Say Something (Sterek)

Chapter 1

The world is wrong.

This isn't new information; for Stiles, the world hasn't been right since his mother died. There are spaces in his childhood-a whole, huge person-he can't speak of without losing control of his voice. The changes started when he was little and his mom died, and then everything changed again when Scott was bitten, and then again with the Jackson-Kanima massacres, and things seem to still be changing and the world just keeps getting more and more wrong. Stiles often thinks that he would very much like to rewind time to when the world was right.

But despite all the wrong things that exist, all the shape-shifters and bloodthirsty creatures and murderers and fucking resurrection, Peter Hale's fucking Jesus Christ moment, nothing that is both wrong and useful has turned up-there is no time travel, there are no superpowers for the geeky, wrong-footed, awkward kid, no cape for the Robin. This isn't Harry Potter. Stiles won't ever be able to fix everything; it will all continue to be wrong. And often he can't sleep because he is the reason that Scott was bitten; he can't sleep because this is the price he has forced his friend to pay for callous curiosity; he can't sleep because of so much, there is so much that tangles in his mind and leaves him with his pillow pressed over his head, trying to suffocate all the wrongness out. It never leaves. It just burrows deeper. Someday he's afraid it'll spill from his mouth in blackened words, will wind insidious around his father and Scott's mom and all the brilliant people who are not crazy the way he's starting to think he is, the way the pack is.

Some nights he stays up on his laptop, reading articles about this stupid world he's uncovered. But they're awful articles, always poorly written and often archaic. They make his head hurt even more. He used to occupy himself by dreaming about Lydia-fantasies that he thought might come true someday maybe-but since Jackson, since everything, that feels wrong, because maybe he still loves Lydia, but she loves a jackass of a werewolf who was a murderous lizard and if she lasted through all of that then it seems unfair for Stiles to create a her in his mind who would choose him. There's enough wrongness in this world without him adding to it.

And so insomnia takes him, and he gives in. He drinks coffee until early in the morning and has developed even more of a twitch and his speaking rate is up to some outrageous level and he is so tired, so tired. He has sand in his eyes and he wants to talk to someone about it, but he's put his dad through enough and Scott is sad over Allison and there is still no one else, is there? These are the things Stiles realizes around four in the morning, the things that make him dig his blunt nails into his thighs to try and think of anything but what's going through his head. Of anything but how alone he is.

All of this is more confusing when he's not alone, though. Sometimes a shape will appear at his open window and launch itself onto his carpet; always very very late, or very very early; always louder than necessary; always Derek Hale, who hates Stiles.

Derek hates Stiles, except on a few days, when he's feeling vulnerable. Then Stiles becomes something like a fucking teddy bear to a big bad werewolf who's too stubborn to admit he never actually grew up.

The first time it happened was three nights after Jackson kissed Lydia and the alpha pack captured Boyd and Erica, one night after they reappeared, physically unharmed but psychologically a little shaky.

That time, Derek fell into his bedroom and grumbled something about "Fucking betas, fucking second floors," and blinked at Stiles in the odd glow from a Wikipedia page on his computer screen. Derek said, "Thought you'd be sleeping," and Stiles covered his hysteria with his pillow, but Derek could still, of course, hear the wheezing laughter and the fast rate of his heartbeat.

Stiles finally dropped the pillow. "Good morning to you, too. Has someone died? Or was it meant to be my death-were you planning on murdering me in my sleep? I would have thought that you'd be more interested in the screaming and the struggling aspect of killing people, but then, sometimes people surprise me. Sorry if I messed up your plans by being awake. You can still have a go at me, if you want. I'm apparently very fun to attack. I make a good victim."