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It doesn't take long for Stiles to realize that he's a little different.
In kindergarten, they learn about something called the "So'may Prinsple"-- the idea that everyone has a perfect match, like their mommies and daddies. Stiles thinks it's a little gross; he loves his mommy and daddy, but they're all mushy and make too many kissy faces at each other all the time. Besides, girls are gross. He and Scotty make faces at each other, each knowing what the other was thinking about.
Some woman walks in with Mama McCall and they put papers on the walls with tape. The teacher tells them all to stand under the paper that looks different to them. They all look the same to Stiles except one, it looks like the leaves on the trees and the little pieces of grass on his and Scotty's shoes. It's hard for him to stand still for so long-- he does what he's told but some of the other kids aren't listening. He fidgits, trying to contain the urge to move around until, finally everyone is where they're supposed to be. He and one other boy stand there, and there are a few people, like Scotty, standing at the paper next to theirs, but most of them are standing at the other one a little bit away. Melissa writes some stuff on a piece of paper, then puts a picture on the board; it's a lot of lines curved one on top of the other. Two of them stand out to Stiles: one that looks like grass and another that looks like the sun. The other ones all look the same.
"One of these lines should look a little different to you," Melissa says to them. "Each line is a different color."
Color. It's something they've heard before, but it's a weird idea. Everything looks different from what they know? But they were Big Kids, they knew everything now! They had letter and numbers and shapes and--
Jacky raises his hand. "But what's color?"
The grownups look at each other for a minute in that weird way grownups do. Melissa looks at Jacky and Stiles knows that look, gets ready for that annoying sentence.
"You'll learn more about that when you get bigger."
The class groans.
After the lesson, school is only half over but Mama McCall takes Scotty and Stiles home early (thanks to Scotty's puppy face). The seatbelt stops him from moving around too much, so he talks. "Melissa, what's color? Why did Scotty see a different one than me? Why did Jacky see one? I don't think he should, he's mean. Do you see colors? Is everything really a different one? That sounds confusing. What's the So'may Prinsple? Are my mommy and daddy sou'mays? Why did you say we could only see one color? I can see two, does that mean--"
Melissa stops the car right in front of her and Scotty's house and looks at Stiles. "You can see two? What do you mean, Stiles?"
Scotty's looking at him like he looks at Ally: like he's a birthday cake at a surprise party or something. Melissa is doing the same, but she looks more confused. Stiles shrugs. "When you drew those lines on the board... What did you call it? A rainbow? Two of the lines looked different. One looked like the grass and the other looked like sunshine."
"Green and yellow..." Melissa murmurs, but Stiles sees someone walking their dog and gets distracted.
~oOo~
Stiles is about to leave elementary school when the next color appears.
He still doesn't know what colors really are, but he knows enough to know that they make his life a little more detailed. He does really well in school and is up there with Lydia and Danny at the top of the class. He also knows that he shouldn't tell people about his extra color, his yellow. He knows that he defies the Soulmate Principle's principle.
Scott knows, Melissa knows, his parents know. That's enough for him. It's when he gets home from school that day that things change. His mom smiles at him, asks him about his day, and makes him a snack. Then all of the sudden something pops out at him: her dress looks different.
"Mommy?" he says in a small voice. His mother snaps to attention; Stiles is nine years old and hasn't called her "Mommy" in over three years. "What color is your dress?"
He can see understanding settle on her face. "It's blue, sweetie. like the sky. Look."
She picks him up and points out the window. She's right. Scott's color is blue, Stiles remembers. He wonders what it means for him that he keeps collecting colors like Lydia collects gold stars. He wonders if, one day, he'll be able to see a full rainbow.
At the end of the night he doesn't care because soon after that conversation, his mother collapsed and now he's in the hospital, sitting next to someone almost grownup. Actually, he's probably somewhere around sixteen and he has this look in his eyes like his entire life just went to poop and maybe Stiles doesn't know him but he needs to take control of something today so he gets up, clutching the dollar that Melissa gave him ten minutes ago and goes to the vending machine. When he gets back, the dark-haired boy is still sitting there, looking like he hadn't so much as blinked since Stiles left. He doesn't look at Stiles when he opens the wrapper, but Stiles taps the kid on the shoulders nonetheless.
He thinks something changes for an instant, but he's gained a new color today and his mom is in the hospital so he's probably just tired. The boy looks at him and Stiles is startled-- he has beautifully green eyes. But he doesn't dwell on that very long and holds out a Reese's peanut butter cup. The boy looks startled, but takes it. The flash happens again, but it's gone as fast as it happens and they share the candy in silence. The boy's family comes to get him and he gets up without complaint.
But he spares a backward glance to Stiles, and their eyes meet for a fleeting moment before Dad is calling him to go see Mom.
~oOo~
He doesn't add any new colors to his repertoire for years after the day he first went to the hospital and met the Boy With the Green Eyes. Not that he particularly minds.
He was nine when his mother died. Eleven when he finally started to act like himself again. Twelve when he started to believe the act. Thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen all pass in a blur of Aderall and harping on his dad's food habits and trying to beat Lydia's GPA to make valedictorian and maybe go to NYU to study law because he likes to talk circles around people and he's so, so tired of Beacon Hills.
He's sixteen when Scott gets bitten, and he's entirely forgotten about the Boy With the Green Eyes and the Reese's peanut butter cups they'd shared. Sixteen when he meets the infamous Derek Hale, one of the only survivors of Beacon's greatest tragedy. Sixteen when he starts to put on the greatest act of his life.
Because the truth is, all this supernatural stuff scares the living shit out of him and he knows better than to show it-- if he shows it, Scott will pull away, will try to protect him. And as much as he appreciates the hypothetical effort, as scared as he is, he knows he couldn't leave his bro alone in this if he tried. So he puts on the mask he's become so comfortable wearing over the years, tries his damndest to be the snarky, hyperactive research guy because that's just what he does, okay? It's who people thinks he is. Hell, it's who he thinks he is half the time, so there's no point in letting the people know the truth. Everyone buys it: Scott, his dad, hell, even Peter fucking Hale.
But not Derek.
Derek does his damndest to keep Stiles out of his world. At first, Stiles honestly thought the guy hated him but now that he's taken a step back, now that he's looking at this from an objective third person's point of view, he sees. Or rather, Derek sees. He can see through Stiles, can see the nightmares leaving darker and darker circles under his eyes. He knows what fear smells like on Stiles and Scott should too but he's slightly too preoccupied at the moment and Stiles has his panic attacks in his room alone, thank you very much.
So when he steps back and really looks at his actions, Stiles realizes that all the shit Derek pulls-- flashing his blue eyes, slamming Stiles into walls, growling at him --is really just a misguided attempt to frighten Stiles back to his own world. Misguided because while Stiles won't pretend that the guy doesn't scare him a bit (the eyes flashing thing is really fucking terrifying because unlike most people, Stiles can see them turn from green to blue and back again), it's not the supernatural that scares him. It's the very real thought that one day, possibly even today, someone else Stiles loves could be killed. That, beyond anything he pretends, is the reason he refuses to feign ignorance. Because tomorrow a faerie could make soup out of his father's eyes. A rogue omega could rip Lydia's throat out. Hell, with their luck, zombies really do exist and they could pull some weird zombie-ninja shit and bite Scott in his sleep. So Stiles refuses to be pushed out of this life. Derek refuses to take no for an answer and just... keeps... pushing.
Until the day Stiles pushes back.
Derek I'm-too-strong-handsome-and-silent-to-deal-with-your-shit Hale finally seems to realize that at this point he and Scott are in too deep. Either that, or he just decides that if Stiles wants to get himself killed then that's his prerogative. Whatever, Stiles is just glad to finally have the guy (or rather, the walls) off his back. Sort of.
So maybe he has a crush. And a weird kink for being thrown up against walls. That's his problem. He has enough by now, he knows how to deal with them.
~oOo~
Stiles is still sixteen when he figures it out.
Peter's dead and Laura's dead and too many fucking people are dead, Stiles is still a goddamn junior for christssake, but he and Scott and Derek aren't and that's a win in some form. He'll take what he can get. But it's when Peter dies that everything falls into place.
"I'm the alpha now," Derek says like he's in some goddamned horror movie or some shit. And yeah, Stiles is cursing the fuck out of the world but he's in shock okay? Over more than just the dead body in front of him.
Derek. Fucking. Hale.
Of all the fucking people in the world, what lottery did he win to get the hottest person in a six hundred mile radius (including Lydia and the Vicotria's Secret Angels in LA but don't tell them that) who's also the only person in a six hundred mile radius to hold his own in a verbal spar with Stiles for longer than a minute and a half?
He's had this idea for a while, sitting in the dark recesses of his mind because come on, people who look like Stiles don't get people who look like Derek Fucking Hale for a soulmate. There's gotta be a rule about that somewhere. But when he says those words, flashes those eyes, Stiles gets a new color. He's got half a rainbow now, he realizes belatedly. Green, yellow, blue, red. Derek, family, Paige, orphan. Different stages of Derek's life, different traumas he's had to go through. Stiles realizes that if he's right-- and he's totally fucking right, come on --then Derek has gone his whole life seeing nothing but brown. How does Stiles know his own eye color? Well, they aren't blue or green, and he doesn't have supernatural shape shifting powers like certain wolfy people. Then he realizes that since Scott turned, someone else has started seeing yellow. Someone who, up until this year, has only ever known brown.
But for once, he shelves this problem. For once, he's putting his happiness into priority because dammit, he's too fucked up to do much else right now. Lydia has Allison and soon Scott will have someone and for today there's been another crisis averted. So he puts it all on the backburner for the moment and just nods wearily when he's told to "Go home Stiles, you look like shit." Because he knows it's true. He looks like shit, he sounds like shit, and he feels like shit because underneath the euphoria of finally knowing is the realization that there is a body in front of him.
He doesn't even try to sleep because the nightmares would wake him up anyway. Him and Derek and Scott. They're all alive, for now, but what about tomorrow or the next day or the day after? Logically, he knows they'll have a break. But his subconscious doesn't seem to care much about shit like logic so yeah, he stays awake, pretends to sleep when he hears his window open (he's gotten really good at controlling his heart rate). And if he jumps out of bed in the middle of the night to wrap his arms around a very surprised creeping-Derek and plant one on him, then whatever. Derek stiffens at first, tries halfheartedly to push Stiles away until Stiles looks at him, moves the man's head so he's facing the window, and says, "No, Derek, look."
It's only while they're touching that they see in full color and Derek hasn't seen all the colors Stiles has grown used to and now there are new ones that Stiles has to grow used to and the realization that he can only discover these new colors, these oranges and purples, with Derek by his side is a very very welcome one.
Stiles is sixteen when he finds his soulmate.
~oOo~
Stiles is seventeen when the pack happens. It's large and dysfunctional and Isaac hates literally everyone except Scott, who he curls up with like a puppy, and the monster of the week is stressing everyone out and Erica actually snaps at Stiles once for saying something that inadvertently upsets Boyd but they come together when it counts. And they always, always come out on top. Then one night, when Derek is at home alone, reading, he sees a flash of color that shouldn't be there. Orange. But Stiles isn't here; he shouldn't be seeing extra colors... No, not colors. Just orange.
Stiles is seventeen when Derek almost loses him.