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Stiles doesn’t blame her, could never blame her, but sometimes he wonders what life would have been like if he didn’t have an addict as a mum.
They hadn’t planned on getting pregnant. He was an accident. An accident that had caused her to go over the edge, jump in the deep end and drown. She was a few weeks out of rehab when they found out, his dad says that that night was the first night she went missing. When she came back she had pinpricks running up her arms, oily hair and bags under her eyes. She was high. As high as a kite and so, so happy to bring a child into this godforsaken world.
Every few weeks she went missing, and when she came back Stiles’ dad never said a word. He just smiled and hoped that his child wouldn’t be too fucked up. Once, when she was six months along, he even bought her a pack of cigarettes, lit the first one too. Later that night they got drunk and had ‘the best sex that either of them had ever had’.
He was born premature, was in ICU for the first 5 months of his life. He was a little thing, he was little but clung onto life like he was destined for greatness. His mum got postpartum depression and the first day that they came home she was slowly filled up a tub of water and lowered him down. His dad came home then. Gently he took Stiles from his mother’s tight grasp and laid him down in his cardboard box cot, still wet.
Stiles doesn’t actually remember any of this, he just got these tidbits of information from his dad, when he got him drunk enough to share. Stiles doesn’t really remember his mum. Just that she had lifeless hair and a swallow face.
Stiles does remember when he was seven, maybe eight, and his mum had come home with a needle in her hand. She said she had a surprise for him and laughed. She sat him down on a seat in the kitchen, tied his hands to the arms of the chair and watched him squirm for a bit. Stiles remembers repeating over and over again to stop, that he was afraid of needles, please, please stop, mummy, stop. She stuck the needle in then and pumped him full of something that made his eyes focus intently and then pulled him into darkness.
When his dad got home from work, he found his kid with barely a pulse and tied to a chair and his wife, gun in hand and a hole in her head. He calls the ambulance and tells the cops that he had no idea that she could ever do anything like this. Just that morning she told him what she was going to do; he laughed and told her good luck.
The needle had given him HIV. He’s been HIV positive for almost nine years when Scott’s bitten and for sure thinks that his best friend will find out and leave. Either Scott’s a really great friend or he’s just that oblivious, because he stays. Stiles sadly thinks it’s the latter. Derek though, Derek knew from the first time he saw him trespassing in the forest. Smelt Stiles and smelt sick, sick and never ever getting better.
When Peter offers the bite he wants to take it. Be normal, be human, be something other that what he is. He wants to not have to worry if he’s accidentally gotten a paper cut, or a bloody nose on the lacrosse field. But then he thinks back to all those doctors visits, then ones where they warned him of all the things that can happen if blood gets transmitted, if he has sex, if he does anything. Then he thinks of Peter getting sick, of Derek and Scott and just can’t. He can’t be that guy who brought down the were-populous because he thought they could cure him.
It’s a wonder no one gets infected though, in the past few months he’s lost a lot of blood. Kinda hopes too that Gerard gets infected. But then he’s been living with this for almost a decade and wouldn’t wish it upon his worst enemy, and seeing as Gerard is kinda his worst enemy, regrets it almost as fast as he thinks it.
On his eighteenth birthday his dad is working. Derek’s pack is training somewhere and Scott is with Allison, doing couple-y things (he’s pretty certain they’re on a double date with Jackson and Lydia). On his eighteenth birthday he starts to get cold, really cold. He’s bone deep cold and suddenly can’t stand the heat. He’s running to the bathroom, almost misses the toilet bowl when his lunch comes up and greets him in sad chunks. He looks in the mirror and sees his mum; swallow face and deep, dead eyes.
He knows what it is. He’s had HIV for almost a decade, do you really think that he hasn’t researched this? He drives himself to the hospital and tells the lady at the front desk that he think he has AIDS and if he could get a bucket please? Like a ripple it happens, everyone in the waiting room taking a collective step back. No one enters his personal bubble then, not even the doctors, trained professionals and all. He stays there all night, getting blood tests, puking and shivering.
Stiles falls asleep for a time but something keeps on buzzing. It keeps going and going until he jerks awake and realises it’s his phone. It’s his dad. He texts a quick ‘at hospital. have aids’, his dad replies ‘congrats, now you really are your mother’s son’. Stiles breaks down then, tears stinging his eyes and great sobs stuttering his breath. He cries for a while and the little girl in the bed across from him tells him to be quiet cause it’s bed time, you can cry tomorrow, I’ll even cry with you if you want. His breath hitches and slowly he falls back into a restless sleep.
He doesn’t want to wake up, he’s much too comfortable.The pain is gone so they must have given him some of the good stuff. He wonders if he can get some more. There’s whispering all around him and when he finally blinks awake there are people standing around his bed. Not only Scott but Allison too, Derek, Isaac, Erica and Boyd, Lydia and even Jackson. He’s stunned, and when a warmth circles it’s way around his heart he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He settles for a whimper slash half-hearted chuckle type thing and looks down so he doesn’t have to meet anyone’s eyes.
That’s when Stiles notices that everyone is touching him, each of them giving a little squeeze as his eyes drift around the circle of hands under his blanket. Each of the wolves have have something black leaching up their hands and disappearing into their forearms. Stiles looks up then, his eyes meeting Derek’s who’s are rimmed in red. But not just alpha red, red as though he’s been crying. He looks around and everyone has that same cried out look about them. He beams.
He’s released a week later and somehow it’s decided without saying a word that he’s going to stay at the rebuilt Hale house. Peter is there when they all file in. He reaches up with his left hand and places it over Stiles’ heart. Black flows up his arm, just like the others have been doing on and off the past week and all of a sudden the tension in the room breaks. He’s led to what he can only assume is Derek’s room, enters the cocoon of sheets on the bed and promptly falls asleep. He’s living with Derek now. His dad doesn’t notice for three weeks and even then it’s because one of the neighbours comments on the jeep not being in the driveway lately.
Lydia gets his homework from school and helps him study so he doesn’t fall too far behind. Nights when they’ve lost track of time and she’s fallen asleep on the giant king bed, he watches her and wonders when he stopped being in love with her. Actually those nights he ends up thinking a lot about how the hell he learnt to love and what he did to deserve love in return.
Scott comes over every day, Stiles has a feeling that he kind of maybe accepted Derek as his alpha. Allison’ there and Derek doesn’t look at her any different than he does Erica. Erica, Boyd and Isaac are living in the Hale house too. Erica and Boyd have a thing and Isaac is their not-third-wheel because of pack connection or whatever. They like to make Stiles breakfast. Which is usually burnt, but tastes amazing because it’s true what they say about food made with love. Peter sees him at least once a day, puts a hand on his heart and then leaves. Stiles is pretty sure he’s not living in the house, but it’s big and he’s basically only been in Derek’s bedroom or the kitchen or the lounge room.
Jackson is there but the only time that he’s ever touched Stiles is when he was at the hospital. He doesn’t think it’s prejudice and when he asks, Lydia tells him it’s because Jackson feels like he doesn’t deserve to touch Stiles after he’s killed so many (Which Stiles only believes because Jackson hasn’t touched the rest of the pack either).
Derek on the other hand is always there, always with the lingering hands and firm gazes. When they sleep Derek curls around him and Stiles can feel Derek’s breath on the back of his neck. Derek is there when he wakes up, when he falls asleep, when he eats and drinks, even when he poops. Sometimes when he’s up late at night, with Lydia in his lap and the sounds of snores coming from the room next door he wonders when he started loving Derek Hale.
He loves the pack, he loves Derek and so when they ask him to take the bite he doesn’t know what to do. Derek says please and he says I can’t and when Derek moves his head to lean down to his neck he doesn’t know if Derek’s going to press down a kiss or something with a little more fang.