved him away to the other side of the country, moving them to a town better integrated than Beacon Hills will quite possibly ever be. Hell, they left for that endeavour before he and Scott even had a chance to start high school together, so it’s been a damn long time since he has built this kind of instantly intense rapport with anybody.
So much between him and Laura just meshes so well. Their wicked senses of humour match up perfectly, their ability to crack the exact right kind of joke to have the other all but rolling on the floor with laughter, the way they naturally just melt into the easiest conversation that Stiles has ever experienced with anyone outside of his dad and Scott. Truly, she has been a monumental help in making him feel as settled and content here as he does already.
He has seen Cora around, every now and then, but she really is your archetypical moody teenager, angry at the world at large and with very little in the way of conversation skills, aside from the frequent grunting or the chronic eye rolling she has going on. He senses it wise to leave her alone for the most part, and he also senses that she appreciates it – underneath all of that teenage angst, of course.
Talia he has come across a few times since, as well. She hasn’t gotten any less paralysingly intimidating in any of those interactions, so he is genuinely more than content to simply avoid her. A pursuit he is certain is happily mutual.
Overall, it’s been... good. Surprisingly. A whole lot better than he ever let himself expect.
The library, in particular, is fantastic. It really does seem to have every book from the entire history of existence contained within its four, high walls. On occasion, he has wondered whether the whole burning down of the Library of Alexandria thing wasn’t actually a well-conceived lie, wasn’t actually just a contrived deception by the werewolf bourgeoises so that they could hoard all of that arcane knowledge just for themselves, keeping it stacked away here, for only the most powerful of werewolves – and the incidentally odd human – to have access to.
He wouldn’t put it past them. He’s dived into a conspiracy theory or two in his time.
Today, he sits in the far most corner of the vast room, mostly hidden away in the shadows, tucked where the light from the windows doesn’t quite reach. He is on the floor, bony ass more than a little uncomfortable against the hard wood, his legs folded over one another with his ankles crossed, too. His knees bounce and his shoulders roll as he restlessly shifts and fidgets in place.
Perched in his lap is a huge and heavy leatherbound book, so big and so solid that the heft of it makes his thighs ache, trembling slightly under its gargantuan weight. He ardently ignores any muscle strain though, in favour of letting his ravenous eyes devour each and every word on the age-stained pages in front of him.
His eyes pore over the hundreds of archaic werewolf family trees etched out in painstaking detail within, some dating as far back as medieval times, all the way across the pond. It’s crazy, he can’t help but think, that hundreds of years have passed since those days, and yet the idea of a werewolf in any sort of family like these, with this kind of societal ranking behind them, marrying outside of their species is still entirely unheard of, entirely shunned.
Hell, it was only a few years ago when the alpha daughter of a prominent werewolf family was disowned completely for daring to fall in love with an omega human she met at college. He remembers reading all about it in the gossip columns at the time. She gave up her whole fortune and inheritance for love, marrying that guy anyway, the many articles read. Honestly, Stiles couldn’t help but find it all stupidly romantic.
But – for anyone else, for any other werewolf of rank who might not be so keen to toss aside all of their entitlements, a human is nothing more than something to screw around on the side with, a simple distraction before settling down into something serious, something real, something within the correct and appropriate species.
How limiting, Stiles has often thought. They may have all the money and the fame and the good fortune in the world, but they will never truly get to be free. He would even feel bad for them, if they didn’t also totally rule the world on top of it. That kind of power mostly kills any sympathy he might have been able to muster up.
On the floor just beside him lays an open and already half emptied bag of chips, looted from the staff kitchens about an hour ago. He makes sure to be incredibly careful to keep his greasy fingers way, way, way away from the pages, keeping that potato-smudged hand hovering, suspended in the air, whenever it is not dipping back into the bag every few minutes.
It is a testament, he thinks, to just how utterly focused he is on his reading, how single-mindedly tuned into the historic tales being woven across the pages in front of him, that he doesn’t even notice the towering presence looming intimidatingly over him until it pointedly, and incredulously, clears its throat to speak.
“Who the fuck are you?”
With the very first word spoken, Stiles’ head snaps right up. A hiss of pain whistles out from between his clenched teeth, his neck twinging with such a sharp, sudden movement, and he has one eye still screwed shut around his wince as he blinks his brain into sluggish comprehension, into registering precisely who it is, actually, currently standing over him right now, with his famously intense glare fixed firmly in Stiles’ direction.
And... oh fuck. Oh fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck his fucking life, because it is...
It is Derek fucking Hale.
Instantly, his mouth runs dry. Even with the nasty, unrelenting scowl taking over Derek’s face, the guy is still just unbelievably goddamn attractive. Hell, maybe even more so, because of that very scowl.
Up close and in the flesh, for the first time ever – ever! – Stiles is forced to confront the fact that this man, this alpha, somehow looks better here, better even than across the airbrushed pages of those magazines, or in the brief flashes during television appearances that Derek would agree to on occasion and Stiles would make sure to catch every single time.
Which shouldn’t actually be possible, Stiles thinks. Not in a fair sort of world. Yet – here they are.
He is wearing jeans that hug his sculpted, muscular thighs, a grey t-shirt that clings perfectly to him, doing nothing at all to hide the broadness of his shoulders, the impressive strength of his chest. His inky black hair is short and carefully messy, his stubble dark and artfully shaven across his sharp jaw, his heavy brows drawn all the way together as he stares down at Stiles with unrestrained anger etched across all of those obscenely handsome features.
For a long moment, for far too long of a moment, Stiles simply gapes back up at him. His eyes are wide, and his mouth is parted, and his heart is racing wildly behind his ribcage as he just blinks dumbly up at quite possibly the literal hottest person in the entire world, standing right before him.
Vaguely, he wonders how loud that must be – his rapidly thudding heart – to Derek’s heightened werewolf hearing. Stiles is nothing more than a human, with bland human senses, and even he feels like he can hear it, a loud roar right inside his ears. So, to Derek, it can only be infuriatingly deafening.
There is a page half-flicked beneath one of Stiles’ clean fingers, the movement aborted with the abrupt realisation that he isn’t, in fact, as originally believed, as alone in here as he was when he first hunkered down with this book. There is, actually, somebody else present right now, and, for whatever reason, that somebody is clearly freaking pissed.
He forces himself to snap back into the moment with a clacking snap of his teeth, quickly and carefully pushing the heavy book in his lap aside, never once breaking eye contact with the predator above him.
“Oh, uh – shit, um.” He stutters over his words as he scrambles to his feet, an uncoordinated flurry of limbs, wiping his greasy fingers onto the rough material of his pants in preparation for a friendly, greeting handshake. “Hi, uh, I’m –”
“Actually, I don’t give a fuck who you are,” Derek interrupts him, curling his lip harshly. “This is private property. How the fuck did you even get in?”
In an act of quick placation, Stiles throws up two palms facing outwards in front of his chest. His eyebrows knit together as he hastily and vehemently begins to shake his head, trying desperately to telegraph just how severely Derek has grasped at the wrong end of the stick here.
“Hey, whoa,” he says. “That’s not –”
“You need to get the fuck out of here before I call the cops.” Derek pauses a moment, his nostrils flaring just a second before his eyes flash burning red, his entire face screwing up in this expression of pure disgust that sends a shiver down Stiles’ spine. “Christ, and you’re a human? A human omega? What kind of fucking moron breaks into a werewolves’ house when they’re just a weak fucking human?”
Stiles’ head rears back in reflexive shock, those harsh words sinking down to his core.
So... that bad reputation that Derek Hale has? That infamous public perception of him as coarse, and rude, and abrasive, and, ultimately, an all-around total jackass? That would be completely on the fucking money, it turns out.
Shaking his head to pull his senses back to him a little better, Stiles lets his face morph from surprise into the outright fury that he can feel flowing steadily through his veins now. He grits his teeth together, feeling a muscle in his jaw twitch with the action, and he blows a short, sharp, bracing breath out through his nose.
“And who the fuck,” he starts, letting venom drip onto every word, “are you calling weak, asshole?”
Derek’s eyes fade back to that speckled, blue-green lightness that Stiles is so breathlessly familiar with. He forces himself to stop noticing that the moment Derek squares his shoulders and tips his chin up high into the air.
“You have five seconds to get the fuck out,” Derek says, voice low and dangerous, “before I show you just how weak your kind really are.”
Stiles takes a step forward. It’s like a reflex, hearing that challenge, to press closer before his brain really catches up with his limbs long enough to put any real thought into it. But at the same time, it is going against every single instinct that he should have. Every corner of his human omega brain is lighting up, igniting with that base prey nature that is yelling at him no, no, no freaking way, bad idea, get the hell out of there, do not proceed any further you goddamn fucking dumbass.
He does not listen to this part of his mind, of course. There is a good reason his dad has told him, more than once over his eighteen years of life, that his knack for self-preservation is pretty much... non-existent.
This close together, he can tell they are a similar height, Derek with maybe just an inch or two over him at most. The likeness allows him to really get up in Derek’s face, lets him sneer directly at him, his hands curling into tight fists at his sides and his chest heaving with agitated exertion.
Derek does not move. He does not take even a single step back or away. Stiles would hazard an educated guess that there is a war of instincts raging on inside of his mind, too, right about now: that superior, werewolf kill-drive, screaming at him that this is an easy fight, an easy win, no back down and no goddamn surrender, in complete conflict with the alpha side of him, the part that must be hyperaware that this is a face-off with an omega, somebody he has been biologically designed to protect.
Two completely contrasting instincts: one side wanting to hurt, maim, kill, and the other wanting to leave Stiles alone, or maybe even grab him a snack, some water, find him a blanket and somewhere comfortable to sit down.
Fuck that, Stiles thinks. He may be an omega, but he is not a weakling to freaking coddle.
Soon enough, they both win their battles over the baser natures of their presentations. Derek’s eyes blink back to that persistently glowing red, and Stiles lets his teeth bare around a nasty sneer as he crowds another step closer.
“Oh yeah, tough guy?” he baits, eyes narrowing. “You gonna hurt me? I bet the papers would love to hear all about that, huh? Yet another story for the rags of big, mighty, alpha werewolf Derek Hale proving what a complete fucking asshole he really is.”
In the rapid blink of an eye, Derek’s fangs drop down, cutting like razors over the soft redness of his lower lip. His jaw works around a growl, low and rumbling up slowly from his chest, meeting Stiles’ challenge head on with those red eyes, those sharp teeth. He looks the very picture of a dangerous alpha werewolf, like the kind of thing you’d see in a textbook above the caption time to run away, a warning that Stiles should be heeding, really, should have him sprinting straight for the hills, any second now.
But he won’t. His heartbeat may ratchet up to a dangerously fast tick-tick-tick, but – he stands his ground.
The air around them crackles with furious tension as they hold each other’s gazes, long seconds of drawn out, heated intensity. All of a sudden, Derek’s eyes dart away, snapping down towards the floor just beside Stiles’ feet, and when they land there, they stay there for a moment, widening slightly as this short, sharp, disbelieving noise replaces Derek’s rumbling growl.
“Are you... are you eating our food?” Derek demands, voice pitched up high and incredulous as he snaps his red gaze back up to Stiles’ face. “Christ, that is – that is some fucking nerve you’ve got on you, I’ll give you that.”
Stiles lets a wide, bloodless smile spread across his mouth. He lets his eyes shift as frenzied, as completely riled-up, as he feels right now.
“You wanna see nerve?” He starts to pull his fist back, elbow bent and muscles tensed, preparing for the broken set of knuckles he is sure to earn himself the moment his hand makes impact. “I’ll show you nerve.”
Except – before he can put his swinging fist into motion, a loud cackle that sounds suspiciously like Laura snaps his attention to an abrupt halt.
“Oh my god,” she says, patently amused as she saunters into the room, shaking her head between them. “What is wrong with you two?”
Stiles splutters out an entirely indignant incoherence of words, stringing together to form little more than a set of high noises spilling from his fish-gaping mouth. Still, he hopes that it properly and appropriately conveys just how much he has no fucking idea how any of this could be put down to his fault.
In front of him, Derek’s eyes blink back to their usual light colour, his fangs receding back into his gums almost as quickly as they had appeared. He twists to turn the full intensity of his glare onto Laura now, making a sound eerily similar to Stiles’ earlier splutterings as he stares at her.
“You know this human?” he asks.
“Wow. And fuck you, too, dude.” Stiles lifts his arms to cross stubbornly over his chest, still feeling the coursing remnants of his anger boiling through his blood. “This human has a name, actually.” He pauses, letting his head tilt to the side and a malicious smirk curve onto his mouth. “You fucking asshole.”
Derek throws an arm out in Stiles’ direction, lifting his eyebrows towards his sister as if to say – see! She simply purses her mouth at him, putting her hand on her hip and staring him right back down.
“To be fair, Derek,” she says mildly, “you are being a fucking asshole right now.”
Stiles’ smile turns impossibly smug when Derek throws his next growl out to her.
“Okay,” he says, with not a small hint of frustrated impatience, “does somebody maybe want to tell me what the hell is going on here?”
Rolling her eyes up towards the ceiling, she takes a few more steps into the room, Derek matching her pace with long, stomping steps until they meet in the middle. Stiles doesn’t bother to follow, electing instead to lean a nonchalant shoulder against the nearest bookshelf, still smirking as he gleefully watches this scene unfold in front of him.
With a huge, heaving, put upon sigh, she twists to share a long-suffering look with Stiles for a second before returning her even gaze to her brother.
“Derek, this is Stiles,” she says, her cadence slow, as though she is talking to a particularly stupid child. “Stiles is the human Talia picked at random from the proverbial bunch this year to prove what a charitable citizen she truly is. You know – like we already told you about. More than several times, actually.”
Even from Stiles’ vantage point, he can spot when Derek freezes in guiltily caught silence, the tips of his ears colouring ever so slightly red under the bright, shining sun glimmering down from the windows. Stiles has to lift a hand to his mouth to stifle his snicker into his palm.
“Oh,” Derek says, eventually, head tilted resolutely away from Stiles’ direction, a visibly embarrassed slump to the set of his shoulders. “I... didn’t realise that.”
“You didn’t let me explain, you mean,” Stiles calls out to his back. “And that would be because you are a fucking asshole.”
Clicking his tongue, Derek raises an arm to point accusingly at Stiles, like a toddler ratting out a sworn enemy for hogging all of the good toys. Stiles bites the inside of his cheek around a threatening bubble of laughter that wants to escape him, having to double down in strength when he catches Laura’s eye and notices she is having to do the exact same thing.
“You can’t talk to me like that,” Derek says hotly, still staring fiercely at Laura’s barely not giggling face. “He can’t talk to me like that!”
She quirks a single eyebrow. “Watch him.”
Derek twists to scowl at Stiles over his shoulder, another growl of agitation echoing from him. The frown at his mouth is truly the most ridiculously exaggerated thing that Stiles has ever seen, and Stiles chooses to simply beam right back in the face of it.
“Yeah,” Stiles says breezily. “Watch me, dickweed.”
He and Laura catch eyes once again as she snorts, not bothering to suppress it at all this time, it seems. Mentally, he thinks, they are high fiving one another, right above Derek’s pouting face.
Derek exhales in a frustrated huff, head bowing as he stares down at the floor. His shoulders start to move, up and down, and up and down, as though he is trying to recover himself back to calmness with long, laboured breaths.
“I...” Derek starts to say, slowly lifting his head to look at Stiles without any discernible expression on his face. “I... forgot... that someone would be here. So that’s... my bad, I guess.”
Stiles barks out a sharp, hollow laugh.
“Oh, gee. That’s your bad? Well, thanks so much for the apology, man.” He shakes his head, watching as the careful neutrality on Derek’s face slips back into irritation with each of his sarcastic words. “Honestly. How could I ever not forgive such a heartfelt outpouring of contrition?”
The grating, audible sound of teeth grinding together pushes through Derek’s tightly thinned out lips. His eyes roll up towards the ceiling in clear exasperation.
“What the hell do you want from me?” he asks.
“Um, an actual sorry might be nice,” Stiles throws right back to him, uncrossing his arms to toss his hands up into the air. “Jesus. You are even worse than your reputation precedes you to be, do you know that?”
Laura’s head tosses back in yet another loud round of gleeful laughter. As she giggles herself back under a semblance of control, she ambles over to Stiles, getting close enough to hook an arm around his neck and pull him down so she can smack a sticky kiss against his cheek.
He allows it, because he likes her, and because it does make him smile – especially with the way Derek is watching all of it happen like it is the worst thing he has ever seen in his whole entire life.
“He’s a fucking asshole,” she teases, eyes glinting as she tips her head towards Derek. “Right, Stilinski?”
Pursing his mouth around a twitching smile, he lets her tug him forwards, burying his hands into his pockets as he stumbles along with her, forcibly yanked all the way over to Derek in the centre of the room. He meets Derek’s persistent frown with a severe return of his own, twisting his neck to look down at her as they come to a stop.
“I don’t like him,” he tells her.
“I don’t blame you,” she shrugs back.
“I’m standing right here,” Derek grouches.
With a quick whip of his neck, Stiles turns the full force of his sneer onto Derek. He can’t help but thrill in the way it makes Derek’s eyebrows shock halfway up his forehead, his eyes snapping that stunned bit wider.
“Feel free to fuck off any time,” Stiles says cheerfully. “You won’t be missed.”
Cutting in with another laugh, Laura relinquishes her hold on him, allowing him to stand all the way back up to his full height. The three of them are all huddled close enough together now that she can lift a hand up on either side of her and place a palm on each of their cheeks, slapping lightly as she looks between them.
“Boys, boys,” she says, shaking her head faintly, fondly. “Are we going to be able to play nice this summer?”
A few beats of silence pass, echoing in the air all around them. She casts an expectant eye in both of their directions, left to Stiles, then right to Derek. She raises both of her eyebrows, blatantly impatient, when neither of them speaks, when neither of them gives her an answer.
Eventually, Derek is the first to give in. He capitulates with a loud sigh under his sister’s unwavering stare.
“Yes,” he mutters as his promise.
“We’ll see,” Stiles hedges cagily.
“Oh, man,” she laughs up towards the ceiling. “This is going to be fun.”