Ignite: Teen Wolf (reader version)
s1 au
pairing: stiles stilinski x fem!reader
chapter 1 💀🩹
chapter 2 💀
chapter 3 💕
chapter 4 💀🩹
chapter 5 🩹💕
chapter six
Ignite: Teen Wolf 💀🩹s1 au
paring: stiles stilinski x ofc
Howling: Maze Runner
tst au (film and book canon)
pairing: thomas x fem!reader
chapter 1 💀
chapter 2 💀💕
chapter 3💀🩹
chapter 4💀🩹
One Word from You: The Artful Dodger 💕 🩹
hypothetical s2
pairing: jack dawkins x belle fox
We’re Overdue for a Revival: The Artful Dodger 🩹
modern au
pairing: jack dawkins x belle fox
One-Shots
Softly, Tenderly: The Artful Dodger 💕🩹
post s1 finale
pairing: jack dawkins x belle fox
His Eyes, His Mouth: Teen Wolf 🩹💀
end of s3
pairing: stiles x fem!reader (she/her)
Don't Go Where I Can't Follow: Teen Wolf 🩹
post s3
pairing: stiles x reader (no use of y/n)
Written in the Stars: Teen Wolf 💦💕
college!au
pairing: stiles x fem!reader (no use of y/n)
She Sure Knows How to Haunt: Teen Wolf 🩹
s5
pairing(s): stiles x fem!reader (no use of y/n)
bg!theo x reader
If I Could Lose You I Would: Teen Wolf🩹
Part II 💕
college!au
pairing(s): stiles x fem!reader (no use of y/n)
theo x reader
bg!ofc x stiles
goodnight n go: Teen Wolf 💕
human!au, aparment!au
pairings: stiles x fem!reader (no use of y/n)
once i'm yours i'm always yours: teen wolf 🩹
s5
pairing(s): stiles x fem!reader (no use of y/n)
𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒅𝒂𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝑰 𝒉𝒂𝒅 𝒉𝒆𝒍𝒅 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒍𝒂𝒔𝒕 //stiles stilinski imagine
characters: stiles stilinski, fem!reader
pairing(s): stiles x you
word count: 5.4k
tags: exes to ???, hurt some comfort, set in s5
warnings: descriptions of a panic attack, mentions of blood, i think that's it, just my usual disjointed stream of consciousness
a/n: a very belated part 2 to this. i am not happy with the ending, but this has been gathering dust for literally half a year, so i'm releasing it to be with its own kind. go on! get out of here! get!!
Stiles has been trying for the past fifteen minutes, maybe more, to pay attention—and he's failing. Miserably.
A truck tears down the street. The fridge hums in your kitchen. His thoughts buzz around the air like flies circling something well past dead.
It’s driving him crazy.
Every sound is swelling in Stiles’s ear canal, compounding with each tick of the vintage clock mounted above his head. He’s waiting for the shoe to drop, for the split-second of peace to end, for someone to burst through the door with another earth-shattering revelation that’ll finally tip him over the edge and snap his psyche in two.
Stiles’s head jerks over towards the window when someone screams outside. It quickly fades into giggles. Just kids, laughing, playing. Safe.
It’s safe, in your living room, in Beacon Hills.
Stiles unclenches his hands and smooths them out over his thighs. He counts out seconds in his head, tries to focus on spelling the numbers in the air in front of him, zeroes in on all the lines and loops of the letters, instead of, well, every other fucking thing going on in his life lately.
It doesn’t work.
Stiles doesn’t forget easily. It’s a blessing and a curse. His brain is filled with useless little scraps of knowledge that he can’t toss out with all the other, y’know, important things like turn in this assignment and remember to take your meds. Instead, it’s all a knotted cycle of—Hey, did you know that StarCraft was originally supposed to be about space vampires? Did you know that in ancient Rome werewolves were called versipellis? Did you know that versipellis means ‘turnskin’?
Did you know that her favorite flowers are poppies—scarlet though, like in The Wizard of Oz, not yellow or orange? Did you know that she loves the rain, but hates when her socks get wet because it feels like she’s wearing soggy slices of bread? Did you know that she’s only happy if she smiles with her teeth?
Hey, did you know that the smell of laundry detergent makes me sick now because every day it’s getting harder to remember the scent of her on my sheets? Did you know that my skull is fracturing behind my temples because every single piece of her echoes in the recesses of my mind until she’s the only thing that’s real?
Did you know that sometimes I wish I could ram my head into a fucking tree and forget I ever even met her?
Stiles scrubs at his eyes and tries to reorient himself.
He knows he’s here, in your living room, bleeding sluggishly from a gash on his knee—it hasn’t seeped through the tear in his pants yet, so, as far as he’s concerned, it’s a non-issue. Just one of the thousands of thoughts skittering through his nervous system.
There are far more pressing things at the forefront of his overactive brain than a skinned knee.
There’s Theo—fucking Theo—and his pack of Chimeras, searching for the Deucalion of all people…or more accurately, all monsters. And then there’s the Dread Doctors and their beast—literally, they don’t even have a name for it yet. All they do know is it’s tearing through Beacon Hills and leaving behind a string of bodies that evaporate. And, of course, Lydia’s trapped with Valek—because Lydia’s always trapped with a psychopath or two—and Malia’s on a matricidal quest that Stiles can’t help but feel a little responsible for because maybe if he hadn’t broken up with her, she wouldn’t have felt so alone. Maybe, if he hadn’t been so wrapped up in his own bullshit, she wouldn’t have had to turn to Theo—fucking Theo—for help. And then there’s you.
There’s always you.
The gang’s in the middle of a clusterfuck of apocalyptic proportions, and Stiles can’t stop thinking about you. Thinking about how one of you could very well die tomorrow, tonight, in the next ten seconds, and you’d never hear him say, “I love you,” again. You’d never know that he still means it. That he’ll always mean it.
The heel of his foot taps against the floor rhythmically as Stiles devolves into a train of untrained thoughts. He can feel the tumble he took in the morgue with every jolt that rips through the fibers of his calf to the tear in his knee. Stiles tries to focus on the pain, that wonderful lingering ache.
He rolls his ankle a few times. Swallows the dirt in his mouth. Pushes his bloody sneaker up onto his toes and does his best to fidget silently.
Stiles should say something, do something about his knee probably, but he can’t. He’s too busy thinking, wondering if he should ask Lydia’s mom to sign him up for ECT too, if it would be better to fry all the memories out of his head than live like this.
He knows that he isn’t a werewolf—it’s impossible to forget, really—but he still can’t think of a single place in Beacon Hills that doesn’t reek of failure to him. The smell must be so putrid even humans can sense it. He’s always known that it’s a mindnumbingly small town, but, fuck, when did it get this small? The streets this suffocating?
Lately, everything seems to whir around him in a tunnel of flashing colors and sounds; a mix of the past, the present, and every horrible thing Stiles can imagine yet to come. It feels a lot like Stiles is watching himself on the other side of a pixelated screen, frowning at the skinny sad sack wearing his face so pitifully–but he knows he’s not. Stiles knows, unfortunately, that he’s really sitting on your couch, the one that always gives him away because the leather squeaks every time his leg moves.
He’s not a god from on high; he’s just an idiot thinking about the last time he kissed someone like he actually meant it—like he’s about to be frozen in carbonite, but it’s all okay because the only thing that matters that you can still breathe and he can feel it on his lips.
Stiles’s knee stops bouncing.
There you go again, slipping into his thoughts without any provocation—when Stiles is actively trying not to think about you—and, fuck, now he’s thinking about what you meant to him, and the way you redefined the entire world without even trying, and that time you doodled poppies all over his sneakers with the highlighter you were supposed to be studying with, how he wouldn’t let you wipe it off after because he was proud to wear something that marked him as yours.
In all of Stiles’s saddest memories, there's a boy with amber eyes, and he's smiling.
You’re still talking, filling the empty air, completely unaware of Stiles’s internal meltdown.
Or, maybe you are. Maybe that’s why you’re talking to the room.
“Stop moving.”
Okay, so, maybe you were talking to him after all.
Stiles barely grimaces as you dab at his knee with a damp towel, carefully blotting away congealed blood and ash. His eyes narrow in on your fingers, the way they tremble every time he lets out a sharp breath or twitches.
“Sorry,” Stiles mumbles, but truthfully he’s not really aware of anything but the rivulets and confluences of the veins on the back of your hand.
There’s a vague stinging sensation when the wash cloth presses into the gouge in his leg. He tries to remember how exactly it got there instead of the smell of your shampoo. Citrus and honeysuckle—no. Nope. Smoke and blood. Disappearing corpses and hybrid freshmen.
Stiles wonders what it is this time—what’s out there snatching bodies and blowing up his Jeep. He flips through his rolodex of monster mythology and lets his mind drift into the plausibility of fire demons and dragons until all he can smell is ash and anguish.
“Stop being so compliant.”
Stiles glances at you. You’re frowning at him, brow all pinched and wrinkled with furious concern.
You catch him looking and quickly curl your lips into a strained smirk, “It’s freaking me out.”
“Sorr–” Stiles’s apology withers under the precision of your pointed stare. He manages a little smirk back at you, “My bad, Nurse Ratched. I didn’t know that scrubbing my gaping wound with a 5 grit towel was supposed to be therapeutic. Better?”
You scoff, but you do look a little less worried after his sad attempt at sarcasm. “You know, I really can’t tell.”
The towel makes a slapping sound when you drop it into the bowl of soapy water by his feet. Stiles watches the water turn pink with his blood until you coax him away from the ripples with a soft, scolding click of your tongue.
“That was really stupid, you know,” you say after his knee is clean, fiddling with a package of gauze. The wrapper crinkles; it’s obnoxiously abrasive in Stiles’s responding silence.
Stiles clears his throat and directs his gaze over your shoulder. “You’re going to have to be a little more specific; stupid’s my specialty.”
“Blazing ball of fire. Human shield. Stiles well-done with a side of charred skin.”
Oh, that.
Stiles flickers his gaze back towards you. You have the beginnings of a grisly bruise blooming on your shoulder. He didn’t realize you hit the wall so hard when he shoved you out of the way. He swallows a sticky pit of guilt-relief-love-love-love lodged in his throat and manages to speak without choking on it, “First of all, it wasn’t a ball of fire—life isn’t a Jerry Lee Lewis song–”
You open your mouth, undoubtedly to argue, but Stiles continues before you have the chance, “Secondly, we were in a morgue; human shields were the only option.”
“Then you should’ve used a dead one.” You grit your teeth and press the pad of gauze on his knee with just enough force to make him yelp.
Stiles can’t decide if it was on purpose, but he’d like to think so that he can be irritated instead of sad—but, despite his best efforts, he’s not irritated. He’s…Stiles can’t quite put a name to the feeling simmering in his gut, but he knows he doesn’t like it. It’s uncomfortable, and sharp, and won’t be ignored.
He lets out a sharp sigh through his nose, tries to push out all the air still in his lungs–expel the undeniable proof of you still rooted in the tissue. That something still rattles around his throat like a chicken bone when Stiles snipes, “I’ll keep that in mind next time a fire monster tries to kill you.”
“Stiles.”
You shouldn’t be allowed to say his name.
Stiles watches your lips wrap around the sounds—how your tongue touches the roof of your mouth, presses against the back of your front teeth, and falls again. His throat swells ever-so slightly, and his heart stops. Cowed by two syllables. Pathetic.
“I had to,” Stiles finally whispers. And he did. He had to.
You still smell like smoke and maybe just a little bit of fear. A vicious thought slithers through his brain stem as he studies the bruising under your bloodshot eyes: Stiles is never there when you need him. He always seems to show up right after.
Your eyelids look heavy and so does your frown. Stiles is sure you got just about as much sleep as he did the last few weeks—the last year—which is approximately none. You still bandage his knee with meticulous care; every diagonal line is precise and neat, far better than he would’ve done even without the hand tremors.
Stiles doesn’t know exactly what he cut his knee on, but it doesn’t really matter. He knows how: You screamed, and he jumped. Self-proclaimed supernatural detective, and what did he come up with when it came down to it? A big, fat, pathetic nothing. What was Stiles actually capable of in the face of evil? Shoving you into a steel wall and bleeding out on the floor.
Scott had to show up, red eyes glowing in the dark like a total badass, and save the day. Again.
It’s always more terrifying than it should be. Stiles should be used to it by now, but he always feels like this, like a scared little boy. Desperate. Alone.
Human.
Something cool cups his cheek.
Stiles’s eyes dart up from the floor, and—oh. You’re touching him.
Your eyes glisten like fireflies in the low light of your living room, and you’re just so…here, really here with him, like you haven’t been in a long time—like you’re finally on the same frequency, really in his life again instead of just a painfully familiar face in the hallway.
“It was still stupid,” you murmur with a soft smile, more fond than chiding.
The couch squeaks, dips, and Stiles swears can feel the warmth of your thigh, even through the agonizing few inches of separation. He manages to choke out a pathetic little, “Fair,” through his sticky throat.
Your head tilts with the narrowing of your eyes, and your hair spills down your back. Stiles’s gaze darts towards the bared line of your collarbone, traces over the smooth stretch of your skin, and his lungs collapse when the trail leads to the angry red mark on your shoulder. It looks like it’s starting to swell, and the edges are purpling—Stiles almost misses your quiet voice through the sickening echo of your body crushing against a solid slab of steel and the little wounded cry you tried to swallow after.
“That’s a bad face,” you hum, squishing his cheeks until his mouth is contorted into something that vaguely resembles a smile. You study his face with a solemn expression, dramatically so, in a futile attempt to get him to smile. “Nevermind, that’s worse. Haunting, actually.”
Stiles does manage a little grin at that, a ghost of a smile that feels so heavy it drags his spine down until he’s propping it up with his elbows on his thighs. His bandaged knee throbs, but it’s distant, soon muddied into something indistinguishable from the spasming behind his ribs. He tries to breathe through it, but the next twinge crests with a devastating billow from the past.
You used to be friends—best friends—but Stiles always knew you were supposed to be more. He remembers when things changed.
You were both squished together on his bed, thoughts muddled and lips loose with too little sleep and too much Red Bull. He remembers how badly he wanted to kiss you, but you were both still pretending not to like each other like that, pointedly ignoring the fact that everyone knew there was something more between the two of you.
Stiles had meant to ask you about the ash corpses they found in Pompeii because he knew you’d already know that the new DNA analysis disproved the lore, and then he’d probably ask you about the plausibility of mummies, given everything going on lately, maybe divert to zombies and how much he hated the Dawn of the Dead remake.
Are the undead fundamentally bad guys? Do you even like talking about mythology? Am I boring you?
Can you breathe when I’m close to you? Can you tell that I’m not?
Instead, Stiles blurted out everything he wasn’t supposed to say, and it hovered between the two of you like cheap cologne.
He remembers he was about to take it all back, wonders what would’ve happened if he had, how different his life might’ve gone—but then you said, “Are you sure? No take-backs?” all small and hopeful before he could, and Stiles was suckerpunched with the realization that he’d die to keep your face from falling.
This thing between you, it was supposed to be more than platonic, but Stiles still stammered his way through it. He stumbled through the darkness of inexperience, using all the walls you’d both put up for balance, and whispered, “Yeah.”
You went quiet for so long Stiles thought about suffocating himself with his pillow, but then you spoke, and everything changed.
“Finally.”
Stiles remembers life before you too, life before everything changed. He remembers being so irritated by Scott’s dopey smile when he talked about Allison, how he talked about love like he could finally see the hidden universe that only the knowing people can live in.
Scott was sprawled out on his bed, grinning at his ceiling like a dumbass, and Stiles just had to ask, “Yeah, but what’s it like? Really? No Taylor Swift bullshit,” because Stiles always had to know.
Scott grinned at him upside down and sighed, “It’s…awesome.”
Stiles just gave him a flat look. “Deep. What is that: Plato’s Symposium?”
Scott threw something at his head. Stiles can’t remember what, but he’ll never forget what he said next.
“It’s awesome, but you’ll be pissed when it happens to you.”
Stiles went silent then, and, for a moment, he was convinced by the palpable confidence in Scott’s tone. He didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to give any credibility to Scott’s frankly goofy explanation, but he had to. The question was a living thing, just slithered out of his mouth before he could bite down on its neck. “...but, how do you even know for sure? What if it’s all just a swarm of hormones and teenage stupidity?”
Scott just smiled at him, infuriatingly content, and said, “Oh, you’ll know.”
Stiles thought he was an idiot, just a guy who got laid for the first time—but he didn’t know then.
He knows now, and he can’t unknow it.
Not when you keep making him smile when he’s about to cry.
It’s always been that way, Stiles realizes, something he’d always idly noticed but didn’t quite appreciate enough at the time. At school, and parties, and lacrosse games, Stiles was never really happy until you showed up. It was some miraculous, mythical thing, those nights you had a million more important things to do, a hundred better people to see, but he still got you all to himself under moonlight and smoggy skies. He can’t remember when that changed—maybe around the time miraculous, mythical things stopped being myths.
Stiles knows he’s spiraling. Knows he should stop biting his thumbnail. Knows he should say something of substance—or non-substance, just say something, say anything so that you don’t have to keep carrying on a conversation with your blurry reflection on the blank tv screen.
It’s just.
When Stiles looked at you back then, something good popped inside his chest, and all the bad rushed out of him through his toothy grin and giddy laughter—and he finally got it, what Scott was trying to say, why he couldn’t come up with a word better than awesome, because watching you love something made it entirely new for him. Chopin wasn’t so boring, Poe wasn’t so bleak, and Stiles—Stiles didn’t think he was all that bad when he knew that you loved him. He thought he was pretty good, actually; he had to be if someone like you saw him and still loved him.
Holy. He was holy once. And now? Now, what the fuck was he other than sad?
You’ll be pissed when it happens to you.
Stiles gets that part now too. He spent so long dreading when it would happen, when—not if, when—he’d fuck up so royally he’d finally see the sun eclipse in your eyes and watch everything go dark again. He got a glimpse of it when he broke up with you, and that still feels so horrifically ironic he thinks he might get sick all over your mom’s expensive oriental rug, right next to the little scarlet droplets of his blood.
That’s what loving you feels like now: an open wound. Constantly telling himself he’s over it and immediately contradicting himself when someone orders coffee with too much cream or pronounces ‘niche’ the wrong way.
Please, explain to me how in the phonetic hell you get nitch from n-i-c-h-e.
Maybe you should focus a little more on taking out the ‘e’ and a little less on correcting your girlfriend’s grammar if you want me to s-u-c-k your d-i-c—
Stiles grins a little at the memory of how quickly he shut you up with a kiss.
He spent a lot of time dreading the end, but he also spent a lot of time dreaming about the future. Imagining a life with you outside of Beacon Hills and the ever-present fear of danger that would never happen—Stiles almost took you to senior prom. He almost kissed you on the lacrosse field. He almost told you his mom would've loved you. He almost created a ‘college board’ with red string for way too far away from you, yellow for maybe with the right scholarship, and green for daily coffee date distance. You almost had greasy pizza Sundays and milkshake mustache Fridays. You almost fed him cake with your hands and a diamond ring on your finger. He almost convinced you to name your dog Jabba the Pup and your first kid Zelda.
Almost. Almost. Almost.
But it didn’t end like that. In the end, it was raining, but Stiles could tell that you were crying, and he didn’t have the courage to ask you to stay.
Stiles wants to write a better epilogue now, an epilogue where he finally ends up with you.
“Kiss me.”
Stiles blinks slowly, shocked that the pitiful little plea came from him—but the words don’t stop spilling out of his mouth, “Please, let me kiss you.”
“Stiles,” you let out a little laugh at his shamelessness, all wide-eyed and breathless, your mouth cutely curled around your surprise.
God, that mouth.
“I don’t know about you,” Stiles licks his lips and shakes his head a little, “but I’m so fucking tired of keeping up this pathetic little shrivel of self-respect.” And fuck, is he ever. He feels a lot like getting on his hands and knees and begging you to kiss him. He just might if you wait a second longer.
You chew on your lip and exhale shallowly. “This is a bad idea.”
Stiles nods and moves towards you, “Terrible.”
He can see your mind turning behind the little gleam of pleased-scared-dazed in your eyes, and a flicker of hope flares in his chest.
“You broke up with Malia, like less than a month ago.”
Well, so much for that flame.
Stiles relights the wick of desperation with a stubborn purse of his lips. “Irrelevant.”
“Stiles–”
“I knew you missed screaming my name.”
You laugh, even though it’s a bad joke and an even worse attempt at flirting, and then do your best to look annoyed. “I hate you.”
Stiles grins, “You love me.”
A beat, and then the room turns somber, the air thick with a million yesterdays and the possibility of today.
“We’ll regret it tomorrow,” you finally say, slowly, like you’re trying to convince yourself more than him.
“Probably…” Stiles’s voice drops to a low murmur as turns towards you, chin tilting as he starts to lean in, “don’t really care, frankly.”
Stiles waits for a moment, close enough to feel the heat of your breath against his lips, just in case you want to slip away from him again—and then you let out a soft, wounded whimper of relief when he cups your cheek, and he has to kiss you, if only get a taste of that sound.
Stiles kisses you the same way the ocean eats away at the shoreline, slowly and with devastating patience. It consumes you; the brush of his lips and the slide of tongue carve through your carefully laid plans and all the levelheaded reasoning you recite in your head every time he smiles at you.
The hand Stiles has clenched on top of his thigh slides to your waist, and you can feel the warmth of his pinky against the strip of skin bared by your rising shirt—that seems to wake him up.
Your lips stay puckered for a moment after Stiles pulls away, and when your eyelids finally flutter open again, you find his eyes wide open and unblinking. The amber is almost completely obscured by the darkness of his dilated pupils; you get stuck in the oil spill, and so does he.
Stiles stares at your face intently, gaze flickering over every feature as his breath stills. He doesn’t loosen his grip on your waist, doesn’t seem to want to, and it’s incredibly distracting.
You lick your lower lip and swallow thickly, “That was….”
“Uh huh,” Stiles nods slowly and fixates on your lips, still shiny and wet with his saliva.
The intimacy of the moment settles over the room, heavy and charged. At some point, your hand migrated to the firm muscle of his chest, and you finally realize that you can feel his heart thudding against his ribs underneath your fingers, the warmth of his skin through his t-shirt, the rise and fall of his chest—and Stiles looks at you with so much desperation it feels like a physical blow.
You smile at him, a little shy, and lift your shoulder slightly, “Don’t gotta be nervous; it’s just me.”
Despite the racing of his heart, Stiles’s expression sharpens. The edge of his mouth twitches into a smirk, a hint of familiar smugness that licks up your spine.
“Just you, huh?” Stiles repeats, his eyes trailing over your face to your hand pressed against his breastbone. “Just the girl who evaporates all my brain cells without even trying?” His thumb strokes over the inside of your wrist as he shifts closer, “Yeah, you’re definitely nothing to be nervous about.”
You grin and relax into his hold on your hip, “Don’t know what to do with me, huh.”
Stiles grins crookedly and shakes his head, “I know exactly what to do with you; I’m just physically incapable of ever being cool about it.”
The corner of your mouth tugs into a soft smile as you study his face, taking your time to get your fill of him after a year of being afraid to get caught. His eyes have always been your favorite part of his face. They’re so big and beautiful, unfairly long-lashed and pretty in any lighting.
So easy to get lost in. So hard to look away from.
Stiles looks at you for a moment, his eyes lingering on the smile on your face. The desire for you is visible in his gaze—the need to touch you, to hold you, to be close to you—is a tangible, tangled thing, and it snares your every intention with alarming ease. There’s an intrusive feeling wriggling up your brainstem, something that feels a whole lot like love.
His thumb traces over the inside of your wrist, the pad of it rubbing against the thin, sensitive skin for a moment. Despite his ever-present exhaustion and spike of fear, his touch is soft, almost reverent; it makes it hard to think.
“Can I…” Stiles trails off, but he makes his intent clear when his gaze drops to your lips.
You squeeze his uninjured knee and nod, “Yeah.”
He squeezes your waist in return, his eyes roaming over your face, still trying to make sure you’re real. There’s a fragility to his gaze that you’ve never seen before—something so desperately naked that it almost hurts to look at.
“You have no idea how much I’ve thought about this,” Stiles murmurs.
You want to argue that you absolutely do know how much he’s thought about this—every second of the day if he’s been half as miserable as you were last year, but Stiles kisses you before you can do anything other than sigh.
His tongue tangles with yours, and he tastes like summer, all sunshine and rain. It’s grounding, to be held so close while you’re falling apart for him. He swallows your sighs and whines with deftness that only comes from a lifetime of familiarity—and that’s what it feels like, a lifetime, with him and waiting for him in the same breath.
“God, I missed you,” Stiles mumbles into the kiss. “I can’t do another year of no you.”
You don’t reply for a moment, and because he’s Stiles, he immediately misinterprets it in a million different buzzing what-ifs.
And then you whisper, “Missed you too.”
Your words settle something itchy in his chest.
The tension eases from his shoulders and the muscles in his face sag—he seems to deflate a little as his eyes close and he lets out a long breath. Relieved. Stiles lifts the hand that’s not holding yours and smooths the hair back from your face, his fingers pausing to trail over your jaw. It feels intimate, like he’s clinging to you for comfort and protecting you from everything all at once. He looks like he wants to say something, but then he just licks his lips and kisses you again.
It’s desperate this time. A frantic need to make up for lost time, and maybe a little fear that this is all you’ll have.
You wish you were different people; you can’t help but think it, even as Stiles guides you back against the couch. You can’t help but wish that you and Stiles could have something easy and normal. Instead, you’re…this, here, in the dark, with the rest of the world waiting just outside the door, salivating for the chance to douse any flicker of light. It’s entirely possible that you’ll both pretend none of this is real in the light of day, even though it’s the realest thing you know—but you don’t want to stop. You’re not stupid enough to think that it won’t hurt to pull away, but you’ll do anything for another minute of this. The blissful nothing in your head after a year of misery. Anything.
Stiles tugs your hand up to his mouth and dissolves all rational thought with a kiss to your palm as he nuzzles gently against your pulse. The thump-thump-thump is a soothing metronome against his lips. “Beautiful,” Stiles’s voice is hoarse with desire, but it feels like he’s saying so much more, not just telling you how lovely you are, but begging you to stay…and you want to.
He kisses you on the forehead, the corners of your lids, the line of your nose, the fullness of your trembling bottom lip. Every single one of his kisses leaves an indelible mark on your skin, sears like a brand, and you can’t take your eyes off him, not for a second. “Beautiful,” he whispers again, “You’re so, so beautiful.”
Stiles is pretty sure he’s never going to get enough of you, even if it means overdosing after months of sobriety. He wants to be closer, wants to press you closer and never let you go. Wants to crawl inside of you and hide there, where everything is okay and nothing bad can ever touch him. And, yeah, if he wasn’t busy bunching the hem of your tank top over your rib cage, he’d probably cringe at how decidedly creepy that is, but he’s distracted by how silky your skin is, how warm and alive you are on his lap.
His girl is perfect—all sweet curves and soft skin, looking up at him with those hazy eyes that makes him want to keep you forever. It’s too much, and Stiles can’t think past the sound of your voice, so sweet and breathy and desperate. Before he can even consider somewhere slightly more romantic than your couch, he flips you onto your back and swallows the cute little gasp you let out in response.
Stiles can’t help the way affection washes over him when he looks at you. The way you’re spread out underneath him, all flushed and completely his for the moment. Stiles has never been much of a believer, but he thinks maybe god was doing something right when he made you.
His fingers clench around the fabric of your shirt, and he pauses, looks at you through his lashes, and pants, “Is this okay?”
He looks like he wants to devour you, eat you up, until you’re just pieces to lick from his fingers–and you’re more than happy to let him. He can’t leave you, after all. He can’t leave if he consumes you. Something about the way Stiles squeezes your thigh makes you think he’s thinking the exact same thing.
The “oh I could definitely write this fanfic in under 5000 words and it really wouldn’t take me that long” voice in your head is actually the devil speaking
i had a sixth sense that you posted some kind of brilliant writing piece, so i got on tumblr and here you are and i can't wait to read whatever beautiful masterpiece you've created 😩🙏💕
tbh this is at least half of my motivation to post in these trying times
I'm so sorry to bother you, if it's convenient, can you write another Stiles x Reader exes to lovers series? I LIVED for "if I could lose you, I would" and I'm absolutely dying for more, (smut is always welcome😭 but 100% not a requirement) I shed ACTUAL tears for some of your fic your so crazy talented and this is coming from an Anhedonic so its crazy you got a reaction, like your writing is a miracle 🫢 Thank youu muah <33
stop :'( :') i live on praise alone, so thank you for the much-needed sustenance. coincidentally (or maybe not because exes to lovers might be my favorite trope for stiles) the fic i working on was another exes to lovers verse. i just posted it for your reading pleasure.
wishing you all the good vibes 💖 and very excited whenever you post anything, whether it's a fic or a brilliant snippet like the one you just released 😫💖
please please excuse my atrociously long response time. thank you so much for the sweetness and support. i got a gig writing policy for my state’s government, and i would like to think it is entirely thanks to all the virtual good vibes 💖💖💖
oᥒᥴᥱ ι'm ყoᥙrs ι'm ᥲᥣᥕᥲყs ყoᥙrs //stiles stilinski imagine
characters: stiles stilinski, fem!reader, mentioned malia tate
pairing(s): stiles x you
word count: 4k
tags: exes to ???, hurt some comfort, set in s5
warnings: some light emotional cheating, i think that's it, sad boy hours, *pats stiles’s head* this boy can fit so much trauma in here
a/n: long time no see. i've missed you my babies, and thank you so much for all the love while i was gone. i'm back with my usual overdose of angst and em dashes. i can't help it; i have a sickness. also, the timing of when stiles and malia got together is a little fudged, so they probably started dating in 4b. UPDATE. Part 2 is here now
It’s an icy slice of fear that wakes you up. A white flash of ‘fight or flight’ behind your sleep-sticky lids. A rattling that doesn’t belong to the pitter-patter of sleet or the whiplash of wind against your bedroom window. You sit up on your forearm, peek out from behind your fleece blanket, and pray until you’re nauseous that there isn’t a pair of glowing eyes waiting for you on the other side of the glass.
The sleet leaves angry rivulets in the dirt-smudged panes. Sad little lines of streaming water, flooding in time with the choppy squall—you can’t help but think it looks like weeping.
A soft sigh falls from your mouth and stirs the stilted air in the room: No skulking eyes…but a foreboding sense of unease still looms above your head like the plumes of steely clouds outside your window. They swallow every trace of starlight and shift every so often in your peripheral vision, almost like they’re alive.
The rattling sounds again, soft but deafening in the darkness. It’s a familiar sound, someone scrambling on the loose tiling of your roof, but a forgotten one. It's strange, sweet-sharp, and out of place in your current reality.
A noise that shouldn’t exist outside of a memory.
Stiles spills into your room and lands on his knees, dripping water onto the hardwood floor. His hair is plastered to his forehead from the storm outside, and the dark clouds are a mocking reflection of the look on his face.
The moon has eclipsed all the sunlight in his eyes, and it feels so, so cold.
For a moment, you think you’re dreaming, or maybe you’re still stuck in that luminescent oil slick spill between sleep and consciousness. Stiles looks like something from a dream—from a nightmare. He’s a boy, but he isn’t. He’s there, but he isn’t. He’s lost to something you can’t see, swept up in the storm and turned into something else.
The glow of your phone illuminates the pinch of your brow, the squint of your bleary eyes. 3:27 am. Stiles used to sneak in through your window a couple times a week, even during the day, just to avoid the parental inquisition. He still does sometimes, rarely, only when Beacon Hills is on the verge of collapsing—and it always seems to be 3 in the morning.
He only ever needs you at 3 in the morning now.
It makes you feel a little sick, the reminder that the only string tying you together now is barbed wire.
You sit up in your bed and wait for Stiles to say something—to move—but he doesn’t. He just sits there, soaked to the bone on his knees, and stares at something beyond the shifting shadows on your bedroom walls.
“Stiles?”
Stiles doesn’t reply. Doesn’t even make a sound.
You crawl out of your bed and sit down on the floor next to him, draping a woven blanket over his shoulders. It almost matches his flannel, blue and checkered. It’s a little thing that would’ve made you smile before, mostly because Stiles would get this warm look in his eyes when you did: so fond it felt like worship.
It’s fall. The air smells like apples and earth. You watch the shadows of little fish swim in jagged circles through murky lake water. Stiles is a warm presence against your side.
He buries his nose in your hair and hums, “You like the pieces.”
A fish breaks from the group and bubbles near the surface. Its silver scales gleam in the setting sun: a piece of a fractured landscape, a detail that steals all the color in your peripheral vision.
You watch the fish swirl for a moment, almost like it’s dancing, and then shrug with a little grin. “I guess.”
You feel Stiles smile against your temple.
“Me too.”
Now, the only color your retinas can detect is black.
Stiles’s pupils swallow his face, and they stick to everything like tar. Seep into the room and stain the moonlight until the blue haze over his skin looks more sickly than luminous. He looks alarmingly corpse-like, so still on your floor, slimy from the storm keening outside—hollowed out from the storm rotting inside.
You sigh after a moment; a soft little sound to break the surface of strained silence coating the room. “Come on.”
It doesn’t take much prodding. Stiles bends to your guiding hands mindlessly and sits down on the edge of your bed without so much as a grunt. Pliant and robotic in the same breath. Ever the paradox, your boy is.
Though.
He’s not, really. Yours, that is.
Not anymore.
Not for a long time.
“Everything’s so fucked up.”
Stiles is quiet, but his whisper still startles you. His voice is raw—and maybe, you’d really convinced yourself that he was dead. It feels like he is sometimes. At least, a version of him. Stiles, in the mole-speckled flesh, he’s a ghost of the boy you knew, a killer of the figment boy you never lost. A paradox. So difficult to read. Impossible to hold on to.
Stiles doesn’t notice that you’ve gone silent, but he doesn’t really seem to notice anything beyond the wet film over his eyes.
“I don’t…I don’t see a way out this time. I don’t know…” he scrubs a hand over his face and looks infinitely older than eighteen, “I don’t think I can fix it—any of it.”
You’re reminded, briefly, of the night he broke up with you. When you looked up, saw the look on his face, and you knew. You have the same sick feeling in your stomach now, and you want to crawl inside yourself until the flip-flopping of your intestines stops—to wring them into little knots until there’s nothing left.
Stiles looks like he feels about the same, so small on your bed for such a lanky man.
“What?” You pull your knees to your chest and hold onto your shins so that you don’t reach for him. “The Nemeton? We’ll find it again…eventually, and—”
“No,” Stiles grits his teeth and closes his eyes, “I mean, yes, but it’s…everything. Everything’s falling apart.”
“Not everything. You’ve always got—”
“Not anymore.” Stiles gets that dead-inside look behind his eyes again, and your stomach turns. “You and me…and Scott—”
Your sheets whisper against your legs as you shift towards him. “Scott?”
You’ve seen Stiles wear pretty much every expression under the sun—backlit by shitty diner lights, laughing; tangled up in navy sheets, panting; drenched in sweat, sobbing—but god. The way Stiles looks now, like his soul has been bleached from his bones, drained from his eyes with a power drill, it’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen. Worse than the when the Nogitsune stole his face, because it’s Stiles. Whatever this skeleton on strings is, it’s him.
“I fucked up.” Stiles whispers so softly you can barely hear him over the cracks in his voice, “I fucked up so bad.”
It takes you a second to realize that he’s talking about Scott. Dumb, considering you asked, but you’ve imagined him saying that to you so many times it almost feels like a memory—like he’s talking about you.
You clear your throat and pull at a loose string on your blanket until it snaps. “He’ll get over it. He always does.”
Stiles just shakes his head, keeps his eyes trained on his muddy sneakers. “Not this time.”
Your fingers twitch with the impulse to grab his hand. “What happened, Stiles?”
“I…” Stiles rubs his hand over his mouth, trying to wipe away the taste of his thoughts. He swallows and then stands, tugging a little on his wet hair until it sticks up in random tufts—it would be cute under any other circumstances, if Stiles didn’t have a disturbingly manic look in his eyes and a desperate tumble of words flooding from his split lip. “The ends justify the means was just a thought experiment, right? Machiavelli was an academic, not a soldier—you know what kind of people actually practice Machiavellianism? Stalin, Mao—Peter ‘fuckin’ killed my own niece’ Hale.”
Your brow scrunches as you try to find the invisible path connecting all his seemingly disjointed thoughts. “Stiles—”
“And I know I rag on Scott all the time for being too soft,” Stiles sneakers squeak against the floor as he continues pacing, without a breath or so much as a glance in your direction. He might as well be pontificating to the darkness. “I mean, fuck, how many times have I said it’d be easier if we just killed the psycho? A dozen? Definitely enough for one of those stupid fuckin’ ‘take a shot’ memes.”
Stiles stops abruptly mid-step and finally looks at you, really looks at you, for the first time tonight. His Bambi eyes look so big right now, completely open and boundless on his sweet face, like the child he hasn’t been since sophomore year. “I didn’t…I don’t really mean it, you know. I don’t actually want...”
His voice is so small it breaks your heart.
“I know,” you say softly, coaxing him to stay here with you, in the moment.
Stiles blinks at you slowly and hangs his gaze on your face like it’s the moon. “I know it would kill him…feeling like this.” He spits it out like ‘this’ is something vile, poison on his tongue.
Your stomach sinks, and a prickling sensation of hot-cold settles through your sinew. You lick your drying lower lip and methodically rub your clammy palms up and down your thighs. “Feeling like what?”
Stiles’s momentary dip into the present fades with the next blink of his clumped lashes.
He starts pacing again, bending and flexing his fingers with twitching gestures that clarify little and worry you greatly. “I get it, totally support it as a concept. I mean, the greater good outweighs a scumbag or two—conceptually, because how do you really define scumbag? And that’s if you use a qualifier; real consequentialists think it’s totally fine to kill whoever the fuck you want as long as it’s in the name of a good outcome.”
You blink a few times and drag your tongue over your teeth, “Right…killing innocent people: bad. That’s the general consensus.”
Stiles’s eyes dart back to your face. “What if they aren’t?”
“Aren’t what?”
Maybe, if it weren’t almost four in the morning, you’d be able to follow his tangential breakdown. Maybe, if you hadn’t become dependent on his quiet sleep-babbling to fall asleep at night, if he hadn’t become the only thing capable of bleaching the nightmares from your eyelids, your temples wouldn’t be throbbing so violently. But it is almost 4 am, and you haven’t fallen asleep next to Stiles in over a year—no matter how right he looks when he sits down next to you on your bed.
Stiles’s throat bobs with his swallow before he says, “What if they aren’t innocent?”
“Stiles,” you grab one of his hands and search his face, scan every solemn line and curve for some semblance of meaning, “what’s going on?”
Stiles chews on his bottom lip and lets out a ragged breath, going stiff—bracing himself for the fallout. His voice is thick with fear when he finally whispers, “What if they were going to hurt someone you care about?”
You let out a heavy sigh and study his expression, eyes flickering across the unrelenting question written in his pinched forehead and glassy eyes. “Do the ends justify the means?”
Stiles nods and bites down on his jagged thumbnail, “Yeah.”
You hold Stiles’s gaze so that he can see your eyes, so earnest they almost look pained, and nod, slow and definitive. “Yeah.”
It takes a second, but when his body catches up with his brain, Stiles collapses in on himself. Turns into a ragdoll of relief and wet clothes, and drops his head into his shaking hands.
“F-fuck,” Stiles exhales and wipes his face dry with cruel scrubs of his hands. “Sorry—I just…” he digs his thumbs into his temples and trembles, “I’m losing my fucking mind, and I didn’t know where else to go.” He glances up from his hands, looks so devastatingly lovely as he peers up at you through his wet lashes it hurts, and murmurs, “There wasn’t anywhere else…anyone else. Nobody…”
Stiles shakes his head slightly and clears his throat, but his words are still syrupy with so much meaning when he says, “I don’t really feel like I’m…me anywhere else.” He pauses again, and you forget how to breathe when his gaze refocuses on your eyes. His tongue flicks over his split lip, and then he whispers, “I’m not me unless I’m with you.”
This boy. This boy. He can wreck you without even trying.
You have to reorient yourself before you get stuck on the drizzle of honey in Stiles’s eyes. They’ve always been so…alive. There’s an entire ecosystem in his irises, savanna grass swaying under the glow of sunset. A blackhole in his pupils, bending and distorting your every thought to Stiles, Stiles, Stiles.
Stop. Breathe. Count your fingers.
Your arms are around your shins, the air is cold, and Stiles has someone who isn't you.
You still wake up with the taste of him sticking to your teeth, sweet honey and sharp cloves, but it’s never enough. Lately, it lingers like a cavity.
You spent so long thinking you weren’t supposed to be friends, and you weren’t. You were supposed to be together—now you don’t know what you’re supposed to be. How can you belong to a memory?
What does Stiles think when he looks at you now? Does a thought even come?
Does he ache for who you were that Friday at the lake? Does he still love that girl in his arms–orange and warm under the setting sun, blissfully unaware of the end?
Oh, he does.
Stiles aches for you, thinks of you, constantly. He meant what he said; he only feels solid when it's just you, him, and the shiny little bubble that keeps out the rest of the world. He doesn’t feel…real when he’s around other people, pretending like everything’s fine. Like he hasn’t lost every shiny piece of the life he had before his mind was stolen.
That’s how it is for Stiles now; there’s before, and then there’s after. He can feel the schism widening with every single fucked up thing he does. Lately, it feels like that’s the only thing he does: completely and catastrophically fuck up.
The thing is, when they finally got him—it—out, Stiles thought that would be it. Happily ever after. Evil expunged. Demon defeated. End-stop. No page turn. Cheers to the Nemeton. Stiles learned, very quickly, that you can’t purge darkness. It always leaves a mark.
The days after…everything, Stiles discovered that rotting was a real human emotion. He still can’t believe people don’t smell it on him. The remnants of Stiles haven’t stopped putrefying in the Nogistune’s absence, and he just knows, somehow, that something this malignantly alive is contagious. He didn’t want to ruin you—doesn’t, Stiles corrects himself before he can finish the thought—doesn’t want to contaminate something so good with something so sick.
Or maybe…maybe it was because Stiles knew that you’d see it. You’d see it, and you’d leave.
The only clean thing he has is memories. He can’t stain the past. The figment girl in his mind can’t hurt. Can’t die. Can’t run. Stiles keeps you there—or, at least, some version of you, a you he can keep underneath the shelter of his ribcage, where you can watch the sunset turn fish scales into topaz in his maroon jacket, happy, forever.
Stiles can’t really remember the last time he saw you, the real version of you, happy. You must have laughed without him at some point, but he can’t think of anything other than when you were with him. Well, that, and the end. Stiles remembers the end with painful clarity.
You were at a lake. The lake. Somehow, it only occurs to Stiles now how shitty that must’ve been for you. Anyway, you just sat there for a while, and he just listened to the silence wash over the world like a flood until the sun reached its peak. He remembers thinking: Holy fuck, this is what they meant. All those stupid songs and poems. This is what it means to break. Stiles couldn’t stand the way you kept your eyes closed, like you were afraid of seeing the inevitable car crash. If I kiss her, he’d thought, everything will be okay. If I kiss her, she’ll forgive me.
Stiles didn’t kiss you. He just said, “I’m sorry,” and the words hung heavily over your heads. In the harrowing quiet, Stiles thought: I never realized cordial could sound so much like cowardly.
“What are you doing here, Stiles? What is this?”
Your voice drags Stiles from the gutters of his mind, and feels a fresh wave of shame when he hears how tired you sound. What is he doing here? Stiles knew it was a mistake before he even started his Jeep, but the flicker of doubt in Scott’s eyes drowned out his best intentions.
“I just…” Stiles swallows, and his hand moves to scratch at his wounded shoulder reflexively. He…he just needed to be with the only person on the face of this planet that still knew him—who would get it.
You get tired of waiting, and when you speak again, Stiles feels about two inches tall.
“You should be with her.” You say it nicely enough. Polite. No venom to fill the awkward hollowness. Cordial.
Fuck. Stiles fucking hates cordial. He kind of wishes you would yell at him. At least, then, he’d know that you still cared.
Stiles clasps his hands together between his thighs and leans his weight onto his elbows. He probably should be with Malia. No. He definitely should, but he’s not. And right now, like this, he doesn’t want to be.
“She’s not good at…” Stiles clears his throat and sits up a little, “she tries, but she just…can’t.”
It’s not even her fault, and that’s probably the worst part about it. He doesn’t want to be another bad thing that’s happened to Malia Tate, but bad things just seem to be his specialty lately.
“You know why you like her, right?” you say softly, not unkindly, but Stiles thinks he isn’t going to like the answer—mostly, because he’s sure it’s true.
“No.” Stiles pauses and draws a circle on his knee with his pointer finger, “Well, I mean, yeah. Didn’t know you put so much thought into it.”
You don’t bother to dignify such a blatant lie with a direct response. That’s fair, Stiles thinks, and tries not to shrink in on himself.
Instead, you lift your shoulder like it’s made of marble and murmur, “She needs you.”
It’s innocuous enough—sweet, even, under different circumstances—but Stiles feels it like a blade. He clears his throat; it doesn’t help the dryness. He manages to arch a brow as he pushes out a raspy little, “So?”
The corner of your mouth lifts into a small smile; Stiles can still see it quiver. “You’re a control freak,” you bump his knee with your own, and it’s the first place on his body Stiles can actually feel, “and we both know she’s never going to be the one to end it.”
That’s just like you; even your jokes are wrapped up inside an argument. It always left him frozen in a maddening power struggle between quipping something snarky and kissing you. No one else has ever managed to keep him on the ropes like you, and maybe that’s why no one after has managed to keep his, admittedly, short-attention span for long. After all, Stiles has always liked his sweetness with a little bite.
Of course, now there’s no sweetness between the two of you. It’s all uncomfortable silences and unspoken thoughts that leave his teeth aching for something more
Stiles’s jaw goes tight as he brings his lips to his knuckles, feeling a bit like bearing down on the bone. “That’s what you think happened?” He glances at you, eyes a little haunted, “I couldn’t control you, so I ended it?”
You tilt your head to the side, so sympathetic it makes Stiles a little nauseous, and murmur, “I think you realized that I didn’t need you; I think it scared the hell out of you.” You say it so softly, carefully—and it impales him in the heart, right through the fucking center.
It would be one thing if you were angry; people say stupid shit they don’t actually mean when they’re angry all the time—but this? You look like you mean it. You look like you mean it, and you’re saying it for his own good. The look on your face, it looks a whole lot like the truth
And.
Maybe it is.
It’s not like you’re wrong. Stiles remembers thinking it, more than once. He remembers more than a few mornings where he woke up to the sound of your breathing, your warm breath washing over his neck, and he thought he’d probably die if you ever stopped. It felt like an epiphany every time, the reminder that without you his world would be irreparably changed.
Dark. Without you, Stiles’s world would go dark.
Maybe, the Nogistune was just an excuse. Maybe, Stiles had been leapfrogging over his heart since the moment you met. Avoiding the future. Wrapping the present around your body and constantly thinking: I can’t believe it's not over yet.
Yet. Yet. Yet.
Maybe, Stiles thought about it so much he tempted fate. Maybe, that’s why the Nogistune chose him. Maybe, he should stop scapegoating the devil. He did end up with Malia after all.
It’s different with her. Not bad necessarily, just different. He takes care of her, and he’s good at that. Making the plan. Having the answers.
Being in control.
With you…that was different.
Stiles is a cynic at heart, but when he looked at—looks at—you, he felt less lonely. When he was with you, he kind of got why his dad used to show up to work 15 minutes late because he got distracted by the way his mom made coffee and did the crossword at the same time. The simple domesticity, the comfort of a morning routine for the rest of his life, the concept of tried and true blue love: Stiles got it all when he saw you.
You saw his happiness, and you gave it back to him. Every single time. That kind of love…it’s become abundantly clear to Stiles that kind of love is hard to find. Like maybe, once in a lifetime hard to find.
Stiles swallows hard and shakes his head. “Whatever it was that I was afraid of,” his voice drops to a whisper, “this is so much worse.”
You’re still the only person he can really cry in front of. Stiles is reminded of that when his eyes burn and something wet drips onto his lips. He sniffles quietly, feeling so incredibly small when he realizes the sound is coming from him.
Stiles can’t look up from his shoes—won’t—and then you speak. You’re so quiet he almost misses it.
“Life’s a lot better when you’re in it.”
The corners of Stiles’s mouth twitch into a small smile. The first one in about a week. Feels like much, much longer.
the children. they yearn for you and your stories. i hope you're doing well and just know that you are so very missed and appreciated here 💙💙💙💙
thank you so much :') i'm still searching for another job and more importantly good heath insurance rip, so sweet messages like this really help lower the cortisol levels lmao.
i haven't had a lot of time or energy to write, but here is a little snippet of something i'm working on to hopefully quench the yearning. it is not edited or finished obviously.
It’s an icy slice of fear that wakes you up. A white flash of ‘fight or flight’ behind your sleep-sticky lids. A rattling at your window that isn’t the rain or the wind echoing in the moonlight. It’s a familiar sound, someone scrambling on the loose tiling of your roof, but a forgotten one. It’s strange, sweet-sharp, and out of place in your current reality.
A noise that shouldn’t exist outside of a memory.
Stiles spills into your room and lands on his knees, dripping water onto your hardwood floor. His hair is plastered to his forehead from the angry squall outside, and the dark clouds are a mocking reflection of the look carving out the hollows of his face. The moon has eclipsed all the sunlight in his eyes, and it feels so, so cold.
For a moment, you think you’re dreaming or maybe still in that luminescent oil slick between sleep and consciousness. Stiles looks like something from a dream—a nightmare. He’s there, but he isn’t. He’s a boy, but he isn’t. He’s lost to something you can’t see, swept up in the storm and turned into something else.
You sit up in your bed and wait for him to say something—to move. He just stays there, soaked to the bone on his knees, and stares at something beyond the shifting shadows on your bedroom walls.
“Stiles?”
He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even make a sound. You crawl out of your bed and sit down on the floor next to him, draping a woven blanket over his shoulders. It almost matches his flannel, blue and checkered. It’s a little detail that would’ve made you smile before, mostly because Stiles would get this warm look in his eyes: so fond it felt like worship.
It’s fall. The air smells like apples and earth. You watch the shadow of little fish swim in jagged circles through murky water. Stiles is a warm presence against your side.
He buries his nose in your hair and hums, “You like the pieces.”
“I guess.”
You feel his smile against your temple.
“Me too.”
You still wake up with the taste of him sticking to your teeth, sweet honey and sharp cloves, but it’s hardly enough.
Does he ache for who you were that Friday? Does he still love that girl in his arms–orange and warm under the setting sun, blissfully unaware of the end.
What does Stiles think when he looks at you now? Does he think about you at all?
You spent so long thinking you weren’t supposed to be friends, and now you don’t know what you’re to be. How can you belong to a memory?
at least one teen wolf villain a season: wow...scott mccall...you have charmed me with your boyish whimsy and earnest love for others...I'm not evil anymore because of this btw
I come back at least once a day to see if you’ve written anything else bcos you my friend are one of the only people who actually write GOOD WELL WRITTEN FICS ABOUT STILES OR THOMAS AND OMG I NEED MORE I NEED YOU TO LIVE WITH ME SO YOU CAN READ ME BED TIME STORYS OR SOMETHING.
Ok love u bye xxxxxx
i'm having the most anxiety-inducing day today (if you live in ameria, you know the struggle i'm sure), so thank you so much!!
i would love to read you a bed time story, especially because i have been Slacking on the content recently. the fandom is def a ghost town, but there are still some stiles and thomas writers clinging to life lmao. I have reqs in my answered tag.
i should've made a post way before now, but i'm in the midst of a job search, and it's consuming my every waking moment. but i promise as soon as i get a new job, i will be spamming the stiles and thomas tags.
Characters: Thomas, fem!reader, Newt, Aris (bg), Winston (bg)
Pairing(s): Thomas x Reader (the slowest of burns as is my brand)
Word Count: 3.5k
Tags: Mix of book and movie canon, newt!sister!reader
Warnings: Canon typical violence and gore, character death, mentions of sui attempt (please take care of yourself and don't read anything that will harm you)
A/N: mix of book canon strikes again. in the book, the flare is airborne, and that is so much scarier to me than a zombie chomp. also this is v sad, but i tried to make it end hopeful for y'all :'( :')
Taglist: @m30wk1ttycat, @mxltifxnd0m
The only sign of life in an endless stretch of sand is the haggard breath rattling through Winston’s cracked lips. He coughs, and your throat almost stings with the sound of his serrated wheezes. The dried blood on Winston's mouth sloughs off in flakes with the new stream trickling from his esophagus, and your stomach roils. This is a man about to die. This is a boy who won't grow up.
“I’m not going to make it," Winston rasps. His voice is wet with his own blood, "I don’t want it to be like this. It’s better…if it’s quick.”
No one speaks. No one moves. It’s mere seconds, no more than ten, but it feels like eternity.
Newt wakes from the horror first. He takes the gun from Frypan’s trembling hands and moves towards Winston slowly.
Thomas steps forward to stop him, “Newt, wait—”
Newt pushes forward and falls to his knees, gently pressing the gun into Winston’s hand. He whispers a goodbye that’s sticky with the wetness glossed over his eyes. Clogged with a lifetime of conversations that will never happen.
You’re far enough away from Winston that you can’t see him over the rolling dunes when it happens—but you all hear it. The gunshot tears through the desert, and the echo cleaves you right in two. Severs you through the spine and all the tender nerve endings attached.
Newt’s eyes are always wide, but right now they’re swallowing the desert whole. You pitch into them, and a sharp pain rips through your spinal cord to your optic nerve.
For a moment, you can’t see anything but the searing white light of pain. What comes after is worse.
You can’t tell if it’s a memory. It feels like the feverish flashes you thrashed around in the Maze, but everything’s been so muddled since Newt showed up. You can’t tell what’s real anymore. Maybe, you never could.
This echo is more unsettling than the others. You’re watching a screen on a screen, a memory of a memory. The girl in the center of the snow globe stares at a grainy monitor from her hiding spot in the shadows.
You almost don’t recognize yourself.
She looks so much younger than you feel now, maybe twelve. Her face is still soft and round with lingering baby fat, hair tied back with a pretty white ribbon and face clean of dirt and the scar above your brow.
Who is she? This girl with the perfect hair and innocent eyes. You can’t remember.
The only world you truly know begins with fourteen. You always thought the before must’ve been better, something to run towards. Now, you aren't so sure.
She’s so afraid. You want to coax her out from the dark, but somehow you know that she’s safer there, curled up behind a desk, away from the light.
Your little pinched face is awash with a blue glow. You stare at the wall of monitors, clutching a battered book to your chest. Most of the screens are blurry, but it doesn’t matter. You’re only worried about one.
Look away, you try to tell her, look away before it’s too late.
She can’t hear you, of course. She tears her teeth into her fingernails and stares ahead, barely blinking. Barely breathing. A slip of a girl on the precipice of fading.
Newt looks younger too, even through the fuzzy computer screen. If your math is right, he must be around fourteen. However old he is, he’s far, far too young for large shadows in his eyes. He’s on top of a ledge—the Maze, you realize, horrified, he’s standing on top of the Maze.
You realize what he’s going to do a second before he jumps.
Your scream gives you away. You didn’t realize until now that you could sound like that—that anyone could make such a horrible sound. Like a fox in the night, a lamb before slaughter, a soul that can’t pass on.
A WCKD employee in a pristinely white lab coat drags you away from the room. It should be soaked in blood, you think. They should be stained with what they’ve done, smeared with their sins for eternity.
You flail in the man’s arms, kick at his legs, try to plant your feet against the slick floor and go boneless. It doesn’t slow him down in the slightest. You’re so small, after all, and he’s so big. A monster you can’t run from.
Your eyes dart around the room, searching for someone, anyone, to help you. They land on Thomas. He looks as horrified as you do, but he’s more composed. Less hysterical, more stunned. He doesn’t move; maybe, he can’t.
You hate him anyway.
The scene fades into mist before you can start screaming at him.
You don’t remember the walk, but somehow you’ve ended up along the ridge of a slender dune. You’re a step away from falling on either side of your dusty boots.
You stumble over your confusion, and your face scrunches, bracing for the inevitable tumble. At least, the sand will provide some cushioning, you think—but you don’t end up rolling down the dune. Newt grabs your hand and pulls you into his side. He holds you out at arms length and rapidly scans over your frame for any sign of injury.
“Are you alright?” Newt whispers. His question almost gets lost in the sand, but you hear him. Your senses are entirely attuned to him and the proof that he’s still here.
You blink away a curtain of tears and stare at Newt, watching his chest rise and fall with his steady breathing. “Am I alright?” You shake your head and let out a shallow, shaky puff of air, “Your friend just—” Your jaw snaps shut with a click.
You have so much you want to say, so many thoughts stripping the healthy tissue from your brain like a plague of locusts. You don't know what to do with them, how to appease them before they rip you apart one bite at a time.
You tip forward, bracing your palms on your thighs and breathe through the roiling in your gut. You think you might puke; there’s so much inside you, too much. Some of it has to get out or you might just splinter into the lingering shards of the little girl you used to be.
“I’m okay,” you finally say and scrub at your face with viscous fingers. You swallow the grit of sand on your tongue and shake your head, “Don’t worry about me.”
Newt frowns, but you continue before he can speak. “C’mon,” you mumble, clutching your injured hand to your chest, “we’re falling behind.”
You’re almost grateful for the deadly heat and Thomas’s brutal pace. It exhausts you so thoroughly you almost forget about everything other than the blisters forming on your heels and the sweat dripping into your eyes.
And then you stop.
Night falls, someone starts a fire, and everyone falls to the sand with the weight of their dehydration. With their grief. You stop, and now your brain cannot.
You clamor to your feet and mumble something about going for a walk to Aris’s slumped figure.
The Scorch is almost beautiful at night. If you pretend you can’t hear the wind crying in the dark, forget about the decaying remains of a society lost to the Flare and the sand, the moon, glowing overhead in the black sapphire sky, is almost charming.
You watch it glisten and wrap your arms around your torso, clinging to your ribcage and fraying sanity. The veins in your feet pulse, the ache shoots to your knees, but you need to move. You have to do something to temper the crawling under your skin.
Thomas’s faint voice upsets the quiet. “You forgot your jacket.” He looks a little shy, holding out the jacket he gave you after the crank stole yours. You wonder how such a sweet face could be responsible for so much pain.
“Don’t—” you choke for a moment as the nausea returns and hold up your hand, “I can’t—I can’t fucking look at you.”
Thomas’s brow furrows. “What’s wrong?” He takes a step towards you, and his hands twitch by his sides. “What—” he’s paralyzed by the look on your face briefly, stops just out of arm’s reach, and his face looks sick with concern. It makes you sick.
Thomas gnaws on his lip. The sinew in his forearms flexes as he reaches for you. He rests his calloused hand on your shoulder and says, “Are you okay?”
You wrench your shoulder from his light hold. “Don’t touch me, Thomas.” You don’t think you’ve ever sounded so venomous, so viscous, but you can’t be sure. You don’t remember much—just that Thomas let Newt die.
“What did I do?” Thomas looks so despondent. You almost feel sorry for him. Almost.
You whip towards Thomas and shove him, slamming your palms against his chest, “You killed him.” Thomas stumbles backwards—not from your little arms and ineffectual pushes, but from the look on your face. The tremor in your voice. “Newt. He…you might as well’ve pushed him off the edge.”
Thomas’s face crumples as he wraps his long fingers around your wrists. You thrash in his grip until he lets go and scream, “You sent him into your maze, and you killed him. One day at a time.”
It sounds like a gunshot, and by the look on Thomas’s face, you think it must feel like one too.
His skin is pale in the moonlight and so is the look in his eyes. You watch the tendons in his neck strain with his swallow. “You wanted to be put in with him.”
You can barely hear him; his whisper is so weak against the pull of the breeze, but you do. You both seem to remember at the same time how you insisted that you go next. You had to find Newt and make sure he never slipped away from you again. When you woke up in the wrong Maze, you weren’t even given the dignity of remembering that you should be enraged by it.
“Couldn’t even do that right,” you sneer through your sniffles, wiping at your eyes with a cruel scrub of your arm.
Thomas is crying. He doesn’t seem to realize it, makes no effort to dry his wet face with his hands—just stares at you with big hopeless eyes. They burn into your chest like hot iron. You close your eyes, and they haunt the back of your lids.
Thomas shakes his head slightly and takes a small step towards you, “I’m—”
You shove him again with weak arms; they're heavy with the whimpers trembling through your shoulders. Thomas just takes it this time, hands limp by his sides. You hit his shoulders and sob nonsensical accusations until a pair of arms wrap around your waist.
“Come on.” Newt hauls you away from Thomas, practically carrying you as you squirm in his hold. He lets go of you once you’re far enough away to keep your conversation just between the two of you. A secret. Something sacred.
You sniffle at the ground and fold your arms, curling in on yourself—hiding from Newt and yourself. You aren’t sure how much Newt heard, but you weren’t exactly quiet.
Newt looks at you, and you aren’t sure what he’s feeling. His face is soft though; it always is when you’re crying, you realize—remember. Sighing, Newt eventually says, “It wasn’t his fault.”
Your gaze darts to the tips of your shoes, unable to meet Newt’s eyes. You kick at the sand and wipe your cheeks clean, “Yes, it was.”
It sounds petulant, even to you, but you can’t help it. It has to be Thomas’s fault. It just has to. He’s just a person, and he’s here—he's the only one you can punish. There's no one else in arm's reach.
Except for me.
You repress the thought with a harsh swallow, and Newt wraps arm around your shoulders. He’s all skin-and-bones, but he’s a solid warmth against the frigid sting of misery. He pulls you into his chest, squeezes you tightly, and you let yourself fall into a bundle of memories. Good ones this time, a montage of hundreds of hugs in growing arms.
Newt cups the back of your head and whispers, “It would certainly be easier if it was, wouldn’t it.”
You snuffle into Newt’s shoulder like a baby and hiccup, “They’ve taken so much.”
He drops a kiss on top of the crown of your head and then pulls away. Newt gives you a soft smile and cocks his head to the side, “Then we shouldn’t let them take anymore, should we?”
You remember things in your sleep now. Little things. Never enough for context, but just enough to leave you shaking in the morning. Most of them are bad. A few are good. None of them make any of this easier.
The dream that woke you was hazy at best. You were little, and so was Newt. You can’t tell exactly how young, but you’re in a room you’ve never seen before. The wallpaper is a sweet, soft mint, and a trail of painted baby goslings follow their mother along the baseboards. It’s the first wall you’ve ever seen with color; the first wall that you aren’t afraid of.
You're tucked under a quilt, and Newt is reading you something. You can't make out the title, but you see that the book is worn and well-loved—and then the cheery warmth of buttercup yellow blankets ripples into somewhere dark and cold.
You’re moving somehow, but you don’t look out the window—you’re only looking at Newt.
He’s crouched down in front of you, squeezing your hands, and trying to tell you something. He’s trying to smile too, but you see the fear. The panic. The desperation. The effort makes your heart clench.
Newt's distorted voice slowly sharpens into focus, and you catch the end of his sentence. “...there’s always a chance the sun’s gone out. Remember how long it’d take to reach us?”
You mouth, “Eight seconds,” in time with the little girl’s quivering voice.
Newt smiles and nods, feathery hair falling over his forehead. “So when you count to eight, you know that we have more time. When you’re scared, just count to eight and remember that we have time, alright? I’ll find you, and we’ll be together again. We’ve got all the time in the world.”
You wondered what it was like when Thomas told you. You wondered what it was like to have a brother. You think perhaps it’s a little bit like knowing you’re going to be okay.
You push yourself onto your elbows and sweat trickles down your back. You shiver. The night is insufferably cold, but your shirt is stuck to your back and your sleeping bag is damp. Blearily, you notice that there’s another layer draped on top of you.
You clutch at the denim jacket blanketed over your torso, eyes aching, and look around the sleeping Gladers for a head of tousled brown hair. The flames flicker and sparks fly from the embers every so often, casting billowing shadows over your friends’ sleeping faces. Thomas isn’t among them.
Your vision slowly adjusts to the dark, and eventually you can make out the shape of Thomas. The shadow of his figure is a ways away and staring into the vast nothingness. You look away from his back and down at the jacket bundled in your lap, chewing on your lip—somehow, you end up standing by him.
Thomas seems to sense it’s you. You’re close enough to see the moles flecked around his skin. The one on the hinge of his jaw jumps when he finally speaks, “I have to make up for what I did.”
You blink at him and tip your head to the side, listening.
“You asked me how I keep going, keep caring after…everything.” Thomas cards his fingers through his hair, and it sticks up in odd places when he drops his hand to his side. You want to smooth them back into place—and then you immediately hate yourself for the thought.
Thomas keeps his eyes on the moon and continues quietly, “I have to get us out—I have to save everyone because I have to make up for everything I did.”
Your teeth catch on your bottom lip, unsure what to say. You look at him for a moment and then rock onto your tiptoes so that you can drape the jacket over his broad shoulders. It actually fits him, you realize with a small smile.
Thomas finally looks at you as the faded denim settles over his biceps. His lips part in surprise, and then the corners twitch into a little smile.
“I’m sorry I keep using my hands instead of my words,” you say quietly.
Thomas huffs out a breath. It’s almost like a laugh, but the bitterness dampens the sound into something darker. Something that hurts. His jaw is tense as he says, “I’m sorry that I keep doing terrible things.”
You feel a residual ache, a distant throb of anger. It fades when you look at Thomas. He looks small, all curled in on himself and lost to before. The sky goes dark in his eyes, and you move closer, searching for the stars in a pool of obsidian.
“In the past,” you say softly. Your fingers tremble as you reach for his jacket. The scratched buttons are cold against your skin. You repress a shiver and clutch at the material, pulling the sides tighter against his torso. “A past you can’t even remember,” you add quietly, gesturing for Thomas to slide his arms through the sleeves.
Thomas looks at your hands with big eyes and slips into the jacket. He smiles faintly and bites his lip, watching you button the front closed with clumsy fingers. They’re stiff from the cold and maybe a little fear—touch isn’t a constant in your life, after all. It’s infrequent and usually painful. Tender things don’t survive in your world. Blossoms shrivel. Little birds are eaten. Sweet children harden, or they die slowly.
But you button the jacket all the way to the top and then slide your hands over his chest, smoothing out the creases in the denim. Gentle. Tender.
Thomas’s fingers twitch, like he wants to reach for you, but he keeps them by his sides. He stares at you instead. “Well, I almost wish I remembered it all,” his voice is thick around the consonants, shaky through the vowels, “so that I can say I’m sorry for all of it.”
Your cheek rounds with your half-moon smile as you shrug, “How ‘bout I only hate you for all the stupid things you do after tonight.”
Thomas pauses, conflicted, and then he smiles. The crooked line of his mouth is devastatingly endearing. “You sound confident.”
“Oh, I’m very confident.” You nod a few times and hum, “It’s an eventuality, not a hypothetical.”
Thomas bites back a smirk and slides his hands into his pockets, “Noted.”
You grin at his profile. The humor bleeds from your face, spilling something more earnest. “But I do forgive you,” you tip your chin so that you can meet Thomas’s eyeline, “I do forgive you for the things you don’t remember. The things none of us remember.”
“I,” Thomas sucks on his teeth and shakes his head—as if there’s a lingering taste of something bitter between his molars, like he’s chewed on bitterroot his whole life. He swallows and shakes his head again. “I don’t know if you should. Not after…” he chokes on the rest of his words and rubs a hand over his mouth, trying to wipe away the half-formed thought, the imprint of the words he can’t bring himself to say.
You go cold as the wind shrieks through your blood. You shudder and wrap your arms around yourself, whispering, “He was only fourteen.” Thomas flinches, and you sigh, chewing on your cheek as you look at him—really look at him.
Thomas’s brow is dipped in a heavy frown that seems to pull at his entire face; it weighs down his eyes until they droop at the corners. He looks older than he should. You forget just how young Thomas is until your gaze traces along his tangled hair and his fawn eyes. He squeezes them shut, terrified of the feeling cutting through his chest. Through denim, and skin, and bone—straight to his trembling heart.
You lick your lip and say, “And you were only twelve.”
His eyes peel open slowly, and Thomas looks surprised to see your painfully genuine expression. “So were you,” Thomas says, shrugging with his hands in his pockets.
“Yeah,” you say, but you say it to the sand.
Warm, calloused fingers cup your chin. They gently tip your chin up until Thomas can see your eyes. When he sees how lost they are, he rubs a broad thumb along your jaw. “You’re going to live a long life—you'll get to grow old and have a better life. Newt too. I swear.”
You sniffle. You don’t even realize you’re crying; the tears only fall when they build on your waterline and you blink. “Wrinkly and gray, huh?” you tease with a watery smile.
Thomas thumbs away the wetness on your cheeks and smiles, small and boyish. “Wrinkly and gray.”
“That sounds nice.” You let out a little sigh, allowing yourself to fall into his impossible promises. Just for a moment. Just while you can feel the heat of his skin.
“Paradise,” Thomas agrees quietly. “We’ll get there; I promise.”
That’s the thing about bitterroot: blossoms grow from withered roots.
Hi, I was just wondering if you’ll be continuing your TMR - Howling? It’s quite difficult to find good TMR-Thomas x OC’s and I really enjoy the female character you’ve created
yes! i wish i had a regular enough schedule to have a set update list for my tmr and tw fics, but it kind of just depends on what my adhd and work schedule allow lmao. i’m actually halfway through chapter 4 for howling and almost done with ignite’s chapter 7. the howling one is especially dark which isn’t out of the norm for me, but it does take me more time to make it right. i am definitely planning on finishing it though!
omg ok i just have to tell you, cause like, ive been wigging out over everything you write, that its incredible!! From one writer to another, i hope you never stop writing, even if you dont post it, even if your motivation falters as it is bound to do. You have something potent and real in your words, a true talent, a skill many hope to master, and I see that in you!! I hope this isnt too simpy lmao but just know, youve got the shit fr girl <3
you really can’t say such wonderful things to me and expect me to normal about it. that’s all it takes for me to fall in love. i write grants and research papers for a living, so sometimes the art of writing gets lost for me and i forget oh i actually do love this thing and it’s something special to a little group of people like me. this little revamp of mine has been a good reminder for me, and the fact that Other people get joy from my maladaptive dreaming and nonsense is still nuts to me. you all get me through the daily irb and spss grind
𝒈𝒐𝒐𝒅𝒏𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒏 𝒈𝒐 // stiles stilinski imagine
Characters: Stiles Stilinski, fem!reader, Scott McCall, Lydia Martin, Isaac Lahey, Malia Tate, Kira Yukimura, Allison Argent
Pairing(s): Stiles x you,
Word Count: 8.9k
Tags: human!au, fluff, childhood friends to lovers
Warnings: there are a few little nsfw mentions in the middle, so MDNI. Stiles does go out on a window ledge, but i have to make it clear he has no intention ever of jumping lmao.
A/N: this is basically just one day i thought what if stiles had a nick x jess first kiss because he seems stupid and awkward enough to jump out a window. and thus this nonsense was born. also the pov switching was new, so you’ll have to let me know if you’re a fan or not.
The thing is, Stiles isn’t an idiot. He’s stupid, but he isn’t dumb. He knows that it’s not normal to think about your best friend like this. That being so intensely attuned to the curve of her spine when she stretches or the hint of citrus that clings to her hair after she showers isn’t exactly platonic.
And he really doesn’t want to be that guy. You know, the guy who just wants more, who gets upset when he can’t have more—the guy who can’t be friends with the girl who doesn’t love him back. So. Stiles stuffs it down. Deep down. And he’s content to die like this because he needs you.
There are other girls. Boys too, after a latent discovery freshman year ( one that surprised no one but himself ). They come, and they go, and Stiles makes due with what he can have because he knows this is how it has to be.
But they aren’t you.
A blatant fact that ruins anything real before it even has the chance to start.
So here he is: 24, single, and perpetually in love with one of his three roommates—but, hey, at least he does his own laundry now.
Stiles watches you on your bed, sitting on the floor like a child, while he pretends to work on a case report. He feels a little like a child too, the longer he stares at you—like a little boy with his hand in the cookie car.
He plays with the fluff on your rug to keep his hand busy, tugging on it a little too harshly when you pull your hair back with the scrunchie on your wrist. Stiles feels like a cretin when his eyes follow the rise of your breasts as you fiddle with the knot on top of your head. They trail over the flex of your collarbones, and he sinks further into his shame when he imagines tracing the lines with his tongue.
You catch him staring, and his throat bobs with his swallow.
“What?” you ask with arched brows. You grin at him like you know something.
Fuck, what if you know?
You asked him something. Stiles knows you asked him something, but he can’t remember what. He just swallows again and fumbles for his coffee. Stiles knows that he should be desensitized to it all by now: your clever mouth, your deft fingers, your fluttering lashes, but he’s still startled by it every so often—like right now, when you look like you’re about to say something snarky at his expense.
“Does it look that bad?” A few strands of your hair slip from their loose hold when you shake your head at him. “Are you moonlighting with the fashion police? I thought you’d be a little busy living in the murder capital of the world.”
Stiles laughs a little, mostly because of the simple fact that your hair always looks pretty. He said it the first time he saw you, blurted it out like a little lamb. Stiles knew, even at six, that he should be embarrassed, but he just couldn’t help it. He was so little and completely overwhelmed by his first case of puppy love; the words had nowhere else to go.
He’s gotten better at swallowing the praise-vomit, but he still notices. You’re always pretty. He’s doing his best to ignore it.
“That’s St. Louis actually,” Stiles says. He burns his tongue on his coffee and pulls a face that he knows gives him a double chin.
You slide off of your bed and kneel down next to him. Your knees press into his thigh, and it feels like something more, something profound, but he knows it doesn’t mean anything. You’re generous with your affection; you make everyone feel special when they’re around you. Stiles loves that about you, how you make him feel like he’s so smart, so vital when he knows that he’s moderately clever at best and really a lot closer criminally obsessive most days.
“Can you tell me anything about it?” you hum, nestling your chin in the hollow of his shoulder.
Stiles can smell your body wash. It’s sweet, fresh, and tickles his nose pleasantly—marigold and aloe. He’s seen the bottle in the shower. Sometimes, he has to bite his fist and turn the water to freezing when he accidentally imagines your wet, sudsy body, lathering the scent of marigold from neck to toe. It’s the in-between bits that make him especially nauseous with guilt.
“Huh?” Stiles mumbles, pressing his singed tongue to the roof of his mouth.
You poke his cheek and say, “You’re eating your lip. You only do that when you get stuck in a case.”
Stiles can think of several other things that make him suck his top lip between his teeth, but he is stuck—most likely because he’s spent the last hour watching you.
You frown, and he smiles a little at the wrinkle between your brows. You smooth out his own forehead wrinkles with your thumb and say, “It helps you sometimes—talking. You think best out loud.”
He does. Stiles swallows a little. You know him so well. You know everything about him. Everything except, of course, that the crush he had on you in elementary school has metastasized into an all-consuming, all-encompassing, honest-to-god, tried-and-true-blue, last-of-dying-breed, core-of-the-sun, probably-caused-the-big-bang kind of love.
Stiles has tried, and failed, to think of a way to casually confess how he feels. How do you even begin to break something like that to a friend? Over Chinese food? After a few beers at your favorite bar? During one of your Buffy binge nights? How is he supposed to say, ‘Hey, so I’m kind of totally and irrevocably in love with you, and it’s ruining my life a little—but that’s okay ’cause I can’t be happy unless I know that you’re happy’ without blowing up his entire life?
He can’t. So Stiles stuffs it down again with a sip of his coffee: black and bitter, a little like his heart when your not-boyfriend, boyfriend texts you. And he knows that’s so incredibly unfair of him. He knows that he’s needy, and pathetic, and far too possessive of your attention—it all makes him a little sick with self-loathing.
You have every right to remove your warmth from his side to respond, and Stiles thinks that if a guy can make you smile like that, he must not be all bad. You seem happy. When isn't feeling sorry for himself, Stiles is happy for you.
“The local police think it’s gang-related,” Stiles says eventually. His voice is raspy from his burnt throat and too loud in the silence of the near-empty apartment.
You slide your phone back into your pocket, and Stiles tries not to feel victorious. “And you don’t,” you scooch back to his side, ducking your head over his shoulder to see his screen.
“No,” Stiles combs his fingers through his hair and sighs, “I don’t. It’s too easy.”
“Follow your gut,” you say, poking his abs, “he usually knows what’s up.”
“You know what he’s sayin’ right now?” Stiles’s back clicks as he stretches and rolls his neck around in slow circles. It does little for the perpetual ache along the ridge of his skull, but it gives him some space from you and your stupidly sweet smile. “It’s time for chimichangas.”
You smile at him again, and Stiles blames the swooping in his stomach on hunger. “I think you deserve a little more than off-brand, freezer-burned Tex-Mex.”
“Don’t knock Great Value,” Stiles grumbles, rubbing a hand over his face. His lips, swollen from an afternoon of tearing into them with his teeth, tug into a tired smile when you wave your hand impatiently in front of his face. He wraps his long fingers around yours and says, “She’s been there for me through everything.”
“Higher standards, Stiles,” you roll your eyes, crinkled at the corners with your grin, “you’re in desperate need of higher standards.”
Stiles wants to laugh, feels the impulse itch his throat. High standards are precisely his problem.
“Maybe you should stop being such a brand snob,” Stiles pokes you in the side, a spot between your ribs that he knows is ticklish. You laugh and shove him away with a firm hand; Stiles goes willingly, stumbles into the doorframe just to make you laugh again.
“I am not a snob,” you push yourself onto a barstool, socked-feet dangling below. He smiles as you swing them and then knock your ankles together. You used to do the same thing on the playground swing set. “Not liking over-salted garbage is not snobbery.”
Stiles reaches for the open bag of corn nuts on the island, needlessly resting his palm on your lower back under the guise of balance. Your skin is warm, and he’s too busy thinking about how his hand must’ve been molded around the shape of your hip to notice how hard you’re biting your lower lip.
He tosses a few corn nuts in the air and catches them in his waiting mouth, smacking his lips together until they’re free of nacho cheese seasoning. He grins at the look on your face, and he wants to kiss the tip of your scrunched nose. “See,” Stiles sucks the leftover orange dust off of his fingers. His voice is muffled by his thumb when he says, “You’re snubbing my snacks right now—like a little munchie elitist. How dare you; they probably won’t ever recover.”
You laugh, as expected, and snatch the bag from the counter, not expected. “You’re literally biting your thumb at me!”
Stiles leans against the counter, rests his forearms on the granite, and watches you chew with a dumb, fond smile on his face. You’re just so clever, all wrapped up in keen smiles and sharp wit. You keep him on his toes, always have—Stiles hasn’t ever met anyone else who can spar with him so well. He doesn’t think he ever will. Admittedly, he hasn’t looked that hard; his heart just isn’t in it—who else would paraphrase Shakespeare in the middle of a mock debate? Who else could possibly look so wily and wicked while doing it through a mouthful of, objectively, terrible gas station eats.
“Purely accidental,” Stiles taps his fingers against the counter, and his shoulders lift with a small, oh-so innocent shrug, “it’s what we professionals call a ‘serendipitous turn of events’.”
“A professional what?” You grin at him. It’s one of his favorites, the one that says you’re about to tease him. “Sadist?”
“Oh,” Stiles’s brow quirks as he leans forward onto his arms, “so I torture you? Being around me is torturous?”
“Yes.” Your chin jerks with a small, sharp nod, but the only thing Stiles can see is your pouty bottom lip.
Sometimes, Stiles swears you do it on purpose—turn him on in the most inconvenient of moments. Make his heart swell into his throat until he devolves into a lovesick caveman. You have to know what you’re doing to him when you walk around in those little tank tops with the lace trim and the sleep shorts that ride up to the swell of your ass. It can’t be accidental, the cute laugh-snorts you’re so embarrassed of, or how you get so excited when you see a bird in a parking lot. It’s all too effective to be a coincidence.
Like right now, the way your lip balm shines under the kitchen lights and exaggerates your pout. You must know how completely and utterly kissable you look, and Stiles can’t do anything about it—now that’s torture.
You give him mercy and tuck your pout away for a solemn line instead. “You’re evil; you never close the cabinets or take the trash out.”
“Careful,” Stiles grins and snaps his teeth in the air, “I bite too.”
You lean across the island, and it’s torture, the way your arms squeeze your chest and push your cleavage to the neckline of your shirt. Stiles pointedly avoids looking at the round flesh. It just looks so soft, so plush—so ripe. His teeth ache. His tongue salivates. He craves with reckless abandon, and he’s never satiated.
Stiles knows you’re a smart girl, but sometimes he forgets. You’d have to be pretty dense, after all, to not see the ravenous gleam in his eyes. You certainly don’t seem to notice it now, not with all that fondness twisting your lips into a grin. Stiles often wonders, worries, how you’d look at him if you knew. Disgusted most likely; he’s disgusted with himself half the time—but you’re so sweet, and so understanding, you’d probably forgive him.
Pity, Stiles decides, if you knew, you’d pity him. He can’t decide if that’s worse.
You rest your finger between his brows, and his dark lashes flutter, brushing against his freckles like they stamped the specks onto his skin. “Eat your nuts, monster,” you drag your finger along the slope of his nose and then ‘boop’ the tip, “and then preferably something with a single gram of protein.”
Stiles grumbles to himself and searches the fridge for something that will placate your relentless bullying. He picks up the whipped cream and rolls the chilled can around in his hands, squinting at the label. 0 grams of protein. Stiles scoffs. Reddi Whip is, like, 75% milk, right?
His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he forgets to shut the fridge door until it starts beeping at him like it's a personal offense.
“Work?”
Stiles barely hears you, nose almost smooshed against his screen. “Huh?” He stares at his phone, eyes rapidly flicking back-and-forth, brain turning over how to counter the latest move on his ever-changing chessboard.
Stiles finally registers what you said when he begins his reply to his unit chief. “Oh…yeah.” His thumbs fly over his screen at a speed that, frankly, shouldn’t be humanly possible, “One sec…”
“You need a break.” You stand and place your hands on your hips in an adorable show of strength. He knows that you’re going for stern, so he bites his twitching mouth lest he invoke your actual wrath. “You’ve been working 18-hour days for the last two weeks.”
That’s an exaggeration, but Stiles doesn’t argue. He feels like it’s true. His stubble is out of control, and he’s afraid to look in the mirror and see exactly how dark his eyebags are. He only stopped by to shower and get a fresh change of clothes, but you came out of the bathroom in your little pink bathrobe and distracted him.
Stiles hates that robe. Detests it. He wants to burn it. He wants to rip the flimsy tie off with his teeth.
Mostly, Stiles wants to tuck you under his blankets and snuggle into the fuzzy fabric until he falls asleep.
He wants, he wants, he wants. That’s the problem.
You pry his phone from his hands and slip it into your back pocket. “We’re getting drunk tonight,” you say, and you say it in a way that he can’t even argue with. You say it like it’s a fact—you’re informing him, not telling him. Stiles is usually happy to comply.
That’s how you’ve always worked, after all: You point at a crocodile infested river, and he goes merrily, merrily, merrily down the stream, with a stupid, dreamy smile on his face.
It’s just. He’s functionally useless at doing anything without you. You take care of him. Always have.
Way back, when he was pre-Adderall Stiles, all baby energy and undiagnosed ADHD, you shoved a kid off of the swings when he made fun of Stiles’s babbling and twitching. He still babbles and twitches, but at least now he knows why. He doesn’t have some parasitic monster inside him; he’s just Stiles.
You’ve always known that—how was he supposed to not fall in love with you?
And after his mom died, you let him cry on your shoulder until your shirt was soaked through. He got snot all over your collar, and you just squeezed him tighter. Held onto him until he could breathe again, and then you said, “Want a grape soda?” and he almost started crying again because right then, at that moment, that was somehow the only right thing to say. Maybe because it was you, or maybe it was because you knew him so well. Maybe, it didn’t matter.
You spent the rest of the night starfished over your bed, and after a minute of staring at your ceiling fan, Stiles whispered, “Do you think we’ll be best friends forever?”
You looked at him and grinned, all teeth and sparkly eyes, and said, “You better hope so, boy blunder. Who else is gonna watch Twin Peaks with you a zillion times?” And Stiles knows that he was only eight, and he knows that maybe it was just because you made him laugh after all the emptiness, but he thinks that he fell a little bit in love with you then, even if he was too young to put a name to the feeling.
He finally figured it out when he was seventeen. Stiles wanted to be an adult so badly back then—and he felt like he was sometimes, after everything he’d gone through, but in so many ways he wasn’t. He definitely didn’t know how to handle his breakup with Malia like an adult—his first breakup, his first real relationship.
Stiles drank a lot that night. He can’t remember exactly how much, or anything that happened after 11 pm, but he does remember how you stroked his hair. He remembers how you wiped the foul mix of bile and sweat from his face with a cool washcloth and tender hands. He remembers how you tucked him into bed and curled up next to him when he asked you to say.
He remembers falling in love with you.
The epiphany felt a lot better when he was warm and limp from his dad’s scotch. It hurt a bit, when he woke up hungover and in an empty bed. You were in the kitchen, making him breakfast: greasy eggs and hashbrowns. After he got over seeing you in one of his t-shirts, he wondered if you’d ever get tired of cleaning up after him and all his issues.
Stiles still wonders that sometimes, even after you crawled into bed with him the night you found out your college sweetheart was cheating on you. He stroked your hair and ignored the wetness soaking into his neck, and you whispered against his skin, “Do you think we'll best friends forever?”
Stiles wanted to laugh. And then scream. And then kiss you. He didn’t do any of those things. He just said, “Can’t picture it any other way.” He didn’t say that whenever he thought about the future, whenever he pictured forever, you were always there.
He didn’t ask, ‘Is it okay if I’m in love with you forever?’
Stiles wants to ask it now, while you rattle off your plans for him this evening, but he doesn’t. He chews on a corn nut instead.
“Lydia’s looking for the right opportunity to make a move on the guy in 2B anyway,” you finish, blowing a strand of hair out of your face.
You’re looking at him like he’s supposed to say something, so he nods dutifully, “The guy with the mullet, right?”
You roll your eyes and poke around the cabinets, taking stock of the chips and tequila. “It’s not a mullet—you’re so obtuse when you’re jealous.”
Stiles blinks because…where the hell did that come from? “I’m good on the perm front, thanks,” he snarks through the food lodged in his cheek.
“Not of him,” you say, tongue trapped between your teeth and distracted by the mixers on top of the fridge. Your back is to him from your perch on the counter, and Stiles watches you with wary eyes. It would be so much easier if you'd just ask him to get things down from the top shelves, but you never do. Refuse to, actually. Vehemently. You'll do it yourself, even if it means breaking a limb.
You manage to keep a hold of the pile of bottles cradled against your chest through your dismount, and Stiles breathes easier when your feet are pressed against solid ground. He’s glad your eyes are still on the kaleidoscope of sugar and citrus because you’d mock the relief in his eyes without mercy.
You line the bottles up in order of emptiness and absently hum, “Well, yes of him, I guess, because—can you check on the vodka and gin?”
Stiles sticks his head in the freezer, grateful for the blast of frigid air, and tries to untangle the crumbs of meaning in your flimsy accusation. He comes up with absolutely nothing—on every front of his mission. “No gin.”
You let out a long, heavy sigh and shake your head at the dangling light fixtures. “Lydia.”
Lydia was the only person in the apartment who liked gin, but Stiles didn’t have any room in his brain for commiseration. “So, I’m jealous of little orphan Annie from 2B because…?” He leans against the counter and tucks his hands under his arms, squinting skeptically, “Just so we’re on the same page n’ all.”
You’re texting someone. He’s sure it’s Lydia, probably asking her to pick up more gin on her way home, but Stiles can’t help but wonder if you’re inviting your…whatever you call three decent dates and one evening of alright sex. ( Oh, how Stiles loved hearing all the details when you came home. )
“Hmm?” Your smile is lit up by your screen and the kittenish glint in your eye, but Stiles knows it’s not for him. He swallows his pettiness before he chokes on it. “Oh, right,” you put your phone down on the counter and smirk. This one is for him, but Stiles actually wouldn’t mind if it was for someone else; the look in your eyes is downright diabolical. “You’re so adorably, blatantly jealous that Lydia is into another no-neck, illiterate jock from the gym—but the perm is pretty bad, I’ll give you that.”
Stiles’s jaw falls, and you laugh, completely misinterpreting his stupor. He stares at you and just shakes his head, scrambling for a grasp on at least one of the million questions pinging around his skull. “You think I want Lydia?”
“Uh-doy,” you roll your eyes like he’s said something particularly stupid, “only since forever.”
He’s struck again at how you can simultaneously know him so well and not at all. “You don’t think that would’ve come up in the last, I dunno,” Stiles’s head jerks with his choppy hand gestures, “eighteen years?”
You wave your hand and then grab his wrist, “It’s been intermittent.”
You lead Stiles back into your room by his hand like he’s a wayward dog on a leash. He’s grateful for it. Stiles can’t do much else besides blink and breathe when he’s like this—when he’s wrapped up in a case he can’t crack.
Stiles drops onto the edge of your bed with a solid thud, feeling a bit like someone slammed a 2x4 into his gut. His tongue seems to be useless, glued to the back of his teeth. All he can do is watch you flit around your room, gathering an armful of skirts and dresses.
You hold up a black dress in one hand and a black mini-skirt layered under a red baby tee in the other, “Pick.”
Stiles wants to pick the sweats you’re currently wearing because they’re his, but he points at the skirt. He knows it’s your favorite; you’d pick it anyway.
You sit down in front of your vanity and pull the scrunchie out of your bun. Stiles watches your hair tumble over your shoulders. You’re insecure about it, always have been. One day it’s the color, and then it’s the texture, and he, for the life of him, doesn’t understand why. Your hair shines so prettily under the light, and it always smells so sweet, like citrus and honeysuckle—Stiles can’t decide if he wants to bury his nose in it or wrap it around his spindly fingers.
Graciously, you twist it into an artful arrangement before he can do either.
“I don’t want to be with Lydia,” Stiles finally says quietly.
You stop fiddling with pieces of hair framing your face and meet his gaze in the mirror, “It’s okay if you do.”
Stiles nods and stares at his lap, twiddling his fingers. “I know,” it’d be easier if he did, “but I don’t.”
You turn around in your chair and give him a little smile. It’s fond and sweet, and Stiles feels like a hand is closing around his heart and twisting it behind his ribs. “We’ll find you someone tonight, then,” you say, popping up from your seat. You grab your clothes off of the bed and squeeze his shoulder on your way to the full-length mirror next to your closet.
Stiles turns his head when you start to wriggle out of your shirt. He knows you don’t care what he sees after years of sleepovers and lake vacations, but you don’t know what it does to him. How all your dips and curves slip behind his lids when he’s alone with his fist and too much lube. If he’s really being honest, it also happens when he’s not alone, but that makes him feel like a piece of shit for a whole other list of reasons.
All of it feels pretty awful when it’s over—when Stiles is left with the unpleasant sensation of drying cum on his stomach and the very unpleasant realization that you’d never wear a swimsuit around him again if you knew exactly what he does with the image.
So. Stiles does what he can. He doesn’t look when you change, tries to avoid seeing you in a towel altogether, and watches so much porn of people who look nothing like you.
It doesn’t work, of course, but he tries. That has to count for something.
Stiles swallows and taps his fingers against his thighs. “I can’t think of anything I want to do less than interact with a bunch of drunk strangers partying in my—”
“Not a bunch,” you say around a grunt, tripping over the dragging hem of your borrowed sweats, “and not a party. Just a chill get-together of like-minded peers.”
He scoffs and tips his chin up, rolling his eyes at the ceiling. “I’m sure I have so much in common with Lydia’s guest list. Yeah, we can talk about how they can bench-press two of me and that I also love me some stacking—pancakes, not steroids, but close enough.”
There’s a whoosh of a zipper and then you’re in front of him with your arms folded over your chest and thinned eyes. “You better behave.”
Stiles grins; it’s decidedly obnoxious. “I’ll be perfectly cordial, promise. I’ll even speak slowly.”
You laugh, and Stiles knows you’re only pretending that you didn’t want to.
“I think it’ll be good for you.” You return to your vanity and pilfer through your mess of earrings. “Y’know, to get out of your head for a little bit. It really is just gonna be us and a few plus ones. I know you, boy wonder, no parties shall ever be thrown in your honor. I solemnly swear.”
He smiles at the childhood pet name, a private little grin Stiles keeps tucked in his chest and at his feet. It falls, however, when he remembers the middle bits of your speech. “So,” Stiles gnaws on his thumbnail and jiggles his knee, “did you invite a plus one?”
You slide a gold hoop through your ear and grin at him, “Nah, I’m all yours tonight, Stilinski.”
Good. God.
Stiles wants to kiss you. He always wants to kiss you, but sometimes every inch of you rips the air from his lungs—cleaves him right in two. Like right now. He forgets how to speak, trying to remember what he can say and what he absolutely can’t say, while he imagines a life where you really are his and you know that he’s always been yours.
You’re just so pretty in your little skirt and cherry t-shirt, and you’re so clever, and funny, and you’re looking at him like he’s your favorite person in the entire world, and Stiles feels all of it spilling over the edges of his restraint. He almost says something so heavy—so categorically, catastrophically stupid, it would ruin your friendship for good.
Stiles swallows it back into his chest, but his voice is still thick when he says, “All mine, huh.”
He’s sick with yearning, and he’s petrified for a moment that you can tell. It seems so obvious to him. It would be obvious to anyone, Stiles thinks, if they heard how weak he sounded, how soft in his throat and reverent in your presence.
But you don’t notice. You never do. It’s a relief, and it’s endlessly frustrating.
“Yep,” you smack your lips together, blotting your red lipstick until it’s perfect, “I wanna win, and everyone knows you can’t win True American with a noob on your team.”
His brow arches, and a lazy grin smears across his mouth, “Oh, so we’re getting drunk drunk tonight.”
You wink at him in the mirror, “If you play your cards right.”
Stiles does, in fact, play his cards right. He picks Scott as the third member of your cabinet, possibly because Scott can outdrink anyone…or maybe it’s because Scott knows that Stiles is pathetically into you and can’t keep his mouth shut at the best of times, but especially not when he’s drunk.
Who’s to say, really?
Honestly, Stiles doesn’t need the advantage—Lydia’s voluntarily stuck with Isaac and the guy from 2B who can’t follow the rules no matter how many times they shout them at him, and Malia and Kira care far more about making goo-goo eyes at each other than they do helping their friend from yoga make any progress towards the King—but he’s competitive by nature and feeling exceptionally stupid tonight.
Lydia introduced the Clinton Strip Rules solely to ogle her latest man candy’s aggressively sculpted six-pack and show off her bewitching décolletage, and it was going along swimmingly until the idiot forgot how to count.
It was so simple. All the guy had to do was hold up three fingers—that’s all. He would’ve matched Lydia's count, and then they could've made out behind the Iron Curtain. But he didn’t. He held up two fingers and in doing so single-handedly crafted Stiles Stilinski’s demise.
Ironic. Considering the moron can't craft a compound-complex sentence to save his life.
For a single, endless moment, you and Stiles just stare at each other, more specifically, at the four fingers plastered against your foreheads—and then the spell is broken by drunken cackling. Lydia grins like the cat who caught the canary, and Scott laughs until his face turns red. He’s loud and obnoxious with the four drinks he’s downed, and Stiles wants to shove him out the window.
“Guys,” Stiles whines, “you don’t really—”
You finish the beer in your hand and shrug your shoulders, “It’s fine.”
Stiles’s head whips towards you, big-eyed and fish-mouthed. He can’t form words. Can’t speak any of the five languages he knows. He’s become a Stiles Stilinski skinsuit held up by a skeleton of gelatin and faulty survival instincts.
You smile at him a little and shrug again, “It’s just a game, right?”
You don’t say it, but Stiles can hear it with painful clarity: It doesn’t mean anything.
Stiles doesn’t know how to say no without telling the truth. It’s not that he doesn’t want to, not exactly. Stiles wants to kiss you—of course he wants to kiss you, feels like the whole goddamn world knows he wants to kiss you and is conspiring against him—but not like this. He doesn’t want to kiss you when it’s nothing. He’s thought about it far too much, imagined it on his bedroom ceiling in the safety of darkness too many nights, to blow it all on a stupid drinking game. A stupid gym-bro’s mistake.
Stiles had a plan. A plan he never actually had the courage to act on, but a plan nonetheless.
He was going to hold your face with shaking hands, smooth his thumbs along the sleek line of your jaw, look you in the eyes so that you could see the disbelief, the wonder, the awe. You’d see that he was overwhelmed to the bone, to all the nerves shivering inside the marrow, and you’d have to forgive him for being so tongue-tied and awkward—for taking so long.
And then, he’d kiss you.
He’d kiss you again, and again, and again, until one of you started laughing, but that’d be okay because it would give him the chance to kiss your neck and whisper, 'You’re the sky, and the mountains, and everything in-between.'
'You’re dark matter; you’re gravity,' he’d kiss the words into your skin and sigh, 'you’re the only thing holding the universe together.'
But he can’t say that, so Stiles follows you into Lydia’s bedroom and wipes the sweat on his palms off on his jeans.
You’re a little giggly while you fumble for the light. It’s breathy, and you can’t meet his eyes. Stiles feels a little better knowing that you’re almost as nervous as he is. You aren’t usually the nervous kind, after all. That’s his thing.
Stiles slides his hands into his back pockets and rocks onto his heels, “We don’t…we can just pretend that we…did it.”
“Did it?” you arch a brow, lips curling into a wry grin. “It’s just a kiss, Stiles. I thought you wanted to win? We gotta end Lydia’s streak, or she’ll be insufferable.”
Stiles’s mouth goes dry: cottony with wanting, brittle with misery. He can’t pretend anymore; he can’t pretend that he's not dying from this.
You can’t look at Stiles’s face. Can’t see the panic. It’s why you shuffle closer to him, stiffly reach for his shoulders and awkwardly search for the least romantic place to rest your hands. Stiles’s back thuds against the wall, and you finally dart your eyes to his. “It’s fine,” you say weakly.
There’s a loud chorus of, ‘Kiss, kiss, kiss,’ through the door, and Stiles watches the resolve harden your face. His chest rises and falls with quick, shallow exhales. He can hear his pulse ricochet around his ear canal, can feel the sweat gathering on his palms, can taste the anticipation in the air.
You roll your shoulders back a few times and shake your hands by your side, rotating your neck in a few slow circles. “Just kiss me, Stilinski. No biggie. I think we can catch up to Isaac if you hurry the hell up and plant one on—”
“Not like this!”
Your mouth parts into a perfect little ‘o’, and Stiles’s eyes bulge when he realizes that the pathetic, desperate cry came from him.
You fold your arms over your chest and tilt your head with an expression on your face that Stiles can’t read for the life of him. “What,” you lick your lip, and Stiles squirms with shame when he can’t stop himself from tracking the movement, “what does that mean?”
Stiles’s face spasms, and he can feel his IQ drop by tens the longer you stare at him.
“No, I didn’t…” Stiles’s stutters, flicking his gaze to your forehead, your chin, between your brows—anywhere but your eyes. His nose scrunches as he shakes his head, “Nothing. I just—I didn’t mean like that.” Stiles isn’t entirely sure what you think he meant, but considering he can’t decide what he means, it’s a safe bet that you’re wrong.
Stiles's hands take over for his melting brain matter, gesturing wildly every-so often like the flexing and contracting add any actual meaning to his meaningless babble. “I just, we can’t like that because that’s not…Do you know, like…? It’s very, like, you don’t…” His eyelids seem to have forgotten how to blink, and Stiles thinks he’d do just about anything for a piano to fall out of the sky right about now.
The chanting outside the door gets louder; Stiles isn’t sure if it’s real or just his anxiety. Through his narrowing pinprick vision, the only thing he can see at the end of the dark, dark tunnel is Lydia’s window. The heavy purple curtains frame the opening like serendipitous velvet gift wrapping.
Stiles swallows and nods sharply, “If you’ll excuse me.”
Stiles steps around you, and you follow his path with your eyes. They’re pinched with suspicion, but mostly concern. “Stiles, what are you do—”
“I’m fine,” Stiles tries to wave off your worries with a shaky hand.
And then he unlatches Lydia’s window and crawls on top of a chair to reach the opening.
“Okay, this makes sense. I just need a little air,” Stiles mumbles to himself. His dirty sneakers leave a clear outline of his soles on the white fur. Under any other circumstances, you’d both be desperately trying to scrub the fabric clean before Lydia found the stains and rained her wrath down upon your very fragile, bruisable bodies. Under these circumstances, you’re preoccupied with the half of Stiles’s body that’s hanging outside the window of your 3rd-story apartment.
“Stiles!” you stumble to the wall and freeze, unsure how to pull him back in without accidentally tipping him onto the concrete three floors below.
Stiles manages to slip the rest of his body through the window without breaking any limbs. Yet. “This is what I needed. Yup, this is—” his eyes engulf his face, a wide pool of churning honey, when he finally realizes just how small the ledge is and just how far away the ground is, “ah, ha, ha!”
“Stiles!” You cover your face with your hands and shake your head over and over again. You hope, childishly, if you spin fast enough, you can rewind time back to 10 minutes ago—when Stiles was safe on the floor and you could stop yourself from giving into the silly, stupid desire to kiss him. Just once. To finally find out how it would feel.
You peek through your fingers and wince as he stumbles towards the left. “You don’t have to kiss me!”
Stiles disappears from view, and you tumble into the hallway. You let out a low hiss when your hip slams into a sharp corner. The flare of pain is soon forgotten, however, when Stiles slams his hands against the living room window. Everyone turns to gawk at him, eight mouths wide open and not a single word is spoken until Stiles presses his entire body against the glass.
The window hasn’t been cleaned since you all moved in, so you can’t quite make out his expression through grime and dirt, but you can hear the shrill urgency in his voice. “This is a regret—I immediately regret this.” It would be funny, how high his voice is—approaching autotuned chipmunk territory, honestly—if he wasn’t six inches away from certain death. You can all laugh about it later when Stiles is safe on the couch, you decide. After you’ve punched him in the arm for doing something so bone-shatteringly stupid, obviously.
Malia does laugh, and Kira smacks her shoulder. You almost appreciate the levity; it reminds you that your brain needs oxygen to function.
Scott cups his hand around his mouth and shouts, “Don’t move!”
Stiles smooshes his button nose into the glass. He inhales and exhales with mad abandon, creating and erasing a cloud of condescension with every breath. “I've made a very bad mistake! I’m not trained for this!” his lips smear against the glass, muffling his cries for help. Stiles pulls back, and leaves a streak of saliva behind. At least, that patch of the window is clean now, biohazard be damned.
It’s Scott who ends up saving the day. No surprise there. He gets Stiles through the window and shoves him onto the couch, teeth ground in what can only be described as parental frustration.
Scott folds his arms over his chest and narrows his eyes, “You scared me half to death out there.”
Isaac snorts and rolls his eyes, quipping over Scott's shoulder, “Are you not getting enough attention?”
“I’m fine!” Stiles groans into his hands and pinches the bridge of his nose. It’s still red from being smashed against the window, and the rest of his face matches with his embarrassed flush. “I am fine! I was partly joking and at least 64% drunk!”
“Stiles, we will talk about this in the morning,” Scott’s face is stern, and his grip on Stiles’s shoulder is just as firm, “but right now, I’m gonna go do stuff with a girl.”
Scott’s face is still solemn when he high-fives Isaac, mostly out of habit. You do laugh then. Can’t help it. A little bit of relief creeps through your constricted chest when Stiles smiles. It’s brief, a little twitch at the corners of his slightly-swollen mouth, but it’s there.
Allison rolls her eyes when Scott holds out his hand, but she still takes it and follows him towards his bedroom.
“Shut the door!” Stiles shouts at their backs. He slumps back against the couch cushions when the thudding of Scott's door closing echoes through the hall.
It’s quiet for a moment. Kira shifts awkwardly, clinging to Malia’s arm for balance when the fog of alcohol spreads from her flushed cheeks to her platform combat boots. Malia doesn’t look that concerned, but she’s always been cool under pressure…and any other emotion.
You expect Lydia to look as worried as you do, but she has a strange, calculating look in her eyes. They’re sharp in the light of her brilliance; the jade almost looks feline.
Lydia’s beaux ends up breaking the silence with a loose laugh. His head tips back with his chuckle, and he throws his meaty arm around Lydia’s shoulders. “That was freakin’ hilarious! I mean, dude jumped out on a ledge instead of kissing a 10. Can you believe that?”
Lydia looks wholly unamused and says flatly, “I really can’t.” She fixes Stiles with a look you can’t read, but Stiles seems to understand.
“I know.” Stiles drops his face into his hands and digs his face into the cradle of his wide palms. "I’m an idiot.”
Everyone seems to hear a cue that you missed while watching Stiles’s chest rise and fall. Malia, Kira, and their plus one filter out the door one-by-one, and Isaac kisses your cheek before wrapping his scarf around his neck. You’re relieved again when you hear Stiles scoff; it’s something he always does when Isaac puts on one of his pretentious kerchiefs in the balmy, LA weather. It’s nice to see some things are still the same.
Lydia stares at Stiles, and they have a silent conversation that ends with a patented Lydia Martin glare and a quintessential Stiles Stilinski squint.
Lydia leaves with her late night delight and kiss to your other cheek, and suddenly it’s just you and Stiles.
You wring your fingers together, gnawing on the lining of your cheek. You can’t think of anything to say. To Stiles. You never thought you’d see the day.
The couch creaks with Stiles’s shifting weight. He pushes himself to his feet and stands in front of you. The redness in his face has faded, baring the smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose that you’re so fond of. His lips part. Your breath stills, waiting. Wanting. His silence washes over the room like a flood, and you close your eyes. You’re afraid of it, witnessing the inevitable wreckage.
It doesn’t come.
You hear the quiet padding of Stiles’s footsteps. When you open your eyes, he’s gone, slinking down the hall to his bedroom. You stare at the place he was just standing, feeling the chill of his absence, and then it’s gone. A glaring blaze of anger warms your face, and you allow it to carry you to Stiles’s closed door. What a metaphor; the thought grinds your molars together until they screech.
You wrench his door open, and Stiles jumps, halfway out of his jeans. He stumbles over the cuffs and almost falls on his face. You wish you could tease him, laugh until you snort and Stiles glares at you through his pathetic attempt to hide his smirk. But you can’t. Not yet.
“You’re really just going to leave it like that?” you say, closing his door behind you. It’s preemptive; you feel a little like yelling. “That was a whole other level of stupid, Stiles, even by your standard.”
Stiles quickly yanks his pants back up and buttons them, struggling with the zipper and his twitching fingers. “Can we just not,” Stiles rubs a hand over his face, looking infinitely older than he is, and mumbles a hollow, “actually, can we never.”
The words hang heavily in the air. In the harrowing quiet, you think: Oh god, is this it? Is this really the end?
Stiles stares at his feet, at the hole he’s wearing in the oak floor. He hears it too, the weight of what he’s done. Fucking hell, he thinks, I didn't know cowardice could be so loud.
You smooth your hands over your hair, clasping for any semblance of composure. “I just…I didn’t realize that the thought of kissing me was so…traumatic.”
Stiles jerks his head from the floor and tugs his fingers through hair. He pulls at the roots until it stings and shakes his head, “That’s not…you’re,” he gestures towards you helplessly and swallows the millions of things he wants to say, “you.”
“Yeah,” your shoulder lifts in a tiny shrug, arms winding around your torso like a brace, “that seems to be the issue.”
Stiles just looks at you for a moment. The lamp on his desk bathes his skin in a wave of warmth when he tilts his head. The tip of his nose casts a shadow over his lips, and you want to trace the divot in his cupid’s bow, the little lines by his nose, the hollow space under his eyes. You want to trace them all with your fingertips and then memorize them with your mouth.
Stiles's eyes are golden in the light, and they’re stuck on yours.
“You are…” Stiles closes his eyes, and his voice is so soft, so devout, “you are so fucking...inescapable, you know that? You are…you’re so deep inside my head, I can’t do anything without thinking about you. It’s becoming a serious fuckin’ problem—a nuisance, actually, a nuisance. And it’s not like I haven’t tried to stop, y’know, like it would be fuckin’ awesome if I could just forget how you smell like going home and a goddamn spring meadow, or if I could go fuckin’ grocery shopping without looking for those impossible to find chips with the Elmer Fudd lookin’ fucker on ‘em—”
“Hot fries,” you whisper hoarsely.
Stiles stops pacing for a moment and nods at you, “Thank you—hot fries. And I would love it if I could walk down the street, just once, and not look for a dog to take a picture of, just so I have an excuse to text you without looking like I was just thinking about you—even though I was obviously just thinking about you because, re my previous ranting, there’s literally not a single second of the day that you're not on my mind. You're just…inevitable.”
“And…I am Iron Man?” your smile is wobbly.
Stiles gives you a flat look over his shoulder, “You’re a smartass—but I love that. I love everything about you—even the way you talk through my favorite movies and force-feed me a vegetable once a week.”
“Stiles,” you swallow shallowly and rest your hand on his chest. Stiles stops pacing and meets your gaze with big, endless eyes and blinking butterfly lashes. Tipping your head to the side, you swipe your thumb over his thudding heart, “What are you trying to say?”
Stiles rests his hand on top of yours, clunkily lacing your fingers together for a little stability. “I love you,” he whispers, because he has to. It has to be this soft. It has to stay just between you and him, in the little bubble of air between your lips. “I’ve been in love with you since…” Stiles chews on his lip, trying to pinpoint when he knew, when he knew that you’re it for him. There are so many moments that come to mind, and he can’t pick a single one. It’s just that the line between mud pies, and t-ball, and this is so blurry. Stiles can’t tell where it really begins and where it ends.
It feels boundless, Stiles thinks, infinity. It’s something, somewhere, past the edge of the universe. He’s yours infinitely. There is no before he loved you, and there is no after. It’s just always.
Stiles breathes and sighs out his answer, “Forever. I’ve loved you since forever, and I couldn’t—I can’t kiss you if it doesn’t mean anything.”
Your lips curve slowly. It’s a nervous smile, one that’s afraid of the rug being yanked out from under happily ever after. “You love me?” you say quietly, voice little and meek.
The tip of Stiles’s tongue darts out, wetting his lip. He nods slowly and rubs the back of his neck—an anxious tick you know very well. You’ve watched Stiles for eighteen years, after all. You’ve studied the tendons in his neck, how they flex when he crooks his head down to read, how it makes your belly warm more than it should. You know he flexes his fingers exactly three times before starting a test, and you know that the long veins in his arms are the most stupidly attractive things you’ve ever seen. He’s the most attractive thing you’ve ever seen, and you’ve loved him for so long it’s written in your bone marrow.
Stiles scratches his neck until it’s pink and raw, and you pull his hand away instinctively. He smiles at you so timidly it breaks your heart, “Is that okay?”
You nod, and nod, and nod. “Very okay. Very, very okay. The most okay of all the okay’s.” It’s so fast, and it’s been so long, but mostly it’s right. Like this is the only logical conclusion, the answer to a cold case that took eighteen years to solve. Your life has always been youandstiles, and that sounds a whole like forever.
Slipping a hand to the back of his neck, you run your thumb along the knobs of his spine and whisper, “I am so ridiculously in love with you, boy wonder.”
Stiles grins. It starts small, fond, tender—but the more times he hears it, every time she loves me, she loves me, she loves me bounces around his ribcage, his grin gets a little bigger, a little brighter. Soon, it stretches across his entire face and swallows you whole. He looks more than alive like this; you want to taste the electricity in his mouth.
You smile at each other for a long time, and you look at Stiles through your lashes. “So,” you tip your chin and bat your eyes, “you gonna kiss me?”
Stiles is going to kiss you. He swears. He’s just…he’s thinking too much after an evening of not thinking at all. He’s been waiting for this for forever, and what if his lips are dry—or, worse, what if they’re too wet? What if his hands are cold and clammy, and you can feel his sweat when he cups your cheeks. He definitely feels sweaty. And nervous. And—
You rock onto your tiptoes and kiss him. It’s a little kiss, soft and short, but everything goes static and neon around you. You let out a little sigh, start to pull away—and Stiles whimpers. His hands surges forward and latches onto the back of your neck, pulling your mouth back to his.
Stiles slides the breadth of his large palm up and down your back, chasing the rhythm of your breath. There isn't much to chase, you think deliriously, you aren’t really sure if you need oxygen to survive anymore. You like swallowing his sounds and tasting his tongue far more than breathing. It feels like Stiles agrees with you when he wraps his arms around your waist and pulls you into his chest, digging his fingers into the small of your back until there’s nowhere else for you to go. Silly boy. As if you’d rather be anywhere else.
He makes the sweetest little noises in-between your kisses, softening the wet smacking of lips and tongues. You chase them, learning what he likes by unraveling him one sound at a time, with a tug on his hair here, a nibble on his lip there, and your hands just about everywhere.
It’s hot. Literally. You can feel heat licking your skin—or maybe that’s just Stiles. Your head is a little fuzzy from his kisses and not enough oxygen, and logic is a distant thought. Breathing. People need to breathe.
Stiles’s nose bumps against yours when he pulls back. He smiles drunkenly and leans in for one more kiss. It’s quick and open-mouthed, two little brushes of his lips, and it steals what’s left of the air in your lungs.
Stiles brushes your hair back and rests his forehead against yours. His breath chills your spit-slick, swollen mouth, and you shiver at the look in his eyes. “I meant something like that.”
IGNITE: A Teen Wolf S1 AU (Reader's Version) // Prev. / Chapter 6
Characters: Stiles Stilinski, fem!reader, ofc, omc
Pairing: Eventual Stiles x Reader, but man are we talking slow burn
Word Count: 6k
Warnings: Canon typical gore/violence, parental death (rip to your fake mom), depictions of depression (apathy, dissociation, 'numb little bug' vibes)
Tags: Canon has been lovingly scrapped for parts, author is a chaotic bi and it shows, prolific overuse of the em dash, the slowest of burns i fear
Summary: You can always smell ash long after the fire is gone. Perhaps, that’s why you still can’t breathe without choking on the past. It’s been four years since your mom died. Four years since she burned alive. Four years since you didn’t. You survived, but they must have buried your heart with her because most days you feel like a shadow, some horrifically sad creature caught halfway between a ghost and a lamb for slaughter.
You can’t scrub the bitter smell of hospital from your memories, not even with denial. Maybe, that’s why death and disease follows Stiles wherever he goes now. It’s been eight years since his mom died. Eight years since he didn’t. Eight years since he decided that he wouldn’t let anyone he loved die ever again. He survived, but Beacon Hills’ bloody underbelly is making it pretty damn hard for him to keep his promise.
Time never stops turning. The grief never dissipates. Children soldier on—but in a town where all the monsters under the bed are real, and old family secrets rattle in every closet, how long can two fragile, breakable humans survive?
Maybe, the real question is: How long will they want to?
Chapter Summary: You go full Charlie Kelly and start to put all the pieces together. Stiles knows more than he lets on, but for some reason you trust him anyway.
A/N: check me out on ao3 (dork_knight) for the full lore version!
Taglist: @eaterof-concrete, @m30wk1ttycat
You played and replayed the video at least a hundred times, over and over again, examining every poorly shot, grainy frame until your eyes burned. You were frantic—a rabbit, picking her den apart, ripping her fur out, searching for all the minute flaws and misplaced straw; a girl, chewing her cheek bloody, tearing at her tights, desperately looking for some kind of explanation that wouldn’t completely shatter her fragile grasp on reality.
It would be one thing if it was just the video. You could easily rationalize the video away; you’d seen enough fan-made edits of Buffy and Twilight to know that amateur editors were hardly amateurs anymore—but it wasn’t just the video. It was the video, and the gutted video clerk, and the mangled bus driver, and the severed woman with wolf fibers found her butchered corpse—all interconnected by one very furry, clawed, fanged… thing.
Rolling onto your back, you scrubbed at your eyes, fingers cruel and violent in their attempt to scour away images of blood, and death, and monsters. There had to be an explanation. A rational explanation. Your gaze reflexively drifted towards the charm bundle on your windowsill, propped up against a few of your favorite novels.
The books were old, spines creased and splitting at the corners from little fingers and a lot of love. They were your mom’s before they were yours; you read them together under the covers whenever it rained. For a long time, you kept them hidden away under your bed with all the other things that might crumble your brittle will, but the yellowing pages steeped in memories didn’t seem so haunting anymore. You were already halfway through the stack, consuming the faded ink like a fiend in the night. It was odd; there wasn’t much that had changed since now and then. Really, only one thing. It made sense, you supposed after some thought. Your childhood favorites: Nancy Drew, Sherlock Holmes, the Hercule Poirot novels, they were exactly the kind of thing a sheriff’s son would appreciate.
The largest book in the pile was your complete collection of Sherlock Holmes. You chewed on your lip, eyes tracing the elegant swoops and swirls illuminated on the spine. Words curled along your brainstem in time with the loops, breaking through the buzzing in your mind with quiet British flourish: When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
Your nose scrunched, bottom lip trapped between your teeth. Surely, you hadn’t eliminated all logical explanations yet. Surely.
The metallic embellishments glinted at you, taunting you with their unmistakable presence and insistent reminder of your evening’s unavoidable ending. There was only one place to go for the improbable, after all; you just had to get past your pride and everything you believed to be true.
Before you could finish putting on your shoes, your dad found his way into your room. He lingered on the border of the black cherry floor. His stance was awkward, unsure of his footing, and you froze with your shoelace in hand. After a moment of stilted silence, he cleared his throat and loosened his tie from its chafing Windsor knot, “I just wanted to let you know I’ll be out later than usual.”
Nodding, you tied your laces into neat bows and pulled the wrinkles in your tights straight, “Parent Teacher Conferences, right?”
“Mhm,” he paused and attempted a smile. The edges were stiff, as if his mouth had forgotten the movement, at least when directed at you, “Should I be worried?”
It was his attempt at a joke; you knew that. You still felt a flutter of anxiety. Despite Stiles’s reassurances, you weren't so cavalier about breaking the rules. “All A’s,” you finally said, quietly to your feet.
Your dad gave you a real smile; smaller than his previous attempt at playfulness, but this one was your favorite. He was proud. It’d been a long time since he’d looked at you with anything other than grief and unease. “That’s my girl.” He rapped his knuckles against your door frame and said, “There’s takeout money on the table. Don’t stay out too long; there’s a—”
“Curfew, I know.” You slung your bag over your shoulder and fiddled with the strap, “I’ll be back soon.”
He didn’t ask you where you were going. He never did. You weren't sure what that said about your relationship, but you didn’t want to think about it any longer than you had to. There were far more pressing things to dwell on.
Maggie was in her kitchen when you opened the door to her house. It was cozy, small; she'd inherited it from her mother when she passed years ago. There were still signs of her 70s nostalgia all over every room. The shag carpet was horrendous, but you kind of liked the color. The muted green almost looked like a bed of moss, like something out of a fairytale.
You had your own key; you’d had one since you were old enough to be a latchkey kid—even though you were never really on your own for long. There was always someone around to help you with your homework, bake you brownies without getting shell in the batter, read you stories about far away places and imaginary worlds. You’d had a wonderful childhood until it ended; some people weren’t that lucky. You knew that you were fortunate to have twelve years of Rockwellian bliss; it was more than a lot of people got. Knowing, however, still didn’t make the after any easier.
“Want a scone?” Maggie’s head was buried in the oven, steam curling around her shoulders. She emerged with a tray of browned lumps in pink oven-mitted hands, “They're slightly burnt, but it’s not my fault. My timer betrayed me.”
You didn’t reply. You chewed on your lip and studied the plants hanging from the ceiling. The Angelica was in full bloom, little clusters of white fuzzy fireworks. The roots were supposed to ward off evil. You would’ve scoffed at the thought a week ago. Now, there was a lingering ‘what if’ you couldn’t shake.
You sighed quietly, the exhaustion rattling through your chest, and trailed your gaze to the next plant. Skullcaps were your favorite, not because they were supposed to induce visions, obviously; you liked the blossoms. The fluted periwinkle petals certainly looked magical. You picked a flower from the lowest stem and rolled it between your fingers, “You really believe in this shit, right?” You looked up from your hands and studied Maggie’s face carefully, “It’s not all a scam?”
The anticipated gasp carried through the kitchen, followed by the clang of a plonked baking sheet, “I resent the very implication.”
“I’m serious.” You stared at Maggie’s back, watching for any tell-tale signs of tension or rigidity, “Do you really believe that witches are real and wolfsbane can kill werewolves?”
“I will not be abused in my own home,” there was a lilt in Maggie’s voice, a flippancy that usually made your lips twitch into a smile, but Maggie's hand trembled and sent the scone on the edge of her spatula to the floor. Maggie dropped to her knees and scooped the crumbling pieces into a pile with desperate hands, oddly frantic for something as silly as a dropped pastry.
You squatted next to her and rested your hands over Maggie’s until they stilled. “Mags,” you were quiet, gentle in your sweeping, but Maggie didn’t seem soothed by the clean floor.
Maggie’s chin lifted, but her eyes zeroed in on the tip of your nose instead of your eyes. “Babe.”
You gripped your knees, clinging to the caps with ragged nails and flexed knuckles, like your bones were the only solid thing left in the room. “Can you be serious for once in your life, please.” Your tongue went heavy, adhering to the floor of your mouth, effectively sealing everything else you couldn’t bring yourself to say: Please, I think I’m losing my mind, and I don’t know how much longer I can white-knuckle it.
Maggie turned towards the counter carelessly, and her pinky brushed against the cookie sheet. She let out a sharp hiss through her teeth and shook her hand in the air. “Why does it matter?” Her words were muffled through the blistering finger in her mouth, “People buy what they want to buy.”
Your empathy was thinning and so was your patience. Your teeth gnashed, and you winced when your tongue got in the way. “I don’t give a shit about your delusional customers. You know what I mean.”
“See, ‘delusional,’” Maggie stuffed a scone into her mouth even though it was still steaming. Her eyes watered as she struggled to swallow the wad of blueberry and oatmeal lodged against the roof of her mouth. “Why are we even talking about this?” she said thickly, throat clogged with congealed crumbs and something skittish in her eyes. She bent over the sink and turned the water to cold; you weren't entirely sure if she was soothing the burns on her tongue or simply avoiding eye contact.
“There’s something happening here,” your voice trembled, much to your disdain, and you were further horrified by the stinging in your tear ducts, “and I don’t know what to do.”
Maggie’s head whipped towards you, wetting her hair and splattering her lenses with water droplets that dripped onto her nose, “You don’t have to do anything. That’s not your job.” She clutched your shoulders with desperate fingers, digging into your scapulae until it hurt, “Your job is to go to school, get good grades, and live happily ever after.”
You shook off her hands and wiped your nose against your shoulder, “Why won’t you just give me a straight answer?”
“Well, I am bi–”
“Maggie,” you struggled for words until there was only one left on your tongue, “please.”
A blank expression fell over her face, and then Maggie seemed to sink through the floor even though she was still standing. “Did you read the book?”
You could barely hear her. Your nose shriveled towards your brows, “What book?”
Her eyes shined with something; you couldn’t quite define it. There was a glimmer of remorse, but you couldn’t make out the rest. “‘Beacon Hills’ Bloodlines’.”
For a moment, you were too confused to be frustrated, “Not really.”
Confusion became bewilderment when Maggie left the kitchen without a word. She returned with a thick book; though, book wasn’t quite accurate. It was really a stack of pulp parchment barely held together with a piece of threaded twine. It looked older than the Bloodline’s journal; you could see a few pages sticking out from the others, and the spine was in desperate need of re-stitching. You reluctantly took the pages from Maggie’s hands after she shook it in your face a couple times.
Maggie was quiet when she finally spoke, “Read the journal.” She nodded towards the new book, “That too.”
You frowned at the cover and held it out in front of you like it was contaminated. “Why are you being so weird about this? Just tell me.”
Maggie looked at you, and the most peculiar sensation rolled down your spine. Maggie's eyes were so present, like a shotgun blast, like a meteor shower. Her voice wasn’t even close to loud, but it was just as piercing as her stare, “I made a promise; I have to keep at least part of it.”
Your forehead creased, “Wha...that’s even weirder. Are you fuckin’ Gandalf? Just say it.”
“Trust me,” Maggie’s gaze shifted to the floor, and you almost melted with relief, “there are some things that you’re better off not knowing.”
“Great. Thanks, Obi-Wan,” you rolled your eyes and crammed the bound parchment into your bag, “I’ll figure it out myself.”
A cool hand cupped your cheek before you could leave. You grudgingly met Maggie’s gaze, adjusting your grip on the strap of your bag.
Maggie held onto your shoulders, a breath away from shaking you. “Promise me, you won’t do anything stupid.”
You grimaced, “I–”
A flash in Maggie’s eyes dried all the words on your tongue.
“Promise.”
“Promise,” you mumbled.
Maggie finally let you leave, and your feet felt heavier than they did when you walked into Maggie’s apartment. Your bag was heavier, so perhaps it wasn’t all an illusion. The guilt, however, was certainly playing a part in your sagging shoulders. You chewed on a thumbnail and slipped into the comfort of denial.
It didn’t count as a broken promise if you didn’t really know what you were promising.
Your dad was still gone when you got home, and you were relieved. Solitude was your only comfort with all this dread chilling your blood. You weren't good with the unpredictable, not anymore. You tried to study it, the way you did with dead languages and theoretical physics, but the methodology wasn't clear. You just wished, for once, you were as scary as people believed.
There was one thing you could do—or rather two. One was on your desk, and the other was at the bottom of your bag.
You started with the journal, and your hair quickly became a nuisance. Every time you bowed your head to get a better look at the messy scrawl, wispy strands obscured your vision. You tied your hair back and nibbled on your lip, struggling to determine if a smudged loop was an ‘a’ or an ‘o.’ They didn’t have computers in the 1800s, you knew that, but it wouldn’t have killed Maggie’s great-great-great-grandmother to quill with a little less ink. Neat cursive was hardly as taxing as cholera.
The pain at the base of your skull was unbearable by the time you made it through half of the entries. Your impatience was rapidly fraying, with yourself and with the lack of insight. Maybe, this was all an elaborate stall—or maybe Maggie really didn’t know anything.
You flopped back against your pillows and starfished your limbs across your bed until all your joints and muscles unkinked. “Fuck me.” Your eyes flicked down your legs, and you glowered at the journal. It was goading you, opened to the middle and sprawled across your thighs, staring at you and all your incompetence.
Your thumbs dug a trench in your skull as you tried to rub the throbbing out of your temples.
One more page. You could read one more page.
You flipped the page, careful with the crumbling corner. The parchment was cluttered with names and arrows; there were a few illustrations too, sketched portraits of the people memorialized on paper. It was inked chaos, but only one word stood out to you. In a large curling script, Hale was spread all over the complicated family tree. You gnawed on your lip and bent your head closer to the small description at the top of the page: The Hale pack founded Beacon Hills in 1856, saving the town from desolation with their wealth. The pack has several branches, extending across the state. They continue to be a prevalent force in their world.
The bloodlines were difficult to follow with all the different branches and untimely deaths. As far as you could tell, the line was documented all the way to 2002. There were a few different sets of handwriting; the style changed every few decades or so, and you flipped to the end of the family line just to check for Maggie’s chicken scratch. You didn’t find her handwriting, but you did notice something familiar on the last line. Derek Hale.
You knew, of course, that Derek would likely be included, but your breath hitched when your finger traced over the notation inscribed next to almost every single one of his family members’ names: Deceased: Arson. Laura Hale was still alive on the tree, and the thought of documenting her death—of giving her an end date —it stole all the air from your lungs.
Your eyes burned, and you quickly flipped back to the start of the Hale bloodline. A few dozen county death records later, the burning in your corneas was due to the strain of one too many computer searches. Still painful, but you much preferred blue light sting to the threat of tears. You focused on it, on the ache; it was so much quieter than all the thoughts fighting you for their turn. They were so loud, a million ravenous locusts buzzing, feasting on your ear canal. You couldn’t make out what they were saying, what they were trying to tell you—what they wanted you to believe.
Derek Hale couldn’t be a werewolf because that would mean werewolves were real, and if werewolves were real, how many other monsters were lurking in the dark? How many creatures from Maggie’s stories were waiting for someone to separate from the herd, biding their time until they could sink their teeth into human flesh?
There was only so much you could find online and in Maggie’s books. Certain secrets had yet to be written.
It was disturbingly easy to find out where Stiles lived. The receptionist at the Sheriff’s station was all too happy to give you his address when you gave her your name. You finally stumbled upon the one perk of being an infamous, pathetic half-orphan: blind faith.
His house was smaller than yours, and you were jealous. All the empty space just made the silence worse, you found. You could see a few spots where the paint was peeling when you got closer, and you smiled at the shoddy patch work. You wondered who tried to fix it. You hoped it was Stiles; you could see the paint in his hair, maybe smeared across his cheek from an ill-advised attempt to scratch his nose. It was adorable.
You knocked on the door and clutched Maggie’s books tighter to your chest. You’d expected Stiles to answer the door, but he didn’t. You didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to you that someone else would be home until Sheriff Stilinski opened the door, but you felt stupid for not thinking of it sooner. The Sheriff looked just as surprised to see you; at least, he had an actual reason.
“Oh.” You blinked and devolved into a monosyllabic moron, “Hi.”
Obviously, you knew Stiles was Sheriff Stilinski’s son, but for some reason the idea of them occupying the same place at the same time was dumbfounding. YOur mind couldn’t make sense of it. There was the Sheriff in one box, with all your grief, all your pain, and then there was Stiles. You didn’t fully know what was in his box, but you knew it was good.
“Hey, kid,” Sheriff Stilinski smiled through his confusion, “you okay? Did something—”
“I’mheretoseeStiles,” all your words were smooshed together in one big exhale.
The Sheriff looked even more confused for a moment, and then he gave you a little conspiratorial grin. “He’s up in his room. Go ahead.”
You nodded absently and followed him inside. You stopped thinking about the hefty pile of books in your arms when you noticed the slight limp in Sheriff Stilinski’s step. “Are you okay?”
The Sheriff followed your gaze and waved his hand, “It’s nothing. Barely a scratch.”
You hesitated at the foot of the stairs, looking for blood or something equally horrific. He had no reason to lie to you, but you’d gotten used to the worst case scenario. “You sure?”
The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepened with his smile, “You sound like my son.”
You mouth ticked up slightly, “That’s not an answer.”
Sheriff Stilinski had a nice laugh, you thought. You grinned as his head shook with another rumbling chuckle. “Now you really sound like my son. I hope he hasn’t driven crazy too.”
“Eh,” you shrugged a little and smiled, “he’s alright.” Your voice dropped a little, like you were telling a secret, “More than, actually. He’s…good.”
The Sheriff looked surprised briefly, a spasm of disbelief, and then all the muscles in his face seemed to melt with fondness. “He is,” his voice was a bit gravelly when he spoke, like it got lodged halfway up his throat. He loved his son; it was obvious. You wondered if your dad ever looked like that when talked about you. You wondered if he even talked about you at all.
“Not a lot of people are,” you said quietly, looking down at your sneakers. The white wasn’t even white anymore. They were graying from years of stepping on your own feet, kicking car doors closed, tripping over asphalt. You weren't the kind of girl who could keep shoes clean; that was one thing about you that hadn’t changed. Sometimes, it felt like everything else had, and none of it was for the better.
Sheriff Stilinski waited until you looked up, and then he smiled at you, almost as fondly as before. “You are.”
You were overwhelmed with feeling, so close to an emotion you couldn’t name, but you knew you’d felt it before. Once upon a time, when parents were parents, and children were children.
The Sheriff rested his hand on your shoulder and squeezed. You were tipping into tearful, and you’d never been so grateful to hear Stiles’s voice.
“Dad, who’s—” Stiles stopped at the top of the stairs and stared at the two of you. His jaw dangled, and it didn’t snap shut until his dad snorted. Stiles’s eye twitched, and you could see the reboot loading behind his eyes. You wholly understood the sentiment.
His brain regained function, and apparently all he could come up with was, “Hey.”
You grinned to yourself, a small secret smile at his predicament, and your hand cocked in a little wave, “Hey.”
Sheriff Stilinski cleared his throat, “I’ll—I’m going to get something to eat.” Neither of you looked at him; you were too busy playing a strange staring contest with equally stupid looks on your faces.
Stiles recovered from his stupor once you were alone. His face settled into something bitter, stony at all the edges, irritation tucked into the creases. It was hardly the face you expected to see when you finally paid him a surprise visit.
Your brow curved, and you tried not to shrink in on yourself. “You look pissed.”
Stiles snorted and drummed his fingers against the railing, “Yeah, well, you’re in a perpetual state of pissiness, so we’ve all got problems.” You must have crumpled this time, at least a little bit, because his scowl thawed and his hands fell limply by his sides. “Sorry. That’s not—displaced aggression, it’s my sweet spot.”
You shrugged and smiled slightly, a little stiff, a lot amused, “You’re not exactly wrong.”
“Still.”
You played another game of eye-contact chicken, and Stiles scratched the back of his rapidly flushing neck. Your hair, still damp from the light drizzle, fell in front of your face as you tilted your head towards the stairs, “So, you gonna invite me up, or…”
He nodded a little too quickly and definitely too fervently, “Yeah, sorry. I’m just—”
“Pissed?” you smirked and adjusted your grip on your books, trekking up the stairs. Stiles narrowed his eyes at you, but he was smiling. He had a nice smile; it was big, loose—unrestrained in a way a lot of people were afraid to be. It was the kind of smile you couldn’t help but return.
Stiles let out a profound sigh and shook his head, “It’s all Scott’s fault.” You shot him a dubious look as he pushed his bedroom door open for you. He shrugged, “If I only tell it with carefully selected parts of the story, it’s all his fault.”
Your mouth twitched. Your smile was small, but it peeled back a good deal of the person you thought you should be. So much so, there was a little you peeking underneath. “We can pretend it is. Just for today.”
Stiles’s throat bobbed with his swallow, and when he smiled back at you, slowly, fleetingly, but ever-so sweetly, you finally realized you were awkwardly standing in the middle of his room. Like an idiot.
His room was exactly what you expected, and that was…you didn’t realize that you knew him well enough to expect plaid bedding and posters of cringey emo bands that were heavily featured on most of your playlists.
His desk was cluttered with various books and papers, stacked with no apparent rhyme or reason. You recognized the bestiary he bought from Curio Killed the Cat; the burgundy and gold binding was striking against all his monochrome textbooks. There were a few papers poking out from the aged pages, printouts of something furry and familiar. Before you could get a better look, Stiles bustled past you, doing a quick but rather poor job of hiding his dirty laundry under his bed and behind his closet door.
Stiles was slightly out of breath when he finished, dropping onto the foot of his bed, “So…you stalkin’ me now?”
You rested your hip against his desk and hummed, “Seemed only fair.”
“Well,” his face split into a bright, infuriating grin, “I am flattered.”
“Shut up.” His grin widened, and you rolled your eyes, glaring at your bowed reflection in a chrome lamp on the edge of his desk. It was in grave need of a good dusting, along with most of the room. “You’re literally my only option.”
“So, you’re sayin’ I’m the one.” Stiles’s smirk was audible, and you sputtered.
Your ears were unnaturally hot, and so was the back of your neck. You meant to groan, wanted him to know just how unamusing you found him, but your throat failed you. Your complaint came out airy, huffy, and it trembled against your soft palate. Truthfully, it sounded awfully similar to a whine; you scowled at the sound and squeezed your books tighter to your chest, “I’m leaving. Right now. I’ve reached my maximum capacity for bullshit.”
Long fingers circled around your wrist before you could go too far. They were blistering against your cool skin, but a shiver shuddered through your arm all the way to your skull.
“Don’t go,” Stiles hummed softly, close enough to warm the shell of your ear. “I owe you one, remember?”
You braved a look at him through your lashes, and he was smiling at you again; this one was nervous. He had forgotten, it seemed, to let go of your wrist until now. Stiles sat back down on his bed, and you absently brushed your fingers over the lingering sensation of his fingertips.
“Right,” you looked around the room and chewed on your bottom lip, “so…what was that whole thing with Derek Hale?”
Stiles paused. You could feel him watching you, studying you like one of his puzzles. “He needed a ride.”
You set your books on his desk, and Stiles nodded towards the chair in front of him. You hesitated before sitting down, feeling a bit like you were giving up the battlefield high ground, “You’re like…friends, then?”
“Absolutely not.” If the emphatic denial wasn’t enough to convince you, the violent shake of his head was telling enough. “Kind of wish he was dead, actually. It would solve so many problems.”
“So you don’t actually know him that well,” you murmured, sinking into the chair with all your hopes and plans.
Stiles’s neck craned as he studied your face, “Why?” You just looked at him, keeping your face impassive, and his eyes went a little buggy. “I know he looks dreamy, but that would be nothing but a nightmare for everyone involved. Trust me.”
Your face twisted, lips curling around the unsavory taste in your mouth. “I don’t—what was wrong with him yesterday?”
Stiles didn’t look entirely convinced, but skepticism did look a lot like concern. “Stomach bug.”
You rolled your eyes. It would’ve made you laugh under any other circumstance, but you didn’t feel much like laughing now. You’d been a tick away from the edge ever since you realized that Lydia had been this close to being butchered by that thing.
Your fingers curled into tight fists, knuckles straining, “I’m not an idiot, okay. I know there’s something weird going on.” You looked up from your lap with sharp eyes, but if he looked a little closer, he’d see the desperation underneath, “And I know you know something about it.”
Stiles swallowed hard and twisted his fingers together, “I’m actually known for knowing nothing about anything. Ever.”
He flinched when you stood up abruptly. The chair rolled back into his desk and sent a few pencils to the floor. You glared at them, like they did it on purpose just to spite you, and your glower drifted towards the glint of citrine and garnet on the corner of his desk. “This.” You picked up the bestiary and tried to shake it in front of his face, but it was too heavy to do your frustration justice, “Why did you buy this?”
His eyes, miraculously, grew rounder, “I told you. D—”
“N’ D, I know, but I looked into it. This is real; it’s transcribed from a real Ancient Greek text.”
“...I like authenticity.” Stiles shrugged towards his fidgeting hands, “I take my craft seriously.”
Scoffing, you dropped the book on top of his bed, “So you’re saying you believe the whole mountain lion theory?”
“Well, obviously no—”
“Then what do you believe?” Your chest seethed with quick shallow breaths as you paced from one side of his room to the other, “Because I was looking through this genealogy line, and the Hales have been here before Beacon Hills was even Beacon Hills, and there’s a pattern of—hold on.”
You snatched Maggie’s journal off of his desk and flipped it open to the Hale family tree, bookmarked with the thick stack of county death reports you’d printed out. “Look, there’s a series of premature, violent deaths in their line directly after a series of animal attacks on the town, and then all of it just stopped a few generations before Derek’s mom became the head of the pa—”
You didn’t know when Stiles stood up, but he was in front of you now, stopping you in your tracks. He brushed his fingers through his short crop of hair and shook his head, “Hold on, okay. Take a breath—”
You didn’t hear him, not really. Truthfully, you didn’t even notice that he’d started talking. You shoved the pages closer to his face, and all your words rushed past your lips in one carved out breath, “And then it all started again after Laura Hale was killed, and she was found with wolf fibers on her body—”
Stiles’s brows flew towards his hairline, “How do you kno—”
“She became the head of the family after Talia died, right?” Your hair was as wild as your eyes after a series of urgent tugging, and you prayed to all the mythical gods in every game you’d ever played that you sounded saner than you looked. They might actually exist, after all. Who's to say that Selûne didn't exist in a world where werewolves did? “‘Cause she’s the oldest living, fully conscious relative, and then immediately after she's killed, the animal attacks start up again, like she was keeping something in-check.”
“Slow down.” Stiles gripped your shoulders. You were closer than either of you realized until you looked up and your noses were almost touching. He swallowed thickly and let go of you after a moment, taking a step back, “A couple of days ago you thought this was all bullshit.”
You chewed on your lip and your indecision, looking for something in his face. You didn’t know what, but you were pretty sure you found it when his mouth furrowed into a concerned frown. It was for you, you realized, not because of you. That was…a rarity in your life as of late. You didn’t hate it.
Sighing, you pulled your phone out of your jacket pocket and opened the video from Lydia’s phone. “A couple of days ago I hadn't seen this,” you mumbled, shoving the phone into his hand.
Stiles looked at you for a moment longer and then pressed play. His face was unreadable, save for the small flinch when the beast shattered the store window, and you hated it. “Where did you get this?” Stiles finally said quietly. His voice was low and infected with something dire.
You rifled through your papers, something to keep your hands busy and your eyes off of the dark look on Stiles’s face, “Someone sent it to Lydia—it was a blocked number, so don’t ask who.”
“Did she—”
“I deleted it before she could.”
Neither of you needed to say it; you both knew Lydia was clinging to sanity by the skin of her perfect teeth. She couldn’t see the proof that the monster under her bed was real. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
“Good.” Stiles rubbed a hand over his face, looking so much older than sixteen, and he flickered his gaze to your face, “You can’t show this to anyone. You know that, right?”
“Besides Scott,” you retorted dryly.
Stiles almost smiled. There was a ghost of one hiding in the corners of his mouth, but it faded before it could materialize. “Believe me, he really doesn’t need any more proof. Delete it.”
He sighed at your scowl and tried again, “Please delete it.”
You shook your head and grabbed your phone from his hands, “Not until you tell me what you know.”
“I don’t know anything.” Stiles held up his hands and took a careful step towards you, “Really. I know as much as you do.”
You stared at him. You weren't sure if you were a good judge of character. You’d like to think you were, but it wasn’t like you spent a lot of time around other people. Even before you got trapped in your head, you really only had one friend, and you used to think you’d be friends with her for the rest of your lives. Maybe longer.
You’d been wrong before. You didn’t want to be wrong again.
Stiles reached for your hand, and you let him lace your fingers together. “I know how you feel. It sucks, and it’s kind of exciting, but mostly freakin’ terrifying—and all you need to know is that it’s going to be okay. Okay?”
Your chin jerked in a rigid little nod. You softened slightly when he squeezed your hand. He wasn’t telling you everything; you were almost 100% certain of that, but you were also pretty sure he wasn’t lying. That was enough for you. For now.
“The file room,” you said quietly.
Stiles’s lips drew together into a little pucker, “What?”
“The evidence room with all the files,” you looked up at him, and the ember of hope was stoked in your eyes, “there’s probably more there.”
He bit down on his cheek, “I don’t know—”
You folded her arms over her chest, chin lifting in defiance, “You promised.”
Stiles sighed and ran his hand over his head. His smile was a little affectionate thing. He sighed and shook his head, “I promised.”
“Well, alright then.” Your shoulders relaxed, and you sat back down in his desk chair, “Middle of the night break-in, it’s a date.”
