“I’d much rather be planning our first Valentine’s Day,” Scott laughs nervously. “If I promise to make it super romantic, will you let me slip out the back and escape into the Preserve?”
Derek leans over his shoulder, his smile teasing. “What if I wanted to be the one to give the big romantic surprise?”
“I could be convinced if you let me run out of this meeting?”
“Mm. Nice try.” Derek leans in again, pressing a sweet kiss to his temple. Scott’s insides promptly go, well, gooey. “You’ll do great. I promise.”
In which a last minute inter-Pack meeting goes, predictably, horribly wrong and forces Scott to consider the werewolf dos and don’ts of relationship traditions.
This story includes Pack dynamics, werewolf traditions, misunderstandings, one cliche visiting Pack asshole, werewolf proposals, fluff, talks about the consent issues of werewolf romance tropes (mating/claiming bites), and blowjobs.
This story is NSFW.
So this was supposed to be for the Scerek Valentine Event for Feb 13th, the Proposal prompt. AND I HAD IT DONE. But then... I realized one scene needed serious work. And then I fell into the editing hole and just slowly grew more frustrated by the fic the more I tried to fix it. So I’m putting it out now before I get so angry at its small mistakes that I just delete the whole thing.
Tagging @queerlyalex, @dydia, @sleepy-skittles, and @hobrien who I very much hope enjoy this fic!!! Hope you guys had awesome Valentine’s Days!
Swallow my breath and take what is mine.
(I’m giving you all, I’m giving you all)
——————–1———————
There’s a scared boy looking at Scott in the mirror. Oh, he may be a man, technically - twenty-years-old and more world weary than any man his age has right to be. But despite that, all Scott sees is the same scared boy that thought going into the woods at night was a great idea. “Okay,” Scott tells his reflection. “You can do this. You’ve got this.”
His reflection doesn’t seem too sure about that.
“You can do this,” he repeats. As if maybe saying it enough times will make it come true.
There’s a soft tap against the bathroom door. “Scott?” Derek’s voice calls gently from the other side.
Scott flinches, cringing at his reflection in the mirror. “Yeah, I’m coming,” he answers. He takes one last deep breath, one last chance to shake the jitters out of his hands, and finger-combs his hair back into perfect order. When he opens the bathroom door, Derek’s expression is sympathetic. “Hey,” Scott mumbles. The sight of his boyfriend usually has the effect of chasing Scott’s worries away. But today it’s just too much, and all he wants to do is curl up against the man and hide.
“Hey. You ready? Alpha Ortega will be here soon.”
‘No,’ Scott wants to say. He’s not ready for this. He’s supposed to be a college student, only worried about money and putting his life together and making sure he’s caught up on classwork so he can take the week of Valentine’s Day off to suitably woo his boyfriend. (He’s gone through at least a dozen ideas at this point. All of them range from falling too short to being, well, too much. Especially the gift he really wants to give Derek.) He shouldn’t have to fret about life and death and starting a supernatural turf war at a last minute Pack delegation. But he’s the Alpha, and so he sucks it up and lies through his teeth. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
It’s a blatant lie, but Derek only hums in response. He steps easily into Scott’s space, doesn’t even hesitate to lift a hand to Scott’s shoulder. It’s the simplest touch and yet it sends has the tight vice around his heart easing just a bit. It makes Scott think of all the years they’ve missed out on, on how many years he’d thought about being this close to older ‘wolf. “It’s okay to be nervous,” Derek reminds him softly.
Scott winces. “You can smell that? Is it that bad?”
Derek looks like he’s fighting not to roll his eyes. “Scott, I don’t need to smell anything to see that you’re nervous.”
That’s even worse. This is going to be a disaster. Why did Scott ever agree to meet with the neighboring Pack? Life was hard enough when their ragtag group was just fighting to survive. Now they have to add negotiating and politics to it. “This isn’t going to work,” he says in a rush of breath, panic overtaking him for a terrifying instant. “We should call this off. Alpha Ortega is going to see how awful I am at this and she’s going to wipe the floor with me…”
His face is tipped up by a firm hand at his chin before he has a chance to finish. A warm, soft mouth covers his own, smothering the self-deprecating words and even the thoughts. He sways when Derek pulls away, trying to chase after him. The other man grins. “You’re going to do fine,” he says, leaving no room for argument, and takes Scott’s hand to lead him out into the front room. “You’ve gone over this with Satomi a hundred times. And at least half that much with me.”
He guides Scott to down into the armchair facing the door. Scott’s never paid much attention to the purposeful layout of the room or the floorplanning of the Pack house, but now that he really looks, it’s increasingly obvious that this room was always meant to be for meetings like this. The sitting room is almost formal in comparison to the rest of the house, and it’s impossible to get to other rooms without going through this one first - impossible to see into the Pack’s private space without making it past this room.
When Derek had designed his new home - the Pack’s home, he’d done it this in mind. Scott can see that now. And realizing that sends the anxiety spiraling faster through him. It’s one more unspoken thing about being a Pack - about being an Alpha - that Scott doesn’t know. That he doesn’t have the background for, no matter how much training he’s had since high school. He could train for this one meeting for years and he’d still be going in blind. Which is why agreeing to this meeting was a terrible idea.
It’s not like he had much of a choice. The Ortegas are now the most powerful Pack on the west coast, given the tragedies that befell both the Hale and Ito Packs in the last decade. Their Pack is old and prestigious, apparently; their territory encompassing most of southern California and south-west Arizona. Given that the Ortega Pack and the Hale Pack were neighbors, and that Scott has inherited the territory (Alpha Ortega’s words, which make something bitter turn over in Scott’s chest), he couldn’t exactly refuse when Beatriz Ortega asked to reestablish communications.
It was Derek who suggested that the meeting take place at the Pack house, in their territory rather than Alpha Ortega’s. It would be a show of good faith to welcome an old ally into a new territory, especially after they worked so hard to rebuild it. And that is why Scott asked, no, begged, Derek to be there with him. Not just because this is Derek’s house, but because he has a background with this Pack and with werewolf customs in general. And he’s slightly less likely than Stiles to open his mouth and cause offense, even if he is equally as suspicious.
And…
A warm hand settles at the back of his neck with a gentle squeeze. Scott’s been so caught up in his thoughts that he hasn’t noticed Derek stepping up behind him. Scott lets himself lean into the touch. They may have been dating for only a little over seven months, but Scott is away at school so often that everything feels so new. He’s hypersensitive to every touch, and every look. The amazement that these are things he’s allowed to have now is still so fresh. So not only does he need Derek here, he wants him here. Having Derek stand by him satisfies something primal in him that Scott isn’t sure how to name, but he takes solace in it nonetheless.
“I’d much rather be planning our first Valentine’s Day,” Scott laughs nervously. “If I promise to make it super romantic, will you let me slip out the back and escape into the Preserve?”
Derek leans over his shoulder, his smile teasing. “What if I wanted to be the one to give the big romantic surprise?”
“I could be convinced if you let me run out of this meeting?”
“Mm. Nice try.” Derek leans in again, pressing a sweet kiss to his temple. Scott’s insides promptly go, well, gooey. “You’ll do great. I promise.”
They hear the Ortega Pack long before they reach the house. The two of them sit in stilted silence, straining to listen as Alpha Ortega’s car winds up the forest road towards the house. Scott takes one last steadying breath. “Okay,” he murmurs. Derek nods and goes out the door to wait for their guests’ arrival. A car pulls to a stop in front of the house a few minutes later. Even if he couldn’t hear the three heartbeats under the rumbling of the engine, the tug of a foreign Alpha in his territory is unmistakable. Scott clenches his hands around the arms of the chair, willing his heartbeat to remain steady.
But something shifts as Alpha Ortega and her three Betas exit the car. There’s the barest stutter of a heartbeat - quickly smothered into silence. “Welcome, Alpha Ortega--” Derek starts to greet, but before he can finish, a woman’s sharp voice interrupts him.
“Derek Hale?”
“...Yes, Alpha.”
There’s a conspicuous silence that has Scott all but jittering in his seat. There’s several seconds where Scott imagines horrible possibilities of a brewing fight right on their front porch. But eventually Derek steps back inside, leading Beatriz Ortega and her two Betas in with him.
Alpha Ortega an imposing woman. She’s tall and solid and walks with a ornate cane due to an injury from a wolfsbane bullet that never quite healed. He’s met her only briefly before, when he visited San Diego to help settle Lori Talbot in for college last year. Satomi had acted as a buffer, then, and had done most of the formal introduction work to cover the fact that Scott had no idea what he was doing. Still, Alpha Ortega had been gracious. Even kind. And interested, which is what led to this.
But now something is… different. As Beatriz Ortega enters the Pack house, she’s wearing a stony frown. It’s as close to tightly concealed anger as Scott has ever seen on her ageless face, and there’s something like disappointment flashing behind her eyes. Worried, Scott climbs to his feet. “Alpha Ortega, it’s an honor to have you here,” he greets, his words coming out only slightly rehearsed. “Did you have any trouble?”
“Everything is in order, Alpha McCall,” she returns, but her voice is a measured coldness. Her gesture towards her Betas is almost dismissive. “My guests: August, my son and heir; Vanessa, our vanguard.” Scott nods to each of them in turn, growing more ill at ease with each cold greeting.
“It’s great to meet you,” he attempts, gesturing towards Derek in kind. “This is--”
“Yes, I remember Derek. His mother met with us often.” His mouth clicks shut, choking back the rise of irritation. Alpha Ortega doesn’t even glance Derek’s way, but the others peer in his direction. The vanguard’s expression is almost stoic, but August watches with something akin to a sneer on his face.
The meeting goes rapidly downhill from there.
Alpha Ortega is never hostile in her words, but the brittle civility is as subtle as a knife to the ribs. Something has angered her. It’s evident in every masked compliment about their territory and his Pack’s progress and in every suggestion that both Packs should meet soon. It’s all hollow words and steely eyes, and it makes Scott want to sink into his chair. He finds himself running through every possible misstep, and in the end can only deduce that Derek seems to be the problem.
While Alpha Ortega seems to pretend Derek doesn’t exist, her Betas are not as careful. Every word Derek speaks, or any advice whispered into Scott’s ear is met with judgment or outright disgust. When Derek’s last suggestion is met with a quiet scoff, Scott actually grips the arm of his chair hard enough for it to creak. Derek isn’t blind to it. His shoulders are growing tighter with every passing minute; his jaw clenching tighter with every near-silent jeer.
“Why don’t you run along and get us something to drink?” August finally sighs with a shooing motion. It’s said flippantly, not with hostility. But it turns the room several degrees colder all the same.
“August,” Alpha Ortega growls, at the same time Scott bares his teeth, halfway to a shout. But before he can let loose the roar that’s been building in his chest all through this meeting, Derek lays a hand on his shoulder.
“Of course,” he says stiffly. “I’ll be back in a moment.” Scott watches with disbelief as the older ‘wolf simply turns and walks from the room, as if the other Pack hadn’t spent the last ten minutes either silently belittling him or ignoring his existence.
“My apologies, Alpha McCall,” August amends sweetly, “is that not what you use him for?”
“Excuse me…?” Scott trails off, aghast. He’s keenly aware of all the eyes in the room have turned to him, Alpha Ortega’s most of all. She’s watching him closely now, waiting, not reprimanding her son for speaking of Scott’s Pack that way.
August’s sneer sharpens, a righteous flicker in his eyes. “You made him to be your servant, yes? Let’s not be coy about it, pretending that you wanted him here for his advice. Then again, given how much you smell of each other, maybe you keep him around for something else. It would be easy. I could smell the pining from here.”
Scott realizes he’s on his feet a second too late. “Get OUT!” The pictures on the wall rattle with the force of his roar. The Betas flinch as if struck. Vanessa leaps to her feet, grasping the Ortega heir by the shoulder as if to drag him behind her at a moment’s notice. Their Alpha doesn’t move. She’s still watching him. “You’re no longer welcome in our home,” Scott continues at a quieter, but no less furious register. “Leave.”
Beatriz Ortega rises sedately from her chair and folds her hands neatly over the head of her cane, unfazed by the sudden outburst. “As you wish, Alpha McCall. Do you wish us to leave the territory immediately, of may we prepare for the trip home first?”
The request catches Scott off guard. She doesn’t appear at all worried by how things have turned out. Her eyes are calculating, uncaring of his anger. It makes the burst of rage fizzle out. “I… Take as much time as you need,” he replies weakly.
Alpha Ortega nods, and shows herself and her Betas to the door without waiting for an escort. Scott follows them at a distance anyway, the fury icing over in his chest, joining the dread and the anxiety that had settled there long before this. Even after the door is closed behind them, Scott stands and listens to the group get silently back into their car, and drive the long path back to the road.
His hands are shaking.
“Why did you do that?”
Scott can’t help but flinch. Derek’s come back into the room, his expression guarded. “Why? Derek you heard what they said. It was--”
“He was just running his mouth, Scott. Trying to get a rise out of you. You didn’t have to kick them out for that. I can handle a little name calling.”
He sputters. “A little-- Derek. He said horrible things! I don’t care if it was just to piss me off. I’m not going to sit there and let them talk about people I love that way!”
Derek’s eyes widen, mouth dropping open enough to reveal the bottom edge of his - frankly adorable - front teeth. It’s not going to distract Scott from what happened. He’s just ruined their relationship with a neighboring Pack, but Scott doesn’t care about that when it was either that or let them say hurtful things about his boyfriend, about his Pack.
“Why would he say those things?” A horrible idea strikes him before Derek can come up with an answer. “Did they always act like this? Did you just go along with us meeting them even if they treat you like that?”
“What? No.” Derek steps forward, grasping his arms in firm hands. “No. It’s nothing like that.” There’s no stutter in his heartbeat, but no, no, Scott is intimately familiar with what Derek looks like when he’s not telling him something. He knows the careful way in which the older man can’t fully meet his eyes, for fear that Scott will notice. “The Ortega Pack is just… traditional. Don’t let it bother you.”
“...Okay,” Scott relents after a moment.
--------------------2---------------------
It’s a lie.
It bothers him. A lot.
It bothers him more every time Derek brushes it off, which happens with increasing frequency over the next few days. He refuses to talk about it, going so far as to ask Scott not to tell the Pack why exactly the meeting went wrong. Or even that it went so badly wrong. It only proves that there’s more to this than Derek will admit.
But the more worried Scott becomes, the more cagey Derek gets about the whole thing. Until by the end of the week, his boyfriend is all but avoiding him. That’s…
No. Scott can’t handle that.
“You guys having a fight?” Stiles asks through a mouthful of cheetos. As if he isn’t aware that Scott asked him to hang out, not entirely subtly, to ask for advice.
“No?”
His best friend crunches slowly. “Uh-huh. That didn’t sound to sure.” There’s silence between them until Stiles swallows his bite, and then pauses Daredevil. “You guys are fighting right before Valentine’s Day. That’s rough, man. It was something that happened at that meeting with the Ortega Pack, right?” At Scott’s wince, he rolls his eyes. “Please, like you could hide that. I dunno what’s more insulting: that you chose your grumpy werewolf boyfriend to be at the meeting instead of me--”
“Well, he does know about negotiating with--”
“--Details, Scotty. Or the fact that you thought you could hide that something happened during the meeting that’s causing you and Werebunny to get into a lover’s spat. Sloppy, man,” Stiles admonishes. “Just sloppy.”
It only takes that and a single, prolonged stare from Stiles for Scott to break his word, and tell him everything. Every out of place word from Alpha Ortega and every veiled barb that had been sent their way. It’s vindicating for Stiles to make outraged sounds as he’s retelling it, and even interject with “What a dick!” at appropriate intervals. At the end of it, though, he’s frowning thoughtfully.
“He said you made Derek to be your servant,” he says. “Why?”
“I… I don’t know,” Scott admits. It’s one of the many things about the entire encounter that confuses him. “I mean, he can’t be. Derek’s always been one of us. We’re all equal, right?”
“For sure, dude. But that’s still significant. Why would they consider Derek the Pack servant?”
That, Scott doesn’t have an answer for. And the fact that he can’t worries him - the fact that he doesn’t have the knowledge to answer worries him. “I think I need to ask Deaton…”
Stiles scoffs into his soda. “Good luck with that. Tell me if he gives you a straight answer for once.”
“He’s helped us through a lot, Stiles.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean he has to be so coy about it. Sometimes I just want to know how to kill something. Not a metaphor for balance in the universe.”
Scott rolls his eyes, and elects to unpause the episode rather than dignify that with an answer. They don’t get more than a few minutes into Matt Murdock laying into a group of mobsters before Stiles speaks again.
“So… was that the first time you told him you loved him?”
Scott freezes, soda can just barely touching his lips, and then slowly, carefully, sets it back down. “....What?”
“Derek,” Stiles clarifies, brows arching. “Was that the first time you told him you loved him?”
He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. It takes two more tries for his exact words to Derek to resurface. And then he grabs his pillow and brings it to his face. And lets out a low, pained moan.
“You didn’t even realize you said it, did you?”
“Nooooooo.”
Stiles pats him on the back, his voice pitying. “Hang in there, buddy.”
i. beyonce feat. jay-z — crazy in love ii. young the giant — my body iii. camera obscura — tears for affairs iv. who is fancy feat. ariana grande & meghan trainor — boys like you v. leona lewis — bleeding love vi. bruno mars — finesse vii. rupaul — sissy that walk viii. melanie martinez — toxic ix. tove lo — over x. zedd feat. kesha — true colors xi. robyn — dancing on my own xii. nicki minaj — save me xiii. blair late & cinema starz — love calling (you are there for me)
A 3-day event for specially for Scerek Fans! The event will fall the weekend before Valentine’s Day: 10-12 February 2017.
Themes for the event are as follows:
10th February (Friday): Attraction
11th February (Saturday): Dating
12th February (Sunday): Love
As usual the themes are just guidelines if you want them, they do not have to be followed. For anyone who wants to stretch it until Valentine’s Day, we have two additional themes for you!
* 13th February (Monday): Proposal
* 14th February (Tuesday): Wedding
Don’t forget to tag your posts with #scerekvalentine
After a devastating break-up with Theo has left Scott down in the dumps, Stiles decides to surprise his best buddy with a three-day weekend getaway to Beacon Hills, a popular gay resort and hotel in Palm Springs, in hopes to help Scott get over his misery. Because the best way to get over a guy is to get under a new one, right? However, things take a turn for the worse when, as luck would have it, it turns out that Theo is also attending the same resort!
In a desperate act to prove that he's completely over Theo, and to make him jealous, Scott decides to grab the first guy within arm's reach and have him pretend to be his boyfriend for the weekend. That guy turns out to be Derek Hale, a single-and-ready-to-mingle, proud manwhore looking to score through a smorgasbord of hot guys. Scott really wished that this didn't happen to him.
Finally, Stiles lowered the radio enough so that they could talk. "I'm tellin' ya, Scotty, you're gonna love this trip! It's exactly what you need to get over Theo Gonorrhaeken."
"Nice," Scott snarled out, sarcastically.
"Dude, it's a three-day weekend at Beacon Hills, the hottest gay resort in California. Parties, naked dudes, alcohol, body glitter, maybe even a new kind of STD."
"I'm thrilled," Scott deadpanned, not even the slightest trace of amusement in his voice.
"It's exactly what you need," Stiles beamed, "The best way to get over a guy is to get under a new one!"
You still have time to write up and submit all your Scerek Valentine fanwork. Although the official three day weekend event is over we still have a theme for today: Wedding!
What’s the Scerek wedding of your dreams? How are their preparations? What are their vows. Do they actually go through a whole ceremony or do they elope? What’s their night like right after the wedding? How do they celebrate their wedding anniversary?
Everything and anything is accepted.
If you haven’t had the time to contribute yet, don’t worry as always we will keep adding any fanwork created until next week!
