Safety

The Beginning

    Stiles has never seen Derek so uncomfortable as he does when he climbed through his window on a Friday evening after his dad had gone to work. He looks nervous, jittery without moving and like he's steeling himself for rejection. But most of all he looks tired. And not just like he hadn't slept, like he had been physically exerting himself during the times he should have been asleep. He looks horrible and Stiles would be lying if he said he wasn't really worried.

   Derek stands there for a moment, looking at Stiles sitting at his desk. He hesitates, then walks over to Stiles bed and sits down, facing him. He still hasn't said anything, as if he's not sure exactly where to start and isn't particularly eager to. So Stiles, like always, breaks the silence.

   "Dude, you look horrible." Derek glares at him, and that look of steeling himself grows before Stiles goes on. "Are you okay? Is something wrong? Well of course something is wrong, that's the only reason you're ever here." He didn't mean for it to sound like such an accusation. But he can't take it back now, and he watches Derek wince, like Stiles had sprinkled salt into an open wound.

   "If anything was ever right..." Derek didn't need to finish that sentence. Stiles understood. Derek's life has been, let's be honest here, really depressingly bad. It's a wonder the guy can still talk to people without putting claws to his stomach and eviscerating himself. That thought made Stiles worry more. Even after Laura had died, when Stiles had accused him of her murder than harbored his fugitive ass in his room, he had never looked this bad. So whatever was wrong had to be really fucking bad.

   "Seriously though dude, are you okay? I've never seen you look this-" mangled "haggard." Derek makes a face at him, like he can't believe Stiles is actually worried about him in any way. And, really, come on! Stiles has saved his glorious ass way too many times to let it go to waste like this.

   Derek seems to consider him a moment, like he's making sure whatever he was about to do or say was something he actually wanted to, then let out a frustrated huff, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes.

   "I'm not sure where to even start." God, Derek sounds so fucking resigned. Stiles needed to get on this shit now.

   "How about with why you look like you haven't slept a wink in a week at least" Stiles sighs. Without moving from his position, sitting on Stiles bed, elbows on his knees, hands on his face, Derek says,

   "Because I haven't." Again, so fucking resigned. It hurts Stiles to see him like this and not know what to do to help, to not know anything really.

   "Do you know why?" He can hear the concern in his own words and hopes Derek does too. Derek finally takes his hand off his face and looks at Stiles, trying to find words it seems.

   "Scott" he says hesitantly. Stiles looks at him in confusion for a second before the memory of Derek paralyzed, Scotts hand on his neck, forcing Derek's teeth onto Gerard's arm rears its ugly head and then he gets it. Derek is an alpha and his own beta had manipulated him, made him feel powerless. And from what little Stiles knows of Derek's past, he knows that that wasn't the first time. Not by a long shot. Images of Kate Argent flags into his head unbidden and he clenches his hands, feeling murderous. The anger he had been harboring for his 'best friend'. Derek wasn't sleeping because he didn't feel safe enough to.

   Derek was looking at Stiles with apprehension, like he wasn't sure whether or not the anger was directed at him. Stiles ran his hands through his lengthening hair and gripped hard, trying to dispel the anger. It didn't work.

   "I'm not mad at you. I'm furious with Scott though, and if she weren't already dead I'd be showing up at the Argent's doorstep to kill Kate as horribly and as gruesomely as possible." The words were out before he could stop him and he got to watch as Derek's apprehension turned into shock and thinly veiled awe. And really that was just depressing. That Derek was shocked and awed that someone would be angry that someone hurt him.