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Stiles would not sleep.
He sat upright in his single bed, knees drawn towards him in the darkness, in the silence. He felt a chill within his chest, but his skin was dappled with sweat like dew, flushed, irritated to the touch. The dark of his room irked him; it was too black, like a cloth had been pressed over his eyes. He breathed deep, and felt the air whistling down his throat, filling his lungs. He breathed until his chest hurt, until his lungs seemed fit to burst. Too dark. With a lean grace, Stiles disentangled himself from the sheet and stepped lithely across the room. The sound that the curtains made as they scraped across the pole grated against his ears. Too loud. Stiles flung the window wide, revelling in the icy air that struck him like a hammer blow, clinging to the pain that spiked inside his nose as he breathed. The streetlight outside cast a hazy yellow glow over his skin, making him look sickly, decaying.
He felt ill. He felt sick in the chest, in the heart, in the mind, like he was full of salt water and just waiting to drown. He hated it. And the hate led to shame, and the shame to bitterness, and the bitterness had turned him into such a broken creature. And he hated it.
He never loved you and he never will.
He still had his tendrils deep within him, he felt his filth in his bones, and Stiles hated him for it.
White flecks began a tiny battlement against his skin, and it took a moment for him to realise that it was snowing. Stiles watched the icy flakes swirl and dissipate against his pale skin with a detached fascination. The yellow glare of the streetlight made the snow outside flare orange, like dying stars. But he felt better now, with the icy air and hazy light. Room to breathe; his bed really was too narrow for two.
Stiles blinked slowly and peered over his shoulder, into the dark.
He regarded the shape in his bed with the same cool detachment that he showed the snow. Smaller than him, but not by much. His hair was inky and ruffled, long enough for him to tie it behind his head. Tanned, with a thousand-watt smile and a stubbled jaw.
You’re beautiful, but you don’t mean anything to me.
What was his name? Jack? Jake? Jason? All Stiles could remember was his mouth, how it had parted for him so eagerly, how it had tasted of bitter rum and cigarettes and lemon cough syrup. He remembered drinking too much and kissing him because…
Because he was beautiful, and he’ll never mean anything to me.
“Wicked scars.” The man blinked slowly, peering at Stiles through the dimness. He smiled, and it was nothing. The man smiled, and it was like bitter ashes to Stiles. And all Stiles could think, all his could think was
Your eyes are the wrong colour.
Stiles didn’t move, “thanks.”
“How’d you-.”
“Long story.”
Stiles’ response was harsher than he intended, cutting through his new friend’s docile curiosity with unnecessary severity. Silence fell. “… right. Sorry, not my place. Hey, why don’t you close the window and come back where it’s warm, lovely?”
Stiles closed the window softly and turned to face him, pressing his scars up against the chilled glass. He had the decency to look abashed when he said quietly, “Look, I had fun last night, but you should probably-.”
“Leave?” Jake(?) sat up quickly, eyebrows high on his forehead. “You’re kicking me out at, what? 3 am? When it’s snowing?”
Irritation crept into Stiles' voice, “you said you live on campus too. It won’t take you long to get home.”
Jason(?) scoffed as he threw himself from the bed to begin angrily pulling on the clothes he found littered around the small room. “Let me guess,” he said scathingly as he pulled on his jeans, “you have to get up early in the morning.”
Stiles regarded him flatly, “no, I just don’t want you to spend the night.”
A look of indignation passed over his face, but he remained silent, and continued dressing in the dark and the quiet.
Stiles shrugged, watching him pulling on his sneakers, “at least I’m honest.”
Jack(?) finished buttoning an ugly coat and regarded Stiles coldly, dark eyes – the wrong eyes they're too dark– trapping Stiles’ gaze within them. The hazy glare of the streetlights made him blur around the edges, like he was a ghost come to haunt him, a spectre come to convict. “We met before, did you know that?”
Stiles shook his head, a quick, jerky movement.
The young man’s eyes never wavered, they remained hard, eyes made to cut and condemn. “I’m not surprised, you were pretty wasted at the time. It was at the same bar as last night. You were sitting there, drinking alone, just like last night. Except it was me that came up to you. I offered to buy you a drink, maybe give you some company. You know what you said to me?”
Again, Stiles shook his head, but it was slow, as dread and shame began to rise thickly in his stomach.
“You said, you’re beautiful, but I’m drowning and I don’t think you can save me.”
Stiles opened his mouth slightly, pressing his shoulder blades into the window until they ached. He opened his mouth once again, and wanted to say you can’t, or I’m sorry, but found that he couldn’t. Instead he plastered on a fake smile and dragged a laugh from his dry throat, “Heh, yeah I was probably drowning in the $5 margaritas they have there.”
The man regarded him coldly, his long made-for-smiling mouth a thin line, a razor's slash across his jaw, “You know what I think? I think that those were the only honest words you ever said to me.”
Stiles' smile fell slickly from his face as anger flared inside his chest. He stepped around his new friend quickly, his voice scathing and louder than intended, “do you analyse everything everyone says when they’re drunk?”
He didn’t seem to hear Stiles’ words. “Is that why I can’t stay?” The young man stepped up close behind him, but didn’t touch him. “Because you’re still drowning? Because you're in love with someone else who -.”
Stiles whipped around so quickly that the young man backed a half step away in shock. “You are a one night stand. You don’t know anything about me or what I've been through! What I've done!" Hurt flashed across Jason’s(?) face, and Stiles hated the satisfaction it brought him. But the young man didn’t respond, just continued to look at Stiles with those dark, sharp eyes. It made Stiles even angrier, but he couldn’t have said why. Finally, he shouted in exasperation, “What do you even want from me??”
Jake(?) tilted his head to one side, “I want you to tell me my name, Stiles.”
Stiles balked. “Why would -.”
“You don’t know, do you?” When Stiles didn’t respond, he shook his head, smiling a sickly little smile. Shame burned deeply into Stiles’ gut, like he had swallowed a handful of embers. He wanted to apologise, to do something. But his mouth wouldn’t move, and his body remained still and cold. Jack(?) sighed, “you are really fucking messed up, you know that.” He phrased it as a question, but it wasn't; he said it as a pure statement of fact.
Yeah I know that. “Please go.”
Without another word nor a backwards glance, the young man walked briskly to the door and threw it open.
And suddenly the tendrils that grew under Stiles' skin sprouted thorns and cut through his muscles and flesh to poke sharp blades out of his fingertips because Derek stood in the doorway, looking numbly at Stiles over the head of the man opposite. Jason(?) looked from Derek to Stiles, and opened his mouth to speak. But not before Derek’s growl cut him off, “you heard him. Go.”
He looked fleetingly over his shoulder at Stiles, “It’s Theo, by the way.” And was gone, and Stiles was left staring at Derek as though he had returned from the dead. Staring at his eyes, green and grey and burning through the darkness.
When Stiles couldn’t take the silence any longer, he said, “So, three months since I left. What are you doing here now?”
Derek ignored the question, jerking his head in the direction that Theo took, “who was he?”
Stiles swallowed, that shame and bitterness burning a hole through his chest to spill embers onto the floor. But he spoke truthfully, “no one.”
Derek stepped silently into his dorm, and Stiles took unconscious steps forward to meet him. It felt like there was ivy living beneath his skin, growing within him, vines pulling the brick of him to pieces. “And how many does he make, Stiles? Can you remember?”
Stiles’s sudden fury at Derek was astounding even to himself. “Fuck you, Derek! How many has it been for you over these months? Fuck, how many more were there while we were still-.” Stiles couldn’t say together. They were only about as together as a planet and a moon caught in its orbit.
Derek seemed to choke on his words, “there was never- you were only, the only. I can’t believe-”
Stiles swung his hands through the air, a burning tension tight in his chest. “What do you want from me Derek? I’m a college student. What do you expect? And why shouldn't I? Why should you even care?”
“Stiles, you can’t just keep sleeping with- with strangers.”
“Why? Because you don’t want me to?” Derek clenched his jaw and looked away, out the small window that was the sole source of light in the tiny room. His silence made Stiles’ anger rise, “you can’t just come back in after months, months, of nothing, and just expect me to be here, waiting for you like some trained dog!”
“I never wanted that! Jesus Stiles, I never would.”
But suddenly Stiles was screaming,
“I wont just be some goddamn booty call for you Derek! I can't do it and you know that!”
And Derek's voice was rising to meet his, "Do you have any respect for me whatsoever?! I'm not here for that Stiles, GOD!"
"Then what the hell business is it of yours what I do with my spare time?"
“It’s my business when you’re hurting yourself. Fuck, Stiles. Do you think it’s healthy to continually bring home random strangers without even knowing their names?” Derek gestured to his rumbled bed, “This isn't - it's not going to make you feel better, believe me I know!” Derek's voice rose, lips pulled back almost to a snarl, “it takes more than fucking someone you don’t know to keep yourself warm!”
Stiles didn’t respond immediately, although everything was screaming inside of him in anger, and pain, and shame. He closed the gap between them and pressed his finger into Derek’s chest, annunciating his every word, “you made it abundantly how you really felt about me three months ago, what you really wanted from me. You let me leave, remember that? And so I've stopped caring about you. We're nothing to each other anymore. So like I said, it’s none of your business.”
A twitch moved through Derek's jaw but he refused to look away. “Why didn’t you let him spend the night?”
Stiles took an involuntary step back, and sneered, “what do you care?”
Derek followed him, voice quiet, seething, “I know about the nightmares. I know what you dream about.” Stiles went still, prey caught in the sight of a predator. Those roots within his flesh twisted painfully, like Derek was drawing them out of his chest, one by one. “I know you can’t sleep without me next to you. That’s why you always insisted that I stay.”
Stiles’ breathing became ragged, his fists clenched. He would not tell Derek; he would not look weak. He would not reveal how he fights in the dead of the night until the voices are still. (His words were cruel and desperate things.) “Okay, you want to hear what I know about you? I know you’ll never be happy. Never.” (But each was carefully aimed.) “You’re still so caught up in your guilt that you’ll be blaming yourself for everything that's happened for the rest of your life. You wont allow yourself to become close to anyone because you will always view relationships as a disadvantage, a weakness that can be exploited. So you’re going to die alone, and miserable, and you will prefer it that way, because not only do you think it's safer for everyone, but you think it’s what you deserve.”
Silence rang empty in the wake of his outburst. Stiles felt hollowed out, emptied of all the words that had been sitting in his lungs for months. Derek was still looking at him steadily, unreadable, stoic as though he had been carved from marble. And Stiles felt weak, lightheaded and sickly and heavy all at once. And Stiles finally realised the single truth neither of them could ever admit, the one fact that both wanted to keep hidden and buried. And that secret was this: each of them had the power to pull the other apart and pass through him like a shudder; that their words could either be lullabies, or glass flakes made to sacrifice the other’s heart. Either way, it was easy; pulling petals, ripping wings.
And Stiles laughed, but the sound rang empty in the hollow silence, “how did we become such messed up creatures?”
Derek looked down and away, his gaze unfocused, as though Stiles had thrown a fist and not desperate words. “You should know,” he said quietly, distractedly, “I came to see- see how you were. See if you were okay. And I guess you’re fine.” He met Stiles’ eyes for a brief moment, before turning on his heel and walking the few paces to the door. Before Stiles could say anything, he turned back and said softly, “I did try, just so you know. I did.”
Derek closed the door gently, leaving Stiles confused and angry with harsh words and loving words and secrets and whispers clouding up his mind like a fog. I did try. “Derek,” his voice a murmur. Stiles bounded for the door and opened it wide, glancing up and down the dim corridor. The windows cast faint orange squares against the line of doorways, but none illuminated the person he needed. Derek’s last words kept thrumming through his chest like a war drum, beating like a tide in his veins. I did try, just so you know.
And suddenly Stiles was remembering. Remembering everything with new, sharp light thrown upon the memories like fluorescent lights on a crime scene.
A flashing smile from the corner of Derek’s lips when Stiles snarks a comeback to Jackson.
A lingering hand on the back of his neck and the proud glint in his eyes when Stiles’ research gives them the answers desperately needed.
The briefest brush of fingertips over the back of his hand when another supernatural threat made itself known.
The brusque silence and wide eyes when he gains consciousness in Deaton’s exam room, more stitches in his flesh and a new story to tell. Derek had been clutching his hospital blanket, Stiles remembered. His knuckles were white with the force of his fist, claws leaving gouges in the soft material.
Maybe that was Derek.
Maybe those brief flashes, those bare smiles, those fleeting touches were his way of saying
I’m trying.
I’m trying.
For you, I am trying.
And what if Stiles just never noticed?
He read somewhere that the heart loves the sound of its own breaking. If that was so, Stiles’ heart was covered in cut glass, cracked diamond, ready to crumble inwards. He leaned back against the doorway, his kaleidoscope heart grating against his ribs. “Fuck.”