Teen Wolf: Sterek: I Look Inside Myself (and see my heart is black)
Title: I Look Inside Myself (and see my heart is black)
Rating: none
Pairing: Stiles/Derek
Warnings: rape/non-con, underage, ptsd, suicidal thoughts, panic attacks, hurt!stiles, unhealthy coping mechanisms, nightmares, pre-season 3, post-season 2
Notes: This entire story is about rape, and the trauma caused by it. And while Gerard is a monster, he is not the one doing the raping, but I figured he'd have people willing to do bad things around him. I tried to make it seem like something that could have happened between seasons 2 and 3.
As a side note, I'm putting a lot of first hand experience into this, and I tried not to make anything too graphic. Just remember that everyone deals with trauma differently.
Also, be WARNED: this could be TRIGGERING.
Title taken from The Rolling Stones, "Paint it Black".
Summary: Stiles blocks most of it out. He limps away after but doesn’t (refuses to) think about why; his face hurts, his lip bleeds, his head aches, and his vision blurs - he focuses on the things he can see, on the things his dad will see, and he forgets everything else.
Go figure Gerard would have the worst kinds of people working for him.
_-------_-------_-------_------_
I Look Inside Myself (and see my heart is black)
- “Paint it Black”, The Rolling Stones
Stiles blocks most of it out. He limps away after but doesn’t (refuses to) think about why; his face hurts, his lip bleeds, his head aches, and his vision blurs - he focuses on the things he can see, on the things his dad will see, and he forgets everything else.
Go figure Gerard would have the worst kinds of people working for him.
///
He doesn’t forget. It’s hard to forget things like what (didn’t, it didn’t, not really) happened to him down in that basement. It comes back at night, in dreams. Only they’re not dreams, they’re memories that feel more like nightmares.
There’s a knife under his pillow now (he’s only cut himself on it once) and a baseball bat between the wall and the bed, a hammer and a screwdriver on the shelf above his head. There is something to use as a weapon in every room in the house, three that Stiles can reach from the driver’s seat of the Jeep, and two that he keeps on him at all times.
It’s a paranoid precaution, but it helps. (Why does it help? Nothing happened in that basement, except some demented geriatric nut job taking out his frustrations on a kid. Nothing. Happened.)
///
Stiles is tackled by Danny in lacrosse practices. He’s (not, so, so, so not) okay.
He blames it on the way he lands when he can’t breathe. He pushes Danny off of him, ignores the worried way his name is called (“Stiles? Stiles, are you okay? Stiles, what’s happening?”), and scurries away on his hands and knees.
Dark laughter echoes in his head and electricity buzzes in his ears. One of the lights on the field must be out. His heart thunders in his chest (every werewolf in a fifty mile radius must be able to hear it) as he coughs; his lungs are desperate for air.
Scott runs over to him, one hand reaching out. Stiles reels back before they can touch. “I’m fine,” he finally manages. “I just… landed wrong or something. Knocked the breath out of me.” He tries to laugh but Scott won’t stop looking at him like he just admitted… (admitted what? there’s nothing to admit because nothing happened) Scott looks like he’s been taking Hurt and Helpless Eyebrow lessons from Derek.
“Alright, Stilinski,” Coach calls when Stiles still hasn’t stood. “Park it on the bench. You’re done for the day.”
Stiles sits and watches the rest of practice, scratches at the scabs on his knees and then frowns. Greenburg looks over at him and grins. “Rug burns. Nice.”
Stiles pukes. Coach curses.
///
Stiles looks up to see Isaac painting the door to the Hale House red and laughs. He’s not sure how he got here, doesn’t remember the walk but knows that’s what happened considering his Jeep is still in the shop. Running it into the brick wall of a warehouse will do that, he supposes.
“That’s not how the song goes, you know,” he says.
Isaac frowns at him; there’s a smear of paint on his cheek and flecks of it on his shirt. “What?” He doesn’t sound like he cares all that much about what Stiles is saying, but Stiles humors him nonetheless.
“I see a red door and I want it painted black,” he sings. “No colors any more, I want them to turn black.” Isaac raises his eyebrows and shakes his head; Stiles continues. “I look inside myself and see my heart is black, I see my red door I must have painted it black, Maybe then I’ll fade away and not have to face the facts, It’s not easy facing up when your whole world is black…” Stiles stops and swallows thickly, suddenly feeling sick. He waves his hand. “Whatever, it doesn’t matter.”
There’s a symbol beneath the paint, not quite covered. Stiles focuses on that rather that whatever turmoil is going on inside his own head. “What’s that? It’s like an angular version of Derek’s tattoo. He rethinking the spirals?”
“Calling card. From another pack,” Isaac answers simply and returns to his task.
Stiles sits on the steps and watches, unnervingly silent. The second coat is halfway dry when he speaks again. “I saw them. In the basement. They were strung up, hooked up to some kind of amp. Gerard stopped me before I could get them down.” There’s a splinter beneath his fingernail where he’s been picking at the wood; blood wells beneath the quick, a red crescent. “I think he used me to torture them.”
“They ran away,” Isaac says after a moment. “I was supposed to go with them. Scott convinced me to stay.”
Stiles laughs. It’s a bitter sound. “I’m not sure if that makes you the lucky one or not.”
When Isaac starts on the third coat, Stiles leaves, as silently as he came.
///
His dreams are spotted with black.
There’s an old man standing over him, a river of black coming from his mouth, the corners of his eyes; he coughs and hacks when he tries to speak, roaring with rage and fear as he grabs Stiles with shaking hands. Everywhere he touches burns.
Stiles tries to scream but his lungs are full of water and his skin is full of fire. There are taped mouths somewhere screaming for him, but he can’t see who they belong to.
He tries to move, to get away, but he feels too heavy, too weak. The black river covers him, drowns him until it is all he knows.
Nothing happened.
///
Peter grabs his wrist one day and grins with sharp teeth. There are bruises beneath his fingers, but Stiles doesn’t know where they came from. (Nowhere. They came from nowhere.) He tries to take his hand back but Peter doesn’t let go. His eyes are knowing, and it makes Stiles squirm, so he reaches into his pocket and slices at Peter’s arm. The knife tears through skin and shirt.
“Don’t touch me,” Stiles growls.
Peter takes a step back, holds both hands in the air and smiles. “All you had to do was ask.”
A city bus passes just before Stiles can step off the curb.
///
Stiles sits in the dust of the old house, reviewing newspapers and looking for leads; his eyes feel like they’ve packed for world travel. The words blur and he blinks, eyelids falling heavy.
He jerks awake when someone takes the papers out of his hands. “What are you doing?” he asks before he can think about it. He doesn’t even know what he’s doing.
Derek looks incredulously at him. “Trying to wake you up. What are you doing here Stiles?”
Stiles frowns at Derek. “Reading. And I wasn’t asleep.”
Derek’s eyebrows reach for the sky. “I shoved you and you didn’t do anything. I pushed you, I yelled in your face, and nothing. You were asleep. Now why are you here?”
Stiles sits up and shrugs. “ Reading,” he says again. “Aren’t you supposed to live somewhere else now? I didn’t think anyone would be here.”
“You’re slurring your words, Stiles. Go home and get some sleep.”
Stiles closes his eyes and lets his head fall back against the wall. “Mmhmm. I’ll get right on that.”
Derek’s sigh doesn’t sound as murderous as it probably should.
///
(“He’s older than what I usually like,” the man says. Stiles keeps his eyes closed because he can feel the sick grin without looking. Across the room, Erica tries to yell past the tape over her mouth; chains clink above her as she struggles. Next to her, Boyd growls. “But he’ll do.”
Next to Stiles, Gerard laughs.)
///
Stiles tosses a rubber ball at the wall and catches it when it bounces back to him. The place is big, but still crappy, so he figures that must be part of Derek’s personal feng shui. Isaac has his own room, though, so he supposes that probably counts as a big plus.
Not that he particularly cares.
“Stiles. Stop.”
Derek is standing in front of an impressive, if dirty, wall of windows, looking down at a table full of maps and newspaper clippings. Stiles knows there’s nothing there about Boyd and Erica because he’s already looked; it doesn’t stop Derek from double and triple checking everything.
The ball rolls across the loft and stops somewhere under the sofa.
“What makes you think they want to be found?” Stiles asks. He wipes his hand over a square of glass and grimaces down at what’s left behind on his palm. “If I didn’t have my dad and Scott, I’d probably run too.”
Derek doesn’t bother to look at him, just shuffles some papers around and sighs. “Yeah, well, you’re human. And you’re young.”
“So are they. They thought the bite meant invincibility, that once they learned a bit of control, all they had to do was watch out for hunters and everything would be fine.” Stiles shrugs. “There are some monsters out there, human monsters, that don’t care about the difference between werewolves and humans, whether you’re young or old, or if you’re going to live or die.” He traces a line on a map and doesn’t look up at Derek. “Gerard Argent was like that. He didn’t care that Erica and Boyd were werewolves, or even that they knew werewolves. He took them and tortured them because they could scream.”
Derek stares at him for a long moment but Stiles refuses to look up. “Is that why he took you?”
Stiles scoffs. “I was the message that nobody got. Nobody but Erica and Boyd. And I never screamed.”
Derek narrows his eyes but drops the subject. Stiles moves to sit on the couch and stares at the ceiling until his mind is numb.
///
“I hear you were taken after your big game,” Morrell says without inflection. She smiles like she always does, like she knows something that nobody else knows. “Would you mind telling me what happened?”
Stiles shrugs and clicks the pen in his hand. “Just a couple guys from the other team. They roughed me up a bit, then let me go.” He taps his heel against the floor, feeling all the edges beneath his skin. “And no, I didn’t get their names.”
Morrell hums and settles back in her chair, watches him from across the desk. “Everything you say to me in this room is in complete confidence, Stiles. You can tell me the truth.”
Stiles rolls his eyes but doesn’t say anything.
“Were you close to the two missing kids?”
“Not really. They’re closer to Isaac.”
“Isaac Lahey?” she asks. “Do you think he knows what happened to them?”
Stiles shrugs again. “Nope. No more than I do.”
They’re both silent for a long moment, then Morrell says, “Have you been sleeping?”
“Not really, no. I keep having these dreams. About when I was taken. And there are these… gaps, in my memory.”
She leans closer, crosses her arms on her desk. “It’s alright, Stiles,” she says. When he looks at her, eye to eye, she says, “He can’t hurt you anymore.” He might stop breathing. He might space out for a moment. When he blinks back to awareness, she’s still staring at him. “Gerard Argent has been taken care of.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, and then he leaves.
///
“Well,” Peter says. “Isn’t this a sight.”
Stiles hiccups and takes another drink. It burns like fire all the way down until it settles in the sun inside his belly. He’s sitting between the gnarled roots of a giant tree stump, cradling a bottle of Jack he took from his dad’s pantry, and now the werewolf who started it all is standing over him with his predator’s smile.
“Bite me,” he says stupidly, and then snorts.
Peter cocks his head and narrows his eyes in what might be interest before he sits down beside Stiles. “Too little, too late,” he says as he wipes sand off of his palms. “It just wouldn’t have the same effect, I’m afraid.”
Stiles hums around a mouthful of liquor and swallows. “That’d be the point of it.” He holds his wrists out to the moonlight, blue veins in stark relief against pale, paper thin skin. “It probably wouldn’t take anyway.”
Peter stares for an indeterminate amount of time, watches Stiles’ gaze drift into the middle distance, caught up in memories. It’s the least guarded Peter’s ever seen the kid, considering he’s usually almost paranoid. “Suicide by werewolf,” he says in the silence, Stiles twitching into awareness beside him. “That’s a new one.”
“Not really. Seventh on my list of ways to off myself.” Stiles swirls the bottle, the level below the label now, and sighs. “Then there’s stealing my dad’s gun, or stealing some aconite from the Argents. How’s that irony for you? Of course there’s also the classics: cutting my wrists, drowning, hanging, sleeping pills... The possibilities are endless, you know? I have a list, in one of my notebooks. Very thorough.” He downs the last of the liquor and then frowns at the bottle. “I thought this stuff was supposed to help, not make things worse.”
Peter doesn’t speak, just observes as he so often does. Stiles’ chin wobbles and his eyes begin to shine, tears ready to fall, breath hitching in his chest.
“It’s supposed to make the bad things go away, right? That’s why dad drinks it. But it’s like everything that happened… that happened and didn’t happen… it’s all right there, brought to the surface. It’s suffocating, and I just want it all to end. But it won’t stop. It’s just always there, and it never goes away.”
“Where does walking in front of a bus land on that list of yours?” Peter ponders, remembering the slide of sharp silver against the skin of his forearm. It’s long since healed, of course, but that had been one of his favorite shirts, now forever ruined. Maybe he’ll wear it on one of the suicide missions his nephew likes to dive into head first.
Stiles doesn’t look like he particularly cares as he shrugs. “Happenstance. I wasn’t paying attention that time.” He snorts like it’s a particularly funny thought. “It’ll probably be an accident when I do finally die.”
“Who knows? Maybe you’ll get lucky with the next bad thing that comes through town.”
Stiles puts his eye against the mouth of the bottle and squints, then digs into the neck of it with his tongue. “I’m probably supposed to say thank you for saving my life, but I’m not really thankful, so, you know, no thank you and all that jazz.”
Peter laughs and leans back into the large roots behind him. “Well, you’re not very welcome, then.”
Stiles guffaws and then somehow manages to hit himself in the head with the bottom of the bottle. It’s a wonder this kid has survived this long, Peter thinks.
///
Despite Gerard being mysteriously missing, most of the asshats he brought with him have decided to stay. And while the local motels and restaurants probably love the increased business, Stiles hates it. The werewolves probably do, too, and maybe even Chris and Allison, but Stiles probably hates it the most. Not that anyone knows why.
He feels paranoid and on edge every time he’s left on his own. He freezes up when he sees a dark SUV, locks every door behind him, doesn’t order takeout unless his dad or Scott is there, and while grocery shopping used to be fun, now it’s like getting lost in a labyrinth and waiting for a minotaur to charge.
Either way, he was half expecting it, to see that face again; somehow, he’s completely unprepared for when it does happen. He’s pushing a cart, doing his best to ignore the people around him, trying to find newer and better ways to torture his dad into making healthier choices, when he makes the mistake of glancing up. His entire body freezes and he’s pretty sure he stops breathing, his blood probably not even pumping through his veins, because there, at the end of the aisle, is him.
Stiles wants to cry, to run, to find something to throw, but he can’t. His breath quickens in his lungs and his heart starts racing, and he’s suddenly dizzy, but still unable to move. With every step closer the guy takes, Stiles feels a scream build beneath his skin; it grows like the nausea in his throat, settles beneath the surface like a panic attack until his entire body feels like it’s vibrating with terror.
But the guy doesn’t even look at him, passes him by without a glance and then disappears around the corner.
Stiles doesn’t know how long he stands there, waiting for something to happen, but that’s how Isaac finds him. When he finally comes back to himself, he’s sitting on the sofa in Derek’s loft, hands trembling and nausea steadily rising.
Isaac sets a glass of water on the table in front of him and gives him a worried look. “Are you okay?”
Stiles swallows at the sudden wetness gathered in the back of his mouth. “Bathroom,” he squeaks, and then runs in the direction Isaac points. He hates throwing up, hates the smell that stays in his nose for three days, the burn of acid in his throat, the way his stomach twists for hours after. But it’s better than dealing with the nightmares and memories.
Stiles’ forehead is resting against the cold plastic of the toilet seat when Peter comes into the bathroom, not bothering to hide the grimace that twists his face when he smells the sick that permeates the air. “Please tell me this didn’t make the list.”
Stiles sniffs as he sits up, wipes the tears from his eyes. “I thought Gerard’s guys were supposed to leave with him.”
“Maybe they missed the memo.”
Stiles stands and flushes the toilet, moves to rinse his mouth out with some of the mouthwash in Derek’s medicine cabinet. It doesn’t completely help, but at least it’s better than the sting of bile in the back of his throat. Peter stands close, too close, but Stiles knows the kind of monster he is, what he’s capable of, and he thinks he’s more willing to accept that than anything unknown.
“I think I need to speak to Chris and Allison,” Stiles says as he drags the back of his arm across his mouth. “Wanna drive me?”
///
Peter sits a careful distance away from Stiles on the Argent’s couch, close enough to touch, if he wanted to, but far enough away that they both have elbow room. Chris sits across from them in an armchair and Allison stands behind him, nervously picking at her fingernails.
“Your, uh, hunter friends haven’t left,” Stiles says. His cheek is still a pink scar and he finds himself scratching at it absently, but drops his hand when he sees Allison looking at it with wide eyes. At least she knows, he thinks bitterly, but quashes that feeling because it was probably more Gerard’s plan than hers. At least he hopes so.
“They were under orders from Gerard,” Chris says stiffly. “They’ll leave once they realize there’s no threat here.”
“It’s been a month,” Peter says, leaning back into the cushions and crossing his legs; his foot accidentally hits Stiles and, unamused, Peter watches him shift away from the touch. “I think we’ve more than proved we’re behaving ourselves. Well, mostly. At the very least, in all the ways that matter.” He turns narrow eyes back to the hunters, looking between Allison and Chris. “Earlier today, in fact, I hear one of your compatriots was following Stiles here around the store. Tell me, how dangerous is a human teenage boy that he needs to be stalked?”
Stiles freezes, because he hadn’t realized, he thought he’d simply been passed by unnoticed, but to hear it out loud like this… his hands start trembling again. He hates feeling this weak, this freaking traumatized, all because some bastard decided that he was, that he would -
“Stiles,” Peter says sharply, and it snaps his attention away from what happened in the basement.
“Do you know what kind of animals Gerard kept for company?” Stiles asks. He can’t make himself look at anybody, just silently waits for an answer that he’s not sure anybody but he knows. Well, he and Erica and Boyd, wherever they might be.
“Those who weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty,” Allison says, her lips pressed thin. “That’s what he told me. That way they’re less likely to ask questions.”
Stiles snorts. “Yeah, sounds about right. Well, they’re the scum of the earth and they really need to leave.”
“And if you don’t want the job,” Peter says with a wicked smile, teeth sharp and claws showing, “Well, I could certainly use the excuse.”
Allison furrows her brows and frowns in confusion. “So, because my… because Gerard was a manipulative bastard, you want to punish everyone who came into town with him? I mean, I’m sorry about what he did to you, but…why?”
Stiles glares at her, hates her for a minute because of her hand in it, and bites out, “Gerard wasn’t the only one in that basement. No, your geriatric asshole of a grandfather brought in some child rapist to deal with me, and thenwatched. He tried to make me scream, like it was something he got off on, but I wouldn’t, so he made me like it instead. He said to make it good for me, so that every time I touched myself, every time someone else touched me, I’d remember. So you ask why? Because I want to watch them all burn in hell.”
When he stops to take a breath and look around, he sees the twin looks of horror of Chris’ and Allison’s faces, and then meets Peter’s eyes. There is no sympathy or pity or horror there, but there is a dark, calculating calmness that chills Stiles to the bone. It’s the same look Peter had when he was holding Stiles by the arm in a parking garage, offering the Bite and plotting revenge in the same breath.
“Stiles, I…” Allison can’t even finish her sentence. Peter stands abruptly.
“I’ll drive you to Scott’s,” he says, and calmly guides Stiles out of the house.
“Home,” Stiles says quietly. “I want to go home.”
“I’m driving you to Scott’s,” Peter says again. “You shouldn’t be alone right now.”
“I’m not telling Scott. I didn’t want to tell anybody, but they just, they wouldn’t listen. And once I started, I couldn’t stop.”
“You don’t have to tell Scott,” Peter offers. “But he’s your best friend. He seems the type to offer a shoulder without knowing the reason why.”
Stiles shrugs and settles in for the ride, trying to stop shaking the entire way. He’s surprisingly numb, despite the emotional outburst he just had, and completely drained. He thought telling someone was supposed to make it better, but if anything it feels like reliving it all over again. He wants to be left alone, look over his list again and start from the bottom until he finds something that works.
Peter’s probably right about not being left alone.
///
A few days later, sitting at the breakfast table with his dad, the phone rings. Stiles listens with one ear, but he’s not too intent on the conversation, more interested in pushing his pancakes around his plate. He looks up when his dad sighs, though, and catches him pinching the bridge of his nose as he shakes his head.
“Dammit,” he says, and looks at Stiles as he sits back down. “Apparently a group of hunters was attacked by a mountain lion a couple nights ago. According to the report, there’s not that much left to the camp, and from what can be identified by the remains there were probably about five guys.”
“So you’re going in,” Stiles says, and finally gives up on his breakfast.
“Yeah,” his dad sighs. “Sorry kiddo.”
Stiles shrugs. “It’s alright. I need to say thank you to someone anyway.”
His dad looks confused for a moment before shaking his head. “Right. I’ll try to make it back for dinner.”
Stiles does the dishes while his dad goes upstairs to change into his uniform, and when he finally leaves, Stiles stands in the kitchen for a few more minutes, listening to the squad car drive away, and then goes to his own room. He sits at his desk for a bit, fiddling with his phone, wondering if he should call or text that thank you, when there’s a knock at his door.
Stiles rolls his eyes and opens his bedroom door to see Peter standing there. “I don’t want to know how you and Derek keep getting into my house, do I?”
“Hmmm, I’m not sure how Derek does it, but I just turned the door knob. Your father forgot to lock the door when he left.”
“Right. Aren’t you supposed to eat him, wear his clothes, and then eat me, too? My, what big teeth you have.”
Peter doesn’t sit on the bed or the desk chair, just stands in the doorway and watches Stiles. “Charming, but I’ve actually come here for another reason. Less maiming, that way.”
“Speaking of,” Stiles says as he sits back down in his desk chair and spins. “Thank you.”
Peter grins. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Fine. In that case, no thank you.”
“You’re not very welcome.”
Stiles rolls his eyes, but at least he doesn’t feel like screaming.
///
On some days, he’s okay. On others, not so much. He tends to take it day by day, for the most part, even though sometimes he just wants to sit in the bathtub and hold himself underwater until he stops breathing.
He doesn’t tell anyone else, even though he knows he should, but at least his dad and Scott are understanding enough on those days where he can’t stand to be touched and he’s just a bit too quiet. Sometimes he lays about at Derek’s and picks at the décor with Peter, or messes about in the kitchen with Isaac, or reads some of the larger tomes that look like they should be on the movie set of Harry Potter.
On the worst days, when he can’t stop shaking and his lungs don’t work right, he sits in the bottom of his closet with his baby blanket and his pillow, and tries to make his mind blank.
When his dad is at work, Stiles practices his smile in the mirror until it’s so good he almost fools himself. It’s not foolproof, of course, but summer’s ending soon, and when he returns to school, he wants to make sure he can hide everything behind a mask. He’s worrying his dad enough as it is, and if he acts like this at school, if he freaks out and breaks down at the rush of people surrounding him, he doesn’t want to think about what kind of therapy will be forced on him.
He’s tired of having things forced on him.
Believe, Deaton had told him, and he’s sure that applies to more than just mountain ash, but sometimes, believing is the hardest thing to do. He hopes that by faking it enough it’ll become true, that he’ll be okay again. He seriously doubts it, but at least he can still hope.
Notes:
(That sleep thing really happened. My friend tried everything to wake me up and nothing worked; I finally woke up though when she tried to take my pencil.)
Let me end this by saying: if you or someone you know have been raped or abused or are thinking of hurting your/themselves - GET HELP. Tell a friend, or a family member, or a teacher, or someone else. If there's no one you can tell, or that you don't feel comfortable enough to tell, call a hotline. I know RAINN.org has several links and a lot of information that can help.
That being said, repressing things and not telling anyone is not a good way to cope. It might work for a short while, but in the long run, therapy is probably best. I've been doing it for 20 years, and it's pretty much become a habit now to just shut down and repress things. In fact, I still have number for the suicide hotline in my wallet.
National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline : 800.656.4673
National Sexual Assault Online Hotline: online.rainn.org
National Child Abuse Hotline: 800.422.2253
National Domestic Violence Hotline: 800.799.SAFE
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800.273.8255
For more resources and references go to: rainn.org/get-information/links and for international resources try hotpeachpages.net
Stay safe.
Crossposted to AO3.