Chapter Text
Lan had come in for his final round of touchups, finally finished with the big lines and healed up enough for all the little gaps where things hadn't quite joined up perfectly to show. He'd pulled his shirts off for Derek to see, turned and twisted and reached for nothing so Derek could stare judgmentally at the circles on circles on circles flowing out from the jagged line above Lan's shoulder blade, over his shoulder to cup his pectoral, curling around his arm and down his back in progressively smaller circles until his arm went to scale-mail and his back went to loose scattered sequins.
(Not that Derek would ever tell Lan that. Once he saw it he'd never be able to un-see it, and the design was glorious.)
Then Derek mentioned why he'd pushed for the earliest appointment Lan's skin was up for, and Lan started bitching.
He bitched his way into the back, into the bathroom while Derek gloved up and prepped his skin, and onto the table, forehead propped on his other forearm so he could keep talking. "I cannot believe you assholes are moving."
Derek, who'd been grinning behind Lan's back the entire time (and whose cheeks were starting to hurt), deadpanned "We're gonna be all of three hours away. You'll live."
"Nocal," Lan muttered darkly. "Pah."
"You're lucky I'm already gloved up. I'm gonna have to hit you after I'm done with you," Derek informed him, picking up the gun and eying an uneven line over Lan's rhomboid.
But Lan flicked his fingers, stopping Derek before he could even turn the machine on, and Derek waited as Lan started shaking with laughter. (And maybe, just possibly, admiring the way the design rippled with the motion.)
Bright, familiar fireworks flashed across the bond, elation and excitement sharp even at a five mile radius, and Derek grinned again when his phone started buzzing, off in the back. Grinned wider at the sting of irritation when he didn't move, the way his phone stopped buzzing as fast as it had started.
Lan had stopped laughing, so Derek fake-grumbled "You done?"
That got him another snicker, but Lan nodded, quirking his hand to call Derek back as he put his head down on his arm again, snarking "Yeah, yeah, last thing I want is to have to drive three hours for a few pinpricks."
Derek's grin showed teeth that time. "But you would."
"Hell yeah I would, you jackass. I'm not letting anybody else touch this."
(Derek was going to miss Lan. The way he blended insults and affection made him feel almost like family.)
His sense of Stiles swelled to full strength, irritation and amusement singing behind his eyes as he set off down Lan's back, fixing the tiny specks of flesh dotting the ink.
-----
They were arguing about the lack of bill (Derek was just fixing his own mistakes--Lan didn't owe him anything for that) when Stiles hip-checked the front door open.
Derek carefully didn't smirk when Stiles tilted his head to stare up at the annoying buzzer. The one that hadn't gone off.
"I think it's broken," he drawled, feeling amused disbelief curling up the nape of his neck. "I left Lori a note."
"Suuuuuuure," Stiles replied, rolling his eyes. Then he was pushing his way behind the register, passing Derek his messenger bag to set on the back table and refusing to give up the space when Derek turned back. "Go clean up your station and stop insisting people can't pay you for your time."
"But--"
"No, I like this one," Lan smirked, handing his card over to Stiles.
Stiles braced his foot like he meant business so Derek signed and leaned in to press a kiss against the spikysaur hiding behind his ear. Smirked when Stiles shivered, and again when Stiles swatted him for it.
"As you wish," he whispered, to get hit again, and chuckled his way back to his station.
"So, what're we charging you?" Stiles chirped behind him, voice only a little unsteady. "A buck?"
"Don't you guys have a min--"
"Please. You just want to tip and don't have cash. You're gonna go over the minimum, I promise."
Derek stopped listening. Focused on the tiny amount of actual cleanup involved, then went around collecting the day's worth of equipment that needed dealing with before closing.
Lan complained "Nocal!" and Derek instantly looked up, grinning toothily, and waved back when Lan waved.
Stiles locked the door after him, pulled the window gratings down, went through and closed out the register, muttering to himself in a way that made him incredibly easy to track by ear.
As Derek closed up the cleaner and started the cycle, Stiles said "Shara finished our page. Both sides of it."
Derek perked up. "Lunic Runic?"
Stiles grinned, excitement and delight making the bond spread out fuchsia and gold. "Ready to go live, as soon as we approve it."
"We'll have to run it past a few muggles, first," Derek said without thinking, then immediately cursed himself because Stiles was a horrible influence on his vocabulary.
Who knew it, gloried in it, splashed tangerine smug overtop of the fuchsia as he agreed "Yeah. I'm pretty hopeful, though."
(If it didn't work, Derek thought he might cry. Or bite something.) (Not Laura, though. Shara might kill him, and knew enough to manage it. And there was no way his family was going to close ranks against Laura's longest running relationship since Thomas.)
There were lots of magical services websites. Most of them were potions and prayers and charms, but the ones claiming legitimate inborn-power magical services did pop up.
They were mostly bullshit (Derek didn't think he'd ever figure out why the idea of being the reincarnation of someone famous was so appealing), but there were a few that weren't. A few trying to walk the delicate line between being available to help others and avoiding being too easily identifiable.
They couldn't hide Stiles. Not when his tattoos stayed on wolves. When he could work protection and healing right into somebody's skin.
(Shara's was the first magical services website that actually had magic worked into it. Let itself hide in plain sight, right under her name.
Depending on their live date, they'd be the second or the third.)
Putting the broom away, Derek peered over at his mate. "Do you have your bribe ready for Laura yet?"
"I finished her crow last week," Stiles smirked. "And I maintain that it was a total pain in the ass, and she should have gone for a raven if she wanted a corvid."
(But Derek had a raven now, crouched in profile with the tail brushing the top of his ass on one side, and the head wrapping around to his stomach on the other with a miniature moon in its beak, and Stiles' shoulders were wreathed in starlings and magpies.
And a crow was better than a jay, at least.)
"Do you know what Shara wants, yet?" Stiles asked, leaning back against the counter, head cocked.
The thought made Derek want to groan. So did the way Stiles' smile widened at the feeling, his scent going cedar and sweet. "Some sort of mutant hybrid of code and circuits. We're going to have to sit down together to talk it out."
For hours. With all the diagrams.
Stiles laughed, because he was absolutely heartless. "You're going to love it and you know it. Now c'mon, I wanna show you the draft she sent us."
"I need to re-sort the inks," Derek grumbled, but let Stiles grab his hand and pull him away from the station.
"What, so Lori can put them back her way in the morning?" Stiles snorted, abandoning Derek's hand to slip their laptop out of his bag and set it up. "You didn't have anything but black work, did you?"
Busted.
"We're gone after tomorrow," Stiles pointed out, offensively reasonably. "Let her have one day without your passive aggressive little argument." Mirth lit up the bond, beating the flare of a smile over Stiles' face. "It might shock her into a heart attack. Now." He turned the laptop toward Derek. "Voila."
"Your accent's still painful," Derek sighed, leaning across the table to get a better look.
"That's because I don't have one," Stiles replied, more rote than anything.
Which was good, because Derek wasn't really paying attention.
Stiles had done the art for the background, bordering his side with swoops of graceful, chaotic curls, and Derek's with emotional abstracts (afternoon of a full moon, curled up with Stiles, and winning a wrestling match with Laura) and Yuriko's blackwork.
(Derek had sent Shara Stiles' third draft, because it was good and she needed something to run with. Stiles tried to murder him when she sent the mockup back with all the art in place, because he'd just finished draft sixty.)
(Draft three was still the best. Stiles even admitted it, eventually.)
It looked good--even better now that Derek had won the argument about a pale French grey for the base color instead of a fleshy taupe--but that wasn't the point. The portfolios were the point. Stiles' columned on the left, under a picture Tania had taken of him grinning at her, and Derek's on the right, under a picture of him in profile, leaning in to work a curl of wisteria over a knee.
Between the two columns, carefully placed next to the relevant photos, Shara'd put text that people who weren't looking, who weren't aware of the power they probably had, hopefully couldn't see.
Born wolf client, two years without retouch at time of photo next to the cartoony toy robot Danielle had on her ankle and, more importantly, the fake scar he'd given her for camouflage. Subtle, pale, thin, but still there.
Bitten wolf client, to lessen anxiety for Cara's only pure-blackwork piece, the one that Derek still thought looked like a treble clef on steroids, design modified four times to increase and decrease effect to suit client's needs.
Scar removal on the watercolor feather light and delicate enough to see there was certainly no scar left anymore. They had before pictures, both pre-ink and right after Stiles had finished the tattoo, but Shara couldn't hide those like she could with the words.
(Not yet, anyway.)
"So?" Stiles huffed, poking Derek just below the ticklish spot on his ribs. "Are we okay with it?"
Derek scrolled up and down a couple of times, clicked over to the artist profiles to make sure Laura hadn't gotten into Shara's files (again), clicked back to the portfolios. As portfolios, they were simple. Nearly minimalist. They didn't need to be anything dramatic, though. Didn't need to draw attention directly. Word of mouth was going to get the information where it needed to go, and between Alan's network, Edward's European contacts, the Hale Pack's name and involvement with packs all across the continent--he wasn't worried about that.
"I think it's good."
"Should've pulled it up while Lan was here," Stiles mulled, scrolling down idly before closing the computer. "He could've been our muggle."
"No." Derek frowned when Stiles snickered at him. "No. I like Lan," he added, ignoring Stiles' muttered "You like his stupidly complicated tastes" with the ease of a lot of practice, "and I am going to make him come visit Beacon Hills. No scaring him off with magic. Not risking it."
Stiles' amusement crested, sharp but fond and twisting like the snakes he had wrapped around his right forearm. "You have a weird way of showing friendship," he pointed out, again. "But, hey. I have something else for you too. Remember this?"
He extracted an envelope from his messenger bag, passed it over as he shoved the laptop back where it came from.
"I'm familiar with envelopes," Derek offered, turning it over in his hands. It was sealed, but there were no marks on it. No intentional marks, at least, just smudges and darkened creases. Something shifted inside as he turned it over, too firm to be paper.
"Yeah, I forgot about it too. I'm pretty sure there's a couple of tarot cards in there, though. I should probably give 'em back to Deaton at some point."
And that-- That he remembered. "That thing you did to mute the bond," he said slowly, trying to wrap his head around the idea. The idea of it still being there, when he could practically talk to his mate through emotional impressions five miles out, no problem. Could still feel him so far out that most mate bonds had faded into life-and-direction. "That can't--"
"Yeah, no, don't think so," Stiles agreed, reaching out to take the envelope from Derek and shaking it, making the contents rattle. "They aren't tied together anymore. I'm guessing it wore off as our bond developed naturally." He shrugged, dropping the envelope into his bag and clicking the latch into place. "Or as naturally as our bond gets, anyway."
Fair enough.
"So. What. Our normal freakiness finally outgrew our supernatural freakiness?" Derek teased. "Is that what you're saying?"
Stiles laughed, leaning into Derek's side. "Dude. We've never been normal."
"Good, though," Derek rumbled. Knew he was blushing even as he leaned over to kiss Stiles' spikysaur again.
"Yeah. Still good," Stiles quipped back, smirk shining through the bond like an emotion.
"I'm going to kill you one of these days."
Stiles snickered, scent going to nutmeg and apples. "Nah. You love me too much for that."
Damnit.