18 year old derek hale starting at UCLA and being terrified because he's never lived anywhere without the whole pack around and laura went to school in new york but laura's also laura and he's afraid of her so he can't call her for advice
derek's roommate being really chill and into partying, which derek hates at first because he comes home smelling awful but eventually his roommate gets derek to come along and introduces him to kate, who's a senior and also the most beautiful girl derek's ever seen in his life, and he hasn't been with anyone since paige but it's been two years now and he realizes he wants
and kate's type has always been subordinate and pretty so of course she takes a liking to derek, but more than that, she likes him, like, as a person. he's cute and young and cocky as hell, because derek after paige wasn't entirely different, but he's also earnest and he brings her coffee in the mornings and when she says "a girl could get used to this" he smirks and tells her "you better"
he's just getting to that point where he can't prevent growing a beard and kate teases him about it endlessly, but when he goes down on her she loves it, she loves the stubble against all that sensitive skin, and he knows it, likes to brush his cheek against her neck while she's working on a paper and make her shiver because no one would ever think kate was the shivering type
college is sort of like kate's escape, from gerard and from her past. she still drives to the shooting range sometimes over the weekends and derek comes with, the ear protection not as effective as he wants but not bad enough for anyone to notice his occasional wince (plus kate looks really hot with her guns). mostly, though, she doesn't hunt when she's at school. she's getting a degree in something to do with business or marketing that's way too sophisticated for derek to understand but will probably get her far in life and she's really, really good at getting people to do what she wants
derek, meanwhile, is getting a degree in history, and it really shouldn't be as hot as it is to hear him read a paper out loud but derek talking about ancient wars really gets her going, okay
they don't even really fit. they shouldn't. they're entirely different people, but kate has this strange desire to protect him, and she likes how close he is to his family, considering her dad's a dick and her brother left her with him and hit the road the moment he turned eighteen like a total fucking prick, and she likes that derek likes her, always turning to watch her walk out of the room
derek likes how spontaneous she is, how she's a little rough and a little wild because he is too, how she's never ever quiet but she doesn't babble and isn't excessive either. he likes her fierce opinions and he likes how fiercely she cares, about people, and about what they think of her, even if she wont admit it. he likes all that stuff enough that he puts up with the fact that she likes to drink maybe a little too much and when he tells her he doesn't like marks she draws on him in gross-smelling sharpie instead because she likes to leave them, and she flirts with everyone in the room and even does a little more but when she's drunk at 4am she'll call him just to say nothing at all
she's reckless and there's something dangerous just beneath the surface but that's in him, too, and he relates
they go to parties and derek doesn't care who she dances with because she's coming home with him, and kate grins at him over their shoulders anyway. she's never dated a boy who was so unaware of jealousy the way derek is, but she doesn't know that derek can hear the truth when she tells him he's hers, and it isn't an i love you but it still matters
she never says i love you, even when derek says it, but she does tell him a little about her family. about how her father only ever thought about her and her brother as like, copies of him he could use to extend his influence, and for a long time she idolized him but now she isn't so sure, being away gives her perspective, but it's hard now that her brother's gone, and derek doesn't get mad when she doesn't say it because he knows that i love you doesn't mean a thing to her, but when she kisses him in front of 200 people and refers to him as hers in any and all conversations he knows that's what she means
kate and chris have a relationship but it's tenuous at best (kate's real relationship is with allison pre-fire) and she never invites any of her family to meet derek, not because she's suspicious of him but because he's hers and she doesn't want to taint him by putting him in contact with a family she can't decide if she even likes most days, but derek, derek and his family are close
so he decides he's gonna invite her to the family reunion in july. they've been dating for almost a year, by then. except in order to do that he has to you know, tell her
and he can't bring himself to do it until the end of term, graduation night for kate and he finally, finally says 'i have a secret'
and kate just grins and says "we've all got secrets, derek" before she kisses his cheek and makes him laugh before his face turns serious again
"it's a big one" he tells her, nervously avoiding her eyes
kate isn't worried, though, because derek is good. that's something she's always known?? he's good and he wants to be taken care of, and he's a little shit but he's good. better than her, anyway. he's certainly not perfect, they wouldn't get along if he was, but he's got a different kind of moral code and she knows it
he gets dressed first, which doesn't exactly put her at ease but it does make her take him seriously, and then he tells her he's a werewolf
her mouth falls open in shock for an entirely different reason than he's thinking, and then he wolfs out and she -- she's in shock, she knows, she's going through his every move for the past 10 months and wondering where her training went wrong because he can't be, but he is
she's known all her life that werewolves are dirty monsters and when she looks at him her heart swells anyway
so kate brushes him off with some excuse about needing time to adjust and tells him she wouldn't tell his secret, and when she kisses him goodbye she can't tell if she wants to vomit because she just kissed a werewolf or because everything she thought she knew is a lie
because derek is good and she can't find way he's ever been bad in the way she was taught that werewolves are
but he still calls and leaves her a voicemail asking if she wants to go to the reunion next month, which gives her a whole month to think, and that's -- that's an example! of all the stupid things he does that are nice when all she knows contradicts that notion entirely
so she goes home and immediately breaks down and tells her dad
because whatever else happened and however her dad thinks of her, chris left, and he's the only one who hasn't (their mom died when they were young in my headcanon) and she's scared and she trusts him, even though she doesn't always like him
he doesn't tell her outright that he's disappointed but she can feel he is, and he doesn't yell but he worms his way inside her head flawlessly. telling her it wasn't her fault because wolves are manipulative, and when kate tells him "derek couldn't manipulate a 2 year old" he doesn't say she's wrong, he tells her maybe she's right, but it wont always be that way. maybe tomorrow, maybe in ten years, he'll make a mistake, or his anchor will slip and he'll go for her throat
but she still isn't really convinced, still on the precipice, so gerard does some digging and discovers paige
he tells her about how they ruled it an animal attack but how the coroner's report said her blood was black, about how newspapers reported on her heartbroken high school sweetheart derek hale, and about how the hales pulled derek out of school for the rest of the year afterwards, and the way he presents it all makes it very clear
and that fosters a rage in kate, because she did love him, she never said it but she did, and now to find that he loved a girl before her and he murdered her, it's, he's
after that, it's easy. to take kate into his arms and let her cry on his shoulder, to foster that rage until it eclipses her sadness, to tell her they need to protect beacon hills, doesn't she remember they lived there when she was young? and she does, she remembers, and the utopian feeling she gets remembering (her mother was alive at that time) makes her even more angry, because the hales could destroy that, could destroy beacon hills
derek could destroy everything
she builds him up into a villain, until everything he did was just a wolf playing games with its prey, until she thinks of herself as a hunter becoming the hunted at which point her vicious pride kicks in, because he beat her, he beat her at the game she knows best: manipulation
she calls derek to inquire about the reunion and he explains the lunar eclipse and about how he'll be arriving a couple days late, after the eclipse is over, because he has to drive to new york to get laura, who hates planes and doesn't own a car bc it's nyc why would you
and she could burn it on another day, but she doesn't, she goes and she kills them while derek is still at NYU getting laura, because she can't bring herself to kill him because she loved him once and she can't, she can't
but when she burns the hale house down she feels a righteous sense of pride at what she's done
she's saved her childhood home from peril and one day, when she's stronger, she's going to make sure derek pays for what he's done, what he's going to do
derek and laura get home to the shell of a house and a dead family and when derek gets out of the car he can scent each and every member of his extended family
he doesn't tell laura. he deletes kate's number from his phone and cries for hours and hours, but he doesn't tell laura.
meanwhile, kate changes her plans from going for her masters to learning more about what it means to be the argent matriarch, and her code goes from "we hunt those who hunt us" to "we hunt the monsters", though she doesn't really say it. they're all monsters, no matter what they say. she knows that now.
kate and derek don't speak again until 6 years later.
#project hail mary
#the amazing digital circus
#photography
#lana del rey
#deltarune
#heated rivalry
#iron lung
#oc art
