HARDER TO BREATHE

Inspired by a conversation I had with my best-friend about Maroon 5 and our high school feelings, however complicated they were at the time. Twelve shots of STEREK played to the album Songs About Jane, and one huge slap in the face to wake you up at the end based on the song "The Way I Was". You don't have to be a fan of Maroon 5, but listening to the album or looking up the lyrics helps.

Explicit. Heavy Mentions of Derek/Kate. Impotence.

HARDER TO BREATHE

Derek's breath became clouds caught in the lamplight underneath the Hale porch. Breath in and breath out, he watched the wisps float away, their lives intertwined with the machination of his lungs, heart, veins. A werewolf's bodyheat never dispersed, even in the winter, chilly January, endlessly cycling with his needs, his desires, his instincts. Derek caught himself before the thought veered down that road again. She was dead. Kate Argent was dead, and he was free from her. Nearly free. He had to live through the memory of her and her manipulation of him for the rest of his life. The entire Hale family, dead, everyone, even his sister and his uncle Peter. He was the only one left now. She had laid the tracks down for that outcome years in advance.

Desire and Kate were linked. Bonded. Chained. Derek found himself questioning whether he wanted anyone. Sex was a question of bodies. Instincts. The memory of her face, her beautiful face, egging him on as she dug her nails into the skin of his shoulders, her thighs coiled around him, her sloppy, wet pussy clinging to his aching cock. Desire. She convinced him she loved him through skin on skin contact. They would meet in hotels, bars, in the dark. Derek, fuck me. I want your wolfboy cock in me now. He did not question why. He only wanted her. He only wanted her whenever he could have her. Kate made things so easy. She made love a question of insertion, condensation, and orgasm. He was young. She was bloodthirsty. Kate got what she wanted. So Derek lost everything.

Now he desired no one. Limp-dicked Derek. Breath in and breath out, he watched the wisps disappear into the dark. Young things unaware of the predator lying in wait. The great fuck pulling them in, destroying them completely. It was harder to breathe after Kate. She had put a poison in his lungs. Infected him. No, not anymore. He was the Alpha but he could not take a mate. Erica had kissed him. The young girl he had turned for the sake of his new pack, his new family, kissed him to prove a point to herself, that she could be desired even by the Alpha, the most desired. He felt her tongue brush against his lips, and for a second he wanted her. Only a second. Kate tugged at his chest. Pulled at his lungs. Made it harder to breathe. He pulled away.

His pack could never know how weak he was. An Alpha was strong in every way. He was the dominant individual, the reckoned, the feared, the exalted. Isaac, Omar, and Erica needed to be kept in the dark. Clouds of breath fading into the cruel night, Derek saw the connection and smirked, because life was cruel in her manipulation of the body and the heart. Life and nature were cruel mistresses who conspired people to ruin like they had ruined Derek. He was ruined, but he knew, however humiliating his inability to perform was, he deserved whatever punishment had been weighed against him for betraying his family for a crazy good fuck.

"DEREK, WE NEED TO TALK..."

Whatever stillness and silence the night had afforded him had been broken, no, utterly annihilated by the teenaged boy driving up to the Hale house in the blue Jeep with his usual face of terrified disapproval. Derek, having spent the last few minutes thinking about Kate, had no patience for this one, absolutely none. On a normal day, he had very little, but tonight, there would be no pleasantries between them. If the human wanted to pick a fight, he would get one, teeth and claws included. He continued to pace forward, wagging his finger at Derek like an accountant would at his client in late March. Fuck, did Derek want to gut him.

"Alright, you can't kill Lydia. I can't let you kill Lydia. Hell, you jump to killing people way too quickly, you know that?"

Derek continued sitting, continued controlling his temper, surprised that he could even be this patient with Stiles Stilinski, the most infuriating, the most talkative, perhaps the least likeable person Derek had ever met in his entire life.

"Lydia is killing people. Possibly us, Stiles. So I don't think I'm taking any leaps here. Now, why the fuck are you on my property?"

"Hey, language? I'm just here to defend the girl of my dreams."

"She is not the girl of your dreams, Stiles."

He watched him go wide-eyed. He watched him flail his arms. He watched him sweat. He smelled him sweat. Derek wanted to break him. He had a girl once. He had a girl that he loved. Kate. A girl who had robbed him of everything he had. A girl who managed to haunt him for years. A girl who still haunted him. This kid standing in front of him, he had a girl who he wanted, thought he wanted, who wanted someone else. Maybe Lydia being in love with Jackson was different from Kate who was in love with killing werewolves, but Derek only saw the glow in Stiles's eyes. Break. He wanted to break him. Watch him crumble.

"How the hell do you know that? Unlike you, who could probably get any girl you wanted. I have to work at mine. I have to make a gigantic effort. This is my effort. This is my Helms Deep. She's Arwen."

"Don Quixote ran at the Giants for Dulcinea. Now, I'm not a windmill, I'm a werewolf, but I will still hurt you." Derek bared his fangs.

"Ugh. Can't you stick to culturally relevant references?"

"Quixote is alwaysrelevant, noob."

"Did you call me a noob? I'm a level eighty-five Worgen Hunter, you ass! I..."

"Worgen? You are a werewolf. Stiles Stilinski, in your fantasy world where you fight mythical creatures, you are a werewolf with a bow." Derek felt a spark course through his spine. Stiles froze. Game. Set. Match. Stiles fell where he wanted, right where he wanted. The rush seemed similar to the feeling before the full moon, before a ripe and just kill, right before he became the Alpha, as he was ready to cut his own uncle's throat, someone he knew deserved what was coming to him. Stiles, well, Stiles made the biggest mistake he could have made that night. He crossed Derek Hale. He would have to stand in front of him and take what was coming to him.

"You secretly want to be like your friends, huh, Stiles? You want power. You want the bite. You want our speed, our strength, our stamina, and hell, you would even settle for the Argents' weapons if you could manage."

"In World of Warcraft, they call speed agility..." Stiles muttered.

"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?" Derek pounced. His tore at Stiles, pinning him to the ground. "You are fucking trash, Stiles. Don't you get that? You're a virgin. A skinny, pale, virgin with no redeeming features whatsoever, yet you pine for a girl who is leagues above you. Then, you still, you still don't get it. You don't get that you're trash. You should want nothing because you are nothing. You tell jokes because you are a joke. You are alone because you deserve to be alone. I know it. You know. Everyone knows it. I'm the only one kind enough to spell it to you clearly."

Two bright eyes turned dim underneath the Hale porch lamplight. Two breaths condensed in the cold winter air. The night was dark. Derek could feel Stiles's heart beat through his clothes. He could smell the saline in his eyes, barely coming through to the surface. Derek's hands rested on Stiles's shoulders. He had retracted his claws but they had pierced through, grazed the skin, but Stiles stared at Derek without blinking, stared without fear, stared with only intention. He wanted to leave the message: I know. I know all that. You didn't have to tell me. I already knew. Derek lay still. Stiles bit his lower lip. The next few movements Derek saw coming. They were written all over Stiles's face, all over the smells erupting from every pore on Stiles's body. He could not breathe. It was not difficult, no, he was completely unable to breathe. He was unable to move. Paralyzed from lack of air.

A hand raised behind Derek's head brought them closer. Stiles closed his eyes. He brushed his lips against Derek's lips. In an arc, he traced along Derek's stubbled right cheek, up to the depression of his right eye, where he stopped.

Then Stiles said, "I know she hurt you, Derek."

Derek felt his lungs expand. He felt the sharp air spike against him. Against the inner fibers of his chest where his heart ran circles around the moment, around the brown of Stiles's eyes, around the feeling of Stiles's lips against his cheek. He released Stiles. No. There were things flying through him that he had not felt in years. Currents he thought lost. Kate burned them when she burned the Hale house down. Stiles lay on the ground, shoulders a mess, Derek's fault, but smiling like mad because he managed to disarm the Alpha, the baddest werewolf on the block, the pack leader and the man he had feared ever since he and Scott wandered into the woods looking for the other half of Laura Hale. Derek wanted to congratulate him. He wanted to strangle him. More so, he wanted to kiss him again. Kiss him for real. Kiss him like he deserved to be kissed. Deep, so deep that he could feel how much he wanted him.

He could not feel this way. Not after Kate, not after she had ruined him, not after she had proven to Derek how despicable a person he was. He was guilty. Stiles, on the ground, no longer on the ground, on his feet, was innocent and so deserving of love. Not from him, not from Derek, not from a murderer, not from a traitor, not from the man who let a madwoman murder his entire family for a cheap fuck or two.

"Derek?" Stiles said. "Derek? Hey? I just...I mean, don't...it was just...if you're creeped out...fuck...that was a joke, okay? A prank. I'm not gay, or attracted to you, anything like that. You were talking down to me and I wanted revenge. Just, please, laugh or something, at the joke, not me. Please. Come on. Derek. Don't do this to me. Don't. Not you. Not you. I wouldn't be able to handle it if I disgusted you."

Derek turned his head to face Stiles. He could see the red eyes, the distress, the way Stiles chewed on his sleeve as he paced in a circle no more than three footsteps apart.

"Why?"

"Why what?" Stiles said.

"Why wouldn't you be able to handle it if you had disgusted me? Especially if this was a joke, Stiles." Derek said. This was the only way he knew out of this, out of wanting Stiles, out wanting the only person he ever found himself wanting ever since Kate broke him.

"Because." Silence. More chewing. Crumbling. "I..."

"It wasn't a joke, was it?"

"No. It wasn't."

"Alright then." Derek said.

Derek spit on the ground before Stiles.

"I think we understand each other."

Stiles left without a word. Derek could feel the burn on his cheek, on his lips, where he had touched. Out on the Hale porch, he sat on one of the wooden steps, underneath the lamplight. The burn consumed him. It was unforgettable. Mesmerizing. Breath in and breath out, Derek replayed the events of the night in his head, regretting everything and nothing, but thinking constantly of the boy who came to him screaming.