Sterek One Shots (boyxboy)

There It Is

There It Is by FirstRabid

There it is, Stiles thought as he pulled open Derek's door.

A slight puff of air wafted by his nose carrying the whiff of lemongrass and lavender and something woodsy. Most werewolves couldn't abide the chemically saturated products found in every supermarket. They always went organic. Many, also, went fragrance free. But not Derek. He didn't have an inconspicuous bone in his hot, leather clad body. So, of course, he had commissioned eau de Derek. Underneath the herbal signatures was a hint of an animal scent. Not wet dog, as Stiles had once spitefully described it to Scott. Not sweaty human either. Fur maybe. Warm and wild, like a cat that's been lying in the sun. Stiles used to love scooping Sgt. Pepper, his mom's old tabby, out of a sunbeam and rubbing his face in the soft sweetness. The cat had reacted just as he imagined Derek would, squirming for immediate release.

"Never love a wild thing," his dad told him once, quoting Truman Capote. "You'll end up looking at the sky as they fly away."

The cat had vanished a few days after Stiles lost his mom. Just like Derek, again. No, that wasn't fair. Sgt. Pepper hadn't bothered to say goodbye or look back or whatever. But Derek had. Derek had left him a key and a cell number and a note. Stiles paused in the doorway, key in hand, to read the note again.

"Leaving for awhile. Lease is paid through March. Use it if you need it."

He needed it. He needed to feel safe. But mostly, he needed some clue about where Derek had gone and how long it might be until he returned. They were foundering without him, all of them. Scott was struggling with authority issues. His own and his father's. Lydia walked a tightrope between good and evil. Stiles hadn't slept through the night in six weeks. His stomach churned constantly. Every breath burned through him. His head ached and his mouth tasted like metal. He would nod off at stoplights. They said his head injury wasn't the problem, though he'd been out for a good twenty minutes. Of course, he couldn't tell the doctors about his sixteen hours under water. Talk about oxygen deprivation to the brain.

And then there was the darkness around his heart. He'd told Scott about the dreams. But he'd shared none of the details. They were too disturbing to talk about. Night terrors, the doctor called them. Panic attacks in his sleep. The triggering images came back to Stiles in flashes-rape and murder, blood and breaking bones. He'd burned. He'd drowned. He'd been blown apart. But the worst parts didn't involve what happened to him. The worst things were the ones he did to others. He could vividly remember strangling women with his bare hands. Hands that, on another night, had buried a knife in his dad's chest. He'd started mixing antihistamines and alcohol to knock himself out for a few hours. But the dangerous combo usually wore off before dawn. Every night he woke up sweat-drenched and screaming. Afraid to lay down again, he would turn on the computer and watch reruns of sitcoms as the night hours ticked away. He wasn't sure how much longer he could go on with no sleep, laboring to breath, to walk, to live. The entire bottle of sleeping pills looked more and more inviting every night.

His phone dinged and he jumped. The keys in his hand escaped his numb fingers, clinking to the floor. Weariness hit him like a cement truck. He couldn't bear to go on like this.

Kill yourself, an inner voice said. Get it over with.

Stiles gave an involuntary shudder. He'd slipped into another one of those tingling states where the world seemed muffled and remote and his mind produced evil suggestions. The doctor had explained these were mini sleeps, his body trying to catch up on rest even as he force marched it through another day. Detached by exhaustion, he'd started to see himself as an unwieldy meat-puppet. His body had became something he was shifting from place to place, until he just gave up and died. He bent to retrieve the keys and dropped his phone.