Kings of the Moonlight

The Long Haul

Stand yourself by me, we'll fall until we're free. This helium prefers no ceiling.

-

By the time that Derek finally blinks back into focus, Isaac's room is bright with sunlight and stifling hot, the shadows on the floor just beginning to lengthen. Derek sits there, in his son's room, for a long, long time, losing track of the seconds and of the way that the sun shifts in the sky.

He's been doing that a lot lately, losing himself in the moment; and whilst some moments are almost unbearably wholesome, like falling into the warm weight of Stiles draped over his back or gently rocking Isaac back to sleep as he snuffles into Derek's neck in the middle of the night, the bad times far outweigh the good.

There's a loss of control in his life that makes Derek feel like he's tethered to the ground, like he's unable to escape. It makes him feel uneasy, as if his skin doesn't fit quite right over his bones.

This specific feeling though, this inadequacy, is something that gained speed when he was wrapped up with Kate in the throes of violence and hatred, it broke down all of his defence mechanisms and made him an almost robotic shell of himself.

But even Derek knows that this feeling was present in his life far before that.

Derek can't even count the amount of times he's let somebody else take the reigns over his life. His family has always been more invasive than normal; privacy is a little known thing between them and personal space far less so.

It's never really bothered Derek, seeing as it was the only thing he'd ever known, and even when he had inevitably strayed from the expectations of his family, he's always had someone on the other side of the line to help him make the leap into personal choice, be it his father or Lydia or even more recently, Stiles.

He knows that his family mean well, but they work like a well-attuned machine, every decision is made in a precise, calculated way and configured into what they want as a collective. Derek isn't too surprised that they don't know how to deal with him, an anomaly of sorts, and everything that he's become after his trauma.

Derek scrubs his hands over his face, blinks back the blinding brightness of the day as his stubble prickles at the soft skin of his palm, and he thinks.

He realises with tired awe that this is the only time he's had, since Kate, to truly be alone and to actually be able to think things through with care.

Almost every moment in the past couple of months has had him either by his son's side or busying himself to actively not think about everything that has happened.

It's terrifying to tap into that particular nook in the corner of his mind; like opening an old memory tome: it's bulky, dusty and fragile but the binding is falling apart, it has to be handled with caution as the softened weaves unravel with every single beat of Derek's heart.

The thing is that with Kate, he was never really scared, not for the things that she did or could do to him. The fear was a completely different manifestation, it was more of a grudging acceptance, acceptance of him acting as a barrier between her and his son, where Isaac's protection was Derek's only duty.

He had spent a lot of days in the dark, lying next to his old love and hating himself for letting her do this to him, for letting himself fall into her trap again and again, gravitating towards the faint flicker of affection in her eyes with desperate hope.

He hated himself because he knew it wasn't real, he knew that it was only a matter of time until she snapped and he caught the brunt of her anger; and yet Derek knows that if the choice was between him and his son, he would go through it three times over if it kept him safe.