Aftermath: Part I

Thunk. "Damn!

Thunk. "Fuck!"

Thunk. "Shit!"

His foot poised in mid-swing, Stiles slowly lowered it to the ground. It was, he now realized, impossible to vent one's anger satisfactorily when kicking a plastic garbage can. The dull, emotionless thunk produced by applying sneaker to plastic completely defeated the purpose of the action. Not even assaulting a can as big as the one he wheeled out to the curb every Wednesday could do it for him. How was he supposed to get rid of his anger when the recipient of his anger not only wouldn't dent but wouldn't even scratch despite his best efforts. "Arghhh!"

Having purged some of the anger from his system, Stiles hastily scanned the backyards of his neighbors. He fervently hoped that no one had witnessed his assault on the Stilenski family trash receptacle. Odd he lived with every day of his life; weird was just more than he could deal with today.

Stiles picked up the wastebasket he'd brought down from his room - the one HE said needed to be cleaned. He'd dropped it when the urge to damage something - anything – had overwhelmed him. He checked that he had actually remembered to empty it. A single, stubborn tissue clung to the bottom. Stiles reached in, plucked it out between two fingers and deposited it in the garbage can. He slammed the lid with a flourish but succeeded in producing only another unsatisfactory, dispiriting thunk for his effort.

The boy sighed as he walked across the yard to his house. He carried the wastebasket into the house and on into the laundry. Dropping it in the laundry tub, he turned on the hot water. While the water warmed, he pulled down a bottle of bleach from the shelf, splashed a generous portion into the bottom of the basket, and then filled it with steaming water.

Kill all odors! Stiles rolled up his sleeves, grabbed a sponge and swished the bleach solution around. He dumped the dirty water into the tub and reached for the spray nozzle to rinse out the dirt his efforts had dislodged. He watched the soapy water swirl out of the wastebasket and down the drain. Setting it upside down in the tub, he left it to dry.

The washing machine was still running behind him. He'd tossed in his sheets and set it to the hottest wash cycle available. He seemed to recall something about cotton shrinking in hot water but figured what the hell. The sheets might not fit his bed anymore but he dared tall, dark, and… The censor riding herd on his conscious mind balked at accepting any of the adjectives that bubbled up out of his subconscious. Finally, with a grimace at its lameness, he finished the thought: tall, dark and scary to say there was any trace of anything but soap smell in his bed. He kicked the comforter out of his way. It would be going in next although he thought, just to be on the safe side, he wouldn't use steam sanitize on it.

Stiles slowly pivoted around considering the cleaning supplies available to him in the laundry room. Maybe if he ever actually cleaned his room he'd have a better idea of what to use. The agreement he had with the Sheriff called for him to maintain his room in a state that kept it off the EPA's toxic site list. In exchange for this promise, their housekeeper would, like the angel of death, pass his room by. In practice this meant that he shoveled the debris out of his room twice a month and vacuumed once a quarter.

Stiles and his Dad had reached this understanding the year he turned thirteen. Since then, the elder Stilinski hadn't been in his son's room except by invitation or his confinement for illness. Stiles was confident that his Dad would never notice the changes he intended to make to his room.

He decided to proceed as though his room was a crime scene that needed to be sterilized. If Derek was correct about Scott's developing wolfy senses, there might be, he realized, residual odors on almost every surface in his room. He had wood surfaces, so he'd need furniture polish; he had a cleaner for his computer and its components upstairs already; and there was his window, which would require glass cleaner.

But then there was the floor. He didn't have wall-to-wall carpeting so he had a two-part problem. He could vacuum the small area rug; but remembering Derek's unnerving performance in his room, he doubted that would be enough. Shampooing seemed like overkill for so small an area so he pulled down from a shelf the carpet freshener left over from the unhappy puppy experiment. As for the rest of the floor, he would have to mop it, he guessed. He tossed the furniture polish, window cleaner, carpet freshener, and a bottle of bleach based cleanser for the floor into the mop bucket. Between the lemon scented furniture polish, the ammonia in the glass cleaner, the cloying, floral scented carpet freshener and the smell of chlorine from the floor cleaner he doubted that even Derek could identify any remaining odors that might linger in his room.

With a mop in one hand and the mop bucket in the other he went forth to vanquish the pitiful remnants of his male, adolescent fantasies. All because that damn werewolf came into his room, scared the piss out of him and left him dazed and confused. About one thing he wasn't confused, Stiles knew that what Derek had implied was not true. He knew that!

He was comfortable with the team he played for. What he'd felt yesterday was fear. As he'd told Derek, fear wasn't an aphrodisiac for him. Maybe, just maybe, there had been something going on below the waist when Derek was breathing on his neck like a fucking furnace but he was a teenage boy. Pencil sharpeners did it for him.

Stiles stopped in front of his bedroom door. The cleaning supplies and the vacuum cleaner he'd picked up on a separate trip downstairs were arrayed in front of him. He stepped into his room and slipped off the earbuds for his iPod. He slipped it into its dock next to his computer. Turning it on, he set the volume control as high as he could stand. Mindless work required mindless music with lots of bass.