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Derek can only watch, pressed to the ground by Kali, as Stiles neck is twisted at an unnatural angle. As he falls.
“Hey, wolfman! You coming or not? The rest of the pack‘s already there!” Stiles calls, running out of the Stilinski residence and looks back at him, grinning.
“You know, maybe if you were carrying, oh, I don’t know, anything at all, I’d already be there.” Snaps Derek as he struggles to keep the basket, umbrella, and blankets in his arms steady while still maintaining his ability to see past it all.
“Yeah, but I’m not the one with the super powers.”
Derek absolutely does not stick his tongue out. Because that would be childish.
Stiles’ head hits the ground with a thump that sounds entirely too final. It bounces back up once before it settles on the concrete.
Derek can’t hear a heartbeat.
Stiles shouldn’t have come.
Derek warned him.
They all fucking warned him.
Stiles falls down on top of Derek on the sofa, and rests his head on his chest. He closes his eyes and breathes.
Derek huffs out a breath at the sudden weight, breathes in the smell of the boy on his torso and only briefly considers throwing him across the room before he decides it isn’t worth it. He turns on his side so that he and Stiles are parallel and curls an arm around him, and Stiles hmms in satisfaction.
Derek’s glad they opted for the ridiculously huge couch that Isaac was gunning for, even though it took up about a quarter of the living room.
Blood is leaking out of Stiles’ head in a steady stream; the smell of it makes Derek want to vomit.l
It puddles around his face, its reflection is in Stiles’ now empty eyes, and god, it looks so wrong there.
Derek howls with anguish, a new brand that he’s never experienced before, and the alphas gathered around laugh.
Kali bends down and presses her lips to his ear.
Asks him how it feels to lose one of his own.
Stiles is in-between his legs, rocking back and forth to the melody of Derek’s labored breathing.
He stops. Again. Was this the forth time, the fifth? And Derek looks up with wild eyes, maybe they were red, maybe they were hazel or fucking aquamarine, but Derek was too far gone to care. He’s practically sobbing with want as he looks into Stiles’ eyes, gentle and gold as they always are with him, and Stiles bends his neck down to kiss him gently, just ghosting his lips over Derek’s.
“I love you.”
They leave.
He doesn’t know when they leave, because time doesn’t seem to mean anything anymore.
They don’t kill Derek, because they aren’t that kind, and the world’s never been that kind to Derek even if they had been.
They might have said something to him, some parting jab, they might not have. It doesn’t really matter to him right now.
He thinks his betas are crying. This, at least makes sense to him. He stops to count, and he hears all of their voices sobbing, or at least whispering in confusion. At least there was that.
He crawls over to the corpse of his gorgeous broken boy, and he reaches out with tentative fingers to touch his face, as if there were any more damage that could be done at this point.
His hands shake, and he curses them for shaking as he pulls what remains of Stiles into his lap.
“I’m coming.” Stiles crosses his arms defiantly.
“No, you’re not.”
“Oh come on. You know my magical Stiles-brand sparkyness is gonna come in handy.” He wiggles his fingers in a parody of a spell, and Derek looks on, unimpressed.
Stiles sobers, and his eyes harden.
“Derek, I need to be there to help. There’s no way I’m gonna be able to just sit back and do nothing knowing you furry assholes are out risking your lives.”
“And I can’t fight knowing you’re in danger too.”
Stiles reaches up to touch his cheek.
“You think it’s any different for me? I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if you got hurt and I wasn’t there to do anything about it. It’s happened too many times, already, Derek.” His voice shakes toward the end.
Derek covers Stiles’ hand on his face with his own.
“You’ll stay out of the way. Work from far off. I don’t want you in the middle.”
Stiles smiles and brings the first two fingers of his right hand to his forehead in a jaunty salute.
“Aye aye, captain!”
Derek groans, catching Stiles’ lips in a kiss.