Work Text:
Camden Lahey is four and a half when mom and dad announce they're having another baby. He's excited, to say the least. He starts making things he thinks a little brother or sister would like, and he shows them to his mother. She smiles, says you're gonna be a great big brother, Cam, while making dinner in the kitchen.
When she tells him it's gonna be a baby girl, he starts drawing pictures of him and a little baby girl together. Pictures of him and a little bundle of wriggling pink in the tire swing out back, or coming down the slide in the park down the street. He's finishing up one of him and a little baby girl playing hopscotch, swinging his feet at the kitchen table, while mom does the dishes.
She tells him that little babies can't go on the big boy toys, but he'd be able to show her the ropes when she got bigger. He could be her knight.
Camden is about to gush about how much he'd like that when she doubles over. Watery suds drip from her wrist and onto the tile, while a dark red climbs down the front of her khakis. He calls the police when she asks him to, and almost drops the phone several times as he shakes and cries.
(“911, what is your emergency?” “My m-mommy is bleeding and she's cr-cr-cry—” “Breathe, sweetheart. What happened to your mommy?” “Her pants are bloody a-and she's cr-crying about my b-baby sister!” “Your baby sister? Where is she?” “I...in her tummy!”)
He doesn't quiet understand what happened, even after she tries to explain it to him through her hiccuping sobs. But he knows he won't be getting a baby sister soon, and it makes him sad.
In a fit later that night, his mother locked firmly away in her room, his father drinking steadily in his study, he rips up all of his pictures of himself and what could've been his baby sister. He cries when he realizes what he's done.
Mom does a lot of crying, After. Mom doesn't want to see him, or dad, or anyone. Mom stays in her room for a while, and she cries until she falls asleep. Then she wakes up and cries some more.
Camden doesn't know what to do, so he sits in front of her bedroom door, hoping to keep away whatever stole his baby sister and his mother's smile.
-
Camden Lahey is five, six, seven when his mom and dad announce they're pregnant again. The pregnancies last long enough for mom to noticeably swell before she loses the pregnancy.
She spends most of her days crying. Dad spends most of his days at work, or nursing a bottle with quiet fury in the relative darkness of their dining room. Camden spends most of his sitting in front of her bedroom door, wishing he was a real knight so he could protect his mother and the baby siblings he's lost.
-
Camden Lahey is almost eight when mom and dad announce they're pregnant again. He bursts into tears and locks himself in his room. When he calms down again, he returns to his mother's bedroom door and waits for the inevitable crying to start.
-
Camden Lahey is eight when Isaac is born. He's pink and shiny and bald. He cries a lot, more than mom did After, but especially when he's all alone.
Camden sits in the corner of Isaac's crib, even when mom and dad tell him not to. He does it anyway, determined to guard Isaac now that mom didn't need him anymore. Sometimes Camden falls asleep while guarding baby Isaac and wakes up with Isaac gripping his shirt with all the strength his fat baby hands can muster. It seems to help.
-
Camden Lahey is ten and Isaac Lahey is two when their mother dies. She went out looking for milk and found a drunk driver instead. Dad drinks and slams anything he can find, and Camden bitterly thinks he's trying to reenact the crash, trying and hoping to get the outcome he wants despite knowing he won't. He breaks Isaac's highchair in a fit of pique and cries once, only once, over his dead wife, the broken leg of a chair clutched in his fist.
Camden holds Isaac at the funeral. Shushes him when he starts to sniffle. Holds one of Isaac's hands as he keeps well-meaning relatives away. The other hand Camden can't pry from the front of his shirt.
-
Camden Lahey is eleven and Isaac Lahey is three, and Isaac has been shimmying out of his big boy bed at night and into Camden's since they lost their mother. He sleeps with his nose against Camden's throat no matter how many times Camden fights it.
He also sleeps with a fistful of Camden's shirt in his hand. Camden learned long ago that that was a battle he wouldn't win.
-
Camden Lahey is thirteen and Isaac Lahey is five, and it's the first day of school for Isaac. Camden walks Isaac to school and doesn't say anything about the death grip Isaac has on his hand. He says school isn't that scary, you'll see and I'll see you after, ok? You'll be just fine and I packed an extra pudding cup for you, don't tell dad.
Isaac tears up when he has to let go of Camden's hand, whispers, Cam, why can't I go to school with you?
I wish you could, Camden says.
(He doesn't tear up himself when Isaac enters the schoolhouse, he swears.)
-
Camden Lahey is fifteen and Isaac Lahey is seven when Camden decides that he wants to go into the army. Their father is proud, which feels weird to Camden. Their father is rarely anything, really. He's a presence at their backs. He's a whistle at swim meets. He's a backhanded compliment at the dinner table. He's a fake, paperthin smile.
Isaac crawls into Camden's bed the night he announces his future plans. He plays with a loose string on his pants leg and asks that when he joins, that Camden be careful.
Camden ruffles his hair, blinks his eyes a few times (he's not tearing up, he swears), promises that he will.
Isaac sleeps in his bed that night. Nose to Camden's throat, fist in Camden's shirt.
Camden hasn't slept that well in ages.
-
Isaac Lahey is eleven when they hold the service for Camden. Isaac doesn't know the particulars of that, of his brother's death, but he's willing to bet it happened because Camden was trying to protect somebody.
Isaac is proud. Isaac is furious. Isaac is grief stricken.
There's nothing to bury, the army said. They hand Isaac's father a folded flag. They do Taps and a gun salute. They do all these things for an empty casket.
It was a beautiful service, one of Isaac's aunts says after, dabbing a tear away from her eye.
Camden would have been honored, one of Isaac's uncles agrees.
Isaac wants to shout, Camden wouldn't be anything because Camden is dead! Camden is dead and he's a liar and I hate him!
(Camden, please.)
No one holds Isaac's hand at the funeral.
-
Isaac Lahey is eleven and a half the first time his father hits him. No longer a distant presence nursing a drink while Isaac and Camden quietly talked and cleaned, Mr. Lahey is all at once in Isaac's life. He's a storm that's finally decided to make itself known, no longer content to sit and menace from the sidelines.
His face is contorted with ugly rage. Veins are prominent in his forehead and temples, like lightening accent marks in his stormcloud brow. His eyes are hazy with lightening strike fury and he's got whiskey blinders on, painting everything the color of the dredges at the bottom of the bottle.
Isaac's confused. He's terrified. He's pissed himself.
He's holding his face on the cold, dirty tile floor in a puddle of his own piss in his shitty kitchen, and his father's hovering over him like some merciless god and Isaac's just one of his peons. Useless, worthless.
His father says, It should've been you. Isaac feels each word like the blow it is.
(It should have been him.)
It takes him hours to get his hands to stop shaking and for his stomach to stop rolling. To get the bleeding in his mouth to taper off.
Isaac cries as he cleans the kitchen floor, bleach stinging his nostrils, and he curses Camden for breaking his promise.
-
Isaac Lahey is twelve, he's got serious nightmares, and he's a master at getting bloodstains out of his clothes. He has no friends and an abusive father and he cannot seem to do anything right. All he has are bruises and mediocre grades and small, nervous smiles for teachers who know what's going on, but never press for enough details to do anything.
He also has Camden's old stuff. At least, the old stuff of Camden's he hadn't destroyed already.
(One time his father caught him dismantling one of his Camden's sports trophies. All Isaac had wanted was the little plaque with Camden's name on it. His father smashed him in the mouth with the trophy. Knocked out a tooth and chipped another.
That was the first night ever with the basement freezer.)
He sleeps in Camden's old sweatshirts and often wakes with his body slick with nightmare sweat, and his wrists aching from having the sweatshirt fisted in his hands all night. One morning he wakes up and discovers that he sleeps with his arms across his chest, like a body in a casket.
He thinks it's fitting.
-
Isaac Lahey is thirteen, and sometimes he wakes up aching in a freezer, with a scream, a plea, Camden's name on his lips.
-
Isaac Lahey is fourteen and hasn't touched another living soul in a way that counted since the last time he saw Camden.
(He doesn't count the forced hugs at Camden's funeral, or his father hitting him.)
He doesn't realize how he absently touches everything he can get his hands on, even after the stove top burns him.
(If he did, he'd probably cry. Maybe cut off his hands? Maybe that's too drastic. But he's looking for affection, for love, for a positive response of any kind and he doesn't care how he gets it. He's a kid who's been denied food for so long the idea of it makes him shake, and he wants to gorge himself on it, even though his rational mind knows that if he just dove into it right away he'd get sick from it. It's probably better than the alternative, though.)
-
Isaac Lahey is almost sixteen when he meets Derek Hale. Derek is...Derek. Isaac doesn't really know how to describe him. Derek is a presence in the shadows, both a comfort and a worry. Derek is the bastard lovechild of beauty and tragedy. Derek is hard edges protecting a fleshy center. Derek is a suave smile with warning broadcasting in his kaleidoscope eyes.
Derek seduces Isaac with the benefits of being a werewolf: the ability to be stronger, be faster, be better.
But it's Derek's hand on his shoulder, the one that slides up and cups Isaac's neck, that's the kiss of death for Isaac. Isaac's eyes shudder closed as Derek's thumb strokes over his pulse point, and without thinking Isaac grabs a hold of Derek's elbow. He fists a handful of Derek's henley in his grip, and it feels like coming home.
Derek Bites him in the middle of the graveyard, knelt in front of Isaac for the first and last time.
Isaac keeps his eyes closed through it all, and thinks of Camden.
-
Isaac Lahey is sixteen, his father is dead, he's a werewolf, and for all the people around him, he's still fucking alone.
Erica and Boyd are the closest Isaac's ever had to friends, other than Camden of course. He loves them and they love him, but they couldn't explain it if they tried—it's like they became a pack and then they became a Pack, all when no one was looking. Their love is sudden and all encompassing, and for the way it roars through their veins, as much a beast as they themselves, it still leaves him feeling hollow. It's not the love and affection he craves, but it's a start.
Boyd and Erica are just as touch-starved as he is, though none of them will call it that. They touch each other in passing, standing close in a way that was uncomfortable before the Bite, before Pack. They touch each other absently. They touch each other with intent.
Erica spreads her legs and presses Isaac's face into her cunt as hard as she can, and Isaac feverishly runs his hands along the smooth, smooth expanse of her thighs. Boyd fists his hands tight in Isaac's curls yet always lets Isaac set the pace when he's getting blown. Isaac let's his hands drink their fill of Boyd's body, warm and solid and responsive beneath his palms. They always seem to settle one on Boyd's hip, and the other on the top of his thigh.
Isaac eats it all up. He loves them, and he'd let them do practically anything to him as long as they touch him.
(He doesn't think about how fucked up that is.)
As long as you're being safe about it, Derek sighs after the first time he catches them. He never joins, even when Erica asks, but he looks envious. His face is usually somewhere in the ballpark of stony, but Derek's got some really expressive eyes and they love to share his secrets.
(Isaac thinks Derek's just as touch-starved as the rest of them, and the least likely of them all to do anything about it. Sometimes while hunting the Kanima, Isaac wonders who the starvation will claim first: the Betas, or their Alpha.)
After a while of frenzied fucking, Isaac, Boyd and Erica's animalistic threesome becomes a twosome, with Isaac by the wayside. He expected it, he has eyes and he saw the way they looked at each other, but the loss of whatever the three of them had hurts just as much as his father's fists had.
(He's not stupid, either. He knows everyone leaves eventually.)
He sits in the train depot with Derek, before Boyd and Erica's official departing but after they'd begun withdrawing themselves, a tourniquet choking off the blood flow before a limb is amputated, and wonders if Derek feels it, too. He wonders if it's not even worse for Derek, as an Alpha and as a man who's lost his entire Pack before.
Sometimes, if he can manage it, he'll sit close to Derek, aiming for physical contact but accepting just close proximity. Isaac's got a taste for touch again, and even if it's not sexual like with Erica and Boyd, he'd like to continue getting his fix.
At first, Derek moves away, politely putting space between them. When he realizes what Isaac's doing, he stops, giving into the need he feels himself. He even puts his arm behind Isaac's head sometimes and feigns ignorance when Isaac leans back into it, revels in the touch of another person, especially that of his Alpha.
They don't talk about it.
-
Isaac Lahey is closer to seventeen than sixteen, the Kanima is dead but Jackson is alive, Erica's dead and Boyd is distant, and as hard as he tries Isaac can't get the world to stop spinning beneath his feet. He tries to dig his claws into the earth to find purchase, but the dirt in his grasp is loose and isn't that just his luck.
There are Alphas in town, there are people being murdered, there's no rest for the wicked.
(Sometimes Isaac wonders if staying human wouldn't have been so bad after all. He still gets tossed around plenty, the only differences are that now he can heal faster [so now while his body's physically okay, he's still fucked raw on the inside] and that the one throwing him around isn't his father.)
Things with Derek are strained. Derek is still his Alpha, Isaac can still feel his influence curled around his heart like a beast guarding its bounty, but Isaac is currently staring at the McCall's living room ceiling from the pull-out couch and he does not know when he'll see Derek next.
He can hear Melissa McCall, though, as she shuffles through the kitchen, making herself a pot of coffee before she goes to the hospital for her evening shift. He can feel Scott through the floor, feel Scott's heartbeat in his skull like someone's gently poking him in the back of the head.
Scott's...Scott, but also this weird other. Isaac can't make heads or tails of whether he's supposed to be Scott's ally, or if Isaac's waiting to be initiated into Scott's pack.
(Scott's still a Beta, but he doesn't feel like one. It simultaneously worries and calms Isaac, as a werewolf who already has an Alpha, as a confused teenager looking for stability, as a sometimes petty individual who's secretly glad everyone else is just as fucked up as he is.)
Melissa crosses through the living room and calls goodbye with an impressive mug of coffee steaming in her right hand. As she goes, she crouches and squeezes Isaac on the ankle. The McCall family's freedom with touch astounds, confuses, enraptures Isaac, and he's not sure whether he'd sooner lean into their warm hands or run away screaming, lest he get complacent.
(Isaac likes Scott, likes likes and genuinely likes him, and Isaac's probably never like liked someone and genuinely liked them as well. Hell, his list of people genuinely liked before Scott is short and sweet [Camden]. But sometimes he looks at Scott and he wants. It terrifies Isaac, because everyone leaves in the end, and going through loss like that again? Isaac's not sure if he'd be able to withstand that.)
Scott comes down the stairs a few minutes later, like Isaac's musing beckoned him. He's dressed down in his boxers and an old t-shirt and he smiles at Isaac sleepily.
You don't have to sleep down here, Scott says, and he sits down on the edge of the pull-out. Absently, he rubs at Isaac's ankle.
It's fine. The bed's already been made, Isaac replies, because it's true, and because the only other places to sleep in the McCall house are Melissa's bed, and Scott's. As much as Isaac wants to grab Scott by the front of the shirt and sleep with his nose to Scott's throat, he doesn't know how that would go down, in Scott's eyes or in Isaac's own sanity.
If you, uh...wanna talk about it. Talk about anything, y'know, I'm here, Scott says. The sincerity makes Isaac's chest hurt, and he pulls his leg free from Scott's grasp. Scott frowns, and his fingers twitch.
Thank you, Isaac whispers. For Scott's words. For being Isaac's friend. For letting Isaac into his home with minimal questions.
Scott says nothing, but he nods and squeeze's Isaac's ankle again. He makes eye contact with Isaac when he does it, like he's challenging Isaac to say something about it. The eye contact holds until Isaac cannot take it any more, and he shakes Scott's hand off his leg with a shaky laugh.
Get some sleep, Scott finally says as he rises.
Isaac falls asleep half an hour later with Scott's heartbeat in his ears and the ghost of Scott's grip tingling on his ankle, and he doesn't dream.
It's the best sleep he's gotten in ages.