Chapter Text
Derek is sitting at the far corner table in the back room of Guido’s, a dingy restaurant in Little Italy whose tables are covered with actual knitted table cloths, or large doilies if you will, a bit filthy and torn in places. It's hard to believe anyone used them any more, but immigrants from rural Sicily, whose mothers and aunts and grandmothers spent blisteringly hot afternoons making those very same doilies under the shades of huge olive trees in their backyards, like to preserve their national identity that way. Among other things.
It is melting hot both outside and inside, but Derek is wearing his leather jacket anyways, and he has his sunglasses on, inside – he feels better that way. People find him weird even when he doesn't dress as a weirdo, so it's all the same to him.
Plus, it’s not like anyone would be surprised by a suspicious looking dude at Guido’s. Par for the course there.
The restaurant is his base, the only constant thing in his ever-changing routine. Across from him is his boss Tony, well Deaton actually but everybody calls him Tony, his friend and his boss; his bald head is shiny with sweat and his white tank top covered in sweaty patches. Tony doesn't believe in air-conditioning. He says it only makes him sick.
“Allora,” he says, squinting benevolently at Derek. They both like using their mother tongue occasionally. Helps with the nostalgia a little. “Come stai, Derek?”, Tony asks in his deep baritone.
Derek grips a tall glass filled with cold milk in front of him. “Bene.” He doesn't smile. He just waits.
Tony puts out his cigarette. “Okay. Let's talk business.” He pushes a photograph with a black and white image of a guy’s headshot towards Derek. “This fat bastard is trying to move in on Morizio's business. And you know, Morizio is a reasonable guy. He just wants a little conversation. But this guy, he doesn’t wanna hear about it. Maybe he'll listen to you. He comes to town every Tuesday. Are you free Tuesday?”
Of course Derek's free Tuesday. He's free any goddamn day for any job Tony gives him. It's all he does. Derek picks up his glass of cold milk and drinks a little. “Yeah. I’m free Tuesday.”
Tony doesn't say anything. Derek finishes his milk, grabs the photograph from the table and leaves.
All in all, he's spent less than five minutes with Tony. He knows what to do.
Derek is highly motivated and efficient. He doesn’t kill, he cleans for Tony. He is an excellent cleaner. Drug dealers, criminals, corrupt cops. Scum of the earth. Derek cleans them all. It makes him feel a little less dead on the inside.
Three days later, he pays a little visit to Mr. Jones the Fatman and makes sure he gets Morizio’s message. When he’s finished, Mr. Jones’ seven bodyguards are incapacitated and Mr. Jones is a shivering mess of fear and terror. There's a blonde chick, too, who flails her arms in fear and breaks at least two blood-red, claw-like nails in the process. Derek lets the blonde bimbo go. He leaves the bags filled with heroin and the stacks of dollars on the suite’s table. He doesn't care for any of that. His job is done.
***
After, Derek buys two cartons of milk and heads back to his place.
When he climbs the three flights of stairs in his rundown building, there’s a boy sitting on the floor of the hallway, his skinny legs dangling through the banister, smoking a cigarette.
He’s very young, too young to be smoking anyway. Derek thinks he can’t be more than fifteen. His face is all sharp angles, eyes too big for his face, but his skin is soft and limbs and bones still boyish. Derek wouldn't look at him twice if it wasn't for the damn smoking. It's disgusting and he can't stand it.
When Derek approaches, the boy jerks and tries to hide his cigarette.
If Derek still made facial expressions, he would have, right now. He would sneer.
Derek looks at him. “Why did you hide the cigarette?”, he asks, his voice hoarse and scratchy from unuse.
The boy leans back on his arms and puts on a brave face. “This building is full of rats. Didn’t want my old man to find out. Got enough problems.”
Derek has noticed that a big and loud family lives next door from him, but he's never seen the father. He almost cracks a smile at the boy's posturing. It's a good thing his face has forgotten how to smile. He wouldn't want to encourage the boy's bad habits.
The boy's voice sounds more mature than Derek expected, but his innocence still clear as day. Something else catches Derek's attention, though. He leans in a little when he sees that the boy’s cheekbone is covered in red scraps and purple bruises.
“What happened?”, Derek asks against his better judgment. He shouldn’t care. He doesn't understand why he asked at all.
“I fell from my bike,” the boy lies, looking at Derek with challenge, biting his lips, his shiny eyes unblinking.
Derek sighs and takes the cigarette from his hand. He puts it out against the iron part of the banister. “Stop smoking.”
“Don’t tell my dad.” The boy’s big brown eyes look at him imploringly.
Derek turns around without answering and walks to his apartment.
He locks the door behind him. He takes off his jacket and his weapon belt. He gets his plant from the windowsill and cleans its leaves. He has some milk and takes a shower. Then he closes his eyes for the night.
When he opens them in the morning, first thing he does is a hundred sit-ups and hundred push-ups. He waters his plant and puts it back on the sill. He leaves for his regular morning projection of Gene Kelly in the local theater. Derek loves old Gene Kelly musicals. When he passes the boy’s apartment door, he can hear noise coming from it, but he ignores it.
***
Stiles lives with his father and two brothers. He is a middle child.
His dad is a retired police officer who spent his entire career fighting the baddies, but at one point, his bosses didn't like that anymore. Some baddies were not to be touched, apparently. To be fair to them, they did try to explain to John that turning a blind eye was necessary in their line of work. John refused. Ergo, early retirement.
Stiles was just happy they didn't kill him. Money was tight since then, and they still lived in fear, both from the corrupt bosses and the criminals who John put behind bars, but he was still alive.
Stiles calls him Serpico behind his back.
Stiles loves his father and does everything he can to feed him properly despite their painful lack of finances. His father has a weak heart and high blood pressure and no money for doctors’ appointments.
He also loves his little brother Scott, but his older brother Jackson, not so much – he was the one who slapped Stiles across his face only this morning because he dared to change the TV channel from Jackson’s workout videos to cartoons.
Stiles hides in his room. His dad and Scotty are sleeping, and despite Jackson’s shitty music which he keeps on high volume no matter what, he hears the phone ring.
Jackson’s voice booms through the apartment. “Can somebody answer the phone? I'm busy!”
Stiles picks up the phone. “Hello?”
A female voice fills his ear. “This is Marguerite McAllister, headmistress at the Spencer Schooling, Wildwood, New Jersey. Is Mr. or Mrs. Stilinski home?”
Stiles freezes. He doesn’t want his father to know, he still hasn't told him. Stiles quit school two weeks ago; he is trying to earn some money by helping Mr. Vicario at his store. They need money, not useless knowledge. He just can’t go to school. He hates it there. They still think his mother is alive, for fuck's sake, even though she passed away more than a year ago. Idiots.
Stiles deepens his voice and pretends to be John. “This is he.”
“Mr. Stilinski, when your wife enrolled Stiles at Spencer, she told us he had some problems. As you know, we pride ourselves on turning troubled boys into healthy, productive young men. But if they are not here, there is very little we can do. Stiles left school without permission nearly two weeks ago. I know your wife paid tuition in advance for a year, but if you will refer to the rules and regulations manual we sent you, you will see that unless there is a valid excuse for prolonged absence, your tuition will be forfeit.”
Stiles squeezes the phone handle. He hates her mentioning his mother. He hates that school. They don't know anything.
“Stiles is dead!” he shouts into the receiver and hangs up.
***
When Derek returns from his movies, he sees the boy in the hallway again.
This time, the boy has a bloody nose.
Derek stops in front of him. He takes out his handkerchief from his pocket and hands it to the boy.
The boy takes it and soaks up the blood. “Is life always this hard or is it just when you’re a kid?”
Derek looks at his huge eyes. The boy is too young to say things like that.
But he can’t lie to those eyes. “Always like this,” Derek replies sullenly and starts walking to his apartment. Before he reaches it, he hears the boy once again.
“Hey!”
Derek turns around.
“I'm going grocery shopping. You want some milk? One quart or two? It’s two, right?”
Derek nods his head slowly, surprised.
The boy grins wide at him, the skin around his nose still pink, and happily hops down the stairs on his coltish legs.
Derek has no idea how he knows about his milk. He locks his door behind himself.
***
As soon as Derek closes his door, five DEA agents in civil clothes and their boss, agent Deucalion, stop in front of the Stilinski apartment door.
Deucalion, a middle-aged man with cruel, sadistic face, wearing a tan suit and looking livid for some reason, cracks his neck like an animal and pops a pill out of a convenient little metal container he keeps in his pocket. Would you look at that, a drug addicted special agent with God complex and a sadistic streak a mile wide. Perfect.
Derek knows he's a sadist as soon as he hears his little pre-battle speech. The man clearly enjoys this.
“I like these calm little moments before the storm. It reminds me of Beethoven. Can you hear it?” Deucalion asks his agents, waving his arms in the air. Everybody's already used to his pompous tirades right before the showdown, so nobody reacts. The quasi-intellectual lecturing seems to give him as much of a hard-on as the bloodshed of the innocents. “It's like when you put your head to the grass... you can hear it growing. You can hear the insects. Do you like Beethoven? I'm gonna play you some,” he grins in self-adoration.
In a flash, Deucalion grabs a shotgun and shoots the door lock off. The door bangs wide open against the wall inside the Stilinski apartment.
Derek hears the gunshots and peeks through the hole in his door, but he can’t see anything. All he can think about is the boy who went down to buy him some milk and whose family is probably going to be murdered right now. He hopes the boy stays long at the store.
“Daddy!,” a child screams.
Derek hears one more gunshot.
He hears Deucalion talking to someone. The father, probably. “We said noon. That was your deadline for turning in the evidence papers. I've got one minute past,” Deucalion says, rolling the words in his mouth with gusto, like he enjoys the taste of them.
Silence. The father doesn't speak.
Deucalion rolls on. “You don't like Beethoven. You don't know what you're missing. Overtures like that get my juices flowing. So powerful. But after his openings, to be honest... he does tend to get a little fucking boring. That's why I stopped!”, he laughs maniacally. “Toss the apartment,” he instructs his agents.
Derek hears an older man's voice then, the father. He sounds scared and exhausted. “It’s not here. I already gave you everything. You won’t find anything, I swear. Please. Don't hurt the boys. Please, I'm begging you. I'll do anything. Anything you want. They're innocent. They don't know anything. Just don't hurt the boys, please-”
Derek considers barging in... No. It's not his business. He has to stay on the down low. He does not care.
Deucalion behaves like he doesn’t hear the father. “You're a Mozart fan. I love him too. I love Mozart! He was Austrian, you know. But for this kind of work, he's a little bit light. So I tend to go for the heavier guys… Check out Brahms. He's good too.” He leaves the room without waiting for an answer.
Derek hears staggering, and different kinds of shots. No! Stupid, stupid... The father has a gun, too.
All hell breaks loose.
Everybody starts shooting. It lasts for two, maybe three minutes, then silence.
An ancient looking lady, hunched back, silver reading glasses half slid down her nose and curlers in her hair, opens her door and walks a little into the hallway. “What's happening out there?”
“It's all right, ma'am. D.E.A. Police. Go back to your apartment,” one of the agents says calmly.
“Leave that poor family alone,” the lady tries again.
“Everything's all right. Just calm down,” the agent says.
The lady gets upset. “I am calm. I'm calm. Why don't you leave them alone?”
Deucalion loses his patience and growls at her. “He said go back inside!”
She escapes into her apartment.
***
Stiles climbs onto his floor with his arms full of groceries, scared out of his mind. He has already heard the shouting and the shooting. The soundproofing is non-existent in this apartment block.
It’s coming from his apartment. He doesn’t recognize the voices. His heart is in his feet. He doesn't recognize the voices, but he hears clearly what they're saying. He is barely breathing, but he keeps putting one foot in front of the other is jerky little steps. He can't stop. He doesn't have a plan, he has no idea what's going on, but he can't stop.
“Ennis, did you have to kill this little boy? Jesus fucking Christ!”
Stiles starts shaking.
“You stupid fuck!! We missed one boy. He had three sons. Three! Find him!”
Stiles keeps walking. When he passes his own apartment, he doesn’t turn his head, but the door is open, and he can see in his peripheral vision his little brother Scotty lying on the floor in a bloody pool. Behind him, he sees his father, shattered. He sees people with guns milling around.
His legs carry him past his apartment, down the hall. He doesn't dare to breathe. His ears are drumming and he feels sweat gushing out of his pores. Petrified, he keeps walking until he reaches Derek’s door.
Stiles presses the bell button.
No one answers.
Stiles keeps pressing it. That bell button is his whole world. Silent tears are running down his face at this point. He can't turn around, they'll see his face and know it is him. His finger starts hurting.
But Derek doesn't open the door.
“Please open the door,” Stiles whines softly and rings the bell again. He can still hear the shouting.The third one's missing. Find him!
“Please, please, please, open the door,” Stiles sobs quietly, his face contorted in agony. His nose is dripping with pink snot down his mouth and chin.
Derek steps away from his door. He looks at his floor, reluctant. He knows what’s happened. He knows that these people have killed the boy’s entire family and will most probably kill the boy, too, if he doesn’t help him. Still, it’s a complication for him. Unnecessary complication.
Derek looks through the hole again. The boy is desperately clutching his milk and his tears are soaking into the paper bags. His mouth is repeating please, please, please.
Derek pushes his gun into the back of his pants and opens the door.
Quickly and wordlessly, the boy goes inside.
***
TBC