[December 2nd] [Teen Wolf] Too Broken to Cry

[saraste-impi.livejournal.com]

Title: Too Broken to Cry
Day/Theme: 2. Don't cry. Tears won't help.
Series: Teen Wolf
Character/Pairing: Sterek
Rating: G


It's the anniversary of the fire, the first since Derek came back to Beacon Hills and Derek is absolutely wrecked.

This year, it's all too much, way too much, after the year he's had. First Laura and then finding out that it was Peter who'd killed her and then killing Peter himself. There's been too much death in too short a space of time to get back to where he... hurt a little less with each passing year because now, all of his family is dead now.

He won't cry. Hasn't, since the first few months when he and Laura huddled together in their grief and during which Laura kept moving them about because she didn't feel safe anywhere and because she hadn't know where the threat had come from, who'd lit the fire because Derek hadn't been able to bring himself to tell her. And even then, even then during those first few months after the fire the tears had usually come at night when they were sleeping all curled up in one bedf, crying each other to sleep because no words were never gonna make anything right.

And now Laura is gone and Derek has no-one to cry with. He's kinda afraid to cry, not that he'd admit to it, because if he did, he isn't sure that the tears would never ever dry up. He thinks he would cry until he couldn't breathe, until there was nothing to him but a sobbing sad mess and he just can't. Won't.

Instead, he rages,right after things seem to not be all death or death anymore, after Peter is... gone. Runs through the preserve and growls to the moon. Rouses the Argents suspicions sky-high as he does but he notices that he doesn't fucking care.

Doesn't care that they might come and decide that he's a threat, that he can just be made dead now, for all the trouble he's caused. For the ruckus his making, such a ruckus that it makes it into the local paper and when he shops for the bare necessities he can hear conversations between the other shopper,all in scared tones over the loud creepy animal noises in the woods.

He doesn't care.

Derek knows it would be better to just maybe cry it out but it seems he's all cried out. Sometimes he even wonders what the hell he's even still doing in Beacon Hills to be honest. There is nothing but death to him here. Well, he knows why he won't leave, why he's torturing himself by staying. And it's not because of his dysfunctional pack of beaten up teens. No. It's because he can't leave well enough alone, because, in the one corner of his shredded and badly patched-together-again soul, there is a glimmer of hope, a part of him that still thinks that maybe, maybe he could still have good things, despite the train wreck which is his life.

Could still have one good thing, even when that hopeful part of him is dead afraid that he'll ruin it, like he does everything in his life.

Even then, when Stiles shows up at the house, where Derek's spent the day of the anniversary in abject misery, decidedly not crying, not even howling because he still retains some speck of self-preservation, Derek doesn't make him go away. Because he just can't. The day has drained him of the will to make Stiles go, to fling nasty words at him, maybe shove him a little. So, he lets Stiles sit beside himself on the ruined remains of the porch and they just remain there in silence and it's fine.

It's Stiles who breaks the silence between them, because it just always is him, it's not in his genetic makeup to remain wordless, not even in a situation like this.

“Have you cried?” he asks, softly, compassionately, and his voice doesn't make Derek want to have his arm slung around his shoulders, it doesn't. Even when it so does. But that would break some boundaries, make more out of this than what this, what they have, is. It would be bad for Stiles, because his presence in Derek's life is fraying on Derek's last bits of resolve.

Stiles is someone Derek can't have but what he wants, sometimes aches, to have in his life. But he can't, because it wouldn't be... There's too much of an age-difference between them. If Derek were to give in, he'd be no better than her.

Even if he does l---

And that's a thing that's dangerous to think about, especially when Stiles is around, Derek can't get comfortable with such a thought, not when Stiles is right there all golden brown eyes and cinnamon boy smell and words. Words which Derek should answer with some of his own before Stiles thinks somethings up, before, maybe, Stiles will say something Derek can't make him unsay. For he knows that there is lust, in Stiles's part, maybe even more and he can't, just can't, give Stiles any leeway, any crack where he might slip in and take permanent residence in Derek's heart... even when he so completely has.

But Derek isn't Kate. Who he shouldn't even think, whose name he shouldn't utter even in his head on this day of all days. Instead, he answers Stiles, who's here, who has no agenda to intentionally hurt Derek and who would never plot to kill his family if Derek had any family left to kill.

“No,” he answers Stiles, after rattling around in his short time memory for what Stiles had actually asked. “No, I've not cried.” He doesn't add 'can't' cos that's giving away too much, that's too raw. Except that, with Stiles there, with him there, tethering Derek, he kinda thinks that he could cry. And that's a dangerous thought.

It's terse, his tone final and he hopes Stiles will get it. Not that he will but Derek is still putting it out there for the infinitesimal chance that he possibly might.

Then there it is. Stiles' hand. On his shoulder. Stiles' heart thudding in his ears, it's steady beat, which Derek would never admit to having memorized, faltering a bit, anxious. Like Stiles is waiting Derek to fling it off, turn to him and snarl.

Which, of course, because when is life ever fair and because it's suddenly all way too much to cope with, is not what Derek does at all. Even when part of him wants to. What he does is cry, even when part of him is sure that it won't make anything feel better, even when he knows that he shouldn't with Stiles there, because it's too intimate and the tears won't help. Crying won't make his family any less dead. They won't make his life any less miserable, the porch he's sitting any less burned out the house any less a derelict, a broken burnt tomb of memories and lives cut too short.

Derek just sits there, with Stiles' hand on his shoulder, letting it all out, all the tears he's been bottling up for years, all the tears he didn't shed after Laura died, even the ones he knew he would have wept for Peter, the Peter he'd known before the fire, not the crazed, burnt post-coma Peter. Stiles is there, silent for once and it is enough... and all too much.

And even when Derek had thought that crying wouldn't make him feel better, it kinda does, mostly because Stiles is there with him.

When Derek's drying his face, when the shadows have long ago gone and been replaced with starlit darkness and the night is chilly around them, the wood of the charred steps cold under where they sit, Stiles is still there. And only then does he speak again.

“It's ok to cry. You can't bottle it up like that.” And then, because Stiles has no self-preservation skills, or because he just loses his brain-to-mouth filter around Derek, he continues, his heart-rate hopping. “When was the last time you cried, cos that sounded like years of not crying.”

Derek is surprised that he even answers, must be the crying making him open up, or this particular day making him emotionally vulnerable and thus talkative. Or the way Stiles asks, his tone, the cadence of his heartbeat, his smell, which Derek could pinpoint in a crowd. It's dangerous and Derek shouldn't have let Stiles stay.

“The months after the fire, when I was on the road with Laura...” he replies and clicks his mouth shut because that, he's never told that to anyone. His eyes flick to Stiles because he cannot not look, he needs to see the face he makes, which he can see, because of his wolf eyes, even when his ears can easily pick up the tick of Stiles' heartbeat, hear the gasp the words wring out from Stiles' lips.

Can almost taste the compassion in the cool air between them. Kind of wants to kiss Stiles to make him forget he ever heard anything. Even when that would be wrong.

“Oh,” is all Stiles has to say to that and even that feels too much, because Derek just can't have him growing attached, starting to care, because he knows he'll wreck Stiles, because he can't do normal. Stiles doesn't deserve to be wrecked, not the way Derek was, Stiles needs someone his own age, not an adult creep years his senior who has issues by the bucketful. A man who can't even cry on the anniversary of his family's death before this boy, this boy, came and wrenched the tears out, unscrewed whatever stopper there was on Derek's tear-ducts and just made him loose all the tears he'd bottled in so carefully over the years, just bleeding inside.

“Stiles...” Derek growls, because this, this is dangerous, veering on the precipice of not-okay-at-all, even when Derek wants it so bad.

He's afraid that Stiles will give in to the demands of the climbing heartbeat which is filling Derek's ears, that Stiles will lean closer, that the hand on Derek's shoulder will turn into arms around him, that the words will morph into tentative, fumbling kisses.

Derek's afraid that it'll all happen and that he, the responsible adult still, even with all his defects and broken pieces, won't be able to say no. Because he needs to. Stiles is just a kid. Stiles doesn't need to be near him, because Derek knows he's bad news, he'll bring more danger into Stiles life than ever before if he were to give in, if he'd let himself.

“I cried every night for a year when my mom died,” Stiles admits, his voice hitching and his heartbeat stumbling over the memories Derek knows that the words must summon up. “Then I stopped. But I still cry every year, on the day of her death. Because I know she wouldn't want me to, she'd want me to be happy and not so sad over her every day... It's okay to mourn.”

Derek really wants to throw his plans to the wind, just fuck it and kiss Stiles right there and then, try and claim him as his. But he won't.

Eventually, Stiles leaves, Derek walks him back to his jeep cos it's dark, and Stiles grumbles. There are no big bad things that go bump in the night besides the pack in Beacon Hills now, so he's safe to walk to his jeep, Stiles tells Derek. Derek just ignores him.

When Derek walks back to the shell of a house with rooms filled with the ghosts of his family, of memories that are burnt at the edges now, seared into his soul, he realizes that Stiles was the only one who'd remember what that day was. His pack were mostly too young to remember, and he hadn't talked about the fire, ever, but Stiles... Stiles had come.

Derek realizes that even if he keeps himself away, shoves his feelings for Stiles in some dark hidden corner of his heart, never to be acted on, he's already lost.

Because Stiles is attached and Derek isn't sure he can ever keep him away.