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A sharp intake of breath alerts him to another person in the room with him. The razor freezes just as he’s about to run it along his skin again; long and deep, one that could make him feel. Stiles doesn’t take his eyes away from where his blood has pooled atop his skin from the first five cuts. He needs another. The blood slowly drips down his arm and onto his bare thigh.
He takes a careful breath, long and deep, and then looks up and stares into crimson eyes, the same shade as the blood on his arm. He moves slowly, as though his muscles have suddenly been turned to steel. He pulls on pants and a long sleeved top hiding the white welts that litter his arms, hips and thighs. These are his. These scars, they are only his. Blood soaks into the shirt and Derek’s eyes seem drawn to it.
“Anything I can help you with” Stiles says with a smile, he knows how to fake it when his world is crashing down on him. He slides the razor into his pocket, nicking his finger as he does. That seems to bring Derek back, he sniffs, and then one long inhale. Derek walks forward, until Stiles’ back hits his wall and Derek is surrounding him like a iron cage.
Derek’s head falls to his shoulder. He nuzzles Stiles’ neck breathing in deep, his nose trails up his throat and stuttered breaths tickle his ear. Stiles wouldn’t be able to move even if zombies were invading his front lawn.
“Why?” Derek whispers into his ear, but it feels like he’s screaming. Derek’s voice is dangerous; furious and broken as he breathes Stiles’ name.
Stiles is empty except for the twisted darkness that threatens every day to pull him under. Drown him, hang him, a gun to his head, too many pills. Every day though, he fights. He fights the urge away, the craving to go deeper, cut deeper, right down to the vein that can make everything just go away. He fights it for his dad. He fights it for his mum. He fights it because if he doesn’t, it wins. He fights it.
“Because it wins the battle, I win the war,” Stiles says, eyes falling shut, “I win the war”.
Derek’s hands leave their position on the wall, on either side of Stiles’ head and slowly find themselves on the small of his back. Derek lifts his shirt just enough to be able to sneak warm hands underneath. They explore his stomach, chest and back, they gradually sink lower and lower until they rest on his hips. Stiles can’t breathe, not when Derek has his thumb rubbing over thick scars. Scissors, four years ago, fourteen weeks after his mum got sick, two hundred and eight days after he lost the first battle. He doesn’t remember them all, sometimes he doesn’t even realise he’s pulled out a blade and run it over his skin until the familiar sting brings him a dose of euphoria. Euphoria because he can feel, euphoria because he has power, he has control.
When his mum found out she didn’t say he was stupid and weak, she pulled him into a hug and cried until she couldn’t cry anymore. He was in the shower, a few months after the darkness took hold, cold and wet. Red water ran down the walls and fled into the drain. He doesn’t know why she came barging in that one night, she said she just had a feeling. When she came in and saw him, he was naked under the water with a razor in hand and bloody thighs. She broke. A look of pure terror on her face, and pain dancing behind her eyes. She carefully bandaged his thighs and that night, slept in his bed. He curled into her, just like he had when he was a child. The warmth and love was enough that night and he thought he won the war.
His mother took his ‘tools’ away from him the next day. Went through his room and found them all, well most of them. At midnight it came back. It creeped up on him, ever so quietly. That night he took a picture from his wall - his parents laughing as a clown took their photo at a school fair - and laid it face down and then slowly pulled out the nail it had hung on. That night he didn’t sleep.
Derek brings Stiles back to himself with the press of warm lips to his eyelids and hands wondering the expanse of his back. Derek has rid him of his shirt, and is now licking at the fresh cuts on wrist. They heal, knitting together and forming less than a scar. It’s frightening to know that his scars can be erased so easily, a quick swipe of a tongue and he hasn't fought the devil today... frightening and beautiful. Stiles thinks he could get drunk on his ability to feel. Derek gently pulls him onto the bed, whispering something over and over again. Stiles strains to listen to what it is, wondering why Derek sounds so desperate.
“I love you. I love you. I love you.” Derek chants, it makes Stiles’ heart stop. His body goes limp and yet it feels as though he’s had the strength of a thousand men siphoned into his bones. He looks into Derek’s eyes and makes a decision that he’s not sure he’ll regret in the morning.
“Can you help me tell the others?” It’s barely more than a murmur but Derek is nodding. Stiles lets warm arms pull him close both restraining him and protecting him. They fall asleep like that, wrapped up in each other, tears and muffled pleas mixing together to form an oddly comfortable bubble of despair and need.
In the morning there’s too many bodies, too much heat. He can’t bring himself to mind though because it’s his pack, curled up and around him. Stiles opens his eyes and realises for the first time in his life that he doesn’t need to fight these battles alone and that one day, he’ll win this war.