Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Derek looks at life and sees Nothing. 

Looks at his giant house, beautiful and standing tall and proud, charred and blackened by ashes and flames and skin to skin. Looks at his family, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, comatose and missing. He looks at his hands, his body, his face, his eyes. Sees roughness and calluses and muscle and worn out and tired and Nothing. All he sees is Nothing because all the things that he's done in his life have been for the wrong cause, and because he's a perfectionist mistakes and faults and wrong turns cannot exist, and so everything is Nothing. 

The moon feels a little like a forgotten twinge of Something, but even then it's not Derek's little Something, it's his wolf's Something.  

Laura was Everything, before she became Something, before she became Nothing. Before his family became dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, comatose and deceased. 

Peter is also Nothing in his life, now. His body, crippled and twisted and mottled with blueberry black bruises and crimson and strawberry red burns, is incapable to heal and return to the former fully functioning life it once had. His face is a waxen mask of folded skin and burnt patches of frayed hair. One eyelid droops over the other and his mouth is crooked, chin wobbling. One finger is always twitching, ever so agonisingly slow and unpredictable. Yes or No? He cannot bear to stay in his presence any longer than he can look at him. He can't stand the sight of his uncle; mottled skin and smells of ash clumps and morphine and dead eyes looking at him. Derek thinks that Peter must know what he did. He sometimes has nightmares that Peter blames him for his condition: he has every right to. 

Derek looks at life and sees newspaper cuttings and articles and interviews and hospital records and dog tags and little plastic beads with his initials on them and nightmares and police files and singed wooden beams and ashes falling onto his clothes and into his hair and Nothing, because Derek's life has been the greatest fuck up since Kate Argent (Something. [target. avenge.]) walked into his school, into his view, into his life, into his bed and into his house.  

(He doesn't dare think of Somethings anymore because the last time he did is seared into his mind and mottled with regret and guilt and skin on skin.) 

It's why — every time — that that lonely, pining, helplessly pathetic feeling, that emotion arises in the bottom of his chest, just like a little hook — he hides and scowls and thinks about what happened last time. When that feeling of want and longing had been taken advantage of, and how everything ended up with Nothing. 

Nothing left, Nothing to hide, still a little Something to keep secret, no life because Derek Hale is in itself — Nothing. (Because Derek is the world's biggest fuck-up extraordinaire.) 

It's why he doesn't dare look, why he doesn't dare to long or desire. 

Why he doesn't dare even a little kiss, because that's how Something started and ended with Nothing. 

Chapter Text

Scott smiles a lot.  

Happy. (A little Something)  

Scott's parents love him. He feels good because he knows they love him. He is good because he is loved. They love him because he is good. 

Scott laughs and plays and talks with his friends and shares his toys. 

Scott's a nice kid because his dad tells him so. Scott's a brave, handsome little boy because his mum tells him so. He is nice to everyone and is brave and helps his friends because his parents love him. His parents love him because he is helpful and kind and happy. 

Scott is happy because his parents are happy. (Something. Nice, warm and protected. Innocent feeling of heartfelt contentment.) 

His parents tell him everyday that he will always be their special boy, and that they love him.  

His parents (Everything)  

Argue. 

Scott is confused. 

His parents love him because he's a big grown up boy, and because he is nice and kind. Scott is nice and kind and grown up because his parents love him. (Hasn't he heard it before?) 

His parents shout and yell and bicker and his dad tells Scott he still loves him and his mum tells Scott that she also still loves him. (Happy?) 

His mum tells him that she'll always love him because ever since she saw the plus sign on her pregnancy stick she knew that he was going to be her special boy, her baby Scott. (Everything.) 

One day his dad tells him that he's a nice kid, that he shouldn't change. (Confused.)  

One day his mum cries and his dad smiles at him and then says that he's leaving because he and mum don't love each other any more. 

So what's going to happen? Hey? Scott — Scott's still loved, right? He's been good and kept his nose out of trouble, and he's been brave and he's been helpful — he didn't do anything wrong, right? Is it his fault? (Agony.) 

His dad does not love him because he's a good kid. His dad does not love him because he's kind or nice. His dad — just doesn't love anymore. So he doesn't feel justified to be brave or nice or stay out of trouble if no one's there to tell him that they like him because he's good. (Astray, confused.) 

Jackson once tells him that it's good to be bad, because he gets lots of attention. (Off the path into Nothing.) Scott tries it. He gets punished by mum. He does it again. He gets punished. He kicks a trash can over at school. He's given a detention. He snaps at a teacher when he's frustrated. He's sent to the principal's office. Stiles asks him if he wants to go walking around in the dark at night. He tells him mum he's on a sleepover. He doesn't check with her. He and Stiles play Ring & Run. He and Stiles play XBoX till three in the morning. His science teacher doesn't like him. He goes out late with Stiles, drinking his stolen whiskey and talking about Scott's dad and Stiles' mum. 

(Nothing.) 

His dad is Nothing. His dad's worth shit. 

One night it get's to the point where Scott is out nearly every night, and his mum grabs him and locks the front door. She shouts at him. (Nothing.) She says that she's worried about him and that she should never have let this go on for so long, that she should have talked to him sooner. He nods, numbly. It's not registering in his head. 

She gets angry and slaps him. (Something new.) She cries into his chest and holds him tight. He feels his arms around her, cradling her shorter body, staring off into the distance. His chest feels warm and wet and painful. 

She tells him that she's sorry and that she's sad, and that he's an idiot for forgetting that she's his mother and that she'll always love him, because he's her goddamn son, isn't that obvious? (Everything. Complete.) He feels tears on his face. He apologises for everything. For all the times he went off without her knowing, for all the times he got into trouble at school, for all the secret meetings with Stiles and the attention seeking. 

Things get better. 

But still, he's scared about what lies hidden under little smiles and secretive grins and knowing twists of lips. 

A dimple. (A divorce?) 

A quick grin. (They know something?) 

A shallow smile, stupidly pretty. (Lust?) 

Painted lips, red as blood and as secretively coy as a fox. (Affair. Cheater?) 

A pout. (Mixed feelings?) 

It's why Scott's so confused when Allison smiles at him. Pure and straightforward and open and unsecretive. (Happy.) (Playful. Shy. Appreciative.) 

He never pressurises her, never stresses her, never tries to rush things or speed it up. He is calm and this thing they have his so valuable and delicate and he'll protect it forever. (Eternity.) Sometimes he's requested for certain items of clothing; the jacket she wore on their first date, that pretty blue scarf, complimenting her. Sometimes he's playfully pleaded for a bite of her sandwich  or a gulp of her drink.  

But he'll never ask her to smile for him. 

It's not that he never says "I love your smile," or "I love it when you smile, (it makes me happy to see you happy),", but he'll never forcibly ask her to smile for him. 

He doesn't dare to. 

He never wants her to force emotions when she's around him. Because then it'll be just like when he forced himself to not care that he was sad that dad left.