Work Text:
The best thing about being a werewolf is that physical pain is ephemeral, a clean burning wash of sensation that recedes into a prickly arousal. Where he used to clench in on himself to minimize the blossoming pain that followed a slap or a backhand, he now breathes it in, easily riding out far worse pain in anticipation of the aftermath.
When Derek snaps his arm during training to make a point, Isaac screams, shock punching the breath from his lungs, but he's ready for the agony that crests along his nerve endings, almost buoyant with it even as his tissues tear and immediately knit back.
Five seconds later, his arm's mostly whole, aching with residual pain, and Derek is waiting with an expectant tilt to his eyebrows, a degree shy of asshole. Which is close enough. Isaac, still panting through the giddy flush in his system, bows his head to hide the decision.
Yeah, okay, he can play this game.
-
His father's hands had been gentle when they wrapped the gauze around his bleeding arm. He thinks there might have been a crash, the jagged edge of broken ceramic, but he mostly only remembers gentle hands.
-
Of course, Erica comments on it as soon as she notices, not two days later. "What is wrong with you?"
Isaac raises his eyebrows. "I was physically abused?"
Instead of snorting or even glaring, she gets into his personal space. "Is that why you've started acting like Derek will hit you if you say the wrong word?"
"He's the Alpha," he tries.
Now she snorts. "Yeah, and you've decided to be his doggy toy?"
"Shut up," Boyd groans from the neighboring rail car before he can find a suitable deflection. "These noise-cancelling headphones are crap against werewolf hearing."
“Don't you know, privacy is a non-existent concept in today's world," Erica says gleefully as she crosses into the other rail car, attention diverted.
-
It doesn't take immediately of course. But Isaac has patience in spades. He slips in a shy smile before breakfast, couches every statement as an entreaty, and offers always, without fail, instant obedience.
The first time Derek trails his fingers through Isaac's hair over raisin bran, he stops abruptly, blinking sleepily at his hand like it had betrayed him before swiveling a suspicious look at Isaac. Isaac takes a moment to stare muzzily back before leaning back into the stream of light filtering through the gloom of the rail car and allowing, for the first time in Derek's presence, a full-fledged smile to curl across his lips, listening carefully for the stutter in Derek's heartbeat.
When Derek falls into the habit of a hair ruffle every morning, Isaac abruptly cuts off the entreaties and the bashfulness, defies a few orders, ignores Derek's increasing ire. Some things are treasured for their rarity, and some things are better missed for their total and conspicuous absence.
-
Boyd brings up the idea on his own, and Erica needs only a little prompting before agreeing it's the best course of action.
"You should come," Erica says, too close to pleading, but Isaac shakes his head, ready this time: "One of us should stay with him, just in case. And I'm the one who's learned to control the shift."
They're family, always will be, but he's well-versed in the art of losing family.
-
It's a good thing Isaac isn't interested in anyone else because sometimes Derek is too easy.
"I won't be angry if you go with them," is the first thing he says that night, half inside the door, like he's already decided that Isaac will leave him too.
Isaac considers. "I can't leave," he admits finally but immediately adds, "Scott showed me how to take away someone else's pain today."
It has the intended effect. Derek looks winded. "Scott... Scott is good."
"He is," Isaac agrees and then slowly closes the distance between them, body language shifting fluidly back, for the first time in weeks. He pulls his lips into the barest of smiles, chin and shoulders tucked in, neck tilted just a fraction to the side, and he knows Derek will hear only the steady truth of his heartbeat as he whispers, "But I'm yours."
Derek inhales sharply. So easy.
-
The first time he mentions Scott after the Gerard fiasco, Derek tenses and walks out without a word.
He still sees Scott and Stiles around school but only speaks to them twice. Once was a warning from Stiles that the sheriff finally knows, and once was an awkward confrontation in front of his locker in which Scott demanded to know why he quit the team and Isaac let him down easy.
See, Isaac had been a little stumped on this part, knowing how fervently Derek guards his trust, but Scott - endearing, well-meaning, nice Scott whom Derek had placed on a pedestal - had shattered that bond all on his own. So Isaac can be charitable.
-
Isaac flickers his eyes upward before dropping them to Derek's lips, swaying forward an inch. There's very little pretense in it.
Derek's confused frown is well on its way to a full-fledged glower, frustration emanating from him as he fights against months of conditioning.
"Stop. Isaac, no, this isn't right."
Isaac jerks back, letting hurt bleed into his expression, into every pore.
Derek makes a helpless noise and reaches for his shoulder. "Not you, Isaac. What I'm doing - I'd be no better than - " He shakes his head, eyes going distant for a moment before conviction suffuses his voice. "Are you looking to be taken advantage of again? Because that's what I'd be doing."
"You wouldn't," Isaac promises, voice low with invitation. "I know you, Derek. I - " he hesitates, one beat, brings up an embarrassed flush, two beats " - I want you."
And he does know Derek, better than anyone, up to and including the only way Derek can allow intimacy right now.
When he looks up again, his eyes are beseechingly wide, but it's Derek's pupils that are blown, it's Derek's pulse that is slamming, and it takes only one more "please" before Derek crumples, strings cut.
It may have meant putting in more work, but Isaac is glad that Derek is marked all over with the signs of abuse. He could almost be grateful to whoever came before him - except what he really wants is to sink his claws into their hearts for daring to have what's his.
-
He's partnered with Jackson in chem two weeks before the end of the school year, and the timing can't be more perfect. When summer rolls around, Jackson and Lydia buy matching tickets and disappear south.
To no surprise, it's Peter who proves the most difficult. But Isaac remembers the overpowering smell the first time he'd been in a room with both Peter and Stiles. So when the enraged sheriff hauls Peter into the station and slams him with sexual assault on a minor, no one truly believes Stiles' frantic denials.
-
His father's hands had clenched around the mug before sending it flying. He's forgotten too many of the details, but he remembers that brief clench, he remembers he had a moment of warning.
-
"We're moving," Derek announces one morning.
Unperturbed, Isaac replies, "Not into that old wreck of yours."
"No." Derek takes a breath, then lets it out in a dramatic rush. "I mean, away. Out of Beacon Hills."
Isaac smiles, pleased. There's a certain romance to the idea, two abandoned souls on the road, adrift but for the presence of the other.
"Okay," he says.
Derek looks a little lost. "That's it? You don't want to know why? Or when?"
Isaac shrugs. He's had everything packed the entire summer. "I know why," he says.
Now that he's a werewolf, Isaac knows, he will never again be subject to anyone else's violent whims.
-
Fin