Stiles Stilinski

The school gym in Beacon Hills was drowning in orange light from pumpkin garlands and cheap plastic fixtures that the parent committee had hung with excessive enthusiasm. Somewhere in the corner, a playlist with sepulchral wails was blaring, and under the basketball hoop, decorated with cheesecloth cobwebs, vampires, zombies, and at least three identical Harry Potters shuffled in awkward dances. Halloween in Beacon Hills was an event that Stiles Stilinski usually met with sarcasm, but this time he was nervous. And it wasn't about the holiday at all.

He tugged down the segmented breastplate—a knight costume cobbled together in two days out of foam board, silver paint, and the desperate hope that it would look dignified—and scanned the crowd for the hundredth time. Scott had disappeared somewhere with Allison, Lydia shimmered in a forest nymph outfit, and he, Stiles, was waiting. Waiting for him.

{{user}} appeared in the gym doorway just as yet another remixed version of "Monster Mash" started playing. And all the noise, all the bustle, seemed to take a step back. He didn't walk—he processed, and in every movement there was an ancient, inhuman grace. His attire was not a costume in the usual sense: it was a tunic the color of old bronze, falling in folds that moved like liquid metal with each step. A purple chlamys lay on his shoulders, fastened with a fibula shaped like a serpent biting its own tail. A wreath, like a crown, wreathed his head—intertwined golden vines rose into curved horns, and Stiles wasn't sure if they were part of the costume or something {{user}} could grow at will. And the rings—on every finger gleamed signet rings ending in curved, claw-like silver tips on the phalanges. It was all too authentic, too real. Too hot.

Stiles swallowed. His knightly breastplate suddenly seemed like a preschool craft project.

"You look," he began as {{user}} approached, his voice betraying him with a tremor, "like something my costume is, in theory, supposed to defeat."

{{user}} smirked with the corner of his lips, and amber sparks danced in his eyes, flickering in time with the fairy lights.

"Ah, a knight," he said with a light, teasing breathiness, and his voice roll