Sterek One-shots

Blissfully Numb.

He looked up into Stiles' eyes, filled with pain and desperation and please don't fucking leave me. He'd already lost so many people: his dad, Scott, Alison, and his mom. But no matter how hard Derek tried, he knew he wasn't going to survive, in the end.

So he clung to Stiles as the blood seeped passed his fingers, out of the wound that refused to heal. As he pleaded for Derek to stay alive the wolf's mind wandered over to other memories. Happy memories. Ones that would've, under any other circumstances, made him smile or laugh.

He thought about the time Stiles proposed out of the blue. His eyes had shone with joy and love and everything that is no more. He had cried tears of pure bliss as had Derek, unlike now. He glanced down to watch the salty water mix with the too-dark blood, and then up into Stiles' eyes again.

Eyes that had hidden so many emotions on their first date despite knowing that Derek could smell and decipher each and every one. Eyes that, when stared into, you could get lost in for decades, only pulled away when he spoke. His voice. A voice always so full of confidence, even when he lacked it. A voice that so few heard sang along to all his favourite songs: 'Wonderwall', 'Don't Look Back in Anger', anything by The Killers. And Christmas songs. He loved those.

Stiles' fingers tightened once he finished tying a strip of fabric around the open wound but it didn't matter. Blood still drooled out and yet Derek felt no pain, no sadness, nothing, only numbness and a tingle that could be nostalgia as he thought over more good times (and some bad) or could be the delightful calling of death. The promise of nothingness. Completely alone, or maybe not. Maybe he was wrong and there was an afterlife and maybe he would get to see everyone he'd lost. He'd get to tell everyone all about his beautiful, in every sense of the word, husband. Get to tell Noah all about the wedding and get to meet the wonderful woman that had brought Stiles into this ugly world.

A world, he realised, that was pulling him away from the man he loved. Stealing his life as well as memories that could have been. Stopping him from being able to remember everything before he died. A world he had fought so hard to help, a world he had tried to save numerous times and every time it had spat in his face. It had handed him hope and then taken it away, playing a sick game with him. Twisting and contorting his beliefs, turning them on their heads and toying with him.

And it was doing it again.

The numbness dissipated, replaced with rage, with a sheer hatred over the placed he had called home for the past thirty-odd years. It was not home. No home would cause you this much turmoil. Everyone described homes as safe yet this place was anything but. And it had torn him apart so many times, it had no remorse even as it did so again.

He would not feel the pain, he would not be there to do so, but the idea of Stiles, his beloved, being utterly alone made him feel nauseous. More than the fatal wound he was sporting could ever.

His eyelids tugged down, closing almost against his will and despite Stiles' protest. As soon as they shut his mind filled with images, almost like a slideshow of his life. Rolling from the first time he and Stiles had met to just before now, when the katana, drawn by what they had believed to be one of their own, had swung into him. There was no doubt in his mind that it had been poisoned. No room for it either as new pictures filled his mind, pictures and shorts almost-memories of the things he would never experience.

It was like one last hit from the world – once claimed peaceful – and he had no way to fight back, too weak, too broken, too damaged. So he lay there, unable to open his eyes, unable to call for help, to beg for mercy, to plead for one last chance. He so desperately wanted – no, needed another chance if what he saw was anything to go by.

The delightful future of children that he and Stiles so wanted, and of promised happiness and calm and love, of everything he dreamed of, stopped. It was so sudden that Derek felt a jolt in his gut and managed to wrench his eyes open only to be met with Stiles. The boy's mouth was open only slightly as if it had just stopped moving and Derke realised everything he had been seeing had been what Stiles had been describing to him. The perfect future. The one Stiles knew he wanted. A way to keep him hopeful.

But without that, with only Stiles sobs to fill the void of screaming silence, all he could think of, once more, was how alone he was about to leave Stiles. Stiles who had already lost so much, so many, not only to the cruel yearning of deaths fingers but also to betrayal and distance. He wasn't sure how well Stiles would come out of this – if he did at all. But Derek hoped he did. He really fucking hoped, so much so he almost believed it, but no one could be so naïve. Not even in times like this, when images of death and blood swam through his head.

Stiles' voice choked out again; pleas and promises flooding the too-thick and simultaneously too-thin air. There was no hope, Derek's werewolf healing was no longer trying, he'd lost too much blood, too much belief, too much everything. He was not surviving this, not this time.

So, with his last threads of strength, he reached up to place his hand on Stiles' face, smearing it with crimson as he did so and parted his lips. "I'm so--" he coughed, blood coating his dry lips, "sorry." Stiles repeated, over and over again that he had nothing to be sorry for and that he loved him and that help would be there soon. Derek knew it would not, knew it was a lie without even having to listen to Stiles' heartbeat. He also knew he did have to apologize because he was leaving Stiles. Leaving him to deal with a battle he did not want. A battle Derek had fought himself and only won after Stiles has reached out, had saved him from it.

Derek needed to apologize because he could not return the favour as he had done in the past.

His hand fell and he mumbled, as black clouded his once impeccable vision, "I'll love you forever." It was true. No one had to have supernatural hearing to be able to know that.

Stiles repeated the first three words back to Derek, hushed and scared as if stuck in a loop, reciting a mantra. With every time the words were spoken he slipped away just a bit more.

I love you.

His eyelids dropped again.

I love you.

His face went slack.

I love you.

His breathing became more laboured.

I love you.

The numbness crept back in, this time carrying a blanket of cold.

I love you.

He tried to repeat the words but got stuck on the second syllable.

I love you.

The claws of nothingness gripped him, pulling him under.

I love you.

An empty bright appeared in front of him.

I love you.

It consumed him.

I lo---.