Devil of Wolves

Chapter Fourteen (Me and the Devil)

This chapter is about 26,592 words long, whoops.
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"If "I love you" was a promise, would you break it, if you're honest?"

^^^^^

There was something gut-wrenching about the feeling of failure. The feeling that every choice you make only leads to inescapable, inadvertent pain and no matter what you try to do, you always screw everything up and hurt the people you care about.

If there was ever a moment in Stiles' life where he wanted to pause time and step away from what was happening, he'd start here. He wanted to remove himself from the situation and run as fast as he could out of the building, out onto the crowded streets of New York City, where the snow touched the pavement and disappeared forever. Only then could he have a moment to think and breathe.

But he was always running, always trying to find a way around the pain and he was tired of it. Just tired.

Maybe that was the problem, the reason every choice he made only caused him and others pain. He didn't know how to deal with his decisions constructively because time and time again those choices had let him down and steered him on a path he couldn't walk away from.

How are you supposed to know what the right thing to do is then? 

Stiles wondered the same thing.

It was quiet after the thud of his body colliding with the wall eased into thin air. A deathly quiet filled the hall. The only noise was the sound of each individual breath being taken, though for the werewolves it was probably the sound of Stiles' heart threatening to beat out of his chest at that moment. Not because he was scared, it was hard to feel anything when you have an angry werewolf in your face.

Instead, he reflected on how much he had fucked up, how much he had ruined to make Derek look at him the way he did now. Like a stranger, like someone you hoped to never see again.

His heart thundered and his breath caught in his throat, but Stiles didn't feel scared. He just felt...lost. He had come back after the endless nights of being alone caught up to him, where the world seemed all too big for his person, and the numbness and loneliness carved a permanent place in his chest.

Stiles returned, not expecting to be welcomed with open arms, but he came back because he missed his home.

These people were his home.

Only now, Derek was staring at him, stone-faced, and it felt like he was right back to square one. He was that stranger again, who walked into this building with the world on his shoulders and the ghosts of his past threatening to drag him down. Stuck in a place where the nights got lonelier and colder and darker and reality was all he could ground himself to.

Stiles knows he's changed as a person, but so have those eyes which belong to a man he knows is capable of kindness and compassion. Now they bore into his own with such a raw intensity that his mind begged him to look away to spare himself the grief, but he couldn't.

Maybe he did deserve to be thrown against the wall for what he'd done, because of the choices he made, and he'd have to own up to his failures again.

Always letting people down.

Stiles knew he needed to choose his next few words carefully or else he'd have claw marks puncturing his skin or worse. Derek did not seem like he was in a forgiving mood.

This is what you deserve.

"Derek," he whispered and his voice caught in the space between their bodies. Stiles was unable to break eye contact, but as soon as he spoke, Derek released him from his hold and took a cautious step away like he'd suddenly been shocked into awareness.