Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/846606.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Teen_Wolf_(TV)
  Relationship:
      Allison_Argent/Derek_Hale
  Character:
      Allison_Argent, Derek_Hale, Kate_Argent
  Additional Tags:
      the_(metaphorical)_ghost_of_Kate_Argent, Handcuffs, freud_-_Freeform,
      gratuitous_use_of_classroom_lesson_as_metaphor, Derek_Hale/masochism,
      Vaginal_Sex, Oral_Sex
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-06-18 Words: 4136
****** Algophilia ******
by leahalexis
Summary
     “The fetish is a stand-in, a method to ease anxiety. A fetish
     relieves the mind temporarily, but in the end, it does nothing to
     address the source of the anxiety itself. It’s a distraction—a band-
     aid, not a panacea. And so the fetishizer returns to it, seeking
     release, again and again. Like an addict. Like someone reading a
     story over and over again, expecting that, this time, the ending will
     change.”
     (A character study of Allison Argent, circa post-season 2/early
     season 3.)
Notes
See the end of the work for notes
She’s back in that room below the Hale house where her world turned inside out,
with Kate and the dust and the reek of decay and Derek Hale chained to a grate,
snapping, snarling. 
The spotlight highlights the grotesque bulge of his brow, the cut of every
muscle in his chest, the glistening path of his sweat where it’s dripped down
his skin. 
“Isn’t he beautiful?” Kate is saying, voice low and smoky, and they’re the
right words, but something’s off, something isn’t right. 
The electrical wires are missing and he isn’t just bare from the waist up, he’s
completely exposed—naked, and hard, cock wet and sore-looking, purple and
swollen, bobbing out from the jut of his hips. Kate reaches out and touches,
just a finger, light down its length, and Derek rattles his chains. Roars. 
Kate laughs and looks back to her. “You want a turn, baby girl?” 
* 
Alison wakes clutching the neck of her shirt and gasping in air, sweat matting
loose stands of her hair to her face and neck where they’ve escaped from her
braid. It’s dark out. Still dark out. The moonlight coming in from her window
barely touches the end of her bed. 
There’s heat still thick and viscous and shameful between her thighs and it
makes her want to retch. 
She takes slow breaths, willing the dream away. In. Out. In . . . 
* 
This semester, she’s taking psychology. She needed an elective, and she’s
already tried and failed at all the rest: art, poetry, music. Beacon Hills
doesn’t offer archery, or self-hatred. Not for a grade, anyway. 
It’s a Thursday, and their teacher is talking about the concept of the fetish. 
“The fetish is a stand-in,” Ms. Engels says, “a method to ease anxiety. For
Freud, that anxiety was about the loss of the phallus.” 
Most of the class snickers. 
“Other theorists,” Ms. Engels says loudly, giving them a stern look, “have
understood that anxiety more broadly: as being about intimacy, or
powerlessness, or loss of control.” 
Fetish, Allison writes down. Powerlessness. Loss of control. 
“But the important takeaway here is that the fetish doesn’t ever work. It
relieves the mind temporarily, but in the end, it does nothing to address the
source of the anxiety itself. It’s a distraction—a band-aid, not a panacea. And
so the fetishizer returns to it, seeking release, again and again. Like an
addict.” 
Allison drags her pencil across the notebook, hard enough to rip the page. 
“Like someone reading a story over and over again, expecting that, thistime,
the ending will change.” 
* 
When she remembers that night, that room, it feels like a fever dream. Out of
time. Unreal. 
The Derek Hale she knows outside that room is a paragon of self-containment,
disrupted only by brief flashes of rage, and even those are rare, now. At
first, all it took was her speaking. But over time, as the two of them have
eased into a troubled truce, even the rage has subsided, leaving something she
can’t quite identify. Something like emptiness, but not quite. 
Against the wall he shows the world, she feels brittle and erratic, out of
control. Half the time she’s near him her throat is tight, like she’s about to
cry, or scream; the rest, she feels so distant from her emotions that it's like
she’s deadened inside. 
He watches her sometimes, with that not-emptiness, and she doesn’t know what it
means. He never says anything, so she usually tries to ignore it, as if by
doing so she can make those looks not mean anything, not exist. 
It’s not like they see each other very much. Around, sometimes, because Beacon
Hills is a small town, but otherwise, only when something happens. When
someone’s in trouble. 
She doesn’t really know why she shows up, every time she notices Stiles getting
tense and Scott distracted. She’s second-string back up at most, her best
weapons locked up somewhere she can’t find. Things are still awkward between
her and Scott. She’s lying to her father. But she just keeps coming. 
This particular time, a few months into the new school year, Stiles even texted
to let her know where and when. They’re in Derek’s loft, Scott and Stiles bent
together over the table, arguing over logistics. It’s just the four of them
tonight; she doesn’t know where everyone else is. 
Derek’s eyes are on her again. 
Her back stiffens as soon as she feels them, and her chin goes up. Reflex; she
always feels self-conscious, defensive under that particular hard, unblinking
stare. She keeps her voice low. “What?” 
“Your hair like that,” he says, voice as blank as his expression. “It looks
more like hers.” 
She doesn’t have to ask who “her” is. There’s only one “her” with the two of
them. A laughing, sneering ghost that lingers in every room they’re both in.
Waiting for her moment, Allison imagines. Waiting to take them over. What
Allison doesn’t know is which of the two of them she’s waiting to possess. 
Back in her room that night, she touches her hair in front of the mirror, and
thinks about what Derek said. She hadn’t thought of that, when she changed her
hair—the color, the cut, the style. But she has pictures of Kate back then, not
too much different from the way she was when she died, not really. And he isn’t
wrong. It looks like hers.
Allison hadn’t thought of that, and that’s what scares her most. 
* 
These days, Allison is trying to be careful. Careful that whatever’s happening
inside of her, it doesn’t reach the surface. Doesn’t reach her eyes. And that
whatever foreign impulse stirs inside her, whoever other people try to make her
into, she’s the one who gets to decide. Who she is. What she does. 
That’s what she wants, at least. 
I’m not a girly girl, she remembers saying to Scott right after they met, late
at night, over the sound of the rain on the vet’s office roof. 
Later, in her car, blue and white lights flashing silent behind her, Stiles’
dad at the window: I swear I’m not like this. 
She says it all the time. She’s always saying it. 
This isn’t me. This is not me. 
If she’s careful enough, she thinks, desperate, she can make it true.
* 
Don’t think I’ve missed the way you look at him, Kate whispers in her ear when
she forgets to be so careful. Just before sleep, in between dreams; with her
hand between her legs. When she’s too tired, too hurt, to guard against her. 
He’s just sopretty, isn’t he? He always was, you know. And so innocent. So easy
to just reach out andtake. 
You’d like that, wouldn’t you? He’s quite a ride. He was even then.  
But I know you can handle him, Kate says, soft and damp and too close in her
ear, lips ghosting over the skin. 
I know you’re just like me. 
* 
Derek uses the same gym she visits in the afternoons sometimes, too keyed up
for homework, when running isn’t enough. When forced to, they acknowledge each
other, tight nods before looking away when their eyes catch. 
So it’s a surprise and yet not a surprise at all when he breaks custom and
approaches her as she’s finishing a set at the punching bag. She’s pushing
herself more today, hitting harder and longer, the dull throb of her knuckles
and the ache of her muscles a good feeling, something concrete to focus on. She
can handle the pain. She doesn’t believe in easy anymore. 
She’s breathing hard by the end, braces her hands on her knees when she stops,
acutely conscious of the way the sport top she’s wearing leaves her stomach
vulnerable, bared, and breathes and breathes. 
“Allison,” he says after a moment, like saying her name helps remind him who
she is, and who she’s not. 
She turns her head to look at him over her shoulder; he’s standing there
impassively in a gray tank and darker sweats, but his hands are at his sides,
not crossed over his chest. It’s Derek for non-threatening. If she weren’t so
tired, she’d probably laugh. 
“What?” she asks, short of breath and patience. With effort, she stands and
turns to face him. It’s polite—polite—not defensive. 
He waits until she’s turned. Until they can see each other’s hands, free of
sharp points. She curls hers into fists, pulling the tape she’s wrapped around
her knuckles tight. 
“Everything’s . . . okay?” he asks, then grimaces like the question was painful
for him to even ask. 
“Everything’s fine,” she says automatically. She glances back at the punching
bag, slumped heavy from the ceiling, swaying slightly on its chain. And then
she tells him the truth, because she thinks: if anyone will understand, it’s
probably him. “I just get kind of angry, sometimes.” 
It’s the first time she’s ever said something that’s made him smile, and it’s
not even really a smile at all. Not a good one, anyway—it’s grim, just a tight
pull of lips. If there is humor there, it’s the blackest she’s ever seen. If
his lips pulled back any further, she thinks, he’d be bearing his teeth. 
“I’m familiar with the feeling,” is all he says. He looks at the punching bag,
too, then back at her. “This helps.” 
“This helps,” she confirms. 
He studies her for a minute, and she’s too tired to get her back up—just stands
there, waiting. Waiting for him to find whatever it is he’s looking to find,
this time. 
“If this ever—isn’t enough,” he says finally, “if this ever stops working for
you. There are—other ways.” 
She furrows her brow. 
“If you ever need that,” he says. The muscle in his jaw flexes, but it’s the
only sign that what he’s saying means anything to him at all. “You know where I
live.” 
* 
The punching bag stops working. It doesn’t happen immediately after Derek
speaks to her in the gym, but it isn’t long after, either. She wishes she
didn’t see the connection, but she does. Because he was offering her—something
else. And she has trouble letting go of a mystery—letting go of what she
doesn’t understand. 
The day she finally gives in, it’s the third night in the row she hasn’t been
able to sleep. 
When she knocks, he answers, then wordlessly steps back, pulls the door open
further. 
There’s only one reason for her to show up, alone, at the door of his loft.
They both know that. She’d never be here otherwise, especially this late. She's
never come before. 
She follows him inside. Pushes the door shut behind her, because he’s left it
for her, already retreated further into the room. 
By the time she turns, he’s propped himself up against one of the columns a
respectable distance away, watching her, hands tucked into his pockets in a way
she’s only seen him do once before, the first time they met, before she knew
who he was. What he was. He’s wearing a shirt but he’s barefoot, button on his
jeans left undone. She wonders what he was doing before she arrived, if he got
dressed just for her. 
She glances around the loft, looking for . . . she doesn’t know what. She’s a
little taken aback by how bright the moonlight is through the large front
windows, this late, but maybe that’s why Derek chose it. 
Finally, she clears her throat. “The other day, you said—” 
She pauses, not sure how to go on. He’d implied he could help her—would help
her. That there were other ways to push back the restless anger beneath her
skin. But he hadn’t said how. She doesn’t even know what she’s here asking
for. 
“Have a seat,” he says, and she shakes her head, wrapping her arms around
herself, and says, “That’s okay.” 
He smiles slightly, faintly. Then he eases himself slowly up from the pillar,
like he’s afraid she might spook, and comes toward her. She stands her ground. 
When he’s still a foot away from her, he asks, voice low, “You’re sure you want
this?” 
She huffs. “I don’t know what this is!” 
He raises his right hand instead of answering, and waits for her to look. She
follows it with her eyes as he lifts it slowly, purposefully, to her face,
until it rests along her jaw. Just as slowly, his thumb presses into her lower
lip, drawing it down. He lowers his head. Covers the space he’s made with his
mouth. 
And she thinks, faintly: Oh. 
He drags his tongue along her teeth deliberately, like a challenge, and instead
of pushing him away, she pushes back. Grabs his shirt to close the space he’s
left between them, shoves herself against him, sucks hard on his tongue. And
it’s good like the punching bag is good, more like fighting than kissing,
except Derek isn’t fighting back. He isn’t giving an inch but he isn’t
fighting, either. He’s just . . . letting her. 
She breaks off and stumbles back, stunned, pressing her fingers to her mouth. 
He doesn’t say anything. He just stands there. Waits. 
She licks her lips. Opens her mouth. Says, “Take off your shirt.” 
He does. He pulls it over his head, drops it at his feet. 
They look each other. There’s heat beginning to suffuse her body, to spread
under her skin. 
Then, slowly, she nods. Assenting. Because the heat is dampening the
restlessness. She doesn’t know if it’s better, but it’s new, and that’s
enough. 
“You’re sure,” he says. 
“I’m sure.” 
She takes off her jacket, drapes it over the back of a chair, as he retrieves
something from a cabinet set back against the wall. It’s a box, she sees when
he brings it to the table, secured with a padlock, which he opens with a key.
He turns and presses something into her hands, before stepping back. Handcuffs.
Two sets. 
“The metal’s mixed with a small amount of wolfsbane,” he says quietly, and she
wonders if this is him offering her protection. He explains: “Makes them harder
to break.” 
Harder. Which isn’t the same as impossible.
She nods, mutely, and glances down again at the metal, cold and heavy in her
hands. “So you want me to . . .” 
“Yes,” he says. He closes his eyes, just briefly, and when he looks at her
again, his pupils are large and dark, the irises devoured. “Please.” 
Her fingers tighten on the cuffs. “Where?” she asks. “The—bed?” It’s just a few
feet away, sitting spare and Spartan and silent, lit up by the moon. There are
no shadows there to hide in. 
“The bed’s fine,” he says. And holds out one wrist, palm up, for her to take. 
“Tell me if anything’s too tight,” she says to him as he settles himself on the
mattress, on his back. She’s careful as she closes the metal around each wrist,
watches his face for discomfort as she fastens the other ends to two of the
hooks she finds on the back of the headboard, between it and the wall. 
He isn’t looking at her when he says, “It’s better if they’re tight.” 
It’s not until he’s shackled to the headboard, arms out to either side, that
she hesitates, looks to him in question. 
“Jeans,” he says softly, and she blows out a breath. “Right.” 
The button, of course, is already undone; she fumbles anyway, with the zipper.
He lifts his hips to let her pull them over, down his thighs, and off, until
he’s lying naked and exposed in front of her, arranged spread out and
restrained across his own bed. Not defenseless—never defenseless, not totally,
not anymore—but close. 
He’s—beautiful. His body is unmarked and strong, skin almost glowing in the
moonlight. 
She drags her eyes from his body, to his face. “What should I—?” 
“Anything you want,” he says, eyes steady on hers. 
She puts one knee on the bed beside him. The mattress under the bedspread is
hard, too hard to be comfortable, but comfort has never seemed to be Derek’s
motivating drive. She puts a careful hand on his chest, then pulls her other
leg up and then over until she’s straddling his hips, all that strength and
bulk caught there underneath her. Still and silent. 
The skirt of her dress fans out around her, and she lifts up, briefly, to free
it from where it’s caught behind her thighs. Then she shifts back, far enough
to be able to look down and see where he’s started to thicken. 
She reaches out her hand and wraps her fingers around him. It’s not as big as
it was in her dream, but it’s big enough. It’s—normal, nothing unusual. Just
another cock. 
Oh, sweetie, Kate whispers, warmth and condescension, like she’s laughing.
Allison grits her teeth and breathes deep. 
She’s far from being a virgin, and not just because of Scott. But she doesn’t
know what to do here, doesn’t know what’s expected of her. She shifts forward
again, bracing on Derek’s chest, to check his expression; the cotton of her
underwear catches on his skin, making her hiss and drop her head. 
Derek lets out his own breath above her, but his voice is calm when he speaks.
“You know what you need,” he tells her. “So take it.”
She squeezes her eyes shut, whole body tense. “I don’t—” 
“I’m telling you to take it.” 
A shudder racks her body as his voice rasps the last two words; it’s nearly a
growl, and her nails bite reflexively into his skin. He jerks. Arches up—into
her, not away. Calculated this time, she scrapes down his chest, dragging
harder, deeper, digging in. His body jerks again, like he’s been shocked, and
she’s rewarded with angry red marks that his skin just swallows up, taking it.
Like whatever she does, it isn’t really real.
“Good,” he grunts, and something breaks open inside her. 
It’s easy from there to yank the thin strip of cotton between her legs to one
side, lift up on her knees, impale herself with one hard, satisfying drop. The
pulled-taut fabric of her underwear must rub into him where she’s pushed it
aside, edge cutting into his skin, biting at the hair, but he just lets out a
shuddery breath, pulls his knees up to shift the angle slightly. Making it
better. 
There you go, Kate whispers. 
She stifles a moan. 
The loft in the moonlight is silent as she works her hips, works his cock,
corkscrewing down over and over, harder each time, feeling the strain in her
thighs. She lifts her hands to her breasts and squeezes, relishing the bite of
her own nails where the neck of her dress dips low, leaving his blood on her
skin. 
What did I tell you? Kate purrs, like she’s there in the corner, watching with
approval. 
Derek’s eyes are closed, mouth set in a hard line. But he’s still hard,
throbbing inside her, and he can’t seem to help his gasp when she clenches and
pulls the right way. 
See? You can do anything you want to him, she says. He won’t stop you. 
She wants to rip him open. She wants to take everything from him, until she’s
all that’s left, and then take that too. 
He wants it. Helikesit. 
And it just winds her higher. 
“What was it like,” she croaks, “with her?” Throat dry, fisting her hands in
the bedspread just below his biceps, getting more leverage. Arching her low
back and swallowing a cry. 
She’s starting to get hot and shock-y, sweating now. 
“Was she soft,” she’s asking, “did she pretend she was soft,” unable to stop
the words from tumbling out of her mouth, unable to stop, “pretend she was
helpless?” 
Kate’s there, in her ear, still laughing, always laughing (Sweetie,
everything’s a joke to me), and she can’t make her shut up, and she’s writhing,
she’s right there, just needs something to pitch her over the edge. 
“Did you think—” His hips jerk up, punching into her, hitting just right and
she cries out. “Did she make you think she needed it? Needed you?” 
He growls. A warning, maybe. She doesn’t care. 
“How did she fuck you, Derek? Did she ride you, too?” 
For the first time, he’s yanking against the chains, twisting under her thighs.
But he doesn’t buck her off. She knows he could. 
And then he just stops fighting, even as she’s still battering him with her
hips, her thighs, her words. He stops writhing. He goes still. 
“Tell me,” she demands, high-pitched and desperate, almost hysterical. Her
voice is cracking as she shoves him into her harder and faster, harder and
faster. “Tell me.” 
Derek raises his head and looks her straight in the eye, and even like this,
body quaking now with the effort of keeping motionless, his gaze is
unflinching. Hard. 
Evenly, calmly—so calm it makes her want to scream and slash and gouge, makes
her crave the sharp slice of her knives as they plunge into flesh, the stick
and drag of muscle and skin when she yanks them out—he says, “Just like this,
Allison. She used to do it just like this.” 
And her throat closes up and her vision blurs and her whole body tightens and
snaps like the string of a bow and she only realizes after—slumped over his
chest and shaking—that what happened was she came. 
* 
For the first time in months, it’s quiet inside her head. She lays with her
cheek pressed against Derek’s chest, grateful. She’s sore already, worn inside
and out, but it’s good. She feels steadier.
It’s at least a minute before she can pull herself upright and gingerly lift
herself off of him. He’s still hard, she notices, as he slides out of her. 
But he doesn’t move, doesn’t shift, doesn’t anything. He’s silent, barely
breathing, and her mind catches on that detail, on the thought of it, worrying
it over. It’s like he’s a statue, made of stone. 
Like something she’s just used. 
And maybe that’s what he was offering—she thinks it was, at least—but it’s not
right. It doesn’t feel right. 
Holding her breath, she drags her eyes up to his face. His eyes are closed. 
“Derek,” she says softly, still kneeling beside him on the bed, and he shakes
his head, eyes still shut. She presses her lips together to keep her chin from
trembling. 
He didn’t even tell her where the key was; she didn’t see it in the box. She
knows he can get free even without it, but she can’t just leave him like this.
Not like—not like Kate would. 
She hurt him, she thinks. She can’t undo that. But— 
He’s still not looking at her. Licking her lips, she bends down, takes a deep
breath, and opens her mouth over him, around him, sinking down. 
She feels his intake of breath as much as hears it, when he realizes what she’s
doing. She presses down on his hips to keep him still. 
“Alli—” he starts as her throat closes around him, and chokes on the word as
she gags and pushes harder, further, jaw achy with the stretch of it, moisture
burning in her eyes. But it’s good, that it hurts. It should hurt. 
The taste of her own body’s secretions is sour where they’ve coated his skin,
collected in the crease of his foreskin and along the underside of the head.
She tongues them away and lets him in deeper, swallows him down. 
She’s not Kate. She can show him that. She’s not. 
She sets the pace slow but intense, long sucks and generous drags of her
tongue, and the tension in his hips eases under her hands. She keeps her eyes
shut tight, tears close to the surface the whole time she works, and when he
comes down her throat in long, tight pulses it’s almost like she's being washed
clean. 
I’m sorry, she tries to say with the soft slide of her tongue as she swallows
all of it, all of it she can. So it’ll be good for him. I’m so sorry.
She curls her tongue around the softening flesh a final time, then pulls off,
uncertain, as she looks at him. 
“Derek,” she whispers. “Say something. Please.” 
There’s a deep flush that’s spread across his chest, his hair dark and damp
with sweat, the muscles of his stomach trembling. He’s staring at the ceiling,
looking more undone than she’s ever seen him, even the times he’s nearly bled
out in front of her, even that night with Kate. 
When he finally speaks, his voice is quiet, empty of emotion. 
“She used to do that too.”
End Notes
     algophilia (n): deriving pleasure or satisfaction from one’s own pain
     or the pain of others
     (Probably not a word that’s going to show up on Scott’s Word of Day
     app.)
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