January seventh. Seven days since the start of 2015, and seven days since his father's death.
The bastard, he thinks bitterly. The past year Derek Hale had made it very obvious that he hated his scrawny guts, taking every given opportunity to shove...
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Grief.
It consumes him, chilling his bones and shrouding all other senses in a curtain of washed-out indigo.
Stiles wraps his arms tighter around his knees and shivers, absently watching a small black beetle crawl along a blade of grass by his foot. The sun had yet to warm up the morning and dispel the silver fog saturating the woods, and his breath billows out white in front of his face. He was really starting to wish that he had thought to grab a jacket before dramatically bolting off into the forest like some scorned lover in a chick flick, but hey, one doesn't really think straight after being slammed up against a wall by an angry werewolf.
There was no single word to describe the weeks of watching Derek cook and pad around the house in sweats, eating crepes, doing laundry, and looking unnervingly human. Definitely reallyfreakingweird at first (still weird, really) and agonizingly tense at times, but life with Derek had provided a cozy atmosphere of safe; restored a sense of normalcy to the point where he'd actually forgotten that Derek was still a werewolf at all. His pride would never allow him to admit it, but he had actually started to feel... Comfortable. Comfortable in the Hale house, the quiet of his bedroom, and at Derek's side. And that's why it had been so terrifying to see the wolf suddenly leap to the forefront and transform Derek into something so violent— rage akin to the beast of his species, claws gnarled with tenacity, irises awash with a crimson eerily similar to Kali's that night.
He sighs, rubbing a palm against his cheek. His skin sticks with dried tears. He had known that Derek wasn't really going to hit him, but all it took was a blink. One blink, one split-second register of glowing red eyes barreling his direction and a fist mid-swing, and his first instinct had been to fling his arms up in front of his face in a pathetic attempt to stay in one piece. But oh, his momentary panic had been nothing compared to the streak of horror on Derek's face— the way he'd jerked backwards as if scalded by his own action, irises switching back to guilt-ridden green in a single blink. He had looked absolutely wrecked: mouth agape, eyes stretched wide, the whole shebang. Hell, Stiles had never seen the guy so expressive.
He watches as the beetle reaches the tip of the grass blade and promptly slips off, landing on it's back in the dirt. It's legs pinwheel frantically in the air, failing to find leverage. Yeah, well serves you right, he thinks bitterly. That's what happens when you don't think about the consequences of your werewolfy actions and end up falling on your ass.
He swipes a twig from the ground and fiddles with it between his cold fingers, pausing when he notices the white gauze still wrapped around his palm.
"Why do you have that? You're a werewolf, you grew up in a family of werewolves. You heal yourself."
