Unsteady | Sterek

Twenty Eight: come close, the end is near

Stiles doesn't fall asleep but Derek does. Fair enough, Stiles thinks, Derek was hit with witch magic and miraculously healed so yeah, he should sleep. Stiles can't though. He can't switch off his mind.

It's a tricky thing, his mind. Stiles thinks it's a bit like a ray of light. It's bright, and it can spread and cover multiple things at once and it sees but it can become fixated in something that reflects the light right back at itself until everything becomes a bright, messy tangle of the same thought over and over.

Was he the one that healed Derek?

He glances at his hands. They're pale, clammy. He has long fingers. They look like normal human hands. But they're murderer's hands. They'd been covered in blood, had been the cause of so much pain. Yet...they had healed something, someone. They had done good in the world of evil and worse evil. He had healed Derek.

But Stiles isn't magic and he isn't special and he isn't a goddamn Spark so how, how, did he manage to save the one thing worth something in his fucked up life? How had he managed to weep someone back to life and why hadn't it worked with Allison when he'd stood at her grave and sobbed?

Maybe Scott might have still been his buddy if he'd brought her back. Maybe his dad might still hug him and not look at him with the same fear he'd looked at Claudia with the nights where she seemed less than human. Stiles thinks it hurts more knowing that his dad sees his mother when he looks at Stiles. Because Claudia had something to blame her darkness on.

Stiles brought it upon himself.

His phone rings; its shrill in the foggy, sleepy silence of the loft. Stiles scrambles for it, wincing as Derek shifts and groans on the couch. Hastily, he answers, breathing a heavy sigh as the werewolf settles back down.

"What?" He hisses into the phone, slipping outside quietly.

"Stiles?" It's Scott, of course it's Scott, because Stiles can't go one minute without having to be someone's person of interest. "Stiles, why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you what Scotty?"

"That your father kicked you out."

And fuck, there goes the air from his lungs. He searches for oxygen, can feel the burn in his chest but he can't breathe cantbreathecantbreathebecausefuckScottfigureditout-

"Stiles, c'mon buddy," Scott says and his voice is low and soothing and Stiles latches onto it like a lifeline because fucking fuck his life sucks. "Breathe with me Stiles, like we practiced."

They're both without words for a moment, just breathing in sync until Stiles can feel the ground beneath his feet and the biting air on his skin. "How did you find out?" He asks and his voice is broken and tangled with sorrow and dejection.

Scott sounds tired. "Your dad talked to my mum, asked if you were staying at our place. She asked why and he admitted that you'd taken off because he'd taken too long to understand everything."

Stiles wants to laugh at that because that's his dad saying that Stiles hadn't given him a chance when really, Stiles never had a chance to give his dad a chance. The fear had risen too quick, too brutal and it had locked Stiles out. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I'm staying with Derek and Peter."

"Why didn't you stay here, man?"

And Stiles has so many things to say, has a nice, pretty excuse sitting on the top of his tongue but the air stirs his hair and lifts the words out of his mouth and he finds himself so heartbreakingly empty that all he can say is, "Because I can't bear to see the fear in Melissa's eyes when she finds out what I've done." And he ends the call.

Then throws his phone on the ground and steps on it.

Then sits down, on the floor, and cries.

And cries and cries and cries. He cries himself dizzy, and then he sits and struggles to breathe until the world dissolves into a haze of nightmares and tainted memories that just push him further and further under until he can't really see the point in dragging himself back to the surface.

Scott will come for him, he knows. Stiles won't go though, he won't go back and be different because Melissa had always told him never change for anybody but he's so scared that she'll see he's already changed and people have died because of it.

There's a hand on his shoulder. Stiles knows who it is without looking up. He ends up crying again.

Peter doesn't judge, just sits down and lets Stiles lean on him and whimper like the world is ending.

The stars take his tears and whisper back at him. He doesn't understand what they're saying but he thinks it's nice that something so cold can be so gentle. Peter lets a small growl rumble in his throat and Stiles lets it drown out his thoughts until he can drag himself into unconsciousness and pretend he isn't ruined beyond repair.