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Language:
English
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Published:
2018-02-13
Completed:
2018-05-16
Words:
98,304
Chapters:
31/31
Comments:
676
Kudos:
1,664
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462
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39,854

Astralogy

Summary:

The day after Stiles first talked to a dead person, he was locked up in Eichen House and spent the next three years just trying to survive. Until one day Chris Argent, founder of the psychic law enforcement agency PsyCrime, showed up and offered him a job and a place to live. There are only three tiny problems: Chris is a scorchingly hot Alpha who Stiles wants like burning; Chris' mate, Peter Hale, hates his guts; and Stiles left behind his own mate at Eichen, Theo Raeken, an Alpha werewolf who's locked up for being a mass murderer. Oh, and Theo's also an insanely powerful psychic, who can get to Stiles any time he's asleep.

Notes:

Trigger Discussion:

So I started writing this five days before the Harvey Weinstein story broke. I truly believe this is a watershed moment and I am in awe of the women and men who have come forward to tell their stories. But I was also in the midst of writing a story where the protagonist is in a sexual relationship with a man who is both his boss and his landlord. I think there is a potential for people to find their relationship triggery so I wanted to be very explicit about what you will find here.

I believe it will be clear from the story that none of the characters--Stiles, Chris, Peter, their co-workers--view their relationship as sexual harassment or Chris as abusing his authority. There is no infidelity and both characters do their best to discuss potential issues in their relationship. The story is omegaverse, and part of the conceit is that omegas have strong submissive instincts, which can be difficult to suppress. In this society, it is considered acceptable for Alphas and omegas to take steps and be intimate in order to manage what they call 'dynamic issues.' (I drew some of the ideas here from the BDSM verse, where it would be considered acceptable for, say, a dominant boss to spank her submissive employee.) So the bottom line is, I did my best to portray a non-abusive relationship that involves a serious power differential.

For the record: I am in no way trying to claim that such a relationship could or should exist in real life, but I also think it's okay to fantasize about your boss spanking you assuming you don't engage in harassing behavior yourself. Fantasies occupy their own space, with their own rules, and for me personally, that is the entire point of reading and writing fic. I hope this is enough to help people decide if they want to continue.

 

Acknowledgement of a major inspiration:
A lot of details in this story are drawn from Jordan Castillo Price's marvelous PsyCop series. The hero of that series, Vic Bayne, is a medium who was locked up in a hellish facility for psychics, and after getting released joins the Chicago PD, where his main job is to take statements from the ghosts of murder victims. So I basically borrowed that set-up and gave it a thoroughly Teen Wolf fanfic spin, including substituting our favorite heroes, bad guys, and adding werewolves and then plopping it in the Omegaverse, cuz that's my thing. I don't think fans of Price's series will find much that they recognize beyond the actual conceit, though when I didn't know the last name of a TW character I borrowed one from Price's books. It should be clear that I highly recommend Price's series.

Comments are hugely appreciated.

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

Stiles stared at the open cupboard. Four cans of organic plum tomatoes, extra-virgin olive oil, also organic, 2 boxes of something called fusilli, a jar of olives from Morocco, and a jar of “capers,” which looked disturbingly like someone decided to pickle little green boogers.

He could hear Chris’ voice in his head: “We stocked the kitchen for you until you get your first paycheck and can do some shopping on your own.”

WTF. Stocked for who? Obviously not him. There was no ramen, no jarred salsa, or god forbid a jar of Prego. There was also no canned soup, not that it mattered since there was no microwave. The clock on the stove showed the time to be 6:33 pm. Tomorrow was Monday, his first day at his new job. Chris had said they’d leave for work at 6:30am. Even a fuck-up, high school drop-out like Stiles knew that meant it would be 12 hours minus three minutes before he had any hope of another meal.

His stomach sank and he almost felt like he could throw up but he was too fucking hungry. He weighed his options. He could go upstairs and ask for help or he could try to wait it out. Neither option was at all attractive: it didn’t take an empath to know that Chris’ werewolf partner-husband-whatever, was not happy about having an Eichen House reject for a tenant. He wondered that he still gave a shit what some random asshole thought of him, but there it was. The thought of facing down Peter’s sneer made him almost wish he was back at Eichen.

The other option was to try to wait it out: it wasn’t like he’d never skipped dinner before—or been forced to skip either for punishments or because of whatever med they were pumping him full of. The problem was he was majorly hungry, like ravenous, like he needed to eat right this goddamn second, and he could just picture himself sweating it out for a few more hours before breaking down and pounding on Chris’ door at 2am, which would not win him any points as a tenant or an employee. And what if low blood sugar sparked a panic attack? He was not going to impress his colleagues at PsyCrime by hyperventilating until he passed out. And he was trying his hardest not to think about what would happen if (when) he had to deal with Theo tonight.

Probably it was for the best that the last prospect was dire enough to push him for once to make an actual decision. No contest: it was better to get it over with. Politely ask Chris if he could give him some actual edible food, hopefully without sounding like Oliver fucking Twist while he did.

He went out the door to his basement one-bedroom, through the garden, and out the gate around to the steps leading to the front door of Chris’ townhouse. He pushed the doorbell, which made a musical chime deep inside the house. A moment later, Peter answered because of course he did.

“Uh, hi, Mr. Hale.”

“Seriously, Mr. Hale? Aren’t you the polite little omega. What do you want? Chris isn’t here.”

So Stiles had not just imagined that bitchy, thin-lipped disapproval. He supposed his old therapist would say it was an important step that he was reading other people accurately. Too bad the reality was just more fodder for his paranoia. “Uh, yah, I’m sorry to, uh bother you…”

“Get to the point.”

Stiles winced but couldn’t resist the snap in the Alpha’s tone. “I can’t cook: I don’t know how to, uh, make the stuff you left in the kitchen.”

“You can’t make pasta?”

“There’s no microwave.”

“You can’t microwave dried pasta, for fuck’s sake.”

Stiles tried to hunch down, every cutting word feeling like some portent from the cosmos warning that he was on the fast track back to Eichen, that even this watered-down version of independent adulting was way beyond his abilities.

Peter shook his head like he’d literally never heard anything so pathetic. “Is there anything you can make?”

“Without a microwave? Uh, chips and salsa, peanut butter—soup I guess, if you could show me how to open the can and use the stove.”

“Absolutely not—don’t you dare touch the stove. We just finished renovating. I’ll have a microwave installed tomorrow.” Peter finally moved away from the door, gesturing that Stiles should come in. He followed the Alpha through the small front hall, past a large seating area which was too pretentious to have a TV, a huge dining-room table, all the way to a massive kitchen that took up the whole rear half of the townhouse.

Unlike Stiles’ kitchen that even he recognized screamed “rental unit,” Chris and Peter’s kitchen looked like a spread from a fancy shelter magazine. The counters were polished butcher block, lined with tiles that looked hand-painted, probably from some place like Morocco or Tuscany. The appliances were all stainless steel, including a six-burner stove, which would have been at home in a restaurant kitchen. Two of the burners were in use, but other than a cutting board with some onions and carrots, the whole place was spotless. Unfortunately, whatever was cooking smelled delicious, so much he thought he might pass out.

Peter was opening various cupboards. “Is almond butter alright? We don’t have peanut butter.”

It sounded gross, but Stiles stammered, “Sure.” It couldn’t be worse than Sunday night mystery meat at Eichen, could it?

“An omega who can’t use a stove—I guess I should be impressed. So subversive.”

Stiles shrugged. It was only now that he was out that he realized that in its psychotic way, Eichen was actually progressive when it came to gender, race, sexuality, species, or dynamic. There were only two classes there: inmates and everyone else. And it didn’t matter if an inmate was human, werewolf, black, white, Alpha, beta, omega, male, female, gay, straight: they were all equally fucked.

“They didn’t teach us cooking at Eichen,” Stiles mumbled. There was a time before Eichen, and even in the early months after he was admitted, when he would have told Peter to go fuck himself. But those days were long gone.

“Obviously. Well here’s some stuff for sandwiches—strawberry-rhubarb jam okay?—I’m afraid we’re fresh out of grape jelly.” Peter said it with a sarcastic smirk, apparently directed at the existence of so plebeian a substance as grape jelly, unlike little jars of green snotballs and almond butter. The werewolf handed him a canvas grocery bag that included the jam and not-peanut butter as well as an entire loaf of bread.

“Wow, thanks—you don’t have to give me so much,” he fumbled, actually meaning it.

“Oh good lord, save the sad omega eyes for Chris, they’re wasted on me.”

“Sorry,” he gulped, momentarily catching Peter’s eye before lowering his gaze.

It was like his whole body shuddered. The werewolf was obnoxiously good-looking, and tragically for Stiles, his assholery was triggering some unexpected (and highly unwelcome) impulses, specifically an almost overwhelming urge to go to his knees, quickly followed by an even more desperate desire to take the Alpha’s dick in his mouth.

Peter must of sensed something because his eyes flared red. “Jesus,” he snapped, sounding disgusted. “None of that either, omega—you’re Chris’ project not mine.” He took Stiles by the elbow and pushed him out the front door and closed it.