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It’s not that Derek doesn’t like being an omega. It’s just that he is shy and awkward, and he doesn’t really know what to do with all the unwanted attention he gets.
Besides, it seems that since his thirteenth birthday every alpha thinks he is suddenly desperate to get on his knees or to bend for them, which is not the case, at all.
Not counting his biology, Derek isn’t ready for sex. Hell. He hasn’t even kissed someone properly, always too scared that they will take it further than what he is ready for.
Because honestly, respect isn’t something he usually gets.
What he gets are hands on his skin when he walks through the hall and sniffs and stares all across from the cafeteria. It’s hell.
It’s even worse for the month leading to his heat. He has heats every three months, so a grand part of his life revolves around receiving gifts and presents and having to sit and talk to the alphas who dare to come to his house. He never hangs out with those alphas alone, though they do try to get him to go on dates with them after school sometimes. He is super scared after Kate - after she tried to take him to her house when he was only fifteen. Thank god his mother had come to pick him up from school that day, and she got so angry at Kate that the substitute teacher lost her job. His mother is an awesome alpha lawyer, and what Kate did was unacceptable.
So yes, there are laws that protect omegas. They are valuable to the system, after all. But not all alphas think within reason, and let their decisions run through hormones. That is what scares Derek more than anything.
He is scared of going out at night, of walking through the streets or of going to the bathroom alone sometimes. He is scared of the stares and touches that linger too long, of being stopped on the sidewalk so old ladies that he doesn’t know can tell him what he should do with his life. They tell him that the clock is running for Derek since he is almost eighteen. They tell him that the other omegas in school are almost all mated already.
He looks at the calendar on his phone. Tomorrow, it will be exactly one month before his heat. He isn’t sure how things will go this time. He hopes it would be fine.
*
Derek opens the door of his house and stares at the small pile of presents left on his porch.
His mother comes and looks around his shoulders. “It’s already started, right honey?”
Derek ducks his head and nods.
Talia laughs softly. “Don’t worry, you don’t own them anything. You can go to school and I will put your gifts in the living room for you.”
“Thanks,” Derek says and finds Laura and Cora already inside the Camaro.
Laura is an alpha and Cora a beta. Derek is the only omega in his family since his great grandmother.
“What do you think you got this time?” Laura asks, driving towards the school.
“Something not useful,” Derek replies, keeping his eyes on the road. After a few years, he stopped hoping to receive a laptop or something electronic, or books. All he ever gets are cooking sets or knitting kits, which boring.
“Oh Der, cheer up. If your gifts suck we can always put them on fire,” Cora tells him, a malicious grin on her face.
Derek glances at his sister. “Do we put them on fire now or we wait until the last day before my heat to make a bonfire?”
Their laughter is loud until they arrive at the school.
*
At school, there are three alphas waiting for him at his locker already. Ethan and his friends.
“Hey baby, got my surprise this morning?” Ethan asks, smirking.
Derek stops in front of them, eyes downcast. He hates being called baby. And to be honest, he hates Ethan as well. “I didn’t open any of my presents yet. Do you mind? I need to get my books,” he gestures with his hands vaguely.
“Oh, what is with this attitude?” Ethan smirks again, but there is an edge to the gesture now. “Don’t forget who the alpha here is.”
And just like that, Derek is angry. He looks at Ethan sideways, and murmurs. “You are not my alpha, Ethan. I am unclaimed.”
Ethan is serious now. “Not for long, though, right?”
Derek shrugs, and shoves past Aiden, Ethan’s twin, to get on his locker, but Ethan holds his arms. “Hey, answer me.”
His hold is tight, and Derek freezes. He looks around madly, and his eyes lock with the Stilinski kid. The kid starts walking towards them, but then thinks better and goes straight to the teacher room.
Derek turns towards Ethan and tries to tear his arms away from him.
“What? You just need to answer me. Who is going to be your alpha? It’s time that you choose, don’t you think?” Ethan says, while the people in the corridor ignore them. Ethan starts sniffing his neck, and Derek tries not to cry.
Derek has never felt more alone in his life until Stiles comes back with professor Deaton, who takes one look at the situation and narrows his eyes. “What do you think you are doing Ethan?”
As if burned, Ethan lets go of Derek and smile at Deaton. “Nothing, we were just talking, weren’t baby?” he reaches out to touch Derek’s neck, and Derek flinches, moving away from him.
He is embarrassed at the situation, at his own weakness, and a part of his brain is hurt at how his classmates didn’t really care for what was happening to him, so he bites his lips, keeping his gaze on the floor. “Derek?” Deaton asks.
He trusts professor Deaton. He is always nice to Derek, lets him answer questions in class when the other professors always pretend he isn’t there because he is an omega, of course, he doesn’t know the answers. Alphas and betas are the only ones supposed to be smart.
So he swallows and speaks what is in his mind. “I am not your baby, Ethan.” He lowers his gaze, face flushed. “He touched me without my consent, professor.”
Deaton nods and says “follow me, Ethan. I am calling your parents. Stiles, please take Derek to his classroom safely.”
“What? No!” Ethan starts but follows after Deaton on the long corridor. “He is an omega, he was asking for it.”
Derek flinches at the words and at the people staring at him, keeping his eyes on his shoes. It’s not usual for an omega to do what he just did: to speak the truth against alphas. Thank god Stiles got professor Deaton and not Harris. Things would have gone way downhill otherwise.
“Thank you” he speaks softly.
“Dude, that was… awful.” Stiles says and rubs the back of his neck. Derek nods.
Stiles motions his hands as if he is going to touch Derek, but stops before their skins make contact. “Hey Derek, are you okay? Look at me.”
Derek looks at him then and smiles a little. “Yes, I am okay. Can we go?”
Stiles accompany him to his class, talking the whole time, but Derek can tell that Stiles is nervous. They aren’t friends, exactly, but they do talk sometimes. The boy is a beta, and he and Derek have been partners in English class before. This time, Stiles isn’t talking about comic books or video games, but about omega’s rights.
“You should do a presentation to the alphas of this school. I know what you are talking about, I agree with you, but I am not the one you have to convince about those things,” Derek tells him.
“But you are – I just wanted you to know that I am not like him,” Stiles says, flaying his arms around.
Derek stops in his tracks. “I know you are not like him. You are not an alpha.”
Stiles lower his eyes and scowls. “I know, alright? I know.”
Derek frowns. He meant that as a compliment, but surely Stiles took it in another way. “Did you want to be an alpha?”
The boy tightens his fingers around the strap of his backpack. “Maybe. I don’t know. I mean, if I was an alpha I could –”
He huffs and stops, but Derek is curious now. There isn’t anything a beta can’t do, is there? They don’t have the cultural limitations that omegas do. The omega’s rights only began to make a difference, like forty years ago. The laws are new. So he pushes “Could what?”
Stilinski sways on his feet a bit and shakes his head. He smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Nothing important,” he says.
Derek isn’t sure why it matters to him, but he doesn’t like the idea of Stiles being sad because of his biology. So he says “I know it sounds selfish, but I am glad you aren’t an alpha. I wouldn’t be able to trust you if you were.”
Stiles’ eyes widen, and Derek hides his blush as he leaves the boy in the corridor and enters his classroom. He didn’t lie, even if he was too forward in the way he spoke. He does trust the kid, even if he is beyond weird most of the time.
*
A few days later, Derek walks out of his house in the afternoon only to find Stiles standing in front of his porch, putting a box on top of his pile of gifts of the day. When Stiles realizes Derek is watching him, he freezes and almost falls face first into the floor.
“Oh god,” he says.
“What are you doing here?” Derek asks, eying the box. It is wrapped in blue paper with the nautical theme. “Are you doing the dirty job for an alpha friend?
Stiles seems to withdraw into himself, opening and closing his mouth, but Derek doesn’t notice, too busy being amused by the situation. “Is it McCall’s? Oh god, it’s his, isn’t it? Or worse, it’s Isaac’s.”
He bends down and takes the box into his hands. It’s the first gift he opens since the month started, too hurt after the confrontation with Ethan to check the presents, which are currently being stored in the basement. But when he opens the package, he is surprised to find a copy of The Hobbit inside. There is also a note, and he stops breathing when he sees Stiles’ handwriting in it.
Dude, I know this is unusual, but I also know how much you like to read. Go crazy :)
His heart starts beating fast, and when he look up he sees that Stiles is struggling to breathe, face red as a tomato. “Oh no, you are not having a panic attack in my porch.”
He seats beside Stiles on the stairs, helping him count his breaths and touching his back with soothing motions. Everyone knows that Stiles has panic attacks. They don’t happen often anymore, but Derek has witnessed it a few times at school. After a while, he retracts his hands and asks. “Are you feeling better?”
Stiles nods not meeting his eyes. “I don’t – you weren’t supposed to see me doing it.”
Derek raises an eyebrow. “I would have seen your present eventually Stiles.”
“But at least I wouldn’t have seen your face… You weren’t expecting a courting gift from me.”
Derek looks at the package in his hands and feels a pang in his chest. It’s not only a copy of The Hobbit but also a comic version of the story.
I know this is unusual, Stiles wrote in the note.
Unusual is an understatement. Omega-Beta couples happen in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, not in a small town like Beacon Hills. Derek has never met such a pairing before.
He knows he is expected to mate with an alpha, that in his heat he begs to be knotted, to be breed. But are the alpha pheromones and the knot that important? He doesn’t know much about it, always too shy to talk about sex with his family, even more, because he is the only omega in the house.
So he is expected to mate with someone like Ethan, who has all the biological material but none of the ethical ones. Even if he was suspended from school, it didn’t erase the things he said, the things that other alphas had said before. How all of them had made him feel.
Stiles makes him feel good, safe, happy. And right now, noticing how miserable Stiles looks, Derek doesn’t want to disappoint him. So he does the only thing he can think of.
“No, I didn’t think it would be from you. But I did like the gift. Nobody has ever given me a book as a courting gift before. I already have cooking supplies for a lifetime.”
Stiles seems to lighten up a little at the worlds. He swallows and asks “I know I am not an alpha but… would you like to try?”
Derek’s eyes widen, and Stiles starts bubbling, voice wrecked. “I mean, we could go on one date, like get milkshakes or whatever, and it doesn’t have to mean anything. I mean – it would mean something to me, but I don’t want to make you feel pressured or anything, I just”
Derek shuts him up by covering his mouth with his hands, and nods. His lips are soft, he notices idly.
Stiles' mouth hangs open. “You,” he gulps, “you want to?”
Derek can’t help the smile that appears on his face. “Yeah.”
Stiles holds his gaze for a minute, then “holy shit I am the gods of the courting gifts!”
A laugh escapes Derek’s lips, and he stands up, saying “if you say so.”
Stiles follows him to the sidewalk. He looks nervous, fidgeting with his hands when he asks “this weekend then?”
Despite Stiles looking like a nervous wreck, Derek feels oddly relaxed. “Sure, pick me up on Saturday night.”
Then he leaves Stiles standing there, grinning like he just won the lottery. Derek still has to go grocery shopping for his mother, after all.
*
The rest of the week goes uneventfully. Derek receives more gifts but just stores them in the basement. He does read the comic Stiles got him, though. When Stiles catches him reading it during lunch, he smiles so much that Derek has to duck his head to cover his blush, the loud beating of his heart. It feels pretty good.
Until he comments about his date during dinner on Friday night, that is.
“You WHAT?” Laura screams.
“Stilinski, really? Derek, he is so weird,” Cora whines.
“I feel that there’s a knot missing there, somewhere,” Peter smirks.
Derek feels his face heat and he knows he has to be blushing furiously, so he hides his head in his hands and moans. He feels his throat contracts and no, he isn’t going to cry, not here, not now. What if his parents forbidden him from meeting with Stiles? Suddenly, he really wants to go on his date.
He feels fingers in his hair and looks up to his mother’s concerned face. “Derek, are you serious about this boy?”
Derek doesn’t know, but he feels safe with Stiles, and that is more than he can say about all the other boys that he knows. There are tears in his eyes and he haphazardly cleans his cheeks. “I want to find out.”
His mother locks eyes with his father, and the older man walks around the table to kneel at Derek’s feet. “Listen, it doesn’t matter to us if you want to date an alpha, or a beta, or even with an omega in the future.” Peter snorts and Talia glares at him to shut him up. His father continues. “But you should be prepared that not everyone will be so understanding, okay?”
Derek feels so relieved that he hugs his father with an inch of his life.
After that, things get better. Cora and Laura even help him pick up his outfit. Peter only teases him, though. But that is okay. Derek knows that there’s no malice in his teasing and that Peter would beat anyone who ever dares to mess with Derek – Talia doesn’t know, but Peter punched Ethan in the face a few days ago. It was a miraculous sight, even better when Ethan had to apologize to Derek for being rude.
So yeah, he knows he can count on his family, always.
*
On Saturday, Derek enters Stiles blue jeep only to find his date freaking out, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. Derek can’t help it – he cracks, laughing with his full body, tears appearing in his eyes. Stiles appears to be a bit hurt at his reaction, but at least any panic attacks are out of the picture now.
Derek, in a rush of courage, kisses his cheek. “You shouldn’t look so scared.”
Stiles touches his cheek, smiling at Derek. “It’s just that you look so beautiful. Not that you aren’t always beautiful, but…”
Derek flushes, looking at his clothes. He looks normal, with a t-shirt, blue cardigan, and jeans. He is even wearing his glasses. Stiles wears a plaid shirt, but it seems to be a new one. And when did Derek started noticing Stiles wardrobe? Derek looks down at his hands. “I like your shirt.”
“Thanks,” Stiles searches the back seat of the car and shoves another package into Derek’s hands, brushing his hands through his hair and starts driving. “I am not sure how this works, but I thought you would like this, so –”
Derek wasn't expecting another present… no, screw that, he totally was expecting another courting gift. It means that Stiles is still interested.
He opens the package eagerly and finds another book inside. This time it’s The Fellowship of the Ring. Derek traces his fingers on the cover, and says “it’s perfect, thank you.”
The way Stiles looks pleased makes Derek’s heart beat faster than it ever has before.
*
Derek’s milkshake tastes delicious. He focuses on Stiles chattering, ignoring the oppressive stares of the other people in the dining. Even the waitress wasn’t as nice as she always is towards Derek. He tells himself he doesn’t care. He doesn’t.
At some point, Stiles deflects a little. “What is it? Am I talking too much?”
In that moment, is like if the world tilted its ax, and suddenly Derek can see clearly. He smiles at Stiles and drinks more of his milkshake. “Of course not.”
“Then why you were with that frown on your face?” Stiles asks, putting his hands in the middle of the table, waiting for Derek to find him in the middle.
Derek hesitates, and then touches his hands to Stiles’, who turns his palm and intertwines their fingers. “I just – I was being stupid,” Derek ducks his head.
“What? You? Stupid? That is impossible,” Stiles waves his other hand as if dismissing the thought entirely.
Derek murmurs “you know it’s not going to be easy, right? Dating an omega?”
And Derek isn’t only mentioning the obvious display of discomfort the other people seem to be projecting towards them, but also his heats, and the hormones, and everything that entails being in a relationship with an omega. Derek has to know that Stiles is ready.
Stiles glances around them and seems to make himself smaller, as if only now noticing the stares and whispers. His hands loosen its grip, and Derek tightens his fingers around Stiles’, not letting go. Stiles looks down at their fingers and understands. His whole body sags in relief.
He holds Derek’s gaze, amber eyes bright in the dull lighting. “Yes. But I don’t really care.”
Derek turns his gaze to the table because that was not the answer he was looking for, but Stiles touches his chin, making him look at him again. Stiles' face is earnest and serious. “No, Derek, you don’t understand. You are the smartest person I know, and I like you so much, dude. I have been liked you for months, but I didn’t think you would ever notice me. Until that day, when you told me you trusted me. It gave me hope, you know?”
Stiles pushes his hair out of his forehead, making a mess on the strands. “I want this if you do. I want you, and not just your biology.”
Derek feels so full of happiness he might cry. It’s a strange feeling.
Stiles smiles at him stupidly, then grimaces. “I mean, I know I don’t have, you know – you know” he gestures towards his crotch, and Derek blushes. “But, like –”
“That’s what dildos are for, right?” Derek whispers then promptly cover his mouth with his free hand. Derek did research last night, okay? But god, this is so embarrassing.
Stiles eyes go huge, and then he starts laughing, and it’s a beautiful sight. He brushes his fingers through Derek’s hair for the first time, carefully, and it’s good. Derek likes it a lot.
“What was that?” he teases Derek.
It makes Derek braver. He wants to say what’s on his mind. “The knot might hurt outside of the heat,” Derek says, blushing furiously.
It’s worth it, though. Stiles blinding smile is worth anything in the world.
“So, are we doing it? Do you want to date me?” Stiles asks and he seems calm, relaxed, fingers still touching Derek’ hair.
As an answer, Derek leans into his boyfriend’s touch and smiles.