FIC: Teen Wolf -- The Old Familiar Sting (1/5)

[the_deep_magic]

Title: The Old Familiar Sting (1/5)
Author: the_deep_magic
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Pairing: Derek/Stiles
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 37,402
Warnings: underage, canon-typical violence, CHARACTER DEATH (not main pairing), grief, intravenous drug use, addiction, mentions of past trauma, angst
Spoilers: none for S3, canon-compliant through S2
Disclaimer: These aren’t my characters.
Summary: To say the nightmares started back up again would be inaccurate – they never really went away, but they had faded to something manageable.  Not anymore.
A/N: Written for rae1013 for the AO3 auction, based on a prompt from this gif.  Please heed the warnings – this is pretty intensely angsty at the beginning, but it eases up, I promise.  See end notes for more details (and spoilers).  Title and cut text from “Hurt” (I imagined the Johnny Cash version).  Eternal thanks to aliassmith for her feedback and support (and to rae1013 for her patience)!

He only knew about it because of Laura.  Not that sweet, perfect Laura would have anything to do with that sort of thing.  But once upon a time, she’d met some werewolf junkies from Portland who knew a guy in southern Oregon who could mix you up some stuff.  And she made the mistake of telling her little brother.

“Isn’t that insane, Derek?  Who would willingly do that to themselves?  Not to mention what would happen if hunters started up an operation like that – they could mix anything in there.”

Derek was only half-listening at the time, because he was thinking about the next time he’d get to fuck his girlfriend.  The one who turned out to be a hunter.

If she’d been mixing drugs instead of flammable chemicals, Derek would be the only one dead.

&&&

The alpha pack delivered Erica’s body to the burnt-out house on a Tuesday.

They delivered the other half three days later.

Isaac vomited, Scott wouldn’t come near her, and Stiles… Stiles wept openly.  He was the one who helped bury her in a grave near where Laura had been.  When they finished, he asked for a moment alone and Derek went inside, focusing on the wind rushing through the holes in the walls so he wouldn’t hear the last words Stiles said to her.

Derek remembered first approaching her in the hospital.  She was wearing nothing but a flimsy gown, looking like a cornered animal, and he’d slid his hands up her legs and all but seduced her.

Because he thought she’d be useful.

Just like Kate had done to him.

&&&

Peter said the worst part was in the waiting, in the calm before the storm.

Peter was wrong.

The worst part was the storm, when the alpha pack finally descended in full force.  They’d kept Boyd alive but had given him something that kept him feral.  When they let him loose, he killed Peter, but only after a long fight.  In the end, Peter was no match for Boyd’s strength, amplified by whatever was in his system.  Boyd fought like a cornered animal – even Derek probably couldn’t have taken him, if he’d even been able to break out of the mountain ash circle that had trapped him with Isaac and Scott.  Stiles broke an arm and two ribs giving Boyd enough sedative to down an elephant, and that was after Boyd was exhausted from the fight and full of Allison’s arrows.

When Deaton concocted something to flush Boyd’s system, at least Boyd was spared the memory of what he’d done.  But he also had to be told about Erica.  The sickest part was that they would always wonder if Boyd was the one who’d done it.

When the time came, Derek let Boyd be the one to tear Deucalion’s head off.

&&&

Instead of bringing them together, it pushed them farther apart.  Isaac moved into a foster home but spent nearly all his time with Scott, who began avoiding Derek altogether despite the truce they’d formed when the alpha pack arrived, and Allison had no reason to come in contact with Derek.  With school out for the summer, Boyd would disappear for weeks at a time, and though it actually made Derek sick with worry, he knew anything he might try to say would make it worse.  Jackson and his family had left before the whole thing went down, and while he heard Lydia was still in town, she wanted nothing to do with any of them save Allison.  Derek didn’t blame her.

And Peter, of course, was gone for good.  Derek doubted even the blackest magic would resurrect him this time, even if someone could find all the pieces.  Derek alternately mourned him and felt sick for it.  Even as a liar, a manipulator, and a killer, he was the only family Derek had left, and even that had been taken away now.

That left Stiles.  Derek assumed his loyalties would be with Scott, but Derek spotted Stiles putting flowers on Erica’s grave once, and from then on there were new ones every week.  Stiles didn’t seek him out, didn’t come to his loft, but he would at least acknowledge Derek in public.  And he would call every once in a while to see if there were any new threats and to check up on Boyd.  Why he didn’t just call Boyd himself, Derek didn’t know.

Stiles asked Derek once if there was anything he could do for him.

As usual, the words came out all wrong, but Derek hoped he at least sounded more exhausted than angry.  “Stiles, what could you possibly do for me?”

There was a pause.  “Nothing, I guess.  Not a thing in the world.”

He still called, but he never asked again.

&&&

To say the nightmares started back up again would be inaccurate – they never really went away, but they had faded to something manageable.  Since Kate died, Derek would wake up in a cold sweat instead of chest-crushing paralysis, and he’d smell the remains of the takeout in the trash in the kitchen instead of charred wood and smoke.

Not anymore.

Now, the only way to keep from hearing the screams, the crackling of both wood and flesh burning, was to keep from falling asleep altogether.  He couldn’t stop sleeping completely, of course, but he worked out long into the night, past his supernatural endurance just on the hope that he could pass out for a few hours without dreaming.  It didn’t work, of course, and he walked around like a zombie during the daylight, rarely leaving his loft.

It took a full month of that before he tried to contact the guy in southern Oregon, though he had to go to Portland first to get a name.  The werewolf community there was small and tight-knit, and they had heard what happened to Derek’s family.  That alone was enough; he didn’t even have to tell them about the alpha pack.

He watched the guy – Terrence – mix the stuff, but there could have been anything in those bottles.  All Derek told Terrence was that he wanted to sleep without dreaming, and the guy gave a knowing nod and started combining herbs and minerals in measurements apparently only he knew until he produced a small bag full of gray powder that looked, fittingly, like ash.

“Dissolve a little of this in saline.  None of that spoon-and-lighter shit,” Terrence said.  “And it works faster if it goes right into the vein.  Oh, and I threw in a little something extra just for fun.  Make you forget your troubles.”

Back at the loft, Derek wasn’t sure which was more pathetic: what he was actually doing, or the fact that he had to Google how to do it.  He’d never had a shot or a blood draw in in his life – never needed to – and even he knew copying the little bit he’d seen in movies was beyond stupid.  Trusting the internet probably wasn’t much better, but at least there was some consensus from people who seemed to know what they were talking about.

He still managed to hold out three more days, but when he woke up with his claws buried in his own thighs, anything seemed preferable to a few more hours alone with his subconscious.  He was careful with the tourniquet, with finding a vein and injecting the stuff properly.  Anything strong enough to get him fucked up could potentially be strong enough to kill him; he knew that much.

That first time, he shot up on the bed, carefully laying everything down on the nightstand when he was done.  He assumed he’d simply lose consciousness and he had no intention of waking up on the floor.

He didn’t lose consciousness.  At least, not right away.

It started with a fizzing in his veins, like his blood had been replace by champagne.  The more it fizzed, the lighter his body became, until he was sure he was floating above the bed.  His eyes had slipped shut at some point; he didn’t remember doing that, but there were bursts of color flaring behind his eyelids – not the scalding heat of red and orange but cool blues and greens; warm, comforting amber and brown.  He smelled the forest, the rain, clean skin and fresh grass and earthy desire.

There were moments of semi-lucidity where he remembered there was something he was supposed to forget, but even in those moments he couldn’t recall what it was.  There was nothing but the present, the sweetness of right here, right now.  No pain or worry or even thought.  Just feeling, pure sensation.

He had no idea how long it lasted – time had lost its meaning within seconds of the hit – but slowly the bubbles in his blood started to pop, one by one.  Maybe it should’ve hurt, but it didn’t.  In fact, it even tickled a little as the euphoria eased off and he felt slowly lowered back down to the bed.

He slept for fourteen hours without moving and didn’t dream once.

&&&

Derek wasn’t completely naïve about addiction; he was able to ration the stuff at first.  Iron self-discipline had been the only thing keeping him going for years, and he wasn’t about to abandon it now.  Once a week, that’s all he’d allow himself.  Once a week he could get a full night’s sleep, preceded by an indeterminate amount of semi-waking peace.

Before the month was out, he was up to twice a week.  How the fuck was he supposed to keep functioning if he couldn’t sleep, for fuck’s sake?  Just because things in his territory were calm now didn’t mean they would be for long.  Something else was bound to come searching for them, out to prove itself or just cause havoc, and Derek wouldn’t be able to face it if he was an exhausted wreck.

Boyd, when he came by, said Derek was looking a little better.  Isaac told Derek he was glad Derek was sleeping again.  Derek’s body apparently metabolized the stuff by the time he woke up, so there wasn’t any lingering scent for the betas to pick up, and he’d been able to push himself harder during his workouts.  Only Stiles looked at him strangely, and it made Derek’s insides twist whenever Stiles stared at him for just a beat too long.  He came by to tell Derek that they were talking about starting up movie nights again – something they’d done before… before – but that Scott and Allison, and therefore probably Isaac, would only do it if it took place at Scott’s house.

“You guys have fun with that,” Derek said, trying not to roll his eyes.

“Dude, you’re invited,” Stiles said, gesturing back and forth between them.  “This is an invitation.  I am inviting you.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

“C’mon, it’s just movie night.  You don’t even have to talk to anybody if you don’t want to.  In fact, talking during the movie is actively discouraged with popcorn ballistics.  Which you don’t even have to clean up, because apparently Scott experienced a traumatic incident where he accidentally ground a popcorn kernel into the carpet and, to hear him tell it, his mom made him pick it out with his teeth, so now he’s totally paranoid about popcorn in his living room and picks it up practically before it hits the floor.  So, y’know, a movie and live entertainment.”

Derek sighed.  “As fun as that sounds, no.”

He went to close the door, but Stiles stuck his foot in it.  Literally.  There was predictable flailing.

“Okay, number one, ow.  Number two, this is Scott reaching out to you.  We’ve been talking about the territory, what we need to do to prevent something like… what happened from happening again.”  Stiles put his hands firmly on his hips.  “I repeat: Scott.  Reaching out.  To you.  You know how serious that is, even if it’s probably going to involve a Katherine Heigl movie at some point.  She really needs a better agent.”

“Still not interested.”  It seemed so pointless now, a pathetic attempt at bonding.  Derek didn’t have a pack anymore.  He didn’t have anyone.

Stiles squinted at Derek.  “What’s up with you, man?”

Derek had just been annoyed; now he was starting to get legitimately angry.  “Did you seriously just ask me that question?  What’s up?”

 “I know what happened.  I was there.  And I know how everyone else is coping with it except you.”

“What’s there to cope with?” Derek growled.  “Same shit, different day.”

But Stiles didn’t give an inch.  “You realize if I said that to you, you would rip my throat out, right?  I’m not trying to start a therapy session or anything, but Boyd and Isaac both said you were doing better, and I’m really not seeing it.”

“Don’t pretend like you know anything about me.”

“It’s not all about you!” Stiles said, throwing his hands in the air.  “You’ve got betas who need you, a… whatever the hell Scott is… who can’t hold things together on his own, and a couple of humans who know what’s out there and what happens when it crashes the party.” He put his hand on Derek’s arm, and it looked like it surprised him almost as much as it did Derek.  “We need you, Derek.  Even if it’s just sitting on the couch watching a shitty movie, it’s something.”

“Call me when you’re in actual danger or I’ll put you in danger,” Derek snapped, shoving Stiles back just enough to get him out of the doorway.  “And enjoy your movie night.”

He didn’t slam the door; he shut it calmly, but he did make sure to click the deadbolt.

“You’re not the only one who’s going through this, Derek,” he heard in a quiet voice.  He stood and listened to Stiles’ heartbeat on the other side of the door for a few long minutes before it finally moved away down the hall.

Derek swore.  If only Stiles would mind his own goddamn… 

This was going to be the third night this week.

&&&

It only took a few more weeks for Derek to stop trying to kid himself – he couldn’t sleep without it.

He could step back from the whole situation, see it objectively: the high was never quite as high as the one before, he had to use a little more each time, he couldn’t stop thinking about it during the day.  He could see it happening and he couldn’t stop it.  Worse, he wasn’t sure he wanted to stop it.
 
It was the only good thing in his life, and it was tainted by guilt and secrecy and weakness.  That seemed somehow appropriate.  It didn’t help that he sometimes heard Laura’s voice as he was about to shoot up, about how insane and dangerous it is, and he couldn’t retort you don’t know what it’s like without it because she did.  She lived with it nearly as long as Derek had, and she broke down sometimes, but she always got up again.

Maybe Derek should have let himself break down more often.

Or maybe Laura was just stronger.  Better.  She would never have needed this.

The bag was running empty.

&&&

Terrence was happy to mix him up another batch – for twice the price.  Derek came within a knife’s edge of asking him to make it stronger this time.  But he didn’t, and that had to count for something.  He’d just have to ration it more carefully this time, keep to the same dose no matter what.

That lasted less than a week, when he woke up with his mouth tasting like ashes.

Derek rarely left his loft anymore.  There was a 24-hour convenience store two blocks away, and when he had to, Derek would stay up past midnight before getting what provisions he could.  Boyd was still coming over occasionally, and usually brought food, but Isaac had stopped entirely.  And Derek could hear the godawful rattle of the Jeep a mile away in plenty of time to bolt the door, though he certainly wasn’t fooling Stiles by pretending not to be home.  Sometimes Stiles sat against the outside of his door for hours, usually just reading or typing away on the computer, but sometimes talking softly, knowing Derek could hear him.

He talked about neutral things mostly – school, lacrosse, his dad.  He gave Derek updates that Derek would never have asked for.  Isaac’s grades had dropped perilously at the end of the year, so his foster parents made him start seeing a counselor, and it seemed to be working.  Scott’s summer school grades, on the other hand, were going back up, possibly because the sort-of breakup meant he and Allison were actually studying instead of “studying” all the time.  His dad was happy, if puzzled, that the animal attacks seemed to have stopped, though they were still repairing the station from the Argents’ assault.  Finstock held summer lacrosse practices and constantly bitched about the loss of one of his co-captains.  Stiles was sorely tempted to tell the coach what really happened to Jackson just to see if his head would actually explode.

Stiles rarely talked about himself, save for mentioning the anticlimactic nature of his seventeenth birthday, and it nearly made Derek crazy.  How was Stiles dealing so well with all of this?  He was badly hurt in the fight, and aside from Boyd, he had taken Erica’s death the hardest.  But he just kept going, kept moving forward as Derek sank deeper and deeper into the hole he’d been digging for himself.

It ended the same way every time: three short knocks and Stiles saying, “Please, Derek, open the door.”  He never said it more than once, but he would wait for at least five minutes before leaving.  Derek didn’t know what would happen if he opened it.  Sometimes Stiles made him angry – Derek might lose control and attack him.  Sometimes the melancholy in Stiles’ voice would rip Derek to shreds – he might simply crumble into dust if Stiles looked at him.  Sometimes Derek would remember Stiles’ hand on his arm, a warm, firm touch that asked for nothing in return – Derek might throw his arms around Stiles, tell him everything, ask for help.

At one point, Derek was on his knees, hand on the doorknob but unable to turn the lock.

Stiles stayed a long time that day – almost twenty minutes, just standing in front of the door.  When he finally left, Derek crawled back to his room and pulled out a fresh syringe.  It wasn’t even sundown yet.

&&&

It could have been anywhere from a few days to a few weeks later; time had really stopped meaning much to Derek.  Even the cycle of day into night – even the full moon – ceased to have any meaning.  There was just when Derek was conscious, when Derek was high, and when Derek was not conscious.  He only knew that the first state was barely tolerable and the second was getting shorter while the third got longer.

He’d stopped working out a long time ago.  It seemed pointless now.  He wasn’t too far gone to realize that he was of no help to anyone like this.  The fact that no one was even asking for help made his uselessness all the more obvious.  At least he wasn’t getting in anyone’s way.

So when he felt the hard slap to the side of his face and heard the resulting curse, he thought he was hallucinating.  Another slap, another bout of swearing, and Derek managed to open his eyes, though it took them a few seconds to focus as his brain simultaneously tried to descramble the sounds into actual words.

“—again, because even your face is made of fucking granite, I swear to god, Derek, I will—”

Derek managed a grunt, and the shape in front of him stopped moving.  He picked out the eyes first, then the nose, then the gaping mouth.

Stiles.

“Are you actually awake?  C’mon, Derek, you gotta give me more than caveman-ese.”

“Only—” Derek started, finding his mouth dry as cotton.  “Only ‘f you stop slapping me.”

“Oh my god.  Oh my god,” Stiles said, gripping Derek by the shoulders and shaking him.  “Can you sit up?”

Surely this would all go away if Derek just closed his eyes.  But as soon as he did, he got another slap, followed by fingers grabbing his nipple and twisting.

“Motherfucker,” Derek groaned, propping up on one elbow.  “Stiles, get out of here.”

He could see Stiles in more detail now, looming over him on the bed and looking pissed.  “Not a chance.  Not until you tell me what the fuck this is,” he snapped, pointing to Derek’s other arm.

Shit, Derek had passed out last night before he even took the needle out.  He forced himself to sit up and do it now, not even watching as the small puncture wound healed itself before he could even pull off the tourniquet.  “It’s just something to help me sleep.”

Stiles’ laugh sounded more like a cry of pain.  “Derek, it’s four o’clock in the afternoon.”

“So?”

“So nobody’s seen you in weeks, and you haven’t answered calls or texts in three days.  I talked to Boyd yesterday and he said the last time he saw you, you smelled weird.  I came over here to make sure you weren’t dead.  Usually I can at least hear you moving around, but I pounded on the door for a good five minutes and for once you didn’t even tell me to get lost.”

Derek was having trouble following all of that, but he knew Stiles shouldn’t be in here.  “Did you break in?”

“Yeah, and I’m not going to apologize, because for about a minute and a half there, I thought you were dead.  What are you shooting up with?  It’s nothing Deaton gave you, I sure as hell know that.”  Stiles held up the small plastic bag of gray powder.  “What is this stuff?”

“Where did you get that?” Derek growled.

“On your nightstand, dipshit.  If you were trying to be stealthy, you failed.  Tell me what this is.”

Derek groaned, seeing how close to empty the bag was.  He wasn’t sure he was capable of making another trip north.  “I don’t know.”

“Tell me what it is or I’ll flush it.”

Derek didn’t even remember moving, but he suddenly found himself crouched over Stiles’ prone body, fangs out, one hand around Stiles’ throat and the other around his forearm.  With his claws piercing Stiles’ skin.  Horrified, Derek leapt back before the stench of Stiles’ fear could hit him.  He hadn’t lost control like that since he was a teenager.

Stiles, of course, had moved quickly away from the bed and toward the door, not turning his back on Derek.  He was rubbing at his arm, which didn’t seem to be bleeding much, but Derek could smell it anyway and it was like shards of glass digging under his skin.  He’d harmed a human.  He’d harmed Stiles, and he’d done it without even thinking.  He just stared at the bed, where Stiles had dropped the baggie.  “You need to go.”

“No.”

Derek stared up at him.  “I didn’t mean to do that.  It’s not safe to be around me right now.”

Stiles stared back defiantly.  “Yeah, I got that, thanks.  But if you think I’m leaving you like this, you’ve actually lost your mind.”

“Stiles, please leave,” Derek said, too humiliated and terrified to even care about the plaintive tone of his own voice.

“What’s in that bag?” Stiles repeated.

“I.  Don’t.  Know,” Derek gritted out.

“You’re sitting there telling me you don’t know what you’re injecting into your own body.”

“It helps me sleep,” Derek muttered.  “I don’t dream.”

“You really don’t know what’s in it, do you?” Stiles said after an agonizingly long moment, looking just as frightened as he had when Derek had attacked him.  “Where did it come from?”

“A—a healer in Oregon.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s just a guy who mixes stuff up for werewolves.”

“Stuff to help them sleep,” Stiles said disbelievingly, his eyes narrowing.

“Sometimes.”

“Okay, let’s try something different.  How much have you been ‘sleeping,’ Derek?”

Derek knew Stiles couldn’t hear his heartbeat, couldn’t smell the fear in his sweat, but those eyes seemed to pierce right through him and Derek knew he’d get caught if he lied.  “I only use it when I need it.”

“And how often do you need it?”

Belated rage suddenly boiled up in Derek’s gut – this little shit had broken into his apartment and was now grilling him on things that were none of his goddamn business.  He told Stiles as much.

“It’s none of my goddamn business if you’re killing yourself?” Stiles retorted.

“I’m not—”

“The hell you aren’t.  Have you looked in a mirror lately?  I came in here and found you unconscious with a needle in your arm, lying next to an almost empty bag of unidentifiable powder.  How long has this been going on, Derek?”

“What part of ‘none of your business’ confuses you?”

“The part where my friend would rather shoot werewolf heroin than actually see the light of day!  Do you really not see the problem here?”

Just as suddenly, all the rage drained out of Derek like a stopper had been pulled.  He had just woken up but he was still so tired, and he just wanted Stiles to leave.  “It’s not heroin.  The nightmares started again, and this is the only thing that stops them.  You know what that’s like.  After your mom…”

It was a low blow and it landed perfectly.  Stiles’ mouth pressed together in a tight line, his eyebrows furrowing, and he glanced back toward the door, like all he wanted to do was storm out of it.  He started to turn…

…and stopped.

“No.  I know what you’re trying to do, and no.”  He ran both of his hands through his hair, which had grown out enough that it stuck up at all angles when he was finished.  “Be an asshole all you want, I’m still not leaving.  Because the second I step out of here, I know that needle’s going back in your arm.”

Stiles was right.  Derek must’ve skipped right past the denial stage, because I can stop any time I want to sounded laughable even in his own ears.  He’d had a problem; he’d fixed it.  He’d just managed, as usual, to do it in the worst possible way.

“What do you want me to do, Stiles?  Get by on maybe two hours’ sleep a night?  And when I do, relive the worst moments of my life every single time?”

Stiles’ face fell as his arms dropped to his sides.  “You’re not going outside, not talking to anyone.  I’m not even sure if you’ve been eating.  Is this really better than the nightmares?”

Derek didn’t answer.  If Stiles didn’t understand that, there was no way Derek could explain it to him.

They both spent a moment trying to stare the other down until Stiles finally blinked.  “Come with me.”

“What?  Where?”

“Your kitchen.”

“No.”

“Derek, I’m not asking you to go frolic in the sunlight.  Just come with me to the kitchen.”

“Why?”

“Just…” Stiles rubbed a hand across his face, turned, and walked out of the room.

For a second, Derek thought he’d somehow succeeded in making Stiles leave.  But no, his heartbeat was still in the loft.  Derek groaned, got off the bed, and pulled a relatively-clean shirt over his head before going down the stairs.

Stiles was standing at the entrance to the kitchen, a hand clamped over his mouth and nose.  Derek looked around; everything looked normal.  “What am I supposed to be seeing here?”

Stiles eyes went wide.  “Seeing?  You mean you don’t smell that?  It hit me like a baseball bat when I walked by on my way in.”

Derek concentrated.  He hadn’t spent much time in the kitchen, true, but there couldn’t be…  His nose picked up something… off.  Okay, so he hadn’t taken the trash out in a while.  But the smell was strongest near the refrigerator, and when he opened it, Stiles leaned forward to take a peek, then dashed back into the living room, as far away as possible.

Everything in the refrigerator was rancid.  Derek slammed the door in disgust.

“You couldn’t even smell that, dude,” Stiles said, his voice high as he pinched his nostrils shut.  “Tell me how that’s okay.  Tell me what justifies getting high and living in filth.”

Derek’s stomach churned hard, whether because of the smell – which he was still too accustomed to for it to be overpowering – or because of the whole situation, he couldn’t tell.  He walked out into the living room like he was on autopilot, knee bumping the corner of the sofa on the way.  The pain barely even registered.  “What…” he started, swallowing hard against a dry throat.  “What do I do?”

Stiles didn’t looked relieved, exactly, but the look of horror left his face.  “You go back in there and double bag that shit – all of it – while I open some windows.  We take it to the dumpster, and if it turns out I can breathe in the kitchen after that, I help you clean it.”

Derek nodded and went to get the trash bags.

&&&

Derek still had halfway-decent cleaning supplies, and Stiles did stick around to help.  He couldn’t go near the fridge without gagging, but the sink and the floor needed work, too.  Derek thought he saw Stiles’ eyes watering, but Stiles just turned away when ever Derek tried to look at him.

By the time they were done, the sun was beginning to set.  Derek looked around the kitchen, smelling only bleach and lemon, and asked, “What now?”

“Be brutally honest with me,” Stiles said.  “Is the state of your bathroom going to make me vomit?”

Derek ducked his head in shame.  “I… I don’t think so.  I’ve been using it more than the kitchen, so I think I would’ve noticed… something this bad.”

Stiles looked seriously skeptical, but once upstairs, all he did was frown at the slightly moldy shower grout and the rust ring in the toilet.  He opened all the windows in the bedroom and the bathroom, and they silently got to work.

The bathroom didn’t take as long, but when they were finished, Stiles let out a groan and leaned back against the wall to slide down and sit on his haunches.  After a few moments, he looked at his watch and groaned again.  “Fuck, I’m going to be late for dinner.”

Derek offered a hand to help him back to his feet, wondering what exactly to say next, but Stiles was already speaking.  “Alright, buddy, you’re lucky we’re on summer break.  And my dad leaves for a conference tomorrow, so I can come back and stay for a few days, but I’m expected to be at home tonight.”

“I’ll be fine—” Derek started, but Stiles glared at him with such sudden heat that the words dried up in his mouth.

“I don’t want you to be alone tonight,” he said, pulling out his phone.  “Let me see if Isaac or Boyd is free.”

“No!” Derek yelped, and he just barely stopped himself for lunging for the phone, but Stiles listened to him for once and put it back in his pocket, looking at Derek expectantly.  “I… I don’t want them to know about this.”

“They’re your pack,” he said softly.  “They’ll want to help you.  They’re already worried.”

Derek felt himself break out in a cold sweat.  “No, it’s… it’s because they are in my pack.  I’m their alpha.  It goes against every instinct I have, to let them see me…”

Stiles had a look of compassion on his face, but he wouldn’t let Derek leave it at that.  “See you what?”

Derek shut his eyes and looked away.  It was bad enough to admit this to a human.  “Weak.  Vulnerable.”

When Derek glanced up again, Stiles was gnawing at his lower lip, deep in thought, and even when Derek had been held down by the alpha pack, Deucalion’s claws raking across his throat, he had never felt so deeply at someone’s mercy before.  Stiles could tell anyone and everyone if he wanted to.

“All right,” Stiles said after a long minute.  “For now.  I think they’re going to find out eventually, and I think you need to be the one to tell them.  But you’re obviously not ready for that.  So here’s what we’re going to do.  I don’t like it, and I don’t think you will, either, but I want you to be safe tonight.”

Then he reached in his pocket and pulled out the bag of gray powder.

Fortunately, Derek was too stunned to react as he had before when Stiles had threatened to flush it.  Derek hadn’t seen Stiles pocket it, probably done while taking a quick break from cleaning the bathroom, and he hadn’t smelled it on him.

Before Derek had a chance to process confusion into anger, Stiles said, “I’m not getting rid of this, okay?  We may need to wean you off of it slowly.  I’m going to say it again, and I want you to listen to my heartbeat.  I will not dump this.  I will keep it safe until we know you don’t need it anymore.  Do you believe me?”

Derek, whose claws had come out but who was otherwise under control, nodded.

“Okay,” Stiles said, looking like he’d just managed to avoid stepping in front of a speeding bus.  “That’s the part you don’t like.  Here’s the part I’m not going to like.  Since I can’t stay with you tonight, you don’t want anyone else to stay, and we don’t know what happens if you quit cold turkey…”  Stiles took a deep breath.  “You’re going to show me what you do with it.  You’re going to take a normal dose to help you… sleep tonight, or whatever.  Absolutely no more than you’ve been taking, but no less, either.  I’m going to have to trust you on this not to try to do something incredibly stupid and take too much, and you’re going to trust me to hold on to the rest of it while we get this figured out.  Thoughts?”

Stiles had laid it all out, and even compromised as he was, Derek knew better than to try to argue with Stiles when he had formed a plan.  There had been no lie in Stiles’ promise to keep the stuff safe, and Derek hadn’t actually agreed to wean himself off anything.  This could be negotiated tomorrow, when Derek wasn’t exhausted from cleaning (since when had mere cleaning exhausted him?) and had a full night’s sleep.

“You really what me to show you how I…?”

“No,” Stiles sighed.  “But I don’t want you to do anything stupid tonight, and since this stuff will knock you out until I can come back, we’re going to have to risk it.”

It wasn’t even 8 o’clock, but Derek wasn’t hungry and the idea of not having to think about any of this for a few hours was deeply appealing.  Stiles handed over the bag, and Derek went to work, calmly preparing the dose, getting into bed, and injecting himself with it.

“I’m going to stay here until you fall asleep,” Stiles said, taking the syringe gingerly and setting it on the nightstand.

“You don’t have to,” Derek said, already starting to slip under.  “I’ll be fine now.”

“No.  I need to know.”

Know what? Derek thought, but he was beyond words by then.  The stuff took longer to hit his system these days, but when it did, the dying light from the window fractured into a color spectrum that made the whole room look like stained glass.  Except for Stiles.  All Derek could see of Stiles were the small drops of crystal that slid slowly down his cheeks.

&&&

When Derek woke, the sun was already streaming in through the blinds and he could hear someone puttering around downstairs.  His claws were already out before he remember the previous night, before he recognized Stiles’ heartbeat.

Fuck.

It wasn’t that Derek had been expecting Stiles to forget or flake out on him – he was the least likely person in Derek’s life to do that.  Derek just… didn’t know what to expect.  Knowing Stiles, he probably had researched half a dozen different detox procedures and somehow managed to send a sample of the gray powder to a crime lab for analysis.

Derek showered in the newly-clean bathroom, resting his head back against the tiles until the water ran cold.  The last thing he wanted to do was go downstairs and deal with Stiles.  But Stiles still had the precious last remains of Derek’s stash.  He would just have to find a way to get it back.  He didn’t even want to think about what was going to happen when he ran out this time.

Creeping carefully down the stairs, Derek managed to get right up behind Stiles, who was putting cans in the kitchen cupboards, and wait for him to turn around.
 
“Mother of god!” Stiles yelped.  “Well, good to know you haven’t gotten less stalker-y?”  Then, oddly seriously: “How’d you sleep?”

“Fine, Stiles.  That was the point.”

Something indecipherable flickered across Stiles’ expression for a fraction of a second before he broke into his usual grin.  “Since you’ve been eating like a broke college student, I thought I’d go grocery shopping.  Y’know: fruits, vegetables, meat that doesn’t end in ‘jerky.’”

Derek looked around at the stack of empty bags and the bags yet to be unpacked.  “How did you pay for all this stuff?”

“That cash you’ve got stuffed in a Mason jar at the back of the bookshelf.”

Derek’s eyes flashed red and his voice deepened.  “How the hell do you know about that?”

“Everyone knows about that,” Stiles said with an eye-roll.  “A hardcover three-volume set of the Gulag Archipelago that’s sticking out about five inches from the rest of the books?  Really, Derek?  I am totally adding a picture of you to the Wikipedia page on hermits.”

“Stiles…”

“Okay, okay, I probably should’ve asked first.  But seriously, if it weren’t for the werewolf thing, you’d probably have scurvy by now.  Which reminds me: vitamin C.”  He chucked an orange at Derek’s head.

Derek caught it easily, intending to wing it right back at Stiles, but it smelled fresh and ripe, and before Derek could even think about it, he was using a claw to slice through the peel.

He was dividing it into segments before he noticed that Stiles was watching him, his lips slightly quirked.  “Close your eyes,” he said.

“What?”

“When you bite into it, close your eyes.”

Derek eyed him suspiciously.

“Oh my god,” Stiles yelped, throwing his hands up.  “I didn’t poison it!  Sniff it if you don’t believe me.  Or throw it away, whatever.”

Stiles seemed so worked up about it that Derek sighed and shut his eyes before biting the first piece in half.  There was a momentary bitter tang from the white pith he hadn’t bothered to peel away before the sweetness of the juice burst across his tongue.  God, when was the last time he had eaten real food?  Or even bothered to taste it?  One bite of an orange and he was practically shivering.  He forced himself to savor the rest of the wedge, spitting the seeds into the palm of his hand.

As soon as he opened his eyes, Stiles turned away to finish putting the cans away, but even human ears could have heard the hitch in his breath.

&&&

Stiles hooked up his Wii to the barely-used TV and they played through all the sports games for most of the day; Derek was not given a choice.  Well, Stiles had said he could pick a game, but the boxes all looked the same to him – pictures of heavily-armed, blood-streaked men.  He didn’t understand why Stiles would want to play at war when his life was already so full of violence, but he didn’t ask.  And it did feel surprisingly good to crush Stiles at baseball, even if it was fake.

Stiles was “taking a break” – face-down on the couch like Derek couldn’t smell his sweat or hear his racing heartbeat – when he surprised Derek by wheezing, “Dinner?”

Derek wasn’t sure he was actually hungry, but Stiles needed to eat, and he’d probably expect Derek to join him.  “What are you making?” he asked dryly.

Stiles didn’t miss a beat.  “Chili.”  He popped back up to sit properly on the couch, grinning even though his cheeks were still flushed with exertion.  “And you’re going to help.”

“I don’t think you want me in the kitchen.”

“C’mon, if I can make it, it’s, like, the easiest thing ever.”

“So make it yourself.”

“You don’t cook, you don’t eat, Wolfman,” Stiles said, eyebrows furrowing, and Derek knew there would be no squirming out of it.

And it wasn’t a total disaster – though he had no intention of telling Stiles he’d managed to drip burning hot grease on his arm while he was draining the ground beef.  He healed before Stiles could see anything and give him crap about it.

They didn’t talk much over dinner, but the silence wasn’t as awkward as Derek had prepared himself for.  They even packed away the leftovers together in the plastic containers that Stiles had apparently bought for him.  Derek didn’t even grasp how disturbingly domestic it was until he realized that Stiles apparently planned to spend the night in the guest bedroom.  Derek knew there was a bed; there had to be some extra sheets around somewhere.

“I think we can fit in at least two movies before bed,” Stiles said, digging through one of his duffel bags.  “Burton Batman or Nolan Batman?”

“Do you have anything that’s not based on a comic book?”

Stiles shot him an exasperated look.  “Of course.  I was just trying to go for a theme.  Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon?”

“Burton Batman.”

That got a grin out of Stiles.  “Excellent choice.”

Somehow Beetlejuice got added on to that as well, and Derek actually yawned when it was over.  Stiles looked at him, and Derek froze.  Somehow, he’d managed to forget.

“Okay, here’s the plan,” Stiles said quietly as he plucked out the DVD and shut everything down.  “We’ll try giving you a half-dose and see how it goes.”

Derek nearly bit clean through his lip with all the things he wanted to say, most of them things that would make Stiles spit in his face and leave.

Stiles turned to face him.  “You looked good today, Derek.  Better than I’ve seen you since— Better than I’ve seen you in months.”

“That’s because I slept last night.  You give me half a dose, tomorrow I’ll look like shit.”

“And you’ll probably feel like shit, yeah.  But you’ll get through it.”

Derek looked away.  The thought of going back to the dreams was terrifying.  But he’d been dulling his senses, living like a dog in the gutter, and that was liable to get him and what was left of his pack killed if they faced another threat.

Derek got ready for bed, brushed his teeth for the first time in god knew how long with the brand new toothbrush Stiles had bought him, and when he was finished, Stiles was sitting on the bed holding the familiar plastic bag.

Wordlessly, Derek got out the equipment he needed, and Stiles must have been paying close attention the previous night, because he measured out exactly half of what Derek had taken.  Before Derek could inject it, though, Stiles stood.

“Good night, Derek.  I… I can’t watch you do this again.”  He glanced down at the sealed bag clutched in his hand, then back at Derek.  “Wake me up if you need me.”

Derek didn’t expect to get much of a high on half a dose, and he didn’t.  He didn’t expect to fall asleep, either, but he was out within minutes.

Continue to part two.