sakura_no_miko

Rating: NC-17

Pairing: Derek/Stiles

Warnings: explicit sex (gay), underage (depending no where you live), dubcon issues due to amnesia, violence, character injury

Other notes: amnesia, magic, monster hunting, action/adventure, mystery, loss of identity

Length: 33k

Summary: He doesn’t know his name, he doesn’t know who he is, and neither does the werewolf he’s on the run with. But he’s pretty sure they hunt monsters, because they seem to be really good at it.

This is just a good fic, and those are always the hardest to rec. Um. I’m not going with any particular themes right now. I was in the amnesia tag on AO3 when I found this. I don’t remember why I was looking up amnesia. I think I was looking for cute fics, but I mostly found angst fics.

I did, however, have a fascinating conversation with my girlfriend about what to do if we encountered each other with amnesia. It’s good to settle these things ahead of time, you know. (She has dozens, if not hundreds, of letters and e-mails I’ve written, so I doubt reconstructing my identity will be hard. I’d even put some confidence in the people who follow me here. I ramble an awful lot. You could probably piece together quite a bit.)

Anyway. This is just–good. It’s a tough action/adventure/mystery, with a side of hot sex. I think the mystery aspects intrigued me the most. I’m not much of a mystery reader. I’m not savvy about details, I don’t usually pick stuff apart until a third or fourth viewing. I like to riff and tease, but I’m not so handy with the meta. (Before you argue, most of these fic recs are written well after three or four reads. I can do analysis, sure, but it’s not quite the same as solving mysteries. More like writing a debate.) Here, poor Derek and Stiles are trying to piece together their identities, their relationships, where they are and what they were doing. Somehow they manage to get into even deeper trouble. Here they are, lost and confused, and they still manage to beat a powerful evil dude. Quite awesome. They–they turn into the Winchesters, come to think of it.

Much like de-age fics, amnesia fics give you a chance to get down to the basic drives of a character, or explore how their life experiences have changed them. I like that this one keeps Derek grumpy. I’ve read others where he’s more open and friendly when he doesn’t remember his horrible trauma, and, while that makes some sense, it’s still fun to watch him and Stiles play off each other.

It’s so fascinating to watch them start a completely new life together. When you get to the end, it’s like, how do you even deal with that? With having this whole different set of memories inside you? You see stuff like that in Narnia, in stories where someone travels through time or space, only to be dropped back into their mundane life after. The worst ones, to me, were the ones like Narnia–they got to live entire lives, and then they got dropped back into being schoolchildren. How frustrating. How terrifying.

It’s also an interesting consent issue. I mean, they consent to have sex. They’re attracted to each other, they discuss it, they enjoy it. And yet, they are somewhat incapacitated. There’s this concept called “rape by deception,” which basically includes anything where someone lies or withholds information in order to get someone to have sex with them–hiding a part of their identity, claiming to say, be on birth control when they aren’t, or not disclosing a disease they could pass on. Basically things where a person wouldn’t have given consent, had they known. How does that work with, say, amnesia? Neither of them is lying on purpose. If only one of them had amnesia, that could get creepy, but with both of them wiped out… I don’t even know.

Anyway, this is quite a fun read.

Looking for more fic recs?

Originally posted on tumblr on 02/14/15