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“This isn't you, Stiles.” Tears, tears and more tears. The nogitsune found it amusing how easily they slipped out, as though he was pulling from a limitless reservoir. The faces around him were pinched with concern, the disturbing possession of such a lovable boy - what a shame.
He wrenched his head, immobilised from his neck downwards, his one mistake had been underestimating Deaton.
The bottom of his thighs chafed against the sofa, it was the sort of meagre annoyance that was sure to build up.
Stiles’ fading body splayed across the couch in Scott's living room, surrounded yet completely in control. He attempted to wiggle his fingers to no avail. Kanima venom, very interesting indeed.
It was a minor setback, merely another hurdle the spirit had to conquer to win his game. It was wasting his time, sure, sitting there immovable, but a century of damnation allowed you to appreciate the glorious ticks of a slow clock. He supposed he could spare a few minutes to rest and take them all in, becoming more and more amusing as the seconds ticked into minutes.
His eyes locked on Scott's, and what wonderful stories they told him. Those open eyes inherited from Melissa. Hostility veiled everyone else’s worry, an attempt at impassivity that Stiles could easily see through, Scott and Melissa were incapable of this. Childhood buddy, best pal, almost-son; Stiles made a home in the hearts of the mother and son. That made him the most frightening creature they had seen in their year of the supernatural. The perfect mask for the perfect trick.
Endearing, harmless Stiles. His dry wit and hyperactive spiels causing fondness. The token human of the pack. They all knew he was breakable and fragile but welcomed and protected him all the same. Not the black sheep so much as the little lamb. Would not, could not hurt a fly. Little fireflies.
Stiles relished in the abject looks of horror on their faces whenever he would speak, he could captivate the room, they would hang onto his every syllable even though they didn't want to. That was the morbidness of humanity, despite how horrified and disturbed they were they would always watch, would always continue looking. It was curiosity that killed the cat, wasn't it?
He wore Stiles' usually bright tone with a slant and it shook them all to their core. Lydia clasped her hands, knuckles turning white in her grip. Her eyes were wide as saucers involuntarily. That was the glory in the face he donned - it elicited reactions beyond people's control. When Aiden had dashed to the school to meet the fate of his twin Stiles threw his head back and laughed, he felt a unanimous shiver shake the floorboards.
Stiles' body was paralysed yet he had the room wrapped around his finger. A thrill murmured through him, riveting.
"It is now.”
-
Derek heard the steady heartbeat before the light knock on the loft door. The scent alluded to familiarity, but there was a sour tint. What once was the smell of aftershave, roasted coffee beans and sweetener became tainted with dust and dirt. The smell of the old and unwanted.
The hairs stood on the back of the beta's neck, his claws falling, spine going ramrod straight by impulse alone. There was the sound of the metal door sliding open, and the weight of a solitary footstep entering the premises.
Without turning Derek uttered, "I didn't think you'd come."
A chuckle bounced along the walls, deep and menacing as it never had been before. Stiles' laugh was far more cheeky, a barking, raucous thing that takes the recipients by surprise until you have little choice but to laugh along with him. There was no joy in the sound that Stiles' carcass made. Devoid of life. Void.
"The King, Derek. You're the King, you saw."
When Derek had stumbled across Stiles' chess board, pieces strategically arranged into categories for each member of the pack, his given title of King sent an unsuppressed shiver down his spine. From that day he felt eyes on him that he couldn't place, couldn't shake the feeling that he was being observed wherever he went.
Derek turned to survey the threat. The lanky best friend of the true alpha, a consistent point of contention and annoyance for Derek, was a shell of himself. Stiles’ typically pale face had greyed beyond recognition, brown eyes dimmed and carrying the weight of dark violet circles. He looked like death incarnate, yet he wore a smile. Chapped and taunting him with each twitch.
The nogitsune tilted its head, a false display of submission. Its grin spreading wider and his eyes narrowing in anticipation. Derek felt panic claw at his throat, breath catching before he could stop himself. The spirit's sick excitement was palpable, and Derek knew he was feeding him a reaction to be devoured whole. But he couldn't help it.
“What do you see?” it asked, taking a few steps towards Derek, slow as molasses. With each advancement, Derek moved back two. They were playing chess even now and he knew that it loved it. “When you look at him. What do you see?”
It exerted energy to merely look at him. At the figure of the boy that he once -- no, don't do that. He, it, wants that. He clenched his hands into fists to retain composure, keep his stance consistent. The nogitsune moved one more, Derek held his place this time.
"I see a cowardly entity that can't keep a body of its own to save its life," Derek drawled, his monotonous voice betraying none of his internal hardship. This surprised it.
It puffed a breath out its nose in shocked amusement. Its smirk was a twisted image, like rambling thorns or the curl of a boa constrictor. Its smile was as dangerous as a frown, possibly even more. It was not unwise to assume that when it was frowning it meant that the spirit was concentrating, and if it was concentrating it meant that it was losing, a smile heralded the exact opposite. It was precisely this which worried Derek the most.
"Always quick Derek, so quick with your quips, I can appreciate that," it said, taking two more steps towards Derek, advancing on the King. “Yet though we are now two, you assume that his body doesn't belong to me. Why?”
“It's never been yours, and it never will be.” Derek stuck his chin out, eyes hard. He didn't care for its riddles, those which he knew Stiles entertained out of terror. Empty brown eyes looked him up and down, the upper corner of its mouth twitching as if Derek was an endless source of unseemly amusement. Then Stiles' eyes moved away, tuning in to a spot just behind his shoulder, taking in the rows of windows behind the desk.
Derek took the silence as an opportunity to speak again, “When will this stop? I mean, what's the end goal for you? I don't get what possibly could be beneficial, hanging onto the body of a defenceless sixteen-year-old.”
This caught its attention. It relished in knowing that boredom wouldn't confine it for another while yet. Oh, what lovely fun Derek Hale proved to be. Stiles' eyes snapped back to Derek's. Another small upturn of the mouth.
“You know the answer to that,” the spirit stated, “hmm, sourwolf?”
“Shut up.”
“I reckon it was you who wanted his body, to own it, have him belong to you. Is that what this is, jealousy?” Stiles was laughing now, a maniacal sound resonating from deep within. Derek wanted to rip its throat out with his teeth. The only thing stopping him was its mask, it was impenetrable only for who the face belonged to. He knew he wasn't the only one who thought so. “Did I get to him first?”
“Stop it.” His claws pinched the palms of his hands, piercing the skin. The nogistune glanced down and raised an eyebrow.
“You’ll be happy to hear that he put up a great fight, you would’ve been proud.” The spirit looked up, taking in the cracks that marred the cement ceiling, as though it was taking note of every square inch of Derek’s abode. As if it had much better things to be investing its time in than playing cat and mouse.
Its jaw was harsh, containing none of the softness that Stiles’ used to. The baby fat that collected around his chin and cheeks had melted away. The teen’s love for curly fries often superseded his moderate metabolism. The baleful spirit had scooped the contents of Stiles out with a spoon, he was empty. “But I suppose none of it mattered in the end.”
Derek said nothing and it took every semblance of composure he possessed and more. The nogitsune stepped in closer, almost impressed by his resolve.
“You should've heard his screaming, oh the screaming,” he sang, hands orchestrating an imaginary tune, “It was delicious.”
Blood began to spill down his knuckles, but Derek didn't feel it. It did little to quell the bubbling rage in his stomach, the heat of anger spreading across his body like wildfire. He could feel his brain clouding over, he was starting to shift.
It began to pace around Derek, but the beta did not turn around.
"There's beauty in the struggle you see, Derek. You of all people should understand. There's a profoundness in the pain, in the upheaval of dignity, in the attempt at survival. It makes you all so utterly, utterly human." it flashed its teeth, "Some break remarkably quick, some people's minds are far too malleable for any sort of real struggle to occur. I underestimated Stiles, truly I did. But then again, everyone does."
Hearing Stiles' name on its tongue was blasphemous.
“The glory, the true beauty is in the breaking, so for future reference…” Trying to control his anger wasn't the issue, Derek was a master at self-control at even at the worst of times, it was the spirit's mouth that was the problem. It wouldn't stop talking. He clenched his eyes shut while trying to stabilise his breathing, he knew that this is what that thing wanted, for him to lose control.
It leaned in as if to tell a secret, “He looks so beautiful when he cries.”
Derek lunged, not fully shifted but with claws intact. He grappled at its shirt. Derek recognised it as the one Stiles wore at a pack movie night when he had spilt orange soda all over the couch and tried to soak it up by sitting on a wad of paper towels. This only made the uproarious fury harder to contain. He raised his right hand up above his head, rearing to slash down and kill the creature. Killing its host. He snapped back to reality.
The nogitsune had not flinched, had barely even moved an inch off the spot where he was standing even though Derek had shoved it with more than an ounce of will. Their noses were touching.
Its eyes were curious, sparkling with exhilaration. It hadn't been the first time Derek had shoved Stiles' frail body, he had acquainted the teen with every wall and door on the west side of Beacon Hills - but the power dynamics couldn't have been more reversed. Despite having its shirt wrapped tightly in his clawed fingers and with the threat of death just in front of him, the spirit was unblinking. Derek had never felt more powerless.
It opened its mouth slightly and he was immediately attentive. “Chaos and strife.”
Derek's eyebrows furrowed.
“You asked when we’ll stop. When we have chaos.” The nogitsune brought Stiles' hand up to brush against Derek's cheek, and for a mere moment, he leaned in, eyes fluttering closed without explicit consent. “And strife.”
Both the coldness of Stiles' fingertips and the sharp buzz of his phone had Derek recoiling from the touch violently. Letting go of the crumpled mess of the shirt, Derek reflexively pulled his phone from his pocket and glanced eagerly at the screen. It was a text, from Scott.
From: McCall 14:36 – FOX AND STILES SPLIT. FOX IS MISSING. BE CAREFUL.
“I did tell you,” it said knowingly, not bothering to glance at Derek's phone. It didn't need to.
Another stab of emotion, but it wasn’t panic, it was hope. Though Derek generally knew better than to feel optimistic, especially when it came to the malignancy of a thousand-year-old Japanese spirit, he couldn’t help the relief that poured down his back and the hint of a smile fluttering at his lips. Thank God. Thank God he would be okay.
He naively envisaged embracing Stiles, roughly grabbing the back of his head and pulling him into a crushing hug. Not too crushing though, Derek knew when to be gentle and Stiles, the real one, looked like absolute shit.
Derek would rub the overgrown scruff on the back of the teen’s neck and sniff deeply at his nape, bask in the authentic scent he didn’t realise he craved so much until that moment.
Stiles would look at him with those doe brown eyes, tired but free, and he would smirk with that damned upturn of his lips and drag out some sarcastic comment about Derek actually showing emotion for once. He could hear the cutting drawl of Stiles’ voice, which Derek noted had deepened significantly in the last six months. He knew it would sound fond. Stiles always sounded fond around Derek. Fond and vaguely terrified, huh.
“We are now two. But two of one.”
Derek halted, defence up within a millisecond, cursing his daydreaming, “What?”
It smiled again, looking around and surveying the loft with fervour. It seemed pleased with itself, self-congratulatory and superior. Derek stepped forward habitually, the fleeting hope replaced slowly with a growing sense of dread. What would it have to be pleased it about? They had it cornered, suffocated. It had lost.
Derek didn’t realise that he had been speaking aloud until the nogitsune let out a throaty chuckle.
“I wanted more from you, Der, less of that naivety that I’ve come to expect from the others.” A beat. Pity flashed across Stiles’ features, a caricature of empathy that was more monstrous than human.
In a low, condescending tone it whispered, “You didn’t really think that I would give him back, did you?”
Stunned, with the air knocked out of his lungs, Derek froze. What did the spirit mean? A flurry of movement followed, an explosion of pain, and the powerful beta was sprawled out on the floor. Derek hadn’t even seen it coming, barely recognised the inhuman blur of a fist hurtling towards his face until too late. His ears rung from the sheer force behind the hit, dragging his fingertips across the floor to ground himself. He looked up.
The loft was empty, it was gone.
-
Stiles emerged from the ground wrapped in bandages, his limbs jelly as he attempted to walk in his own body for the first time in days. Darkness crushed him as he pulled at the cloth around his face. He couldn’t breathe.
Suddenly he felt two pairs of arms strangle his shoulders, pushing him backwards and backwards, he stumbled over his own feet with each push, muffled yelling resounding around him. Stiles fell onto a soft surface, his body going limp on impact. Hands clawed at his face, his nose burning from the chafing of fabric against skin. He began to struggle against the scrambling at him, jerking away from the harsh tugs and letting out an unconcealed whimper. The pulling at his bound face become more aggressive until he heard a panicked shout, “Wait, wait, wait!”
His unbinding became gentler.
The bright blinded him as the wrapping was pulled from his head, loosened just underneath his chin. Stiles panted, a layer of sweat he had not previously been aware of cascading down his back. He blinked harshly, squinting as his eyes attempted to focus on the light. Two faces began to focus in front of his own, features marred with hostility and fear.
Peter and Scott.
“Scott?” he rasped. His voice sounded foreign to his own ears, Stiles almost expected for it to be taken from him again, for his voice box to start babbling on its own accord, controlled by a force he was helpless to. His eyes flashed to Melissa, he remembered everything he, it Stiles it, had said to her. There was a wariness in her eyes that he had never seen before, nonetheless directed at him.
Silent chaos ensued as Scott stared at Stiles, just stared. The world blurred in the background as the best friends held each other’s gaze, Scott’s clenched and pained look mirrored Stiles’ own.
Stiles remembered everything he had done, he remembered twisting that sword into Scott’s torso, he remembered mocking him as he screamed. Hot shame consumed the teen.
Scott clenched his jaw, stuck halfway between wanting to hug Stiles to death or throw him out of the house to never return. He knew that was unreasonable deep down, of course he did, he knew that Stiles was under the influence of a soul that was not his own – but fuck, his face. Scott remembered the smile, Stiles’ sharp, sardonic face held captive by the smirk of a devil. Scott shivered. “Stiles?”
Deaton and Peter tapped Scott’s shoulder, which the alpha grunted at, eyes never moving from Stiles’ face as if he was afraid Stiles was going to disappear. Literally or otherwise.
“Scott, it’s gone.” The alpha looked around the room, a pile of dirty bandages on the floor, the front door swung up open.
“The nogitsune is gone.”
The last thing Stiles recalled before falling unconscious was the remnants of its voice whispering in his ear, a mantra the nogitsune had repeated in his head long before he had split from the teen’s body. Repeatedly, “you know what you need to do.”
“You know what you need to do.”
“You know what you need to do.”
Stiles knew what he needed to do.
-
Stiles dreamt of the broadened trunk of the Nemeton, it was reaching for him. He was in the woods surrounding the decrepit Hale house where he knew Derek no longer lived. He hoped the house would protect him even if Derek wasn’t in it, the beta’s presence would reside there as well as that of the rest of his pack. Could Stiles still call them his pack?
When Stiles turned to run his feet sunk into supple soil, enveloping his legs like quicksand. The bite in the night’s chill made goosebumps erupt across his skin, a harsh wind started to build from behind his ears.
That’s when Stiles heard it. A whisper intermingling with the roar of the weather. The whisper of the bandaged man. It was almost a relief to hear it using someone else’s voice for a change.
He lifted his arms in an attempt to block his ears, but they were lead at his sides, he was stuck, frozen. A deer in headlights.
Stiles was sure he had shut the door to his mind, slammed it shut with more energy than he thought it was possible for him to muster in his dilapidated state. Yet the echo in the wind reminded him of the hanging man from Eichen, just when the last sounds of his life bounced around the stairwell. Though that was the thing about echoes, he reckoned, they were always a few seconds behind, a few seconds too late. So that meant—
Stiles turned and the nogitsune was standing right in front of him, blood pouring from his fanged mouth. Dread drowned him, consumed him whole. Fear shook his legs that were still implanted in the ground. He let out a strangled scream, but it barely made a sound over the howling wind.
It choked off pathetically and Stiles knelt down and clasped his side to catch his breath in greedy gulps of air. His hands were filthy against his deathly pale skin.
“I don’t-“ Stiles started, ears ringing. He was certain that the fox could hear him despite the surrounding cacophony. “I don’t know what more I can give you.”
The spirit paced around him, his thick boats squelching in the wet moss that had captured Stiles’ feet, yet the nogitsune did not sink. The wind grew louder, impossibly, so that there was no other sounds but his pulse in his ears and the thick, wet boots.
“You do.”
Everything had been ripped from Stiles’ grasp, his control, his friends, his family. Any semblance of self-esteem wrestled from him. There was little more he had left to offer, little else but one thing - as meagre as it was.
“You’ve already taken everything,” Stiles whispered, throat catching as he felt its arm rubbing across his back.
“Not everything, Stiles. Not what’s worth most of all.” The nogitsune stood directly behind Stiles’ shaking form, he could feel the chafing of his leather bomber jacket against his shoulder blades. “It starts off light and easy to bear, yet the more you carry it with you, the heavier it becomes.”
Stiles was tired, he was so so tired. “Please,” he begged, “please don’t.”
“It starts off light and easy to bear, yet the more you carry it with you, the heavier it becomes.”
“I don’t know.”
“You do, Stiles. You know better anyone.”
“I don’t.” Admittedly, battling against a malevolent ancient spirit wasn’t the best of ideas. Stiles knew he had a penchant for danger, this was recklessness, but the tired kind. The kind where the repercussions didn’t matter because Stiles no longer cared. As long as no one else got hurt. A selfless form of self-destruction.
“You do.”
“I don’t.”
The terrified teen felt a warm breath against the shell of his ear as it started to scream in his ears, but it was no longer the voice of the poor Corporal Rhys, it was the snarled attempt of his own. “It starts off light and easy to bear, yet the more you carry it with you, the heavier it becomes.”
The wind came to a sudden stop, the last syllable of the nogitsune’s roar breaking off into nothingness. Stiles no longer felt its presence behind him, but recognised someone else’s all around him.
“What have you done?” Stiles’ head whipped to his right, the mangled sound of Scott’s voice calling from the trees, obscured.
“Get the fuck away from me,” sounded Derek’s bitter yell, this time coming from his left. There was the snapping of branches all around him and a crescendo of noise.
“It’s you. It’s all you.” Dad. That was his Dad. Stiles made to move, to lunge out of the confines of the mud and moss but he was completely immoveable, paralysed. Stiles started to yell and clawed at his feet to try and drag them to the surface of the earth. But no, they were intent on pulling him to straight to hell.
“Allison!” Lydia wailed, her shriek deafened him.
“You murdered her.”
“You’re a killer!”
“Look what you’ve done.”
“Dead. Dead. All dead!”
It was a low hum of voices overlapping, building up to where none were more decipherable than the other. It was a constant steady stream of hatred, Stiles recognised, directed towards him. His hands flew up to his ears.
“What have you done Stiles?” His friends and family were a choir, screaming at him from every crevice of the Earth. Their vitriol shook the ground.
“Stop. Please stop!” he yelled, his pleading a garbled sound that Stiles scarcely recognised. He sounded animalistic, a cracked, broken roar of, “Stop it! Stop!”
The nogitsune infiltrated the uproar once more, the heartbreak of his friends receding into the background as its haunting purr dominated his ears once again. “It starts off light and easy to bear, yet the more you carry it with you, the heavier it becomes.”
Realisation dawned like a punch to the gut, knocking the air from Stiles’ lungs. He crumpled over and grabbed his stomach, dry heaving into the dirt. A dark vapour exited his mouth, blowing away in the wind.
The tortured screams of his pack halted, the trees falling quiet. The spirit was certainly a fan of repeated silence. The ground settled and the Earth’s axis shifted back on its hilt.
Stiles had an incurable disease. It wasn’t the mockery the spirit had made in the copy of his mother’s frontotemporal dementia, it wasn’t the possession that lingered deep in his bones, the ADHD that rattled them or the depression that weakened them; it was guilt. The sixteen-year old's conscience was so dirty it made Stiles inherently unclean. It was the sort of filth that could never be washed away, no matter how much penance he sought after.
“Guilt.”
The teen heard a horrible creaking and his head shot up. The Nemeton’s trunk was vibrating, shaking with excitement. Stiles twisted his ankles violently to remove them from the ground, hearing his bones crack at the weight of his jerks. Sharp pain consumed him, but still, he struggled, sweat staining his shirt.
The trees roots began to move on their own accord, omnipotent and unforgiving. Stiles could see the ground moving in unison as though comprised of water, waves and ripples moving as he battled to escape. A tuber shot up through the dirt with a burst, its pointed end facing him, the other hundreds followed suit, eyeing Stiles.
“No!” he screamed. “Don’t do this. I’m more than this. Please!”
Abruptly the roots shot underground, causing an earthquake of activity. They all began to move at once, a low grumble resounding again, not unlike the voices of his friends. Their outlines could be seen from above ground as if they were gigantic worms, slithering quickly towards Stiles’ frozen form.
Stiles’ fingernails chipped and his knuckles bled as he tried to scramble himself away, and instead fell onto his back as his body failed him. Far too much exertion in far too little time. Two lifetimes worth of trauma and had he had little to show for it besides crippling insecurities and a deteriorating frame.
Too much became too much so Stiles surrendered to his fate, moving his heavy arms to his sides and lying on his back. The earth was wet and cold beneath his shirt, he could feel it grabbing onto the fabrics of his shirt to devour him whole. The teen felt like a fly during summer that gets caught in a sticky trap, blindly continuing the cycle. A poor, harmless, virtually useless fly with none of the strength to escape its fate.
As he shut his eyes the roots consumed him, wrapped around his body like vipers, cutting off his air supply and creeping past his lips.
The worst part was that the sensation did not panic him, Stiles did not mourn his own death. The Nemeton’s foundations entrapping him did not feel like murder, they felt like a warm embrace.
He woke up.
-
When Stiles came to no one could look him in the eyes. He found that his past possession gave him a newfound ability to read a room even amongst the most stoic. He knew Allison was dead before they told him.
When the traumatised pack had tumbled in the door of Scott’s abode, they crumpled to the floor in front of the armchair he was curled up in, Lydia’s sobs spoke a thousand words. Flecks of blood-stained their shirts.
“I don’t know how it happened. One second she was there and the next—“
“Who was it?” Stiles croaked, the palms of his hands tacky with sweat. Isaac, Lydia, Kira and Scott sat in a jumbled circle, plotted randomly across the floorboards. Their spines were hunched and their faces were pale, even Scott’s typically golden skin had dimmed - devoid of its usual glow.
The alpha took an intake of breath before he spoke, weighing his words with extra care, “The oni,” he said. “It was one of the oni. She managed to get an arrow to its chest, a silver one, we were— we were all distracted. We didn’t know they could be killed, y’know? None of what we had done so far had even wounded them so it took us by surprise, we froze.”
Isaac closed his eyes tightly. Lydia’s sobs had reduced to quiet twitches and bouncing shoulders, a sort of surreptitious pain.
“We couldn’t do anything, it was too late. By the time we looked it got her.” Scott’s fists were shaking, blood welling as his wolfed nails dug into him, holding back an emotion that Stiles couldn’t identify. He moved his arm to touch his friend and Scott flinched, shifting his body away from the support. Stiles recognised it as an involuntary reaction. The alpha’s mouth opened to apologise but it was too late.
Stiles withdrew his hand sharply, heat bubbling in the pit of his stomach. It wasn’t anger, it was shame. The tips of his ears grew hot as he mumbled, “Sorry.”
“Was he.” No, correct yourself. “It was there too?” Stiles asked. He could hear the vulnerability in his own voice, they knew that he knew the answer but didn’t remark on it.
Scott nodded tightly, eyes betraying the hurt and fury. Stiles could feel the rest of the group staring at him from their pitiful circle and he got deja vu, the distinct picture of trees and quicksand mud swaying into his head. He excused himself just as the bile started to claw its way up to his oesophagus.
That was the last time Scott mentioned it directly. No one would dare speak her name for fear of eruption. The girl Stiles had indirectly murdered was becoming a distant memory and Stiles didn’t want to be forgiven.
He craved ex-communication from the pack like a sinner craved repentance, like a lover craved martyrdom. Stiles didn’t want the pack’s forgiveness. He didn’t deserve it, and it sickened him to acknowledge that he would get it anyways. At the end of it all, Stiles knew that he would be embraced, disingenuously, and they would remove him of blame like they had so many times before. It made him wretch harder.
The bubbling of shame didn’t quell, it became more turbulent. Stiles knew what he needed to do. He would drown himself before the guilt consumed him whole.
-
Two days after Allison’s death, Stiles sat on the edge of his bed. His meagre three hours of sleep frayed his nerves, his head ringing and pulsing, filled to the brim with clouds and cotton balls. He flexed his digits, and yeah, no feeling whatsoever. It was constant teetering on the edge of consciousness, walking on the tightrope that bridged absolute insanity.
After Stiles went home that day no one had talked to him since, radio silence. He understood why, of course he did. The pack had lost a dear friend, a close ally with whom they shared a deep bond, they were selfishly mourning as mourners did whilst unintentionally blaming him with every tear they shed.
Allison was someone they would never forget, her fiery spirit and vulnerable heart were her forte. She was femininity and strength personified, weary yet unafraid. Stiles would never forget the time she stood up to Peter when an argument exploded during a meeting, or when she stole books from her father’s stock for Stiles to pursue his research on the fae people.
The loss blew a hole in the group’s dynamics; gone was their accomplice, their mediator in pack disputes, the optimistic eye when things had gone south and all seemed to be lost. Her resourcefulness and intelligence had got them through many slumps and hardships.
Allison Argent’s presence was a casualty too fatal to move past, and they all knew it.
Stiles drew a circle of mountain ash around his home, turned off his phone and allowed it to die; he supposed that contributed to the silence most of all, self-sabotage. He needed isolation to figure out his next move, the divine move. The less intervention from the pack, the better.
Stiles’ room smelled of sweat, fear deeply ingrained into every particle of his room. The last night’s torment had seeped into his mattress, intermingling with the hundreds of other late-night traumas. That’s all his three hours of tossing and turning got him, another reminder of all he had done.
As lifeless they were, Stiles raised his hand to his mouth and traced his index over his lips, afraid that if he pressed any harder they would crumble to dust. The matted knot on the top of his head was stubborn, not bending to the will of Stiles’ futile tugs. He didn’t have to look at himself to know what would be reflecting back at him. A shadow of the boy he used to be. Funny.
Yesterday evening he took a towel-covered fist to the mirror, a jagged crack splitting his face in half. His knuckles groaned and his head pounded as Stiles let out a scream, not one from the pain of breaking the mirror, but an internal one. If his dad heard it he didn’t say anything.
His Dad wouldn’t and couldn’t look him in the eyes anymore. Not without seeing the monster that wore his son’s face. It didn’t matter that the spirit was gone; the image of his sarcastic son stretching a taser with his bare hands and yelling down the barrel of a Desert Eagle was engrained into Noah’s memory.
Void had possessed not only Stiles but the memories he shared with others, Void had made itself home in the recollections of his family and friends - tarnishing any future memories in the process.
Stiles remembered staring at his dad, his shadow of a smirk lengthening when Noah realised that his son was gone. He had never seen his Dad look so frightened, knew him to be the brave man who had lost it all yet soldiered on. It was almost funny how seeing Stiles so utterly, utterly unlike himself was nearly enough to undo the sheriff with the famously iron will. The urge to break out in maniacal laughter had his lip quivering.
Bracing himself for the first time in forty-eight hours, Stiles stood and snatched his phone from its lonely spot on his desk. He clenched the button on the side, and true enough, no juice. Contemplating on not charging it all was a selfish but necessary evil; Stiles knew Scott would want to talk, ignoring it would only assist the storm.
His knees called out to him once more as he brought himself over to the plug outlet at the end of his bed, relishing in the blip of light that cast a dim glow across his features.
Stiles wrung his hands as he waited for the phone to turn on, scratching bitten nails across the beds of his fingers and along the palm of his hand. Scott once told him that the nervous tick was contagious, making him want to do the same, Stiles wondered if this was still true.
The anticipation was killing him, yet the second the thought that no one had reached out to him floated into his brain, it couldn’t be removed. Dread flushed his face of colour, his eyes flitting towards his bedroom window inadvertently. What if none of the pack wanted to talk to him, what if none of them cared that he had gone completely awol? It was plausible for sure, look at what having Stiles around had done for them all. Another gravestone to put beside Erica and Boyd’s.
His phone sounded a courtesy blip to announce its resurrection and Stiles’ feet froze to their spot. He waited. Waiting for a text notification notification, a buzz from his voicemail, a ding signifying a missed call, anything. Tears pulled to the front of his eyes as a horrifying resignation overtook him, settling deep in his bones. His worst fears became reality: no one cared.
Stiles reached forward to chuck his phone across the room when the first buzz sounded, then the second, then the third. Suddenly there was an overlapping of every notification tone Stiles had enabled on his phone. His bedroom became filled with the sounds of a technological orchestra, buzzes and beeps pinging from the walls, his hand still outstretched.
The noises didn’t cease for a solid minute, whereafter Stiles still stood unmoving, a myriad of emotions capturing the whine in his throat. With immense caution he reached for the phone again, afraid that even the slightest touch would make it all go away. All of the hope.
63 missed calls. 107 messages. 26 voicemails.
From: Scotty 13:54 - Stiles pick up the phone
From: Lydia 14:15 - We don’t blame you, Stiles. We know this wasn’t you.
From: Isaac 14:27 - can u please answer
From: Lydia 14:30 - I’m worried about you, we all are. Please respond.
From: Scotty 14:36 - I’m coming over
From: Scotty 14:58 - Stiles what the fuck
From: Scotty 14:59 - Break the mountain ash. Please. I just want to talk
From: Lydia 18:42 - If you don’t respond by tomorrow morning I’m coming over. I won’t care if the door is locked.
From: Isaac 21:02 - why are u doing this?
He responded to each one slowly, humiliation licking at his insides. He managed to ward off Lydia’s visit with a few choice words and many spattered apologies. Stiles couldn’t deal with her red-headed fury, not today.
Amidst all of the tragedy, it amazed Stiles that he could still cause them so much trouble, that he’d hurt them regardless of his actions. Whether he stayed or went didn’t seem to matter, because he would wreak havoc wherever he went.
An unopened message caught his eye and Stiles did a double-take, rereading the name.
From: Derek Hale 05:58 - Call me.
Stiles checked the time that bannered the top of his screen. His blackout curtains shielding him from the real world to the extent that he didn’t know the time. It could’ve been day, it could’ve been night - it didn’t matter to Stiles, it wasn’t like he was getting any sleep anyway.
It was just past 8 in the morning, Derek’s text was only a meagre two hours ago. So he did what he wouldn’t have done under any other circumstances, he rang Derek back.
Bringing the phone up to his ear was a daunting task, as his entire body reduced to jelly. A fizzle of energy bubbled in preparation for whatever Derek had to say, which Stiles was sure wouldn’t be good. There were two beeps and then silence. Derek picked up on the second ring.
The silence realistically lasted but a few seconds, but Stiles could feel its awkward tendrils hugging onto him for what seemed like minutes. Before Stiles could so much as clear his throat Derek simply said, “Loft. Now.” And promptly hung up the phone.
-
Stiles’ jeep pulled up outside the loft with an ungraceful squeak of brakes, so much for being surreptitious. The sensation of the morning breeze brushed across his cheekbones, a nice change to the humidity of his desolate bedroom.
His room now felt like enemy territory, every second he spent sprawled out aimlessly on his bed or pacing from wall to wall felt like an intrusion. Stiles didn’t feel welcome in his room, heck, even in his own house.
He worried that the same sickly, unwanted sensation would extend to Derek’s loft. Derek’s loft where they held pack ‘meetings,’ curled up on beanbags that Scott ordered from Amazon to watch romcoms - courtesy of Lydia and her penchant for sappy soundtracks and generic plot-lines. Sometimes it would be tense, him and the pack would spend hours huddled around Derek’s ridiculously large coffee table devising plans to take down the big bad of the week. Stiles wondered if they had a meeting about how to deal with the fox inhabiting his body. Did they passionately argue about Stiles’ fate, or did they sit in silence unsure of how to deal with something so close to home?
He made his way up the spiral staircase in silence, trying to calm the brutal pounding of his heart. Stiles could feel its thump in his eardrums.
Scrambling to the top step, he noticed that the door was open and waiting for him. Ajar. Stiles slide pack the burly steel and stood in the doorway. The horrible feeling overtook him just as he dreaded, the air in the loft thick with emotion Stiles didn’t have to be a werewolf to sense.
“Stiles.” He blinked and Derek was right in front of him, eyes glazed with caution. His broad shoulders spanned larger than Stiles remembered, blocking the doorway.
“Yeah?” Derek made no move to allow him in.
“This…” Derek started, his words catching up to him. Stiles could practically hear the scratching of a needle on vinyl, a roar of uncertainty emanating from the man who used to make a routine out of shoving Stiles into walls and intimidating him with his eyebrows. “This is you?”
Coming from Derek’s mouth should’ve made it a statement; the man surrounded by a sense of assurance and superiority reduced to an unsure bundle of anxiety. It was the sort of thing that made Stiles despise poetry.
The guilt that slipped into Stiles’ stomach felt misplaced, but something about Derek’s demeanour really wasn’t sitting right with him. He knew he (it) must’ve done something when he and the spirit went their separate ways, Derek’s hostile posture told him as much. He was much too afraid to ask for fear the answer could be worse than his imagination. That was becoming a thing, too. His nightmares coming to life, and worse. Allison was dead, he’d destroyed his already fickle friendships, his bond with Scott, and now Derek of all people refused to meet his gaze.
“Yeah,” Stiles uttered, the quietness of his voice startling them both. He twisted his fingers as a silence blanketed over them, his eyes remaining glued to a fixed spot on the ground in an aid to dispel the panic that seized him whenever Derek caught his eye. All of it screamed wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Derek shouldn’t be looking at Stiles like that, like he was — like he was a monster. “Yes, it’s me.”
The beta’s face softened marginally but ultimately remained distant. Derek still made no move to invite Stiles into his home. The unwelcome feeling rose to his throat to suffocate him.
“You are not wanted here,” a voice deep inside of him crooned. He reckoned that it was right. Impossibly Stiles’ head craned down further, a silent prayer for the floor to open up and gobble him down whole.
“Look,” Stiles started, volume only raising a tad higher, “I don’t know how I can prove it to you. Maybe I can’t. I’m not asking you to believe that it’s me, really me, but I’m more myself than not which I consider an accomplishment. I know that’s pathetic but…”
As Stiles trailed off, Derek moved to the side allowing him to enter, the barest trace of a smile on his face. He cleared his throat as Stiles tiptoed past him, noting the confusion. “Your rambling gave you away,” Derek said.
Stiles responded with a mere. "Ah.”
Seeing Stiles put Derek on edge, Stiles seeing Derek made him wary. For a split second the situation seemed unredeemable; as though the depths their relationship had sunk to due to a dark kitsune could not be brought back from. There was a distance between them and it was truly terrifying.
He made his way down the concrete steps, Derek in tow, wondering what he would say, how he would say it. Anxiety thrummed through him, sparks of adrenaline occupied his brain, like when he used to take too much Adderall to stay up far too late researching some useless lead.
“Why am I here, Derek?” He questioned, taking to sounding as non-confrontational as humanly possibly. It wasn't like Stiles could ever intimidate Derek Hale anyways.
Derek gestured towards his sofa, a request to be comfortable. Possibly just to do something with his arms.
Stiles didn’t feel like he deserved such a luxury so he stood unwavering, legs once again glued to the floor. The beta held his hands up in surrender, a still guarded expression on his face as he surveyed the teen.
“Why do you think?” Derek walked towards the sofa and sat down by himself, leaving a vacancy beside him as a silent still open invitation. He crossed his arms in front of him, and his bushy brows crumpled into a thick, unimpressed line.
It was somewhat of a relief to Stiles that Derek wasn’t treating him completely differently, not handling the meagre conversation with the same air of fragility all of his friends had done.
To Derek, Stiles hoped he was still the indignant nuisance with a mouth too big and patience too small, he didn’t want that to change for the world. He didn’t want Derek to treat him differently like his life depended on it.
Stiles wanted Derek to push him into the nearest surface and growl into his ear with his lips far, far too close about how stupid and idiotic he had been. He wanted Derek to hear how his breath hitched and how his heartbeat cranked up to one-thirty. In an alternate universe maybe, one where he hadn’t fucked up so tremendously, maybe more would’ve come from it. Stiles craved Derek’s general unfriendliness like a drug.
Even for him to give Stiles a simple hooded glare would’ve satiated the boy so deprived of genuine human contact.
Many moments passed before either of them said anything. Derek was characteristically quiet of course, yet it didn’t feel like the same silence he’d exhibit during tedious pack meetings, it was an expectant silence. A promise; I’m not going to talk until you do.
Stiles began to pace as he had little else to do, activity would help the cogs in his brain start to whir. He feared that he didn’t remember how to put sentences together. What order were the words meant to go in, again?
“I think you want to ask me if I’m okay, but you wanna be discreet about it. You want to check up on me without seeming that you care too much, which you don’t. You want to blame me for what I’ve done, rightfully.” Stiles didn’t look up when a growl sounded from the couch. “I can only hope you’ll do it properly. Blame me properly, I mean. Not the way everyone else has.”
He didn’t react to the scuffling of Derek’s shoes as he bolted upright with none of his usual elegance.
“I think you want to tell me that it’s my fault, and that I should leave the pack while I’m ahead. I’ve done enough. I’ve definitely done enough,” Stiles mumbled. He continued on despite the presence now in front of him, he continued to stare at his shoes. “But I don’t need you to tell me any of this because I know it myself. I deserve the guilt trip from you, but I don’t want it. I don’t think I want it anyways. Maybe I do, I could want it—“
“Stiles.”
“But after all of this, after all I’ve done.” Stiles’ voice started to raise, a hand clamped down on his shoulder.
“Stiles!”
Stiles wrenched away, voice catapulting to a shout. “The LAST person’s fucking pity I want is yours!”
More silence. More excruciating, mind-numbing silence.
He finally looked up, expecting to see an impassive Derek, maybe even an angry one. Nothing prepared him for reality.
The beta’s stubbled jaw lay slightly open, lower eyelids tensed, eyes blown wide. Two burly hands were outstretched in front of Derek’s body, the tips of his fingers curled, brandishing claws the wolf was a millisecond away from calling out. Derek was afraid. Of him.
Stiles slumped and retreated in on himself. The familiar sickly breath of shame breathing into his ear, warming him up inside. His shoulders laxly fell as Stiles panted in exertion. Any sort of shouting wound him into a state of immovable tiredness.
Dread tightened his stomach, had him clenching every part of his body. Not even Derek was untouched by the actions of the evil he failed to control.
A few months, even weeks ago, Stiles shouting wouldn’t have elicited a reaction from Derek. Derek, the man who communicated through his eyes, not through words. The man whose music was in his body; the way it moved, the way it fought, the way it danced. The man with his heart guarded with a wall of plexiglass and steel. The man whose genuine emotions were as rare as an eclipse in the summer.
This untouchable man was now afraid of him and Stiles could taste bile.
“I’m sorry,” Stiles started, the sob he had been holding back for the past ten minutes escaped from the back of his throat. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so so fucking sorry.” He sank down, not expecting to be embraced by two firm arms. His knees met concrete, the warm body going slowly down with him.
While one hand was wrapped around his midriff, another flew up to the tangled mess of his hair. Soothing rubs accompanied soft shushes, reassurances whispered into the top of his head as Stiles’ body quaked from his sobs.
“Shh, it’s okay. It’s okay,” Derek crooned, the fingers of his right hand tugging gently on the fibres of his head. Stiles could feel the manic thuds of Derek’s heart against his back.
“It’s not.” He knew he wasn’t a pretty sight, snot began to trickle down his mouth, it wasn’t an attractive cry. “It’s not okay, Derek. I’ve-“ He ran a hand down his face, all goo and tears. “I’ve fucked it all up.”
The beta began to rock him back and forth gently, a motion that had Stiles’ face heating up despite the dire situation. To be on the receiving end of such tenderness for Stiles was unusual, especially from the hardened enigma that was Derek Hale. He didn’t remember the last time someone had hugged him.
“You haven’t done anything.” The hand that was in his hair moved to rub circles in between his shoulder blades, the timid swirls of Derek’s fingertips mollified him significantly. The twists were familiar, Stiles recognised, Derek was tracing a triskele. “You haven’t done a single thing.”
“You don’t know what I’ve done.” Realisation ticked in the back of his mind. “I don’t know what I’ve done.”
The gentle traces against his body continued, and they didn’t stop. Time was a construct for those few minutes even though they felt much more like hours. The tense air subsided into gentle whispers, not completely peaceful, but far better than the alternative.
And for the first time in many weeks Stiles fell asleep.
-
Stiles came to in a bed that wasn’t his and he panicked, the weight of a foreign duvet holding him down.
He thrashed violently and let out a mimicry of a scream, the yell catching and instead releasing a sort of gargled yelp. As the blankets caught around his feet Stiles felt the roots of the Nemeton tangle themselves around his limbs, dragging him down into the depths of the earth.
A door crashed open in the commotion and Stiles opened his eyes. He hadn’t been aware that they were closed in the first place. Calloused fingers touched his cheeks.
“Hey, hey. Easy, Stiles. Easy,” The voice crooned. If Stiles focused hard enough he could recognise it.
“Derek?” He let out, eyes focusing. And Derek it was indeed, a dishevelled and exhausted looking Derek - but him all the same. He moved his hands from Stiles’ face to his upper arms quickly, quick enough that Stiles thought he was imagining it, gripping his shoulders with a desperation that betrayed his schooled expression.
“Yeah, it’s me. You’re okay. You’re at my house.” Small circles enchanted his skin, Derek’s thumbs tracing various shapes.
“How did I—?” Stiles wrenched the knotted sheets from around his ankles, sweat sticking to the material. “How did I get here— I don’t understand— How did— Who—?”
As panic started to forefront once again the comforting rubs from the stoic beta became slower and more spaced out. Even and predictable. It allowed Stiles to grasp himself onto reality.
“Okay, relax. Listen to me.” Derek said, moving from the kneeling position in front of Stiles to sitting at his feet on top of the bed. “You came here yesterday morning, do you remember that?”
Stiles shook his head slowly.
“Okay, then. You came here yesterday just after I asked you to call me, we talked, you got upset,” Derek averted his gaze. “You fell asleep. And now you’re here.”
The teen tried to remember, pushed his brain as far back as he could muster the energy to, but nothing, Stiles remembered absolutely nothing. Another affirmative squeeze to his arm brought him back. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“And I didn’t hurt you? I didn’t do anything?” Stiles questioned, surging up with a sudden burst of energy as if the answer to the question was more important than life itself.
“No, absolutely not.” Derek looked resolute, but there was still a look that Stiles couldn’t identify lurking underneath his calm demeanour.
“Don’t lie. If I did, please, please don’t lie to me.” The distress in his tone was evident, eyes wide as saucers.
Derek raised a hand to slow him.
“When have you ever known me to lie?” He asked, and boy if he wasn’t Stiles’ rock, his anchor for stability with his calm voice and casual posture, it was reassuring if only just for the few moments of mental relaxation he was allowed these days.
Stiles’ silence was the answer.
“Exactly.”
The teen was quiet, and stayed that way for many minutes. His feeble body swayed with the weight of his thoughts, knocking him from side to side. Derek didn’t know if this was a good or bad sign, whether the lack of panic-induced ranting and raving was preferable to the stony soundlessness he was now faced with.
As the minutes rolled into a worrying chunk of time, neither of the men spoke for fear of disrupting the air’s delicate balance.
Stiles was suddenly overcome with the urge to ask a question, a specific question that lay wrapped around the tip of his tongue. It was playing tug of war with his brain, and for some reason his brain didn’t want him to say it. Some primal, instinctive part of him that he couldn’t understand pushed and pulled, a question that he recited from memory. Like he had asked it before. It blurted from his mouth before Stiles knew what it meant.
“What do you see when you look at me?” Stiles whispered, and immediately Derek’s eyes were on him like magnets.
A beat, time stilled. Air electrified.
“What did you just say?” Derek’s body was tensed, muscles coiled tightly along his shoulders. He embodied a cat ready to pounce, toes curled against the floor and angled towards the door in case he needed to make a break for it.
“What?” Stiles asked, dumbfounded.
“Say that again.” Derek inched closer, nose twitching as he inhaled the boy’s scent. He smelled normal, of too much caffeine and not enough sleep, he smelled of Stiles. But that easily could’ve been another trick. “What you just said there. Say it again.”
“What do you mean, I—“
Then Derek’s hands were on his throat, a stark contrast to the gentle giant easing him down from a spiralling panic attack, drawing shapes on his arms. His thick thumbs lay under the crux of where Stiles’ jaw met his neck, pushing his head towards the ceiling.
Stiles grabbed the werewolf’s hands hopelessly, breath going thin, but Derek’s grip was steadfast. It wasn’t constricting his air supply, not yet. He made sure of that.
“Derek, stop! What’re you doing?” Tears began to flood his eyes, rivulets of confusion trickling down his cheeks. One second the man was comforting him, and the next he was trying to strangle the life out of him.
He felt a nose tickle against the outside of his throat, and a deep inhale. The exhale rippled against his ears, a shudder roaring down Stiles’ spine as he tried to keep absolutely still.
“You even smell like him and everything,” Derek grumbled, his voice angrier than Stiles had heard it in many months. Its livid, low baritone pooled anxiety in the pit of his stomach, fear once again clawing his mouth closed. Stiles was becoming familiar with the feeling. “How’d you manage that?”
“Derek I—“ His head was wrenched to face the werewolf, piercing blue eyes boring holes into his skull. Derek let out a cough.
The beta assessed him clinically, taking note of every inch and crevice of Stiles’ gaunt face. He stared and stared, and would not let go. Stiles suddenly felt more vulnerable than he had in the last couple of weeks, a surprising feat. He felt naked, undressed and so thoroughly disgusting. He shut his eyes.
“You think a few tears will deter me?” Derek whispered, though he might as well have been shouting. His grip on Stiles’ neck became increasingly tighter and the teen whimpered.
“You think it’ll distract me from the face you’ve taken, again? Because if you’re under the impression that you can fool me not just once, but twice,” He yanked the boy’s face closer to Derek’s own, his eyes looked more different than Stiles had ever seen them. “You’re wrong.”
“I didn’t, I don’t, I swear I—“ Stiles cut himself off when he felt the vibrations of the beginnings of a growl reverberate along Derek’s arms. A choked sob spilled from his lungs. “It’s me, Derek. It’s me, Jesus Christ.”
His face was so close to Derek’s he could feel scorching breath fan against his cheeks. It wasn’t how he had fantasised it, being this close to Derek Hale’s lips. Stiles envisaged dim lighting and the flutter of his lashes brushing against his cheeks as soft lips pecked his own. Possibly even a movie playing in the background, at a wild stretch, even music. Then again, nothing in Stiles’ life was going right, and perhaps never would again.
Stiles used the moment of delay and the leverage of his lower body to rocket his legs into Derek’s stomach, relishing only very slightly in the grunt of surprise that escaped the two-hundred pound man’s lips.
He scrambled his way off of the bed, thankful that he had untangled himself from the bedsheets, and darted towards the bedroom door. Yanking it open, he thrust himself down the stairs.
From behind him he could hear Derek composing himself, so he ran even faster. With caution not to tumble his way down the rest of the steps, Stiles slowed his pace to a light jog to get down the remaining stairs and made for the steel front door. He was slick with sweat after only a few minutes.
With a breath catching in his throat, Stiles just about got his first two fingers around the rung of the door handle before someone caught the back of his shirt.
With alarming strength Stiles was thrown down the steps by the hem of his t-shirt, landing on the concrete floor with a resounding thump. The wind knocked from his lungs, causing him to blindly gasp for air, choking and spluttering as his back and head pounded with the duress of being slammed onto the ground from such a distance.
Stiles was overwhelmed with the most agonising panic, he didn’t know what he had done wrong, what had spurred Derek’s violent attack. His heart convulsed in his mouth as he looked up at the broad stature looming above him, realising that Derek could kill him. And going by the blazing look of fury in his eyes, he knew Derek would. The veins in his built arms flexed, and Stiles felt the need to explain, to say something. But it didn’t matter either way because he was now going to be at the receiving end of a livid werewolf with notorious anger issues.
Derek began to make his way down the steps towards Stiles’ panting frame, and Stiles scrambled back, the palms of his hands chafing against the rough floor.
“Derek stop, fuck, stop! It’s Stiles. I’m Stiles!”
But Derek didn’t stop, footfalls staying at the same broad and menacing pace, one daunting foot in front of other. Slow, to make a point.
“You won’t trick me again, you monstrous, dirty thing. Not this time,” Derek spat, hands trembling with anger, claws finally retracting after being on edge all night.
And before Stiles could even hope to react Derek surged downwards, charging on top of him with his near full weight, legs splayed across Stiles’ torso. Stiles let out a choked yell, bucking his body upwards to try and knock Derek off, to no avail.
“Get the fuck off me!” He yelled, body still writhing under the forceful pressure.
A growl erupted from Derek’s chest, deep and guttural. Goosebumps spattered across Stiles’ skin in unadulterated terror, legs quaking from both fear and adrenaline.
“I’ll fucking kill you,” Derek smiled, he smiled. Two rows of immensely white teeth stared at Stiles, and immediately he knew something was very, very wrong. “I’ll kill you like I didn’t get the chance to before, and this time you won’t get away. I won’t let it.”
Derek reached his hand towards Stiles’ face and he flinched. A sporadic flail caused his head to hit back against the dusty ground, bashing the bump he was already nursing. The tip of Derek’s claw rested lightly underneath his jaw, tracing gently up to his cheeks and around his mouth. Stiles shook as he shut his eyes, lips quivering as he fought back another onslaught of tears.
He had always wanted Derek to touch him this way, wanted Derek to lean in and caress his cheeks with his tree trunk hands. Thinking about the damage those tough hands could do, while they were being used to soothe him, the idea was, to say the least... appealing.
One of the claws nicked Stiles’ cheekbone, and he could feel blood welling to the surface, a sharp sting warming his face.
Light spilt into the room, the dim glow of sunrise peeking in through the litany of windows, illuminating Derek’s face. The morning honey highlighted the deep crevices of his mature cheeks and eyes, especially those damned eyebrows with their various personalities.
Stiles glanced at Derek’s nose, a rim of blackness around his nostrils.
Then Derek was bleeding, droplets of black, black, black rained onto his face and Stiles choked, trying to get away. The morbid droplets splashed on his cheeks one by one. A fountain of ink spilt from Derek’s nose, then his mouth, and he doubled over as sudden coughs wracked his body.
Stiles battled the urge to run, to bolt up the stairs and escape like he had been dying to only a few moments prior. Now he was battling the urge to help.
“Derek?”
No response, only the sound of wet coughs and shaky gasps for air.
“Derek,” he asked shakily, eyebrows quirking into a concerned line.
Still shaking as he bent forwards with his arm outstretched. It was unwise to try and touch the man who seemed unhinged enough to try and kill him, but even still, Stiles reckoned, weren’t they all unhinged enough as it was?
After an eternity of those torturous barking coughs, Derek slumped over, bending into a ball, unconscious.
Relief enveloped Stiles, and so he grabbed onto some semblance of courage, peering down onto the man’s face. A high-pitched buzz split through the air, and he confusedly looked around. Its offensive keen tickled his eardrums. Coming from underneath Derek’s hand the buzz sounded again, so Stiles lifted up Derek’s arms carefully and moved it to the side.
There, on the ground twitching was a dying fly, surrounded by a pool of blackened blood.
“This will never end,” a voice, the voice told him.
Stiles crumpled onto the floor and sobbed. He knew what he needed to do.
-
When Scott and Stiles were younger, they used to make these revolting mud pies in Melissa’s back garden. They would bask in the overcast weather with mud caked under their fingernails.
It was so disruptive to the house’s general cleanliness that Melissa had to adopt a strict ‘no eating while muddy’ rule. So, ingeniously, the devious duo would take to eating chicken nuggets outside on the patch of scruff underneath their burly oak tree. On summer days it was the most euphoric shade, lapping up dripping ice creams, in khaki shorts with burnt knees. In autumn and winter, they still persisted, even in torrential rain.
They were devoted enough to those sludge-covered nuggets that it took Scott’s mom chasing them into the house with a hose to get them to budge.
Despite her mantra, Scott and Stiles knew that Melissa was a patient woman. How she even managed to put up with them in the first place was beyond their knowledge, yet every mom had their breaking point.
It was when flaky bits of dried soil got underneath their good rug that Melissa inevitably snapped, getting down on her hands and knees to brush away the dirt before it stained, yelling at the two to do the same.
Then she straightened up, a curious glint in her eyes, and said, “you do know this isn’t mud, don’t you boys?”
A beat. The two exchanged a look.
“Whatd’ya mean, mom?” Scott had asked, innocence glazing his doe brown eyes.
It was funny how little he really had changed, despite it all. Scott, underneath the title of magnanimous true alpha, was still just Scott. Stiles yearned to be able to say the same.
Melissa wiped the dusted flakes off onto her knees, pushing herself up with that same mischievous glimmer. Ah, so it really was hereditary.
“Well, I didn’t want to have to be the one to tell you, thought you’d figure it out all on your ownios, kiddos. But that’s not mud.” She paused as if only for dramatic effect, “it’s poop.”
Scott and Stiles never made another mudpie again.
Stiles thought it was funny how only a few words could change their minds about such a sacred tradition - all it took was just one little lie to dismantle their after-school fun.
One lie. Just one.
It was all it took to destroy his friendship with Scott and derail his pack bond. The foundations of the McCall pack crumbled in the wake of Allison’s death, and the man that Stiles now was because he hadn’t been man enough to keep a fox out of his head.
He was only just beginning to get Derek to trust him, maybe even like him. He saw all of the half-smiles aimed his way when Derek thought he wasn’t looking, as well as the snickers underneath his breath when Stiles would come out with something snarky and likely rude.
All gone now.
The cool steel of the ladder rungs burned Stiles’ skin as he ascended up and up, the chill of the night biting at his exposed arms.
As he climbed up the fire escape behind Derek’s building, he surveyed the nightlife of Beacon Hills. It was no city, no New York or LA, but Stiles knew that it was much more eventful than its domestic façade would give away. Briefly, in the distance he heard honking and an odd car alarm before it faded away into the background of his mind.
Though it was fifty-three degrees outside, the nubs of Stiles’ fingers grew blue and numbed before he managed to even reach the top. Perhaps his body anticipated the next few minutes. Steeling himself.
Stiles stepped onto the roof, a sway in his step as he listed forward slightly, unsure on his feet. The wind blew him in all directions like an isolated tree, and Stiles went along with the motions for a few minutes, taking the deepest breaths he’d ever inhaled.
He closed his eyes, familiar of course with the blanket of darkness. Yet, instead of seeing the bandaged man or even the carbon copy of himself, Stiles saw him and Scott at nine years old, frolicking around in a way his dad never would’ve approved of.
Flashes of mudpie and bake-offs, movie marathons, and Call of Duty benders filled his mind. Stiles welcomed the nostalgia. It felt like the only thing keeping his heart pumping.
“So, little Red has come to the wolf’s den at last.”
Stiles’ shoulders seized up, the colour sapping from his cheeks. His mouth suddenly went dry, paralysed with fear. Only inches away, he could hear the rasp of his own voice mocking him.
“What, you don’t want to look at me, hmm?” it chuckled.
Stiles could hear its smile. He could feel it.
“Am I not pretty enough for you, Stiles. Is that it?”
The nogitsune’s language, Stiles pinpointed, was in rhetorical questions. It spoke in riddles like it was its primary vernacular, its only purpose being to make you question everything.
Stiles’ feet were stuck to the ground again. He was pulling, really he was, he was trying. He was pulling, pulling, Jesus fuck, yanking. He couldn’t move.
“I thought I chose the face well. Guess not.”
And so he turned, and he met the self that wasn’t really him at all. Its skin was too thin and translucently pale. The sickly pallor of its complexion reflected like a mirror, bouncing off the rays of the moon. The purple that scavenged the last bit of life from his eye sockets made it look as though they were bulging out of its head. Like a character from a Tim Burton film. Stiles used to watch those with his mom.
“Ah,” it crooned, voice dropping to a more private decibel. “There he is.”
A bead of sweat dripped down his temple. Stiles knew that he didn’t have it in him to fight. He never really had learned to fight his demons after all his years of pain. His mom’s death, his dad’s drinking, his best friend being turned into a night-prowling lycanthrope. He never learned to fight, to defend himself against his own monsters.
And now there was one standing right in front of him, wearing his face.
“Here I am,” Stiles whispered, and his voice had never sounded so tiny.
He was usually a boisterous thing, treading the fine line between energetic and downright headache-inducing on normal days. Now he was not a person.
“And what’ll it be, little Red?”
Lydia used to call him that as a joke when she caught wind of his crush on Derek. Of course, it knew that too. All of Stiles’ memories felt corrupted, his bank of happiness used and dirty.
“I know what I need to do.”
The spirit’s cheeks cracked his mouth into a malevolent grin, lecherous and greedy. It hummed as he placed a hand behind Stiles’ neck, fast as lightning, so quick that it didn’t look like it had moved an inch. Its iced hands held firmly and squeezed. Stiles shivered violently.
In the pale moonlight and amidst the dark, the veins of the creature’s arms lit up. Black on pale white as the tendrils of dark snaked their way up to its forearms underneath the skin.
Stiles immediately thought of the dying fly spewing from Derek’s mouth, wings twitching on the floor. He felt like that now.
The nogitsune’s mouth fell open, a surprisingly hot moan fanning against his cheeks. Its eyes, Stiles’ eyes, glazed over in pleasure and rolled back into its head as he further sucked the anguish from his body. Its sharp pants were deafening in the world that had now gone quiet.
Stiles swayed even more on the spot, hair ruffling in the breeze. After Void had taken his pain, the kindest act of mercy it was capable of, Stiles was void too. Emptier. It wasn’t all gone, and Stiles was certain that was intentional; the spirit would’ve sucked him dry had it allowed itself. An exercise in self-control.
When the spirit recovered, it almost looked impressed, amazed that such a tiny vessel could carry that much chaos and strife and keep it inside.
“So much pain,” it said, not removing itself from his space. “Don’t you wish that someone would just kiss it better?”
Stiles’ eye twitched.
It leaned into his face, its greying, chapped lips twisting into a smirk as Stiles did everything not to turn his head away. They were now practically nose to nose, and the spirit thought it was the funniest thing it had ever seen.
Two treacherous tears rolled down Stiles’ cheeks, his misery personified. More spilt when Void tilted its chin up and brushed their lips together. It felt like sandpaper and guilt. Stiles’ lips trembled.
“Mm, no.” And it was murmuring that into his lips now. “Not just anyone. I think you want someone special, Stiles. Someone extra special.”
A horrifying growl came from beside them, and Stiles startled.
Derek stood at the edge of the roof, posture ramrod straight. His usually impassive face couldn’t hide his fear, not even for a minute. At that moment, Stiles could read him like an open book. It stood as another reminder of the anomaly of a situation they were in.
“Stiles,” Derek spoke, only a little bit louder than a grunt. It was Derek’s quiet fury, the sort he reserved for Kate Argent and sometimes even Peter. Never pack, never Stiles. “Get back.” It wasn’t an ask, it was a command.
Stiles couldn’t look into his eyes, knowing that if he did, it would’ve changed his mind. He could hear Derek’s livid petrification clear as day, and as he stared at his feet, Stiles could see Void’s feet tapping to the tune of Stiles’ life falling to cinders.
“Get back, now. I don’t want you getting hurt.”
Stiles and Void scoffed, a scuffed noise that came with the scratch of the nogitsune’s shoe against the concrete as it turned to face the beta.
“And here is Big Bad in all his glory!” it exclaimed, clapping once before encircling Stiles’ hunched frame.
A part of him hoped that perhaps if he stayed still enough, it would all evaporate. But that hadn’t worked in his dream and wouldn’t work now.
“Nice of you to show up. Perfect timing, by the way, Der-bear, you won’t miss the show!”
“Stiles.”
His head shot up, and when he looked past Void, Derek was looking at him, through the monster and talking directly to him.
It was sapping Derek of his final strands of self-control not to go haywire and tear the fox to pieces.
“Go downstairs. Please.”
Stiles started crying again at his blatant desperation. He was not the Derek bathed in vitriol and grumpiness anymore. It was all a lost cause.
“I can’t.” Stiles tried to convey his apology in his eyes, his last form of communication that hadn’t been yanked off him completely.
All of his fighting up until this point seemed pointless. He had tried so desperately to keep the nogitsune from colonising his brain, planting those corrupted roots so far deep into his skull that they felt intrinsic to his basic biology. When all of his determination had left him with this.
“We are now two, but two of one,” the nogitsune spoke up, speaking for Stiles. “Or have you forgotten that as well?”
Derek didn’t move. It became clear to him that Stiles wasn’t budging, but still couldn’t allow himself to unleash his wolf on the thing that had abducted Stiles’ stature.
Void saw this as a prime opportunity to grab a handful of Stiles’ hair, yanking his head backwards and exposing the long, pale column of his neck. Stiles whimpered as pain spiked behind his eyelids, nostrils flaring in a bid to bite back tears for the umpteenth time.
In the shadows, Derek’s eyes glowed a luminescent, radioactive blue that sliced through the colourless night.
“Easy there, pup. I’m giving you what you want.” It leaned down and licked a stripe up the side of his nape, his rapid pulse beating against its tongue. It was coarse and wet, leaving behind a sickeningly sweet-smelling tack.
Derek made to rampage forwards but was stopped abruptly in his tracks at the nogitsune raising one of its long fingers, one of Stiles’ long fingers. The mere notion of it hurting Stiles went against every homicidal tendency begging to come to the forefront.
“Ah, ah, ah,” it crooned, sliding the same finger down the same place on Stiles’ neck it had just taunted.
“Stop it,” Derek growled, and Stiles made no interjection. “Stop it and let it just be you and me. Leave him alone. Take me.”
This interested it, and it briefly let go of Stiles’ hair as to vouch for sincerity, grinning a Cheshire cat smile when it realised the truthfulness of the statement. Its tongue flitted out on impulse, licking its bottom lip. It added another dimension to an already frankly delicious game of cat and mouse.
Derek took a brave step forward. “Take me instead.”
Ignoring the offer that reeked of martyrdom, Void turned its attention back to the teen. It ran its nimble fingers down the clefts of Stiles’ face, wrenching his chin towards him as he tried to turn away.
“But why would I do that when I’m already having so much fun?”
Then, in a blur far quicker than the human eye could see, Void flung himself on top of Derek at his moment of weakness, pinning him down to the ground with its knee on his neck. Stiles gasped, immediately attempting to move to help Derek, stopping only at Void’s humiliating tuts of disapproval.
“You’re only prolonging it for him, Stiles. Don’t make this any longer than it needs to be.” It pressed a kiss on the back of Derek’s ear, barely bucking at the powerful werewolf’s vies for escape. “He’s already watched his family die.”
Derek howled, letting loose a guttural cry for help, an undeniable signal to the rest of the McCall pack. After only a few moments, there came a wailing response from the other end of town, further away than any of them would’ve liked. Another call echoed right after, and Stiles barely stifled his whimper when he realised that he would have to act fast.
“Do it,” it said, with a flash of teeth. “Go. Now.”
“Stiles, no!” Derek relinquished the last bit of his strength and sent the darkness hurtling onto the ground, taking only a moment to widen his eyes in horror as it cackled in the corner. Then Derek moved for Stiles.
Stiles lunged at the same time as Derek, throwing himself off the edge of the building. A hand caught his, and the recoil very nearly ripped his arm out of its socket. He dangled from the roof of Derek’s apartment building, held only by the man who months ago claimed to hate him.
Regular Derek would’ve had zero problems pulling Stiles back up as if he weighed less than a bag of sugar. This Derek, however, was weary and tired, having undergone possession only a few hours prior. He was a far more weakened version of himself, and Derek’s inner wolf cringed at his incompetency.
Derek grunted, groans turning into a loud yell as he yanked with every fibre of his might to get Stiles back onto the roof.
Stiles’ legs hung, dangling, and the bones creaked in his body as Derek failed to grab onto him with another arm to equalise the pressure. It felt like his arm was going to be ripped off.
“Let go,” he said softly, an acceptance in his tone that made Derek want to retch and scream. “Let me go, Der. Please.”
“I won’t,” was his blunt response, and another howl sounded from much closer than before, not so far off in a cluster of trees. Derek returned to his vice-like grip, fingers like ironclad handcuffs encircling Stiles’ wrists.
The litany of things left unsaid looming in the air was what nearly killed them both. They had both gone weeks not addressing those quiet smiles and hearty chuckles, or the inside joke they’d cultivated about Scott’s wonky jawline. Derek didn’t have that with anyone else and the pack knew that. They were acutely aware of the peculiar relationship the pair had, strangely close yet so insufferably far apart.
Now, Derek feared, all of those hidden words would remain unspoken.
“This is not the way I wanted it, you have to believe me.” Tears streamed freely down Stiles’ cheeks, dropping into the seemingly endless abyss. “You weren’t supposed to be here.”
Derek just about gaped down at him. “And what, you had this planned, did you?” His voice was cold, but they both heard the heartbreak, the shatter of his acrylic wolfy heart.
Stiles laughed ruefully, tears falling into his mouth, eyes growing disturbingly fond. This was not the way it was meant to happen. “Don’t tell me you’re surprised. You should know me by now.”
“Yeah,” Derek remarked, voice breaking as tears started to well up in his own eyes. “I really should, shouldn’t I?”
Just as he said it, another howl erupted from right below them, and Derek’s eyes immediately removed themselves from Stiles, searching uselessly in the blackness below to locate the member of his pack. It could’ve been Isaac, but something instinctual told him that it was Scott without even needing to check for himself. Call it the former alpha in him.
Foolishly, he allowed the faintest bit of hope to envelop him - clearly not learning from past mistakes.
Freezing cold hands grabbed Derek’s arm, skin goose-bumping and recoiling immediately. He looked up and into the eyes of the man who he was also precariously dangling from the roof, and with the proximity was struck headfirst with the urge to swap their places.
Derek tore himself from its gaze, and stared back down at Stiles with a shattered expression.
“I’m sorry,” Derek whispered.
Stiles smiled. “It’s okay.”
And Derek’s arms were wrenched from Stiles’ sharply, cruelly. And Stiles did what Stiles did best: he fell.