A/N: I didn't abandon this, I swear! I just got really caught up in another project for a while. :P Sorry! I have serious issues staying focused on any one thing for a long period of time, as my recurring readers surely know. But I'm keeping with this 1000%

AND! We're getting out of the angst forest soon, I swear! This is the chapter that's gonna mark a change in narrative (I hope) from the spiral down. We hit the ground, splat, and now it's time to work back up. ^^

Not proofread, as per usual. I can't keep a beta to save me, and I can't be assed to do it myself, so. :P

Jackson


You hate his house.

It's all grimy windows, faded, splintered wood, and awkward, cramped angles. Typical of some rent controlled east side piece of shit. Tucked away behind an alley, there's always trucks and drunks and trucks full of drunks passing by outside, at all times of day. The light always seems filtered and musty, like an attic, and nothing's in the right place.

The couch faces one of the many floor-to-ceiling windows, forcing you to watch the passersby ogle at you along their way. The pantry is about ten inches away from the toilet and only ever filled with wheat grass this and whole grain that. You never thought you'd miss gluten this much. The worst though—the absolute worst—is his bed. It's too small, too lumpy, faces the morning sun, is low to the floor, is below a ceiling fan that creaks as it spins. It's not comfortable, it's not familiar. It's not yours, and he's not your boyfriend.

He doesn't wake you to tell you he's leaving. He doesn't ask when you'll be home and what you'd like to do. He never cooks for two or begrudgingly shares leftovers. He doesn't know that you prefer baths—doesn't even own a tub—and doesn't ask. Derek told you he wasn't looking for a relationship, and it's clear he still means it. Whether he'd be better or worse by it if he was actually trying, you're not sure, but it's hard not to be around someone who's at least trying.

Because even when he hated your guts, Stiles still wanted you around, still absentmindedly reached for your hand, recorded your favorite shows, remembered that you were allergic to melons and tucked aspirins into your pocket the morning of a hangover. You know that you don't have any right, but you miss him, you miss what the two of you used to be.

You haven't had sex since it happened.

It should be weirder, it should be more awkward, the both of you should feel liberated by it. Instead all this free time is populated by avoiding conversations and each other's stares. Derek's sister, Cora, comes over all the time—lives on campus just a half hour away. She so clearly doesn't like you—never calls you the right name, ignores your questions, and whisks Derek away to talk in the loft, sitting cross-legged on the mattress and speaking in hushed French. They'll go at it for hours, so purposefully leaving you out, but you refuse to leave, to give them the satisfaction.

And that's just Cora. His older sister Laura lives up in Quebec— a high profile business woman, or so you believe you've been able to glean from the rare snippets of English. She calls every other night and you can hear her yelling into the receiver. She's asked to speak to you directly a few times, always leaves open-ended threats and tells you she has eyes and ears everywhere. Unlike Cora, she seems to accept the fact that, at least for now, you're here, you're with Derek in some kind of capacity, and respects his decisions. For that you're grateful and when you say as much she usually freezes mid-tirade before changing the subject.

Stiles doesn't call and neither do you. As much as you find yourself wishing you could just see him, just hear his voice, hold his hand, you stay back. You chose this. You know you did, actively made the decision after going through a list of all the ramifications, and though you didn't know it would really be this bad, you don't deny the fault. But you wonder about him constantly—if he misses you, if he's thrown himself into his work or into a drink, if he's picked up a rebound guy, if he's walked by this house at night, only just keeping himself from knocking.

You think about calling Isaac. He always distrusted you, but he recognized that, at least at one point, you made Stiles happy, and that was enough to keep things polite, to include you and make you feel at home. He'd know when, if ever, it was okay for you to come around, to try and find some kind of peace and closure. Because the both of you deserve so much more than this cold cut, this bullshit fade to black.

In the end, that's all you do. For once, all you can manage is to contemplate, to sit on your ass and think about the possibilities without testing a single one. You wish that this inability had come around sooner, that you had been a good sort of man and had only looked and never touched. As per usual, you never perform when it actually counts, and fuck up the chance to do what's right.

Unlike Stiles and Derek, you don't have anyone to turn to though, no one that would sit with you in your own filth and despair for days on end, just to be there and to listen. You have friends who want to take you clubbing, who try to get in your pants and your wallet. You have friends that offer to get you drunk, to take you to their fucking ski chalet, that buy you new leather jackets and expect you then to be grateful and happy and over it.

No one wants to sit with you on a grungy mattress, drinking coke and rum in the middle of the day, watching daytime television while laughing too loud, crying too soft, and asking hard, hard questions. That was what Stiles used to do for you—what Isaac does for him, apparently what even Derek has Cora for. And you threw it away.

You got confused and overwhelmed and scared and entitled and bored and angry and horny and stupid and you traded it in. For clarity. For knowing. For being able to pick and point and say for absolutely sure that you loved him, that leaving was a mistake, that whatever you had, has died. You know it all now, can see everything that you wanted to, don't have to agonize over the what-if's. You are painfully aware of what's going on in your life and where you stand.

You wish that you didn't.