After him

POV Derek

I was never very talkative, even before my parents died. Talking, using words, is something that always seemed complicated to me. I didn't know how to express the feelings that ran through my veins, I didn't know how to explain the torment that invaded my state of mind, I didn't know how to describe the states that changed me and those that disturbed me. Everything was hidden pain, buried, buried in the hollows of my soul, too sensitive to experience life serenely. Everything was only sleeping anger, waiting for the slightest peccadillo to emerge and defend invisible wounds, abrasions that a body cannot understand.

And then there was Stiles. A ball of energy, a strange and bubbly boy who took an interest in me without me understanding why. His arrival in my life was like a storm on my habits and at first, I hated him for it. He was intrusive, sticking his nose in my business when I wanted to be left alone. And he knew how to understand what I was unable to say, he knew how to unlock the milked words, trapped in my throat. No one had been able to make me trust him since my family was murdered, no one. As a teenager, a psychopath abused me and used me to destroy the people I loved, I just couldn't let anyone get close, tame me. Yet, along the way, I met a young madman who healed me where everyone else had failed before him.

I went through so much to rediscover the path of love, and I found someone who helped me learn to live with the past. It wasn't easy, I had to break through so much armour to do it, but it finally happened. Yet today, fear still grips me. It's like an old enemy that I find again when I had forgotten it existed. I don't understand what I saw, I just have this dull ache in my gut and I ache for everything I didn't know before.

Stiles, my companion, who are you? In the five years we've been a couple, this is the first time I've seen you like this. Have I ever wondered further than you wanted to show me? I have told you everything, revealed everything, unveiled everything in the most difficult of transparencies and while I believed in the reciprocity of your confessions, I now understand that you have placed an opaque veil over your own history. Am I able to understand what motivates your actions, what pushes you to go beyond the forbidden?

What I saw yesterday affected me deeply. My heart is as tight as it has ever been and I feel as if it has become trapped in the impossible. I can no longer look at you without my stomach hurting. It's as if I'm back to being that person who is impervious to everything, especially your smiles. You don't know it yet, but I'm lost, I can't understand, can't admit it. Why? How is what I saw when I came home earlier than expected even possible? Have you been deceiving me all this time without me suspecting anything, without me even suspecting the beginning of treachery?

The worst thing is that when I came forward, you pretended so naturally. I think that's what hurts me the most. My love, how can you lie with such ease, appearing so innocent even though you transgress everything? I didn't sleep all night, caught in the thick fog of my questions, tortured by unhappy feelings and an unacceptable desire to hurt you so that you would confess. I don't know what to do, I'm completely lost and waiting.

I wait until I can no longer keep my discovery to myself. I am waiting for your flaws to reveal themselves, for your mask of self-confidence to crack and reveal your true face. And despite everything, I love you and continue to hope that you will tell me, that you will tell me what I cannot yet understand. There has to be a logical explanation for all this, if it wasn't anything that I think I saw. There's this part of me that hopes I'm making a mistake that I've misinterpreted what I've been watching out of the corner of my eye. And there's this other part, which is certain and judgemental.

I'm doing push-ups to try and take my mind off it, but the only thing I can do is silence the ache in my heart by moving it through my muscles. Stiles knows that something is working on me, he knows my reflexes. But this time it's different, this time he's the main one involved, this time he's the one responsible. I feel like throwing up as I think about the possibility of our alliance shattering, and terror fills me at the thought of not being able to solve this.

I hear her coming home from work, my stomach churning as her cheerful voice echoes through our walls to call me. I'm so confused that I can't answer and continue my physical exercises in the weight room we've set up for ourselves. I redouble my efforts and breathe hard. I don't want to feel anything anymore, I don't want to feel this emptiness that has returned since the night before and that makes me feel like shit.

I am in the middle of my effort when I see the tips of my companion's shoes appear in the doorway that I left open. I look up and he smiles tenderly at me. I can't return this grace. How can he intend such sweetness for me and keep his secret betrayals trapped deep inside him? I stop and swallow my discomfort. I'm all sweaty and I take advantage of my breathlessness to pretend my annoyance isn't real.

'Didn't you hear me calling you? '

Stiles has a mocking look on his pretty face. It annoys and upsets me to see him so naturally, to see nothing but his daily love and bonhomie.

'Yes, I was finishing my series.'

My voice is cold, I can't hide my resentment. My companion immediately frowns and worries that I am distant. I wipe my face and casually toss the towel I've grabbed. I can't hide my feelings from him, he is the only person I can't hide anything from. Yet he has been lying to me from the start. He lives with an inadmissible secret and my throat closes up at the memory of that vision that struck my lucidity the day before.

'What's the matter? Why have you been so cold to me since yesterday? You barely pecked me this morning and you don't even welcome me tonight, have I done something wrong?'

Stiles puts his foot down, as is his wont, and I am tempted to spit out what is weighing on my consciousness in the process. I restrain myself, I can't get into it like that. It's too serious to be rushed into and I want to try and save us before we're on the verge of breaking up.

'You tell me. I need you to tell me the truth about you, Stiles, because I know now that you're hiding things from me.'

My tone is low, my voice seems so foreign to me that it deepens in the underlying threat it deploys.

'Why would you want me to hide anything from you? '

Stiles' question is turned in such a way that I see it as a mockery of my beliefs. I can't relax, and seeing the disbelief injected into my companion's attitudes pushes my anger button. I frown. How does he manage to fake it so easily? To what extent is he able to deny and pretend? Could I ever believe him again after this? I feel my heart sink in the bitterness of this whole situation. The only way I know how to soothe the electricity scratching at my nerves is to shut down completely. I want to scream at my boyfriend, I want to shake him to force him to spill the beans, I see myself making him bleed and it's unbearable.

I sigh through my nose, wipe my sweaty forehead and stand up abruptly. Stiles is startled and tries to get closer to me afterwards. I consciously avoid him. He plays on my patience and I am unable to refuse him any affectionate touch. I must not allow myself to be touched, I must not allow him to manipulate me with his natural tenderness. I bristle with disgust to protect myself from the desire he inspires in me. Everything I think I know about my life partner now seems artificial. It's as if he's just an actor who has played me and my heart hardens to stone.

'What is true in all that you have shown me, in all that you have told me, if you are able to lie to me like that, without blinking? '

My words are needles of ice destined to strike right into my companion's vital core. I can see the shock spreading through his eyes, which fog up instantly. It is accompanied by a painful stupefaction. It hurts to see what I am doing, but there is no turning back. My lover's masks have to come off; otherwise it means I've been cherishing the wind all these years. I can't accept that, it's impossible. This thought persuades me to take my apparent insensitivity up a notch.

'But what's going on with you, how did you come to believe that, Derek? '

My baby's voice is broken by the emotion that immediately infects him and he says my name as a plea.

'I saw you yesterday, Stiles. I came home early from our family dinner and I saw you. What the hell does that mean, why do you keep playing me for a fool when I've seen everything? '

I'm totally detached when I say that. I wipe my chest vaguely, then put my shirt back on and try to keep a cool head. I mustn't scream, I mustn't fall into easy and gratuitous violence. When I turn my head towards the man I love, I see the devastation of my words on his attitude, which crumbles by the second. Our eyes meet and Stiles immediately sinks into terror. His tremors force him to hold on to the wall to keep from falling. This reaction is his first admission that he is destroying himself internally and I ache for him.

'Oh my God,' he said, exhaling feverishly.

He collapses to his knees on the floor, assailed by a pain that seems to twist his inside badly. It is as if I have punched him in the stomach. He suffocates and I am the spectator of his collapse. I swallow, I want to cry like a five-year-old girl and yet I remain impassive. I reach out fully to stem the tide of empathy that drowns me against my will. Now my love is crying, no longer looking at me and liquefying in shame.

'What does that mean, Stiles, what I witnessed yesterday? '

I try to bring him back by forcing him to answer, but his hiccoughs of grief become more painful as my insensitive words hit him. I want to die, I want to break down for everything I'm putting my partner through, but the horror of his betrayal overrides everything. I am frozen in my fury. I leave him in our weight room, I can't watch him fall to the floor sobbing like a wretch.

I head for the kitchen, feeling like a soulless robot. I am no longer there, as if outside my body, even though I can still hear my companion crying in the distance. I walk through the corridor, the living room, the dining room and I go straight to the fridge to get myself a beer. I open the bottle and gulp it down in record time. The freshness of the liquid twists my guts. I end up puking it all out into the sink the next moment before screaming my anger without allowing myself to cry too. I sit up, feeling like the world is spinning around me and I grit my teeth in refusal.

To have seen my love decompose in front of me, to have become a limp rag, a nobody, all this makes me nauseous. I humiliated him with my behaviour, I killed something in him. What have I done? For all I know, Stiles is a victim and I just dealt him a fatal blow instead of helping him. How long has he lived with this secret on his consciousness? It has to be before us, it has to be. Did I react out of selfishness, clinging to my sense of spite like a dog to its loyalty, while my companion suffered in the impossibility of telling my story? Did he free me from my silences to better bury his?

Doubt floods into me and contaminates all my beliefs. I still hear my baby's sobs and I forget that I am angry. I forget that I've been obsessing all day about hurting him as much as I felt yesterday, discovering a whole part of his life I didn't expect. I found him guilty even before he gave me the explanation I now require. I've become, in less than twenty-four hours, a fucking asshole who flouts everything. I have to go back to the room I just left, I have to take Stiles in my arms, I have to pick him up and help him recover from the blow I just dealt him. What if I've misunderstood and misinterpreted everything?

It's unbearable, I can't stay stuck in this uncertainty. I rush to do everything I've just thought of and rush to find Stiles. He remains kneeling on the ground and when he senses my presence, he shields his head as if I'm going to hit him. I curse myself inwardly and come to force him into my arms. I pick him up and our contact seems to scare him as much as it immediately reassures him. He shakes against me and I am overcome with guilt. I kiss his forehead, his temples and hold him to my chest. He continues to cry and clutches at my shirt as if I might push him away at any moment.

'How do you tell this to the man you love? How do you tell him about the past without scaring him away? Can you tell me, Derek? '

His questions pinch my insides badly. I don't know, I can't answer, I never imagined this situation for myself.

'I didn't want to betray you, ever, but I couldn't admit to anything either. It was just the slippage of another life, totally different. I owe him that. '

He stutters to tell me what he thinks as he sobs tirelessly into my clothing. I roll my eyes to the sky to push back a surge of emotion. I was the one who had ignited this despair in my lover's body.

'Did he … did he was abusive with you and you could never say no? '

My voice is borderline aggressive when I ask this, and Stiles breaks down in tears. My self-esteem had already fallen to a low yesterday, but now I have no respect for Noah. My boyfriend calms down and detaches himself from me, he steps back and looks at me with a distressed expression, he nods negatively, it's like an automatism.

'No Derek, it's all my fault. My father didn't want it at first, he resisted me for three years…'

He leaves this sentence hanging and hides his face behind his palms while his shoulders are shaken with sad vibrations. I don't understand anything anymore, what does that mean? I feel like I've been slapped and I can't react…

'Explain to me, Stiles, because I feel like I'm getting it all wrong. Are you telling me that you did your dad because you wanted to and you made him? '

My voice has risen to a high pitch of scepticism to ask him this question. When I hear Stiles' positive nod, I feel like an anvil dropped into my stomach, I'm just dumbfounded. He pulls his hands away from the front of his face and stares at me with an indescribable shame in the depths of his amber irises. My heart stops beating.

'When Mum died, Dad forgot about me and preferred Whisky. He suffered so much, he was so destroyed. So as not to resent him for abandoning me, I fell in love with him. It was the only way I could stay faithful to him forever, even if he couldn't see it. I was twelve years old, I was a kid, but I was convinced that I had to have sex with him to make him want to live again. Mum used to make him happy like that, so I thought I had to do it too, that it would be the only thing that would save him…'

Stiles cried again and I sat down on my exercise mat, so shocked was I by what he was telling me. He leaned against the wall and let himself slide before he spoke again, sniffling.

'At first it was a belief, but as the months passed it became more and more of a certainty. And then it turned into an obsessive fantasy. It was all I could think about. The more my father rejected me, the more I wanted to have sex with him. Oh, my shame, I can't believe I'm telling you this. How can I live with myself now, how? I'm a mental patient, a lunatic! '

He shouts at me and tears wear down his salt-ridden cheeks. I can't move, I'm stunned by his revelations. And then Stiles resumes his explanation, as if he's convinced himself that having hit rock bottom, he has nothing left to lose.

'When I was fifteen, I finally got my father to give in. He took my virginity and he did it well, I swear he didn't rape me, I swear he's a good man. My father is a good man, I'm the one who's out of line, I'm the one with a fart in my helmet. I'm madly in love, I've confused everything, I've done anything so as not to feel like I'm dying. My father didn't want to at first, but he was so desperate for everything that he allowed himself to be trapped by my desires so that I would stop destroying myself. He gave completely to my blackmail. He didn't want to live Derek anymore, and when we started sleeping together, he … he got better you know. He was happy again. And I felt like I was finally here, like I'd been waiting my whole life for this. What a fucking idiot I am. '

He sighs, wipes his eyes again, holds his forehead and I am unable to get out of the state I am in. I am locked in my inner defeat, understanding that I knew nothing about Stiles, nothing. He speaks again and I am sure that if he says anymore, he will succeed in giving me a heart attack.

'At home, we lived as a couple for four years and played the model dad and his lovely boy on the outside. It was so exciting to have this double life. Everyone thought my dad was bossy with me, because he was a sheriff and he demanded that I succeed everywhere. But the truth is, I was the one who decided everything. He deferred to me for every choice he made, right down to his new wife. When I met you, Derek, I… I fell in love with you and I realised I'd messed up with my dad. I had made him dependent on me, totally. I had subdued him with sex like a fucking bitch. I had gone too far and I couldn't stop it all overnight. So I slowly started to space out our intimacy. Then I put Natalie in his lap and slowly made him understand that I wanted him to be my father again rather than my lover. He didn't want it anymore, I was his. It took two years to persuade him, and when he started sleeping with Lydia's mother, we did nothing more together. I finally felt free to seduce you. I promise you, since you've been my boyfriend, it's only you Derek, only you. '

He says this while crying and my stomach is completely turned. I feel like I'm living in a nightmare that everything he's telling me can't be true, and yet I know for a fact that Stiles isn't lying anymore. He can't look at me anymore and lowers his face to the ground. He is searching for the courage to finish his confession, to go through with it. It's getting dark outside and soon we'll be in darkness.

'What you saw yesterday was just stolen kisses, because I will always be in love with him and he will always be in love with me. But he knows I love you, he knows I'm faithful to you and he's gotten used to it. But I can't refuse him this exchange that he wants from me after what I've done to him, I have no right. '

He seems totally convinced by what he is saying, and at the same time he is degrading himself in truth. Looking at him hurts and yet I can't help but stare at him with prohibition. He suffers my attitude and groans before asking:

'And now you're going to leave me, aren't you? Now you're gonna leave because you need to protect yourself from the abomination that I am. Now you know the true face of Stiles Stilinsky, now you know that you love a poor, damaged guy, a guy who fucked his father thinking he was saving him from the misery of losing everything. '

These last words are acid when they come out of his mouth and the man in front of me immediately falls into tears. I am stunned, I don't know what I think, I am afraid. I still love my companion despite everything he has told me and yet I am no longer sure what is driving me. Can I stay with him? Will I be able to deal with his past, which I had no idea about? Does what he said to disgust me or can I ignore it? And then I am struck by a realisation that pierces my soul.

'You fell in love with my misfortune? Actually, you … you acted with me like your father. '

My words are disembodied, I have no tone to carry them as this realisation overwhelms me. Stiles loves broken people and he believes he can heal them by making love to them with all his veracity. That's what he did to me, and he learned that from his father. I feel completely overwhelmed by the wave of impressions that is coming over me. I feel as if I am being crushed by the weight of a morbid lucidity.

'No Derek, I fell in love with your raw sensitivity, with what you were hiding in plain sight. I could see it because I've known what pain does to men since I was a kid. If I'd fallen in love with your pain, I'd have made sure you kept it going or I'd have left with it. I love you Derek, only you. '

He finally murmurs, stands up with difficulty and sways in the weakness of his uninterrupted crying. My heart is racing. I don't want him to come to me because I don't know how I might react if he tries to touch or kiss me. He looks at me, dejected, and walks out of the gym. Silence falls over me and I hear my partner slowly walk towards our room. He cries louder in his loneliness. I still can't move, I feel drained of substance. I feel as if I am fading away in amazement. What will become of us? Do we have a future? Can I help the man I love to heal from this? Do I have the strength or even the desire?

Stiles is making noises, moving things around and always sobbing. It's like he can't stop. I clamp my hands over my ears so I can't hear him as he just whimpers away. I feel the tears burning my eyes, I don't want them to flow, but they force their way through my eyelids and onto my cheeks. What my partner has been through is so difficult. He thinks he's a perverted person and I'm pretty sure I've given him that hateful feeling back. Why did I stop trying to understand him when he admitted to me that he was the one guilty of his situation with his father?

That's not the truth. Stiles is not responsible for his mum's death, he's not responsible for his dad's distress. He just didn't know how to make things right and held on to an absurd idea until he made it happen. He fell into his own love trap and is still bound hand and foot to this successful rescue attempt. My God Stiles has sacrificed so much of himself. I snap out of my thoughts, I hear my companion coming out of our room, he is dragging something behind him and I start to fear. When he arrives at the doorway, he turns on the light in the room I occupy and looks at me. He is in a bad way. I see that he is pulling a suitcase.

'I'll call the emergency room. Right now, I'm too desperate to die not to be tempted to do the irreparable. I love you, I can't let you carry the guilt of a possible suicide, so I'm going to get help. I know they have a psychiatric cell at the hospital, so you won't have to put up with me anymore, Derek. Besides, maybe they'll be able to stop me wanting to get back into the arms of my crazy mother. '

He's so fragile when he says that. An adrenaline rush hits me and the sudden fear of losing him almost makes me piss my trousers. What's going on? I leap to my feet and feel that I am sinking into the impossible. My pulse is racing, all my senses are in a panic. My lover's eyes are elsewhere, he is no longer looking at me and is about to leave.

'Stiles! '

I shout as if he is already in the living room when he is just standing profile in the doorway. He turns to me, looking like a zombie.

'You're going to stay here, you hear me! You are not going to leave, you are not going to die, you are just going to stay with me. What do you think that you're the only one with feelings in our relationship? '

I am aggressive when his words come out of my mouth. I spit out my tears like insults, because I refuse to accept anything I feel that makes me feel like a complete idiot. My darling is haggard, he seems to be out of touch with the reality of his body, as if he doesn't really rule it anymore. I quickly join him and force him into my arms. He struggles a little before letting go and starting to cry again. He whines like a confused child.

'You think I can't help you like you helped me? I was your age when you spoon-fed me. My love doesn't run away from you, I accept you as your past has made you. It is you that I love, I love you. I'm sorry if I let you believe that I was angrier with you than I loved you. You're not crazy, you were a confused kid who didn't know how to change things. You made some weird choices, that's all. And even if you're crazy, that means I'm crazy enough on my own to accept that and keep living with you. Stiles, don't wish death on some bullshit! I'm here, I'm here baby, I got you. I'm staying with you, I love you, I love you so much. '

I hold him tightly to my heart, I wish he could hear how much it beats for him. I feel that this is my last chance to prove that I am truly in love with him. I have to overcome my prejudices, all of them. I have to kill the judgements I may have made about him at one time or another. Stiles did this for me a long time ago and I feel like I'm late for him. I have to destroy my anger and this hateful feeling of having been betrayed, it's the only thing I can still achieve so I don't lose him. My lover didn't cheat on me, he cheated on himself.

We won't eat tonight, we won't wash the dishes together and laugh at the stupid things we say to each other just for the fun of it. We won't watch a movie, we won't comment on stories written by others that we allow ourselves to criticise on our couch. We won't make love, not tonight, not in this state, no. We'll only get naked on the couch. We will only lie naked against each other. I'm going to comfort my Stiles, I'm going to whisper sweet nothings to him all night, I'm going to kiss him and I'm going to show him how much he means to me and how little I care about anything else.

Maybe we'll make love in the morning after all and it will be tender, delicate and intense. I'll make us a light breakfast after our nap and call our employers to carry us pale. We'll stay all day tomorrow, entwined. That's what I want. And as for the more distant future, I only know that I will continue to love my companion despite what I have learned from him. Maybe I'll love him even more, because knowing that he'll do anything to save the people he loves upsets me. I breathe a sigh of relief when I feel Stiles finally calm down. I pick him up and he lets go. I carry him and take him to our bed.

After him, there is nothing.

The END