(KAI) I don't have any excuses for this.

Global Damages

Weeks after the bruises have lost their gangrenous blush and the slashes along his arms have closed within the press of butterfly laces, Stiles feels damaged. It hits him sometimes, sharply, like a breath of salt air, and it reminds him of knives.

Long knives with sharp edges and points and the pinpricks staining his chest and belly, that bled and bled and turned his skin to sunsets of pain. He remembers faces, sometimes, in his dreams, that chase him and catch him at the ankles, over and over and over again, and sometimes he trips on air, on dust mites, and falls against walls as though his Achilles tendons are still muddied from the tightness of thick rope.

He huffs sometimes, to no one, and Scott says nothing. It kills him to catch a whiff of the way Stiles' body recalls, aching. It's an acrid sting that reminds him of his own failings. It's after the deep, settling sighs and the faraway, checked-out expressions that Scott wants most to crawl into a hole and die. He has the Old Stiles most of the time, but the New Stiles is there, too. Under the surface.

The New Stiles is a little bitter, no less accommodating, but altogether blunt in his approach to emergencies. He runs faster and harder than he used to, until he is ragged and breathing like there is glass in his belly. Lydia worries. She thinks, unexpectedly, of monks sitting in flames, letting death take them in a blaze of pain they do not feel. Or pain they can't react to, so deep in meditation.

And Lydia remembers his name, now, which says enough.

There is a turning point afterward, after the untimely demise of Stiles' overall trust in the world, that he snarks point-blank and cold and gets a spitting-mad Jackson in his face for the trouble; there are claws millimeters from Stiles' throat, and a face so close, he can read the striations in Jackson's eyes. He blinks, slowly and without breathing any more or less quickly. His voice is still cold when he tells Jackson to try again, he's nowhere near the jugular.

And that's when the meeting gets back on track, because everyone would rather listen to Derek than dwell on what's just transpired.

Occasionally, Erica hears the young man's ribs creak inside his body, where, deep-down, they are not completely healed. Sure they aren't hurting him anymore, but she can tell his body is struggling to keep up with him, and she wonders if there is a purpose to it- to his marrow and the way it groans through him, sludge-like and sad. She says nothing, of course, because she doesn't know how, and because she doesn't want to know what Stiles might say back.

Being infused with strength and power and ability and still feeling that fear- of a plain human, no less- strikes her, shames her. She is all the more intrigued when Isaac gives over to some inability to keep himself out of harm's way, and troubles the corpse they used to know as Stiles Stillinski.

(They all know he hasn't been eating.)

It is at the next meeting, another two weeks from the weeks past Those Days, that Isaac brings Stiles a worried to crumples brown paper bag. There is muscle cream tucked into its corner, high-quality pain-killers, and a science-fiction trilogy DVD. Isaac presents it, his eyes lowered, curls limp across his forehead. Stiles wants to scream, but he doesn't. The look of expectant fear in Isaac's eyes stops him, and he's reminded of how, should he choose, at this moment, Isaac could rear up, tear into his throat, and kill him. But instead, he's handing him drugstore muscle cream and Percoset and making a low keening in his throat that must sound entirely pathetic to the wolves assembled.

He feels damaged.

There is a hotness behind his eyes and he tries to drag it down, but it won't go. The tiptoeing around him and the gentle press of concern, unvoiced, has him eroded. His skin remembers the warm blink of Isaac's skin, passing along his as he pressed the bag unerringly forward; it is the first human touch he has known since the single, long embrace he allowed his father. It hurts. It hurts like knives drawing promises against his skin, down his arms in tiny, white scars, as thin as hairs. It hurts to breathe; his ribs remind him what touch means and now Erica is grimacing, holding her arms across her chest and looking anywhere but at him and Isaac, frozen in the middle of the room.

This little suite Derek is renting, for no other reason than he can't stand the Hale house anymore or the sick, dark places he's been, is cold.

Scott opens his mouth, closes it, and looks at the ceiling, searching. Stiles' tension is like barbed wire along his throat. He doesn't know what to say; has never known. As natural as loving Allison had been, before the trouble and the change and the irreparable split, it does nothing to help loving Stiles. And then Stiles is smiling, grim and with wide eyes, and then saying lightly, Well, all right, that's great, thank you! I guess that's all, see you later, everyone. He turns around on one heel, sharp with an undercurrent of danger, and makes it two steps to the door.

In his peripheral, there are the drawn curtains of the hotel room and the low light, and the memory of how dark it had been Those Days, and then the blood is rushing to the surface, to his pores, and away from his skull. He knows, in a quiet, contemplative way, as the curtains in his peripheral tilt and his mind is suffused with horror, that this is a blackout. That he simply cannot go on another step, because his body won't let him forget and the pack won't let him forget and his memories won't let him forget.

The shame is almost tangible.

But arms catch him around his ribs, though they protest, flinching. His arms wheel in confusion, hands catching on nothing.

Breathe, someone says, near his ear.

Breathe, because he is underwater; surely he is underwater, it is so pale here.

Breathe.

Breathe!

A hand blasts against his bad, hard enough to startle him and he sucks in, once, a shuddering mess of air on which he immediately chokes. Curtains.

Isaac is kneeling in front of him. Oh, the floor. I remember this, he thinks, though it has never happened. The damages claw at him as he hacks into someone's elbow. They want out. He wonders if the blow to his back will bruise, with what desperation it was delivered; will blood rush from his capillaries in a confusion of abuse?

One hundred things happen at once that Stiles will never understand. The arms haul him backward to the bed, a blurry vision of Isaac following, and Scott approaching. Erica's blonde hair brushing his hands as she cradles one of his wrists against her forehead and just breathes. Boyd behind her, unreadable, arm around her waist as they curl up on the bed; his dark hand is on his thigh, near his knee, and there is a pressure there that is anything but subtle.

Stiles' face is hot, blood rushing in a pattern of unease. He remembers his last meal. Crackers and Pepsi. Yesterday. Yesterday sometime.

Scott is close to his side, awkward and earnest, scruffing his hand up and down Stiles forearm, bunching up the fabric of his long-sleeved tee and smoothing it back down. Behind him, arms are tight around his waist and chest, trapping his upper arms; a chin on his shoulder, legs around his hips as he's pulled deeper and deeper into the wounds of touch.

It's Derek. Derek is mumbling Just breathe, carefully, with inflections of endless connotation, while Isaac slowly sinks in front of them, wary and humming nervously, not quite whining. His eyes are unusually bright, or it is unusually dark. Their foreheads meet, and Oh, Stiles has been hyperventilating, that's the problem. Of course.

The beta has one hand on his neck, on the side unoccupied by Derek, and the other hand balanced on Derek's immovable arm, where it holds in the hiccups of darkness balancing on Stiles' solar plexus. His expression is sweet, open. He noses Stiles' nose, careful and while closing his unusual blue eyes; Isaac breathes in, gently, and murmurs something, but Stiles can't hear over the rush of blood in his head and Derek's grumbling missive. They're doing it, he realizes, sucking in his pain. Across the room, tense, is Jackson, held at the elbow by Lydia, glaring in discomfiture. It's difficult to concentrate, but he sucks in another gasp of oxygen and holds it for so long that Isaac squeezes his neck and Derek squeezes his pinpricked belly of scars and on the exhale Jackson is across the room.

Lydia follows.

They sit at his feet, alongside Isaac in his kneeling. Lydia rests against the bed's edge, one hand firm around his ankle. Jackson says, I'm sorry, once, so quiet Stiles isn't certain, but then he's repeating it, pushing toward Erica to get closer, laying his head on Stiles' knee and Derek's knee beside it and getting a little louder. Isaac noses his way along his cheeks, dangerously close, but in between one heartbeat and another, Stiles realizes it's because Isaac is more afraid of him than the other way around, but is being brave. He wonders if Isaac can smell the old ache beneath his skin in a way the others, unabused, don't. He wonders if it hurts Isaac to revisit that pain, but he's choosing to do it anyway; his hands twitch.

Derek turns his head to incline it against Stiles' neck and he remembers, his skin remembers, the little knife, the butterfly, as a hunter spun it carelessly beside his ears and jugular, grinning. He shudders, and Derek breathes it in. Stiles knows he is frowning, can feel it in the pull of the corner of Derek's mouth against his neck and the draw of Derek's eyebrows against his skull.

Isaac opens his eyes and there are tears there, which startles Stiles more than anything else so far. The black-edged panic is drawing down, pooling out of him. His body is succumbing to the rewriting of the wires of his nerves. The synapses of his brain are firing at speeds he'll never fathom, re-connecting and burning out like little suns, tiny supernovas. Isaac kisses his cheek, longer than his cheek has ever been kissed, long enough for Stiles to flush. But his skin is happy in its rush of color, in its embarrassment. He can think of no reason why this is strange, because the curtains are still and there is plenty of light from the lamps. He can hear again.

The tightness around his torso eases; as though Derek no longer has to keep him held together, held at the edges from falling apart. A kiss at his neck, and his nerves erupt in new connections, most of them pleasant, some of them concerned. Isaac relaxes down, his upper body across Stiles' lap, right side pressing into Jackson's forehead, belly against Boyd's hand. The petting has not stopped. Lydia is outright massaging his ankle and part of his calf and though that should have been part of some fantasy fulfilled, all he can really think is Thank god she cares, that's all I wanted.

He can feel Jackson press closer to Isaac, can see his free arm reaching across the blonde's back to touch Lydia, who meets him halfway. Scott leans against him, dropping his cheek to the top of his head. Boyd is fully rested around Erica. They occupy the same few cubed feet of space without a breath of space, a tangle of limbs and awkward affection.

Stiles wonders if its because of him. He wonders if they want all to be the bandage on his wounds.

He hopes so.

Later, they re-orient on the kingsize, curling like spoons around Stiles and his finally even breath; he's still shocked, still dazed, but he feels strangely loved. Derek has him pulled tight against his chest, with Isaac wrapped around his back, curls a comfortable touch against his ear. Scott flanks the other side of Isaac, wound needfully against the blonde's back. Derek kisses his temple, refusing to speak or acknowledge what he's doing.

Erica and Boyd are wrapped around each other at the foot of the bed, tucked into the curves of calves and feet. Nearby, on the suite's couch, Jackson's chest is flush against Lydia's back, his hold on her nothing less than knightly. She endures it, overwhelmed with a taste of what she's always wanted. It has been quiet for so long that Stiles is afraid to speak, so he doesn't.

Without having to be asked, Lydia reaches for her cell phone, and breaks the silence herself, confident as always. She orders pizza enough to warrant a vaguely disconcerted tone on the other end of the line.

It is true that his appetite is coming back. She knew. They all knew.

Derek pulls him closer, lips pressed without pause to his skin, near his hairline where it has grown. Stiles feels his heart shake and wants to hope it means something, and the way Isaac seems to grin knowingly at his neck, shy and amused, perhaps counts for something. The pack always knows before he does, whatever it is they know.

He whispers, I can't believe that happened. I can't believe this is happening. What is my life, I am cuddling with way too many people. You are all freaks of nature and I will never live this down.

They stay with Derek for the remainder of the weekend, eating, watching television, swimming in the hotel pool, and sharing the bed and the floor. They resurrect the Old Stiles, without condemning the New one. It is a process. Stiles huffs occasionally.

Life goes on. Past that weekend that is past Those Days, they are a Pack as any other; falling to squabbling and intermittent bouts of excessive tactile connections, like synapses firing affection to one another, building a network that, Stiles is at first hesitant to accept, includes him. A network that has, better late than never, pledged to keep him safe from future damages.

Derek reaches out for him; it means more than he thought it could.

There are ups and downs. Stiles rolls with the punches. He is imperfect. He falters and lingers and leaps to the world he does not altogether trust. But he isn't alone.

He remembers, sometimes.

He remembers to breathe sometimes, too.