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Hierarchy and Autonomy

Summary:

In a werewolf society omegas are expected to succumb to their base urges. Stiles has refused for eight years, can he for one more?
Conceptually based off of:
Alpha Spikes By Starbeast
and
Devil of Mercy by KouriArashi

Chapter 1: You're on

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

           Biology.

           Biology is my greatest enemy.

           Stiles looks out his window with contempt. His birthday was two days ago and like always it signaled the worst week of the year. Ever since his 15th birthday, an entire year early, a normally depressingly solemn day became a shrieking horn of warning for what loomed ahead. 

           Heat week. The week of the year when every alpha and omega alive experience a massive uptick in their pheromone production and they each are consumed in a brutal haze of stifling warmth and desire. Betas experience it too, but it’s well known that it’s tame in comparison. 

           It’s his 12th time experiencing it and it’s just as awful this year. He can’t stand it. He can feel it crawling beneath his skin when he wakes. He can feel it when he eats breakfast. And he can definitely feel it when the knock at the hotel door snaps what little capacity he has to ignore it in half. He’s stationed in Southern California this year. He was brought to the hotel from Sacramento last week. He hates it here, it’s warmer in Corona Del Mar than most of the places he’s been schlepped off to for these things. 

           He grabs his taser and heads to the door. He’s dressed informally to make a point. 

           “You’re not wearing a regulation approved outfit,” one of the half dozen masked and armored guards state when he opens the door. 

           “Smart observation. It’s this or I show up naked to the ceremony; because, I’ll shred any suit you force me into.” 

           The lead guard stands still a moment scrolling through their tablet before responding. “Fine.” They say and gesture Stiles out of the door. 

           Half an hour later and one taser burst later, Stiles finds himself being shoved into his seat by his five remaining guards. He stills himself uncomfortably and waits on his 9th picking ceremony to begin. It’ll go the same way as it always goes.  Terribly. And he’ll end up in the same position he finds himself each year. Compromised and degraded. 

           The virgin omegas over eighteen are all shepherded off in a division away from all others in attendance. They’re closer to the stage, for convenience. This way the half dozen or so, semi-local, Alphas can sift through their crop easier and without challenge. 

           He isn’t afforded any information about the alphas this year, not that he ever is. Omegas never are, not until whichever selected emissary representative decides to begin prattling off about the first of the alphas. He can barely focus on the inane praises. He never can, not that he ever needs to pay attention to any rant other than the first. Between the pressure of his skin boiling from both the inside-out and outside-in, and his ADHD; his attention is shot. One of the male alphas is standing next to the podium and is whispering to an emissary in a pressured manner. He locks eyes with Stiles for several unnecessarily long moments and then finishes his conversation. The man had been third in line before, but when he returns to it; he’s first. 

           Stiles looks off to the crowd. He can smell his dad in the crowd somewhere in the back with the other betas sweating bullets. Scott’s there too, with Kira. Lucky her. She doesn’t have to experience this. Stiles remarks to himself. Other shifters don’t have to deal with this. Just werewolves. 

           Alan Deaton won’t shut up. And his announcements only get louder once the woman emissary whispers something in his ear. The droning bores into Stiles’s frustrated mind like a trepanation drill. An hour and a half later, once he’s finished delivering praises for the excruciatingly long host of twelve alphas he introduces the intimidating one who was moved to the front.

           “Peter Hale,” Deaton reminds them all, “will now begin the selection process for the Southern California region.” 

           His eyes catch Stiles’s own the moment he finishes his petty overtures and platitudes to the councils. Stiles rises from his seat and awaits what his every sense is already telling him. The man descends from the stage and saunters into the center aisle. Stiles is in the center of the next to last row on the right side of the stage.  Peter walks to directly Stiles and offers his hand forcefully. Stiles holds Peter’s gaze for a bit longer than he should, averts his eyes ruefully, and takes it. 

           The crowd cheers from behind the dividers. The familiar mournful sense of disgust and self-pity consume him, the way they have every year since he was first chosen on his eighteen birthday. 

           He’s led to the stage and gets the usual questions and his own introduction by the woman announcer, Morrel. The sexism and it’s basic link to his classification make the experience all the more indignant. He fields the questions with frustration:

  • Who are you? Mieczyslaw Stilinski but you can call me “Stiles.”
  • Where are you from Stiles? Beacon Hills, Sacramento now.
  • How old are you? 26.
  • What is with your outfit selection? Aren’t you at pleased to be chosen? No.

           This answer gets him hauled off stage by his latest conservator. He misses the rest of the selection process. A choosing ceremony tradition for him at this point. 

           He’s shoved into the back of a black limousine and the door slams behind him. I’ll never see that taser again. He turns to the opposing door before it opens and stares at it blankly as The Alpha descends into the seat next to his. 

           “You know. I heard that your scent was something remarkable. But, I never imagined I’d be able to smell it before I got on stage.” 

           “You’re welcome.” Stiles says into the glass. The response is automatic, detached, the way it’s been since his third choosing. Whichever alpha goes first always chooses him. They either change the line up or it’s a spur of the moment choice when they get in the lines; but he’s always first.

***

           “You’re by far the loveliest omega I have ever scented,” The alpha whispers into his ear. Deucalion is his name. Stiles can hardly stand still next to the guy. It’s only his first time at the choosing and usually eighteen-year-olds are never chosen. The man has a death grip on his shoulder and Stiles can barely focus on the podium. The touch of an alpha and the pheromones are already overwhelming his senses. He can feel his heat amping up several fold.

           He’s already 48 hours into the cycle, 48 more than everyone else, and it took everything he had just to get dressed before he’d been dragged from his hotel room. It took three guards just to get his first arm into the restraints and another’s rib cage being permanently sacrificed to constrain the other. The enchanted steel still chafes his skin as he fields questions through the panic. He’s nearly blinded from all the flashing cameras. It’s cold as hell in the Northern Canadian hall he was forced to attend for the ceremony. He shivers and leans into the microphone. He can’t remember what he’d said, but a moment after his third question he’d been ripped away and marched out of the public eye. 

            “Do not test me boy.” The grit of it through Deucalion’s teeth terrified him more than being pulled away from his dad just a few days prior. It worried him more than being stuffed into a car and being locked in it on the way to the airport. It sobered him more than stepping off the plane in Quebec. Stiles steeled his eyes and looked down on his way to the next car he was sure to be captured in. He didn’t breathe a word on the way to the strange complex of cabins and ski lodge looking buildings Deucalion kept as housing for his closest pack members. Hours of nervous silence and inching away from a pursuing predator made him skittish as he worked his way through the dim halls to the room he’d later find out he’d be in for an entire week.

***

           “What are you looking off at?”

           “Nothing.”

           “Then look at me. I’m far more interesting than the scenery.”

           “You guys always think that. Always demanding something of me. Why can’t you ever just let me rest or better yet not pick me.” Stiles shifts himself to another seat half-way up the limousine cabin and slumps against the leather interior.

           “So, the legends about you are true,” Peter says and dusts off his deep blue suit jacket. 

           “Which ones?” Stiles asks and turns towards the window. He rests his head on it, seeking the cool relief of the glass. He hasn’t been able to fully ground himself since 2AM on the 9th. April. What an ill timed month. He groans softly. 

           “That you’re the worst behaved omega to be chosen in the last century.” 

           “Sorry to disappoint.” Stiles says and rolls his eyes to himself. 

           “Hardly. It’ll make this weekend far more entertaining.”

           Stiles just whimpers and his first tear of the year falls from his eye, hidden from his cabin mate as it absorbs into his damp, grey-cotton sweat pants.

***

           Stiles arrives at the worst place he can remember. A strange stone house in the middle of the woods just outside Atlanta somewhere. Why the structure was built here he couldn’t imagine. It was an abomination in the damp heat of the southern state. He was clammy beyond belief the moment he stepped in. The feeling never departed his skin for his entire stay there. Ennis had constructed it. The cooling vents rasped in his ear no matter which room he was tied up in. He can still remember the feel of the endless bruises that marred his skin. Each hour brought up a new spattering of internal bleeding and half broken skin for his resistance. He refused Ennis multiple times the first day.

           Each rough touch to his skin was a punishment the alpha had used in a failed attempt to “seduce” him. The second day there he’d spent naked chained to a bed for his insolence. Ennis had worked his body over tirelessly trying to get Stiles to succumb to his heat. Ennis was hoping to see the fight fade from his eyes and his jaw slack as a function of desperate need and desire; like so many others had so easily. It never worked. Sleep deprivation, hand feeding, hours of foreplay, dirty talk: Stiles spurned it all. In the end, Ennis wanted him to beg to be taken.

           “You’ll have to beg me to relieve you. You little asshole.” Rung in his ears multiple times a day. Each insult was punctuated by a whip, cut, or paddling. He didn’t speak the week of his 21st birthday. A crown of wolfsbane soaked thorns was his only gift that year.

***

           They pull away from the city center and the half hour drive to Peter’s mansion is underway. 

           Peter demands attention. He just won’t be quiet. The entire ride, he’s whispering, or declaring something Stiles can’t hold onto. Promises, lost in a haze of smoke and confusion. Stiles gets out of the car and is floored by the sight of a large seaside mansion. The smell of the salt in his nose has him sprinting for the water in a moment of excited forgetfulness. He gets half way down the beach before Peter catches up with him and tackles him. He falls to the ground and the sand burns and scrapes his skin under his shirt. His elbows burn in the mid-day sun. Peter’s laughing above him. A hot kiss scorches his face when he’s flipped face up.

***

           Kali didn’t wait for permission. The moment they were in the car she lunged on him. The boiling Nevada heat pervaded even the car’s cabin through the air conditioner’s futile attempts. Stiles groaned against it. His body was rioting in the seat she had him pinned to. The affront had him off guard. At his last 4 choosing ceremonies, each of the other alphas had at least given him some illusion of choice the first day. His body fought him, trying to slake itself of the pressure. The intensity overwhelmed him on his way to her casino. She ushered him into an elevator and after a quick ten-minute drive and pursued him into wall after wall as he fought to regain some control of himself on the way up.

           The elevator dinged their arrival. He ran into the living room that opened out behind him and noticed the one thing the massive penthouse lacked. Sound. The entire room was silent. Kali pursued him quietly. Each surface was a danger as Stiles skirted around it.

           His pleads filled the room and died in the air. Each “Please, don’t” and “I don’t want this,” met a sonic death the moment it escaped his mouth. Each time she pinned him into something, trying to take from him what she wanted, their bodies were revealed slightly more. Clothes turned to rags in their dance of panic and pursuit.

           The first and last thing he heard that week were her shouts for help after she pressed a button half a room away from him. He didn’t know how she had ended up over a busted teak table, splinters filling the air like angry dust. But, he does remember the blankness of the pale sand walls in the containment room he was kept the rest of the week.

***

           When he comes back to himself Peter his standing several paces away looking winded. His suit is coated in sand and his hair is doused in it. Peter's thick black curls are a mess soaked in damp sand and granulated sea shell.

           “Well, I’ve certainly never received that kind of response.” Peter declares and dusts off his jacket. He frowns not a moment later when his fingers meet slices in the top half of the shoulders on each side. “I guess I won’t be wearing this again,” Peter remarks and slips it off to reveal blood stains on the thin, white, linen dress shirt. “This either, I suppose.” Peter unbuttons it and throws it to the ground.

           He walks over to Stiles and outstretches a hand for him to pull himself up with. Stiles takes it. His eyes are glued to the muscles in Peter’s arms as he aids pull Stiles up. “Fancy a swim?”

           Stiles looks out at the water. His mouth smiles and then frowns. “I don’t have a swim suit.”

           “You can borrow one of mine if you really want one.”

           “Sure,” he says and awaits the arrival of the clothes. He takes them quietly and begins stripping.

           “You sure you want to do that here?” Peter asks staring at Stiles’s pale upper body.

           “Would it matter if I didn’t.”

           Something in Peter’s scent turns foul and he turns around. “Go into the house and change. My butler will show you to the changing room.”

           So this is the kind of alpha he’ll be. Stiles walks back to the house and is shuffled into a powder room with a full vanity. He changes into the shorts quickly. He looks at himself in the mirror and frowns. He worries at the bottom seam. The shorts are vibrant, loud even considering Peter’s measured demeanor. They smell like they’ve been worn recently. They’re only a few inches long on the inseam so they’re revealing, but they’re loose which is more privacy than he’s used to being afforded. He sighs and walks out of the bathroom headed for the beach. He’s handed a towel on the way out and all the staff disappears by the time he gets to Peter’s side. Peter’s hovering, a half foot in front of the tide.

           Peter doesn’t even turn. But, the hairs on the back of Stiles’s neck rise anyway. He can hear light sniffs, just beneath the sound of the sloshing water. “Should we go in?” Stiles asks.

           “Do you like them?”

           “The shorts? They’re nice I guess,” Stiles acquiesces.

           Peter’s scent sours in his nose again. “I’ll have them choose different ones next time.” Peter grabs Stiles by the hand and pulls him in towards the water.

           They swim for hours. Stiles loses track of time. He’s adrift in the lapping water and heady purposeful teasing of Peter ebbing and flowing around him. The grazes are fast and light. Stiles’s senses barely grab onto each one before the water smooths it away. His heat abates in the cold early-spring water.

           At some point Peter takes his hand again and ushers him onshore. He frowns. Peter does too. A few moments after they get out they’ve made it to a table that materialized when they were in the water. It has their towels on it and Peter wraps him in one. His heat rises back up through the coiling pit in his stomach and he moans.

           “Are you hungry?”

           “Yeah.”

           Peter snaps his fingers and moments later a meal is placed on the table. Peter sets the two chairs close together facing each other next to the table and gestures for Stiles to sit. It takes him a moment, but he wills his feet to shuffle over to the proffered seat. He sits and avoids Peter’s gaze. He studies the table and notices a large numbered sundial steadied just off the far edge of the table. “Half past one,” Stiles observes quietly.

           “My staff are excellent at their jobs and know better than to intrude on me while I swim. Don’t worry, they won’t be around other than mealtimes after tonight.” Peter extends an arm out towards him offering a bite of shrimp. Stiles halts for a moment, and timidly takes a bite. Peter eats the other half not a moment later. It carries on like that until Stiles is full, not that he is full. He just can’t bring himself to eat more for fear of his growing daze.

           He keeps his face poised, but he can smell the excitement shifting beneath Peter’s repose. He stands up from the table, only to topple over into the sand sloppily. Peter’s above him in an instant pulling him from his place wrapped in the heat of the sand.

           “I’m fine. I’m fine,” Stiles says already doing his level best to pursue the ocean’s wake back out to sea.

           “You don’t seem fine.” Peter says pulling Stiles back around.

           “You smell good. Go away.” Stiles says weakly wrenching out of Peter’s grip.

           Peter lets him go after a few seconds of harsh glaring trying to discern what is going on. He stands there watching Stiles swim leisurely in the briny water while his brain clicks everything together like a puzzle. The selection had occurred late this year, but none of the others in the crowd had exhibited the familiar heady intoxicant of onsetting heat. Peter thinks of the combative conversations they’d had in the car and his curt responses to the questions on stage.  

           When Stiles finally gets back out looking distant, but sober Peter grins. More entertaining indeed. He meets Stiles with another towel.

           Stiles rebuffs him and walks towards the house. Peter follows as Stiles sniffs his way through his house, dripping sea water onto his cold stone floors. He follows Stiles all the way up the stars to his room. He stops outside his closet, into which Stiles marches determinedly and begins perusing. Stiles selects some thin linen boating shorts Peter hasn’t worn in years. Then he rifles through shirts for an old cherry red polo Peter had forgotten he owned. He digs through to the back of the underwear drawer and pulls out some sleeping boxers. Then Stiles pushes past Peter and slams the bathroom door behind him. Peter hums to himself and waits until he hears water pulsing out of the shower head to open the door.

           “How long have you been fighting a daze?” He asks confidently and rests against his counter, back to the vanity.

           “Leave me alone pervert.”

           “All day?” Peter asks lasciviously.

           “I’m not talking to you,” Stiles says and begins scrubbing the salt from his body.

           “Longer?”

           …

           “When did your heat set in?” Peter purrs.

           …

           “Yesterday?”

           “No.”

           “The day before.”

           “Will you give me some peace?” Stiles snaps.

           Peter grins and walks out of the bathroom. “I’ll see you in a bit,” Peter reminds him do try not to waste too much of my lotion or body wash. They're expensive.”

           Stiles opens his eyes. He can tell the bathroom door is still open through the opaque glass. He looks around, finds, and dumps the body wash out of the bottle. He watches it lather and swirl on the tiled floor of the large rainfall/steam shower hybrid until he’s ready to get out. He gets out and dries off roughly before getting dressed. When he has; he walks out into the bedroom and surveys it in earnest. There isn’t much to it. There’s a large bed against the center of the back wall. It’s adorned in slate grey sheets and has a white blanket folded back at the edge. They smell clean, almost sterile. Next to it is a black wooden nightstand with several charging cables all fastened into place. There is one pad to charge a smart watch, one for a phone, and a general cable next to them. The drawers are nearly empty. Supplies for the week, nothing else. On the other side it’s mostly the same, but with a host of snacks in the lower cabinet as well. The walls are a surprising off white that’s a little more aquamarine than most rich people would put in their homes. The far wall has a large sliding door behind a long line of blackout drapes that match the wall. The only personal belonging in the entire room is a large dotted abstract painting that’s a mix of red, yellow, and orange dots on the wall across from the sliding door. A small placard was next to it. Emily Kame Kngwarreye.

           Peter’s in the doorway when Stiles looks over. “It beautiful isn’t it? I saw a remarkably similar one in a gallery in 2015. This is the closest piece to it that’s ever been for purchase. I had to leave the hall prematurely and haven’t been able to find the work that enamored me with in the style since.”

            “It makes me feel like-” Stiles drifts off.

            “We should be a part of some collective? Yeah, me too. But, not all things are achievable. So, I have this. To remind me of what feelings are worth chasing.”

            “And which would those be?”

            “Serenity.”

            Stiles snorts.

            “Mock me all you want. But, this painting has bought me more peace of mind than some people will feel their entire lives.”

            “And they say money can’t buy happiness.”

            “That’s just what we tell the poor to make them feel less envious of what the rich have.”

            Stiles laughs. He laughs to the brink of collapse. He laughs until his eyes are welded shut and tears frame his mouth as he gasps for air and he’s forced to brace his hands on his knees.

            Eventually, he stands up straight and walks Peter with a pat on the shoulder. Peter frowns as the echoes of the sound deplete themselves from his bedroom.

            Peter follows him through the halls and sits next to him when Stiles comes to a stop at his couch in the main living room. Stiles shifts away a seat.

            “You really don’t like me do you?”

           “I have nothing against you. It’s this whole process. I hate it.” 

           “You’ll change your mind.”

           “No, I won’t.”

           “You will. Because, I’m going to make you want me. And then, you’ll never want anyone else,” Peter says voice smooth and buttery in Stiles ear. He draws in close to Stiles and lightly grips the back of his neck. 

           Stiles shudders for a while before he can talk again. “I don’t want anyone else either. I want to not be subjected to this every year.”

           “Then why not give in? Why not just, heed your body’s urges. You won’t be subjected to the next selection if you just participate.” Peter tries to pull him in, body to body, but Stiles stays in place. He’s steadfastly glued to the seat as if he’s willed  himself to become part of the couch itself. 

           “Because it’s basically non-consensual sex?” Stiles replies. His vision blurs and he feels himself slipping away.

           “I’ll convince you, you’ll want me.” Peter croons and tucks his head over Stiles’s shoulder. 

           “I’ll never give you what you want. Not like this. Just sitting here is unbearable,” Stiles whimpers. It’s never been this hard to resist before. It’s only two days in and he can already feel himself drowning in his heat. Peter dominates his senses. Stiles can feel a pull to him like iron to a magnet.

            “Never?”

            “Never.”

            “Then let’s make a game of it,” Peter says.

            “A game?” Stiles asks, incredulity pushing his mind back above the surface.

            “I like a challenge. And you’re possibly the best opponent I’ve ever had, even in this lust addled state. Maybe, you’re even more worthy because of it.”

            “What’re you proposing.”

            “A simple game.”

            “The rules?”

            “You allow me to make a growing list of rules you have to follow. For each one I have to make to advantage myself in the game, you get to make another request of me to fulfill at the end of the game.”

            “Do I get to make rules?”

            “Of course. Ground rules. To make sure, I can’t take advantage of you.”

            “And how would you win.”

            “Simple, I convince you to beg me to relieve you. Three times. You have to beg me specifically to relieve you three times and then after that I won’t hold back. We’ll alleviate your virgin status and if you want you’ll never have to see me again after your heat ends and your time with me ends."

            “It’ll have to be a specific phrase each time to make sure I’m thinking clearly enough to make the choice. And me getting off accidentally because of my heat can’t count. I can’t control it, especially if you start trying to leverage that end.”

            “Sounds fair.”

            “Write up some ground rules and we can start tomorrow.”

            “You’ll never break me, you know.”

            “Then it looks like I have a lot of expenses ahead of me.” Peter says, kisses him on the cheek and shoves off the couch. “Once I issue a challenge, I don’t take it back. If you make that list; I won’t relent until I win, or your heat abates. And, if you choose to quit at any point once we’ve begun; I will request your presence through the council next year.” Peter walks out of view into the kitchen, opens the refrigerator, and pulls out fruit water and pours himself a cup.

            Stiles walks in, his jaw is set firm. The look he gives Peter shakes something loose inside the alpha. “You’re on.” Stiles walks back out.

Notes:

I hope you guys enjoy the outset of this fic. I'm basically internally screaming trying to force y brain to focus enough to write it. I felt satisfied to end a first chapter here. The first 3k was easy enough to write but the last third was brutal with my brain fighting every moment to distract me from the page. I went back over it several times and think it ended up pretty good.

Tell me if the flashbacks need some sort of improved demarcation. Also, notify me of any tags you think are important that I forgot. Like I said, poor focus towards the end here.

Enjoy!
XOXO Iru_Naru
Peace