Teen Wolf AU: Stiles is Deaton’s apprentice, learning all about the supernatural world, runes, potions and witchcraft. When another unknown, deadly creature hits the town, Derek comes to him for help.
“Stiles. We were not having a moment.”
“I’m sorry, am I hearing things? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure you just admitted to trusting me, and for you, that’s like a love declaration. I’m half expecting you to drop on your knees and propose.”
Lydia is ten when she starts
dreaming of the…girl. Woman? It isn’t clear how old the girl is, or rather, the
girl appears at various ages in various dreams.
Sometimes the girl is young, a
toddler scrambling through underbrush, entangling in the leaves and bramble as
her family gives friendly chase. Dirt on red cheeks and twigs in wild hair. Innocent
smiles as she catches her breath.
Sometimes she’s older,
surrounded by younger siblings that clamber all over her, until she collapses
under the weight of their enthusiasm as they beg for warm cuddles on chilly
nights where the air nips at exposed skin.
Sometimes she’s not human. Eyes
that flash in different colors – red is alphamothersafetypower, yellow is packfamilycomfort,
blue is unknowndanger. Claws that grow out of human fingers, faces that
transform. Impulses that are hard to control as the moon tries to call out her
deepest, darkest desires.
When Lydia first starts
dreaming, trying to remember the dreams is like trying to catch a wave with
bare hands. The moment she wakes, memories start slipping out of her grasp,
until only hazy emotions remain – and those fade away too, as surely as hands
wet from a wave dry up. There’s no way for a human to capture a full wave but
there are ways to hold onto part of it. Cup your hands and have a container
ready to fill up with seawater. Lydia begins writing down the dreams the moment
she wakes up, neat words trying to bottle up loose trickles of memory.
There’s a journal Lydia starts
keeping, kept under her mattress for safety and secrecy, that tells the life of
a girl, a werewolf, as seen through the kaleidoscope lens of Lydia’s dreams. She
has no name – there is no sound in these dreams Lydia has, only emotion – but
she has a story. –
For Laura Hale Appreciation Week 2018 @laurahale-appreciation, fulfilling today’s theme of Femslash. (But also the previous days’ themes of Laura Didn’t Die and Pre-Canon.) Set in an AU where Laura is the one in a coma, and is connected to Lydia. On the backburner to be fleshed out into a full fic.
Okay so I’ve been drinking wine all night and binge-watching The Great British Baking Show, and I remembered that I’ve been meaning to not!fic about the pack going to one of those wine and painting places.
Really, it’s just Team Human that’s going to go—Stiles, Allison, Lydia (she’s honorary Team Human), and Danny—because they’re the only ones who are going to enjoy the wine and they’re not going to be overwhelmed by the smell of acrylic paint and the loud music. But Scott makes horrible puppy dog eyes when he finds out they want to go and Erica practically begs to be included as well and that means Boyd and Isaac are going to want to go, so Derek throws up his hands and buys everybody a seat and calls it a “pack bonding exercise.”
They get there and they take up almost an entire table all by themselves, and the rest of the pack swaps the paper plate name badges around until they’re sitting in the order they want to sit in, and this means that Derek and Stiles end up sitting next to each other at the very end of the table. Stiles snarks that he’s surprised Derek wants to paint something with colors other than black and Derek snarks that Stiles is already halfway through a glass of wine the size of his head, and then the instructor gets up and starts talking and it’s time to start painting.
Stiles is, unsurprisingly, a faster painter, covering his canvas in black almost as fast as the instructor is. He’s fantastic with blending the paint together to make it like the moon fades seamlessly into the night sky.
Derek’s a lot more meticulous. He’s slower and much more concerned with getting his outlines absolutely precise. The detail he manages to get with the smaller brushes is frankly astonishing, as far as Stiles is concerned.
(Stiles also happens to hear, more than once, Derek singing quietly along to whatever song happens to be playing over the loudspeakers when the instructor isn’t talking. His personal favorite is when he hears Derek singing “Don’t Stop Me Now.”)
It’s just as noisy as Derek expected it to be, and he really doesn’t like the smell of the paint that much, but what he smells from his pack is pure happiness and joy. Scott’s got a streak of blue paint on his cheek that might have been put there deliberately. Allison is almost through her first glass of wine and is laughing at something on Lydia’s canvas. Boyd, Erica, and Isaac all seem to be collaborating on one giant painting instead of following along with what the master painting is. Danny is well into his second glass of wine and playing Pokemon Go while he’s waiting for his paint to dry, pausing occasionally to assure Jackson he’s doing a good job. Even Cora, who likes to pretend she’s too cool for this kind of stuff, is getting into it.
And Stiles is sitting right by him, the tip of his tongue peeking out of his mouth as he very carefully paints a lake monster climbing up onto the dock behind the two figures sitting at the edge, a glass of wine between them.
Honestly, it’s a better pack bonding exercise than Derek ever expected it to be.
Everybody is thrilled with their paintings when they’re done, and they’re splitting up to head home when Stiles taps Derek on the shoulder and holds out his painting.
Derek is not drunk, but he has been filtering out ridiculous levels of noise all night, so he blames that for why he sits there for a minute and finally says, “What?”
Stiles shakes the painting. “Here, big guy. I made it for you. Used lots of pretty colors and everything. That’s supposed to be us at the edge of the dock.”
“You painted us getting attacked by a lake monster,” Derek points out.
“No, we’re totally going to take it out!” Stiles argues. “Besides, you have to admit, that’s probably how a night on the lake would end for us.”
Derek snorts. Stiles isn’t wrong.
Without thinking too hard about it, he hands his painting to Stiles. “Here.”
Stiles blinks at it. “For me?”
Derek shrugs. “You should have one, too. Without the lake monster.”
Stiles breaks out into a gigantic grin that is likely at least 50% the wine he’s had and 100% guaranteed to make Derek’s heart do somersaults. “Thanks, Derek.”
“Anytime,” Derek says, and prays it’s dark enough outside that no one can see that he’s blushing.
(He hangs Stiles’s painting in his bedroom and ignores every lewd comment Erica makes about it. He feels more than vindicated when he visits Stiles’s apartment and sees the painting he drew hanging right above Stiles’s bed.)
theproblemwithstardust 