Chapter Two: History is a bitch and honey, you're not doing any good quoting Aristotle
There's probably something important that must be pointed out before anyone answers Stiles ambiguous question.
Stiles was never, under any definition of the word, normal. He had once looked it up on three dozen text citations and twice in an online urban dictionary and figured that, yes, he was not normal. Eccentric was putting things a little too-lightly.
Something along the lines of psychotic might sound too mean but "if the shoe fits then wear it" and Stiles doesn't like to walk around in socks. So maybe he's a little bit insane; I mean, hello, teenager drags his best friend to hunt half a body in the scary woods? Molotov cocktails, anyone?
He faced down psychopaths, alphas, omegas and so much personified mythology before graduating that it's sad. Or is it funny? The line blurs a lot.
"We aren't exactly sure what you are right now, Stiles." Derek answers and, hello, Stiles had asked a question. Sure it was almost five minutes earlier but that didn't matter because he had an answer. Well, no he didn't have an answer and everything was confusing and nothing hurt mostly, Stiles believed, was because his body was probably dead and this was all some elaborate dream.
Inception was a great movie. Was DiCaprio dreaming or was that real life? Stiles can bet that at the end of this story he'll wake up in a hospital. Maybe this whole thing is a dream? But what if it's real life and—
"You were dying," Scott whines pitifully, his face still shoved against Stiles' neck. "And we couldn't get you to wake up so Derek bit you-"
"Derek. Bit. Me." Stiles repeats and, woah, who knew he could sound so emotionless? He should probably call up Erika and ask her to be his Doctor, that was Cyberman good. "He—and no one thought to check my wounds? Was it suddenly like 'oh no, there's blood how will the silly'," Stiles' voice is starting to get lower, throatier, "little. Human. Survive?" Stiles' eyes flash a fiery orange, like the purest flame and Scott jumps out of the bed, whimpering, face contorting into his were-features. "No. Now tell me, what the hell am I."
It's not a question. The room rises a few degrees in temperature. Stiles glares straight at Derek, eyes flickering between a deep orange to a heavy crimson.
"We don't know what you are," Lydia answers instead. "You should be a wolf but the vamp got you fairly well. You weren't bitten but I suspect some of his blood may have ended up on an open wound." Lydia's features harden into something scary, something beautiful. "So calm down, lie down and shut up so we can figure out what is going on and what to do now."
Stiles growls, something dark and unrestrained from deep in his chest, but listens. He lies down across the blankets once more, regulating his breathing.
"I'm sorry," Stiles croaks out at last, closing his eyes and presses his palm against his icy cold forehead, "I don't usually fly off the handle like that. I-sleep. I need some sleep." He whispers and turns in his bed, facing the peeling paint of the wall. He can feel the heat that's most likely Scott leave the room with a low whine. The Lydia and Derek heat and smell signatures just sort of… linger for a moment. "Please," Stiles whispers, feeling so miserable and pitiful that it almost physically hurts.
The Chocolate-Lydia-inferno walks away hesitantly.
Good. One down, one to go, Stiles thinks bitterly, curling into himself under the covers.
"You, you haven't actually turned." Derek's voice is low but flippant, burning Stiles' blood with ire and fury. "You've been out for three days and we weren't, we didn't know if you were going to wake up or not." There's a breadth of silence until Derek continues and Stiles can't help but hate him a little more because of it. "You never, how vampires turn, they literally die. Within 12 hours they just throw up their insides, all of the processes that they won't need when they die and come back and you never, there was no way we would know. We smelled something off but you were attacked and the pack just figured it was your attackers smell and then three days (three days, Stiles) you didn't wake up and the smell got stronger and you-"
"I'm a freak." Stiles mumbles and Derek growls.
"You're in between phases. Your body is human and living but your wolf is staving off the change." Derek huffs out a breath and Stiles can hear him run a hand through his hair. "We don't know what will happen if your wolf can't fight off the change. There might have been something about it in the Beastiary but-"
"Out." Stiles breathes and Derek bristles from across the room. "Fuck you, this is not open for discussion. Whisper another word and I will honestly rip your fucking throat out with my teeth; you're not bringing this up right now I am fucking dying for christ's sake and you're standing there telling me that-" Stiles can feel his mouth fill with saliva and the bitter aftertaste of blood; his jaw aches and tingles as his teeth, jesus fuck, his canines abortively try to elongate.
"The Beastiary, the Alphas, hell, Allison , Erika and Boyd," Stiles lists off, going over his mental checklist of 'Shit I will stab people in the eye socket when mentioned in my presence', "I swear I will fucking jump out the window or run through the woods until I actually die if you mention any of that you sack of shit, I kid you not."
"Stiles, eventually you're going to have to talk"
And, fuck fuck fuck there's only so much shit a person can take in a day, alright? And Stiles is still a quasi-human on the verge of fucking dying to become a vampire and is only still alive because, technically, he's a mother fucking werewolf. If anyone has the right to flip their shit and snap, well, it's Stiles.
It's been three years. He has the right to let loose. Hell, he's long overdue that right, anyway.
"How about I am not fucking pack so you don't order me around." Shit, Stiles knows he's doing this weird growling thing deep in his chest and somewhere in the background of his mind he can feel whining, his wolf making itself present for the first time tonight, woah and he's throwing off the blankets that were cocooning his body in warmth and lethargy. Derek, to his own credit, doesn't flinch when Stiles stands at the foot of the bed, not even three feet away.
Stiles is shirtless, a little to his chagrin because he knows there are some things wolfy-Wolverine-healing powers can't fix and those are scars. Scars, well, Stiles has a few, of course. The lacerations Derek tries to pointedly not look at but totally does because, frankly, they're hideous and outrageously long, travel from Stiles' mid-ribs to under the hem of his loose sweatpants. They never healed right and tend to throb when Stiles is on one of his "shit-I'm going-to-fucking-die-tonight-and-in-the-creepy-ass-woods-no-less" runs.
"It's been three years, Derek. Three. You disowned me, Allison left pack not soon after; the Beastiary is gone." Stiles can't help but sound more bitter about the latter than the former. He thinks he should feel even a little guilty but, instead, feels guilty that he doesn't. That year had ended in as eloquently as a train wreck. "Erika hasn't even fully recovered and neither has Boyd, but you wouldn't know that, would you? With your head so far shoved up your ass, you never noticed that they still need their fucking alpha. Peter fucking massacred a dozen people, left so many orphaned and the whole city in disarray and you know who had to pick everything up after all the Werewolf Games?" Stiles' eyes don't flicker anymore and remain that amber color, so close to the Alpha's that Derek can make out the orange and gold wisps of something ethereal, something like intent in the iris.
"I did. I had to come in with all the shit I had weighing me down to face a fucking pack of Alphas. Me. A lonely human whose best friend didn't want him, whose only home had abandoned and who was suffering from so much loss no one had even dared to speak my name on the streets or at school. Which, may I add, I still have to attend in absolute solitude because you were a bitter ass hole that took my help, my fucking sacrifices and spat on them." Stiles can taste his own blood as his canines grow, pressing into his lip but never breaking the skin. It feels like his skin is on fire but it's controlled, like a part of him.
It feels good.
It feels right.
"So don't you dare stand there and try to talk to me about the Beastiery, you don't even know how long that was my only fucking companion, especially when Allison would leave me for 'pack things' she wasn't even a part of but actually was. Yes, I know about it, stop giving me that stupid look." Stiles closes his eyes and opens them, looking about the room to distract him from Derek's stupidly nauseating, delicious scent. "Don't talk to me as if you have the right to order me to. You lost that right, hell, you gave it away. Now, get the fuck out of my house because I do not want you here. So you bit me, good on you. Wouldn't be the first time you turned someone, now get out. I don't need you. I may have needed you three years ago. Hell, I might have needed you a year ago but I sure as hell don't need you now."
"So you wanted me to talk. Guess what, Derek? That isn't even the tip of the iceburg. Now, turn around and get out and don't even fucking dare to visit out of the goodness of your heart because I don't give half a fuck about your guilt or whatever stupid, emotionally stunted excuse you may make. I'm not mindless and sure as hell am not weak or fragile." Stiles turns away and crawls across his bed to curl up in his previous position. "I don't need your help, or your fucking commentary. I don't want to talk to you. In fact, I kind of feel like keeling over and throwing up my internal organs but, alas, here we are and we can never get what we want."
"Stiles, what if something happens between your transitions? What if you… you don't change, and you die?" Derek whispers, the leather of his jacket insanely loud from a distance.
"I've dealt with these things before, Hale." Stiles responds, willing his teeth to regress because fuck he's getting hungry and that's just eight levels of wrong. "And if I die, well, isn't that just the luck of the draw? To lose everything within four years; that's not even irony. Poetic justice? Maybe. Personally, I think God just really hates all comic book superheroes and is hell-bent on making them and their fans suffer. Seriously, if I had known this as a child I would have picked up on a different fandom or something."
Stiles peeks over his shoulder at a stock-still Derek.
It was all fine and dandy until Derek had to open his mouth. It was so much easier to ignore the gulf of bad blood (oh look, double entendre!) and history between them if he just kept his mouth shut and stood there looking pretty. Or Broody. Or whatever-the-hell in that leather jacket and haunted eyes, as if he hadn't slept in three days. Or concerned.
Huh, that last one was actually new.
But, Stiles is mad, and bitter, and depressed because seriously. What. The fuck.
"All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire." Stiles thinks but maybe it's actually Derek speaking because the voice in his head sounds a little dick-ish and a lot gravelly.
"I'm surprised you're still here," Stiles grinds out as he closes his eyes, tries to will away everything that's happened or let it sink in because it feels like he might be on the verge of a panic attack and it can happen, he's seen Erika seize before and after he wolf-bite beta-ness. "Didn't know being a wolf meant no manners," Stiles scoffs, "Just, get out. Smell me, smell my house and realize that I'm seriously not kidding. Lydia, I can handle. Scott too, sometimes, when he's not being a snot monster and using me as a tissue."
Stiles hears the leather of Derek's jacket moving towards the door and by the time he's finished his little ramble the door opens and Scott and Lydia scurry away. Scott must have heard the whole thing and Lydia isn't an idiot, she knows about Stiles and his inability to openly be emotional to undeserving assholes.
There's silence, for a moment, and hushed whispers Stiles can't make out from across the door. His Wolfy senses must not be kicking in yet and he feels slightly relieved and alarmed at once.
Breathing in, he can taste his own agony, the lies that, on his tongue and lips, were truth and harsh but were broken and untrue. He hopes that it's the Vamp thing that's allowing him to taste these things in the air and not wolf-related.
But Stiles is the realist.
This cup doesn't even have water.
This cup is fucking broken.