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When she was in sixth grade, someone thought it’d be hilarious to put chewing gum in her hair. They couldn’t get it out, so her dad cut it off and she cried, then cried some more when she saw her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes were puffy and red, and seemed way too big for her face, her mouth seemed too big, she was all eyes and ugly red splotches, it was like looking into a stranger's face, so she smiled through the tears, said “hey, loser” to the reflection, kept the buzz cut.
*
Beacon Hills was a small town, but they got used to her after a while, even though sweet old Mrs. Read at the grocery shop down the road never stopped calling her ‘boy’, but then she never stopped calling her dad ‘boy’, either. Mrs. Read had poor eyesight, and Stiles wore baggy hoodies and t-shirts way too often, hey, there were worse things in the world than a little bit of gender confusion. She called herself Stiles, for chrissakes. Scott was awkward about it, but Scott was also predisposed to be awkward about life in general. She loved him anyway, how couldn’t she.
Dad sometimes seemed to forget he had a daughter and not a son, or didn’t give a damn anyway, so he taught her how to throw a punch and bought her sundresses she wore with sneakers to freak everyone out and to make him smile. She wore trinkets he bought her, too, necklaces and charms and beads, pierced her ears when she was old enough and wore pink butterfly earrings, because why the hell not.
She learned how to cook, how to piece together a dinner that didn’t have anything deep-fried in it, and that was one thing dad never liked about her, but bravely choked on salads, thanked her and smiled. When he thought she couldn’t see him his face was as full of unspoken grief as it had been at the hospital back then. She’d never said anything, just made him green tea or something like that just to hear him complain, smooth out some of the lines on his forehead.
Dad used to try to braid her hair when it’d still been long enough, and the less was said about it, the better, though he’d mastered ponytails after a while. Sometimes she thought she missed it, his not entirely faked panic when faced with hair bands and ribbons. Though she hated when other people’s moms cooed over her as if dad was genetically incapable of dealing a girl without mom. He did fine, thank you very much and screw you, and her scraped knees and haircut and being lifelong buddies with Scott instead of other girls were her own fault. Dad bought her sparkly notebooks and pepper spray, reminded her to take her medication and waited in endless doctor’s offices when she had panic attacks or couldn’t deal with ADD, or one day when she broke her wrist playing lacrosse with Scott. She wanted to punch every soccer mom who thought dad deserved pity.
If she had her own children, she thought, she’d let them crawl in the mud and play football all day long, or wear pink dresses if they wanted. Then she was thirteen, watched fourth season of Buffy, everything suddenly made sense, and the idea was shelved for the time being. She always wanted to be Willow, anyway. When she got to the sixth season and saw Tara die, her dad found her bawling and couldn’t calm her down for hours.
*
There was wanting someone, and wanting to be someone, and they were kinda hard to separate from each other. That she also wanted to punch that someone in the face complicated things even more, but she liked complicated, all-night wiki walks and hopeless cases, running in the forest under a crescent moon and stumbling into things, because some people never learned and she was one of them. She’d never let those furry freaks hang around by themselves, they’d probably trip over their own paws and die without a snarky commentary from the side, and it’d be a horrible fate deserving a Greek tragedy at least.
For a moment she thought it was kinda hilarious that someone like Daria Hale followed Scott around, because oh come on, you don’t see bodies like that in the twenty-first century. You don’t see faces like that in the twenty-first century. Then Stiles realized that Daria’s personality was the ultimate proof that the universe sought balance. The contents balanced the package pretty well, otherwise they’d have a female werewolf president or a freaking queen of the world, because nobody would be able to say no. Hell, nobody would ever think of saying no, they’d be too busy throwing themselves at her feet.
In hindsight getting over her hopeless crush on Lydia by running headlong into another hopeless crush mightn't have been the best idea in Stiles’s life, and she’d made a habit out of hanging around crime scenes. There’d also been this Britney Spears’ poster on her wall nobody talked about, especially her dad. Still, Daria. Worst. Crush. Ever. Being self-conscious about crap like that had never stopped Stiles from doing whatever she wanted, so she kept following the Alpha around like a lost puppy, a puppy, get it, get it.
*
It was high summer with the air sticky hot and almost sweet on her tongue. Days melted into each other like beads on a string, and she wore light sundress with sandals, nearly gave Jackson a heart attack when he saw her for the first time, served him right. The whole supernatural thing quieted somehow, as if some powers that be decided they all deserved a few weeks off. Wonder of wonders, because between a wendigo, some selkies and a particularly nasty run-in with a harpy everything Stiles wanted was a few days of peace and quiet.
“Where’s everyone, why is there so quiet,” was literally the first thing out of her mouth when she got out of the Jeep. Daria looked up at her, and damn, they shouldn’t be able to make them like her anymore, it was just too unfair.
“Out running,” she said, sprawled on the front steps of the house in jeans and a black top, she had her stupidly sculpted arms thrown over her head, buried bare feet in the grass, and there probably should be a porn warning somewhere, because she must’ve been breaking some decency laws. There were drops of sweat shining on her forehead, because Stiles wasn’t frustrated enough as it was. “I told them to,” Daria added, smirking a little. “Could use the exercise.”
The pack took to hanging out in the old house during the summer. The heat was much more bearable out in the woods, and Daria could torture the pups with training to her heart’s content without worrying about bystanders.
“Without you?”
“They’ll manage.” Daria shrugged without getting up, which was probably a minor miracle in itself. “You’re late.”
“Wrong. I’m fashionably late.” Stiles grabbed two frappucinos and a small package from the car, managed not to kill herself tripping over her own feet in the process and get to the steps. Daria took one coffee from her, sniffed it suspiciously.
“It’s not poisonous,” Stiles scoffed.
“It’s not coffee, either.”
“Of course it’s not. Now drink.”
Daria had this cutest little frown where a thin line appeared between her eyebrows and she wrinkled her nose, her hair like a corona around her head in black spikes. She probably had to put a ton of product into it to get the look right, and Stiles waited just for the right time to point out this one expression of vanity. She was saving it, though, for something really, really good.
Stiles got in the shade on the steps and lay down next to Daria, kicking her sandals off. This day she had her toenails painted green, and could see that the nail polish was smeared again, her toes covered in dark spots. She’d have to clean it, then paint her toenails again, maybe orange this time, and ruin it again by running off before they had a chance to dry.
“You could have just brought coffee,” Daria grumbled beside her.
“It’s, like, a thousand degrees,” Stiles said, sucking on an ice cube and nearly purring, oh god, heaven on the stick. “I’m melting. You can probably see my skin melting off right now. Ice is good. Cold is good.”
“It’s not coffee.”
“Who cares. You don’t let me drink coffee, anyway.”
“Because on caffeine you’re worse than a chipmunk on a sugar high.”
An ice cube crunched between Daria’s teeth. They was less than a foot of distance between them, and Stiles could feel the Alpha’s body radiating heat, but it wasn’t unpleasant. Soothing, in fact, it made her lazy, it made her want to lie still, to bury her face into the crook of Daria’s neck where she probably smelled like sweat and pine needles and golden summer afternoons. Hopeless and pathetic, Stilinski, she thought to herself.
“Speaking of a sugar high...” She reached blindly and found her package, got her fingers dirty when tearing off the wrapping. Daria propped herself on her elbow, peering at her suspiciously. “Crap, it melted,” Stiles murmured to herself. “Here.”
The chocolate was a bit shapeless after a ride in the Jeep, but it held well enough under the circumstances, Stiles supposed. It was dark, almost black. Stiles licked her fingers, tasted a bit of rich flavor with a sharp aftertaste. Daria eyed her, took the offering, then broke off a bit, probably to placate Stiles more than anything. Then she coughed, bright-eyed suddenly, broke off another piece.
“I got it from my relatives,” Stiles said, taking a piece for herself, feeling it melt and burn her tongue. It was rich, with almost no trace of sweetness, and the aftertaste was still a surprise. “Swiss chocolate, they were feeling charitable or whatever. Thought you’d like it, you’re crazy anyway.”
Daria took another piece, and it was a treat to watch her close her eyes a little, murmur something that sounded way too pleased.
“Please keep it PG,” Stiles said, because her mouth apparently had a mind on its own, and this mind was freaking dumb. “Or--”
“Or what?”
Daria looked at her, eyes half-lidded, voice low and amused. There were dark smudges on her lower lip, chocolate smeared across the fullness of her mouth. It was too hot, suffocating, Stiles’s dress was sticky with sweat at her back, and apparently her hands had a mind on their own, too, because she was breaking off the last piece of chocolate, crowding right into Daria’s space, the werewolf watching her quietly, intently. Daria’s mouth was softer than she’d expected as she traced the contour of her lower lip with a finger, thumb brushing over smooth skin. It was too tight, too much, and Stiles felt like suffocating when there was a hint of white teeth, skin on skin, mouth over her fingers as Daria took the piece of chocolate from them, and why’d Stiles thought it was a good idea, because that was as close as she’d ever felt to fainting.
It was because of the heat, or the chocolate and chili still burning in the back of her throat, or maybe the beginnings of sunstroke, her imaginations taking off and running wild. Daria brushed her mouth over her knuckles, across the palm, then there were teeth on Stiles’s pulse point, and that was it, show’s over, everybody close the curtains and go home.
“You shouldn’t have fed me something like that and expect me to sit still,” Daria murmured into her mouth later, laughing a bit at Stiles’s indignation.
*
After that it all went downhill, or maybe uphill, but mostly up and down and really fantastic. Stiles thought about sending a thank-you postcard to her relatives, but they probably didn’t make them with ‘good job getting me together with a hot werewolf girlfriend’ captions. She bought a box of chocolates – something sweet, nothing dark and spicy, because now she had associations and they were rather personal, thank you – and sent them with a note to her dad’s endless surprise and eventual approval, because normally she was rubbish at this sort of thing.
She made muffins with cinnamon and ginger, cookies mixed with chili, ground cardamon and cloves into her coffee, made the Alpha smile, crooked and sweet, about being the subject of a culinary experiment. She slept the night on a mattress in a burned-out house under red summer sky, curled into Daria who was a bit soft, but mostly all hard muscle and edges, and maybe it’d all turn out all right. She traced the contours of Daria’s tattoo with a finger, thought about growing her hair out, thought about telling dad. Thought about crescent-shaped teeth marks on her shoulder, on the inside of her thigh, thought about those who had tried to break Daria beyond repair, who had tried to break her.
Mostly she thought about things she’d decided to keep, and she wasn’t going to let anyone take them away one way or the other.