"When you love someone but you bite your tongue, all you get is a mouthful of blood."
-When You Love Someone by the Fruit Bats
It was happening again. Stiles was in my loft yelling at me again.
"I'm sorry that I'm not good enough to be your friend or whatever," Stiles said with acid in his voice, "but when someone is pouring their heart out its considered pretty damn heartless to ignore them entirely, regardless of how annoying you find them!" His voice was steadily rising, anger rearing out of him, almost masking the desperate sadness below it. Almost, but not quite.
I sat, letting him empty his emotions on me while I remained motionless, completely stoic through his words that burned me more than I'd ever let him know. I kept my gaze fixed on the television behind him, not at all comprehending what was flashing across the screen while I listed to his words, to his heartbeat.
"I don't even understand why you hate me so much! What did I ever do to you?!" When Stiles' voice broke, I couldn't stop myself before I was tearing my gaze from the T.V. and looking up at his face, now looming over me.
As soon as I took in the broken expression on his face and the tears welled up in his eyes, I felt my heart clench, forcing me to my feet before I even had the thought to move. I did catch myself though, I managed to hold my ground, standing just a few inches from Stiles with a scowl locked onto my face. I felt like if I moved a single muscle in my face, just a twitch of my eyebrows, I'd break my carefully placed facade of anger, letting it crumble down into the nothing that it really was.
The stare-off between Stiles and I lasted just a few moments before a tear broke over Stiles' cheek, slipping quickly across his soft skin to pool at the corner of his mouth before he looked down at his feet. That movement, that simple acceptance of the rebuffs I'd been throwing at him since day one did me in. My resolve tumbled down and I let the scowl fall from my eyes. I could feel the unusual tug of my eyebrows, drawn together and upwards in concern for what I've done to Stiles.
All this time I thought I could protect him from the world I lived in. I thought that if I could push him away enough, eventually he wouldn't want to return. I never considered it hurting him though. I knew it annoyed him and made him feel a little self-conscious, but what I saw cross his face in this moment showed me that my actions had run deeper than that. I had cut Stiles down to the bone, ripped a painful, jagged hole through his chest.
I opened my mouth to speak, to tell him that all of my cold behavior, all of my actions had been a lie, I couldn't bring myself to do it. My brain lost all ability to form words, clouded with colliding images of all of the times that I had pushed at Stiles and emotions that I didn't even have a name for. I could feel cold panic rushing up through my chest as I grabbed at any words at all, anything to say to pull Stiles back from this misery but there was still nothing. I bit down on my tongue hard, enough to draw blood, enough to ground myself enough to begin to think of what to say but by the time that I had enough attention back on the real world, Stiles was already to the door. I looked at him and took a step forward before he turned as he pulled open the heavy loft door.
"I loved you, Derek." He said, roughly, throwing my entire world upside down before stepping out into the hallway and slamming the door shut behind him.
"When you love someone but you bite your tongue, all you get is a mouthful of blood."
-When You Love Someone by the Fruit Bats
