Title: Live Hard
Summary: He may not even be considered much of a person anymore but the moon does things that bring out what he used to be, there's a reason the doctor has him on a sedative and there's one unlucky nurse's name on the bottom of the incident report following the bite.
Rating: M
Warnings: Language, violence, sexual content
Spoilers: There are some but they are few and far between for the most part, this story works around the main storyline while incorporating it at key points.
Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Wolf
A/N: Decided to do a Derek centric chapter, I think I'm going to make every fifth chapter like this, so it's just a short little snippet that will be between 2,500-5,000 words. This one takes place between episode ten and episode twelve.
Day 54:
He doesn't intend to do any lasting damage all he wants to do is leave a lasting impression. The kid is stupid and it's particularly obligatory to let someone know they're stupid if no one else is letting them in on it. The whole thing has a resonance to it that he can't shake, and he knows now that it comes from the fervent wish that someone had mentioned he was acting like a damn fool when he was sixteen and acting like a damn fool.
And it's as if the whole thing isn't irritating enough so karma or luck or fortune or God has decided he's fucked up enough that he doesn't get the opportunity to make things right or stop them from happening. This is his ass biting and his comeuppance he thinks. It must be because as much as he clues them in with examples to their stupidity and general dumb unsafe behavior they just don't listen, they don't care, they don't give the warning any credence because what would he know?
He's only been a werewolf with twenty-three years.
He's only been the guy with a spot as captain on a sports team, perfectly gelled hair, and an expensive car.
He's only been led around by his dick.
He's only been carrying the weight of well-deserve guilt and grief around like a bad habit for years.
He's only been the lone survivor.
He's only been shot, stabbed, burned, captured, drugged, and beaten on multiple occasions by people with guns and combat training and more grudges than scars and bullets.
And now he's only been able to watch things come full circle by being selfless and stupid and getting himself captured because he really doesn't want to go it alone forever, that's not in his nature. He wants a pack and closure and to get stupid Porsche boy and Scott to find they're damn balls.
And it occurs to him that this is what he has to do for them to find them, offer himself as a sacrificial lamb and besides being unfair, it's just plain getting old at this point in the game, he thinks when his pummeled by too many bullets and too high a voltage from automatic weapons and shock batons.
Day 55:
There was a sense of the surreal that came with being in the same room where the majority of his family had been reduced to char and ash. It was unpleasant and uncouth of the older woman but he doubted she was anything else when stripped of her beguilement and seduction.
It reeked of medicinal scents that made his head throb and his stomach turn with nausea when he breathed in deep as he became more alert.
"Awake?"
She sounded spectacularly girlish and it made the streak of cooled saliva she'd left on his abdomen itch, his fingers clenched and unclenched with the unrealized urge to scratch the spot raw. The sensory memory of her breasts pressed against his thighs made him shiver unpleasantly in revulsion.
"You know…," Kate Argent tossed her hair behind the shoulder opposite the one she turned to look at him over, her eyes shining malice and perverse joy.
"You made quite the impression on Ulrich and Uncer, they couldn't get out of here fast enough. It's hard to find hunters who can take a hit these days, you know?"
Her boots clicked as she stepped closer and the cloud covered moonlight played like water through the bars of the hole in the basement wall across her face.
"You would think it's the girls who have a problem with all…," she waved a finely manicured hand and twisted her head to look around the room and take in the equipment, "this, but compared to the men they stick around longer and do a better job."
He ground his teeth loud enough for her to hear as she considered him like road-kill or a sick animal, "But then again you can be so intimidating Derek, maybe I shouldn't be too hard on them." Her bottom lip plumped up into the one above it and creased her chin mimicking the way her shoulders raised in a theatric shrug.
"You should be thankful I got to you first, I mean, yes, you're being tortured and you really don't like me but what's a little electricity and a few cheap shots between old lovers you know."
He flung himself against the chains holding him, the metal fixtures groaned and she let out a single loud exhaled laugh. She pressed her nails into the bulge of muscle above his heart her lips closing to press out a small smirk.
"It's practically foreplay for a big werewolf like you since you heal so fast. But if those bureaucrats caught you they'd put you in a little cell somewhere, this at least is still a bit of home sweet home, right?"
The drag of her nails left angry red furrows behind, she ran her finger pads across the line of hair above his belt and between his hips.
"They might dissect you or make you some nice little docile pet. And really I prefer a clean kill when it's time for that, and you wouldn't make a very obedient and loyal companion."
She tapped her nails on his belt buckle and pouted at his lack of male reaction at her proximity. He grinned with venom. She stepped back and flopped heavily into the rolling chair, fondling the buttons on the face of the box ready to deliver the whip crack of electricity across his muscles and nerve endings.
"It's funny but we actually have a few werewolves on our side, hunting their own kind down. The rogues and rabid ones, but they're a touch too mercenary for me. They take the image a little too far, motorcycles and leather pants and ehhh it's too much cliché."
The notion made him sick despite understanding it.
"Chris might have offered you a sweet little place on our side of things but Chris didn't catch you, did he? And I'm not that giving, like you'd say yes anyway," she scowled and made a displeased grunt in her throat. "But really Derek you've gotten so…pathetic, what happened to all…that… swagger? Was it the grief or the guilt that did it?"
He narrowed his eyes and let his lips pull away from his teeth in a weak growl.
"This whole torture thing is less fun when you don't growl or yell or scream or try to kill me. Is this boring you?" She made to turn the dial but stopped to let the question sink in. "I, myself am a little underwhelmed."
With a booted foot she slipped her toes under the edge of a cart and brought it closer to her, reaching out when it was close enough to let her hand hover over the instruments in the metal tray resting unused on top of it.
"Do you know what's in this?" She held up a syringe with the plunger pulled back and clear liquid in the barrel. He was much too concerned with its contents to wager a verbal guess.
"No, idea?" She quipped spinning the chair to face him and his stoic silence.
"It's an equine slash bovine sedative." She tilted her head to consider the tray again considering a vial and turning it with her fingers. "And this," she pouted. "Still no idea? This is purified aconite extract dissolved in glucose, why glucose? Because it metabolizes faster. You know what the Wolfsbane does, but it has this neat effect when combined with heavy duty horse tranquilizers."
He didn't want to know and focused his stare on the wall behind her head while she held up vials and syringes like a deranged television phone order home goods channel.
"It's still a little experimental but I borrowed a few samples just for this occasion, wanted to make it special. Do you want to know what it does?"
He pinned her with a furious glare that made her eyes widen.
"No? Alright, you'll see. Sedative first and then the kicker," she drew up a syringe with Wolfsbane. She injected him despite his flailing and he felt his fingers and toes tingle as the sedative spun lazy numbing tendrils up his legs and down his arms, his head lightened and his mouth felt heavy.
"Can you feel it? Nice little euphoria and tingly goodness going on, give it a minute." The prickle of pins started in his shoulders and was like hot grease splashing across his skin. He jerked spastically unable to control his muscles from twitching and jumping.
"Oh! There it goes. It does something to the different types of responses your nervous system experiences, I'm not a doctor so I don't know the nitty gritty but your body wants to change but the messages your brain is sending out aren't as specific as they should be because of the sedative."
She watched him twitch like a toy whose batteries were running low with mild amusement, "It doesn't last long but it does the trick."
Derek felt his mind go soft and runny. It spun through memories of things he never wanted to think over again. Being sixteen again and his mind likening the twitch of his limbs to the way they bounced and shook with every long-legged stride across the tarmac during the spring track season, the overwhelming bass in the bar the night he meet Kate Argent, the flare of transient warmth spiraling down his throat with shot after shot done to show off and try to impress the older woman who he should have noticed stopped after two as he went on to number six and then seven and then eight.
The muted colors and hazy recollection of them in the backseat of her car and the way the black leather felt on the sweaty skin of his back, the press of her throat on his shoulder while her hips bashed a frantic rhythm against his. The way he'd spasmed and floundered and realized exactly how many shots it took for his youthful enthusiasm to come off unsatisfactory.
How she purred it was alright because he was young enough to have the stamina to go again, the way she held the steering wheel as she drove him home and told him to come around to the bar on the weekend. And the realization and fall of pieces into place after the fire and how when he dug his hands into his jacket pockets at the police station standing next to his stony faced sister he found the blinking red light flashing at him on the bug she planted.
The baseball bat striking him brought a halt to the unwanted trip to memory lane. He welcomed it like an old friend and relished the beating.
Day 56:
His uncle killed his sister. His uncle killed his sister on purpose. His uncle killed his sister on purpose after luring her into town.
His blood spikes hot and his body breaks out in anxious prickles of gooseflesh from the revelation, his fury clears his mind of how weak his body is and flares like a bursting sun, white hot and spectacular and unrelenting in its destruction of every limit he's ever set for himself and vaporization of every line he's sworn never to cross.
And it feels euphoric in its own warped twisted devious way that without self-made restraints on his human nature he can do anything and enjoy doing it when he's more animal than man. He knows how the night is going to end and he ignores how ignoble of him it is to have no qualms about doing what he wants in place of what he needs to do, but the line between the two things is gone and it no longer matters because there is no difference, what he wants to do is what he needs to do. Retribution, vengeance, and revenge are just different slants of the same motivations. Retribution for Scott, vengeance for his family, revenge for his sister. The greater good, the selfless, and the selfish desires he's tried to mediate and meld together without conflict. It no longer matters that he's failed at it before because without the delicate and imaginary restrictions he's put on his most primitive drives and motivations he's claw and fang and animal violence and it's welcoming and secure and enthralling.
It's all instinct and urge until he gets shot. Shot, without flair or anger, just simple and non-emotive by a woman he's considered anything but. It stings because it's efficient and cold and robotic and it hits him that Kate Argent is less insane and more predator than he ever gave her credit for. Her heart doesn't pick up as she does it, her breathing is steady and her pace is measured and even as she points the gun at the sixteen year old kid he's tried his best to get to understand the scope of the issue.
She's as much an animal as he is, as fickle and flicking between the dynamics of the chase and the kill with quick efficiency. Once the fun is over it's over and there are no splitting hairs and trying to coax more from the prey. It chafes, badly. Delirious as his body tries to heal he only vaguely notes the change in events and the way things go on between hunter and werewolf and the niggling sense of something waiting in the dark for the moment to reach critical mass.
Tiny hands curl around his ankles and yank him into the treelike, he flails in surprise with claws and teeth forming fast, they recede when he lifts his head and sees the familiar lines of the nurse's face set harsh and dirt-smudged, scowling behind her as she keeps pulling him.
It's the most surprising turn of events and the only one he hasn't planned for and in truth he'd put the woman from his mind putting her involvement with the larger scope of things to the most minimal of probabilities but nonetheless she's the one pulling him into the cover of the woods and jumping into the fray.
His opinion of girls and woman has always been cemented into finely made out categories of highschool drama-mongers, psychotic bitches, and familial sister-mother-aunt-cousin relations. He knows the types and he knows what they're likely to do and not do. He wonders if it's the fact that she's a nurse that she's dragging him out of the line of fire but he doubts it has anything to do with her actions, this woman runs in modes set for the circumstance occurring and it's something he doesn't have much experience with, he doesn't like not knowing what she's doing and why.
Maybe she gets that if he isn't around she's fucked and it's 'survival and self-preservation by proxy' mode she's in. Maybe it's 'pack mentality' mode. Maybe it's some version of 'basic human decency' mode she's gone into but he doubts that too because she's not the same person she plays at when she's in uniform, there's a divide in her nature and it's made up of things he can only guess at.
The only things he knows about her are the massive scope of pride and viciousness in her. It occurs to him then that the only reason she's dragging him to safety is to prove her own ego is well deserved and justified, it's not about saving him, it's about being able to say she's done it, another notch in her belt of accomplishments that make her bigheaded.
It only serves to make his opinion of her less than stellar.
She drops his feet and looks at him, her forced smile is lopsided and her lets out a heavy breath. "Come on, let's go." When he doesn't move she frowns, "You've got to stay."
"Yes."
He finds the pout formed even before he affirms the state of things fakely childish and annoying.
"Why?"
"My uncle."
The pout transforms into the pulled blanche of someone who's bitten into lemon pulp and it's worse than the pout because it shows him exactly what he does not need to be shown about how dumb the idea to stick around is.
"You on his side or the kid's?" She means Scott and he scowls that she's been hiding in the bushes long enough to watch everything that's happened. He doesn't care much for the unsaid accusation in her voice or the condescending tone of it.
"I'm on my side."
Her dirty face shifts into utter and complete revulsion in response to the statement, and he sees her scoff at the idea. The almost unnoticeable tick of unrestrained emotion tells him everything he needs to know and more, she doesn't believe him, doesn't believe he even knows what side he's on. The look says that she thinks he's a child, "Why did they shoot you?"
"Anti-werewolf agenda."
"Rightfully so?"
"Not towards me or the kid."
"Towards your uncle?"
"Not my problem."
"You're the one who got shot."
"You're the one hiding in the woods."
"You're the one being stupid."
"I'm not running."
"They want to kill you and the kid and your uncle."
"My uncle wants to kill them."
"Who are you going to kill?"
"No one who doesn't deserve it."
She is silent and treats the lack of word exchange as if it's expected; maybe it is, to her. He doesn't know, doesn't care, and doesn't want to know.
"You'll bleed out," is her response as she looks over his wounded form with clinical detachedness, her hair raggedly hanging in choppy portions over her face and shoulders and back.
"I can't leave."
"Fine, hold still," she hisses from behind the mop of windblown and stick strewn mess of hair, her hands smell like sap and bark and they force his shoulders back into the dirt he'd tried to rise from, they push again more firmly when his body insists on rising.
"Where did you come from?" He coughs lowly and blood specked spittle hits her knee and discolors the denim as the globs thin and soak through.
"Tree. Hold on. You're all shot through like a freaking buffalo on the great plains."
The knife is poised loosely in one hand while the other tears his shirt up breaking the seal of blood stuck cotton to skin, her nails prick on his ribs and she studies the hole in his chest that pulses with the push of the bullet lodged in muscle budging out bit by bit.
"You brought you're gun?"
"This will hurt," she ignores the question that he hopes brings across his agitation that she'd rather watch the melodrama not yet done instead of shoot someone trying to shoot him. The idea of her not caring enough about the situation weighs down his foggy thoughts and angers him. The anger leaves when he ponders the idea that maybe he hasn't gone over how critical his survival is in relation to her not killing people and getting shot herself with her enough for her to understand.
She prods the hole with the tip of the knife and digs until it wedges under the bullet, her arms move like she's trying to wrestle a bolt loose with a wrench, the tendons in his legs jerk and his knees pull up closer to his chest to try and close the open line of his body that she's performing amateur surgery on, she smacks his knee and he folds them down and digs his heels in, compacting the loose moist earth under them.
It breaks out of his skin with a moist pop and her fingernails scratch down the sides of the bullet, her knuckles dragging along the edges of the torn angry hole in his chest and when they find the bottom she tugs and examines the projectile to make sure it's all in one piece and drops it into her pocket.
"Hurry up," he forces out when she pulls his shirt back down and rips the hole in the leg of his jeans bigger to stab and dig and tear and rip at him with the knife to remove the pieces of shattered arrow head in his thigh.
"Shut up," her eyes flash molten gold and lupine yellow and her breath wafts into his face smelling like pennies and cigarettes. Her knees hold down his leg above and below where she digs through skin and muscle to the bone scraping out shards of metal like an army field medic. There's blood on her breath and he thinks he knows what kind.
He feels it, but in a blunt way, not numb but close enough that he doesn't need to choke down his tongue to hold in a muffled exclamation of profanity and gurgled scream at having someone dig to excavate parts of his body with a pocket knife.
He pushes her away with an arm as she shifts back, finished but still eyeing the gaping skin trying to suck itself closed, "There. Get back in the tree. Stay there."
Her eyes are cold despite the yellow animal color they cast and her teeth are sharp and mean, looking up fast and then back to him with a swing of her neck, closing and then opening her eyes slow and deliberate. She smiles cruel and humorless, "Don't die," she tells him and it takes him until she's gone with a whip of her hair and legs kicking out behind her not a moment later that she has sing-songed the words mockingly as she swings up into the tree without a falling pine cone or waving branch to mark her ascent, her limbs and body obscured by the dark and her scent no more than a memory in the wind, almost intangible once she's gone.
Derek is unsure whether she said it once or twice, and it makes him uneasy. A pine cone hits the ground in the absence of wind and he spares the upper branches of the tree a scathing look and a snort before turning to run after Scott running into the house.
A/N: There we go, figured that since I needed some filler I might as well try and make it more interesting and write it in Derek's perspective instead of making it part of a longer chapter. I imagine Derek being a lot like Jackson when he was sixteen. Obviously he can never be that person again because of the things that have changed in him and in his life but it's an interesting thing that a lot of us on the forums for the Teen Wolf fandom have been talking about. Also I wanted to have readers know what Derek thinks of Lucette. In simple terms he's realizing that maybe it wasn't the best idea to leave her to her own devices the majority of the time because she's been figuring out the werewolf thing on her own and might not be going about it in the way Scott is going about it. That's just a little subplot note that maybe people may miss when reading this, what it boils down to is Derek trying to balance Scott, Peter, the Hunters, Jackson and his melodrama, Lydia's attack and kinda/sorta/maybe gonna be a werewolf situation, and Lucette. Lucette is at the bottom of the list because she's older and more independent and unconnected to the other characters but that might not be the best course of action and Derek is just noticing a hint of a problem with his prioritization skills.