Work Text:
They say that if you can’t sleep, it means someone’s dreaming about you.
Most of the time, when Stiles crashes, he sleeps hard . His working theory is that the combination of crashes, both adrenaline and Adderall, means that when he’s out, he’s out , body’s calling it a day whether he likes it or not. Sometimes, when he’s been running on minimal sleep for a couple of days dealing with whatever crisis this Beacon Hell has thrown at them lately, he swears he hears the chime of a Windows XP system shutting down, before he wakes up anywhere from 4 to 14 hours later hopefully on a soft surface.
But then there are times where Stiles just doesn’t sleep. The anxiety is too much sometimes, and his brain works the problem over and over and over again, obsesses over what he’s not seeing to the point where he can’t sleep no matter how hard he tries. Usually that’s a night every couple of weeks.
And then, at least once a month, Stiles can see the nightmares of all the shit he’s done or had done to him peeking around the corners, lurking in the shadows with riddles and Go and memories. Stiles doesn’t even try to sleep on those nights, leaves the light in his bedroom on and puts loud music through headphones, lets himself fall into the distraction spiral that only hyperfocus can offer. Eventually his body gives up before his mind does, and he falls asleep in an uncomfortable position with noise and light.
The point is, though, that insomnia doesn’t happen often to Stiles. It’s cyclical, there’s a pattern to it, even if it’s one that Stiles doesn’t have his finger on the pulse of quite yet. It’s the knowledge that he may have a sleepless night here or there, but it’s not forever, and he’ll probably sleep tomorrow night or catch a nap in the early afternoon.
This? This is hellish .
He’s on Day Four. It’s not even actually Day Four, it’s actually Day Nineteen, but four days ago was the last time that Stiles slept more than two hours in a single night. He’d gotten four hours instead, and then he’d been awake again, staring at his ceiling.
And the thing is, four hours of sleep in one night is becoming his marker for a good day. His average days are about an hour and a half, maybe two hours. His bad days? No sleep at all, just lying in his bed and watching the shadows shift in the night before dawn finally starts showing up and Stiles throws in the towel. The problem here is, of course, that he’s not even sure he’s getting two hours on average, or if his actual average is no sleep, his good days are two hours, and his great days are four.
He researches, tries everything that the internet has to offer. Exercise makes him tired enough to get him a thirty minute nap and muscle aches when he wakes up again, establishing a routine just means that he lies awake in bed for a couple hours longer than he usually lies awake in bed. Melatonin doesn’t touch him, limiting stimulation drives him almost more insane than too much stimulation (gotta love ADHD), white noise makes him paranoid that he won’t hear something that wants to eat him coming (that’s the PTSD, probably), and he doesn’t have to avoid naps because he can’t fall asleep for those either.
He may or may not be losing it a little. He avoids over-the-counter sleeping pills, because he read something about migraines and accidental overdoses once, and Stiles doesn’t like who he is sleep-deprived at 3 am.
The bed doesn’t feel comfortable or safe anymore, that’s for damn sure, so when dawn of Day Five (or Day Twenty, depending on how you look at it) starts painting the sky a slightly lighter shade of blue around 5:30 am, Stiles just rolls out of bed and pretends that the tears pricking at the corners of his eyes are from the yawn he can’t hold back, and gets to work researching to keep himself busy.
Whoever’s dreaming about him needs to wake the fuck up already.
Stiles knows the effects of long-term insomnia and sleep deprivation. His anxiety is definitely taking a hit, panic attacks coming on more often while he functions at a higher level of anxiety than he really should be at - he could probably, at this point, classify at least 75% of this bout of insomnia as an anxiety attack, but the strangest thing is that the anxiety doesn’t seem to be the thing keeping him awake. He doesn’t have racing thoughts, he’s actually falling into this awful half-awake state where his thoughts are more dream than reality. Stiles just can’t drop off completely .
He adds the caffeine pill when bodies start showing up again around Day Twelve. 200 milligrams at noon is enough to keep him upright and functional until somewhere around eight in the evening, when Stiles doesn’t crash exactly, just kind of falls down onto something soft and lays there for a few hours until he cries about the fact that he’s still not sleeping.
By Day Twenty, it’s not a temporary measure anymore so much as it’s now a necessary one, so when he throws the pill back with his Sprite in front of old tomes in Latin at Derek’s kitchen table, he doesn’t think much of it. It’s just the two of them, which is becoming more and more frequent as the days go on - Stiles-and-Derek, Derek-and-Stiles, they’re a team these days, more than Stiles-and-Scott or Stiles-and-Lydia are. If Stiles weren’t so goddamn tired, he’d probably try to flirt or something, but as it is, he’s barely got enough brain power to attempt to decode rituals to boost power in Latin.
“I think it’s witches,” he mutters for what has to be the second or third time today alone. “Has to be, right? Not saying all witches are bad, but the ritualistic… sacrificial look to the bodies practically spells out ‘evil coven of witches.’”
Derek makes a noise - might be assenting, might not, Stiles is honestly too tired to care. He’s either right and they’re gonna kill a bunch of witches, or he’s wrong and they’re gonna die. At this point, Stiles doesn’t have a lot of stock in staying alive anyway. Maybe they’ll hit him really hard over the head and he’ll get to sleep.
“You think it’s too obvious to think they’re trying to get some kind of demonic attention?” Stiles asks, taps his fingers rapidly on the tome before he closes it and reaches for another. Maybe the reason none of the magic-locator spells are working for him are because he’s focusing on inherent power, not demonically-given power. Or something.
Again, he may or may not be slightly checked out of reality. But it’s not like he can just say ‘oh, no thanks’ when Derek calls for help, not like he can look the other way when bodies are showing up left and right. This whole exhaustion thing is just another reminder that he’s just a weak little human, trying to run with the wolves so they don’t leave him behind.
He looks up when Derek doesn’t answer, and finds that there’s a frown aimed at him. “What?” Stiles asks. “You don’t think it’s witches? Share with the class, Derek.”
“Your hands are shaking,” Derek says, and now the frown is focused on Stiles’ fingers, resting on the spine of the book he hasn’t opened yet. Stiles feels his fingers twitch in response, and he fights the urge to shove them under his legs or something.
“Yeah, that’s, uh.” Stiles shrugs - pick a reason, really. “Caffeine,” he finally settles on. “I just took a caffeine pill.”
The explanation doesn’t actually make the frown on Derek’s face go away. “I know, I watched you,” Derek says. “Why?”
Stiles stares at him for a minute, blinks and tries to compute the question. “Because I’m tired? That’s why people take caffeine. I guess it wouldn’t do a lot for you, would it?” He opens the book, skims through a few chapter titles until he finally finds one that looks promising. “So. Witches?”
Derek makes another sound, and it’s definitely not agreeable nor is it an answer to Stiles’ question, so Stiles looks up again.
Oh boy. Now Derek’s frowning more , eyes back on the fingers that Stiles can’t keep from trembling. This time, Stiles gives into the impulse and shoves his hands into the pockets of the hoodie he’s wearing - out of sight, out of mind, he thinks, and leans over to try and focus his blurry eyes on the words again.
“You haven’t been sleeping,” Derek goes on after a moment of silence.
Stiles sighs, rolls his eyes and looks up from the book again. “I thought we established that peeking in my window in the middle of the night was creepy behavior only befitting sparkly vampires and murderous stalkers.”
He gets no response other than Derek lifting an eyebrow. Yeah, okay, fine, Stiles’ distraction techniques aren’t at their peak at the moment.
“No,” he finally admits. “I haven’t. Not much anyway.” He gives up on the book, pulls one hand out of his pocket to drag his fingers through his hair a couple times - self-soothing, he knows, feeling painfully different all of a sudden, as he always does when one of these habits makes itself known. He’s just tired , okay, and it’s hard to be a socially acceptable human being when he’s so damn tired, and his sensory issues are all out of whack when he’s tired anyway, and…
But he’s fine. He’s fine , he has to be. This pack needs him, people need him, and if they find out that he’s not fine, they’ll go back to trying to wrap him in bubble wrap and sideline him. Sometimes he thinks he should have taken the bite when Peter offered, just because that way he’d have less of an argument when it came to following Scott and Derek into the fray.
However, Derek is still looking at him like that , with that whole I-look-angry-but-I’m-actually-really-just-concerned thing he’s got going on. “Stiles,” he says, and manages to wrap up a whole lot into that one utterance of Stiles’ name.
“Don’t ask me why,” Stiles sighs, drops his hand to the table and his head back a bit, gives in just a little bit to the exhaustion that’s weighing him down. Now that Derek’s pointed it out, he can feel how his hands are shaking and his body is begging for rest that he can’t give it. “I don’t know why I can’t sleep, I really don’t. It’s not anxiety, because my thoughts don’t run in circles, and I’m not having, like, flashbacks or anything. I just can’t sleep.” He lifts his head to look at Derek. “I can’t even nap , but I’m getting to the point where I’m just…” He pauses. He doesn’t want to say ‘not functioning,’ doesn’t want to give them a reason to shove him away when he can be useful. “Words are blurry.” He taps the book in front of him. “Latin is hard enough when my brain’s at its best. But it’ll be fine.”
Derek eyes him for a moment before nodding, like he’s made some kind of decision that Stiles is apparently not privy to, and pulls out his phone. Stiles rubs at his face again before he goes back to studying the book - he already took the damn pill, he might as well try to get something done. Derek doesn’t mention it again, so Stiles figures the conversation is over, at least for the moment.
Except apparently it isn’t, because not even five minutes later, Derek is very suddenly standing by Stiles’ chair at the table.
“Hey!” Stiles gripes when Derek reaches out and closes the book. “I was reading that. Trying to solve our local ritual sacrifice problem here, Derek.”
“Peter and Lydia are taking over research,” Derek says, and punctuates it by pulling out Stiles’ chair while Stiles is still in it.
Stiles glares and doesn’t get up, even when Derek stands back to let him. “I’m tired, Derek, but I’m not useless. I can handle this.” He reaches for the book again, annoyed that he’s lost his page, but Derek leans over and puts his hand on the cover of it.
“Stiles. Did you see me get up and walk over here?”
With an annoyed huff of air through his nose, Stiles looks back up at Derek. “No? I was focusing.”
Derek has that look on his face again, eyebrows drawn together and a little frown on his face. “No, you weren’t. Your eyes were closed. Twenty seconds, at least.”
Oh. Stiles doesn’t have anything to say to that - microsleep, great. He scrambles for something, anything, so he doesn’t have to admit how much that frustrates him, how annoying and terrible it is that his body’s so desperate that it’s practically passing out even with the caffeine in his system. “Well, that’s twenty seconds more sleep than I had a minute ago,” is what he manages to come up with, but it sounds thin even to him.
Derek doesn’t reply, just steps back again for Stiles to stand. This time, Stiles actually does - gets to his feet and rolls his head on his neck, can’t quite keep the yawn back though he tries valiantly. He grabs his keys off the table, figures maybe he can at least get home and lay in his bed for a few hours or something.
“No,” Derek says, and then Stiles’ keys are no longer in Stiles’ hand - they’re in Derek’s, and he’s dropping them back on the table. “You’re not good to drive.”
“Oh my god.” He tries to sound indignant or outraged, but shit, Stiles doesn’t even have the energy to flail, and he just manages to sound kind of annoyed when he sighs the words out. “Well, I’m not leaving my Jeep here, I’m gonna need it later.”
“It actually takes less than twenty seconds to wrap your Jeep around a tree. You just fell asleep sitting up at my kitchen table, you’re not driving.”
Stiles throws up his hands. “Then let me research ! I’m not sleeping in my Jeep, hell, I’m not sleeping at all!”
The look on Derek’s face now is one that Stiles has seen many times, on many faces, and he has nicknamed it the “give me the strength not to throttle Stiles” face. It’s usually characterized by a look up, as though toward a wrathful god that would place Stiles in this conversation in the first place, and followed by a deep breath in before whoever is wearing it tries once again to convince Stiles of something he is not going to do.
Derek, however, does have the advantage of being able to flash his eyes an otherworldly red, which pings off something in the pack bond that Stiles can feel in his chest in moments like these.
“Just go lay down,” Derek finally says.
“Ugh,” Stiles replies, mostly for show and they probably both know it. The idea is tempting, to say the least, and if he’s already fallen asleep sitting up, then maybe he’ll actually be able to get a couple of hours.
And , a little voice kindly reminds him in the back of his mind, this is your Alpha’s house, so it’s completely safe .
“Fine,” he hears himself say, kind of quiet and defeated. He chews on his lip. “Couch?”
“I don’t care.” Derek nudges Stiles in the direction of the living room. “Bed, couch, bathtub, wherever you think you can nap. Curl up under the coffee table for all I care.”
Stiles nods and goes, kicks off his shoes and flops onto the couch, grabs one of the stupidly comfortable throw pillows that he knows for a fact Derek drove to an actual Pottery Barn to buy. It takes him a couple of minutes to find a position that feels right, with his face pressed into the back of the sofa and his hood pulled over his head to block out light and muffle sound. For a while he thinks this is it, he’s found it, the magical space where his exhaustion may actually win out over whatever anti-sleep demon is now inhabiting his body.
Then it just… doesn’t happen. He doesn’t fall asleep.
He feels heavy, can’t really move, doesn’t want to move because he’s so damn tired, but he isn’t asleep. There’s a weird, surreal feeling that kind of might be a dream, thoughts that ping everywhere and nowhere all at once, but he isn’t asleep . It’s frustrating, so fucking frustrating, and finally Stiles peels his eyes open and sighs a sigh that sounds more like a sob, fights back tears of frustration and exhaustion and pure rage at his body that won’t just go the fuck to sleep.
A hand lands on his arm, and he starts, just a little, but it’s just Derek. He rolls over, and this is it, Stiles is done. Bench him, sideline him, whatever, Stiles is so fucking tired and he’s got nothing left to offer. Except, apparently, tears. His body can summon the energy for that, which would be embarrassing if he had anything left in him to conjure up some embarrassment.
But Derek is crouched beside the couch, and he tugs Stiles’ hood back off of his face, and Stiles doesn’t really know how to decipher the way that Derek’s fingers linger on his cheek.
“I can’t sleep,” Stiles says, in a little half whisper, half sob combination that he’ll never admit to. He can feel his hands shaking where he’s got them curled up under the pillow.
“I know,” Derek replies, soft in that way he gets sometimes when someone’s really hurting. Stiles doesn’t really think his insomnia warrants the same level of softness that, like, Erica’s broken wrist or Isaac’s nightmares do, but he can’t deny that it’s kind of nice. Especially when Derek’s fingertips on his cheek start stroking just slightly, just enough to be soothing.
Stiles lets his eyes close again, lets himself float for a little bit in that hazy space where he’s more asleep than awake, but not asleep enough.
“Come on.”
He blinks again, opens his eyes when Derek tugs at the sleeve of his hoodie. Coordination is not Stiles’ friend on the best of days, but it’s been especially worse lately - he stands only to stumble on the first step he takes. Derek gets his hands on Stiles’ upper arms, steers him where he wants Stiles to go. It’s the bed, apparently, through the door in the apartment that Derek closes behind them.
For a moment, Derek leaves Stiles swaying in the middle of the room - actually swaying, too, Stiles can feel it even as he tries to steady himself. Then he’s back, coaxing Stiles’ hoodie off of his shoulders.
“Witches,” Stiles mutters. “We gotta take care of the witches, Derek.” He doesn’t protest, though, just leans on Derek’s shoulders when Derek crouches down to tug Stiles’ sneakers off his feet, and then Stiles’ socks. He would be more excited when pants follow too, but honestly, Stiles could care less right now, and the only real rush of emotion he gets is the sheer joy at the soft texture of the sleep pants Derek starts to pull up his legs.
Finally, Derek stands, starts prodding Stiles toward the bed. “We’ve got a pack for that, Stiles. No one’s going to make any moves while you’re catching up on your sleep, okay? Nothing big is going to happen. They’re going to research, and when you wake up we’ll figure out our next move.”
Stiles sighs, fumbles a bit as he draws the covers back because his hands are still shaking, too big for him somehow. “I’m not gonna sleep.”
But he goes, curls up in the middle of Derek’s bed and closes his eyes. He expects maybe a blanket to drop over him, the quiet click of the bedroom door closing as Derek leaves, but what he gets is the rustle of clothing and, a little later, the warm weight of Derek crawling into the bed behind him.
He blinks his eyes open, only to find that the curtains have been drawn over the window, and the room is pleasantly dim - not deep night dark, but dim, so that he can see everything just fine, but it’s so calming. Stiles shifts, instinctively seeks out the warmth behind him, and settles when Derek very carefully drapes an arm over his middle, presses himself close to Stiles’ back.
“Derek?” Stiles asks, a little slur of Derek’s name that sounds exhausted even to his own ears. “Whatcha doin’, big guy?”
Derek shushes him, rubs his thumb gently on Stiles’ stomach over his shirt. God, if Stiles weren’t so damn tired… Derek’s bed? Derek spooning him in Derek’s bed? He’d be over the moon. As it is, he’s only half-sure this is real.
“After…” Derek starts, stops, and then starts again. “When we were in New York, after everything, I didn’t sleep well. Sometimes Laura would lay down with me, and it helped having someone else there. Even if I wasn’t afraid of something coming in the middle of the night, even when I was too exhausted for nightmares… it helped. So maybe it’ll help.”
Stiles hums. Derek might be onto something there, he thinks, because he can feel his body going boneless, heavy and weightless at the same time underneath the solid line of Derek’s arm, the warmth of Derek’s chest against his back.
“The witches will still be there when you wake up, Stiles,” Derek goes on, so very soft, coaxing and tempting and gentle all at once. “No one’s going to be upset if you take some time to rest. Go to sleep. I’ve got you.”
It is stupidly comforting that nothing’s going to be able to sneak up on him here, even if that was a problem he didn’t know he was having. There’s no distant dread that he’ll still be awake in an hour and a half, staring at the wall or the ceiling, because he can just enjoy this, enjoy being pressed to Derek and enjoy the gentle sounds of Derek breathing and the comfort and the blankets and all the little pieces of intimacy that are adding up to one very satisfying half-asleep moment.
Later, he thinks fuzzily, later he’ll wake up and maybe he’ll be awake enough to care that he’s in Derek’s bed and in Derek’s arm. Maybe he’ll be rested enough to fight down the anxiety and do something about it for once. For now, though, Stiles settles and lets himself be lulled by Derek’s steady breathing.
And he sleeps.