His Ink On My Skin

Chapter 1: Skinship

Key for this chapter:

Stiles' Thoughts

Anyone Else's Thoughts

'Old dialogues memories, spoken out loud thoughts, the past in general...'

///Memories///

POVs

""Not an Actual Speech or Thought""

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Warning: Alternative POVs

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As a child, Stiles hated drawing.

It wasn't that he was bad at it, he'd insist, but just because it took too much time.

And of the multitude of words people have used to describe Stiles Stilinski, being patient wasn't one of them.

There was nothing he hated more than the mandatory art class in grade school, forced to sit in a chair and take a whole half hour out of his day to scribble lines on a sheet of paper.

Usually, he'd end up refusing to do anything at all, sitting there with his thin arms crossed stubbornly over his chest and chin jutted out in defiance.

If pushed, he might draw a stick figure. On the rare days, he felt like cooperating, he might even produce a starship, a knight, a dog, a wizard... Those were the pictures his dad would take and tape to the fridge desk like he was proud.

In middle school, he'd doodle in the margins of his notes, the little figures spreading through the pages like a virus. They'd crowd into his math homework, or illustrate history notes.

They never meant anything.

Not beyond a scolding from a teacher or two, though he was quick to point out that they never changed the fact that the work was perfect.

He'd get off with little more than a small admonishment to pay attention in class and go right back to doodling.

When he was twelve, his math teacher pressed a sketchbook into his hands, along with some old-fashioned pencils, and told him it'd be a better place to keep them, "And for the love of God Stilinski, please keep it away from your Math homework, it's not like your handwriting makes sense on a good day, either", he retorted and pushed the sketchbook at him again.

He didn't touch them after Claudia, his mom had died and he'd let them lay collecting dust, forgotten and only half-filled. For two years, they stayed shoved back in a seldom-used drawer, buried under a slow-building pile of knick-knacks and crumpled-up receipts.

One day after everything with the Nogitsune and the rest of the few crazies the Nemeton had invited, Stiles managed to run out of socks.

The drawer got pulled forcefully open while he searched desperately for a single sock, roughly pushing things aside with noises of frustration.

He stilled when he uncovered the old sketchbook and pencils, fingers brushing over the black leather. After some thought, he'd picked them up and tossed them on the bed to examine later, returning to the search for socks.

When he came stumbling home, a fresh bruise darkening his eye, he'd picked up the sketchbook and looked through it for hours, sprawled on his bed with the tight squeeze of nostalgia gripping his chest.