Derek Zakari | Writing

@disabledwhumphurtcomfort prompt: Free Day

Teen Wolf | Disabled Stiles

Stiles has been in enough ambulances to know Beacon Hills traffic better than most EMTs. This is not a skill anyone asked him to develop, but it is about to become everyone’s problem.

“Take Maple,” he said.

“We’re not taking Maple,” the driver said.

“Cool. Love a man with confidence and no concept of lunch-hour traffic.”

The EMT nearest his head gave him a look. “You can’t even see where we are.”

“I don’t need to see where we are. We left the preserve side, siren’s been on for four minutes, we turned right hard enough to briefly rearrange my skeleton, and now we’re slowing because someone thinks Main at noon is a personality trait.”

The driver said nothing.

The ambulance slowed more.

Stiles opened one eye.

The EMT looked toward the cab.

From the front came the faint, irritated click of a turn signal that was not being used because there was nowhere to go.

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@disabledwhumphurtcomfort prompt: Unconditional love | Offering without pressure

Teen Wolf | Disabled Stiles

Stiles can admit the shirt is too much. Barely. Derek doesn’t ask him to explain why. But he does understand the difference between solving the problem and removing one more thing making it worse.

Derek closed his eyes as he breathed in slowly. “Take. It. Off.”

Stiles gaped at him like a fish. Derek sighed back, “The cold air will help.”

Stiles looked at Derek’s shoulder instead of his face.

“If I do, nobody makes it weird.”

“Nobody’s making it weird,” Scott said immediately.

Stiles pointed at him without looking. “That made it weird.”

Scott closed his mouth.

“Fine,” he said. “But if anyone says anything about my nipples, I’m defecting to another pack.”

Lydia turned fully toward Isaac. “Tell me about the boat again.”

Isaac blinked. “The boat?”

“The boat,” Lydia said, with murder in her diction.

“Right. The boat. So the boat is, uh, structurally important.”

“Great,” Stiles said. “Love a structurally important boat.”

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@disabledwhumphurtcomfort prompt: Touch

Teen Wolf | Disabled Stiles

It’s just an itch. Except it’s across his chest, under his arms, and impossible to scratch without making it worse. The shirt is making sure Stiles can’t forget it exists. So Stiles tries to sit still, not scratch, and pretend he knows what Isaac is talking about.

By the time he pulled up outside Derek’s place, the itch had stopped being one itch and become a problem Stiles was desperately trying to ignore, which also made him irritated.

And it wasn’t as if he could point to anything as proof of his discomfort. He didn’t have hives, or a rash or poison ivy, or even insect bites he could point to and say ‘See? This is why I feel miserable!’

There wasn’t anything useful that would show up dramatically on his skin and make people go, wow, Stiles, that looks awful, perhaps you are not being a delicate Victorian ghost about textiles after all.

Just an itch. An invisible fucking itch. With no known motives or reasoning behind it.

It was just a plain fucking itch.

An itch with no target. An itch that jumped away when he scratched and came back three inches to the left. An itch that turned scratching into more sensation, which became more itch, which became pain if he kept chasing it too long.

Stiles breathed deeply as he ran through the only mantra he could grasp.

Don’t scratch. Do not scratch. Do NOT scratch. DO NOT scratch. DO NOT SCRATCH.

And now Stiles felt like a raccoon with unresolved trauma.

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@disabledwhumphurtcomfort prompt: Respecting privacy | Breathing room | “I trust you”

Teen Wolf | Disabled Stiles

Scott can tell Stiles is hiding something, but this time he doesn’t try to pry it open. He brings the good chips, turns down the brightness, and gives Stiles room to not say it.

Scott looked at the TV, then at the windows, then at Stiles’ face for just long enough that Stiles felt every muscle in his body start lining up excuses.

“Do you want the lamp off?”

Stiles froze, his hand paused halfway back to the chip bag.

Scott kept his voice light and easy. “You’re squinting.”

“I’m not squinting.”

“You are squinting aggressively.”

“That’s just my face. I have an expressive skull.”

“Does your expressive skull want the lamp off?”

Stiles wanted to say no on principle. He wanted to keep the room bright because turning off the lamp made it obvious that light hurt, and making accommodations obvious made them feel like announcements. But the headache behind his eyes pulsed again, heavy and mean, and the lamp really was stabbing directly into his skull like it had personal motives.

“Maybe,” he said.

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@disabledwhumphurtcomfort prompt: Masking | Minimization| Warped tolerance

Teen Wolf | Disabled Stiles

Before Stiles knows what POTS is, he learns what it feels like to lose the world from the outside in. It should probably count as an emergency, but by the time his vision comes back, he’s already making it smaller.

He blinked again, because some terrified, stupid part of him thought maybe he had closed his eyes without realizing it. Maybe that was all this was. Maybe his body had not just deleted the entire hallway.

Maybe he was being dramatic in the privacy of his own skull, which was at least familiar territory.

His eyes were open.

He knew they were open because he kept blinking, once, twice, three times, each one more deliberate than the last, like he was trying to reboot something.

The room stayed gone.

That was the part that scared him so badly he could not even make a joke out of it.

Stiles locked his elbows and held on.

Am I dying?

The thought arrived plain and cold.

No sarcasm. No clever little escape hatch. No internal commentary dressed up in jazz hands. Just the question, blunt and absolutely useless.

Am I dying right now?

He wanted his dad.

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@disabledwhumphurtcomfort prompt: Coping strategies | Post-traumatic resilience

Teen Wolf | Disabled Stiles

Stiles tries showing up because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re depressed. Being around people is supposed to help him feel like himself again. Instead, it leaves him quiet, overloaded, and stuck on the couch while everyone else moves around him. Derek notices what Stiles missed: the problem isn’t that he stopped caring. It’s that caring costs too much right now, and Stiles has been spending everything he has trying to look fine.

“You don’t seem depressed.”

Stiles looked up sharply. “Oh, good. Awesome. Glad I’m failing at that too.”

“That’s not what I said.”

Derek leaned back against the couch, giving him space without making a production out of it. “You’re acting like everything is a threat.”

Stiles frowned. “That’s called living in Beacon Hills.”

“No. That’s called being in survival mode.”

The words landed strangely. Like Derek had given Stiles the correct shape after he'd spent a week trying to shove it onto the wrong shelf.

He picked at the pizza again. “That sounds fake.”

“It isn’t.”

“You get that depression is real, right? I’m not making up a fun little hobby because I ran out of personality traits.”

“I know depression is real.”

“Do you?”

Stiles glanced at him.

Derek’s face had gone flat in a way that made Stiles remember, abruptly, that Derek had spent a lot of years living in the burned-out ruins of things people kept telling him to move on from. Not metaphorically. Literally.

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@disabledwhumphurtcomfort prompt: Self-blame | Complex effects | Mental fatigue

Teen Wolf | Disabled Stiles

When Stiles starts losing the small systems that keep him functional, he assumes he recognizes the pattern. The messy room, the unfinished homework, the missed plans, the heavy gravity of not moving all look familiar enough to name.

It was just his room, slightly more annoying than it had been last week.

He could fix it. He knew he could fix it. He could put the notebooks away in his desk, move the heating pad to the bin it belonged in under his bed, plug in the phone charger, take the water bottle downstairs, put the dirty clothes in the hamper, hang the clean-ish things back up, carry the hamper down after dinner, start a load, switch it before bed, fold it tomorrow.

His brain lined up the steps very neatly and then Stiles just stood there unmoving.

He knew this pattern. Depression. Right? It had been an old friend since his mom died. And the pattern seemed clear to him.

His autism wanted to do the thing. His ADHD was semi-rioting doing the thing. His EDS had shut down the power grid before he could go do the thing.

He felt tired for no reason. Yeah, that’s classic depression.

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@disabledwhumphurtcomfort prompt: Self-advocacy | Major decision

Teen Wolf | Disabled Stiles

Stiles has spent enough time being managed for his own good. Now he’s learning how to say no, how to make himself heard, and how to take back control one decision at a time.

Noah came downstairs with the braces in his hands, one in each hand, the plastic catching the light in a way that made them look even uglier than he remembered.

"Found these in the back of your closet," Noah said.

Stiles looked up. "Why were you in my closet?"

Noah set them on the kitchen table. "You haven't been wearing them."

"So you went through my room."

"I wasn't going through your room, I was—"

"You went into my closet without asking because you noticed I wasn't wearing them and wanted to confirm it." Stiles tilted his head. "Which you could have just asked me."

Noah's jaw tightened slightly. "Are you going to tell me why you stopped?"

"I was going to. You just didn't ask."

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@disabledwhumphurtcomfort prompt: Infantilized | Denied control

Teen Wolf | Disabled Stiles

Stiles can handle his body being unpredictable. What he can’t handle is everyone else deciding that means his choices belong to them now.

“Did the pharmacy not fill the oxy?”

Noah set his coffee down on the table, “Well, good morning to you too.”

“Dad. I hurt. I need to know if—”

“They’re in the safe.”

Stiles stared at his dad. He’d said it with such a finality, like it was something they had both agreed on.

“The safe,” Stiles repeated, because maybe if he said it back out loud it would start making sense as a normal sentence and not something his dad had apparently decided in private without him.

Noah nodded like that settled it. “It’s a controlled substance.”

“So is my Adderall.”

“That’s different.”

It came out too fast, which meant it was either true in a way his dad hadn’t figured out how to explain yet, or it wasn’t true at all and he needed it to be.

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@disabledwhumphurtcomfort prompt: Space to grieve | Safety net | Moving forward

Teen Wolf | Disabled Stiles

Stiles finally admits something he’s been quietly grieving for years: he knows exactly what he wanted to be when he grew up. Unfortunately, he came with a pre-existing condition.

Stiles leaned his head back against the wall behind the bed and closed his eyes. “I wanted to be like you when I grew up.”

The sentence landed softly enough that Noah almost missed it.

Stiles gave a short laugh without humor. “Which in retrospect is hilarious considering I need an hour to recuperate from showering.”

“Stiles.”

“No, seriously.” He opened his eyes again, expression tired and sharp around the edges all at once. “I can’t even make it through statistics finals without my body rage quitting halfway through. I don’t think my body is built for police work though.”

Noah didn’t answer immediately.

Because the awful thing was that none of this was new information.

The medications weren’t new. The exhaustion wasn’t new. The migraines and braces and heating pads and electrolyte powders weren’t new either.

“I really wanted that.” Stiles sniffed, a tear rolling down his cheek. “It’s not fair.”

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@disabledwhumphurtcomfort prompt: Unfair choice | Without support | "There's no way to fix this"

Teen Wolf | Disabled Stiles

Stiles has spent most of his academic career surviving through a combination of panic, pattern recognition, and weaponized improvisation. Unfortunately, statistics finals during an MCAS flare turns out to be the exact point where “history of male circumcision” no longer applies as a viable academic strategy.

Stiles knew he was in trouble halfway through the statistics final when the words on the page stopped meaning anything.

He could see them perfectly fine. His brain just suddenly refused to turn them into usable information.

He stared at the same probability question long enough for the numbers to start feeling fake and sat back slowly in his chair, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes as pressure throbbed behind them. The migraine had been building for hours now, slow and quiet and inevitable as a haint from Appalachia.

He needed to stop listening to “Old Gods of Appalachia” podcast before bed.

Someone near the front sniffed hard every couple minutes. Another student coughed into their sleeve.

Finals week. Everyone sounded sick.

Stiles felt sick. He knew he wasn’t.

That was the problem.

He’d been hearing the sounds of other’s being sick around him and his MCAS sent out the alert to the rest of his body to release the histamines like some action flick hero who saves the day.

That is not this. His body is not saving the day.

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@disabledwhumphurtcomfort prompt: Confession | The universe will catch you | Non-linear recovery

Teen Wolf | Disabled Stiles

Recovery would be significantly easier if Stiles’s body believed in linear progression. Unfortunately, it appears committed to experimental jazz instead. So when Stiles wakes up feeling better enough to make the deeply unfortunate decision to participate in his own life, he once again runs into the fundamental problem with chronic illness recovery: Stiles never knows if it’s a good day until after he’s ruined it.

“Oh no,” Scott said immediately.

“Don’t start.”

“You overdid it.”

“I participated in my own life for like six hours.”

“Yeah, exactly.”

Stiles made a tired, aggravated sound into the couch cushion.

Derek looked up from the kitchen table. “Why didn’t you stop earlier?”

Scott answered before Stiles could. “Because he never knows if it’s a good day until after he’s ruined it.”

“Rude,” Stiles muttered into the cushion. “But not wrong.”

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@disabledwhumphurtcomfort prompt: Over the limit | In denial | Breakdown

Teen Wolf | Disabled Stiles

Stiles wakes up feeling vaguely wrong in the deeply unhelpful way chronic illness often does and “something feels wrong” narrows the possibilities down to almost nothing. His brain recognized the pattern but Stiles kept turning away from it because he knows exactly when he changed his fentanyl patch. His body, unfortunately, appears to have different opinions about the timeline.

Scott handed him the takeout container before settling onto the opposite end of the couch with the kind of easy familiarity that came from years of doing exactly this. Derek disappeared into the kitchen without asking permission, opening the refrigerator and immediately making a face.

“Why do you have five jars of pickles?”

“They’re different kinds of pickles,” Stiles called back.

“Four are the exact same: Vlassic Kosher dill.”

Stiles sighed, “One is for eating, the other three are for drinking.”

“One of them says ghost pepper.”

“That one’s medicinal.”

Derek stared at him and slowly raised a brow.

“Hangover cure.” Stiles supplied at last.

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@disabledwhumphurtcomfort prompt: Welcome visitor | New treatment

Teen Wolf | Disabled Stiles

Stiles accidentally joins what appears to be an actor cult and, against all odds, it’s more medically useful than most of his specialists.

Stiles is already standing, jacket in hand, already composing the text to Lydia — I love you and I know you meant well and absolutely not — when the door opens directly in front him.

The woman on the other side is somewhere in her sixties, unhurried, with the kind of posture that makes you aware of your own immediately. She takes in the room in one sweep — the two actors, the chairs, Stiles with his jacket half on and one foot already committed to leaving — and her eyes settle on him with the patient amusement of someone who has seen this exact moment before and found it funny every time.

She doesn't say anything right away. Just looks at him the way you look at something you already understand.

“You look like you’re about to make a terrible decision.”

Stiles opens his mouth.

"I'm not an actor," he says.

"I know," she says.

She steps past him into the room, sets her bag down, and gestures at the chair he just vacated.

"But it's free. Sit down."

Stiles sits down.

He's not entirely sure how that happened.

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@disabledwhumphurtcomfort prompt: Contraindicated | Malpractice

Teen Wolf | Disabled Stiles

Stiles has spent years collecting recommendations from doctors who all sound certain and not all in the same breath.

“You should eliminate gluten.”

Stiles spends several days trying to figure out what gluten actually is before deciding gluten sounds fake. Like something medieval villagers blamed on witches.

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@disabledwhumphurtcomfort prompt: Out of harm's way | Field medicine

Teen Wolf | Disabled Stiles

The hardest part of surviving the night turns out to be what happens after somebody finally cuts him loose.

Scott reaches him first.

“Are you hurt?” “Define hurt.” “Stiles.” “I can still feel most of my fingers which honestly feels medically optimistic.”

Behind him, Derek appears abruptly at Stiles’s shoulder and reaches to slice the zip-ties loose from Stiles’ wrists.

“Wait,” Stiles says.

Nobody listens to him. Which, also rude.

“Oh,” Stiles gasps. That was significantly worse than anticipated.

Scott catches him before he can pitch sideways out of the chair completely. “Stiles?”

“I changed my mind,” Stiles says faintly into Scott’s shoulder. “I’m hurt.”

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@disabledwhumphurtcomfort prompt: Stress position | Deliberate exacerbation

Teen Wolf | Disabled Stiles

Hunters use stress positions and prolonged restraint expecting Stiles to eventually hit a limit. Stiles respects the homework they did but there’s something deeply unsettling about watching his own body refuse to fail in the correct order.

The younger hunter folds his arms tightly across his chest. “Something’s wrong with him.”

"Rude." Stiles snorts

Because there it is.

The first tiny fracture in the assumption that this situation is behaving normally.

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