A/N: Something a little new for you! Soulmate AU for Stiles/Jackson because the show messed up when it never let them connect and bond over the whole nogitsune/kanima things. Those traumas are too closely paralleled for me to let that go un-rectified. Sorry that it's not more Merlin or more Sterek, lol I'm pretty sure I'm losing half my readership cuz I keep switching fandoms and ships, whoops.


"What do you mean, he's leaving?"

Lydia looked at him like he was a moron, which, admittedly, was not an unusual thing, and picked at her salad.

"I mean he's leaving, Stiles," she said, voice sharp but low so it wouldn't carry across the cafeteria to any of the poor, innocent high-schoolers with no knowledge of the supernatural death match they had missed out on over the weekend. "After all the bullshit he just went through, can you blame him?"

She had a point there. Stiles' jeep still had a sizable, Jackson-shaped dent in the hood from where he had mown Jackson down just three days ago. And that had been the least traumatic part of the whole debacle.

"Well, yeah," Scott said around a mouthful of chicken nugget that made Lydia blink at him in disgust—and only Lydia could make something as simple as blinking convey such disdain. "But what about you?"

Lydia pursed her lips like she might not answer but eventually said, "What about me?"

Scott stared at her. Stiles did too, a bit.

"You're his soulmate!" Scott said, as if she didn't know that.

Everyone knew that and had for years. Lydia Martin and Jackson Whittemore were their generation's resident Perfect Match and had been since they met on the first day of sixth grade. They were inseparable, practically joined at the hip (in every way imaginable) and they were going to be together forever and ever, amen. For Jackson to flee the country and leave Lydia behind? Unthinkable.

And yet Lydia was chewing on her tongue, stabbing at her salad without actually picking the fork back up to bring any of it to her mouth.

"Soulmates don't always stay together, Scott," she said tartly, which was an evasion if Stiles ever heard one. "Look at you and Allison."

Scott winced, eyes straying unerringly to the far side of the cafeteria where Allison was sat alone at a table, her books spread out around her to discourage friendly overtures. Her hair was up in a haphazard bun, dark circles under her eyes. She looked exhausted, and she didn't meet Scott's eyes even though it was obvious from the tension in her shoulders that she knew he was looking.

"Allison and I will work it out," Scott said with the kind of faith that always made Stiles exasperated and jealous in equal measure. "We're soulmates! We're literally perfect for each other, made to be together."

Stiles made a disagreeing noise in his throat.

"That's not exactly what it is, Scottie," he said, and not for the first time because Scott was just too idealistic to bother with the nuances of real life sometimes. "Just because two people understand each other perfectly doesn't mean they necessarily work as a couple. You can understand someone and still not want to be with them."

Lydia pointed to him, raising her eyebrows at Scott in triumph. Scott just frowned.

"But you and Jackson do want to be together," he said, getting back on topic. "You've been together for years. And now all of the sudden, Jackson's just fine with leaving his soulmate behind?"

Lydia looked away. She was pale, paler than usual, with those same tired circles under her eyes as Allison; for all that Jackson had been the primary victim in the whole kanima mess, Lydia had fielded her share of attacks recently too and it showed. She huffed a sigh and threw down her fork, sending it clattering across the table.

"He's not," she said, glaring at the fork like it had run away of its own accord.

Stiles picked up the fork and held it out to her, laying it gently down on her neatly folded napkin when she didn't take it from him.

"He's not...leaving?" he asked, confused.

Lydia's eyes were red-rimmed when they met his.

"He's not my soulmate anymore," she said, voice catching in her throat like she might actually cry right there in the cafeteria.

Stiles got his hand over Scott's mouth just in time to muffle his shout of disbelief, swallowing his own down only because he honestly wasn't that surprised; after all, soulmates changed when people did, usually after a life-changing event. Like a botched werewolf bite and subsequent mind-controlled murder spree. Scott just shoved him off and leaned in towards Lydia like proximity might make her words make more sense.

"Your name-mark changed?" he asked, unreasonably horrified over something that happened more often than not, truth be told.

Lydia wiped at her eyes, nodding.

"I noticed when I got home Friday night," she said. "I was taking a bath and… His name has just always been there, you know? Every since we were little, before we even met. And now it's just…"

Stiles felt a chill down his spine, some of Scott's horror creeping into his mind as well at the possibility that hung in the air.

Lydia seemed to notice their concern because she shook her head quickly.

"It's not gone," she said. "Well, his name is gone. I have a new soulmate now, apparently. Some guy named Jordan. I don't know him yet but I guess I will eventually. And that's fine. I mean, there's nothing wrong with changing soulmates. It's just...different."

Stiles slumped back in his seat, nearly boneless with relief on Lydia's behalf.

"Thank god," Scott said. "For a minute there, I thought you'd say you had no soulmate at all."

Lydia bit her lip, starting up again with the salad-stabbing.

"Lyd?" Stiles asked slowly. "What's with the face?"

She sighed.

"I don't think Jackson has another name," she said, almost a whisper.

Scott dropped his most recent chicken nugget.

"We only talked over the phone," Lydia went on, "but it was obvious that he was upset. More upset than he would've been if his soulmate had just changed, like mine. And really, it makes sense, you know? With everything that he went through? How many people could really understand that the way a soulmate should?"

"Wow," Scott breathed out, chicken nugget forgotten in the face of Jackson's terrible, pitiable fate. "Poor guy."

Stiles had to agree. He might not like Jackson very much as a person, but he wouldn't wish no-name status on anybody.


Stiles had known his soulmate since he was two years old. They had had playdates together long before they'd been old enough to read the names written on their inner thighs in freckle-brown letters. Stiles had learned how to spell Heather's name before his own—and not only because his real name was a Polish nightmare of a key-smash—and Heather had made her mom research the pronunciation of his name to make sure she had it right. They were peas in a pod as kids and no one ever doubted that they would be together forever, least of all them.

When they were nine years old, the two of them had sat down to have a very serious talk about the whole soulmate business. They were both thoughtful children, for all Stiles' hyperactivity and Heather's unrelenting idealism, and they decided that it would be best if they had a chance to grow as individuals before they committed to each other for the rest of their lives. There was no worry, they said, because they were perfect for each other and they always would be. Some day in the future, when they were grown ups and knew what was what, they would be together for real. They would have their happily ever after, just later, when they were old and wise enough to appreciate it.

So they went to separate schools and had different groups of friends and stayed in contact via texts and emails and facebook and birthday parties. And it was good. There was something immensely reassuring, Stiles found, in knowing that there was someone out there who loved him unconditionally, who knew him right down to his core and would always just get him even when no one else did. Even if he didn't see her very often, she was still out there, waiting for him just like he was waiting for her. They didn't even really miss each other, not in the sad kind of way, because it was only a matter of time before they were together again, but for real this time.

Stiles thought for a while, though, that maybe it would be better to wait even longer than they had planned. With all the werewolves and rogue alphas and psycho hunters and molotov cocktails that had suddenly invaded his life, all he could think sometimes was that he was glad Heather hadn't been dragged into it too. The distance between them had kept her safe so far, maybe it would continue to keep her safe. Hardly anyone knew they were soulmates, after all, and it's not like anyone was directly targeting Stiles like they were Scott and Derek. Heather would be safe as long as Stiles kept her out of it.

But that wasn't fair. Stiles knew that if she had kept him in the dark about something like this, he would be beyond pissed. She deserved to know, to have the choice to stand and fight like he did. To stand by his side through it all. And if she was perfect for him like their name-marks said she was, then Heather would be every bit as brave, clever, and strong as she needed to be to survive the onslaught. Stiles knew she was, and it was about time that he gave her the chance to prove it.

Stiles was going to tell her everything. It was her seventeenth birthday party and he was going to tell her about the werewolves and hunters and the things that went bump in the night and they were going to be together for real and be the most badass monster-fighting couple ever and it was going to be great.

Heather seemed to have the same idea. Well, sort of the same idea. The finally being together for real idea, at least, considering she practically jumped him as soon as he walked through the door. Not that he was complaining about that in any way at all. He would tell her all the scary stuffafter the party.

Or he would have if she hadn't run off. Rude but not unforgivable or anything. They had been moving a little fast, after all, and they were still young. Maybe she had panicked and changed her mind and wanted a little more time before they did the do and all that. That was fine! Stiles could wait, no problem, even though he would've appreciated a conversation about it instead of a kiss-and-ditch situation. It was fine and she would probably call him later to apologize and he would maybe tell her about the crazy stuff then.

Except she didn't call. She didn't call and her parents hadn't seen her in two days and there was a gnawing worry in the pit of Stiles' stomach that he couldn't ignore even when there were bodies turning up at pools and Lydia doing weird shit and an alpha pack being all menacing on the horizon. And when Stiles' found her body in the hospital morgue, he didn't even have it in him to be surprised.

The numb shock of it followed him through all the craziness of the next few weeks. Everything was too fast and too much and he didn't have a single moment to fucking breathe, not with Deucalion the demon wolf and Ms. Blake the vengeful druid and Boyd dead on Derek's unwilling claws and Scott off the rails and his dad in the kind of danger Stiles had tried so hard to keep him out of. It wasn't until everything was over, all enemies defeated and the danger passed, that Stiles finally noticed.

Heather's name was gone. He knew that, had known it for weeks, knew it deep in his gut where all the darkness of the last year had settled. But in his grief he hadn't quite comprehended the blank space where her name had been. Blank. Empty.

Nameless.

Heather was gone and no one could ever really replace her, but this felt different. He was no-name, completely alone in a way he had never been in his life. No one was out there waiting for him anymore, no unconditional love and acceptance, no other half to make him whole.

Stiles was only glad that the running of the shower covered up the sound of his panic attack when even the water going cold wasn't enough to shock him out of it.


Stiles didn't tell anyone. Not his dad, not Scott, no one.

It wasn't that being no-name was a bad thing. It happened to plenty of people, good people, all the time, and it wasn't usually permanent. People changed and their name-marks changed with them; everything was fluid, even fate. So it was fine that Stiles didn't have a soulmate right now, really, it was. It was fine. Soon enough another name would take Heather's place, like Jordan's name had taken Jackson's when his and Lydia's bond was broken.

Until then he would just keep it to himself. It was better than seeing the same awful, horrified look on Scott's face as he had a few months ago. Stiles didn't want Scott or anyone else pitying him like they did Jackson, looking at him with those sad fucking puppy-dog eyes and lamenting his tragic fate. He didn't fucking need that, not on top of the crushing weight of Heather's absence and the even heavier burden of loneliness that came with the featureless stretch of pale skin where she had been.

Scott didn't ask. For once in his life, he showed a bit of tact and just didn't ask what had happened to Stiles' name-mark in the wake of his soulmate's death. Whether it was out of respect for Heather's memory and Stiles' grief, or because he didn't truly want to know the answer to that question, Stiles didn't know but he was grateful for it anyway. Or he just forgot, caught up in the whole mess of it and his own preoccupation over Allison. And Scott was the only one of his friends who had known about him and Heather, although the looks that Lydia gave him sometimes made him think she had guessed. She didn't say anything either, though.

His dad, too, was blessedly tight-lipped about it, but the dimness in his eyes and the way his rough-worn hand pressed against the back of Stiles' neck was almost too empathetic to bear; it harkened back to the days after the illness finally took his mother, when his dad had buried himself in bottles to numb the pain of it. For the first time, Stiles understood the impulse.

But he couldn't let himself fall victim to that kind of addictive escapism, no matter how much wanted to, so he did what he did best: he kept busy.

He did his schoolwork diligently, picked up extra credit work when it was available, did assignments ahead of time only to trash them and do them all over from the beginning. He went to lacrosse practice and did drills until his head spun and his heart stuttered in his chest, then stayed late to do some more. He stole esoteric books from Deaton's office and read them all twice, scoured the internet for reputable sources on mythological creatures, tried to sort out the bullshit from the true lore.

But more than anything, Stiles focused on his friends, the ones that were still around. He let Scott talk about Allison and how he would win her back eventually—even though every mention of soulmates and fated bonds and true love made his stomach churn—and did his best to be a good best friend, to be solid and supportive even with the more and more frequent nightmares that left him feeling like the rug was being pulled out from under his feet inch by inch, a little more every night.

And when Kira caught Scott's eye, Stiles heaved an internal sigh of relief. Soulmate or not, Allison was adamant that they didn't work together anymore, and Stiles couldn't blame her for that. Sometimes soulmates just weren't meant to be romantic, sometimes they didn't make it, and that was supposed to be okay. If Scott could be happy with Kira, and Allison with Isaac, then one way or another Stiles could be happy without Heather. With every besotted look Scott and Kira shared, Stiles fought harder to believe that, to make the iron bands around his chest loosen enough for him to breathe again.

It was Derek who gave him that first breath of fresh air, and not in a way he would have expected. Stiles hadn't told him about Heather, hadn't told anyone, but apparently he hadn't needed to. Derek had taken one look at him and sighed. He put a hand on Stiles' shoulder, smiled in a way that was so fucking sad it made Stiles' throat close up just to see it.

"It gets better," Derek said, soft enough that not even the other wolves could overhear. "Never stops hurting completely, but it does get better."

Derek had been no-name for nearly eight years, ever since Paige's name had vanished and none had taken its place. He had no soulmate, no one who could truly understand what all he had been through, and yet here he still was. Still standing tall in the face of a world that had shit on him again and again. Always pushing forward, always fighting even with no fated mate to fight for.

"I know it feels like you're alone," Derek told him, still with that hand warm on his shoulder, fingertips digging into the muscle just enough to ground him. "But you're not. You've got a dozen people who care about you, Stiles, soulmate or no. Don't let yourself forget that."

Stiles stared after Derek when he walked away, watched as he stood apart from the rest, with the pack but not really a part of it. He wondered if Derek took his own advice, if he realized that all the people who cared about Stiles cared about him too. Somehow Stiles doubted it, but Derek held his head high anyway, watching them all with something like pride, like he was glad to be there with them despite what it had taken to get him there.

Even alone, Derek was stronger than anyone else he knew. That was the kind of strength Stiles could aspire to, and not just with being no-name. With the fucking nightmares, the hallucinations, the constant surreal terror nipping at his heels and howling to be let in. If he could just make it through, just keep pushing like Derek did every day, then he would be fine.

So Stiles went to lacrosse practice and did his homework—or tried to, at least, when the letters didn't chase each other off the page. He didn't let his eyes stray to the jarringly unblemished skin of his inner thigh, clenched his hands to keep from brushing over where the letters used to be. He gave Scott pep talks—or he thought he did, could've sworn he did, maybe that had been a dream too—and watched Isaac make cow eyes at Allison.

He counted his fingers every time the world skewed too much and gritted his teeth against another scream when he reached eleven.


Stiles couldn't sleep anymore. Or maybe the problem was that he couldn't wake up, maybe it was all just one long nightmare and sometime soon he would wake up screaming to find that everything was fine and Allison was alive and he hadn't spent the last however long as a meat puppet for chaos incarnate. But then, waking up hadn't been very effective of late, so even if he did it wouldn't do him a lot of good.

The world—what he thought he knew of it, at least—was in shades of blood-tinted grey and counting his fingers did no good when he knew he couldn't trust them.

They weren't his. And not in the sense that they had done awful, horrific things outside of his control—swords and blood and a rush of savage pleasure, perverse and unforgettable—but they weren't his. Not his hands, not his face, not his body. Everything that he was was fake, a magical construct vomited up by a demon and left to approximate life in a world that didn't make any fucking sense to him anymore. He couldn't look in the mirror, couldn't look at the thing he had become and see It staring back at him with his face.

Stiles didn't tell his friends any of that either. Sometimes he thought he could still taste their fear, could feel it like a sick thrill in his gut. The way his dad seemed ready to dive headfirst into a bottle of Jack Daniels every time he looked at Stiles. The way Kira was skittish and nervous around him. The way Lydia flinched sometimes when she caught sight of him before reminding herself that it wasn't the same him. The blank look in Scott's eye and the palpable grief that Stiles knew all too well—the loss of a soulmate, though Stiles knew that Kira's name had replaced Allison's on Scott's thigh.

None of them seemed to notice how Stiles watched them, searching out their fingers to count when he could because he knew his own were unreliable. How he stared at books and fought down panic when the words shimmered and shifted before eyes that didn't quite see the way they used to. How he scratched, clawed at the skin that dared to claim itself as his when it wasn't, wasn't even real, wasn't him at all but something foreign and wrong and inescapable.

Stiles did his best to forget about it, covered up as much of himself as possible in layers and layers of plaid just so he didn't have to see himself. He still showered when he had to, because it drew unwanted attention to him when he started to offend the werewolves' noses, even though all that vulnerable, traitorous skin on display made him sick to his stomach, made his borrowed head spin.

Or maybe that was exhaustion, hunger, whatever; he wasn't sure how long it had been since his last meal, whether his last real awakening had been that morning or a month ago, but what did it really matter? Even with the nogitsune dead—and him along with it, the real him, anyway—he was still in the nightmare.

The skin still felt the same, at least, still transmitted all the same signals of pain and pleasure even if it was all felt through the heavy felt blanket that seemed determined to smother him these days. When his hands rubbed soap across his stomach—unscarred from the evisceration he could still feel sometimes, the buzzing of flies loud in his ears—he could feel the slip and glide of it, up his chest to his neck, along his shoulder and down one arm to the other hand. He didn't let himself linger there; if he did, he would scrub until he broke skin trying to wash away the remembered slick of blood and the fresh blood it brought would send him into a new panic.

The hands were dangerous territory in a lot of ways, so he avoided those as best he could. Better to focus on the innocuous things, the few parts of him that had never been used to kill and maim and torture. Legs were relatively safe. Feet were fine, no guilt to be had there. Knees that only shook sometimes, thighs as blank and featureless as alw—

Stiles nearly slipped and bashed his head in trying to get a closer look because there was no way he had just seen what he thought he did. That spot had been empty for months, ever since Heather, and it had been weeks since his latest life-changing experience; why would it change now? Or maybe it wasn't just now. He hadn't been looking, after all. He hadn't liked the reminder of his no-name status, had studiously trained himself not to see the evidence of his isolation, and the nogitsune had sealed the deal, he thought; who could possibly understand him now? He hadn't thought about his own soulmate status in a long time.

When Stiles finally managed to contort himself the right way without causing injury, he stared. And then he stared some more, long enough for the water to grow cold around him, wondering if this was part of the dream. Finally he decided that it had to be real only because his subconscious was not creative enough to come up with this.

There, in freckle-brown letters stark against pale skin, was the name Jackson Whittemore.


Stiles checked his thigh again the next morning—assuming he was really awake this time; he didn't remember going to sleep the night before—but it was still there. Every time he checked, even when he was sure he was dreaming, Jackson's name was staring up at him, something between a threat and a light at the end of some tunnel. It took four days for Stiles to convince himself that this was real, in every sense, and not some twisted figment of his imagination. Then he made his decision.

Lydia flinched when she opened her front door to find him standing there, disheveled and pyjama-clad and a rolled-out-of-bed type of non-threatening, and Stiles couldn't help but step back, ready to throw it all away and leave right now if that's what she wanted. But she frowned at her own reaction, raised her head and smiled at him determinedly, and that helped to remind Stiles that it wasn't him she was afraid of, not really. That hadn't been him, he wasn't the nogitsune, wasn't what it had made of him.

She let him in, led him up to her room and sat primly on her bed, a queen holding court even in sweats and a t-shirt.

"What's up?"

Stiles hesitated, clenching his hands in the extra fabric of his pyjama pants to keep them from straying to places that were sort of inappropriate in a public context just to check; what if it had disappeared? What if he had imagined it after all and he would find only pale skin and nothingness if he looked one more time?

No, he had made sure. He had checked over and over again, wasted days in pursuit of some kind of certainty. He was as sure as he could be of anything nowadays that Jackson Whittemore was his new soulmate. That was why he was here, standing like a moron in Lydia's room with her staring at him and looking more and more concerned the longer he didn't say anything. He opened his mouth to speak, had to clear his throat and try again.

"Do you still talk to Jackson?"

That was obviously not even on the spectrum of things Lydia had expected to hear from him, not that Stiles could blame her for that. He was still having trouble believing it too, and not just because reality was a relative thing by now. It was just...Jackson.

"Jackson?" Lydia echoed his thoughts, one eyebrow raised skeptically.

"Yes, Jackson," Stiles repeated. "Are you still in contact with him?"

Lydia nodded slowly.

"Of course," she said. "We were soulmates for a long time. We didn't just stop caring about each other when the bond broke. We talk sometimes."

"Good. Great. Um…"

Stiles scratched at the back of his neck, the strangeness of the moment translating into a physical sensation itching all over him, screaming at him that none of this could possibly be real. He squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head, ignored it as best he could.

"I need to talk to him," he forced out.

Lydia's mouth fell open.

"You what?"

Stiles rolled his eyes, impatient; he had really been hoping that she would be quicker on the uptake, or at least that she wouldn't ask questions. But of course she would, she was Lydia. She always wanted a hundred and ten percent of all the information on any given situation, especially ones brought directly to her doorstep.

"I need to talk to Jackson," he reiterated through gritted teeth. "Is there a number I can call?"

"Why?" Lydia asked, eyes narrowed.

Stiles gripped his pant leg again, tighter; he wasn't up for an interrogation right now. His skin was crawling, his head hurt from exhaustion, and he just needed to know that, in this if nothing else, he wasn't crazy. He couldn't get that from Lydia, no matter how smart and wonderful she was. The only person who could give him that was Jackson.

"Will you give me the number or not?" he snapped.

Lydia blinked at him in a different kind of surprise, this one tinged with hurt, and Stiles bit his tongue until it bled; it wasn't the first time he had lashed out at someone recently, even though they were just trying to help. He couldn't seem to stop himself nowadays, but he still felt like a giant sack of dog shit every time he did it. He was just so goddamn angry, all the time about everything, and it scared him. He could feel it sometimes, that anger, like a separate entity boiling inside him and fighting to get out. It was like the Nogitsune all over again, only entirely of his own making this time.

Lydia's hand, small and cool on his arm, made him jump.

"Stiles, what's going on?" she asked, gentler than her data-mining voice.

"Nothing," Stiles lied. "I just need to talk to Jackson."

Lydia let out a soft sigh, her disappointment clear, and Stiles turned his face away. Her hand tightened for a second, nails sharp against the softness of his inner forearm, before she let go.

"Fine," she said shortly. "But eventually you're going to tell me everything. Because it's definitely something."

Stiles thought about protesting again, but she had already snatched his phone out of his pocket and there wasn't really any point in arguing with Lydia Martin anyway. He watched wordlessly as she programmed a number into his contact list.

"Long distance rates apply," she warned him, as if that would deter him. Then she held the phone out but snatched it back when he reached for it, face expectant.

"Fine, I promise," Stiles said, too tired to fight anymore. "I'll tell you, I will, just...not now, okay?"

He must have looked like a kicked puppy or something because Lydia's pursed-lip look melted away.

"Okay, sweetie." She leaned up to press a kiss to his forehead and put the phone in his hand, squeezing his fingers in hers for a moment. "Get some sleep, Stiles."

Stiles gave her a wan smile and let her shepherd him to the front door and out. He sat in his jeep in her driveway for a long time, clutching the phone in his hand and wishing it were that easy.


It took Stiles another two weeks to work up the courage to actually make the call. Two weeks of curious, impatient glances from Lydia and waiting to get the same from the others even though she swore she hadn't mentioned it to anyone else. Two weeks of his friends' vague concern over his new twitchiness on top of all his other behavioral issues, though no one bothered to ask directly. Two weeks of checking his phone again and again to make absolutely sure that the number was still there, that he hadn't dreamed it up.

It came down to fear if he was honest with himself, which he had taken to being if only because he could never be completely sure that anyone else was at this point. He was afraid to call Jackson because what if he didn't have a matching name-mark? What if some celestial wires got crossed and Jackson was Stiles' soulmate but Stiles wasn't his and he told Stiles to fuck off? Or what if Jackson told him that he was still no-name and it turned out that Stiles was just so lonely and pathetic that it was all one long, self-pity-induced delusion?

But he had to know. He needed to know one way or another or he would keep thinking himself in circles, drive himself even crazier than he already was, which he really couldn't afford to do with his grip on sanity tenuous at best these days. And wouldn't it be worth it in the end, if he was right? If it was true and he had a soulmate again, someone who could understand him completely, wouldn't that be worth any risk?

If Jackson matched, that is. If he cared. Hell, maybe Jackson had noticed the mark change months ago and just ignored it because he was disgusted at the prospect of having Stiles as his soulmate; they had never exactly gotten along before, were always at each other's throats, always fighting. But there was an equal chance that he had just not seen the new name-mark, like Stiles.

Stiles had his phone in hand before he could talk himself out of it again. His dad had just left for another back-to-back night shift—anything, apparently, to get away from his son, to get out of the oppressive atmosphere that had descended on their house—and he was sat on his bed alone, staring down the barrel of yet another night of finger-counting and over-thinking if he didn't do something.

He pressed the little green call button.

It rang for a worryingly long time, long enough for Stiles to decide twice that he was going to hang up and then change his mind both times. By the time a familiar voice came over the line, Stiles was considering throwing himself out his bedroom window and wondering if he would die or just wake up again.

"Who is this? How did you get this number?"

Jackson sounded just the way he used to, snappish and demanding. Stiles swallowed hard, all his words tangled up and lodged in his throat now that he had his opening. The hand holding his phone was shaking.

"Hello? Whoever you are, you shouldn't have this number," Jackson said. "If you keep calling, I'll—"

"I got it from Lydia," Stiles choked out because it sounded like Jackson was going to hang up and he would never be able to make the call again if he let that happen, he just wouldn't.

There was a pause where Stiles held his breath and waited for the click of disconnect, but it didn't come.

"Stilinski?" Confused, disbelieving.

Stiles cleared his throat, gripping one of his pillows hard enough for an uneven fingernail to make a run in the fabric.

"Uh, yeah. Yeah, it's me."

"Why the hell are you calling me?"

Stiles closed his eyes; now or never.

"I need you to check your name-mark."

That statement was met with stunned silence. Not unexpected, but not promising either. And it gave Stiles far too much time to panic. He took deep, slow breaths to force it down; there was no reason to freak out just yet, none at all, no reason to—

"What the fuck, Stilinski?"

Stiles heart dropped. Jackson sounded angry. Like, really genuinely angry, which was not one of the reactions that Stiles was mentally prepared for.

"I always knew you were kind of a jerk, Stilinski," Jackson spat, "but I never thought of you as cruel. Did you seriously call me up just to rub my no-name status in my face?"

"No!" Stiles said immediately, knocking his pillow off the bed entirely as he scrambled forward like he could actually physically reach out over the phone somehow. "No, Jackson, that's not what I'm doing at all!"

"I don't need this shit, okay?" Jackson said, talking over him. "This is the whole reason I left in the first place, so dicks like you wouldn't have the chance to—"

"I wouldn't, Jackson, I swear! I would be the last person to mock you for this."

"Oh really?" Jackson sneered. "And why's that?"

"Because I've been no-name for months, okay?"

The words almost got stuck on their way to his mouth, coming out strangled and hoarse; he realized abruptly that he had never said it out loud before.

"My soulmate died," he pushed on—another first—because he needed Jackson to understand. And Jackson should understand, if this was all real and not just the start to a whole new kind of nightmare. "She was...she was murdered. Ritually sacrificed, actually. Back in September."

"Oh."

Stiles snatched his pillow back off the floor, wrapping his free arm around it and holding it tight against his stomach, over the place where the shard of Noshiko's tail had pierced his other body. Somehow this felt more invasive.

"I get it, okay? It sucks, being alone," he said, his voice breaking. "I would never do anything to make that worse for you, man, I promise."

There was a shuffling noise like maybe Jackson was sitting down on his bed too. Stiles shifted to the edge of his, hoping that having ground under his feet would make him feel more solid, less unmoored. It didn't really work, but there was something comforting in having a physical parallel between them, even if it was only in his imagination.

"Look, I'm sorry or whatever," Jackson said eventually. "About your soulmate. But what does that have to do with me?"

"I told you," Stiles said. "I need you to check your name-mark."

Jackson huffed.

"Why the hell should I? There's nothing there, there hasn't been in over a year."

"Jackson, please, just—"

Stiles cut himself off, running a hand through his hair and pulling hard. He was getting that feeling again, the itching, creeping numbness that threatened to drag him down and lock him away. He pulled on his hair harder, needing the sting to keep him focused for another few minutes. Just long enough to get his answer.

"Please, can you just check?"

"Hey, are you okay?" Jackson asked, stilted and awkward. "I can hear your heartbeat going nuts."

Stiles laughed a bit, strangled and a little hysterical; he was surrounded by werewolves on a daily basis and the only one to really notice his distress was the one on another continent. Fucking of course.

"I don't know," he said, honest for once. "I don't— Please."

Jackson sighed, and it wasn't in the melodramatic way he used to, either, but a real, genuinely tired-sounding sigh.

"Fine," he said. "Fine, I'll fucking check."

More shuffling of fabric, a staticky crackle that was probably Jackson putting the phone down on the bed, the metallic snick of a zipper being pulled. Stiles clutched at the side of his bed until the tips of his fingers throbbed with his heartbeat, counting the pulses and timing his breaths to them as he waited. He got up to twenty-six before he heard a muffled, "What the fuck…"

Then there was a lot of white noise that he assumed was Jackson scrambling to pick the phone back up and get it to his ear.

"What the fuck, Stilinski?"

"Is it there?" Stiles asked, and he didn't have it in him anymore to be ashamed of how desperate he sounded.

"How the— That's not possible! I was no-name for a reason, no one should—"

"My name, is it there?" Stiles asked again, voice cracking.

"Yes, but it shouldn't b—"

The tears hit Stiles like an oncoming train, as painful as they were unexpected. He stuffed his fist into his mouth to try and muffle the sound but there was no way Jackson didn't hear, not with his werewolf ears and not when the sobs made Stiles' ribcage ache with the force of them.

Stiles' numb fingers gave up their grip on the phone and it fell as he bent forward, head between his knees like that could somehow stem the flood now that the dam was broken, but the tears just kept coming because they matched. They matched and he wasn't nameless anymore. He had a soulmate again, but this time that soulmate was Jackson Whittemore and Jackson didn't want him and never would and even with fate on his side, Stiles was still alone.

He had been wrong before, when he'd thought this would be worth the risk. How had he not realized how much his soulmate's rejection would shatter him? He should have seen this coming—it was Jackson, for fuck's sake—but he hadn't and now he would be left to pick up what pieces of himself were left. He wondered if he would be able to put them back together or if every bit of him was already too broken to fit.

By the time the waterworks died down and he could finally get some breath back into his starving lungs, feeling cramped and raw and like they didn't quite fit inside him, Stiles expected Jackson to be gone. Surely he had hung up, disgusted by Stiles' neediness, driven away by the pathetic weakness he had seen in Stiles even back in freshman year. But when Stiles wiped at his face with the back of his hands, rubbing at gritty eyes until he saw stars—because at least those were the innocuous kind of hallucination—he could have sworn he heard a voice, tinny and indistinct. He squinted down at his rumpled bedding for a moment, doubting his senses even more than he usually did, but he heard it again.

Stiles threw his comforter back, hands already scrambling amongst sheets and pillows, but there was a clunk and a muffled thunk that told him the phone had gotten thrown somewhere. He found it stuck down between his bed and the wall and scraped the back of his hand on the siding as he fished it out again.

"Stiles?" Jackson was saying, and his voice was hoarse like maybe he'd been saying it over and over again, loud and insistent, trying to get his attention. "Stiles, are you still there?"

"Yes," Stiles said, letting the side of his face rest against the wall where it was cool and soothing and stable. "Yeah, I'm—I'm here."

He heard Jackson give a shaky sigh.

"Jesus, Stiles," he said. "What the hell happened to you?"

And wasn't that just the million dollar question? Heat crept up the back of Stiles' neck, a flush of shame. He dragged himself upright, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the ruined mess that was his bed, and sniffed.

"How much has Lydia told you?" he asked.

"Not much," Jackson said, sounding strangely subdued now. "We don't really talk about Beacon Hills stuff."

Stiles could understand that. If he had gotten away, gotten out, then he wouldn't want to know anything about this place either. He would do anything to keep from getting dragged back in, would cut all ties if he had to, drop everything and never look back. Jackson was the lucky one, really, and Stiles couldn't honestly say that he hadn't contemplated following in his footsteps and hopping on a fucking plane. But he couldn't do that to Scott, to his dad, to Derek and Lydia and Malia. He couldn't leave them all behind to fend for themselves, even if it killed him to stay. And with the way things were going, it was looking more and more likely that it would.

"It's, uh...sort of a long story," he said. "Does it matter?"

He didn't want to tell it. He didn't want to drag it all up again, try and force it into some kind of coherent narrative when so much of it was still a blur of horror and fear, for the sake of someone who didn't really care. Jackson had never had any sympathy for him or his problems before, why should that change now? Name-marks didn't mean all tha much if the people marked didn't want to make it work, so there was no point in going into his sob story. Stiles would only end up doubly hurt; he didn't know why he had even made this call in the first place.

But then Jackson said, "Of course it matters!" And by some miracle, he sounded like he meant it.

Stiles had to pull the phone away from his ear to check that he was still connected to the person he thought he was. Jackson's name was on the screen, however little sense that made. His head gave a particular unhappy throb and he tried the eye-rubbing thing again. It didn't do anything to alleviate the growing pain, sharp and real in the one moment he might have actually welcomed the feeling of bodily disconnect he had come to dread so much, nor the anger that rose up to drown the hollowed out feel of exhaustion both mental and physical.

"What do you even care, Jackson?" he bit out. "You don't want me as your soulmate, so why should you—"

"I never said that."

Stiles' next words died a quick death before they made it past his lips. His breath gusted out of him like he was a deflating balloon, taking his anger with it.

"But you...you just said I shouldn't be."

Shouldn't be Jackson's soulmate, shouldn't be taking up space on Jackson's skin where he wasn't wanted.

"I didn't mean it like that, I meant—" Jackson stammered, tripping over his words in a way Stiles had never heard before.

Stiles bit his lip, scratching a hand through his hair again and no doubt leaving it sticking up all over.

"Meant what?"

"I just meant…I mean, you know what happened to me," Jackson said. "After the kanima and everything, I was no-name because no one could possibly know what it was like. Soulmates are supposed be able to understand each other, but this. Jesus, Stiles, what happened to you to make you understand all that?"

Stiles fought to swallow against the tightness in his throat, eyes stinging like they would tear up again if they could.

"There, uh...there might have been a possession involved," he confessed. "Lot of fighting and bloodshed, you know, the usual."

Jackson swore, quietly but with a lot of feeling, then said, "And now we're—?"

"Yeah, seems like. Sorry."

Because apologizing felt like something Stiles should do, though he wasn't quite sure why. For forcing this connection on Jackson? For butting into Jackson's self-imposed exile and dragging him back into the Beacon Hills drama? For getting possessed and getting them in this mess in the first place?

"No, I'm sorry," Jackson said, successfully shocking Stiles out of his shame spiral in a way nothing else could. "I know how awful all that is. I wouldn't wish it on anyone."

Stiles sniffed again and picked at a loose thread on the cuff of his pyjama pants, tugging on it until it bunched up the fabric around it. He didn't really know what to say to that, so he didn't say anything. That was sort of his go-to response lately, so very different from his previous fake-it-til-you-make-it style of rambling to relieve the tension.

Jackson cleared his throat.

"So are you...okay?" he asked slowly, like he wasn't sure how to form the unfamiliar words. "I mean, how are you, you know, coping?"

Stiles laughed, unable to stop himself.

"I'm not," he said through his inappropriate chuckling. "I'm really, really not. God, I am so fucked up, I can't even tell you."

There was silence on the other end of the line and Stiles thought maybe he'd finally scared Jackson off, sent him running for the hills like Stiles expected from the start. Then—

"I'm booking a flight home."

"What? " Stiles yelped, nearly knocking his elbow on his bedside table in his flail of surprise.

"I said I'm booking a flight," Jackson repeated, like it would be less bizarre the second time.

"Yes, I did hear you say those words," Stiles said, "but what I do not understand is why."

"Because you're my soulmate," Jackson said with something of his old haughty possessiveness sneaking back into his tone. "And believe it or not, that means something to me. I'm not going to let my soulmate go through something like this alone."

Stiles mouth worked soundlessly as his tired, overwrought brain struggled to catch up with what was happening. Something of his distress must have carried over anyway because Jackson made a quiet noise that might have been frustration.

"Look, I know we've never exactly been the best of friends," he said with a gentleness that sounded odd and out of place in a voice Stiles had only ever heard angry or disdainful before. "And I know that was more my fault than yours. I was a real jackass back then, to everyone, for a lot of stupid, immature reasons. And I was a shit soulmate to Lydia, I realize that now. I don't want to make that same mistake again."

"You actually want… You're not, like, mad or anything?" Stiles asked faintly. "Earlier, you said you were no-name for a reason."

"Not because I don't want a soulmate," Jackson said. "Because I didn't want anyone else to go through what I did or feel the way I do. But you did and you do, and I can't change that. All I can do is try to help in whatever way I can. I can be a better soulmate to you than I was to Lydia."

"You really want that?" Stiles asked, disbelieving. There was a dangerous swelling in his chest of something he hadn't felt in a long time, something like hope. He didn't know what to do with it.

"I want to try. If you'll let me."

Stiles bit his fist to fight down another laugh; as if he would turn down his literal soulmate, the person destined to be his perfect fit. Just the thought of having someone like that, someone who didn't look at him like he was some alien thing to be handled with the utmost caution or otherwise avoided, was dizzying. He had to clear his throat twice before he could answer.

"I think I'd like that."