Chapter Text
Dear Entirely Imaginary and Utterly Made Up Captain Derek Hale,
My name is Stiles Stilinski. I am sixteen years old, an omega of good breeding and background, possessing some education and thought. I am also the biggest idiot this side of the Channel.
When she was alive, Stiles’s mother used to joke that her only child had been born with a pencil in one hand and a book in the other. Even as a boy, Stiles was rarely happier than when he was surrounded by print and pictures. Unless he was with his beloved and gentle omega mother. But her health, always frail and questionable, had failed them all far too soon, leaving Stiles alone to explore the world without her. Stiles found his peace then in the quiet back garden and deep woods beyond, sketching all manner of life as he found it.
Where he did not find his peace, however, was surrounded by people. Just thinking about being the center of attention cast an icy stone to the pit of his stomach. And actually being surrounded by people? Well, it really was for the best that it happened as little as often.
Unfortunately for Stiles, he was the only child of a widowed baron, and there were more than a few strings and expectations that came along with the title. He spent much of his fifteenth year dreading his birthday, knowing he would be face-to-face with the biggest expectation of him yet. Stiles was supposed to find and catch an alpha who would knot him; securing the Stilinski title before it could pass to Stiles’s dreadful American cousin. It sounded simple enough, but to Stiles the thought of meeting strange alphas, knowing how he would freeze and humiliate his family name and fail his father completely...well, he spent hours trying to talk his father out of it, even before Natalie came to live with them.
Stiles’s beta step-mother had a good and kind heart, and Stiles was honestly quite fond of her. Natalie clearly adored Lord Beacon, and young as she was she and John Stilinski had quite a good chance at securing a proper alpha heir for the Beacon barony together. Though she was only a few years older than Stiles, Natalie made Stiles’s father happy again after too many somber years, and Stiles couldn’t bring himself to dislike her in the slightest as a result.
Still, he could have done without her well-meaning plans for his season, due to begin shortly after their honeymoon. He tried, in vain, to explain his crippling shyness and how he was destined to ruin the family name at his very first outing. Natalie, though, declared that what Stiles really needed was a holiday by the sea while his parents were celebrating their nuptials in London. Stiles would spend two months by himself, and be able to use the time to practice talking to strangers and getting over his shyness.
What happened instead, however, was Stiles spent a blissful two months of solitude. He had walked the beach by the hour, sketching waves and hermit crabs and collecting seashells to line his windowsill and dresser. Evenings were spent curled around first one book, then another, in front of the cheerful grate in his room. It was heaven.
Unfortunately, when he came home, it was to Natalie already making plans for his wardrobe, insisting that her son would have the most lavish coming out party possible. That he would surely meet and snare a handsome Duke on his first go, now that he’d had a chance to conquer his shyness. And Stiles panicked.
“But I’ve already met someone,” he blurted. Which was stupid and silly, and perhaps if he’d confessed to the lie then and there, he might have been able to convince Natalie and his father to listen to reason. Instead, Stiles looked at the naked disbelief on his father and his step-mother’s faces, and felt a burning embarrassment that they could be so incredulous at Stiles’s ability to find love on his own. He doubled down, spinning a tale of a handsome Scottish soldier-- an alpha, of course -- and an engagement indefinitely postponed by the war on the continent with Emperor Deucalion’s forces.
With that story came more lies, building and shaping until the end of the day when Stiles’s mysterious suitor had a name (Derek Hale, a combination of random and common names), a rank (captain), and an appearance (tall, strong, with thick dark hair and eyes like an unspoilt glen reflected in a still loch). Stiles spent so much time mooning that his family reluctantly accepted that this Captain Hale must be real. Hell, Stiles himself nearly believed it. Best of all, his father had reluctantly agreed to delay Stiles’s coming-out, if only for the time being.
...but now, of course, my family expects me to write to you, to keep you company on your campaign. I know you don’t exist, and I know you’ll never read this, but Natalie has been watching me write all this time and she doesn’t have to know that all I’ve done here is make my confession to you, Captain Daydream.
So, in closing, I should probably apologize for using you so shamelessly, but since you aren’t real and I am truly getting the peace I desire from this, I shan’t. Here, have a drawing of a dog.
Very sincerely yours,
Your fibbing fiance,
Stiles Stilinski