Merry Christmas, @Jennoasis!
Read on AO3
*****
Tattoo My Heart
Stiles was born with the phases of the moon tattooed down his spine. Most of the earliest pictures of his existence were of him laying on his stomach with his back on display. Sometimes he was on his father, sometimes on his mother, sometimes sleeping, sometimes not. As he grew older, he would wonder what it meant.
He would wonder whether his soulmate would be whimsical and free-spirited. Whether it meant his soulmate would be prone to pessimism and hopeless thoughts and contemplations about the vastness of the universe. Whether they would know all the constellations and prefer the darkness to light. Whether they would be brilliant in a soft, muted way, or ever-changing, or have the ability to make slow but constant impact on vast things, the way the moon affected the ocean.
Stiles would lay awake at night wondering.
Why the moon?
And when Scott got bitten, he laughed until he cried. And then laughed some more.
-
Derek grew up knowing his soulmate had an insatiable curiosity and an extremely short attention span.
Images flitted over his skin constantly.
Peter teased him about having a soulmate so entirely different from him. Someone capricious, that tended to lean toward dangerous things.
He howled with laughter when a wolf settled onto Derek’s skin, only to replaced by a panther the very next day.
Even if Derek were at all inclined to tell his uncle secrets the man hadn’t already figured out for himself, he still would never have explained that the wolf had simply moved from his bicep to curl up with its head on its paws just underneath his collar bone.
Peter found out anyway, because it was impossible for two wolves in the same pack to never see each other shirtless at the very least. Peter waited for the wolf to really disappear so he could tease, but had to content himself with mocking the way the wolf shrunk until it was just a small little thing in the pocket of Derek’s shoulder.
But his scathing comments barely registered to Derek, because it was what let him know that when his soulmate truly loved something they never let it go.
-
A cello appeared on Stiles. At first, it was a lovely instrument. The burnished teak color contrasted beautifully with his pale skin. The bow leaned gracefully against the cello, and one could almost hear the soft strains of soothing music.
And then one day, not that long after its first appearance, the instrument had snapped strings and warped wood. The hair of the bow lost its sheen and was cut in half to hang loosely. There were deep gouges.
Stiles didn’t realize they were claw marks until much, much later.
-
Derek had a sand castle on his skin. It looked like a child’s drawing of a sand castle mostly.
Did his soulmate love the beach? Did it represent a cherished memory?
Derek had the sense it had to be something specific. He felt that if it was about his soulmate loving the beach, he would be marked with something representing the ocean.
They seemed like that to him. Tempestuous and wild. Ever-changing. A chaotic surface and boundless depths. Peter said making assumptions about his soulmate would only lead to disappointment.
Still, Derek wondered if ocean waves ever appeared on his soulmate’s skin.
-
Siles had a basketball on him. He wondered whether his soulmate was on a team or whether they just liked the game. Did they play for their school? Was it something for fun, just to let loose?
What if they were more athletic than him? It wouldn't exactly be hard after all. Stiles could already tell he was going to grow up scrawny with barely any muscle at all. He wondered if his soulmate would laugh at how different they were.
-
“Your soulmate is so weird,” Laura murmured. Her eyes were on the picture of a brain scan that colored Derek’s skin.
Derek shrugged. He thought the same thing, though with much more fondness than Laura did.
Peter stared for a while, but didn’t say anything. Not even the slightest teasing comment.
Laura and Derek shared a glance.
“What is it?” Derek asked.
“Nothing,” Peter said with a casual shrug. “It’s probably not their brain.”
Laura’s spine went straight. She placed a hand on Derek’s shoulder. “What if it was?” she demanded to know.
Peter shook his head. “All I know is the colors are in the wrong places.”
Derek tried to convince himself that his soulmate was just learning something new, had found some new obsession to explore with their boundless curiosity. But the days passed by and the scan didn’t move or shrink or fade.
Derek was torn about how to feel.
Because if the scan didn’t belong to his soulmate, it certainly belonged to someone they loved dearly.
-
There was a necklace on a bed of purple flowers.
After research, Stiles figured out it was aconite.
Wolfsbane.
He didn’t really understand the necklace. But the wolfsbane made him wonder. Was his soulmate into mythical lore? Or was this some kind of oblique reference to being poisoned?
The way the necklace was settled into the petals, the subtle twist of the chain. It seemed intimate. Stiles thought of poison and how love could hurt. He thought of his obsession with wolves in the fifth grade. He wondered.
Stiles knew a lot about werewolves long before his best friend became one. And he wasn’t that surprised they existed. Not really.
-
There was a star on his skin. It appeared not long after the brain scan faded. It wasn't gone, but the colors had lost their luster in a way that made Derek think whoever it represented was gone forever.
The star was big, five pointed, and gold. It looked like a sheriff star from old western movies. Unlike most other things that appeared the star never grew smaller. It was in a strange minority with the brain scan and the sandcastle. In fact, sometimes the star would even grow bigger.
But it lost some of its brilliance over the years. It was difficult to explain how the image had its own overall vibrancy that stayed the same, and even grew at times, but the star itself got a bit dull. A bit scuffed, the points not as sharp.
Derek wondered if the star represented a person. If it was that person that was deteriorating. Or if his soulmate’s perception of them was becoming disillusioned.
-
Stiles woke up with a symbol on his chest one day. It was a triskele, he found. It seemed different than his other marks somehow. More vivid. A deep red in the center that faded to black. He would get caught up staring at it in the mirror.
He would think of the broken cello, the intimate poison, and this symbol pulsing blood red in the center like a weeping wound.
He knew his soulmate had been hurt. Was still hurting.
His dad caught sight of his chest one day and paused with wide eyes.
“There is something different about it!” Stiles exclaimed.
John checked his expression, but it was too late.
“Your soulmate got a tattoo,” he said.
Stiles blinked at him. “Tattoos show up?”
“Not always,” John said, “Not usually.”
Stiles stared at his father, trying to beam the full force of his curiosity out of his eyes.
John sighed. “Stiles, I told you to stop doing that. You look demented.”
Stiles shrugged. It worked to get him the information he wanted more often than not, so it was all good as far as he was concerned.
John studied his son. Stiles would only go look it up himself if John didn’t tell him. “Tattoos don't usually show up unless the bond is particularly strong.”
Stiles began to smile. It faded when he took a closer look at his dad’s expression.
“Isn’t that good?” he asked uncertainly.
John shook his head. “Intensity isn’t always a good thing when it comes to soulmate relationships.”
Stiles thought of the case descriptions that had trickled through to him over the years. Vicious abuse cycles. Codependency. Murders because of jealousy. Suicides because someone’s soulmate died.
He nodded at his dad to show he understood.
Intensity wasn’t always a good thing.
“Will it be on the same place on them?” he asked.
“Not necessarily,” John said. “It might not even be that color.”
Stiles rolled his eyes. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy.
Over time, he found out the triskele absolutely would not be the same color, since the outer edges seemed to change according to his soulmate’s most prevalent and constant mood.
The center always stayed that fresh-cut red.
-
Derek didn't like Stiles when they first met. He knew his own inability to protect people. He didn't want someone like Stiles involved in what was going on. Someone so pretty and fragile, with such wide innocent eyes.
He soon learned Stiles was beautiful like the ocean, and even less likely to be tamed.He had a steel spine, an iron will, and those innocent eyes sparked with fiery passion at the slightest provocation.
Derek knew the dangers of fire by now, knew how easy it was to get burned. And yet there he still was, drawn like a moth, fluttering at the edges of a light he knew he was not allowed to have. A light that would only deepen the darkness around him, in him, if it were ever to go out.
The most he would allow himself was a slight suspicion and a resolute indifference to confirmation.
-
Stiles suspected Derek Hale was his soulmate from that first time in the woods. Even though Derek clearly didn’t like him, everything about the man made Stiles hum. From his cheekbones to his hostile glare, his leather jacket to his surprisingly soft voice.
And then he thought Derek was a murderer and he was still pretty sure, but he was hoping he was wrong because he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life hiding bodies.He would do it, and more, for his soulmate but he didn't actually want to.
Stiles would always be surprised at his own reaction when he found out for sure.
He saw the triskele first, right in the center of Derek’s back.
Stiles had the fleeting thought of how they would match up and maybe Derek preferred being the little spoon, before the wolf turned around.
Stiles caught sight of his mom’s brain scan and mentally noped the fuck out. He stayed mostly silent through the following interaction, as blank as he could possibly be out of sheer self-preservation.
He didn’t have a panic attack until he got home.
It was hours later when Scott called him to assure him that just because they both had triskeles didn’t mean Derek was Stiles’s soulmate. They weren’t even the same color or in the same place.
-
In the end it was Boyd who spilled the beans, though Jackson was the trigger.
“Shut the hell up, Stilinski. Who wants to listen to you? You can't even get your soulmate to look twice at you. You really think he doesn't know it's you? That he's not ignoring you on purpose because he would rather have anyone but you?”
Stiles went white. He stared at Jackson for a moment and then promptly left, pointedly not looking at anyone else in the room. Derek slowly turned to stare at Jackson with crimson eyes until the young wolf left also.
After a drawn out moment of silence, Boyd said, “You're the reason he can throw shit like that in Stiles’s face.”
Derek looked at him with wide eyes, the confirmation he hadn't wanted suddenly given to him.
But he had a different perspective of his reticence as selfishness now, and he couldn't bear the hurt he could clearly see he had caused his soulmate. The sense of embarrassment and shame lingered where Stiles had been standing.
-
Stiles made it home only to find Derek in his room waiting to command him to take his shirt off.
“Fuck off, Derek Hale. Get out of my room.”
“Stiles,” Derek said standing from where he was leaning against the window sill. He stared intently at the human boy. “Take off your shirt.”
Stiles wanted to argue. He wanted to demand an explanation for why Derek had come here, now, to order him to do this. He wanted to yell some more, tell Derek to get out and to not expect to see him for at least two weeks. But he was tired of knowing who he belonged to and knowing that person didn't want him back without getting to say anything at all about it. If Derek wanted to have it all out right here, right now, then that's what they would do.
So he took off his shirt. And he watched as Derek took in his own life and love and hurts on Stiles's skin. He could practically see Derek thinking, “It's true.” But he wasn't prepared for the wolf to just whip his own shirt off. He’d seen Derek shirtless before, but it was different now.
Now it was to prove that they were made for each other. That they'd been marked by what made each other.
“Why didn't you say anything?” Derek asked.
“What was I supposed to say?” Stiles scoffed, “You didn't even like me when we first met.”
Derek looked away. Of course Stiles knew that.
“Plus, I thought you were a murderer,” Stiles added.
Derek raised an eyebrow. They both knew that point didn’t matter nearly as much as it probably should have.
“I love you,” Derek said.
Stiles scoffed at him again. He shook his head and looked up at the ceiling with pursed lips like he was trying to hold back laughter. Or tears. When he looked at Derek again, he was smirking, but his eyes were bleak.
“Because I’m your soulmate?”
“Because I love you.”
Stiles closed his eyes. This was too much.
“Derek,” he murmured brokenly. He opened his eyes and his soulmate was right there in front of him, close enough to touch.
Derek reached up and cupped his cheek.
“I love you, Stiles,” he said.
Stiles gave up fighting, and fell into his other half.
-
They found each other, and all their questions were answered.
