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The worse part is? Stiles doesn’t blame Scott, not really. There was a choice but…but one that men older than his eighteen years and with a more frigid heart than Scott should never be faced with.
Stiles doesn’t blame Scott because he knows if the situation had been reversed, if it had been him, he’d have done the same. It twists something shameful within him to think it, to picture Melissa on that cold metal slab instead of his father but it doesn’t matter now, it’s done. He doesn’t blame Scott because he can’t afford to…he’s all Stiles has left.
But he can’t be around him.
He can’t stare at those soft brown eyes and the way his lip quivers every time he thinks Stiles isn’t looking and the way the guilt sits wracked upon his shoulders like Atlas. Stiles loves Scott and he doesn’t blame Scott but Scott is a reminder of loss and the sick taste of bile in his throat when he comes home and sees only the jeep in the drive and the dark oak door to the master suite that was once filled with deep rumbling laughter and the quick sharp tongued wit of a green eyed red head.
The silence is thick and choking like acrid smoke and sometimes like the scentless lull of carbon monoxide killing him quiet and clever.
Stiles always thought the pack would fail, but he imagined it would fizzle out slow. First, with Erica dying young and beautiful and then Jackson leaving and Lydia’s staycation from everyone and anything that had to do with them, and Peter dying, again, and Boyd calling it quits and Isaac gluing himself slowly to Scott’s side and Derek slipping further and further away.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
The pack avoids him, the Argents look at him with expressions of open pity and commiseration that makes it all worse. The first time Chris Argent looks like he wants to say something, an offer of apology Stiles spits in his face and breaks his hand punching the mirror off of Chris’s SUV.
Melissa never liked him but she suddenly finds him amenable now that he’s an orphan and he wonders how much of it is guilt and how much of it is sympathy. She sends Scott over with Tupperware containers of homemade macaroni salad and chicken breasts and enough sandwiches to last him a week but he loses nearly ten pounds when it sits rotting in the garbage out back.
He doesn’t walk at graduation, has his diploma mailed to him and watches the entire series of Battlestar Galactica on his couch in nothing but a pair of three day old boxers and his father’s tattered bathrobe and buys shit he doesn’t need on infomercials because it’s his money now and he can do what he wants with it.
Stiles gets into all the colleges he applied to but he burns each of his acceptance letters one by one, watches the smoke curl up from the hot flames before tossing them into the fire place until they fizzle out into ash and dust.
Sometimes, deputies from the station come to check in on him, but he stays quiet, sitting alone in the dark of the family room or at the kitchen table with his father’s tumbler of whiskey passed back and forth in his hands, scraping across the table.
The pack does come by, as a group and individually, but it trickles out to a stop after about a month. Stiles barely sleeps or eats, showers even less often and when he does he stays until his skin is red and scrubbed raw and the hot water is gone and he stands still under the freezing cold spray until his lips turn blue and he can’t feel his fingers and toes.
He’s glad, when eventually they stop coming to call, even if it eats at his insides.
Two months after his father dies, the summer drawing to a close, Stiles thinks about how he maybe would have been at Wal-Mart or Target, buying extra-long sheet sets and matching curtains and a new pair of sneakers, maybe splurge on a souped up new laptop as a congratulations on actually graduating and not getting himself ki—
Instead he’s trying to figure out how to fix the broken dishwasher when he’s not even sure where the water main is, anyway, and why hadn’t he ever thought to ask? He gives up, is passing through the downstairs hallway to the stairs when he sees the shift of light beyond the window at the front door and tugs it open expectantly…
Stiles knows all the stages of grief, but he pushes everything else away until there's only anger and denial. There had been a potent kind of denial when he was a child, reeling after his mother's death, the panic attacks and the nightmares. It's a different kind of indifference to the truth this time, a blind numbing sort of feeling, like procrastination: he knows it's a deadline looming on the horizon, the inevitable breaking point, but he thinks maybe if he drowns it in hatred and loathing he can stave it off for a bit longer.
He doesn't cry. He thinks maybe he did when it first happened, when he first realized what it meant that his father was dead, but he hasn't. It makes people even more uncomfortable than hysterics and it makes him laugh darkly at it. The looks he got at the funeral when, stony faced, he delivered his father's eulogy. But nobody wants to push him, to tell him he needs to deal with it. Isaac was the first one to try when he'd told him he was "fine", always "fine" like a life motto he adopted at eight when the psychiatrists and therapists asked how he was. They try to get him to go back now, to get help, but he's eighteen and an adult and they can't legally force him so he doesn't. The word leaves a bitter after taste in his mouth, but it stopped having meaning a long time ago.
Scott had looked like he wanted to rage at Stiles, to force him to cry, like that would help, would do anything to fill that hole dissolving him from the inside. But he didn't, because he didn't want to push, didn't want to be reminded of the choice he had to make. Stiles knows he makes the others uncomfortable.
The anger keeps everything at bay, like that first time he thought about doing the dirty dishes left soaking in the sink. The one that had the burnt scraps of his father's last breakfast, and the dirty chipped ceramic mug he'd poured him coffee in that day. He smashes them all to pieces on the Formica floor and leaves it there for a week before he sweeps it into a pile and empties it into the trash can.
…It's Derek Hale standing on his front porch, one arm shoved into the pocket of his leather jacket and the other raised towards the doorbell. He lets his arm drop and straightens his back and stares at Stiles.
"The fuck you want?" Stiles asks him, staring at him with an expression of open hostility. It's the first time he's seen Derek since that night.
"You haven't left the house in over a week," is Derek's answer and Stiles rolls his eyes hard and scowls, leaning against the door frame with the cant of his hip.
"Are you watching me?" He asks, barely able to muster up the indignantion. He expects Derek to lie, to come up with some thinly veiled excuse about talking to Scott even though he knows Scott doesn't want anything to do with Derek anymore, none of them do. Stiles is indifferent to the pack mentality and the shift in loyalty.
"Yes," is Derek's response though and Stiles' mouth splutters in a gape before he clacks it shut with a snap.
"Whatever," and he steps back inside the house but doesn't shut the door. It's not an invite, not really, but Derek takes it as one anyway. "You caught me on a shower day, good for you," Stiles nods with a wry sardonic kind of smile. Derek is looking at him with an intensity he's seen only a handful of times, each before the big reveal, the dramatic revelation of plans and monsters and villainous intents.
He probably sees the way Stiles' skin is stretched too tight over his bones, the anemia he's been suffering through since he's stopped eating anything other than cold pizza and the last of his father's stash of alcohol.
"I came to see how you were," Derek says and his voice goes soft and his eyes dart up to catch Stiles' gaze before he looks down and away.
"I'm fine," Stiles says with a nod. Derek huffs out a laugh and Stiles scowls, lip turning up in an angry, defiant snarl.
"Have you said it so often you're starting to believe it or the opposite?" Derek asks him and Stiles stops his movements from where he was backing up towards the edge of the railing.
"What do you want Derek?"
"To see how you are," Derek says again and Stiles laughs and shakes his head.
"I told you--"
"You're not fine Stiles," Derek says, and his voice is hard and angry and annoyed.
"What the fuck makes you think I give a shit about what you think, Derek?" Stiles growls, stalking forward and twisting two fists in the collar of his jacket and shoving. Derek moves back a step but Stiles isn't deluding himself that he had anything to do with it.
"What part of all of this seems like I wouldn't perfectly fucking okay!" Stiles shouts, stepping back and waving his arms. He can feel the pressure in his nasal cavity, feel the sharp stinging in his eyes that say the tears are threatening and he clenches his teeth and presses his hands angrily to his eyes before he drops them to his side and pushes at Derek again, getting in his face. Derek is watching him, quiet and patient and it pisses Stiles off more than anything.
"Get the FUCK out of my FUCKING HOUSE!" Stiles screams at him, livid now and pushes at Derek, struggling with him and Derek pushes him back, wraps strong hands around his wrists and forces him away from the open door.
"No," Derek says, firm and patient. Stiles tugs himself out of Derek's grip and turns, pacing in the foyer before turning back to him.
"Why?" He asks again, huffing out a shaky breath.
"Because you're drowning Stiles," Derek says and Stiles shakes his head, "and it's killing you."
"Who cares!" Stiles shouts, voice cracking and maniac.
"I do," Derek tells him, watching him carefully.
"Why?" Stiles asks, imploringly, stepping back now.
"Because at sixteen you sat with me in a jeep while I was dying and Scott played house with a girl he'd dump a year later. And three months after you held me up in a fucking swimming pool for two hours while I was completely fucking defenseless,” Derek enunciates the words slow and careful, staring hard into Stiles’ wide eyes, moving steadily closer like a cop staring down a freaked gunman. “And at seventeen you slit your own wrist in a fucking blood sacrifice to keep me and the pack from dying --"
"And I'd let you ALL die seven times over if it could bring him back," Stiles hisses, jaw clenched tight, pressing into Derek's space, faces barely an inch apart. Derek's voice chokes and dies in his throat and he stares back and forth between Stiles' eyes, expression going soft and sad and the tension in Stiles' face falls and he steps back, confused.
"And that's why I am here, Stiles," Derek says, voice barely above a whisper as he regards Stiles in front of him. Stiles' brows knit together. "Because not even now can you make that sound like anything but a lie."
"You don't get to insinuate you mean more to me than he did because you fucking don't," Stiles says, shaking his head. "You don't."
"I know that, Stiles, he was your father."
"Don't," Stiles says, and he hates how it comes out like a plea. "Don't."
"You're not fine, Stiles," Derek tells him. Stiles laughs, and he can feel the tears welling up now and he does nothing to stop them.
"No. Shit," Stiles snaps. "How could I be fine, Derek? What part of THIS sounds fine? I've lost everything that I care about. And don't TELL me that you fucking understand because your life is one tragic misstep after another. Because fuck you."
"I wasn't going to."
"You don't get to tell me how I deal with this, you don't get to judge how I fucking self-destruct. Because at least I'm not deluding myself into thinking that sucking more people into this fucking travesty of a situation is a valid life choice. So, if I want to fucking implode slowly then I get to fucking do it. If I want to pretend like I'm fine..." Stiles' voice cracks and breaks off, breathe coming in sharp painful bursts, but not enough and he feels dizzy and light headed.
"I need to be fine," Stiles says suddenly, and he can't see Derek anymore in front of him, vision hazy and blurred at the edges like a photograph mid-develop. "I don't know how to not be fine, Derek," he admits finally, and it hits him then, the crushing weight of everything, the bills unopened on the kitchen table and the empty refrigerator, his father's sneakers by the front door he hadn't been able to touch, his unmade bed upstairs and the unfinished scrabble game on the dining room table and the 2 for 1 coupons for the veggie burger special for the diner on Main.
His mouth opens but he only wrenches out a gasp as his face contorts with involuntary misery, tears spilling hot and wet, and he feels his knees give way beneath him, but Derek is there in front of him, tugging him up and wrapping his arms around him. Stiles tries to push him away, tries to fight him off, to pull away and curl in on himself but Derek's grip is strong, body a stone pillar around him, holding him.
"I'm never gonna see my dad again," he says and he starts struggling again with the sudden realization of it, staring at the front door and knowing it won't open for him ever again. He'll never hear the sound of his father's frustrated laughter or the way he could say so much with the single quirk of a disapproving brow, or the fact that he couldn't make ego waffles without burning something or screw the cap back on the damn toothpaste the right way or buy the right brand of mouthwash that Stiles liked.
And then Stiles is screaming in between broken wrecked hysterics and collapsing beneath the weight of his own body and Derek lowers them to the ground as Stiles continues to thrash in his grip. He’s not trying to escape Derek’s clutches anymore, but he can’t do anything but bleat and beat against Derek’s body with angry fists and the butt of his head against his shoulder and neck. And the sound spilling across the threshold of his front door is one of an animal caged and tortured, the sound of misery wrought with terror; it’s the sound of someone being unmade.
Derek doesn't say anything, just holds on tight until Stiles can't do it anymore and he goes still in his arms, hands still fisting tight to the material of Derek's henley beneath his leather jacket. He's aware after a few moments of silence, that Derek's sniffling too, can feel it then in the way his chin wobbles above Stiles' cheek where they're pressed together and Stiles buries his face in the crook of Derek's neck and says nothing for a long stretch of time. He doesn't know how to extricate himself from Derek, doesn't think he wants to, not really, when Derek is a warm, all-encompassing weight around him.
He feels...the word better is wrong, too simple too black and white for the feeling settling in his chest now. It feels like a scab running over his skin, like the hole inside him has stopped expanding and growing and settled into something that suddenly feels more like a scar than a wound. There's a serenity here at rock bottom, sharp jagged cut of emotion slicing at him but Derek is rocking him back and forth now and breathing heavy against his neck.
Goosebumps break out suddenly along his skin, and he feels ice cold down to the marrow and Derek tightens his grip with one hand and rubs his back with the other. Stiles pulls away after another minute, cheeks brushing and noses and bumping they're so close. He wants to say something, maybe thank you, or something but he's flushed with embarrassment and guilt and when he glances up Derek is looking at him so earnestly it feels like a punch. His eyes are wet and puffy, rimmed red around irises that are too green in the yellow overhead light. His lips are parted and Stiles strokes his hand down Derek's rough unshaven jaw and kisses him.
Derek lets him, mouth moving softly under his until Stiles pulls away maybe a minute later or the stretch of a thousand heartbeats.
"I'm sorry," Stiles says but he isn't sure for what.
"Don't apologize," Derek tells him, catching his gaze again and holding it.
Stiles pressed forward once more, but Derek turns his head to the side and Stiles catches him on the corner of his mouth. “Stiles,” he sighs, soft and sincere. Stiles looks down and away, can’t bear the look he knows must be in his eyes, apology and pity.
“Not now,” Derek tells him and Stiles looks up.
“Then…” Stiles tries and Derek nods once and presses a kiss to the curve of his cheek bone and lets their foreheads press together.
“Now won’t last forever, Stiles,” Derek assures him. It comes out like a promise and Stiles, for the moment, believes him.
"You shouldn't stay in this house right now, Stiles," Derek says, a moment later, and it sounds like a plea. Stiles nods and sniffs, desperately in need of a box of kleenex, but he doesn't want to move from this spot, wants to melt into the floor and not exist until maybe everything feels less like dying.
"You should stay with Scott," Derek tells him and Stiles glances up at him quickly, disappointed, and looks away with a slight nod.
He does end up at Scott's, who pulls Stiles into a tight hug and whispers I'm sorry over and over and over and Stiles allows it, wraps an arm awkwardly around him and lets him. It's the end of summer vacation, though, and Stiles sees the days dwindling down on the calendar until Scott and Isaac head off to college, leaving Beacon Hills and Stiles behind.
Scott tries to convince him it's not too late to accept, that he should come with them, rent an apartment off campus or something. There's a pleading look there when he asks but he's felt the tethers of their friendship fraying for a long time and he shakes his head with a smirk and gives him a non-committal shrug. The truth is he has no idea what he's going to do.
Melissa offers up the guest room on a permanent basis and Stiles suspects her empty nest syndrome is kicking into full gear as Scott crams his possessions into boxes and old suitcases. He thanks her but he knows he doesn't belong there, but he hasn't been back to his house in over a week, not since the night Derek...
He doesn't tell Scott about Derek, doesn't think he'd understand, because Scott still hates him, even worse after the whole catastrophic night, but it wasn't Derek's fault so much as it was Peter and more misplaced trust. He sees the fragile pieces of Derek broken and glued hastily back together and he used to wonder at them, but he feels the fractures in himself and understands there's no fitting something together the right way once it's smashed to bits.
He knows he doesn’t fit anymore, no matter how hard he tries to wedge himself back in to this spot, but he doesn’t know how to move on either.
Derek does, apparently, because Scott says, one evening, the sun starting to dip steadily toward the horizon, Scott’s bedroom darkening, “’least we won’t have to deal with Derek anymore.” Stiles throws him a look of confusion.
“Oh yeah, forgot he wanted me to tell you he’s taking off,” Scott says with a shrug, turning back to the tv screen.
"What?" Stiles asks, his voice cracking, unable to hide the surprise and the terrified tremble in it. He hasn't heard from Derek since that night and he wonders if he got everything wrong.
"He said he's leaving...I mean who cares, right? It's not like there's anything here for him anymore and if he's gone maybe things will finally--"
"Finally what?" Stiles snaps. "Get back to normal?" Scott looks stricken and guilty.
"That was stupid, I'm sorry," Scott says, sincerely.
“What did he say exactly? Did he tell you when he was leaving?” Stiles asks, sitting up and turning his whole body now towards Scott.
“I dunno…just that he wanted you to know—“
“Well when Scott!” Stiles snaps.
“When what?” Scott yells back, getting flushed with irritation and confusion.
“Is he leaving?” Stiles asks.
“I think he said by nightfall!” Stiles’ head snaps toward the window and the jet of gold and pink swirling out from the dying sun.
“Tonight?” Stiles balks, turning to look at Scott.
“Yeah, I guess—wait where are you going?” Scott asks, but Stiles has already pushed himself to his feet, booking it down the hallway, Scott’s confused shouting left in the wake behind him.
Stiles drives across town with panic simmering below the surface, like threads of nervous tension winding their way through him and turning his veins to lead. When he bangs the heavy metal door to the loft open and finds it empty, he panics. He feels the breath stop short in his chest and it feels like a punch to the sternum. But he backtracks down the stairs and collapses into the front seat of the jeep and punches the steering wheel angrily, feels the sharp pain of it in his knuckles but he doesn't break the skin. He rubs his hands over his tired face and allows himself the fraction of the moment to cry before he turns the key and shifts it into gear and peels out of the quiet parking lot.
He makes his winding way past the turn off towards town and takes the small, twisting back roads out to the Hale property. His heart flips in his chest as the jeep bounces over the uneven road as he makes his way deeper into the woods. When he sees the sleek black of the Camaro's hood shining in the half light up ahead he lets out a noise of sharp choked off relief. Derek slows the car to a stop and Stiles slams his foot roughly on the brakes and barely gets it into park before he's tumbling out and stalking up the Camaro angrily.
He slams his palms hard against the hood and screams at Derek to get out of the fucking car, he complies, slowly, and Stiles can tell from the look of guilt written into his sharp features that he meant to be gone.
Stiles has words of loathing and anger, biting ill will and resentment he wants to throw at Derek, accusations and insults, but what comes out instead is an anguished sort of sound as he cries, "take me with you!" It reeks of sincerity and desperation and Derek looks sadly at him for a moment before he shakes his head.
"Why would you do this? After--" Stiles tries, shaking his head, not understanding. "I thought..."
"You don't belong with me Stiles, you belong he--"
"No! I don't," Stiles argues. "I have nothing Derek."
"You have Scott," Derek says and Stiles huffs a sardonic laugh and looks away, curling his fingers over the hood.
"He doesn't need me anymore."
"How could anyone not--" Derek cuts himself off, closes his eyes with a heavy sigh, like he didn't mean for it to come out, willing the words back.
"Stiles--"
"No, not after everything. You don't get to make this decision, okay? You don't get to act like this is some self-sacrificing bull shit for the greater good. Like I'm a fucking child who can't make my own goddamn decisions about what I want and who I want to be with. Fuck you."
"You're better off without me," Derek shakes his head, grips the edge of his open door tightly, holds it open between them like a shield, and Stiles knows he really means it. Really feels like it.
"Yeah, probably. I'd probably way better off going back to that empty house, just like you were much better off chaining yourself to this tragedy, and look how fucking therapeutic that was for you. You don't get to tell me things like 'not now' and mean 'not ever'. So, fuck you. I'm coming with you and you can't fucking stop me." He knows he's devolved to petulance, but his steam has run out, the anger abating and leaving only cold biting defeat.
He stalks back over to the jeep and tugs open the passenger’s seat, pulls out his duffel bag and stalks back over to a surprised looking Derek. "I'm coming with you. And if you try to stop me I’ll just follow you. You can’t get rid of me, we both know that. You’ve been trying for like two years,” Stiles reasons, cheeks still tracked with streaks of tears.
A smirk tugs finally at the corner of Derek’s mouth but he’s not looking at Stiles. “I can’t do this alone, and I know you don’t want to either, so please just…just…don’t leave me here by myself.” Derek looks up then, sighs heavily and moves out from around the car door and crosses the distance between them. He wraps a hand around the back of Stiles’ neck and pulls him in, kisses him on the forehead and Stiles wraps his arms around his back and holds on.
“Get in the car,” Derek says finally, and Stiles pulls away with a triumphant grin and Derek rolls his eyes at him. When they’re settled in the front seat, Stiles’ fingers fluttering over the dials on Derek’s dash and scrolling through the ipod he has hooked up to the jack, Derek shifts in his seat and turns to look at him.
“I don’t know where we’re going,” he admits. Stiles shrugs and settles back, drawing a leg up on the leather seat, and letting his arm fall out the open window.
“Good.”