Love is Just a Bloodsport
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Summary: Kate teases out Derek's secrets.
Note: Title from “Bloodsport” by the Sneaker Pimps.
Love is Just a Bloodsport
This is the in-between, the waiting that happens in the
space between
one note and the next, the place where you confuse
his hands with the room, the dog
with the man, the blood
with the ripped-up sky.
{ The Dislocated Room by Richard Siken }
Kate wasn’t sure, at first. Short of seeing one turn or heal, there was no sure way of knowing whether someone was a werewolf or not. Wolfsbane worked as a preliminary test, but as her brother would never cease reminding her, a flinch or cough wasn’t hard evidence.
She had done her homework, knew the boy was part of the pack, but nothing more. She wouldn’t put her hand in the fire and swear the boy was a wolf. Not yet. But she was working on it.
The seduction was pitifully easy. Teenage boys and hormones were little rockets just waiting to go off, and Kate always loved to play with fire. She just had to crook a finger, shoot a smile, and Derek was hooked, blood hot and body aching for her. A few choice words, circumstantial truths with unspoken parentheses, like I love being with you (you’re such fun to toy with) and I’ve never felt this way before (the thrill of the con is intoxicating), words that won’t make her heartbeat trip and betray her.
She got him to talk almost as fast as she got him to come, teasing out stories of his life with her hands, her legs, her teeth and tongue and lips. He told her stories, told her dreams, told her wishes and fantasies and when I graduate, let’s… She forgot those as soon as they were said, leaving them in the bed (or behind the bleachers, or in the backseat of her car) along with the boy. But when he told her names and places and habits, she remembered every word.
It was fun. It was spy work and it was conning and it was sex with a beautiful boy. Jotting down shorthand notes in her journal - habitual routes and floor plans and my uncle said… - Kate would wonder if maybe she had enough, if she should go on to phase two and get her hands dirty with something that wasn’t sweaty teenage skin.
Sometimes Chris would look at her across the dinner table and Kate would wonder if she should just stop altogether. He was always going on about the Code, always reading the Bestiary, and reciting that damned French line, mangling the words but throwing them at Kate just the same. He would throw other words at her, what ifs and morality questions that muddied waters that should have been simple and clear and obvious.
Kate didn’t want to think like that, didn’t want to look down and see herself standing in black waters, toes in the mud. She knew what she was doing, knew it with the certainty and clarity of a soldier. A hunter.
But she was having so much fun. She loved the challenge, the delicate art of interrogating with the dip of her hips and twirl of her tongue, lying through her teeth while only saying the truth. She loved pulling Derek apart, stripping him down layer by layer, having him break in her arms so she could put him back together just the way she wanted, with the right word and touch and promise. It was like mining for gold - there was always something more, some other bright shiny secret to dig up, another piece of the boy to take and write down into her journal.
She also loved his body, how responsive it was, how easily taught - trained - it was, and how eager he was to please. She loved how it wasn’t the lean hardness of teenaged muscles stretched over bone, but the solid thickness of a man. Or a young werewolf.
Because now she knew for sure. She should add that to the Bestiary, how born werewolves bloomed into wolfhood in their teenage years. How bruises and bite-marks on his skin healed faster each day until one night she bit and sucked and scratched and the colours faded right under her hands. How she was the one with the bruises now because Derek literally did not know his own strength. How she could feel the growl in his chest echoing in her ribs. How he would turn his head and freeze mid-kiss or mid-thrust, dipping his head into the the side of her throat as he tried to control the shift.
When Derek says he loves her, that he’d die for her, she can’t help but laugh and think, “Because of me, you’ll die because of me,” and suddenly she stops laughing.
That night, lying in her bed but unshowered, leafing through her journal, she decides it is time for step two.