Actions

Work Header

From One to Ten, He's a Twenty (Part 4/5)

Summary:

Previously Stiles had to talk to his husband after he got shot on duty. In this chapter Kane and Derek go to visit him at the hospital and Kane stays to talk to him.

Notes:

I just replied to the few comments in the previous chapter and like I told them, I'm only posting this chapter because of them, because the series barely gets any comments and kudos and people have lost interest, so yeah, as you can see, I honestly don't feel like updating it anymore.

I always say the same but some people don't get it: Feedback is TRULY important, it is the KEY, so I need to mention this Tumblr post for those people haven't realised how important feedback is for the writers and it's cool to see that it's been useful for some people here.

Please read these important TIPS about feedback and what you can say when you don't know what to say (which happens to all of us sometimes):

tips-600

Anyway, I'm gonna copy the beginning of the post and if with this comment I can help more writers out there who feel like giving up or removing their stories from AO3, I'll be happy. If this useless, at least I tried:

I’ve seen five different authors take down, or prepare to take down, their posted works on Ao3 this week. At the same time, I’ve seen several people wishing there was more new content to read. I’ve also seen countless posts by authors begging for people to leave comments and kudos.

People tell me I am a big name fan in my chosen fandom. I don’t quite get that but for the purposes of this post, let’s roll with it. On my latest one shot, less than 18% of the people who read it bothered to hit the kudos button. Sure, okay, maybe that one sort of sucked. Let’s look at the one shot posted before that - less than 16% left kudos. Before that - 10%, and then 16%. I’m not even going to get into the comments. Let’s just say the numbers drop a lot. I’m just looking at one shots here so we don’t have to worry about multiple hits from multiple chapters, people reading previous chapters over, etc. And if I am a BNF, that means other people are getting significantly less kudos and comments.

(...)TL;DR: Passively devouring content is killing fandom.

^^^^^^THIS^^^^^^

Fandom is kept alive by readers, watchers, lookers, commenters, and supporters. And the FiKi fandom has some MAGNIFICENT ones…but a lot more who click, consume, and say nothing.

Otherwise, artists and writers are throwing into a vacuum. And it’s the artists and writers who get blamed when there’s not new content?

This applies to so many fandoms. It makes me so sad to see that even on LJ comms, there are far more people reading things than there are commenting on and liking them. I co-mod one of the oldest sites in a particular fandom, and I know it’s still active because of the sign-ups for our challenges, but it’s so disheartening when people post and nobody says anything.

How does that encourage new writers, if the first thing they post gets no response? (...) I don’t know why fandom is getting so heavily skewed towards passive consumption, but I wish I could do something - anything - to fix it. I miss the kind of comment threads that used to lead directly to more fic and art.

(Keep reading it here and reblog it if you can...)


Thanks to my lovely beta, WhenAngelsFall, for her help as usual; she's amazing and I couldn't share this without her advice.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

"So, on a scale from one to ten, how upset is he?" Kane asks, taking a seat.

Derek has left with Jackson to grab a bite, so Kane thinks that at least they'll have thirty or forty-five minutes to talk alone.

Stiles snorts. "I guess he's a twenty or something..."

"That much, huh?" Kane raises an eyebrow and smiles.

"Yeah, he's furious." Stiles nods.

"That's because he loves you and he's still in shock, I guess. As much as he says that he was waiting for this to happen, it was just a façade, he wasn't ready. You can't be ready for your husband getting shot, you know?" Kane waves his right arm.

"He's so..." Stiles bites his lip as he thinks.

"Stubborn?" Kane offers.

"Yeah, that and infuriating... I'm not the first cop getting shot, for god's sake!"

"Yeah, that's true... but he's not married to any of those other cops... And you have to admit it, you've been here too many times now. He's sick of this place and you keep coming back."

"Not because I want to!" Stiles whines.

"I know. And I'm sure he knows that too but it doesn't change the fact and you have to admit that."

"I admit it, okay? I told him I fucked up. I told him I'm sorry. I was honest with him and he still looks at me in that way he does... like he won't forgive me or something... and shit, I'm not the one responsible here... and still, why do I feel responsible? It's crazy." Stiles says, waving his arms.

"He doesn't think you're responsible. But he's not sure what happened which doesn't exactly help either."

"He thinks I'm not good enough to be a cop..." Stiles runs his right hand through his hair.

"That's not true. He doesn't think that. But he's a lawyer and he's sick of seeing murder cases of any kind. People getting shot for the all kinds of reasons and the pain it causes to the families... the last thing he wants is to have you as one of those cases."

"He's never really approved my decision. I know he would have wanted me to go back to college, so that I came back to work at my company or somewhere else. The last thing he wanted was for me to become a cop."

"Yeah, I know. But I think that your past has everything do with it. He's almost lost you twice and he's been through a lot. So I can understand that now, he's scared of losing you for another reason... and well, also because it's not just you, the idea of the kids losing you terrifies him."

"Shit." Stiles closes his eyes for a few seconds.

"Is everything okay between you two?" Kane asks.

"What do you mean?" Stiles frowns.

"Only that... I mean, since you've been a police officer... has anything changed in your relationship?"

"Well. Maybe you should ask him that because I don't remember how it used to be before the accident. But despite how he feels, I thought we were in a good place... You're not asking me if we are having sex or not, right?" Stiles smiles.

"What? No. Of course not." Kane smirks.

"I'm not stupid. I know that things haven't been the same since I finished at the academy. But we were dealing with it and I thought we were making progress and we were reaching a point where he was okay with it. I think these two years have been good."

"I guess you know that he has problems sleeping at night when you're working..."

"Yeah. Of course I know. And I wish I could do something about it but I can't." Stiles shakes his head. Most of the time when he gets home, his husband is awake in bed or working at his office. "Hopefully, when I make detective, things will change and I'll be at home every night. I want to be there for him and the kids more than anything but this is my job and right now, he needs to accept it."

"Yeah, right. I think he accepts it because he loves you and he would do anything you asked, but I don't think you can expect him to be okay with it because you can't change what he thinks about it." Kane shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair.

"I think sometimes you forget that your husband is a werewolf and that they don't deal with this stuff like humans do." Kane continues. "He needs his mate to be safe and that's how it is. The concepts of mate and cop are never going to fit together for him. At least not the way you want."

"Well, I want him to be safe too and he's been involved in some pack stuff I didn't like many times and I've never told him anything, you know? He's always done whatever he wants and I've always respected it--"

"Yes, but he's a werewolf and he can heal. You have to admit that the probabilities of him getting seriously hurt are less than yours."

"God, on which side are you?" Stiles says exasperated.

"Hey, I'm on your side but I understand his point of view too because I know how he feels... I have my own Jackson at home, remember? He's told me many times that he'd feel like Jackson does if I was in you line of work and that he's grateful for not having to deal with something like that. Of course, it also has to do with the fact that all his life he's always been worried about one thing or the other, so if he had to worry about me now, I guess, we'd probably end up having problems... maybe even breaking up."

"Well, I'm not leaving my job and he knows that. Besides, I love him and we have two kids who need both of us... not to mention that he'd literally die without me, so we're most certainly not breaking up and hopefully he knows that too... so, can we please change the subject?"

Kane nods and smirks. He knows there's no way those two would break up because despite everything, at this point their bond is as strong as it was before the car accident.

"Yeah, what do you want to talk about?"

"Anything that hasn't got to do with my husband, please."

"How sad is it that we always end up talking about Jackson or werewolves when we are together?" Kane smirks.

"Yeah. It's like we need to get a life apart from them." Stiles agrees. But hopefully they are changing that starting today. "We should go to the movies sometimes... I want to see something that isn't Disney or cartoons for once..."

"Yeah, that sounds good." Kane smiles. "Just call me when you get out of here."

Notes:

I'm otg2012 on Tumblr.

Feedback is very important in case you don't know and you'd like this story to continue.

You can comment (and leave kudos) without an account. You only need an e-mail to comment. It's easy and fast.

Series this work belongs to: