Hell
When Stiles Stilinski dies, he always pictures it differently each time. Maybe one night he'll hang himself, waiting for his dad to come home. Another night might be when he uses his dad's shotgun. It feels heavy and cold against his temple. He could swallow a handful of pills, just like his mother did that night.
He never really does these things, though. He dreams and dreams, but we all know those never come true. Maybe one day Stiles will work up the courage to tie that rope, load that gun, down those pills.
It's the days that he thinks of her that make things hard for him. He can't think straight, thoughts racing in-and-out and he can't stop, can't stop, won't stop, stop, stop, STOP. No matter how many times he yells, screams, or shouts, it will never stop. Those are the days he takes extra Adderall, and passes out in the bathroom. Sometimes his dad finds him, sometimes Scott. Usually, no one finds him. He's lost. He's nowhere to be found.
And then he wakes up. Alone. And he cries and cries but is too much of a man to admit it. At least, that's what he tells himself. The problem is he is so lonely, so very lonely and can't seem to fill the whole that is gaping inside of him.
When Stiles was little, when his dad was in the stage of Sort of Happy, everything in his life was kind of okay. When his mother would look down at him and smile when he wouldn't, couldn't, stop talking and kiss his forehead. She would actually listen and ask him questions and care. He just wanted someone to care.
His mother never died, not in his book. She fell in love with the idea of heaven and is there now, smiling down at him. He doesn't want to think if she went to the opposite way or not. But guessing by how many pills she took the day of her death, she was already living in hell.
The panic attacks started after she died, when he was a little boy. He would clutch his chest and gasp for air and choke on nothing but oxygen. It felt like a million other hands were grabbing his lungs and squeezing the air out until he couldn't breathe, felt like he was going to die and be in hell with his mother because that's what she wrote on her note. His dad helped him in the beginning, but as the Sheriff worked more and more to forget his dead wife, he didn't have time for his dying son.
That was when Stiles's dad entered the Unhappy stage. His glass of whiskey would get larger and larger, and Stiles's self-esteem would get smaller and smaller. As a glass turned into two, and two turned into three, the Sheriff of Beacon Hills would hit his own son. Stiles always pretended like it never happened the next day. His dad was the only thing he had left. Not only did it scar his body, along with Stiles's pocket knife, but emotionally.
To stop the panic, to not feel like he's drowning, he would pinch his arms harder and he would start tasting that metallic tang of blood in his mouth. Blood streaming down his arms, he didn't realize this was what was classified as 'self-harm'. His nails led to paper-clips, and paper-clips led to pocket knives, which would lead Stiles to his death.
Stiles never had friends. He was the weird kid. He talked too much because he had ADD and his mother died of a suicide so teachers always gave him that sympathetic look he had learned to hate.
Then, Scott McCall moved into the small town Beacon Hills because his dad left him, so their two family's would be perfect together and Stiles thought of puzzles because they were missing a big piece and his mother loved puzzles, for she was one.
He befriended Scott, the new kid, and they were best friends ever since then. He liked to spend time at Scott's because he missed the feeling of being babied by a mother and he tried not to cry when Scott asked him where his mom was.
Scott and Stiles are both in high school now, and it's all Stiles's fault that Scott was a werewolf now and fuck, fuck what does he do now? They're chased by all sorts of odd things and Stiles is just a plain mundane and worthless, just like how he always is.
Scott tries to convince him that he's pack now, after all the thing he's done for Derek and his pack, but he doesn't believe it, won't, because he's never belonged anywhere in his life before, so why now?
One night, the evening of the anniversary of his mother's passing away, the panic attacks get too strong, one after another, and he can't keep doing this. He's so alone, so very alone and wants to bash his head into the wall to get these dumb, dumb voices out of his head. They won't leave him, though. They reach for him, taunt him, begging for him to join them, join them. He has nothing to lose, no one to live for.
He takes his pocket knife and slices one, two lines across his wrists because X marks the spot, right? Maybe his breathing will stop after making an X on his neck. He puts the knife to his neck and imagines the way he will slit his own throat on the anniversary of his mother's death. How weird it will be for his dad who will have to deal with two deaths on one night. And then suddenly, Derek is there and oh fuck he fucked up again because he was supposed to be at a pack meeting and he missed it and Derek is here to kill him to save Stiles the trouble of doing it himself.
The Alpha takes the knife out of Stiles's hand before crumpling it, bending it and squeezing until he throws it out the window. What will he kill Stiles with then, he wonders? Probably his own bare hands and damn Stiles just wants to die. He didn't realize it before but now he knows and oh how he wants to join his mother.
And he's saying these things out loud now, and Derek is quiet and listening and Stiles takes this as an advantage. He slurs and stumbles over his words, until he can't breathe and he doesn't even know what he said, but it must have been pretty bad by the way Derek was looking at him.
Derek knocks over his lamp because he is so mad he didn't see it before, why he didn't wonder why he could always smell blood on Stiles whenever he was with him.
"I'm sick. I'm fucking sick in the head and I'm already dead, gone a long time ago and I'm so fucking sick of this hell." And everything sounds familiar because this is what his mother said and sounded like, so ready to leave and she did leave. She left her one and only son alone in this world with no one else to hold his hand.
And then Derek's hand is on his, and he comes to the realization, that yet again he was still speaking out loud, saying everything that's been on his mind. He's drowning in his misery and Derek might be the one to pull him out and let him breathe again for the first time.