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Stiles' future was decided when he was seven.
He didn't know that, at the time, didn't really have a concept of the future, what it would mean, what it could bring. The person he'd become and the things that he'd want one day were only distant, abstract concepts then. He wanted to be a guardsman like his father, a woodcutter like his mother, but that was only when he wasn't busy wanting to be a dragon.
In any event, it wasn't the future he was thinking of, when it happened. He had a basket full of black elder flowers, carefully hand-picked, and he was alone in a sunny meadow, didn't even realize until he looked up that he'd wandered away from Scott and Scott's mother, that he was probably in for a scolding when they found him again. He was looking around, trying to remember which way he came, considering calling Scott's name, when an animal stepped out from the tree line, its regal head lifted, its ears swiveling and nostrils flared.
The moment was etched in his memory forever: the unicorn's shining silver coat, the warm rush of breath across the knuckles of Stiles' outstretched hand, the velvety softness of the creature's muzzle beneath his fingers when he reached out to touch. He didn't notice the basket tumbling from his hands, or Scott's mother's voice calling for him. The unicorn stared at him, and Stiles stared back, awed and unblinking. There was blood dripping from the unicorn's face, and it stained Stiles' hand bright red.
Stiles didn't choose to give his life to the unicorns, not really; they were the ones who chose him. He didn't understand, then, what it was they were taking from him.
+++
"Wait, Derek? We are talking about the same Derek, here? The one from the Wolfswatch?"
Scott's tone walked the line somewhere between hesitant support and cautious optimism, probably hoping that they weren't talking about the same Derek, even though there was only the one that either of them knew.
"Yes, Derek," Stiles said. "Tall, dark, and entirely unobtainable? You have to admit, he's kind of the perfect crush for a guy who's taken a vow of celibacy. I wouldn't have had a chance anyway."
Stiles tried not to sound bitter, but knew even as he spoke that he was failing completely. He was turning over a pile of unicorn manure with a pitchfork, getting ready to spread it as fertilizer — the caretaking of unicorns was not as glamorous as the stories would have one believe — and he was just as sexually unsullied that day as he'd been the day before. He felt like he had a lot to be bitter about.
Scott made a thoughtful noise, and turned back to his work, pulling neat rows of furrows into the ground they were preparing for planting. Stiles' mother — gods keep her — would have used her horse for it, and proper equipment, and had it done in two passes on a plot as small as this. But the Order didn't care for anything that might incur expense, like a horse or a harrow, so Scott's labor was unpaid, unassisted by beasts of burden — Stiles excluded — and done with a much-mended spade. He worked as briskly as any man, though he stopped a lot to rest, so he wouldn't lose his breath.
"That's a good point, actually," Scott said. "I mean, normally I'd warn you off, because Derek's not exactly the friendliest guy in the world, and you deserve to be treated nice."
"Awwww," Stiles said, and it wasn't even sarcastic. He felt a little ember of warmth in his heart, where his undying love for Scott lived.
"It's not like there's anything wrong with looking, right?"
"Must not be," Stiles agreed. "If there were, I'd have been found out by now, because I've been doing a lot of looking. We're on his patrol route, so he checks in here at least once a week. Mostly he just skulks around the outbuildings, looking for who knows what, sniffing things."
"Wait, you've been looking looking when he's a wolf?" Scott asked. He was using his carefully non-judgmental tone of voice, which meant he was intensely judging mentally.
"No," Stiles said, because there were some things he wasn't entirely willing to admit to, and his desire to curl up around wolf-Derek and snuggle was definitely one of those things. There was nothing wrong with it, Derek as a wolf just looked... soft and warm, like petting him might be a transformative experience. And anyway, it wasn't the point. "The High Obligate always makes him stay for supper, and he usually sleeps here before he continues his rounds. We keep a room for him in the Obligates' Hall, and spare clothes so he can dress if he arrives on four legs."
Stiles didn't mention the last time Derek's room had been occupied, how Stiles had opened the door without knocking and found Derek still naked, breeches hanging from one hand. It didn't seem — well, Scott didn't need to know about it, that was all. Scott definitely didn't need to know about the way Derek had only stilled, and stared, not moved to put his clothes on, hadn't even growled at Stiles to get out. He'd just stretched his hand out, and Stiles had been halfway to throwing himself into Derek's grip before he'd realized that Derek was just reaching for the plate of food he'd brought. It was a little mortifying, but not any more so than the way he'd backed out of the room, mouth open, eyes fixed on all that muscle, that flesh unmarked by even the slightest of scars, while Derek's sharp, unblinking eyes watching him with something like interest. Neither of them had said anything, or looked away, until Stiles had shut the door between them. That was Derek's last visit, only five days gone, and just the thought of it still made Stiles' heart pound in his chest.
If Stiles sometimes thought of it, alone in his room, blowing air like a winded horse with his hand wrapped around his own cock, no one had to know that either. And if that memory sometimes reminded him of an older one, of locking eyes with a unicorn and feeling something like destiny shivering up his spine, well. It would all come to nothing, this time, because destiny had already had its way with Stiles, and it had made sure that fate would be the only one to give him a good fucking.
There was quiet, for a moment, marked only by the sounds of their labor, and then Scott said, low, "Do you think he likes you back?"
Stiles thought of Derek's eyes, the flat animal reflection of them against the light of his candle. He said, "I don't know; I imagine not," and he wished it weren't so.
"You're thinking of breaking your oath for him," Scott said. It wasn't a question; he knew Stiles too well for that.
"Children make all kinds of vows," Stiles said, which wasn't an answer. He remembered other things he'd promised that summer: that one day he and Scott would get married, that he'd catch the rabbits that were eating his father's vegetable patch, that he'd run away to the keep and become a knight. It seemed only one of his oaths mattered to anyone.
"Stiles... you'd be throwing your whole life away. And your future, too; no one would look kindly on an obligate who would abandon his unicorn. You'd never be able to find work, not anywhere near here."
"I know."
"You'd never be able to see Bedivere again," Scott pressed.
"I know," Stiles repeated, snapped this time, harsher than anything Scott deserved from him.
Scott let it lie in silence for a long moment, and then said, "Of course I'll support you, whatever you do. Just... think on what you want to have from your life, not just on what you can't have right now. They may be the same thing, in the end, but know the difference first. And perhaps find out whether the man you'd yield all to even knows your name."
Stiles sighed, turned over the pitchfork one more time, listlessly. "When did you get so wise?"
"Oh, I've always been," Scott said, with a bright smile that said all was forgiven. "You just never bothered to listen before."
+++
As it turned out, he didn't have to seek Derek out for himself. The wolf found him, instead, although if Stiles had had a choice in the matter, the meeting wouldn't have started with Derek frightening him half to death.
He was in the southern pasture with Bedivere, beneath the big spreading oak whose shade the unicorn favored in the late afternoon, and he was plaiting flowers into Bedivere's mane, which was at least one of the more pleasant chores to which an Obligate was... well, obligated. Bedivere preferred the delicate purple blooms that grew on the hillock near the abbey's vegetable beds — probably because they matched his shockingly bright purple eyes — so Stiles had collected a whole basket of them on his way out into the field. His fingers were deft in the familiar, silky mane of his charge, and they moved almost of their own accord, much-practiced in the art of it. His growth spurt two summers past had proven to be an asset in this task, at least: his hands had broadened, his fingers lengthened, and his height had shot up well enough that the ladder he'd once had to use to reach his unicorn's head had finally been passed along permanently to an Obligate younger and significantly smaller than himself. If he still sometimes felt like a wobbling colt, constantly forgetting the length of his own legs, it was a small price to pay.
He talked while he plaited, which was always his custom, because his mouth had never made him particularly popular in the quiet, echoing halls of the abbey, and it was probably some small mercy, perhaps the gods granting him a single small favor, that he wasn't prattling on about the depth of Derek's eyes when the wolf appeared, rather suddenly, just at the edge of his vision, padding around the broad trunk of the oak as if he'd perhaps crawled forth from it.
That Stiles yelped and tripped over his own feet was only a natural progression of events, really, and he refused to think of the way the wolf's mouth lolled open as laughter.
"Seven bells, you scared me half to death," Stiles gasped, and sat up so as to recover some small measure of his dignity. The lush grass was comfortable enough, though.
The wolf sat neatly down on his haunches, as if he was conceding Stiles the space to recover his wits, though Stiles was sure Derek's intentions weren't anywhere near as honorable; he looked far too pleased with himself.
"Bedivere usually warns me when someone's coming," he said. "Well, by 'warns' I mean he tends to walk off, regardless of what I'm trying to accomplish, because he's choosy about his company. I'd have thought a wolf would have him galloping for the hills, leaving me to my inevitable demise."
If a wolf's expression could be said to be exasperated, that was what Derek's was. Bedivere, strangely, merely looked bored. He was eating the flowers from Stiles' basket, and his mane was already unraveling itself, without the tension of Stiles' fingers to hold the braid in place. Stiles would have to start over — and gather more flowers, too, apparently — but his fingers were already tired, so he elected to rest them, a little. He looked down at them, flexing the joints, and when he looked back up, there was a naked man crouched next to his unicorn.
"If he's choosy about his company, why does he let you hang around?" Derek said, with a teasing grin. He settled back in the grass, his legs sprawled out before him, muscular arms bracing his body up, and there was his cock just lying there, soft against his thigh.
It took all the will Stiles possessed to force his gaze upward, to desist from tracing every line of Derek's completely exposed body with his eyes, and even then he couldn't help but glance down, fleeting, like staring too long would leave him blind. Derek didn't seem to care, though he must certainly have noticed. Stiles had heard that werewolves could hear heartbeats, and his own was thundering, as if he'd just run to the spot all the way from town.
"I'll have you know that Bedivere selected me as his life's companion, which means his taste in humans is absolutely impeccable," Stiles finally said, around the lump in his throat. His voice wavered embarrassingly, but everything about this encounter had been embarrassing so far, so he chose to just push through it. "He's obviously only hanging around with you here because he can't bear to be parted from me."
"That's sweet," Derek said, though the tone of his voice implied laughter.
"I'm Stiles," Stiles said, for lack of anything better to say.
"I know," Derek answered. He didn't offer his own name, apparently confident that it too was common knowledge. Instead he reached out with a careless hand to rescue a handful of flowers from Stiles' basket. His fingers passed so close to the unicorn's face that he must surely have felt Bedivere's breath against his knuckles, and Stiles sucked in an alarmed breath, tensed himself to move in his unicorn's defense, but Bedivere didn't flinch or pull back, his placid face completely unbothered.
Derek turned his attention straight to his prize, twisting the stems together, as if completely unaware how miraculous a thing it was, that a bonded unicorn hadn't shied away from him in the slightest.
"It's nice," he said, as if nothing at all had happened. "The way your people take care of them. Your customs are absolutely baffling to me, but there's something charming about a grown man picking flowers for his pet unicorn."
"He's not a— It's a sacred duty!" Stiles sputtered, utterly scandalized. "How do you not know about this? Do you live in a cave in the woods? Are you complete uncivilized?"
"I live in a house in the woods, which is more or less the same thing," Derek replied, blithely refusing to take the insult for what it was. "Don't blame me for not understanding your strange occult rituals. I do my best to get in and out of this place quickly, when I'm forced to stay."
"'Occult rituals,'" Stiles echoed, with a snort. "What's the matter, afraid you'll be asked to take on the obligation? I wouldn't worry, if I were you. Unicorns are attracted to purity, and given your comfort level with nudity, I doubt you qualify."
"What's that got to do with anything?" Derek asked, and the puzzled furrow between his thick eyebrows said it was a genuine question. "I just don't like to be indoors away from home, especially not here. I worry that the doors will all be shut and I'll be trapped."
"Trapped?" Stiles said. "We don't even fence in the unicorns, what makes you think we'd want a captive werewolf?"
Derek blinked at him, gave him that unnerving animal stare like he was looking straight through to the sinew. He gave the stems in his hand one last artful twist, and held up the fruit of his labor: a crown of twisted stems, crowded with purple petals. He shifted closer, on his knees, and then lowered it ceremoniously onto Stiles' head. His fingertips brushed against Stiles' temples as his hands fell away, and he was so close that Stiles had only to lift his hand to touch some part of all the bare flesh before him. It seemed almost like a dare, the way Derek lingered in front of him, close enough to share breath.
Stiles stayed very carefully still, and did not touch.
"Don't mock me for my fear of human cages," Derek said, softly, and he shifted himself into a crouch, rocked back on his heels. "Not when you're the one with your leg in a snare."
The shape of him shivered, and the change washed over him with an eerie silence, fur sprouting where there had been only the barest strokes of coarse black hair over pale skin. He fell to four paws and turned away, trotting off toward the abbey, casual and carefree, leaving Stiles to his unicorn.
+++
It was perplexing, was what it was, the entire business of it. Stiles wished he could ask someone about it, anyone, but Scott wouldn't be around again for another few days, and he was hardly going to speak to any of the other Obligates about his problems with sexual desire. The only one under the abbey's roof who might welcome the conversation was Derek himself, and if the afternoon's interaction was any indication, that would would probably be more of an exercise in frustration than enlightenment.
The High Obligate had often told him to seek stillness in times of turmoil, to retreat to the quiet of the devotional tower, light a candle, focus upon its flame and let his consciousness be carried away, to open himself to the messages the gods might whisper into his ears. Stiles had long since figured out that that was religious speak for "go away and stop bothering me," that there was no enlightenment to be had from a stillness he'd never been able to achieve, anyway.
So when he finally gave up on sleep, crawled from his bed, dressed in his robes, lit a candle, and stepped out into the corridor, he told himself he was going to go to the tower and give the whole meditation idea one last shot.
Instead, his feet turned him toward Derek's room, drawn there like a bird homing to its own roost.
He didn't knock before opening the door, which was unforgivably rude but also, he thought, perhaps expected. Derek certainly didn't seem to be surprised to see him, and though he was lying in his bed, undoubtedly naked beneath the single sheet thrown over his hips, he didn't look like he'd been sleeping, either.
Stiles stepped inside without asking leave for his intrusion, and shut the door quietly but firmly behind him.
"When you said this afternoon that I was snared, what did you mean?"
Derek sat up, and the sheet fell away just enough to reveal a smooth flank, the crest of his hip. "My sister says you take a vow, that you'll never touch anyone with intent in your whole life. Why would you promise a thing like that?"
It was the same question he'd been asking himself for weeks, months. The laugh he let out was strangled with it. He should have said that it was his duty, that he was chosen, that it wasn't possible to cast off the obligation, that it would mean casting aside his father, too, his friends, his life, his soul. He should have said any of those things.
What he actually said was, "I was too young to know what I'd want."
Derek stared at him, eyes flaring yellow by the candlelight, and said, "What is it that you want?"
Something in him broke, and he imagined that perhaps it was his bond to Bedivere shattering irretrievably, or perhaps his soul being torn away even before death, like in the stories the nursemaids used to tell at bedtime. Whatever it was, what it felt like was relief, the breaking of chains, the last tether of his tenuous grip on himself snapping beneath too great a strain.
He threw himself into Derek's hands like he'd been unmoored from the world and only Derek could hold him in it. It was like leaping from a great height, terrifying and thrilling in equal measures, but it was simple, too, and easy, and Derek caught him like it was nothing, like it was always meant to be so between them.
Stiles' hands settled on Derek's bare skin, warm and soft like a burning candle. He found the lines of ribs beneath thick muscle, and their mouths met too, as if they had a thousand times before, Derek's blunted teeth catching on his lip, Derek's body surging up to chase the taste of him.
He pushed Derek back against the bed, threw the sheet back, helped as Derek's fingers worked at his own robes, and when he gasped, "Do you—" even he didn't really know what he meant to ask.
Derek only said, "Yes, yes, yes," and Stiles couldn't help but echo it, whispering the affirmation into Derek's open mouth, writing it with his lips onto bared skin, carving it into the surface of his heart with each touch.
Their voices weaved together the same way Obligates chanted in prayer, but their song became something wordless, breathless, sung only for each other (though sometimes Stiles' voice raised a little too loudly, and off-key, and Derek, laughing, silenced him with a kiss).
Derek wouldn't let him return to his room, not until the light of dawn touched the horizon, and even then he was reluctant, his hands dragging over Stiles' body. Stiles forced himself upright, but found he could go no further than the edge of the bed, his fingers curled tight at the edge of the palette.
"Come home with me," Derek said. "You'd be welcomed by the WolfsWatch. I've told my family about you. You could bring your unicorn."
Stiles drew in a deep breath and let it out, slow. "He'll never let me touch him again," he said. "Unicorns only allow themselves to be touched by those who are pure of soul, body, and deed. He'll accept another Obligate, perhaps. Or he'll go back into the forest. He was hurt when he first found me, and I tended him well. There's nothing to keep him here. Not anymore."
He supposed he should have felt sad about it, hollow but for regret. He didn't, though. His body was practically humming with all the things they'd done, with Derek's closeness, with the whole new world of sensation now opened to it. And his mind, far from being troubled, was comfortingly emptied, exhausted and exalted all at the same time, finally settling into that state of meditative bliss that the High Obligate had talked about but Stiles had never dreamt of achieving. Apparently all it took to achieve some sort of spiritual elevation was multiple rounds of athletic, achingly emotional, utterly filthy sex.
Derek frowned, his hand rubbing comforting circles on Stiles back, but when he opened his mouth the expected words of comfort were not forthcoming. What he actually said was, "That's the most idiotic thing I've ever heard. Is that really why you make a vow of celibacy?"
"Uh, yes?"
Derek sighed and blew out a breath, and the expression on his face was an eloquent statement on his feelings about human customs.
"Put on your clothes," he said, and pushed himself up from the other side of the bed, reaching for his own trousers. "Where is your unicorn likely to be, this time of the morning?"
"Probably trying to raid Obligate Greenwood's flower beds," Stiles sputtered, as his own discarded robe and undertunic hit him it the face, thrown by a lover who moments before had been loathe to let him leave the bed. "What are you doing?"
"Idiots," Derek muttered, almost to himself. He threw open the chamber door, though Stiles only had half the finicky buttons on his Obligate's robe buttoned up, and led the way through quiet morning corridors and onto the grounds.
Bedivere was, as predicted, lingering near the high fence surrounding the flower beds. He looked up as they approached him, but made no move to shy away, not even when Derek reached out his hand to—
"Don't!" Stiles barked, and though he lunged forward to intervene, he wasn't fast enough to stop Derek's hand from coming to rest against the unicorn's neck.
Nothing happened. Stiles shivered, uncertain, but Bedivere just leaned into the pressure, the way he did when he wanted to be scratched. He certainly didn't drop dead on the spot, or strike out to kill his own Obligate for the failure, or gallop into the wilds to summon the vengeance of the gods on the abbey, or any of the many catastrophes Stiles had been taught to expect.
"They don't pay us wolves much mind," Derek said, and sprouted claws so he could more effectively scratch at the crest of Bedivere's neck. The unicorn arched it in pleased response. "We don't hunt them. They're considered a sign of good luck, when they linger near a pack's home."
"But I don't..." Stiles said, and trailed off, because he wasn't sure what to think anymore.
"They won't usually let humans touch them, that's the truth," Derek said. "Your kind hunt them for their horns, so they're shy of you. If they allow any human near them, it's usually just one person they choose to trust. Children, usually, because they're less dangerous. But it has nothing to do with where your cock has or hasn't been. Go on, touch him."
Stiles said, "I can't." He wrung his hands, staring at his bonded unicorn, who was showing no signs of wanting to leave.
"You can," Derek said, gently. "Had I known— Stiles, I would never have asked you to give up your unicorn for me. You can have us both, I swear to you." He stepped back with an encouraging nod, and waited for Stiles to find his courage.
Bedivere was not as patient. In the absence of Derek's attentions, he turned his head instead to Stiles, thrusting his muzzle into Stiles' fidgeting hands, as was his custom to demand that Stiles use them to pluck him some flowers. Though Stiles' body was no longer pure as he'd always been taught that it must be, though the scent of Derek's sweat — and, undoubtedly, other things — was still on his hands, the unicorn didn't seem to care in the slightest.
"We usually spend our whole lives in the Order, so not to be separated from our unicorns," Stiles said. "That— they— they lied to us. How could they..."
He let the question die in his mouth. He knew the answer. The Order had never cared to pay for labor and service, where devotion could yield it up for free.
"You were serious with your offer?" he said, finally. "To join you at the WolfsWatch?"
Derek nodded. "You'd be welcome. Both of you. And perhaps I might request an assignment that will keep me closer to home, since I won't have reason anymore to wander so far."
"We're really doing this," Stiles said, and it wasn't quite a question or a statement.
"If it's what you want," Derek replied. He reached out a hand and swept it, warm and comforting, from the center of Stiles' back — the place behind his heart — to the bottom dip of his spine, and back up. "Will you put your obligations down, for me?"
Stiles didn't even need a moment to think it over. "We'll have to go to town first, to tell Scott and my father. Let me get my things," he said, and it was decided.
It didn't take long to pack — the Order wasn't big on personal possessions — but Stiles took a detour through the kitchens, on his way out, to pack some food into his saddlebags for the journey, and he emerged into the dining hall at the same time the rest of the Obligates were shuffling in.
"Obligate," the High Obligate said, when she saw him, and raised her eyebrows. Her voice was loud enough that everyone in the hall could hear her, and what noise there was immediately died down as all eyes turned to the impending tongue-lashing. "I'm told you were out of your chambers last night, and not in attendance at morning prayers. Explain yourself."
"Of course," Stiles said. He slung his laden saddlebag over his shoulder and stood up a little straighter, meeting the High Obligate's eyes for maybe the first time in his life. "I stole out of my bed last night and crawled into the wolf's."
Somebody gasped. Obligate Greenwood dropped her bowl with a clatter. The entire thing was immensely satisfying. Stiles was always being chided for being too loud, for making a scene; finally he had a chance to earn it.
"We had a lot of sex, in case that was too subtle," he added, cheerfully, and the shocked faces of his fellow obligates was his reward. "Now I'm going to take my unicorn and join him at the WolfsWatch."
"Your unicorn will never tolerate your touch again," the High Obligate informed him, her mouth hanging open in shock. She looked like she believed it, even, like even she didn't know.
"I've already been out to see him," Stiles said. "He doesn't seem to mind. It seems like none of them mind, actually. We were lied to about that. But I have to go, now, Derek's waiting for me."
He turned and left, and tried not to feel too satisfied over the sudden rising of voices behind him, pretended not to notice the younger obligates trailing along behind him. They kept their distance, as if to prevent being tainted by association, but they obviously wanted to see, too, whether what Stiles said was true.
The proof of it was standing just outside the eastern gate. Bedivere was brushed immaculately clean and Derek was waiting beside him, a hand scratching idly at the unicorn's long forelock, fingers tracing over the long shape of the old scar there, as if there were nothing unusual about any of it.
Stiles kissed him on the lips, deep and filthy and utterly welcome, if the way Derek's arms wrapped around him were any indication, but it was mostly for the benefit of their audience, all of whom had new choices to make.
Not that Stiles was complaining. He'd take any excuse to press his mouth to any part of Derek's body. He was looking forward to learning it all by heart. That would come later, though; for now, he accepted the boost Derek offered, and swung carefully up onto Bedivere's bare back. Stiles had climbed onto Bedivere's back often, as a boy, before he'd known better — and received a subsequent long lecture on the sacredness of unicorns — but he'd never actually riddenproperly. Bedivere didn't seem to mind, at any rate.
"Are you ready?" Derek asked, ignoring their audience entirely as he peeled off his clothes, leaving them in a heap on the lawn. It was probably safe to assume that he wouldn't be welcome back again as a guest.
"I've been ready for years," Stiles said.
The wolf, grinning, turned toward the road, his long legs setting a brisk pace toward town. Bedivere didn't need to be told which route to take; he shook his head and snorted, rounded his back and practically floated along at a trot, carrying Stiles off toward a new future.