"Everything is fine," is what Stiles says when he wakes up, six hours later. He's not bleeding, he doesn't have any wounds on him, but Derek can't shake the feeling that the statement is false. By all logical means, Stiles is fine.
But when has his life ever been logical? There was no rhyme nor reason for Stiles to have come to the Loft in the first place, and then for him to fall asleep.
Derek nods. "Water?" His question is met with a solemn nod, and this, too, feels wrong. Stiles' eyes are different, somehow. He is different, when he wasn't, before. Before that demon put its slimy hands on Stiles, its twisted lips onto Stiles'.
When Stiles willingly gave up his most precious thing to it.
Derek brings back a glass of water from the kitchen, and finds Stiles on the couch instead of Derek's bed. He pivots when he realizes this, and it irks him, this change of places. Not just because Stiles should be resting, they don't know what's gonna happen after a deal is made with a demon like this, but because not once has Stiles ever relocated himself from Derek's bed. Not after something like this happens, which happens quite often.
It irks him, he realizes with a sudden clarity, not because Stiles shouldn't be exerting himself — but because this feels like he's removing himself from Derek's space.
It's stupid, maybe, but it is how he is feeling.
Stiles drinks the whole glass in one gulp, and Derek tries not to stare at his neck, soft and bare, where he could —
"Are you okay?" He asks again, and again Stiles replies that he is. Frustrated, he growls out, "You just made a fucking deal with a demon, Stiles, you're not okay! You gave that thing your most precious thing."
Stiles' smirk doesn't carry its usual nuance of playfulness and... something else, that's always there, when it is directed at him. This time, it's a cruel tilt of his plush lips, pink tainted with venom. "What the fuck do you care? It's not like you have to deal with the consequences."
Stiles puts down the glass on the coffee table, and the force of it rattles the papers — Stiles' assignment papers — off of it and onto the floor. Stiles bends down to pick them up, and Derek stares, because he has no clue what the fuck has changed.
Except, he's not the beast everyone thinks him to be. Sure, he's a caveman when it comes to technology, sometimes, but he isn't stupid.
He licks his lips, and this is it, he thinks. Stiles' eyes are downcast, searching for the one paper that Derek saw move under the couch, so it's easy to say it now. He doesn't want to see Stiles' face when his worst fears are confirmed.
"Stiles... what did I mean to you, before you took the deal?"
He has wondered, a million times over the billion seconds he's been alive, if the universe hates him. If he's patient zero for all of universe's cruel plans, the unlucky chap saddled with Lady Fortuna's fury. And right now, when Stiles' eyes snap up to his, he's sure that he was right.
Stiles' smirk turns, somehow, more cruel. He confesses, "Everything," and then with a laughter that sounds nothing like the warmth of the sun but everything like the absence of moonlight on his skin, he says, "And now you mean nothing to me. This is the happiest fucking day of my life, you know? I was so... burdened before."
Derek can't breathe. With the last of the air he can manage, he stutters out, "Get- Get out!"
Stiles still hasn't found that last page, and now, concern flashes across his face. But it's gone quickly, like it was never there.
He leaves that last bit of paper under the couch, unaware of its predicament, when he slides open the door to the Loft and heeds Derek's words. And Derek, well, he falls onto the couch, falling like a crumpled piece of paper, and like that fucking paper below the couch.
How does the saying go? It's better to have loved and lost rather than never having loved at all? What does this qualify as then, when apparently Stiles' most precious things had been... something about Derek, that's now gone, and he's acting like this?
Derek has loved Stiles for an amount of time he cannot quantify, and now he's lost Stiles, too. And it hurts like all of his limbs are tearing apart, all at once, and like his lungs are burning, and he's choking.
It would have been better if he'd never loved Stiles at all. Because this, whatever Stiles has become after that deal, is something Derek can't survive. He's lost too much already, and he's losing Stiles, too.
His anchor.
The one person whom he actually fucking trusts.
Of course this is happening to him. It's what he deserves, doesn't he? There's no debate about it. He's a sinner, a killer; he's made of pain and he's meant for pain. He is alive only because death would be the most peaceful option for him, and it's ironic that the person who had started to make him feel like maybe his life is worth something is making him feel like this.
“And they just kept coming, and we were losing. But then he came. Derek. Fangs bared. Eyes red.”
Laura stops breathing. “Red?”
“Alpha, my Alpha,” Stiles chants, reverence in his tone, and like he’s been called by it, Derek emerges from the forest, his white t-shirt riddled with bullet holes and arrow-tip grazes, the rest of him drenched in blood that makes Laura’s run cold.
Her baby brother looks straight at her when he says, “It’s not mine. Mostly. I’ll heal.” He says it off-handedly, like it’s no matter. Like him fighting, and winning, and burning a human being alive is just a Thing he does.
It feels like an entity of his own, the way his blood rushes inside his body, the way his bones and flesh too small to hold what he's feeling. It feels like he's one of those poor people the alien's egg is going to incubate in, tear through him to become the deeply terrifying, shapeless, haunting monster.
This feeling is overwhelming, something he can't really name. But it's not unwelcomed. It is, in some fucked up way, like a call to him — he feels that rush of power, of trust, too. The call to his magic. The way his breaths come out calmer.
He can't really name it, not really, but he knows this feeling is the most important thing he possesses.
So it's not really a shock when the demon looks at him and only him, one arm out like he's going to snatch it without permission, a sharp grin on its borrowed face. "You," the demon beckons, and Derek snarls, protective. Derek moves in front of him, like it's going to stop the demon. Like there's anything they can do except take this deal. The demon laughs, reedy and evil, and he's sure the person doesn't sound like this; this demon has taken over completely, and Stiles doubts they can save the man who is being possessed at the moment.
"What do you want?" Derek's fang slur his question, but he's understandable, and Stiles puts his hand on Derek's shoulder, pulls him by his soft henley. They were on a walk around the preserve, a routine perimeter check, but here they stand now, in the middle of this clearing where kids had definitely messed around in and found the fuck out.
The camping bags are still warm, but the trail to the kids has gone cold. Unless they take this deal.
"I told you, wolf," the demon sing-songs, and Stiles wonders where he got this body from. The man is clearly in his 30's, light brown hair, hazelnut skin, brown eyes. He cannot be one of the people who summoned the demon, here. "I want what's most precious to your pet."
Derek's been growling all this time, but now he roars, all restraint broken under the clearly verbalized threat.
Only Stiles' hand on Derek's shoulder stops him from leaping at the demon.
"Derek," he says, concerned. They have no idea how to deal with demons that aren't evil fox spirits. "Maybe this is the only way."
And he wants out. He knows what are his most precious things — his feelings. Especially for him. He wants to get rid of it, because there's rarely anything as painful as feeling like your world tilts on its axis when you know theirs stays the same. They're friends, and pack, and that is all they can be.
It would be okay to lose these feelings.
"Listen to him, listen to him!"
"Stiles, don't you dare move!"
Stiles moves around Derek and is again in front of the demon. "Will you leave, then? Never to come back?"
"I'd do you one better — I shall forbid any other of my kind to come back here."
Derek doesn't grab him back, but he does verbally accuse Stiles of being stupid. Stiles is grateful for their relationship to have come to a point where Derek knows better than to stop him when he's set his mind, and he's really fucking gonna miss his bubbling mess of a heart later.
"Deal," he says, and there the lips come, cold and cruel; a quick, dirty kiss that leaves Stiles gasping for breath.
He closes his eyes, and when he opens them, it's to Derek hovering over him worriedly. It makes Stiles feel packed, so he pushes Derek backwards, and stomps his way back towards the Loft.
