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There are a lot of unexplainable phenomenon in this world.
The supernatural, for one. Why some people and animals were born with magic, no one has been able to really figure out despite the fact that the world of the supernatural has been known to the entirety of mankind for only a little less than a thousand years. Of course, it is science that explains why some children of magical creatures are magic as well, or why some of them do not possess the magic at all. However, the initial spark is one of those forever mysteries that, honestly, people aren’t really worried about needing to solve.
Soulmarks are another one of those unexplainable phenomena. It is widely assumed that the same spark of magic that created magical creatures was behind these marks that inked the skin of all human beings on earth. Supernaturals did not have these marks, as they are a different species, technically, though they are still classified as people. Most creatures have their own way of finding the people or person they are meant to stay with for the rest of their life, either through instinct, smell, touch, or any other number of reasons. Because humans don’t have any of these special abilities, they get corresponding marks that they can see, or in some cases feel.
Soulmarks can be any number of things. Some people have phrases, some have their match’s first words spoken to them, some have shapes or depictions of animals. Some have just a single letter or character.
But every human being, at one point in their life, would have a soulmark. Sometimes they are not obvious, and sometimes they do not appear for years, but everyone gets one at some point. The longest documented case of a person (excluding premature deaths or anything along those lines) going without a soulmark was a sixty-four-year-old woman who got her mark the day her grandson was born.
Soulmarks didn’t necessarily mean anything romantic, just that your lives were intertwined, and you were destined to meet and mean a lot to each other. About fifty percent of all soulmark matches ended up romantic, and out of pairs with a ten-year or less age gap, that percentage was a much higher 80%.
Many people had pre-conceived notions about soulmarks, but it wasn’t until you really met your match that the real feeling of connection made sense to anyone. It is deeply instinctual, feels like a tug at the heart, a shortness of breath, and even in the most stressful situations it can feel like a wave of calm has enveloped you. And you feel like you’ve just learned how to breathe correctly for the first time.
***
Derek Hale was not born a werewolf.
This came as a bit of a surprise to the rest of the Hale family, because all of them were werewolves. There was a 25% chance, genetically, that Derek would be born without the magical spark, but with Talia Hale’s first daughter, Laura, being born a werewolf, she hadn’t thought anything different for her second child. Derek’s father, Eric, however swore he called it from the beginning. Said something smelled different from Talia’s first pregnancy.
Either way, the Hales had no problem with having a human son. They vowed to love and cherish him even if he was the only human in their pack. He certainly wasn’t the first human in the Hale Family line, as Talia’s grandfather had been human.
None the less, it was still a surprise. Talia had remembered, two days after the birth, that humans were supposed to have soulmarks, and after checking every inch of her newborn son for a sign of dark etching and finding nothing, she began to worry. She immediately rushed to the closest Urgent Care, where the kind attendant at the front desk assured her that this was perfectly normal, and that there was nothing wrong with her son.
“Just check every once and a while. It may not happen for years,” Talia was assured.
Though werewolves were some of the closest supernaturals to humans in the ways they lived, there were still things that Talia had to research to make sure she was taking care of her child properly. She learned that because of the slight differences in her body chemistry, she could not breast-feed Derek for any longer than five months, just in case, and wean him onto formula as soon as he was willing. Werewolf children were just as fragile in the infant stage, so there were no worries with her knowledge there. But usually werewolf children shifted and grew fangs, learning about their other side before coming back to their unshifted “human” selves and then beginning to crawl, walk, run, etc. Derek was crawling much earlier than Laura had been, which was not something Talia planned on telling Laura, as she was in her terrible threes going onto terrible fours and could be very nasty when jealous.
Eric, being someone who worked with human children on a regular basis as a nurse at the local hospital, had an easier transition with figuring out how best to raise a human son in a werewolf den. It took a few months for everything to even out; for the child-proof railings to go up and the pads on the coffee table edges secured. But after the first year, Derek hardly batted an eye when Laura tried to scare him off by shifting and growling, and he joined his family on full moon nights as they all gazed up at the sky from beneath the trees, perfectly content to sit among a pile of shifted werewolves.
As Derek grew, he was taught all about werewolves as much as his werewolf family was taught about humans. He learned that his mother was the Alpha of the family, because she was at the top. Her red eyes though scary in appearance were rather calming. And paired with his father and sister’s matching golden eyes, they made a pack with Betas. His uncle Peter had blue eyes, and his mother told him that was because Peter was a special Beta. Derek always thought that was cool, but Peter never said anything in agreement.
Talia was special, because she could fully shift into a wolf, something that was a Hale-family trait. She’d told Derek in a hushed voice, that everyone else pretended they couldn’t hear, that she suspected Laura would be able to do a full-shift as well, once she was older.
When Derek was three, his mother announced he would be getting a younger sibling. The entire family, including extended members, began to debate whether the third child would be human or werewolf. Talia secretly wished that her child would be human, just so that down the road, though it wasn’t an issue now, Derek wouldn’t feel like an outsider in his own family. She couldn’t be disappointed however, when five months later she gave birth to Cora, a giggling werewolf. Derek was too caught up in his new baby sister to even think about their differences, and Talia hoped he would think that way forever.
It was only a month after Cora was born that Derek had rushed into the kitchen, tears pouring down his face, babbling nonsensical words to his parents who were only half-awake.
“What’s wrong, my little prince?” Talia cooed, ignoring her exhaustion and kneeling on the tile to scoop her son into her arms. “Are you hurt? Nightmare?”
“I can’t get it off!” Derek wailed into her ear.
Talia and Eric shared a look, and Eric joined them on the floor as well. Derek backed out of his mother’s arm and was tugging at the sleeve of his pajama shirt.
“Your shirt?” Eric guessed.
Derek shook his head vehemently. “No! The words! I can’t get the pen off! I kept scrubbing and scrubbing, and Laura kept laughing at me, but it just won’t come off!”
A thought hit Talia suddenly, and both she and her husband locked eyes in that second and sighed in relief.
Eric pulled Derek close. “Let us see, son. There’s no need to worry.”
Derek sniffled but rolled up his sleeve as requested. Against his flushed skin, rubbed red from Derek’s most likely vigorous washing, was a handwritten duo of words. It did look very similar to pen marks on skin, but there was a difference to the inking of the letters. They were settled into the skin, unmovable.
Talia subtly brushed her fingers over the words and sucked a bit of the leftover pain from the irritated skin. Derek sniffled and wiped his nose with his other sleeve.
“Derek this is your soulmark,” Eric said, speaking slowly. “Having these words means that someone very important to you was born while you were sleeping.”
Derek sniffled again. “But Cora was born forever ago!”
Talia resisted the urge to coo. “Someone not from our family,” she explained. “Someone you will meet in the future.”
“What does it say?” Derek asked. “How did they know how to write on me?”
Eric pursed his lips and held back a laugh. “This is magic, Derek. No one wrote it on you.”
Derek twisted his arm around and then shook it out, the sleeve falling back down over half of the mark, before he pushed it back up and then poked at the skin. “So, it’s gonna stay on me forever?”
“Yes. And guess what? You’re special, because you’re the only one in this family who gets a soulmark.”
Derek’s eyes lit up. “Because I’m human?” he asked.
“Because you’re a great human,” Eric corrected, kissing the top of his son’s head. “And you know what it says?”
Derek’s eyes widened even further. He bounced a little on his toes. “What? What?”
“That first word right there,” Eric pointed to the first scribbled word. “That says ‘Alpha’.”
Derek’s head whipped around to stare at his mother. “Like you!”
Talia beamed. “Yep, just like me. You’re an alpha too, don’t ever forget that.”
Derek flung his arms around his mother’s neck and squeezed. Simultaneously, baby Cora let out a wailing cry. Eric sighed and stood on shaky legs, but waved his wife off as he shuffled back over to the counter to warm up a bottle of milk.
“Now go tell your sister she is going to be late for school and you’ll eat all of her breakfast if she doesn’t get in here soon,” Talia told her son, a teasing lit to her words.
Derek stood, spine ramrod straight and said, “Yes!” like a cadet saluting its superior. He sprinted out of the room, the only sign of his tears being the ruddiness of his cheeks.
“Alpha Lupi, what is that?” Eric murmured as he passed Talia on the way into the nursery.
“I’ll look it up,” Talia promised as she started pulling out the options for breakfast cereal. “Sounds Latin,” she added belatedly, but she knew her husband was still listening as he made a hum of assertion from the hallway.
Alpha Lupi, as it turned out, was a star. It was the closest supernova star to the earth, and bright enough to be seen even on the smoggiest of days, shining bright with a bluish-white glow. Derek had been fascinated when Talia sat him in her lap at the computer desk during Cora’s afternoon nap. They’d flipped through online photos and diagrams together, though they weren’t much to see. Without the extensive knowledge of truly how hot over twenty thousand Kelvin was, the information of it was confusing to her, let alone a four-year-old.
“Twenty-five thousand times brighter than the sun?!” Derek squeaked after Talia read that fact off of the Wikipedia page. “That’s… super-duper bright!”
“It is!” Talia agreed with a chuckle. “It’s a very bright, very special star. Just like you.” She poked the tip of his nose, and he scrunched it up at the feeling, eyes crossing to look down at it.
His gaze then shifted down to the words on his arm. “This means an important person, right?” Derek asked, voice soft.
“Yes, in a way,” Talia agreed. “It means that you will eventually meet someone who has a mark to match yours, or has something to do with your mark. I think,” she murmured the last part to herself. There was still more information on soulmarks that she had yet to discover.
“Maybe they like space!” Derek suddenly blurted out, fingers tracing repetitively over the ‘L’ in Lupi.
“That…is a very good guess,” Talia responded, allowing Derek to slide off of her lap, bare feet smacking against the wooden floors.
“I wanna learn about space, too! So I can talk to them about it when we meet!”
Talia laughed, throwing her head back with it. Derek cocked his head to the side, confused at his mother’s reaction.
“You can if you want to. Once Cora wakes up from her nap, we could go to the library and pick up some books and movies.”
Derek’s eyes lit up. “Yes please, Mommy!”
As if responding to her brother’s enthusiasm, Cora let out a wail form her bassinet. Derek giggled giddily, bouncing on his feet declaring that he was going to get ready to go before zooming off towards his room.
Talia knew that in a few minutes he would come to her to button his pants or tie his shoes, but for now she had a crying baby to placate and, apparently, a new subject she had to educate her child on.
***
Stiles Stilinski was not born with a soulmark.
Nobody worried about it. The doctors let Claudia and John know once they cleaned him off, but neither of them were concerned. John hadn’t gotten his mark until he was starting kindergarten, so he knew to be patient. Claudia had been born with hers, but all of her siblings had been born without, so she was well acquainted with the concept of being “soulmark-less” for a few years.
Still, with human society being as obsessed with soulmarks as it was, Stiles learned at a very young age that soulmarks were the thing to have. One of his favorite morning cartoons had an episode on soulmarks that was Stiles’ favorite, and he watched it several times a week. He liked seeing how happy all of the characters were with their marks, and how special each individual one was.
Every morning, around the age of three, Stiles started checking his body for a mark. He was only a little discouraged when he could only note, over the passage of time, some of the moles on his arms and face growing slightly darker. In the bath, he would have his parents check the places he couldn’t see, like his back. His father, John, was a little concerned about how much his son was stuck on these marks, but Claudia calmed him down with soft words. Stiles was only a young kid, it wasn’t something harmful.
The harm started to creep in around kindergarten. A majority of the population gained their soulmarks within the first three years of schooling, but Stiles was impatient. Every day he was surrounded by students who had marks. No one else really seemed to care about them like he did, and it was annoying to him.
There were only a few people he could stand, and one was his best friend, Scott, who had been born with his soulmark on the wrist of his right arm: a heart with a slit in the top and a slit in the bottom, missing its pierced arrow. Scott was just an enthusiastic child in general, so it was easy to play around with him without worrying about things like marks.
The only other person he could stand was Lydia Martin, and that was because she already knew who her match was. Her match was, unfortunately, not someone Stiles ever wanted to associate with. Jackson Whittemore was the meanest kid in the class, but also the most popular. He was very protective over Lydia, which she only seemed to mind when it became too much and inconvenienced her. But Stiles could sit with her and not worry about stupid mark stuff because for her it was already over and done with. Plus, her mark, four sharp jagged lines over the crest of her shoulder, was hidden by her clothes, so he could never see it.
Stiles tied to stop caring about soulmarks as much. The favored books and movies of his from his childhood he offered to sell at yard sales or donate to the library. He stopped his daily full-bodied mirror checks. But it wasn’t easy to completely stop what was so ingrained within you, and within society. It seemed as if as soon as he was ready to stop caring so much, another classmate would get their mark, or find their match, and the self-loathing process would begin all over again.
By the age of eight, Stiles had decided to give up. He decided that he wasn’t going to wait until he was ten, or twenty, or fifty for his soulmark to appear. He was going to pretend they didn’t exist and that he could live his life by finding his own special someone.
He started with Lydia, which, honestly, was the most idiotic person to start with. But Stiles couldn’t help it. She was smart, and cute, and didn’t mind talking to him most of the time. Scott, as encouraging as ever, backed him up fully. He helped Stiles devise a plan to get Lydia to date him, which they plotted out over a span of ten years. That should be plenty of time for them to fall in love, right?
The problem was Jackson. Well, the problem was Jackson and the fact that Lydia seemed to really like him, and when Stiles started to act as flirty as an eight-year-old could towards her, she stopped wanting anything to do with Stiles.
But Stiles persevered. He focused all of his attention that he used to focus on researching soulmarks onto getting Lydia to love him. He would spend hours after school studying, so that he could be in the smarter math class with Lydia in the next year. He started working small jobs for his neighbors, like weeding yards or walking their pets so he could make some money to buy Lydia something nice for her birthday, because she would definitely like him better than Jackson if his gift was better, right?
Lydia never gave in to his courting, which was a little disheartening. However, Stiles had planned for this. He knew she wouldn’t, her strong will a part of her that drew him to her. But he persisted none the less, never giving up hope.
Over time, he came to actually like doing these things for himself, and not just Lydia. That proud smile on his parents’ face when he brought home his report card of all As made him feel happy, and he had fun walking his neighbor’s dog because he didn’t have his own pet at home and animal affection was something special. Plus, the extra money he earned went towards buying video games for him and Scott to play on the weekends, and he became awesome at those.
Honestly, Stiles decided somewhere during his fifth-grade year, giving up on his soulmark was the best decision he’d ever made. He didn’t even want one anymore. So there.
In the Stilinski house, ever since Stiles stopped talking so excitedly about soulmarks, John and Claudia decided that they would only ask once every year if Stiles had looked to see if any new marks had shown up on his body. That once a year was always the day before his yearly dermatology appointment.
Both Stiles and Claudia were covered in beauty marks and moles. Claudia had a cute dot underneath her left eye that John had an affinity for kissing. There had been cases of melanoma in Claudia’s family in the past, so it was important for them both to be checked every year, just in case they happened to fall into the 1-6% that were affected. Because of this, the two elder Stilinskis used it as an excuse.
“We have the dermatologist appointment tomorrow after school,” Claudia would remind Stiles after dinner. “Do a check tonight in the shower, see if anything looks different or darker than before so you can report truthfully to the doctor.”
Stiles would grumble an affirmative, gripe about the one mole on the back of his head that he could never check on his own. Claudia would chuckle, smooth his hair out of the way to check for him, and then pat the spot when she confirmed he was good to go, the spot looking the same pale brown as it did the last time she saw it.
John and Claudia would brace themselves for the next twelve hours, waiting, hoping a little that their son would burst into the bedroom with exciting news.
It never happened.
As the years went by, Claudia stopped reminding Stiles to do a full-body check because he could remember on his own. John ignored the box on the forms for Stiles’ high school physical indicating to check if Stiles had a mark and, if so, if they had found their match. Stiles continued to strengthen his friendship with Scott, fawn over Lydia and be ignored by her at every turn, then verbally abused by her human pet, Jackson.
Stiles was happy, he really was. It just felt a little…empty, sometimes.
***
Looking back, Derek really wasn’t surprised that he ended up where he did. His fascination for space started practically at birth, and the more he learned, the more the focus shifted away from learning about things surrounding his soulmark and slid into the other fascinating things the universe had to offer. Though, he still had a special place in his heart for stars, as much as hot Jupiters and black holes fascinated him.
Now, Derek was starting his fourth and final year of university where he was studying astronomy and astrophysics. The George Washington University in Washington D.C. was no MIT, that was for sure. The astronomy department was small, but close knit. Many of Derek’s professors he’d gotten to know on a personal level over the last three years, and all of them have done some pretty impressive stuff, one of them even a retired NASA employee. And though there were better schools for his field, he didn’t want to go anywhere too far from home. He found his true passion in teaching the subject, anyway, so where he got his degree didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.
His capstone may kill him, though. He’d purposefully scheduled his four-year course load so that his senior year fall semester capstone would be taken with easy 1000 or 2000 course electives. And though he managed that, he ended up falling into the 9AM lecture trap twice a week.
Which was how Derek found himself here, ENGL 1330: Myths of Britain. Glancing around the large lecture hall, one he vaguely recalled having a class in freshman year, Derek noted that most of the students were probably younger than him, as to be expected. He spotted a trio against the wall who looked all prepped and ready for class despite the starting time not being for another fifteen minutes. English majors, he surmised, and chose a spot on the aisle side of a two-person table a couple rows back from them.
As the time before the start of class ticked by, Derek busied himself by beginning his reading for his Astrophysics seminar. However, it became increasingly difficult to pay attention to the words on the page as the students filled the room, the volume inching higher with each passing minute. Derek gave up after three pages and pulled out his phone instead, replying to a message from his fiend, Kira, who was starting her first college class today at a university in Northern California and was nervous.
The room significantly quieted and Derek glanced up to see the professor had entered, chatting with a woman who looked young enough to be another student, or perhaps a TA. Derek checked the time on the clock on the wall next to the door and saw there was only three minutes left until class began. The seat next to him at the table had yet to be filled, and Derek wondered if he’d be getting an entire table to himself for the semester. In half of his classes, this was the case. Laura said that it was because of his perpetual resting bitch face, and Derek had disagreed until her words spoke more truth than lies. He tried to not appear so stand-offish, but apparently had not succeeded today.
Two guys walked into the room then, one of them greeting the professor before saying something to his companion and splitting off to stand next to the woman and the professor. The lone friend glanced around the room, looked in Derek’s direction, and started towards him. Derek shifted his binder closer to himself and the edge of the table, a silent offering for the student to take the empty space next to Derek.
The guy smiled, murmured a, “Thanks, dude,” before settling himself into the chair on Derek’s right, leaning his body against the wall as he pulled some stuff out of his backpack. Derek averted his eyes, not wanting to be caught staring.
The professor began class a few minutes later, beginning with attendance. Derek listened in to see if he recognized any names from previous classes. A few sounded familiar, he thought as he silently raised his hand when the professor called for him, but none of the faces matched to what he’d imagined.
When the professor stumbled over a name, Derek glanced up as the kid next to him sighed heavily before shooting his arm into the air.
“Call me Stiles,” he requested, and sitting this close, Derek could see the tips of his ears burning.
“Stiles Stilinski?” the professor repeated, inflecting his voice in a way that prompted Stiles to nod at his supposed correct pronunciation, before he moved on to the next student.
“Every fucking time,” Stiles murmured under his breath. And though the words would indicate he was irritated, there was a little smirk lifting the corners of Stiles’ mouth, like he was instead amused.
There was a smattering of light moles on his left cheek, a tiny dimple at the center of the collection. Derek wondered if the other cheek had a matching set.
Once the role was called, the professor introduced the woman sitting in the front row as his TA and instructed her to pass around the syllabus for the class. She paced up and down the rows of the lecture hall, passing a stack of two to each table. When she passed by Derek’s table, she handed them to him with a soft smile, which Derek returned with a short head bob. He took the top one for himself and, eyes already scanning the class objectives, held the second copy out to his right for Stiles to take. The paper slipped from his fingers, and Derek pulled his hand back so that he could flip to the next page in the packet, glancing over at the grading percentages before flipping back to the front. Derek took his pencil and underlined a few important notes so that when he undoubtedly went looking for something like the professor’s office number, he could find it faster.
Derek glanced back up then, and he found Stiles staring at him with an amused look on his face. “You’re pretty intense for syllabus day,” he commented.
Derek furrowed his brow in confusion. “It’s still a day of class. Plus, how would you know? You don’t look any older than seventeen, so this must be your first week of classes.”
Stiles’ jaw dropped, a little, and his eyes widened. He had nice eyes, not hard to look at at all. “I…guess you probably know more than me, that’s fair. But if we’re assuming things based on appearance then aren’t you a grad student? You look thirty-five, dude.”
“It’s the beard,” Derek replied automatically, his go-to when he got comments like that. Then he paused. “Thirty-five? Really?”
Stiles smirked.
“I’m twenty-two,” Derek corrected. “Senior.”
Stiles nodded. “Cool. But you were right, I’m a freshman. I did manage to turn eighteen, though.”
“Congratulations,” Derek murmured, attention drawn back to the front of the class where the professor had begun to go over the syllabus.
Stiles made a breathy noise that might have been a quiet laugh, but Derek didn’t look over to confirm his suspicions or not.
However, for the rest of the class, he had a heavy awareness of the boy to his right, like he was being stared at for the entirety of the hour and a half period.
***
“How was the first day, kid?”
Stiles’ father’s voice filtered through the phone’s receiver, and it was a welcoming sound as Stiles heaved his backpack off of the shoulder he wasn’t squashing his phone against, sandwiched between that and his ear. The bag hit the floor with a much larger thump than he’d anticipated, and Stiles winced. He glanced over at his roommate’s empty bed and felt relief. Stiles got along fine with his roommate, but they weren’t really friends, so having him privy to a potentially emotional phone conversation with his father was not something he really wanted to allow.
“Not horrible, but I have more homework than I thought I would the first week, the first day, of my first semester.”
“Well what did you expect?” his father asked with a chuckle, and Stiles resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at the phone.
“A little less. But it’s manageable. Plus, professors know we’re all still trying to get into the swing of things, which is a relief.”
“Have you had your first class yet, the, uh, sociology one?”
“You mean Sociology of the Imagination,” Stiles emphasized the name of his class with a dramatic flourish. “No, that’s tomorrow. But the professor sent us the syllabus in an email this morning so I’m gonna take a look at it before dinner and prepare myself.”
“I’m sure it won’t be all that bad. Prerequisite classes always seem unnecessary at first, but you never know, you may enjoy it!”
Stiles chuckled. “Yeah, I guess knowing about people is kinda important for field work,” he joked, scratching at an itch on his neck.
“It’s only the first day. Take a break, digest it all. I gotta get back to work, my lunch break is up. But text me if you want, alright?”
Stiles smiled, took a deep breath, and nodded. “Alright, Dad. I will.”
“I’ll hold your mother back for a couple days, but by the weekend expect a few hours of her time, alright?”
“I would be disappointed with less,” Stiles joked.
He ended the call shortly after, and then took a seat on the edge of his bed. He let out a deep sigh again before shrugging out of his hoodie and draping it over the bed post. Stiles ran his fingers through his hair and roughly rubbed them back and forth, leaving a thousand paths of tingling sensations all over his scalp from his nails.
Last week had been freshman orientation at The George Washington University, and the folder he’d been handed on move-in day with all of the information on meal times and numbers to call in case of whatever-emergency sat on the top of his desk. Stiles reached for it and flipped it open, the paper on top detailing the course requirements for the Criminal Justice major. The one underneath talked about the Psychology major, but Stiles wasn’t quite sure he wanted to double major, so he decided that would be something to figure out after the first semester.
Looking into the long-term, a Psychology major would do him good, considering he was shooting for the FBI once he graduated. It was going to be tough, and he knew he definitely couldn’t afford to slack off in any classes. Any dreams he’d had in high school of attending parties every weekend and drinking until he forgot had disappeared. He figured every once and a while he could afford to have a crazy nigh out. But Stiles wasn’t going to let anything distract him from his goal. And this one is more important than anything else he’d ever put his whole heart into before. More important than his ten-year plan to woo Lydia Martin. More important than soulmarks.
He’d seen that dude’s soulmark today. Derek something. He’d rolled his sleeves up at the beginning of class, leaving his forearms exposed. And even though the script was a little bit illegible, not allowing Stiles to be able to read what the mark said, it was clearly a mark with the way the lines were settled into the skin. Stiles supposed it could have also been a tattoo, but there was something different about soulmarks, how they almost glowed in some light, that distinguished them from human-made ink.
Stiles glanced over at the full-body mirror that was attached to the back of his dorm room’s door. Nope. No mark.
Stiles couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked seriously. Maybe in his early high school years? After Allison, no one in Beacon Hills brought up soulmarks around him and Scott again. So that was probably why.
At the beginning of their sophomore year, Allison Argent transferred to Beacon Hills High School, and within the first hour of her attending the school, Scott had fallen ass over heels for her. Two minutes later, when she’d turned in her seat to ask to borrow a pencil, he spotted the mark on her right index finger: an arrow that appeared as if it pierced the skin after one knuckle and came back out the other side in front of the second. Disturbing the rest of the class, Scott had squeaked in excitement and waved his right arm about, showing off his soulmark: a heart missing its pierced arrow.
After a week, the two officially began dating. Their story was like one of the fairytales parents told their kids about, how nicely two soulmark matches could get along with each other; how effortless their love could be. Stiles often felt like an outsider when the three of them would hang out, but he could see how happy Scott was with Allison. And Allison was a really great friend. She was fantastic at French and often helped Stiles with his homework. Most of all, she made Scott happy, and that was really all Stiles could ask for.
Eight months later, Allison died in a car accident. Scott almost failed the school year, and Stiles stayed awake more nights than slept, visions of the totaled car and a limp hand hanging out the driver’s smashed window.
Scott’s mark turned pale, but the arrow-pierced heart was finally complete on his skin, no longer two separate marks. Scott wore a cuff most days, to cover it up.
As time passed, things got better. Scott got therapy. Stiles managed to sleep most nights. Their friendship strengthened as they both tried to patch the empty holes left in them.
When they graduated, Scott had decided to go to a local college for the first two years and work to make enough money to go to a full-time university to get a biology degree before starting veterinary school. Stiles had been accepted to many schools across the country, but when he found his dream of joining the FBI, he decided to go to school in D.C.
Parting had been difficult, but they still texted. Scott had called just last night to talk about his first day of classes and gush about the cute pair of puppies that had been brought into work earlier. Stiles didn’t expect that their friendship could ever dwindle or disappear, after all their years together. But it was changing, which was a little scary. But he was treading the water, floating for now, before he would find enough traction to begin to swim.
Stiles unloaded his backpack onto his bed, picking out the two syllabuses he had picked up from his classes, and then snagged his binder before reaching for the three-hole punch and putting them into the binder in their designated class sections.
Stiles’ first priority was to get organized. If he wanted to do well, he certainly shouldn’t make life more difficult for himself. So, he’d purchased a binder to put all of his classwork in, so he could refer back to that if he ever had questions. He’d organized all of the files in his computer, separated his high school work into its own folder in case he wanted to pull an essay for English or something.
Next, he snagged the text books from his bed and sorted them on his desk into four piles, one for each class he would be taking. Above his desk, he’d pinned a weekly schedule of his classes. His desk right now looked clean and organized, and it made Stiles feel proud. He knew once he was in the crux of the semester, it would be difficult to keep his side of the room neat and tidy, but for now it looked nice. He snapped a photo of it and sent it to Scott with a tongue-stuck-out emoji. Scott responded back within half a minute with a slew of exclamation points and then a photo of a puppy’s face smushed against his, obviously one of the patients at the vet’s office he was working at.
That was another one of his goals that was going to be difficult to hold up: be better at communication. Stiles had friends, friends he didn’t want to lose just because he was off far away at school. His goal was to text each of them at least once a week, to catch up. Call his folks once a week, or for a few hours spread throughout it. Even if the texts were stupid pictures or Snapchats, he didn’t want to lose them. It was inevitable that they would drift apart, but it certainly wasn’t going to be because of something Stiles did on his end.
Though, if Jackson wanted to kill off their friendship, he could probably live with that, Stiles thought with a chuckle.
The sound of a key in the door startled Stiles, and he had a fleeting thought of hiding himself away before his brain rationalized the noise as his roommate coming back. Stiles relaxed his shoulders, huffed out a laugh at the irritated noise coming from said roommate who was obviously having trouble with the door, and perched himself onto his bed, pulling his laptop up onto his knees so that he could review the syllabus for his class tomorrow.
His roommate finally got the door opened, they shared a nod of greeting, and then Stiles went back to his syllabus.
***
Derek’s Myths of Britain English class was thankfully only twice a week, and Derek had no class on the day between them, so he had plenty of time to get the reading done for the second class-day. He found this free day to be extra helpful as the first few weeks of the semester passed, because his capstone idea was not as well received as he thought it would be by his advisers, so he’d had to scrap most of his idea and work around it. Most of this work was impossible to get done on any day that he had class, because he needed to focus solely on the capstone.
Other than the catastrophe his capstone was turning into, the rest of his classes were going fine. He probably enjoyed his English class the most, simply because the subject was interesting and it was refreshing to read something other than heavy physics for once. The professor had a bit of a dull voice, but the TA managed to keep the class awake with her bubbly personality and good looks. When she smiled, the whole class seemed to swoon in tandem, including the professor. Perhaps she had a drop of succubus in her blood.
His table-mate, as well, was an added plus towards the class. Stiles, a Criminal Justice major he learned the week before, was taking the class to fill his English gen-ed requirement, but he’d secretly enjoyed the dramatics of Shakespeare when he had to read it in high school. His whispered comments and witty retorts that he’d mutter under his breath amused Derek, often startling breathy chuckles from the older man. Every time Stiles caught him smiling at one of his jokes, he’d beam at Derek, dimpling his moled cheeks. Derek had glanced out of the corner of his eye so often during lectures that he had the curve of Stiles’ jaw on the left side of his face practically memorized.
Derek brought Stiles coffee one morning, to thank him for loaning him notes on his missed class day, and Stiles had smiled up at him, eyes squinting. Derek gently set the Styrofoam cup down and nodded in response, ignoring the way he’d felt his pulse race at the sight of that smile. Stiles made a happy noise after taking the first sip, and Derek couldn’t fight the smile on his own face. Stiles reached out and poked at his cheek, admonishing at how rare a Derek Hale Smile was, but Derek didn’t rise to the bait. He just rolled his eyes and pulled out his well-worn copy of King Lear that he’d rented from the bookstore.
Derek never ran into Stiles outside of class, though it made sense since they were not in similar clubs nor similar academic tracks. Derek recognized a few of his other classmates he got on with when he would stop at the commons for food on the days he was too lazy to make anything himself, or the fridge in his off-campus apartment was empty and a trip to the store seemed an impossible task.
Cora, his younger sister, had followed him to school this year, so he often met up with her. She chose to live on-campus in the dorms, because she wanted that feeling of independence. So, Derek didn’t hover over her too much, despite his mother’s insistence that he do. Derek once shot back that Cora was a werewolf and that she could more than handle herself, but that had only resulted in a lecture about how to not be speciest and automatically expect werewolves to be able to handle every situation. Derek never made that mistake again.
Growing up in a werewolf household as the only human had been pretty normal for Derek, all things considered. His family never made him feel like an outsider, and they didn’t coddle him to the point of inflating his ego. Derek had known a kid like that in his middle school and he had never been so relieved to have the parents he did.
Being surrounded by werewolves for the first five years of his life, and then surrounded by mostly humans at school had been a large culture shock for him. Learning in a different environment had instilled some stereotypes into him that Derek wasn’t sure he’d ever break the habit of assuming at first glance. But his mother’s rants always helped to snap him back into place.
There was only one part of being a human that Derek hadn’t liked, and that was the difference in strength. His father had once snapped a small tree in half while slightly intoxicated. It was tough, trying to live up to something like that. So, Derek worked out. He’d grown up physically fit, thanks to his family’s affinity for nighttime runs, but once he started middle school, he started doing weight training a couple times a week. He joined the baseball team in high school and worked out with them. Over the summer, he would go to the gym almost every day. He kept up with it in college, the exercise becoming more of a stress reliever than anything. He was happy with how he looked and his abilities. He’d never be able to snap a tree in half, but he sure as hell could chop some trees up and use them for firewood.
The thing he disliked about going to the gym was how people stared at him. Derek knew what he looked like, but it was still uncomfortable. He was fine with people who wanted to chat and discuss workout regimens or bond over course work, but when people began to hit on him it tipped the scale into uncomfortable.
And always, every time, their opening line was about his soulmark. Because he was at the gym, he never wore shirts long enough to cover up the mark on his left forearm, so it was always exposed. He could cover it up with makeup, but he’d sweat it off before long, plus the extra step to prepare for an hour-long workout was just tedious.
“Is that a tattoo or a soulmark? Can I see? Wow, you have amazing muscles!” or something along those lines. Ridiculous.
Derek spotted Stiles only once at the gym when he was getting ready to leave. Stiles was running on the treadmill, earbuds in and eyes focused on a textbook propped up on the front of the machine. He was wearing a gray shirt that said ‘Beacon Hills Sheriff’s Department’ on the back and a pair of black basketball shorts. Stiles didn’t even glance up when Derek walked by to head for the exit. He flipped a page in his textbook, eyes narrowed and focused, and Derek slipped out without a word shared between them.
***
“Wait a minute, you mean my brother?”
Stiles stumbled over his feet as a lightbulb went off over his head. He snapped his head over to look at Cora who was giving him a narrow-eyed look. “You two are related?” Stiles asked before sweeping his eyes up and down Cora’s body. She smacked him on the back of the head. “Ow! Oh, I see it now. It’s in the eyebrows.”
“Do not equate those animals to me. I pluck my eyebrows, thank you very much.”
Stiles smothered a laugh into his hand, and the two resumed their walk back from class to their co-ed dorm.
“Well, I guess you both have the excuse of being a furry creature of the night, so it’s not too surprising,” Stiles teased, dodging out of the way of Cora’s second swipe at him. The third caught him across the back, though.
“Shut up. And no, we don’t, Derek’s human,” Cora rebuffed, tucking a strand of hair that had fallen out of her bun behind her ear.
“Really?” Stiles asked, eyes blown open wide. “Huh.”
Stiles stayed quiet for a moment, in contemplation. Cora nudged him with an elbow a moment later and demanded he explain himself.
“Well, I mean, you both just give off the same aura, I guess. Plus, the dude is huge. Those muscles have to be magic-made,” Stiles threw in a joke. Cora didn’t seem amused. “It’s just not often that you see a human and werewolf pair of siblings, is all. I never would have guessed. He just seems like he has to be magic, to me.”
“Ooh, magic to you?” Cora teased. “Someone have a crush?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Stiles hissed, shoving his hand into his pocket to retrieve his keys so that he could open the front door for them. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I guess. It’s funny, though, how we both share a class with you. I never thought we’d have anything in common other than our choice of university.”
“Must be fate,” Stiles mused as he jiggled the stubborn door open and waved an arm out, offering Cora first admittance. She bowed her head to him in thanks before stepping in, Stiles following right behind.
Cora snorted. “Yeah, okay. Fate.”
“Don’t tell me a werewolf doesn’t believe in fate,” Stiles declared incredulously. “Soulmarks are a thing, you know! Where do you think that comes from?”
Cora shrugged. “The same magic that made me, I guess. But there’s no mystical Fate hanging about.” Cora snorted out a laugh and shook her head back and forth “I actually forgot about soulmarks there for a second. But yeah, just magic, nothing special.”
“How could you forget about them?” Stiles grumbled, feeling a tingling sensation underneath his skin. His anxiety had gotten better over the years, but with certain subjects… He was the one to bring them up, but still.
“Um, werewolf? Don’t have one. How did you ever think Derek was a werewolf with a soulmark anyhow?” Cora attacked him with her words.
Stiles cleared his throat. “I’ve done research, and I know some creatures can have soulmarks in the case that the creature has a human parent or strong human gene or weakened creature genes or—”
“Alright, I get it, you know stuff,” Cora snapped, cutting Sties off of his rambling. “But no. No mark on me. Derek flaunts his all over the place, though, like a badge of honor. You’ve seen it.”
Stiles nodded at the not-question, recalling the chicken scratch he did his best not to stare at two days a week.
“Still weird how you know my brother. And the fact that you’ve been gushing to me about him for two weeks now.” Cora scrunched her nose up. “Ew.”
Stiles shoved her shoulder, but she didn’t budge. “Don’t be gross.”
“Don’t be bisexual all over my brother,” Cora shot back with a smirk. She glanced around the mostly empty lobby and shook her head. “I’ve got things to do, so I’ll see you later.”
“Sure,” Stiles said with a nod and then turned towards the stairwell to head to his own room.
Stiles got a text a few minutes later from Cora once he was pulling on a pair of sweatpants and relaxing for the rest of the day.
You can be a little bisexual on my bro if you want
Fair warning, tho, he’s been obsessed with his match since he was little apparently so be careful with that
Stiles rubbed his neck and let out a loud groan, closing out the text message and ignoring its existence for hopefully the rest of time.
Of course Derek was obsessed; everyone with a mark wanted to meet their match. No matter how small that want may be, it was inevitable. Stiles met his own eyes in the mirror. He rubbed his hands over his cheeks, and blamed their flush on the rough movement.
No words, no shapes, no marks. Eighteen and a half years. And counting.
***
Two months into the semester, Derek was drowning a little in his capstone work, but he’d managed to dig himself out to attend his English class the next morning. He’d finished off his punch card this morning at the coffee shop near his apartment, so he used the free coffee for Stiles. The younger man’s eyes brightened when he spotted Derek walking in twenty minutes later, two cups in hand.
Stiles had wiggled his fingers in the direction of the cup, and Derek had rolled his eyes and teased him, but eventually handed the cup away, allowing Stiles to inhale the warm drink. Judging from the bags under Stiles’ eyes, it was a needed gesture.
Stiles sat back with a deep sigh, eyelids fluttering closed for a second before they snapped back open. He glanced over at Derek, and Derek could feel his gaze for a second before it drifted. Derek took in and released a breath slowly.
“So, astronomy,” Stiles started, and Derek raised an eyebrow at the sudden subject.
“Yes,” he dragged out the word. “That’s the one about the stars and planets.”
Stiles rolled his eyes. “Don’t be facetious. That’s your major, that and astrophysics, which, honestly props to you for being alive after four years.”
Derek raised up his coffee cup in a mock toast before taking a sip. Stiles chuckled.
“What about it?” Derek asked when there was no follow-up statement from Stiles.
“Just curious as to why. You could have skipped college altogether and gone into modeling, or something.”
“I could say the same to you,” Derek commented. He gracefully ignored the blush that rose onto Stiles’ face with those words. “And you could have become a Shakespearean aficionado.”
“Anyway.” Stiles cleared his throat. “I’m just curious what sparked it. I know your mom’s a lawyer and dad’s a nurse, so they didn’t influence you.”
Derek stared at Stiles in confusion. “How do you know who my parents are?”
“Cora and I share two classes, Derek,” Stiles said. “You know this. She talks about your family all the time, that’s how I know.”
Ah, right. That was weird, finding out one of his sister’s newest friends was a classmate of his as well. He usually blocked out those thoughts. Mostly because a Stiles and Cora combo was a terrifying image. They were both too alike to ever fully get on, and Derek wasn’t worried about them forming a romantic relationship because Cora wasn’t looking for one, so they were an explosive combination when together. Derek assumed, at least. He’d still never interacted with Stiles outside of class, except for the one time they both stayed after class for twenty minutes to finish some reading questions. But that didn’t really count.
He definitely wanted to avoid a Cora/Stiles interaction until they had at least their first big blowup. Then maybe it would be safe.
“Right,” Derek responded, belatedly, dropping his gaze down to his coffee. He took another sip and winced. It had passed pleasantly warm and settled into lukewarm. Yuck. He cleared his throat. “Well, I’ve been into space ever since I was young. It started because of my mark, but eventually I learned more and more that interested me. Space Camp after fourth grade did me in,” Derek joked, using the line he always did when talking about his interests.
Stiles’ eyes immediately dropped to Derek’s arm where the mark was actually covered today, because Derek had pulled on a three-quarter sleeve baseball tee. Derek rolled back the material and shuffled his arm closer to Stiles. Derek watched Stiles lean in, tilting his body to face Derek so that he could properly read what the mark said.
“Alpha Lupi?”
Derek hummed. “It’s the brightest star in the constellation Lupus.”
Stiles smirked. “Fitting.”
Derek rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, I’ve heard all the jokes before, believe me,” he murmured, pushing his sleeve back down. “But yeah. I was three when I got my mark, and it’s been astronomy for me ever since.”
“Isn’t it weird?” Stiles said abruptly as soon as Derek stopped speaking, causing Derek to snap his head up to look at him. Stiles was facing him head-on. Derek was a little bit taken aback. He didn’t think he’d ever really seen the right side of Stiles’ face before.
“Choosing your life’s work on a magic mark from someone else?” Stiles continued, eyes unblinking, unfazed.
Derek was surprised, and a little pissed. He narrowed his eyes slightly. “Do you think it’s weird?” Derek snapped maybe a little too harshly, going by how Stiles flinched back an inch.
“Alright, it is officially nine, let’s begin!”
The professor’s voice drew both of their attentions, and Stiles readjusted in his seat, hiding away half of his face.
Derek turned back in his chair, picked up his pencil, and opened his notebook. Neither of them said anything for the rest of the class.
By the time Derek had packed up his stuff at the end of class, Stiles was long gone. Left behind was his abandoned coffee cup, about an inch of cold coffee left at the bottom. Derek sighed and went to throw it away as he passed the trashcan by the door, but he spotted some scribblings on the side of the cup that hadn’t been there before.
Sorry, the cup read, next to a wobbly frowny face. Derek snapped a photo of it and accepted the apology.
He took to pulling his phone out at random times throughout the day and staring at the picture. His pulse jumped every time he did.
***
Stiles had practiced in the mirror this morning, and had almost had a heart attack when his roommate knocked on the bathroom door, wondering if he’d heard. But he’d managed to escape unscathed and rushed to class, chanting his apology over and over in his head.
When Stiles got to class, Derek was already seated at their table. He didn’t look pissed or anything. He looked relaxed as he looked at something on his phone. He was wearing his glasses today (those had made their debut appearance during week two and the mental image had given Stiles issues for weeks to come), and the screen reflected back onto them.
Stiles felt like his limbs weighed a thousand pounds as he walked up the aisle towards their table. He nodded at the TA, unable to muster up a proper smile, and shuffled past.
Derek glanced up when Stiles got to the table, and Stiles had a moment where his entire body locked up and his mouth opened, ready to repeat his spiel, but nothing came out.
“I got it,” Derek said. He was smiling, waving his phone about.
Stiles blinked rapidly. On the phone’s screen was a picture of a coffee cup covered in familiar scribble. Stiles swallowed. He looked back up at Derek who was still smiling. His cheeks were flushed.
Stiles released a heavy breath and nodded, feeling a smile slowly form onto his face as he shifted behind Derek’s chair over to his. He fell into it, feeling the heaviness in his muscles lighten.
“Seriously, it’s fine,” Derek reassured him, eyes never leaving his phone. Stiles was grateful for the lack of eye contact.
But when he opened his mouth to comment on the reading homework, what came out instead was, “I don’t have one.”
Derek looked over at him, eyes slowly widening.
“A mark, that is,” Stiles added, voice petering off with each word he spoke.
“Oh,” Derek murmured. “Huh.”
“So, it wasn’t me just being an asshole— Well, okay it was. But not for no reason. I just couldn’t understand, I guess. Or was jealous. I don’t know.”
Derek didn’t say anything for a moment, and Stiles pulled out his notebook and book for lack of anything better to do. He fiddled with the fresh page of lined paper in front of him. Wrote the date, erased it, and then wrote it a different way.
“Do you want to get coffee after this?”
Stiles snapped his head up and over, eyes wide as he stared Derek down. Derek had taken off his glasses and was rubbing the bridge of his nose. When he slipped them back on, his eyes immediately locked with Stiles’. Slowly, he raised a single eyebrow.
Oh, right. He’d asked a question.
“Y-yeah, yes, sure. Sounds great. I could use some.” The words fell out of Stiles’ mouth without his permission.
“Cool. There’s a good place by my apartment, a five-minute walk from here. That sound okay?”
“Perfect,” Stiles choked out.
Derek’s eyes seemed to asses him for another ten seconds (Stiles counted, not breathing the entire time) before they dropped to the table. The tips of his ears were red.
A few minutes later, class began, and their normal commenting resumed. Stiles had missed it, being silent during their last class. It had been a split-second decision, to apologize via coffee cup. He’d cursed himself the entire way back to his dorm, assuming there was no way Derek would have looked over at the cup before leaving. Or if he did, he would have just thrown it away.
It was definitely his turn to pay for coffee. Stiles subtly checked his wallet while he pretended to be looking for a pencil and saw he had a twenty and a few stray ones in there, so he could totally cover them both.
When Stiles sat back up, fresh pencil in hand, he saw Derek’s gaze slip away. Had Derek been looking at him? True, he was digging around in his bag for a while. Had it been distracting? Stiles was careful to keep his potentially distracting noises quiet for the rest of class. Derek had been nice enough to forgive him after being such an ass. He didn’t want to ruin it immediately afterwards.
Class seemed to drag on and on, until finally the professor dismissed them two minutes after he was supposed to and Stiles practically jumped out of his seat. Derek watched him, clearly amused, and Stiles shot him a playful glare.
The walk to the coffee shop didn’t take long, Derek was right. Derek took the lead, a single step in front of Stiles to his left. Derek asked about Stiles’ other classes, and Stiles asked about Derek’s capstone and immediately regretted it. Derek lost the pinched look to his face a minute later when Stiles, as an apology, told him an embarrassing story about something that happened to Cora in one of their classes the week before.
Stiles immediately overtook Derek as soon as they got to the coffee shop, stepping up to the till first, pulling his twenty out of his wallet, and ordering Derek to get whatever he wanted. Derek looked a little surprised, but then he smiled and said a soft thanks that went straight to Stiles’ heart.
“There’s actually something I wanted to talk to you about. I’d rather do it just the two of us, but if you’d feel more comfortable in a public setting then I am fine with that,” Derek said as they waited at the other side of the register for their drinks.
Stiles felt his heart stop in his chest. He forced himself to breathe and respond. “Um, should I be worried here?”
Derek’s eyes widened. “Oh, no. No, it’s nothing bad. Sorry, I guess I should have worded that better.” Derek rubbed the inside of his wrist; a coping mechanism, Stiles had come to learn.
Stiles took both of their drinks in hand when they were finished, thanked the barista and then handed Derek his before responding, “I trust you, I think. So, if you think this is a conversation better had without public eyes, then that’s okay with me.”
Derek’s shoulders dropped. Stiles hadn’t realized how high-strung Derek had been until he relaxed. The crease in his brow disappeared. The older man nodded and took a sip of his drink before nodding his head at the door.
“My apartment is two minutes away,” Derek said, and Stiles nodded in agreement.
As opposed to their walk to the coffee shop, the walk to Derek’s apartment was filled with only the sounds of their feet and the soft sips of warm drinks. Stiles repeatedly told himself to calm down, that Derek wasn’t going to yell at him or hurt him or anything stupid like that. He knew Derek well enough to trust that.
Plus, he was friends with Cora, and she would have warned him way off long ago if her brother was that type of person. The only warning she ever gave him about Derek was pertaining his soulmark, which, now Stiles understood why Derek was so attached to it.
Derek’s apartment was actually pretty nice, its entrance right next to the single parking space that was currently empty.
“Cora and I share the car,” Derek explained as he unlocked the door. “She has it during the week because she works off-campus, and I get it on the weekends for research trips and the like.”
Stiles nodded, vaguely recalling Cora talking about her work. He stepped into the apartment following Derek and glanced around. It was small, as expected, with a small kitchen next to the living area. A hallway separated that section from the bathroom and bedroom. Stiles dumped his backpack by the couch and toed off his shoes on instinct.
“Yeah, um, take a seat. I’m just gonna throw this into my room.” Derek gestured to the backpack over his shoulder with his coffee before nodding once and then heading down the hallway.
Stiles sent off a text to Cora, just in case. At your brothers apt. Smthin I should know???
Cora sent back a heart emoji, which only baffled Stiles all the more.
Derek came back into the room, but this time he had his coffee in one hand and a book in the other. Derek set his coffee down onto the table in front of the couch, and Stiles could see his hands were shaking a little bit. His face was also slightly flushed. What did Derek have to be nervous about?
Derek settled onto the edge of the couch next to Stiles and set the book into his lap. The cover of the book showed an eclipsing moon and sun. Stiles got distracted from trying to read the title by Derek’s arms covering up the script as he shoved his hand into his pocket to pull out his phone.
Stiles watched, confused, as he sipped his coffee, as Derek opened up his photos app and then pulled up the same photo he’d showed Stiles earlier.
“Um,” Stiles murmured, setting his coffee next to Derek’s. “Do you want a verbal apology?”
“No!” Derek assured, a nervous smile on his face. “No, you kind of already gave one. Plus the coffee. And this was enough” he gestured to the photo. “More than enough. Um.” Derek’s thumb fiddled with the corner of the phone case. Part of the plastic was cracked, so it made a snapping noise every time Derek rubbed his thumb over it.
Derek swallowed, and Stiles tracked the motion with his eyes.
“Your handwriting. It’s familiar. To me. And I’ve seen your notes before, but it never really clicked until I saw this.”
Stiles blinked. “Clicked?”
Derek held out his left arm. The lighting in the room was dull, but Stiles could still make out the script on Derek’s arm. Derek held his phone up next to it, and some of the light from the phone illuminated the last half of Lupi.
“That looks pretty damn similar, don’t you think?” Derek asked.
Stiles stared. His eyes widened. Holy shit, it really did.
“But I don’t—” Stiles cut himself off, eyes locked on the mark on Derek’s arm. It seemed to glow blue. “I don’t have one.” Stiles’ voice cracked.
Stiles looked up at Derek’s face. Derek was biting his bottom lip, but released it when he caught Stiles’ eyes. His tongue peeked out to wet his lips before disappearing. “I think you do, actually. Because if you were my match, you would have been born with a mark.”
“But I wasn’t,” Stiles insisted. “The doctors looked me over. I looked me over. I was obsessed with soulmarks when I was a kid. Trust me, I would have known!”
“Not necessarily,” Derek insisted, setting his phone aside. “You were born in April, right? April 17th, or 18th?”
Stiles stared.
“Between those two days, overnight I got my mark. That was when you were born, right?”
Stiles dropped his gaze. “I wasn’t born with a mark,” Stiles repeated.
Derek turned to the book in his lap and flipped it opened to a dog-eared page. The binding of the book was well broke-in. It was clear Derek had owned this book for a long time. Derek pointed down at the page, and Stiles shifted closer so that he could see.
“This is the constellation Lupus, and this,” he pointed at one of the dots in the lower right hand of the shape, “is Alpha Lupi.”
“Okay,” Stiles said slowly.
Derek looked up at him. “Does this look familiar to you at all?”
Stiles looked back at the depiction. “It looks like dots to me, Derek, honestly,” Stiles replied, starting to feel a bit agitated.
“Well, you’re not wrong,” Derek admitted. He huffed out a breath, like a laugh. “It took me a long while to notice. Not until today, officially. You’ve always been to my right, so I never really saw the other half of you until just recently.”
Stiles groaned and buried his face into his hands. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly and only released the tension when they began to hurt. “Derek, please speak real sentences.”
Derek raised a hand and cupped his cheek, and Stiles’ breath stuttered.
“You are covered in moles, Stiles. You’ve probably been covered in them your whole life. Tell me, since you said you used to be obsessed: were there cases in which people thought their soulmarks were just random beauty marks instead?”
Stiles couldn’t breathe. “Yes,” he admitted. “About three percent.”
“Was that why you ruled out the possibility for yourself?”
Stiles choked on his words, “Pretty much, yeah.”
Derek’s hand left his cheek briefly before the touch returned, this time a single finger. He set the book onto Stiles’ lap, and Stiles took it between his hands. “Look at it,” Derek commanded gently.
Stiles did as was asked and glanced down at the diagram. Then he felt Derek’s finger begin to move across his cheek.
“Phi Lupi,” Derek spoke softly, tapping a spot on Stiles’ right cheek in the upper left, along his cheek bone. The finger drifted slightly up and to the right. “Chi Lupi.” More movement, another tap, this time even further to the right but lower down. “Eta Lupi.”
Derek’s finger left a tingling sensation as it lightly trailed over his skin. Stiles bit his lip and tried to concentrate on the diagram in front of him. Derek had just traced the top triangle, the head of the wolf.
Derek slid his finger halfway down Stiles’ cheek, slightly diagonally. He tapped the spot, leaned closer, and whispered, “This star really doesn’t have a name.”
Stiles couldn’t help the giggle that bubbled up out of his throat. He felt a little weightless.
Derek’s finger moved again, further down, almost to Stiles’ jaw. “Zeta Lupi.” The finger made a sharp upwards motion halfway back up his cheek. “Epsilon Lupi.” Derek finished off the body of the wolf with a breathed, “Gamma Lupi,” and a movement of his finger a bit up and to the right.
Stiles counted in his head. Three more stars made up the constellation.
To the left of the last point, Derek tapped Stiles’ cheek and declared it, “Delta Lupi.” Down and to the left. Derek’s pinky almost brushed Stiles’ lips. He breathed warm air against the appendages. “Beta Lupi. The second brightest star.”
There was a pause then. Stiles had been staring down at the book long enough to know what was left, what Derek was waiting for.
“And the brightest?” Stiles prompted, Derek’s finger lifting from his face as he spoke.
Stiles looked into Derek’s eyes. Even through the glasses he could see they were a little bit shiny.
Derek’s finger returned and, without hesitation, slid down to the last one. “Alpha Lupi,” he spoke with confidence.
Derek dropped his hand, but the tingling feeling remained.
“Can you show me again?” Stiles asked.
Derek took Stiles’ arm and pulled him up from the couch, leading him down the hall and into the bathroom. He flicked on the light and aranged Stiles to stand in front of the mirror. He faced Stiles’ right side to the mirror, and then repeated the same pattern again. This time, however, Stiles had no diagram to look at. This time he watched as the dots on his skin, the moles he had been born with, were reimagined as stars.
This time, as Derek’s finger connected each star, a faint white line appeared where he had just traced. Stiles’ eyes widened. Once Derek finished, Stiles tripped forward as close to the mirror as he could get to get a better look.
“It’s really there,” Stiles breathed. He cupped his cheek, rubbed at the skin, but when he pulled his hand away, the lines were still there. In fact, they looked even more shockingly vivid against his reddened face.
Stiles whipped around and grinned at Derek, feeling tears pricking at the back of his eyes. “It’s really there, Derek. I have a soulmark.”
Derek cupped his cheeks and pulled him closer, pressing his lips against Stiles’ forehead. “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” he murmured before pulling back.
Stiles shook his head. “It’s fine. If I hadn’t I might not be here, with you, so. I can’t complain.”
Derek pulled his bottom lip between his teeth and sucked on it, obviously trying to hold back a grin. Stiles thumbed his lip out from between his teeth, forcing the smile out anyway.
“You are such a nerd, knowing that constellation just by seeing a random arrangement of dots,” Stiles blurted, knocking his forehead against Derek’s.
“Of course, I would. I’ve been drawing Lupus since I could pick up a pencil,” Derek said in defense of himself.
Stiles reached for Derek’s arm, allowing Derek to drop one hand from his face. He traced his fingers over Derek’s mark. Stiles’ own mark on Derek, he should say. He traced the letters with a blunt nail, and he felt Derek shudder under his touch. The letters appeared to glow again, just from the contact. Stiles brushed his thumb over it.
Stiles looked back up at Derek and raised his arm back up so that he was once again cupping his face between his hands. Falling back into place, Stiles tipped forward, forehead against Derek’s.
“I can’t believe I found my soulmark and match on the same day, this is incredible,” Stiles thought aloud, not afraid anymore about voicing his thoughts. At this point, he and Derek were basically fated to stick together.
Yeah, that’s right, Cora. Fated. Suck it.
“You’re my soulmate,” Derek confirmed, hands warm on Stiles’ cheeks. His finger kept tracing the fine fresh white lines on Stiles’ flushed cheek, mapping out the constellation over and over again.
“It’s a little cliché to call me a soulmate, dontcha think? Isn’t that term so…Victorian Era?” Stiles murmured, heart feeling like it was going to flee his chest.
Derek laughed. “Cliché, you say? Stiles your moles are literally stars,” Derek rebutted, voice coming out on a breath.
“Point taken,” Stiles spoke against Derek’s lips, and then neither of them said anything else for a long while.