sometimes scott thinks about how it all came to this.
the bite is a gift, derek had said.
and at the time, scott hadn't given it any real thought. he had been too preoccupied with this constant panic that he couldn't squelch down. what he could only liken to an asthma attack. different still because it wasn't just his throat that was narrowing. it was- it was all of him. everything inside him was churning and contorting. lengthening and shortening and breaking off at the ends and down the middle, to reassemble into- into-
and it left him gasping, grasping. trying to brace against a fall into something dark that had opened up inside of was all this space, and too little of it all at the same time, and none of it felt familiar in the room between his skin and his bones and-
scott remembered the phantom sensation of grappling for things that were no longer there. nameless things that he'd never named simply because of their constancy. and he was only aware of how vital they were once they were gone and- and he was scrambling for tension, support, contact against horrifying absences in the bleeding jagged places of who he was.
all of this at once was more than anyone could say. and scott, faced with derek who had never actually been human. who was born a wolf. never forced or turned into anything he wasn't already. scott had never given it much thought, but the bite was wholly and completely the opposite of a gift.
it was a theft.
scott was robbed of something that derek never had. and scott was robbed of something that could never be taken from derek.
scott didn't have the words at the time. he still doesn't have the words to this day. so all he had managed to say was
i don't want it.