Chapter Text
“Oh my god,” tears pooled in Stiles’ eyes, threatening to spill over and down his face, “Yes, Derek, yes. Of course, yes!”
He leapt forward into Derek’s arms, golden ring quickly forgotten, and buried his nose in his boyfriend’s--no, his fiance’s--shoulder. Derek huffed, fighting off tears and laughter of his own, and held Stiles tighter. Around them the restaurant continued as if nothing unusual was occurring, waiters bustling past, forks clinking noisily against bowls. When they separated, reluctantly, Derek signalled the busboy for another bottle of champagne, his face split in a grin.
Stiles thought that agreeing to marry Derek was the easiest thing he had ever done.
***
Like all things in adult life, it wasn’t easy at all.
“I am not setting foot in a church.”
“Synagogue, Derek, fucking synagogue, and it’s not exactly like you’re a vampire. You won’t turn to ash if you get within three feet of the bimah, so what exactly is your damage here?”
Derek narrowed his eyes and took a step forward, seemingly itching for a fight.
“You go to your Rabbi and you tell him about werewolves, Stiles, and if he somehow believes you I bet anything he starts in on demonic presences. We aren’t accepted in the world, and religion is the first part of that. It’s how they taught everyone to hate us, by convincing everyone we were sin incarnate!”
Stiles scoffed, “So, what? Werewolves are all edgy atheists?”
“Well we don’t go to churches! We aren’t going to sit and worship imaginary gods and pretend at some kind of purity that no one actually thinks we’re capable of! And I won’t either.”
His chest was heaving with unexpressed emotion, still so much anger left in him that needed to come out, and Stiles felt weary with it. A counselor in school had once told him that anger needed to be let out, that he should scream or use a punching bag or rip up paper when he felt upset, but lately it felt like that was all he’d been doing for years. All Derek had been doing too. It only ever self perpetuated, an awful, terrible, baleful cycle of hurt, and he was so weary.
“Derek,” Stiles sighed, “I didn’t expect you to be this wigged out about it, and I'm sorry. People are shitty and they say shitty things and then your shitty fiance makes you relive them all over again.”
Derek slumped and looked away. His voice was small.
“You aren’t shitty.”
“I am sometimes,” he smiled, “But this is important to me, it’s how I’ve imagined my wedding my whole life, and I don't think I'm asking for the moon here. So if it really can’t happen, so be it, but I want us to at least try . And hey,” he reached out and captured Derek’s hand, “it’s not all about me. We can incorporate your beliefs too. We can have it outside, at midnight, naked if that’s how werewolves are.”
“We don’t get naked, Stiles,” he huffed.
“I can tell when you’re lying, man.”
“Don’t call me man.”
“Wereman?”
“Were means man, you know that--”
“Man wolf? Wolf man? Hey, Wolf Man! That’s a head trip, we haven’t seen that in--”
“Stiles!”
He smiled, big and broad, and ran his hand up from Derek’s hand to his shoulder.
“I knew fighting would get us to stop fighting.”
Derek struggled to keep his smile off his face but lost ground at the goofy look on Stiles’. He reached out and hooked an arm around his fiance’s shoulder and tugged them together.
“Okay, fine. You’re right. You’re getting married just as much as I am and you deserve some say in things. But, Stiles, I don’t think you know just how ugly the history gets. It’s pretty much just druids who like us, and even that relationship is...wary.”
“I don’t think you know the history, Derek. Admit it, ‘rabbi’ is the only Hebrew word you know.”
He huffed against Stiles’ neck, pressing his mouth to skin to obscure his answer.
“Maybe.”
“Look,” Stiles drew back and looked Derek in the eye, “I’ll set up a meeting. It can be on neutral ground if you want, that shi-shi coffee house you like where all the employees hate me, and you can meet Rabbi Volkovich and talk with him. I don’t really know how we can guide the conversation from meet-the-fiance to werewolves but we’ll figure it out.”
Derek raised an eyebrow, “You’ve spoken to him about weddings before?”
Stiles grinned and clapped him on the shoulder.
“Derek I called him about marrying you after our second date.”
***
The shi-shi coffee house (“Procaffeinating”) charged $8 for a large, plus $2 for the extra shots of syrup Stiles demanded he get (“Sweet goes in the mouth, sweet comes out, it’s foolproof.”) but Derek hadn’t touched a drop of it by the time the Rabbi arrived. It sat in his hand, a waste of money and effort, lukewarm and probably gone sour and his stomach felt much the same.
Volkovich was not an imposing man, although when Derek and Stiles stood to shake his hand it appeared he was taller than the both of them. His shoulders were slight and his wrists narrow, a full beard softening the edges of his jaw, and he smiled like he just ran into them by coincidence, like he had no stake in the meeting or its outcome. The sour feeling in Derek’s stomach started to roil. A disarming smile, in his life, typically meant someone wanted him without arms or defenses, and he hated that he had to think that way.
“Afternoon, sorry to be late.”
“Hey there Rabbi Volkovich. This is my betrothed, Derek Hale.”
He shook each man’s hand in turn, “Stiles, Derek.”
They made small talk at first, little bits and pieces exchanged like currency. How’s work? What’s your dad doing? Any good crimes to report? It flowed well enough for a first meeting, if a bit stilted. Then, maybe twenty minutes in, he turned his gaze to Derek and smiled that disarming smile again.
“So, Stiles tells me you have some reservations about getting married in the Temple.”
And here’s the thing: Derek has never been good at confrontation. He certainly got enough of it in his daily life, from monster attacks to the overwhelming and overbearing presence of the pack, but he’d never been good at it. He couldn’t navigate its waters past basic survival. It was to his benefit that most people with villainous inclinations liked to monologue because it gave him time to compose himself, to focus on what he could and could not say. Something direct, like this, was and always would be his undoing. And it was this explanation he would offer to Stiles later when he made fun of him for blurting out:
“I’m a werewolf.”
Whatever he expected, it wasn’t for Rabbi Volkovich to nod thoughtfully and fish his phone out of his pocket, not an ounce of composure lost.
“It’s funny we should meet now of all times. The Torah reading this week is on Binyamin, and I think it might assuage your doubts. We have a few like you locally, so I’m familiar with the anxieties you face.”
He scrolled absentmindedly through something on the tiny screen and then began to read, his Hebrew and his English mingling together into something melodic and soothing. Derek sat, frozen to the spot, as he spoke. He tumbled through blessing after blessing, endless names Derek wasn’t familiar with, before finishing with Binyamin.
“Binyamin is a wolf, he will prey; in the morning he will devour plunder, and in the evening he will divide the spoil.”
He set his phone on the small table with a decisive clack.
“Wait,” Stiles said, brow scrunched up, “that doesn’t mean he’s a werewolf.”
“That alone, no, but we know that he was. Other scriptures, tradition, and so on. There were many wolves within his tribe, that was his blessing. Out of everyone who ever lived only four were righteous enough that they did not deserve to be taken by death and Binyamin was one.”
“How do you…” Derek’s crossed his arms tightly over his chest, “being called a wolf isn’t much of a blessing for most of the world.”
“Mm-hmm,” Rabbi Volkovich swirled the coffee in front of him and took a sip, “and yet...”
His eyes flashed bright yellow.
“Omega?” he breathed. Stiles was excitedly smacking at his arm--it would seem this wasn’t public knowledge--but Derek couldn’t tear his own eyes away. The Rabbi’s fingers had gained claws where they rested against the cup.
He nodded, “At the moment, yes. Although I’ve been talking with the Satomi pack for a while about joining. The Buddhism is...a barrier.”
“Oh my god, how have you never told me?” Stiles crowed, “I mean, I know I was never all that honest about my pack but we all know I’m not as good a liar as I think I am, so what gives?”
“You’re a wolf?” Rabbi Volkovich leaned forward and inhaled, a curious tilt to his head.
“No, no, just the resident human,” Stiles flapped a hand, “which I’m sure doesn’t count for much. But there’s a dozen of us now, and growing if the lovely librarian would ever agree to come talk to us.”
Derek broke his gaze away from the Rabbi, finally, to glare at Stiles.
“You know I don’t like her. She has no sense of boundaries.”
“I know,” Stiles sighed, “but I think she can learn. She’s not malicious, just...lonely, touch-starved. Erica was the same for a while, you know that. Although I’m not making excuses--”
“Good. You shouldn’t. I had to beat that out of Erica--” he stopped himself and cut a glance over at their guest, who only smirked at the exchange.
“You won’t frighten me off, Derek. I’m not squeamish.”
“I admit, I never expected to find someone like you.”
He shrugged.
“You likely wouldn’t have if it weren’t for the energetic young man dragging you along by the ear.”
Stiles eyes widened and he smiled at the both of them.
“That’s right, I got side tracked. So!” Stiles clapped his hands, “Marriage! Thoughts?”