Dead bodies are fucking heavy.

Stiles isn't quite sure how this particular dead body came to weigh so much, given that the guy didn't actually eat—but he doesn't think too hard about solving the mystery, given that the answer can only be found in complex biological science, which is way too advanced for his high school education and fickle attention span.

Fucking vampires.

It also doesn't help that the body he's carrying over his shoulder is also slippery from the steady drizzle of rain that's currently soaking through Stiles' patchwork jacket. Luckily, it's raining and it's midnight, meaning that no one can actually see him stumble around with a dead guy—a dead guy, Stiles might add, that's still trying to use Stiles' trench coat as some sort of macabre Slip 'N Slide.

He grunts, stepping out of the building's window and onto the third-floor fire escape. Stiles makes his way down, carefully gripping the body with one hand and the handrail with the other.

Safety first.

He makes it down to the first-floor escape and dumps the vampire over the edge of the rail. The vampire's impact onto the ground below doesn't really make a sound because the ambiance of the city—the sirens, traffic, and ever-present heavy bass—all combine to create a vacuum. A constant buzz in the background that consumes most noises. Including the sound of a body falling ten feet onto cracked asphalt.

Beacon Hills can also be considered a vacuum because, at least for everyone that Stiles knows, it fucking sucks.

Stiles kicks the fire escape's ladder until it unfolds—yet another noise lost to the vacuum—and hauls himself up and over. He shimmies down the slick surface, gliding with sure hands and landing on even surer feet.

Glancing down the alley, Stiles spots his jeep, and thankfully, no eyewitnesses. He gives himself a breather, and then picks up the vampire and tosses him over his shoulder once more, staggering a little as he does it. Stiles walks as casually as he can to his jeep, unlocks the trunk, and then plops the guy onto the layer of thick plastic sheeting covering the backseat. He rolls the body up like a particularly gruesome burrito, ties each end tightly with cables, and slams the door shut when he's done. Stiles takes a moment to slick the rain from his eyes and then hops into the cab. Pulling out of the alley, Stiles merges onto the street and takes off.

Stiles makes his way through Beacon Hills' late-night traffic, watching as the buildings slowly go from "crack-den" to "ew" to "seedy"—the aesthetic of each neighborhood's buildings is usually a good indication of where you're at.

And once Stiles hits the "club/goth curious/desperate for sex" district, he knows he's in vampire territory.

He makes a left on Clarkson Ave. and spots his destination.

The name Wonderland beams in neon red, casting a ghoulish glow onto the large queue of people waiting to get in.

Stiles snorts to himself as he drives past the line, taking in all of the fishnets and leather and—yep, that's a velvet top hat.

Stiles sighs.

Baby vampires are the worst because they've read too much Anne Rice to comprehend how stupid they actually look.

Stiles cuts around to the back of the building, backing up his car in the employee lot and putting her in park.

He jumps out quickly, hoisting up the body—hopefully for the final time—and making his way over to the backdoor.

Stiles pounds on the door, steps back, and waits.

The little hatch on the door slides open and a pair of glowing red eyes peek out.

"Password?" asks a bored British voice.

Stiles grits his teeth, "Fuck you, Reggie. Let me in."

The eyes stop glowing and the sound of locks turning fills the air, "Oi! Sorry, mate. Didn't see you over that guy's arse."

"Don't remind me," Stiles mutters to himself. The door swings inward, and Stiles steps inside the club.

Reggie smiles at Stiles, "Boss has been waiting for you, thought you weren't gonna show."

Stiles answers back with a feral grin, "I wonder how you retain such confidence, Reg, given how often your boss is wrong."

Reggie frowns, taken aback by his comment, but Stiles is already marching past him and into the rooms near the back. The sounds of shitty trance music and writhing bodies surround Stiles, only to fall silent once he travels past the door marked VIP. Past this particular door, only the sounds of hungry vampires can be heard. Oh, and moaning.

A lot of moaning.

Steadying himself, Stiles walks to the end of the hallway. Kicking open the door—god that feels good—Stiles enters and searches the room for Charlie.

It's hard to make out, what with all of the low-lighting, smoke, and mass of bodies in various stages of undress, but Stiles finally spots him on the throne.

Charlie—or, as he likes to be called, Sir Charles—is seated on his red velvet throne, naked, with some young twink riding his dick.

Human, Stiles catalogues.

He would be impressed with the kid's tenacity if he wasn't so disgusted by the idea of Charlie's cock. Oh, and all of the sweat flying off of the twink's body. That's a little gross, too.

Stiles' entrance—namely his badass door-kicking schtick—goes largely unnoticed by the room. But, his trudging through the bodies on the floor—geez, are those rubber mats?—while waterlogged and carrying a corpse, makes both the music and the vampires stop.

He pushes himself through the blood orgy until he's at the steps of Charlie's stupid fucking chair. The dude bouncing in Charlie's lap has come to a stop, and Stiles can see red eyes glowing from behind the kid's mop of dark hair. He can also see a self-satisfied smirk.

He meets that smirk with his own face devoid of all emotion. "Don't stop on my account." He looks the wannabe-vampire up and down, "I'm just here to drop something off."

And then Stiles slams the body onto the steps in front of Charlie. The humans in the room startle, including lap-boy. The vampires in the room are watching curiously, waiting to take their cues from the douche in the glorified Lay-Z-Boy.

Stiles kicks the body so that it's facing Charlie, and then reaches in his pocket for his switchblade.

A vampire—shit, that's a cool leather jacket—flashes his fangs at Stiles when he flips open the blade.

Stiles just raises his eyebrows at the guy, crouches next to the body, and cuts the plastic sheeting away from its face. Stiles yanks the vampire's head up by his hair, showing Charlie that, yes, Stiles killed the right vampire and that, no, he's not a fucking idiot.

Stiles stands back up, snapping the knife shut and putting it away. He takes out a notepad and pen and starts a list, "Okay, let's see. That'll be my flat rate of dealing with you, plus the price of the actual body, plus the damages this sick fuck rendered onto my clients," he kicks the body harshly, "plus my 'no-cops' fee." Stiles jots everything down and pretends to calculate with his fingers. "Carry the two, add the four—yeah," he pins a steely gaze on Charlie, "that'll be $5,000." He rips off the receipt and smacks it on the corpse's forehead.

Charlie pushes the twink from his lap and stands. In a blur, he's in front of Stiles. He's smiling, but his eyes haven't lost all of their red tint. "Five grand, is that all?"

"No," Stiles stares back, defiantly. He points sideways to the vampire who flashed his fangs, "I also want that guy's jacket."

Charlie inhales sharply, and then bursts out laughing. Stiles sees Reggie scoot in behind Charlie's left shoulder.

All of the other vampires have decided to laugh, too.

For a room full of apex predators, they're nothing but a bunch of sheep.

It's almost as if Charlie can hear his thoughts because he stops laughing. Never taking his eyes from Stiles, he says, "Well, pay the man Reggie."

Reg takes an envelope out of his pocket and passes it to Stiles. He then goes over to the other vampire and rips the jacket off of his back. Stiles tucks the money and his new coat under his armpit and nods at Reg, "Thanks, Reggie."

Then Stiles turns his back on Charlie, Beacon Hills' most powerful vampire, and walks back through the crowd. This time, the sea of people automatically parts in his wake.

Stiles reaches the broken door and pauses. He looks back over his shoulder and meets Charlie's unwavering gaze. Stiles' eyes turn deadly. "Oh, and Charlie?" The vampires in the room hiss at the nickname.

Stiles smirks, "You owe me one."

Then he walks out of Wonderland and into the rain.

It was a week before Stiles' trip into Wonderland that the bell over his shop's door rang and Mr. James and Ms. Diaz entered. Mr. James owned the auto repair shop, and Ms. Diaz ran the little bodega on the corner. Stiles looked up from his seat at the counter—well, it's really his workshop—and called out a friendly hello to his two favorite old people.

They both gave him a look, and Stiles knew—he knew, right fucking then—that he wasn't going to like what they had to say.

The bandages at their throats also clued him in.

He listened to each of them, to both of their stories. They had been attacked by a feral vampire, some newbie so fresh its eyes hadn't even turned orange yet, let alone red. Both survived—thankfully each of them is a patron of Stiles' shop—but they were worried that the vampire would hurt someone else. Stiles had nodded and told them he'd take care of it. He gave them replacement cartridges for their tasers and walked them out of his store.

Stiles didn't even wonder why Ms. Diaz and Mr. James didn't call the police.

No one in this neighborhood called the police.

Stiles fumed for six hours after their visit. He fumed all of the way up until the bell on his door chimed again.

That time, it was Reggie that walked through his door. Apparently, Charlie had a contract for him.

Stiles remembers clearly telling Reg, "You and Charlie both know that that isn't what I do."

Reggie had responded, "Yes, but, you see—" and Stiles had cut him off by slamming his hands on the counter.

"Yeah, I see. Charlie's the bigshot, so he needs the rabid vamp off the street. But, because he's the overlord or whatever, it's ultimately his fault in the first place." Stiles had crossed his arms over his chest and scowled, "So you need no police and someone low enough on the food chain to take care of it so that no one will ask questions, and so that Charlie can make it seem like it isn't a big deal." Stiles leaned forward into Reggie's face. "But it is a big deal—vampires running around gnawing on people. So, you guys need someone people don't notice but can actually tell their ass from their elbow." He took a deep breath. "Is that about right?"

Reggie had nodded slowly.

"Fine," Stiles ground out. "But you tell Charlie that he's going to owe me."

Reggie had walked out of Stiles' shop looking like he'd won some huge battle. Stiles didn't have the heart to tell him that he'd been planning on killing the feral vampire anyway.

The white bandage at Ms. Diaz's throat had sealed that fucker's fate hours before.

Stiles makes his way back to his shop, stumbling through the backdoor around one in the morning. He trips over the umbrella stand he always trips over, which causes enough ruckus to wake his cat Ted, who hisses at Stiles before scurrying off to his hidey hole upstairs.

Laughing to himself quietly, he debates over how quickly a landlord would evict him, given the fact that Stiles is always causing some sort of ruckus. Heh.

Stiles can be as loud and as weird as he wants—perks of owning the whole building.

His secondhand gadgets and gizmos shop, One More Time Around, takes up the first floor, and Stiles' apartment is on the second.

Days like today make him wish that people respected the fact that he finds and fixes up old things, and that's it. That's what he is—a fixer. Some people take it a step further, like Ms. Diaz and Charlie, and think that he can fix anything.

But that's not what Stiles loves, what he wants.

He just likes figuring out what makes things tick, how to make forgotten items useful again.

Stiles also likes making his own weapons, and his affordable prices and winning smile have made him a sort of staple of the community.

At least, a staple of the small slum he lives in—the one made up entirely of humans.

That statistic is baffling for most, considering that Beacon Hills is the country's third largest Supe City. Stiles read a statistic from the census two years ago that said for every ten people in Beacon Hills, nine of them were supernaturally flavored. And with a population of almost 800,000, that was a lot of fucking monsters.

Now, Stiles isn't some sort of speciest, like, c'mon, if you have a problem just fucking leave. But he's seen a lot of scary shit over the years, and most of it has been caused by or related to some supernatural bullshit.

And Stiles doesn't forget that sort of stuff.

Ever.

Stiles is human in a world where most people aren't, so he does what he can in order to survive. He also does what he can so that others can survive, too. Whether that's by hot-wiring old stereos so that they're compatible with today's advanced circuitry, or creating a new Wolfsbane-laced mace for the humans that work the corner on Ash St., he doesn't much have a preference.

Stiles just likes fixing things.

It usually doesn't involve staking feral vampires.

But, at least for today, it does.

He makes his way upstairs, kicking off his shoes near the door. Stiles throws away his tattered trench coat and slides on his new one.

He looks like Selene from Underworld.

Stiles loves old movies. He also loves this jacket.

He shrugs out of the leather and takes out the cash. He splits it into two equal stacks and shoves each into a fresh envelope.

Ms. Diaz and Mr. James will need it. Stiles doesn't.

Plus, he's not one to spend blood money. Especially when it comes from the likes of Charlie.

That vampire has always looked at him funny, with interest. His red eyes always searching Stiles' face with a hunger Stiles can't quite identify. It's never just lust, either for his blood or his body—it's always something more. And it fucking squicks Stiles out.

Stiles strips out of his wet clothes and hangs them on the bathroom's towel rack. He rubs himself down with a plushy towel—he's only got the one—and makes his way into the bedroom. Stiles catapults himself into his California-King, the one luxury item he's ever allowed himself to buy. He can hear Ted purring softly from his cave next to the radiator. Stiles lies down and tries to fall asleep.

Stiles lays there, hoping that he never has to cash in that favor from Charlie.

He scratches at his bare wrist and snorts. He discovered something new from seeing the douche naked.

It's funny that even a guy like Charlie would have a mark. Hell, even the rabid piece of shit that Stiles killed had one on his forearm.

That was just another fun little quirk of the world—not only was the majority of the population juiced up on magical mojo, but pretty much everyone has a soulmate mark. Sure, a lot of people don't actually find their soulmate—statistical probabilities are a bitch, aren't they?—but it's a time-honored thing. Soulmates are a blessing, the one person the universe has fated to be your perfect complement. Soulmates are to be sought after and cherished—the ending to ever story destined to be of the happily ever after variety. And Stiles doesn't have one. He doesn't have fangs or claws, and he certainly doesn't have a soulmate mark anywhere on his body. He just has himself, his shop, and his cat. If you ask Stiles, that's more than enough.