Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Stiles traded his Immortal Soul for his mother’s health and ten more years, that seemed like it would be a long time. He’d only been eleven at the time, and the two months until summer vacation seemed like an eternity. Stiles had thought he’d gotten a great deal. By the time his twenty-first birthday rolled around, he’d realized that maybe he should’ve negotiated a little harder.

Spring semester of junior year, Stiles went home for spring break. He hugged his parents and told them he loved them as often as he could, and silently cried the entire drive back to Berkeley. Ten years was up two days after he got back to his dorm.

Stiles was expecting hellhounds, fire, brimstone, the whole works. Instead, a bored looking businessman in a grey pinstripe suit and sunglasses knocked on the door to his room at midnight exactly.

“Um,” Stiles said.

“Is this the residence of Mieczys∤aw Stilinski?” the businessman asked.

“Er,” Stiles said. “Yes? I can’t talk, though, I have, um, plans.” This guy needed to leave before the hellhounds arrived. Stiles didn’t know if the hellhounds would wait, or eat the businessman too, or if the poor guy would just be forced to watch Stiles being ripped apart in front of him. Either way, Stiles had a lot of angsting to do, and this guy was cutting into his last minutes.

“My name is Mark Osias. I am here to arrange your transfer to Hesperus University,” the man said. Stiles blinked.

“I didn’t apply for a transfer,” he said. “Look, I really have to - ”

“My records show that you applied for and were accepted to the university on this day, ten years ago,” the man said. Stiles squinted. This was getting weird. The man sighed. “You sold your soul to a demon?”

“What is happening,” Stiles blurted out. The man - demon? - rolled his eyes.

“May I come in?” he asked. Stiles yelped and tripped backwards, throwing up his hands in a vague ‘help yourself’ gesture. The demon stepped into Stiles’ dorm room, lifting an eyebrow judgmentally and carefully picking his way to Stiles’ desk around the piles of clothes on the floor.

“I thought there would be more, you know, pain and death,” Stiles said as the demon sat primly down in Stiles’ desk chair. “All that torture and torment and stuff. Um. Mr. Osias.”

“We did that for a while, but it gets boring,” the demon said. “And it’s not Mr. Osias. It’s Mark Osias.” Stiles blinked. The demon’s eyes rolled again. “One word. With a ch, not a k. Marchosias.”

“Okay, sure,” Stiles said. “Hell got boring?”

“Very,” Marchosias agreed. “We realized around the 17th century that the world of the humans was a much more interesting place to be.”

“So you just...pretend to be humans?” Stiles asked incredulously.

“Oh, no, we’re still evil,” Marchosias assured him. “But, you know, in more interesting ways. I have thirty thousand legions in my command - in one day, I can order my legions to call every person on this planet and suggest that their car loan needs refinancing. Every single person.”

Marchosias seemed extremely pleased with himself. Stiles was confused. “So you just. Annoy people?”

Marchosias scowled. “The telephone calls are very effective,” he grumbled. “But, in a word, yes. The human world is much more entertaining than Hell, but there are a lot more rules here. We can’t let those damned angels get wind of what we’re doing, or they would rage holy war to kick us right out. It’s a balancing act. We have to get up to as much mischief as possible without drawing undue attention.”

“This is the weirdest day of my life,” Stiles said.

“Yes, well,” Marchosias said. “Expect that to continue.”

“What was that you were saying about a university?” Stiles asked, remembering how the conversation had started.

“Well, we may not be dragging you kicking and screaming to Hell, but we do still own your soul, so we’re going to be getting some use out of it,” Marchosias said. “You’ll be transferring to Hesperus University for next fall semester and you will begin to study the subjects you will need in order to be useful to us. You know, your basic demonology, eschatology, cryptology, soothsaying, occultism arcane arts, sigils, witchcraft, seduction, corruption, and so forth. Your degree will appear to be completely normal to the outside world, and you will be allowed to continue your life as you otherwise would - except that you will be expected to serve Lucifer in all your actions, henceforth and forever more, etc., etc.”

“I can still see my parents?” Stiles asked, his head swimming and an odd bubble of hope rising in his chest.

“Yes, yes,” Marchosias said, waving his hand. “Less often, of course. Hesperus University is in Jersey City, much longer trip.”

“Oh my god, why is it in Jersey City?” Stiles groaned.

“That is not a meaningful question,” Marchosias said. “A more useful question would be, why is Jersey City, Jersey City, and the answer to that is, because Hesperus University is in it.”

“Oh my god,” Stiles said.

“Well,” Marchosias said, “No. Not exactly.”

~~~~~~~~~

Hesperus University was remarkably just like every other vaguely pretentious university in the country. Stiles’ new dorm room had the same cinderblock walls, the same suspicious stains, and the same pervasive smell of weed. The only difference was that Stiles now had to watch out for puddles of discarded potions in the showers in addition to the more familiar puddles of puke.

Also, the dining hall food was terrible, and everyone was required to be on the meal plan anyway. That much was at least not a new horror.

“This is disgusting,” Stiles said, grimacing as he chewed a bite of burger. It was somehow both too bland and too spicy. “I can’t believe they wouldn’t let me get off this dumb meal plan.”

Across the table from him was Jackson, Stiles’ new next door neighbor, who had tolerated Stiles sitting at his table. Jackson was grimly plowing through his own burger, but took the time to sigh loudly in response. “We are at Demon U, and you expect them to be reasonable?” he sneered.

“Be nice, Jackson, he’s clearly new,” said the girl sitting next to Jackson. Her hair was extremely red, her lips were extremely red, and her eyes were extremely condescending. Her eyes were also red. The color of flames, really. And kind of flickering. Stiles was only a little in love. “You can practise turning him into a frog using only the power of your sneer once he’s settled in.”

“Whatever,” Jackson grumbled into his burger. “He won’t last that long, anyway, Professor Hale will chew him up and spit him out.”

“You’re in Professor Hale’s arcane sigils class?” the girl asked.

“Yep,” Stiles said. “It seems, um, interesting. So far.”

“Right,” she said. “I’m Lydia. I’m in the afternoon section. Don’t ask me if you need help. I will not have time.”

“Cool,” Stiles said, nodding briskly. “I will not do that. Thanks.”

Lydia nodded back and turned to Jackson, clearly dismissing Stiles, who choked down the rest of his burger in peace.

~~~~~~~~~

Professor Hale was the kind of middle aged man who wore button up shirts but only buttoned them halfway, kept his sleeves rolled up, and wore pristine converse sneakers. His default expression was a smirk, occasionally replaced by a leer, and he liked to lean on the edge of his podium and maintained an ‘informal’ atmosphere in the classroom. Stiles sat in the back and vowed never to attend office hours, out of fear that Professor Hale may choose to venture out of arcane sigils and into the seduction portion of the Hesperus University curriculum.

Despite the slutty middle aged professor vibe, Basic Arcane Sigils (ARSI 107) was Stiles’ favorite class. The sigils worked like puzzle pieces. Each shape within the sigils meant something, but could mean something different depending on the context in which it was placed. You could think you were making a sigil for general home protection, but depending on how you placed the symbols for ‘detection of ill intent’, ‘hearthstone’, and ‘beloved’, you could accidentally make a sigil that strongly encouraged the inhabitants of the home to have a lot of hate sex. In fact, Stiles learned from Professor Hale that most sigils, done wrong, somehow had the potential to lead to hate sex.

Stiles was less fond of Intro to Demonology (DEMO 105), which sounded cool but turned out to consist entirely of memorizing the names of the major demons, most of whom were retired anyway. It was at 8:30 am, and was followed up by the equally dry Eschatology And You: Predicting the End (ESCH 101). Some things never changed.

Hesperus University didn’t teach only occult subjects, and Stiles had been happy to discover that he could continue with his art major (ART 341, Occult Images in Modern Art, and ART 322, Intermediate Sculpting). He had, though, been encouraged to explore the occult subjects and try to find something that spoke to him to double major in.

“Literally speaks to me?” he’d asked.

“Maybe,” his guidance counselor, Ms. Morrell, had replied.

So far, arcane sigils seemed the most compelling, but it was also by far the most difficult. Stiles was having a lot of trouble with the homework. Some of the subtleties were just completely lost on him. He wasn’t willing to risk Professor Hale’s office hours, so instead, he found himself at the TA session run by Professor Hale’s nephew, Derek Hale.

Derek Hale was the opposite of his uncle in almost every way. Where Professor Hale flaunted his chest hair and chose to lean seductively on any and all available surfaces, Derek slouched and wore oversized leather jackets even on the hottest New Jersey days. Derek glowered and spoke in monosyllables, and Stiles got the vibe that he would rather poke his own eyes out than leer at anyone, ever.

Derek was also really, really good at arcane sigils.

Derek saw whether two symbols would interfere or bolster one another at a glance, knew which direction was North at all times, and drew the neatest lines Stiles had ever seen. Stiles was super intimidated, but also super into it.

Lydia, the girl with the red eyes Jackson was dating, came to the TA sessions, too, and despite her insistence that she would not be helping him, turned out to be a great study partner.

“What did you do about the ‘loved ones’ and ‘lover’ ambiguity in problem three?” Stiles asked. “I added an additional ‘plurality’ loop over the top, but that could lead to polyamory rather than clarifying the intent, so I’m considering using ‘sex’ negated instead.”

“I used ‘multifold’ and let the sigil apply to all cases,” Lydia said.

“Oh, of course,” Stiles groaned, crossing out his earlier attempt at a sigil promoting domestic harmony and starting over. “Oh my god, ‘sex’ negated, what was I thinking.”

Derek looked over from where he was helping an overwhelmed student named Greenberg. “Don’t worry, we all went through that phase,” he said seriously. “It takes time to develop a sense of when to specify the intended targets and when to be general.”

Stiles flushed. “Thanks,” he muttered. Derek wandered over and looked at his half finished sigil.

“Your lines are impressive on ‘hearthstone’ and ‘peace’,” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“Thanks,” Stiles said again, accidentally knocking all of his pens and three of Lydia’s onto the floor. He scrambled to pick them back up, avoiding Lydia’s fiery glare. “I’m an art minor, so. All about, you know, lines.” Derek nodded and moved on to the next group. Stiles tipped his head back and groaned quietly.

“This is pathetic,” Lydia drawled, looking up from her textbook. “You’ve got it bad.”

“He’s so smart, Lydia,” Stiles groaned. “And hot, and, well, not nice, but like. I think I’m okay with that?”

“He can be nice,” Lydia said. “He’s just shy. I’ve heard he’s a total teddy bear.”

"Oh my god, no way," Stiles said. "I don't believe you."

"I have very reliable sources," Lydia said. Her eyes flickered a little.

“Whatever,” Stiles sighed. “He’s never gonna be interested anyway.” Lydia hummed noncommittally. “What?” Stiles asked, growing concerned.

“Don’t worry about it,” Lydia said. “Did you figure out the placement of ‘interlocking’ in problem four?”

Stiles groaned and flipped to the section on transitional symbols in the textbook. “No, and I think I accidentally turned a sigil for keeping food fresh into a sigil for reanimating formerly dead plants,” he grumbled. “Fuck the placement of ‘interlocking’.”

“Gosh, is that the kind of thing you’re into?” Greenberg asked, looking alarmed.

“Shut up, Greenberg,” Lydia snapped. She pushed her paper over. “What do you think of this?” Stiles started comparing her sigil to the textbook. “You have ‘interlocking’ opening onto ‘breath of life’ instead of ‘vegetation’,” he sighed. “I think that’s how I got my lettuce to sprout roots earlier.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Lydia sighed. “Fuck the placement of ‘interlocking’.”

Chapter Text

The worst thing about transferring to Hesperus University, Stiles found, had nothing to do with the demons. The problem was just that he was transferring to a new university at all. When Stiles had first shown up at Berkeley, he’d found himself surrounded by hundreds of other freshmen just as terrified and homesick as he himself was. You would barely say hello to someone and they were latching onto you and declaring you their new best friend. Sure, you never saw most of them again after the first couple of weeks, but with the sheer volume of people eager to make friends, some of them were bound to stick.

When you transfer to a new university in your senior year, even if you are in a ‘five year BA/MA’ track (as cover for the fact that Stiles was very far behind on the new prereqs), no one else you meet is as desperate to be your friend as you are to be theirs. They already have friends and are perfectly content with their lives as is, thank you very much.

Stiles hung out mostly with the other art majors, especially three named Boyd, Erica, and Isaac. All three of them were pretty quiet, and tolerated Stiles’ rambling, which made them great candidates for potential friends in Stiles’ book.

Sure, Isaac was so obsessed with Pokemon Go that Stiles had yet to get anything other than ‘pass the chisel’ out of him, but Stiles could appreciate the finer points of Pokemon, he was sure they could bond over that eventually. Also, Erica was super into silently judging everyone around her, but Stiles could get into that. Some of their classmates were totally worthy of some serious judgement, and Stiles had already gotten on her good side by sharing his best Greenberg stories from arcane sigils class.

Stiles was pretty sure Boyd was just a quiet dude.

The three of them were already friends before Stiles showed up, but they seemed alright with him budging in on their little group, and Stiles was going to take that in and run with it.

Funnily enough, all three of them seemed to also be pretty good friends with Derek Hale, but Derek never hung out with them in public. He only ever caught sight of a brief hug in the hallways or heard that the three of them had had dinner at Derek’s house the night before. None of them were ever willing to talk about Derek, though. They clammed up even more than usual and started acting shifty the second Stiles brought it up. Very weird.

~~~~~~~~~

“It’s unfair, you know?” Stiles sighed, staring at where Derek was leaning over to help another student across the room.

“What is?” Lydia asked dully, scratching out her latest attempt at a healing sigil.

“Derek Hale’s thighs, Derek Hale’s ass, Derek Hale’s arms, you know, just, Derek Hale’s body in general.”

Lydia blinked at him. “Um,” she said. Across the room, Derek swore as he accidentally hit his knee on the table.

“Us poor mortals are not equipped to deal with it,” Stiles sighed. "I don't know how the university saw fit to set him loose on poor, unsuspecting undergrads.

“Well, it is a university created by and for demons,” Lydia said.

“Yeah, about that,” Stiles said. “Is it kind of weird that I’ve been here for a month now and I still haven’t met any actual demons?”

Lydia looked at him askance. “Stiles. You’ve met a demon,” she said.

“I mean, sure, the one who told me I was transferring,” Stiles said. “But like, none of our professors are demons. That kind of surprised me.”

“Loads of professors are demons,” Lydia said. “A bunch of them are even greater demons. Professor Bifrons in bio, Professor Murmur in philosophy, and Professor Buer in math were all in Soloman’s Pseudomonarchia Daemonum. Didn’t you go over them in demonology?”

“Ugh, yes, probably,” Stiles groaned. “I am doing terribly in that class.”

“Apparently,” Lydia drawled.

“Anyway, I already finished all my math and science prereqs at Berkeley,” Stiles said. “And I dunno, I just expected to see more demons around, is all.”

Lydia heaved a sigh. “I have no idea how you survived as long as you did,” she groaned.

“What?” Stiles protested. “It’s a demon university, I expected there to be demons, that seems reasonable!”

“There are demons,” Lydia said. “I’m a demon.”

Stiles gaped at her. “No you’re not.”

“Stiles,” Lydia said, narrowing her eyes at him. “My eyes are literally made of flames, Stiles. What the hell did you think I was.”

Stiles blinked. In hindsight, that maybe should have given it away. “I thought it was those cool contact lens things.”

Lydia threw her hands up. “No wonder you’re failing demonology, you can’t spot a demon when it is literally sitting right next to you."

“But why are you even taking this class, if you’re a demon?” Stiles asked.

“I’m a new demon,” Lydia said. “I’ve only been a demon for two years, and demons need to know this stuff, too.”

“You’re only two years old?” Stiles asked, gaping at her again.

“No,” she sneered. “I’ve only been a demon for two years. I was a banshee before that, and a human before that.”

“There are banshees?” Stiles asked.

“Yes,” Lydia said, “and it sucks to be one. I went through so many cough drops. Being a demon is way better.”

“How did you become a demon?”

“I asked nicely,” Lydia said. “Actually, I decided I’d rather be a demon than a banshee, and then I made them give me a whole bunch of perks on top of it as my price for selling my soul and all that.”

“You scammed hell?” Stiles laughed.

“I scammed hell,” Lydia said, smirking. Her eyes were brighter than usual. Stiles bit his tongue to keep from asking if she could use them like flashlights in the dark. She was a demon now, she could probably eat him if she wanted. Plus, he had more pressing questions, since Lydia seemed to be in a sharing mood.

“Why aren’t we all demons?” Stiles asked.

“Becoming a demon is a whole process,” Lydia said. “And demons are immortal. The higher ups decided it wasn’t worth changing everyone, and also that hell was getting really crowded.”

“Huh,” Stiles said. “Okay, I guess. So are we not all going to hell when we die then?”

“Ehh,” Lydia said. “The short answer is no, but you can if you want to, and it’s not a terrible option, really.”

“What’s the long answer?”

“Religion 453, A Human View On The Afterlife. I do not recommend it.”

“Somehow I thought religion would be easier when you know which parts are real,” Stiles said.

“Nope,” Lydia said. “The demons are just as confused as you are.”

~~~~~~~~~

“So did everyone know that Lydia Martin is a demon? Because I totally missed that memo,” Stiles said, sitting his tray down on the lunch table. It was meatloaf day. He was pretty sure the dining hall was actively trying to one-up itself. The loaf was oozing grey liquid the consistency of gasoline.

“Everyone knew,” Erica drawled. “Her eyes are on fire, Stiles.”

“I knew,” Isaac said, not looking up from his phone, “and I’ve never so much as spoken to her.”

“Aw, hell,” Stiles sighed.

“Don’t worry,” Erica said, “everyone also knows you’re a dumbass, so you haven’t actually lost anyone’s respect by missing it.”

“Oh, come on,” Stiles groaned. “Is there no solidarity here? Humans gotta band together, and all that?”

“Dude,” Isaac said, looking up from his phone. Stiles’ stomach sank. He didn’t know what he said wrong, but it must’ve been bad if it got Isaac to look up. “You are the only human at this table.”

“What?” Stiles yelped. “Oh, come on, none of your eyes even glow!”

“We’re not demons,” Boyd said.

“We’re werewolves,” Erica said. “And our eyes do glow.” Her eyes flashed gold. Also her face sprouted hair. And the apple she was holding exploded due to the force of claws erupting from her fingers.

“I am not good at this,” Stiles groaned. “Why are werewolves at Demon U anyway?”

“Free tuition,” Erica said.

“What?” Stiles yelped. “I don’t get free tuition!”

“Well, no,” Boyd said, “you wouldn’t. We get free tuition because a bunch of our pack members are professors here.”

“Wait, really? Some of the professors are werewolves? Do they have to, like, schedule classes around the full moon?"

"No," Erica said, "full moons are pretty chill. Werewolf professors are pretty much the same as normal professors."

“Werewolves do have super hearing, though," Isaac said, "So some of them eavesdrop on the students in their class.”

“Peter keeps notes,” Boyd said.

“Crap,” Stiles said. He silently vowed to stop muttering under his breath so much. “Do I have any werewolf professors?”

“Well, yeah,” Erica said. “Peter.”

“Who?”

“Peter Hale,” Isaac clarified. “Of the Hale pack. Teaches your arcane sigils class?”

“Oh,” Stiles said, and the realization punched him in the gut. “Oh, crap. So when I was gossiping to Lydia about Derek Hale’s ass during his TA session?”

“Oh my god,” Erica snorted. “Stiles, how are you so bad at life?”

Stiles really could not answer.

~~~~~~~~~

Stiles couldn’t meet Derek’s eyes during the next TA session, and he stayed behind after it was over to talk to him.

“Look, Derek,” he said when the last student had cleared the room, “I wanted to apologize for what I said the other day. I didn’t realize you could hear me, and it was really inappropriate for me to say that kind of thing, especially in your workplace.” Derek said. His arms were crossed in front of his chest, and his face was tight. Stiles was not feeling great about how this was going.

“I appreciate the apology,” Derek said stiffly. “I am willing to ignore it and continue to act as your TA if you are.”

“Thanks,” Stiles said. Derek nodded sharply, swung his backpack up over one shoulder, and gestured for Stiles to follow him out of the classroom. He locked the door and, with one last glance at Stiles, walked away. Stiles watched him go. He was pretty sure that Derek Hale was still way mad about Stiles ogling him, and Stiles was way more upset about that than he had any right to be. But as far as he could tell, Derek wanted nothing more than to get as far away from Stiles as he could, as quickly as he could, and Stiles was going to make that as easy as possible for him. He owed the guy that much.