Paying the Rent
Teen Wolf, mature, Derek/Kate, Derek/other(s), prostitution, noncon.
Also at AO3.
WARNINGS: This fic includes sex work, reference to a past underage relationship, noncon/dubcon (more non- than dub-), electric shocks/tasing, and a non-consensual power differential / D/s. I don't claim that my depiction of sex work reflects what sex work is actually like in any way, shape, or form.
This isn't an AU, it's actually intended to fit in canon (well, pre-canon). Also, I really do love Derek, even though I keep writing about awful, awful things happening to him.
When he turns eighteen, Derek tells Laura he wants to move out. He already has a part-time job waiting tables, and he can get a second job, enough to pay rent on his own place since Laura insists they save the insurance money. There’s an old woman who frequents the restaurant Derek works at who has a little basement room she rents out; it has its own entrance and a bathroom -- no kitchen, but that’s okay, he can eat at the restaurant. She likes Derek and is going to give him a discount if he’ll help her out with carrying her groceries, replacing lightbulbs, and unscrewing jars.
He promises Laura he’ll always come stay with her for the full moon, and it’s really not far at all -- just a couple stops down the Q train. She looks sad and a little lonely when she hands him the money to pay his first month’s rent in advance.
***
It’s another waiter at the restaurant who points him to the escort agency, when he complains that he’s having a hard time finding a second job. The building is nice enough, and the lobby of the office is comfortably full of plush chairs and the hum of fluorescent lights. Derek is early for his interview, but he only has to wait a few minutes before the receptionist ushers him into the manager’s office.
The woman is in her mid-forties, impeccably dressed, her dark hair coiled in a perfect bun on the back of her head. Derek gives her his most charming smile and extends his hand. Her grip is firm and confident. “Well, you certainly look the part, Mister . . .”
“Hale,” he supplies, “Derek Hale.” She motions him to the seat across the desk from her and makes small talk for a few minutes, asking him where he’s from, how long he’s been in town, what he likes to do in his free time. Eventually, she asks for his driver’s license to verify his age. He wonders for a brief moment why it matters if he’s eighteen or not, given that he’s applying for a job which is illegal anyway.
“You must know, of course, that the legal system views solicitation and solicitation of a minor in very different ways,” she says, reading his face. “In either case I’m sure you are aware that our agency does not arrange for any illegal activity. We arrange meetings -- anything else is an agreement directly between you and your clients.”
“Of course,” Derek says, trying to sound like he knows what he’s talking about.
“Do you have any marks, scars, or tattoos?” she asks, handing his license back. He tells her he has a tattoo on his back, and she asks him to stand and remove his shirt so she can see it. He feels strangely naked under her gaze, remembering another time, another woman looking at the swirls on his back. She eyes him critically for a few moments, then lets him get dressed and sit down again. “I run a tight ship,” she says. “You’ll be tested for STDs once a month. We arrange all meetings and you are expected to be prompt and sober when meeting your clients. One complaint will get you a warning, two and you’ll be let go. You will also be able to file complaints against your clients if they violate the terms you have agreed to, and we can and will refuse to arrange any more meetings on their behalf if we find it’s warranted.”
Derek shifts in his seat, trying to avoid thinking about what “violating the terms” might involve. She hands him a clipboard with a document describing compensation and several forms. “If this sounds like the kind of job you are looking for, we would love to have you. Samantha will take you back to the lobby. If you don’t want the job, you are welcome to go. If you do, please fill out the forms and give the clipboard to Samantha, and she will take you back to have your photos taken for our website.” Derek recognizes a dismissal when he sees one, and he thanks her and opens the door, following the receptionist back to the front desk. She hands him a pen and he takes a seat to review the clipboard.
There are two forms: the first asks for his name, address, telephone number, and an emergency contact. The second is all about personal preferences. Derek breathes deeply and begins to fill them out.
***
It’s only a few days -- just long enough for them to get his STD test results -- before Derek gets his first call from the agency. The man he goes to meet is in his thirties, with the air of a businessman who works too many hours for romance. Derek smiles and laughs with him, and actually has a decently enjoyable evening letting his client treat him to an expensive dinner before taking him back to a suite on the business level of his hotel. He gives the man a blowjob on the bed, and heads home with an extra tip of fifty bucks in his pocket, on top of the amount he’ll get from the agency later.
The next day at the restaurant Derek thanks his coworker for referring him.
Most of the calls he gets are similar -- men of varying ages, looking for a night out, or maybe just a night in. Gradually they start sending him on jobs with men who are looking for something a little rougher, because Derek’s rapid healing means he can handle it easily. He doesn’t even bruise.
Laura smells it on him when he goes over to her place for the full moon, and he just tells her that it’s good money and it’s easier than life was in Beacon Hills. She worries about him, and he tells her there’s a reason he only takes male clients.
And then, one day, he gets a call from the agency asking if he’d be willing to take a female client as a special exception. “She’s offering five times your usual rate,” Samantha tells him. “Cash, up front. Took a liking to you on the website and wouldn’t be dissuaded. She wants to be rough and your reviews are excellent -- you’re top rated on the site. Only in town for one night so it won’t be a regular thing. Will you do it?”
Derek doesn’t sleep with women for money -- there have been a few one-night stands, when he finds himself needing more than the men he sees for work, when he wants slick moisture and soft curves -- because he doesn’t like letting a woman have power over him. He hasn’t liked it since he was sixteen. Still, with that much money he might be able to afford an apartment with an actual kitchen. Maybe one that doesn’t have rats. “I’ll do it if you raise my percentage,” he tells her, and hopes he’s not making a mistake.
That is how Derek comes to find himself sitting at a table on the porch of a cafe in Brooklyn, sipping ginger ale and checking the time on his phone to see how much longer it will be until his client arrives. He’s just putting his phone back into his pocket when he smells it -- too familiar, leather and gunpowder and fuck it’s the same body wash she used two years ago. He recognizes the scent long before he can see her face, and ducks his head, hoping she won’t notice him in the crowd and will pass right by.
Instead, the click of her boots and the sound of her breathing comes closer, and she slides into the seat across from him. “Sweetie,” she says, “when I called you a whore I didn’t think you were going to take it as career advice.”
Derek’s muscles tense, and he pushes back from the table violently, upsetting his chair. He wishes he were stronger, wishes he could bring himself to fight her, but his instincts tell him run run run and he’s already on his way when she speaks again. “If you run now,” Kate begins -- she doesn’t touch him, doesn’t even move from where she’s sitting, but he freezes up anyway and hates himself for it -- “your sister will be dead by the time you make it back to her apartment.” If he hadn’t already been stopped in his tracks just by the sound of her voice, that would have done it. He can hear the steady drum of her heart and knows she’s not lying.
“What do you want?” he asks, turning to face her again. His voice sounds strange to his own ears, rough and gritty, and his teeth are clenched in anger. If she were a werewolf, she would smell his fear; then again, she never needed extraordinary senses to know what Derek was feeling. Kate had always been able to read him like a book. His eyes meet hers for the first time since he smelled her coming, and somehow he’s surprised to find that she looks the same, that she’s just as beautiful as the day they met. Her eyes are still sparkling just like they were back then, her mouth turned up in a secretive smile. The difference is that now he knows her secret.
Kate stands up and walks over to him, and Derek tries not to flinch when she slides her hand down his arm and interlaces her fingers with his. “Let’s see, your profile said you enjoy a night out on the town, you like to play rough, and, what was the other one? Oh, you’re particularly skilled with your tongue.”
“You’re not serious,” Derek finds himself saying. For her to come here, to find him, to find Laura -- she must be planning to finish what she started back in Beacon Hills.
Kate leans in with her lips close to Derek’s ear. “Loosen up, Derek. I’m only in town for one night.” She reaches out to touch his chest, and he grabs her hand with his own to stop her. “It’ll be like old times,” she laughs. “Give me what I want, and I’ll even let your sister go . . . for now.” She starts walking down the street, tugging on his hand, and he follows her, helpless to do anything else.
***
The hotel she takes him to isn’t as upscale as his usual clients prefer, but it’s quiet. Derek thinks she must have picked it because it’s empty enough that there won’t be people in the next rooms to hear him scream. Kate kept up a steady stream of conversation on the subway ride and the walk over, and Derek can tell that his monosyllabic replies have been making her angrier. Still, he’s surprised when practically the moment he walks through the door he’s on his knees, stunned by the taser she had concealed in her jacket.
“Just to take the edge off,” she says, tossing the jacket over a chair. “I don’t really want to restrain you, sweetheart, but I can and will give you enough electricity to keep you human and weak.”
Derek struggles back to his feet, staggering against the door. “Why are you doing this?” he asks, buying himself some time to recover from the shock.
Kate laughs (does she ever stop laughing?). “My mother always told me not to play with my food, but I was never very good with table manners. I just thought you might need a little reminder that I can kill you whenever I decide I want to, and that in the meantime I can make you do anything I ask.” She walks back into his space, cornering him; he’s grown a couple inches in the past two years, and her breasts press into him a little lower than he remembers. “I don’t want to see any fangs or claws. Give me a good show, Derek,” she breathes against his lips.
Giving a good show is, after all, what he gets paid for these days. Maybe, he thinks -- maybe he can pretend that this isn’t Kate Argent. Maybe he can pretend she’s just another client. Maybe he can put on a good show and she’ll leave Laura alone.
Maybe, a small part of him whispers, he wants to.
It’s not so hard after all, not so hard to kiss her, to pretend that he has the upper hand, to play the seducer and tease his tongue into her mouth. The last time he was with Kate he was 16 years old and inexperienced; now, he thinks, he probably has more experience than she does. Going on the offense gives him back a little portion of the power she’s taken from him, and he backs her toward the bed, hands moving over her body. He feels a little stronger when he hears her heart rate pick up. She bites his lip, hard, and he backs off in surprise. “Being a whore agrees with you,” she says, “but don’t forget who’s in control here. Take off your clothes.”
Derek has learned how to make a show of this, too. He takes his fear for Laura, his anger at the deaths of his family, his hatred of Kate’s betrayal, and locks them away in the back of his mind. He repeats to himself you are not Derek Hale and she is not Kate Argent as he pulls off his clothes, flexing his muscles to catch the light to his best advantage. She watches him, sitting on the bed while she takes off her boots and her socks, lips twisted in amusement.
Derek does what Kate asks all night, tonguing her nipples, nuzzling her stomach, bringing her off with his mouth while she curses and grasps his ears with sharp fingernails. He doesn’t fuck her. She only let him the one time, the night before-- Well. You are not Derek Hale and she is not Kate Argent and he won’t -- can’t -- think about that right now. Instead, she makes him jerk himself off while she circles him, shock baton held in a loose grip, and when he comes she whispers filthy things in his ear about rabid animals and the smell of burning flesh.
She electrocutes him, then, over and over, until his screams sound like they’re coming from far, far away and the world goes black.
***
Derek wakes up alone in the hotel room. Kate’s scent catches in his throat and clogs his nose, and he barely makes it to the bathroom in time to heave up the contents of his stomach into the toilet. He staggers back into the room and digs his cell phone out of the pocket of his jeans, dialing Laura with trembling fingers.
She answers on the second ring and Derek has never been so relieved in his life. “Are you okay? Where are you? Is anyone following you? Watching you?” he asks frantically, wishing he could at least pretend to be calm.
“I’m fine,” she replies, “Derek, calm down, I’m fine. I’m at home. There were some hunters outside the building earlier, but they’re gone now.” Laura’s breathing, at least, is slow and even, and Derek tries to match it with his own. “What’s going on? Did they come after you? Are you hurt?”
“No,” he says, hoping that she can’t hear his heartbeat with the poor quality of the cell phone’s microphone, “I’m not hurt. I’m fine. Don’t-- Don’t worry about it. I think they were just passing through. I’ll come by later.” Derek ends the call and slumps down to the floor, head in his hands. He sits there for several minutes, breathing in and out, before it occurs to him that Kate might come back.
He gets dressed quickly, but a glance around the room tells him that she’s taken her things and gone. All that’s left is a fat wad of cash on the night table.
Derek clenches his fists so hard that his claws come out and pierce all the way through his hands. He starts to walk toward the door, then stops, turns, and goes back to the bed.
It’s five times his usual rate and an extra $300 tip.
The money burns in his pocket all the way home.
***
Thanks to quigonejinn and vongchild for beta/advice giving!
This entry was originally posted at http://marmolita.dreamwidth.org/5111.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Also at AO3.
WARNINGS: This fic includes sex work, reference to a past underage relationship, noncon/dubcon (more non- than dub-), electric shocks/tasing, and a non-consensual power differential / D/s. I don't claim that my depiction of sex work reflects what sex work is actually like in any way, shape, or form.
This isn't an AU, it's actually intended to fit in canon (well, pre-canon). Also, I really do love Derek, even though I keep writing about awful, awful things happening to him.
When he turns eighteen, Derek tells Laura he wants to move out. He already has a part-time job waiting tables, and he can get a second job, enough to pay rent on his own place since Laura insists they save the insurance money. There’s an old woman who frequents the restaurant Derek works at who has a little basement room she rents out; it has its own entrance and a bathroom -- no kitchen, but that’s okay, he can eat at the restaurant. She likes Derek and is going to give him a discount if he’ll help her out with carrying her groceries, replacing lightbulbs, and unscrewing jars.
He promises Laura he’ll always come stay with her for the full moon, and it’s really not far at all -- just a couple stops down the Q train. She looks sad and a little lonely when she hands him the money to pay his first month’s rent in advance.
***
It’s another waiter at the restaurant who points him to the escort agency, when he complains that he’s having a hard time finding a second job. The building is nice enough, and the lobby of the office is comfortably full of plush chairs and the hum of fluorescent lights. Derek is early for his interview, but he only has to wait a few minutes before the receptionist ushers him into the manager’s office.
The woman is in her mid-forties, impeccably dressed, her dark hair coiled in a perfect bun on the back of her head. Derek gives her his most charming smile and extends his hand. Her grip is firm and confident. “Well, you certainly look the part, Mister . . .”
“Hale,” he supplies, “Derek Hale.” She motions him to the seat across the desk from her and makes small talk for a few minutes, asking him where he’s from, how long he’s been in town, what he likes to do in his free time. Eventually, she asks for his driver’s license to verify his age. He wonders for a brief moment why it matters if he’s eighteen or not, given that he’s applying for a job which is illegal anyway.
“You must know, of course, that the legal system views solicitation and solicitation of a minor in very different ways,” she says, reading his face. “In either case I’m sure you are aware that our agency does not arrange for any illegal activity. We arrange meetings -- anything else is an agreement directly between you and your clients.”
“Of course,” Derek says, trying to sound like he knows what he’s talking about.
“Do you have any marks, scars, or tattoos?” she asks, handing his license back. He tells her he has a tattoo on his back, and she asks him to stand and remove his shirt so she can see it. He feels strangely naked under her gaze, remembering another time, another woman looking at the swirls on his back. She eyes him critically for a few moments, then lets him get dressed and sit down again. “I run a tight ship,” she says. “You’ll be tested for STDs once a month. We arrange all meetings and you are expected to be prompt and sober when meeting your clients. One complaint will get you a warning, two and you’ll be let go. You will also be able to file complaints against your clients if they violate the terms you have agreed to, and we can and will refuse to arrange any more meetings on their behalf if we find it’s warranted.”
Derek shifts in his seat, trying to avoid thinking about what “violating the terms” might involve. She hands him a clipboard with a document describing compensation and several forms. “If this sounds like the kind of job you are looking for, we would love to have you. Samantha will take you back to the lobby. If you don’t want the job, you are welcome to go. If you do, please fill out the forms and give the clipboard to Samantha, and she will take you back to have your photos taken for our website.” Derek recognizes a dismissal when he sees one, and he thanks her and opens the door, following the receptionist back to the front desk. She hands him a pen and he takes a seat to review the clipboard.
There are two forms: the first asks for his name, address, telephone number, and an emergency contact. The second is all about personal preferences. Derek breathes deeply and begins to fill them out.
***
It’s only a few days -- just long enough for them to get his STD test results -- before Derek gets his first call from the agency. The man he goes to meet is in his thirties, with the air of a businessman who works too many hours for romance. Derek smiles and laughs with him, and actually has a decently enjoyable evening letting his client treat him to an expensive dinner before taking him back to a suite on the business level of his hotel. He gives the man a blowjob on the bed, and heads home with an extra tip of fifty bucks in his pocket, on top of the amount he’ll get from the agency later.
The next day at the restaurant Derek thanks his coworker for referring him.
Most of the calls he gets are similar -- men of varying ages, looking for a night out, or maybe just a night in. Gradually they start sending him on jobs with men who are looking for something a little rougher, because Derek’s rapid healing means he can handle it easily. He doesn’t even bruise.
Laura smells it on him when he goes over to her place for the full moon, and he just tells her that it’s good money and it’s easier than life was in Beacon Hills. She worries about him, and he tells her there’s a reason he only takes male clients.
And then, one day, he gets a call from the agency asking if he’d be willing to take a female client as a special exception. “She’s offering five times your usual rate,” Samantha tells him. “Cash, up front. Took a liking to you on the website and wouldn’t be dissuaded. She wants to be rough and your reviews are excellent -- you’re top rated on the site. Only in town for one night so it won’t be a regular thing. Will you do it?”
Derek doesn’t sleep with women for money -- there have been a few one-night stands, when he finds himself needing more than the men he sees for work, when he wants slick moisture and soft curves -- because he doesn’t like letting a woman have power over him. He hasn’t liked it since he was sixteen. Still, with that much money he might be able to afford an apartment with an actual kitchen. Maybe one that doesn’t have rats. “I’ll do it if you raise my percentage,” he tells her, and hopes he’s not making a mistake.
That is how Derek comes to find himself sitting at a table on the porch of a cafe in Brooklyn, sipping ginger ale and checking the time on his phone to see how much longer it will be until his client arrives. He’s just putting his phone back into his pocket when he smells it -- too familiar, leather and gunpowder and fuck it’s the same body wash she used two years ago. He recognizes the scent long before he can see her face, and ducks his head, hoping she won’t notice him in the crowd and will pass right by.
Instead, the click of her boots and the sound of her breathing comes closer, and she slides into the seat across from him. “Sweetie,” she says, “when I called you a whore I didn’t think you were going to take it as career advice.”
Derek’s muscles tense, and he pushes back from the table violently, upsetting his chair. He wishes he were stronger, wishes he could bring himself to fight her, but his instincts tell him run run run and he’s already on his way when she speaks again. “If you run now,” Kate begins -- she doesn’t touch him, doesn’t even move from where she’s sitting, but he freezes up anyway and hates himself for it -- “your sister will be dead by the time you make it back to her apartment.” If he hadn’t already been stopped in his tracks just by the sound of her voice, that would have done it. He can hear the steady drum of her heart and knows she’s not lying.
“What do you want?” he asks, turning to face her again. His voice sounds strange to his own ears, rough and gritty, and his teeth are clenched in anger. If she were a werewolf, she would smell his fear; then again, she never needed extraordinary senses to know what Derek was feeling. Kate had always been able to read him like a book. His eyes meet hers for the first time since he smelled her coming, and somehow he’s surprised to find that she looks the same, that she’s just as beautiful as the day they met. Her eyes are still sparkling just like they were back then, her mouth turned up in a secretive smile. The difference is that now he knows her secret.
Kate stands up and walks over to him, and Derek tries not to flinch when she slides her hand down his arm and interlaces her fingers with his. “Let’s see, your profile said you enjoy a night out on the town, you like to play rough, and, what was the other one? Oh, you’re particularly skilled with your tongue.”
“You’re not serious,” Derek finds himself saying. For her to come here, to find him, to find Laura -- she must be planning to finish what she started back in Beacon Hills.
Kate leans in with her lips close to Derek’s ear. “Loosen up, Derek. I’m only in town for one night.” She reaches out to touch his chest, and he grabs her hand with his own to stop her. “It’ll be like old times,” she laughs. “Give me what I want, and I’ll even let your sister go . . . for now.” She starts walking down the street, tugging on his hand, and he follows her, helpless to do anything else.
***
The hotel she takes him to isn’t as upscale as his usual clients prefer, but it’s quiet. Derek thinks she must have picked it because it’s empty enough that there won’t be people in the next rooms to hear him scream. Kate kept up a steady stream of conversation on the subway ride and the walk over, and Derek can tell that his monosyllabic replies have been making her angrier. Still, he’s surprised when practically the moment he walks through the door he’s on his knees, stunned by the taser she had concealed in her jacket.
“Just to take the edge off,” she says, tossing the jacket over a chair. “I don’t really want to restrain you, sweetheart, but I can and will give you enough electricity to keep you human and weak.”
Derek struggles back to his feet, staggering against the door. “Why are you doing this?” he asks, buying himself some time to recover from the shock.
Kate laughs (does she ever stop laughing?). “My mother always told me not to play with my food, but I was never very good with table manners. I just thought you might need a little reminder that I can kill you whenever I decide I want to, and that in the meantime I can make you do anything I ask.” She walks back into his space, cornering him; he’s grown a couple inches in the past two years, and her breasts press into him a little lower than he remembers. “I don’t want to see any fangs or claws. Give me a good show, Derek,” she breathes against his lips.
Giving a good show is, after all, what he gets paid for these days. Maybe, he thinks -- maybe he can pretend that this isn’t Kate Argent. Maybe he can pretend she’s just another client. Maybe he can put on a good show and she’ll leave Laura alone.
Maybe, a small part of him whispers, he wants to.
It’s not so hard after all, not so hard to kiss her, to pretend that he has the upper hand, to play the seducer and tease his tongue into her mouth. The last time he was with Kate he was 16 years old and inexperienced; now, he thinks, he probably has more experience than she does. Going on the offense gives him back a little portion of the power she’s taken from him, and he backs her toward the bed, hands moving over her body. He feels a little stronger when he hears her heart rate pick up. She bites his lip, hard, and he backs off in surprise. “Being a whore agrees with you,” she says, “but don’t forget who’s in control here. Take off your clothes.”
Derek has learned how to make a show of this, too. He takes his fear for Laura, his anger at the deaths of his family, his hatred of Kate’s betrayal, and locks them away in the back of his mind. He repeats to himself you are not Derek Hale and she is not Kate Argent as he pulls off his clothes, flexing his muscles to catch the light to his best advantage. She watches him, sitting on the bed while she takes off her boots and her socks, lips twisted in amusement.
Derek does what Kate asks all night, tonguing her nipples, nuzzling her stomach, bringing her off with his mouth while she curses and grasps his ears with sharp fingernails. He doesn’t fuck her. She only let him the one time, the night before-- Well. You are not Derek Hale and she is not Kate Argent and he won’t -- can’t -- think about that right now. Instead, she makes him jerk himself off while she circles him, shock baton held in a loose grip, and when he comes she whispers filthy things in his ear about rabid animals and the smell of burning flesh.
She electrocutes him, then, over and over, until his screams sound like they’re coming from far, far away and the world goes black.
***
Derek wakes up alone in the hotel room. Kate’s scent catches in his throat and clogs his nose, and he barely makes it to the bathroom in time to heave up the contents of his stomach into the toilet. He staggers back into the room and digs his cell phone out of the pocket of his jeans, dialing Laura with trembling fingers.
She answers on the second ring and Derek has never been so relieved in his life. “Are you okay? Where are you? Is anyone following you? Watching you?” he asks frantically, wishing he could at least pretend to be calm.
“I’m fine,” she replies, “Derek, calm down, I’m fine. I’m at home. There were some hunters outside the building earlier, but they’re gone now.” Laura’s breathing, at least, is slow and even, and Derek tries to match it with his own. “What’s going on? Did they come after you? Are you hurt?”
“No,” he says, hoping that she can’t hear his heartbeat with the poor quality of the cell phone’s microphone, “I’m not hurt. I’m fine. Don’t-- Don’t worry about it. I think they were just passing through. I’ll come by later.” Derek ends the call and slumps down to the floor, head in his hands. He sits there for several minutes, breathing in and out, before it occurs to him that Kate might come back.
He gets dressed quickly, but a glance around the room tells him that she’s taken her things and gone. All that’s left is a fat wad of cash on the night table.
Derek clenches his fists so hard that his claws come out and pierce all the way through his hands. He starts to walk toward the door, then stops, turns, and goes back to the bed.
It’s five times his usual rate and an extra $300 tip.
The money burns in his pocket all the way home.
***
Thanks to quigonejinn and vongchild for beta/advice giving!
This entry was originally posted at http://marmolita.dreamwidth.org/5111.html. Please comment there using OpenID.