Work Text:
It came in a dream, in the early hours of the day. Stiles awoke with his skin drenched in sweat, and his heart racing in his chest. He laid, paralyzed, looking up at the ceiling. But it wasn’t the ceiling he saw. It was an image, burned into his eyes, forefront in his mind, and it wouldn’t leave. Not as he tried to go back to sleep for another two hours, not as he showered and readied for school.
The image remained.
With every blink, he saw it again, with every free scrap of paper he got he’d draw it, again and again. But papers were disposable, easily lost, or managed to be homework he had to turn in, and each time he lost or had to give up the image, the urge to have it, to express it, came to him once more.
He didn’t say a single word all day, not to anyone. Not even himself so fixated on the image.
It was Scott who finally pulled him from his mind.
“Dude? Stiles!” A hand smacked down over his, the pencil in his hand breaking, and he met eyes with Scott for the first time that date. “Stiles, what’s up with you today?”
“What do you mean?”
“You haven’t said anything, and you look like a zombie. You haven’t even eaten.” He points to the lunch tray sitting next to Stiles, and briefly, he wonders when he got to the cafeteria. He couldn’t remember it, the morning’s classes had been a blur, and obtaining his lunch had been as well.
He shook his head, feeling unconcerned. His only concern was finding a new pencil.
“Stiles, seriously, are you alright?” Scott asked again, and Stiles took stock of himself. was he alright?
"I’ve just got this thing stuck in my head, I need to get it out, I need it somewhere permanently, where I can always reach it. I don’t know how to really explain it, but it’s all I can think about. All I can see.”
“Is this an ADHD thing?”
“Maybe? I dunno.” Stiles shrugs, he’d taken his medication on time. But nothing is cured completely. It just helps. He’s never been quite this obsessive. He just needed this image, he needed to touch it, to have it in his grasp, in his sight. Something that wouldn’t get lost or washed away.
A tattoo might work.
He stood, abandoning his lunch and Scott, he quickly walked to his locker, grabbing his keys and Scott caught up with him on the way to the parking lot.
“Where are you going?” Scott sounded panicked now.
“I think I need to get this tattooed.” He declares and even saying the words provide relief to his mind. It’s the right decision, he knows it.
“It’s the middle of the day, you can’t just leave school.”
“You can stay if you want Scott, but I’m going.”
He didn’t want Scott to make up his mind. He just put the jeep in reverse and was smoothly sailing it out of the parking lot. There was only one tattoo place in Beacon hills, and it was Hale's Tattoo Temple. Stiles had passed it hundreds of times, but never went in, why would he? He was only sixteen, besides his dad would kill him for just looking at the place too closely.
Today he was going to do a lot more than that.
_
Inside the parlor was an entirely different atmosphere. It was warm, and the entire building smelled like cinnamon. The walls and floors had a wood design and it felt like walking into a cabin in the fall. Beautiful elaborate drawings were hung on the walls, huge murals. Even the floor had drawings, it must have been carved into the wood itself and polished somehow to prevent fading. It was amazing. Stiles was mesmerized. He took a moment to appreciate every single one.
There were racks as well, holding clothes, necklaces, bracelets, there seemed to be a recurring nature theme and Stiles loved it.
Finally making his way to the counter, he noticed the man standing there, waiting patiently for Stiles to approach. When he met eyes with the man, he felt his knees go weak.
He was beautiful. His face looks handcrafted, his beard was perfectly curved and dark. His eyes were hazel, and his smile, while small, was bright.
“Can I help you?” the man asked, lifting his eyebrows with the question, and it took Stiles a moment to remember how to breathe.
“Yeah, yes, I’d like a tattoo, please,” Stiles said, clearing his throat. The guy nodded, and bent down, and grabbed a few items.
“Okay, do you have anything in mind that you want, or do you want to pick something out from the books?
“Oh, I've got something in mind,” Stiles said, getting a little fidgety.
“Alright, describe it for me?”
“I don’t know how to explain it.” Stiles licks his lips. “But I can draw it though if you have a paper and pen.”
“Sure” The man bent down again, and Stiles’ eyes locked onto the way his jeans road a bit lower as he moved and he could see hints of his back. had to close his eyes to stop himself from looking at the man’s ass. The man came back up and Stiles was handed a sketchbook and pencil, he flipped to the last page and quickly started to draw. Once he was finished looking it over, it dawned on him how he’d been terrible at drawing until today, until this image which he’d been able to perfectly recreate every time.
It’s a wolf, tribal almost, with the lines and swirls Stiles blocked out inside.
“It’s that, well something like it. The image changes, but it’s always a wolf, always a swirl.” His slight nervousness bleeds through his voice, but he's not sure why he's nervous. Maybe because his dad is going to kill him after this and he doesn't trust Scott to delete his hard drive before his dad gets to it. The man takes the paper and looks at it for a moment before looking at Stiles suspiciously.
"Have you seen something like this before?" The man asks, and Stiles shakes his head because no, he hasn't really. Not before his dream anyway. Although technically that can't be true can it. Since dreams are made up of your subconscious and what you've seen. Or at least that's what he learned from his science teacher, and he likes his science teacher. "Where did you get the idea to draw it?”
“In a dream, and it’s been stuck in my head since this morning,” Stiles said with a shrug. The man looked at him for a moment, as if he was thinking something important to himself. Stiles felt weird under the man’s gaze but eventually, it softened.
“You know, I don’t advise impulse tattoos, that's how you end up with regrets.”
“No, it’s not like that,” Stiles says. “I need this tattoo.”
“Well, why don’t you come back tomorrow and we will talk about it then.”
“God no, I couldn’t possibly wait another day.”
The man crossed his arms and leveled Stiles with an unimpressed glare.
“Come on, isn’t it like illegal to deny me service or something?” Stiles said, grasping at straws at this point but he couldn't deny the sudden panic building in his chest at the thought of not getting this tattoo.”I’ll actually go insane if I don’t get my hands on this tattoo.”
“While it is true I can’t deny you service based on bias; which I am not doing, by the way, I do have a right to maintain the integrity and require that you make an appointment before I give you service. But let’s skip over all of that, and move over to the fact that you look too young to be in here, and I can ask for your ID, which I am betting it will say you are under eighteen, in which I legally will have to tell you to get a parent or guardian to come in here and sign a paper saying they agree to you getting a tattoo.”
Stiles rolled his eyes and pouted, and yeah, probably wasn't helping his case, but pouting felt right at the moment. The man raised his eyebrows as if daring Stiles to say something about it.
“Come on, please? I need this, you don’t understand.” Stiles pleaded as if his life depended on it. The man sighed.
“Why does this mean so much to you? You had a dream about it. By tomorrow you are going to forget what it even looks like.”
“I won’t. It’s driving me crazy! I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t stop drawing it. I see it when I close my eyes, man. Like- I think I really may go insane.” There was a chair next to the counter and Stiles dropped into it. Feeling defeated. There wasn’t any other parlor in Beacon Hill’s he could try and leave town but who knows if they’ll do his tattoo either.
“Alright.” The man sighed. “Come here.” He walked around the counter and across the room to the reclining chair. He patted it twice and Stiles bolted up and quickly sat himself down. Heart racing, he said a quick prayer of thanks and counted his lucky stars. He was saved.
“So where do you want it?” The man asked, pulling a stool up and sitting next to him.
“Uh.” Stiles looked himself over, then pointed at his forearm. “Here.”
“Roll up your sleeve.” As Stiles did, the man grabbed a thin marker.
His hands were warm as he grasped Stiles’ arm, pulling it closer and to a better position. And then the pen cap touched skin and Stiles tried holding back his flinch. He focused everything on the moment, on the feeling. He would flinch or fidget every so often, and the man settled to leave his free hand on Stiles’ wrist, keeping it in place as he worked.
It could have been ten minutes or three hours and Stiles wouldn’t have known the difference.
“Okay.” The man said when he was done, straightening and pushing back just a little. “How’s that look?”
“That is perfect,” Stiles said because just having it drawn like that already felt so satisfying.
“Well if you want it, I can do it. But you need to be smart about this, a tattoo is a serious decision that you should research. Not to mention you're young. This marker will last for a few days, you can try it out and come back.”
Stiles had to admit, just having it here was better. Maybe he didn’t need it to be permanent.
The man had rolled his sleeves up just before he began working, and Stiles finally took a look, drawn by the smoother skin, of his inner arm contrasted to the very hairy outer. But mostly what took his attention was the faded beginning of a tattoo.
“Hey wait a second.” With no thought of personal space or boundaries, Stiles reached for the arm and pushed the sleeve up the rest of the way. “Oh my god.” His entire body tingled with the chill of rising goosebumps. His hands shook. The image in his mind had been nothing, nothing but a crude caricature of this masterpiece. “This, this is the image I’ve been seeing.” He removes his hands, trying to remember himself and that he was grabbing onto this man’s arm for dear life. “This is what I’ve been looking for.”
The dream from last night, now he was starting to remember, he was starting to understand where the image came from. This guy was in his dream. The eyes, the eyebrows, the jawline. All of it. He had been fixated on this one piece that he could remember, but it was the man that he’d been trying to find.
“You’re sure?” The man asked.
“Yes, I am one-hundred percent sure, this is exactly it from my dream!” Stiles nodded frantically, now partially freaking out, and the other half of him so happy he found out why that was stuck in his head.
The man looked suddenly uncomfortable and stood up. “I just remembered I have something important to do today- like right now actually. You should go, and maybe come back tomorrow, okay? Good.” He said, not giving Stiles a chance to talk. He helped Stiles up and out of the chair, and all but pushed him to the door.
“Oh. Um okay, I guess. Then I will see you tomorrow.” Stiles said unsure of what just happened. But he went with the flow. He opened the door and began to step out, but stopped halfway and turned back. “My name is Stiles by the way.”
“My name is Derek.”