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His dad says, “Get a hobby, Stiles. Join an after-school club. Volunteer. I never thought I’d be saying this to you, but for God’s sake, please do something besides school to get out of this house.”
Stiles bites his tongue until it bleeds as he smiles with his lips closed, nodding. “Yeah, sure thing, Dad. Good idea.”
His father gives him a skeptical look, but then, finally, he leaves. Leaves with the door open behind him. Stiles waits until he’s heard the squeak of a footfall on the last, bottom stair, and then he rushes to close it. He slides down against it, breathes, in, out.
There’s been a door left ajar in Stiles’ mind for four days, eight hours, twenty minutes, and six seconds, and already: Things are spilling through.
The next morning at school, the third time he reaches it (this time, he pleads to his mind, must be real), he goes straight to Scott.
“It’s still happening?”
“Yeah.” Stiles looks closely at Scott. He looks real. Same worried eyes, same stupidly perfect hair, same weirdly crooked jaw. But in the dreams, he always looks real, too. It’s a curse, of Scott’s, to always be so real, even as a nightmare, a dream, a fantasy, a thing that Stiles’ mind has picked up on as a soft spot to dig in at.
“Hey, man,” Scott says, trying for a smile. “At least, you’re not likely to hurt anyone else, right?”
Stiles thinks of the bags under his dad’s eyes, of the way he’s spread himself as thin as the Confidential: Do Not Remove from Sheriff’s Office files that cover every surface in their home, of the way his dad never blinks when Stiles wakes screaming in his arms, and Stiles says, “Sure.” Because if Scott can find a way to look at the positives, even the ones that aren’t there, Stiles isn’t going to take that from him. “We’ve gotta do something, though.”
“Yeah, well, you think of a plan, let me be the first to know,” Scott says, and he punches Stiles’ shoulder as the bell rings and they head to class. They always do this. Scott has learned to pull his punches so that they’re just the same as before, a friendly-buddy touch. This time Stiles has to plant his feet to keep from tipping, and he knows there’ll be a bruise tomorrow. But Scott walks on, unaware, and Stiles jogs to catch up, says he was lost in thought.
It’s not so much a metaphor, now.
And if, throughout the day, he finds himself rubbing at his shoulder and shivering to feel the twinge, it’s just to remind himself: They need to fix this, so Stiles can get his head back on straight. So things can go back to normal, or whatever passes for it in their lives.
In the morning announcements, after the pledge of allegiance, the lunch menu, and a warning to Greenberg to, for the last time, remember to turn his headlights off, there’s a call for try-outs for the school play. Stiles is half-listening. He’s got no love for acting; his life has enough drama. But when the announcements turn to static and his homeroom teacher, looking up from paperwork, adds “Students, remember you’ll have college applications to think about soon, and being involved in this production—either on- or backstage—could really help those out,” Stiles thinks about his dad’s words, and he thinks, eh, whatever.
He tells his friends at lunch he’s thinking of going for it, and gets some raised eyebrows in response.
“Stiles,” Scott says gently, “you’re not always the best liar, even.”
“Acting isn’t lying,” Stiles says loftily. “It’s a higher truth. Or something like that someone once said. But no, I’m probably going to end up painting clouds on backdrops. Come on, some of you guys should come, too. Like, Scott, you can paint with me! And Lydia, you know, you’d make a great—“
“I’m not Ophelia,” Lydia says, wide-eyed. “Don’t you dare wish that on me. You can’t say things like that.”
Stiles laughs it off like he was kidding, like her superstition is ridiculous, and he doesn’t say, But what if you are.
The new girl, Kira—the one Stiles can’t remember seeing until the day her father pointed her out in class, and he sees things, he notices, it’s what he does, except now—
She says, “I think I might try out! My dad keeps telling me I need to ‘meet more people!’ and ‘Be more involved!’”
“Yeah,” Scott breathes, and Stiles is almost embarrassed for him, how pathetically gone on her Scott sounds, and a little surprised, because he thought people who fell this hard this fast only did it for one person. But Allison is sitting across the table, unbothered, and noticeably avoiding eye contact with Isaac, and Scott’s eyes are only on Kira.
“So you should try out then,” Stiles says, and everyone’s attention jerks back to him like they’re surprised to see him there.
“I think I will,” Kira says with a smile as she waves and heads off to her locker. You could maybe say that the smile’s for the whole table; everyone else nods and waves back to her like it is. But Stiles sees: That smile was only for Scott, and the fact that the edges reached the rest of them was only because it was so wide to begin with.
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” Stiles asks Isaac when he catches up to him after class. “That Scott likes the new girl so much.”
“Not really,” Isaac says. “She’s hot. Scott has a thing for new girls. She’s hot. Whatever. There are definitely far weirder things to be worried about.”
“I am,” Stiles says. “I really, really am. But—she even does research. That’s my thing.“ He’s aware that he’s close to whining, and that it’s neither age-appropriate nor attractive. He feels entirely justified in it, anyway.
“It’s not like he’s going to ditch you,” Isaac says, rolling his eyes. “Ugh, I have to go cram for a quiz. Bother someone else with your insecurities.”
“Yeah, thanks a lot, dude!” Stiles calls after him. He kicks at the lockers, and thinks, But with Allison, for a little while there, he kinda did. And, yeah, it wasn’t for long. But he can’t take that again, especially not now. He knows Scott isn’t his, that best friends have rights to their own lives and loves. He knows these things—but they’re starting to feel more and more unacceptable. He hits his head against the lockers, too, for good measure, but it doesn’t help.
Stiles stays after school for the informational meeting—it's one of their days without practice, somehow—and even when he sees that the drama club sponsor is apparently Ms. Morrell, ambiguously aligned former Alpha Pack emissary, he doesn’t leave.
“Mr. Stilinski,” she says, all s’s, “So glad you could join us.”
With the exception of Kira, who smiles in greeting, Stiles doesn’t really know anyone else there, except by name and occasionally by the briefest of bylines (the kid who was the star of whatever play they put on last year; the student council VP; a girl who’s in his economics class and sometimes makes funny faces behind Finstock’s back).
He’s been figuring he’ll paint sets, or something; one of those things they let the untalented kids do. But when Ms. Morrell goes over the different roles available, the time commitments and skill sets required, and concludes by informing them of try-out times and the length of monologue everyone should have prepared—she looks right at him when she says, “And for god’s sake, people, even though it’s Hamlet, please don’t pick that one.”
Because Stiles is Stiles, he could do no other.
“Whether ‘tis nobler, in the mind,” he says the next week, staring straight at her from the auditorium stage, “To suffer—“
Some of the other students still waiting giggle or groan a little, but they stop soon, or Stiles stops hearing them, and he’s a little shocked, when he finishes, to find the auditorium completely silent. Ms. Morrell breaks it with a slow, not-entirely-mocking clap. “I can’t say much for your ability to follow direction,” she says thoughtfully, “but well done, Mr. Stilinski. Didn’t know you had it in you.”
Stiles doesn’t say, Well, it’s easier when you can relate to it. He says, “Thanks,” and heads out to see if Finstock’s going to make him run extra laps to make up for being late, or act like a reasonable coach who respects that students sometimes have other commitments.
He runs suicide drills for what feels like the rest of the afternoon, and each time he turns back, he checks off another reason in his mind why the play is a bad idea, why he doesn’t have time for this, why he doesn’t need anyone depending on him when he’s on the verge of a complete and utter breakdown.
The next day, his name’s on the casting sheet, though. It’s at the top. On autopilot, he draws a line in thick black Sharpie over the first name, scrawls in Stiles, and then he lets himself stare at the character name directly across from his. Hamlet. It’s bizarre. It’s probably some new evil plot of Ms. Morrell’s, though even Stiles can’t think of what it could possibly be, and he can conspiracy theorize with the best of them. It’s ridiculous; it’s unfair to the students who’ve been doing this for years and actually want this; it’s certain to go badly.
But the longer Stiles stares, the more right it looks.
At lunch, when he tells his friends, they’re as disbelieving as he expects, but there’s also a round of congratulations.
"Lydia can have her Fields Medals,” Stiles says, grinning. “I’m gonna win a Tony!”
“Only those in Broadway productions are eligible,” Lydia says breezily. “Unless you want a Regional Theatre Tony, which, still…you’ve got a ways to go, Stilinski.”
“Hey,” Stiles says, “you didn’t hear my audition.”
“Because you said we couldn’t come watch!” Scott protests. “I wanted—“
“You’d have thrown me off,” Stiles says with a have of his hand. “Anyway, I was awesome. The play is going to be awesome. This year—werewolves and nightmares and supernatural beacons be damned—is going to be awesome.”
Scott fist-bumps him, and something shatters.
Stiles comes to consciousness with Scott shaking his shoulders and repeating his name in an ever-more-frantic refrain. “Stiles, come on man, wake up, lunch is over. Stiles. Stiles. Stiles!”
“Yeah, OK, no need to shout. I’m awake now.”
“You looked like you were awake before,” Scott says, eyes worried. “But even when Kira came over and started telling us about the play—which, hey, way to not even tell me you got the starring role!—you just kind of sat there all zoned out and tracing creepy patterns into your mashed potatoes like a serial killer.”
Stiles looks down, and although the mashed-potato-glyphs are largely indecipherable blobs, he’s pretty sure he spots a “wake” and an “up” somewhere in there, because of course. His new favorite words.
“Oh, shit. Did she notice? Did she say anything?”
“No, we told her you’re a little narcoleptic. Which Lydia actually says would make a great cover story, even for the hallucinations and the sleep paralysis or whatever, but she held off on the treatise until after Kira left, at least. You’re safe for now. But, dude--“
“Yeah, I’m workin’ on it,” Stiles huffs.
“If you need me to do anything—“
“What, Scott? What are you gonna do? Reach in my head and slam the door shut?”
“If I can figure out how,” Scott says, and he’s so sincere it kills Stiles.
“Let me know when you do, man.”
Scott gives him a rueful fist-bump, and this time, Stiles stays awake.
But it’s not just Stiles who’s losing it in all-too-public places. More and more, Stiles finds himself covering for Scott. He doesn’t mind; they’ve always had each other’s backs. But now it’s becoming more literal, Stiles throwing himself over Scott to try to hide the sprouting claws, the red eyes, the fangs. And people are noticing.
Danny says, “I’m still not commenting on behalf of all gay men, but I guess at least one formerly straight guy finds you attractive. Way to go, Stilinski.”
Finstock says, “Jeez, Bilinski, keep it out of the locker room. We’re trying to win track meets, not a Grabby Award.”
Kira looks flustered and avoids him, which makes him feel like he’s stolen her puppy her something. Which, no. His puppy. Or not, but still.
Lydia hums and gives him a look he can’t interpret. And she knows what he’s trying to do, and why, so it’s all the more alarming.
Stiles wishes they were right. And not just, he thinks, because the truth is so bad. No, he thinks sometimes—because their truth might be something good.
“I feel like I’m not all here anymore,” Scott says, voice muffled where his face—fangs now finally retracted—is buried in Stiles’ shoulder. “Like—like the wolf is taking over sometimes.”
“Well, your wolf’s been fairly well-behaved so far, considering the general lack of carnage and mayhem. There’s a piece of you here, at least,” Stiles says, patting him on the back and then letting his arms dangle awkwardly.
Scott flexes his fingers—as he does, now, always, as if to feel if the claws are really there. He sounds a little lost when he replies, “But where’s the rest?”
Stiles can’t stand it, for Scott to feel that sad. He wants to find all the pieces and present them to Scott, a gift, a tribute, the sort of thing knights once did and romantic idiots might still do. He says, “I dunno, but we’ll find them, buddy. I promise.” He throws his arms around Scott, and they hold each other tighter than they usually would, but it’s OK, because there are extenuating circumstances, and there’s no one around, and Scott needs it.
And Stiles knows himself to exhibit a certain impious stubbornness in his loyalties, but it worries even him, a little, what actions he might excuse if Scott needed them.
They go to ask Deaton for his advice, because when resources are scarce, you fall back on what you have, such as it is. (We can always try, Scott says, again, and so they do.)
“My new theory,” Stiles announces, “is that we’re being haunted. Because I refuse to believe that my own mind is capable of some of the truly creepy shit I’ve been dealing with.”
“There are such things as ghosts,” Deaton says, his eyes wary. “But I would caution you to assume that most of what you see, what you hear, is in fact the expression of your subconscious, rather than of an alternate reality or some supernatural cause.”
“Oh,” Stiles laughs (without humor; the only way he laughs now). “So my subconscious—the one that knows freakin’ fluent ASL—is perfectly natural?”
Deaton looks away, and Stiles knows that’s all they’re going to get from him. He expected no better.
By and by is easily said, he thinks as he pushes through the white ash gate.
“Have a nice night,” he says as he pushes through the front door, out into the alley.
He’s not sure what Deaton says in response, but he thinks it sounds afraid.
“Maybe Deaton’s controlling the ghosts, like a kanima master,” Stiles tells Scott as they drive off. “That’s why he doesn’t want us to know what’s really going on.”
“Stiles,” Scott says carefully. “Are you being serious right now?”
“Yes.”
The noise Scott makes is soft, strangled, but it’s undeniably one of worry and pain, and so Stiles tacks on, “By which I mean, not at all. Just—it’s just frustrating nobody knows how to fix us.”
“Yeah,” Scott sighs. “I got you there.”
That night, Stiles dreams (within dreams, in an inner layer that is frosted with truth and sprinkled with horror) that behind the open door in his mind there is nothing but a mirror.
Some days in rehearsal, Stiles can’t read the script in front of him, the letters that rearrange themselves before his eyes. But that’s ok. He can find his way without his eyes; it’s scripted that he will. He’s too smart for instructions, too smart for scripts. The words are within him now, they are his own. He is Hamlet, Prince of the Danes.
And he can almost feel the hinge of a too-long-open door straining, its bolts loosened and rattling to escape. The vibrating hum of it runs through him, the rattling rock of a pressure cooker too full and on too high. There are days when he can pull it back; days when he gets done the things that need done and rounds up the newest supernatural creatures to appear on the scene. Sometimes it seems like it’s always the most normal of days, the most normal of situations, where his grasp on reality is most tenuous. It doesn’t makes sense, but nothing does.
He gets mad when he should only be annoyed; blinks back tears when he should only be frustrated. There’s a regulator switch that’s somehow wired to that door, he thinks, and he needs it.
When Scott says he’s staying after one day to study with Kira, instead of do the control practice he and Stiles were going to do with the twins, it’s all Stiles can do not to tell the idiot what a colossal idiot he’s being, and so instead he calls him an irresponsible jackass, because that feels close enough.
“It’s just one day. Ethan and Aiden are busy, anyway, OK—they texted while we were in class. And I can practice control here, too, just not the same.”
“You can practice control in the school library. Like, what, she’s your anchor now?” Stiles asks, and he hears, distantly, that his voice sounds angrier than it should.
“No, dude, chill. I’m my own anchor. It’s—I didn’t think it was possible, you know, but my mom really helped. She’s surprisingly good at the werewolf-mentoring thing. Better than Derek.”
“The bar’s a little low, there.”
“Yeah, well. We’re all trying.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s just—you’re always smiling at her.”
“What am I supposed to do, Stiles? She has a crush on me, she spends hours doing research for me, and I’m supposed to glare at her and tell her to go away?”
“Well, speaking of the Derek Hale playbook—“
“It’s just—like—I’d want to be let down easy. If I— So I’m trying to do that, except—“
“Except you have yet to get to the letting down part, which is a problem, because then it turns into leading on. And, please, Scotty, like any girl would turn you down once you turned on the sad-puppy eyes. And saved her life.”
Scott mutters something Stiles can’t hear, but he hears his name, so he’s pretty sure it’s a shut up, Stiles. “Whatever, man, I don’t have wolf hearing, I don’t know what you’re complaining about, just—can we not? I’m sorry I brought this up. Let’s just—go watch a movie or something after you’re done studying, and watch other people’s problems.”
“Yeah, OK. Except—my dad’s supposed to come by for dinner tonight. To talk about instituting a curfew, since I have so much time to roam around crime scenes in the woods.”
“Ugh, your dad. Come over to mine, then, and just say you forgot about it?”
“I can’t, my mom would kill me if I left her to dinner alone with him. But—rain check? We’re OK, right?” Scott asks, anxious.
“We’re both at least halfway to certifiable,” Stiles says. “But yeah, man, we’re OK.”
It’s not the biggest lie he’d tell to soothe Scott’s mind. In the scheme of things—in the grand, fractured scheme of things—it’s almost true.
Stiles can feel things colliding, in his mind, and sometimes he thinks that the people around him—the real-world people, the ones who wake from their dreams only once a day, the ones who look at him and don’t wonder if he could feel pain—sense it, too. Like the cracks in his mind are resonating out from him, through the shakes in his leg that he can’t let rest, through the tremors in Allison’s hand that ground every arrow she shoots, through the holographic there-not-there in Scott’s shadow.
But if they notice—if that’s the question that’s in their eyes when they ask him, “Stiles, are you OK?”, “Stiles, do you need to see the nurse?”, “Stiles, are you with me?”—they don’t feel it for what it is. They keep going on with their lives. They keep studying and gossiping and partying and moving and rehearsing and going on. And each time when he jerks awake again, Stiles does, too.
Stiles has dragged himself to school on little to no sleep for reasons as trivial as Star Wars-watching-marathons and as serious(ish) as last-minute essay-writing. The nightmares are just another excuse, but they’re not one he’s going to volunteer to his teachers. When he stumbles into the auditorium for rehearsal after a day of school in which all he did was fade in and out, it’s almost a relief to see that his dad’s there, even though it probably means there’s been a crime.
“God, dad, I’m so glad to see you. I don’t think I’m fit to drive home today, can you—“
“Why would you drive to school if you didn’t think you’d be able to drive back?” his dad asks, and the question is genuinely puzzled, but it hurts, because his dad knows how hard Stiles is trying. “You need to learn to take responsibility for your actions and your decisions,” he continues.
“But, Dad—“
“You’re why I lost your mom, and why I’m losing my job,” his dad says, and it’s mean, it’s cruel, but it’s true, and it’s what he’s been waiting for his dad to say for days now, and what he’s heard before, though he can’t remember where. There is a crow circling by the ceiling light, and though people glance at it, none move to shoo it out, and Stiles knows: This is wrong. But as he claws at the dreamscape, he can’t find the seams, and his dad keeps talking, glass shards and salt into open wounds, and roots are reaching up from a cracking floor to hold him tighter, and Stiles knows that this, this is going to be the one he never wakes up from.
“Stiles!” Ms. Morrell says sharply, and it’s a jump cut; suddenly she’s there where his dad was. In the auditorium, in a chair in a semi-circle of chairs, of people staring at Stiles. “Act 2, Scene 2,” she says, and her voice is as crisp as ever, but she’s not saying, “Are we boring you?” like she would for anyone else, so he knows: She’s worried, too.
“Well, God-a-mercy,” Stiles says, and he gives it a drawl that makes people smile, that maybe makes people forget, and the read-through is off again, Stiles is on again, for now.
Even the dreams that are not fully nightmares make it there in the end. He dreams of warmth, of Scott, on his knees before him; he dreams of Scott, smiling at him like he’s the only one in the world. He dreams of his come soaking into the gold of Scott’s skin, of his fingers tracing through it to blend it in.
He dreams of dream-Scott asking, “Take you me for a sponge, my lord?” and the scene changes, and Stiles is cold again, so cold.
The next time there’s a crisis (of the banal, rumors of a pop quiz tomorrow variety, surprisingly, not the skin-eating locust-creature variety or any other such thing), Stiles heads to Scott’s on instinct, but then he pauses before rushing into the house. He’s been checking a lot of instinctive actions, lately—ever since Isaac told them he caught an arrow Allison aimed at Lydia’s head, ever since he’s lived Groundhog Days’ worth of homeroom. Ever since Agent McCall came to town, and is everywhere at once. Also—ever since Stiles began to wonder, with what's left of his mind, if he's falling for his best friend.
(He’s pretty sure he is.)
He sprawls on Scott’s floor, tosses a pack of notecards at Scott’s head and says, “OK, go. Quiz me.”
Scott frowns at the cards. “I’m gonna be really glad when you can read on your own again, Stiles.”
“But this way you can study, too!”
“Derek finally called back, so Isaac and I were going to go meet him and figure out what’s been going on with him.”
“You and Isaac, huh? I see how it is. When are you going to kick him out already?”
“I can hear you, you know!” Isaac yells from downstairs.
“Eavesdropping moocher,” Stiles whispers.
“Cut it out already, Stiles. Anyway, apparently there are some people after Derek and Peter, so we figured it’s safest to keep them away from humans for now.”
“It’s always safer to keep Peter away from humans."
Scott nods in assent, because it's one of the truest things there is, and they make it through about half the stack of notecards before he throws them back at Stiles. “I’m so tired of this. What are we even doing in economics this year? What high school has two years of economics?”
“Ours, Scott. Because what else could they let Finstock teach?” Stiles glances at the notecards, is pleased to see that this time they’re registering as actual words, and resumes recitation.
Scott stops him midway through an entry. “Uh, Stiles, what exactly are you reading?”
“Unit root—the attribute of a model which spreads beneath a city—oh, holy shit, what am I reading?”
Scott grabs the card from him, skims it, and looks at Stiles with concern. “It has the right definition. You’re just—“
“Reading things that aren’t there. Great. A natural progression.” He can feel himself losing control, and now all the words, real and not-real, are doing their rearrangement before his eyes.
“It’s OK, Stiles, just wait it out.” Scott does a roll call of his fingers, and he wraps each one around Stiles’ as he counts them off. At the end Stiles isn’t even entirely sure the final count was ten, but he’s content not knowing if this is dream or reality, because it’s ended with Scott’s fingers intertwined in his and his forehead against his own, and Stiles lets himself collapse.
“Am I…interrupting something?” comes Mrs. McCall’s voice from the doorway, and Stiles looks up to see her holding a basket of laundry and bearing a very bemused expression.
“No, mom, just a panic attack thing.”
Her look immediately changes to one of concern. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. Do you need me to call your dad, Stiles?”
“No, no, I’m good now, thanks. Scott talked me down.”
“OK, but let me know if you need anything.”
“Sure thing, Mrs. McCall.”
Once she’s out of earshot, Stiles fights the urge to burst into semi-hysterical laughter.
“Dude, what’s so funny?” Scott asks. “Is this what a nervous breakdown looks like?”
“No, it’s just—I was thinking, like, what if we had been doing something else, and just—‘nothing to see here, just a panic attack.’ I wonder how naked we could be before she wouldn’t buy it.” He wonders, too, how naked he'd have to be before Scott was anything but oblivious to the crush Stiles feels he's displaying for the world to see.
“Uh, what?”
“No, but really, people have been saying things. And where there’s smoke, there’s fire, right? So where’s our fire, Scott?”
“Idiot,” Scott says fondly. “Get up and go to your own house already.”
“But my home is with yoooouuu, Scotty!”
Isaac glares at him as he leaves, so Stiles figures that, all appearances to the contrary, he’s probably doing something right.
Stiles throws himself into research after that, and if sometimes he can’t read the words, and other times he’s not sure he’s reading the real words, well—he’ll grow stronger for the struggle, or something like that.
He’s flipping through a book that’s almost all conspiracy theory and just enough hints of real magical history to make him keep pushing onwards when he sees it: The Perils of Resurrection and Reconstitution. He runs out to the Jeep with only the book and his keys, because shoes are for later, once he’s fixed.
“Sometimes, when a break heals badly, you just have to rebreak it,” Stiles tells Scott, and it sounds like just as bad an idea when he says it out loud. “When we went under, and were brought back—Deaton said it had to be someone we had a bond with, right? But according to this, a lot of the problems happen when the bond isn’t strong enough on both ends. So, really, it should have been us for each other—except we were both going under, so Deaton and Lydia were all that were left. And maybe that’s why Allison’s getting better on her own as she and Isaac are getting, uh, closer.”
“Are you saying we have to date each other?”
“Uh, no. Unfortunately, not that easy. Since we weren’t the ones that brought each other back to begin with. Now, if you want to start dating Deaton, that might—“
“Do you have a plan that's actually possible?”
“We have to do it again, only one at a time, this time, so we can be each other’s tethers. Because you’re mine, my anchor, if humans have them. So, like, when Lydia was the one who put me under and pulled me back, it—didn’t work right, because she wasn’t the right person.”
“Well…OK, then. But does it have to be the ice baths again?” Scott asks. “I really didn’t like those.”
"I’ll see if I can figure out something else, but no promises.”
But who is he kidding, Stiles thinks as he leaves. If there’s another way, he’s going to find it. And not just because the ice baths really did suck.
When they’re in the loft, a misappropriated set of defibrillation paddles between them, Stiles reconsiders his stance.
“Are you sure we’re not going to kill ourselves with these? Like, permanently?”
“Mostly? I mean, the YouTube videos looked easy enough?”
“Maybe we should get your mom to supervise.”
Scott looks horrified. “You said this ritual involved nakedness,” he hisses. “And you want my mom here for that?”
“I said it involved skin-to-skin contact, not, like, full-frontal. Jeez.”
“Oh.” Scott looks a little sheepish. “But still—I don’t think my mom would actually be OK with this.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure I’m OK with it,” Stiles says. “But it needs done, right? So. We’ve got everything? You know what to do?”
”Charge, shock, wait 15 seconds, put my hands on you, repeat. Where did you find this book again?” Scott asks.
“A totally, 100% reputable source that was not the used book stall at the flea market.”
“Right. Right. Totally safe and responsible and not going to end up with us both dead in a super-sketchy-looking scenario.”
“Think of the juicy headlines, though. We might even make the tabloids! It’s Electric!: Teen sex games gone awry.”
Scott grimaces.
Stiles schools his expression into one that he thinks conveys his sincerity and underlying seriousness, even if his dad has told him it just makes him look a little near-sighted. “It’s gonna work, Scott. We’re gonna be OK. I trust you.”
It seems to help, because Scott shakes off whatever was going through his head (probably a lot of completely legitimate reservations). “Yeah, OK. I trust you, too, you know. Obviously. So—which of us is doing this first?”
Stiles shrugs, because it’s not like it matters. Except that if he’s going to have Scott’s life in his hands, then he’d like to be fully in control of his mind, so he says, “Me.” He leans back on the floor and looks up into his best friend’s slightly terrified face and says, with a grin that’s surprisingly easy to fake, “C’mon, Scotty. Hit me with your best shot.”
“Idiot,” Scott mutters, but Stiles hears the affection, and he sees the way Scott’s hands are shaking around the paddles as he says, Clear, and then that’s it, for a moment.
It’s a freefall, and Stiles loves those, loves the drop in his heart and the wind in his hair, but what he loves most is the sight of the ground rushing up at him, the danger that isn’t really there. But this, it’s freefall into a void, and Stiles would live his life in waking nightmares just to see the ground.
But then there’s a jolt, and Stiles is back, himself, and he can feel it, the fracture in his mind that’s no longer there. There’s something else, instead, that he wants to push at and explore, but it feels safe and right, whatever it is, so there will be time for that later.
“Hey-o,” he says, sitting up and throwing his arms around Scott, who still looks frankly terrified. “Back from the dead and all fixed up! Your turn, now!”
“Yeah, OK,” Scott says, and now he’s the one who sounds sure, which is all wrong, because this is the really scary part. As they switch places, their limbs tangle a little, and Stiles lets them, wraps himself around Scott before pulling himself together and into his own space.
“I’m not going to kill you, I promise,” he says. “I mean, not any more than I’m supposed to.”
The look Scott gives him is more exasperated than trusting, but it’s a look Stiles is used to, and it grounds him. And so he goes for it.
It’s possibly—definitely—the most nerve-wracking sequence in Stiles’ somewhat-harrowing life. After it's done, he falls over himself getting his face over Scott’s to feel his breath, because seeing his chest moving isn’t enough, could be a hallucination, but feeling—that he thinks he can trust. He has his hands all over Scott’s face when Scott’s eyes finally flutter open, and he can feel Scott raising an eyebrow under his hands.
“Uh, you can get off me now,” Scott says.
“Can you feel it?” His voice is only half as desperate as he is. “Did it work?”
“Yes?”
“Yes? Or yes! C'mon, man, please tell me this worked!”
“I don’t know! I don’t know what—what normal was. What it’s supposed to be like—like, would I know? I mean, it’s not like the werewolf was sprouting out all the time, just randomly. So if it doesn’t happen, for, like, a day? Then we’ll know?”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? I could tell, like, right away! Like—try to turn. Can you?”
Scott hesitates. “Maybe you should leave while I try? Just in case it didn’t—“
“I’m not leaving you like this! Just—put me out of my misery, OK? Wolf out, wolf-man.”
And it’ll never not be a little unsettling to see Scott’s features disappearing into those of the wolf, but right now it’s the most beautiful sight Stiles can imagine, especially when Scott pulls back into himself almost immediately after.
Relief is a wave, it’s an ocean of them, and Stiles could drown in it, lose himself in it, let the brine pickle his lungs. He’s just gotten back his mind; he can be a bit callous with his other organs.
“Scotty, it worked! It—I think I’m going to hyperventilate of joy.”
“Awesome,” Scott says. He’s tilting his head a little, as if examining the contents and surprised to see what’s shaking out, and he doesn’t seem quite as excited as Stiles, though, which is crazy, because they’d both been going insane, and now they aren’t—what more could a guy ask for?
“Why aren’t you more excited, dude? This is amazing. I’m not going to die a mad hermit who sets his own house on fire and runs off into the night crying about bells!”
Scott, if anything, pales even further. “I…understood all that,” he says, sounding vaguely horrified.
Stiles blinks. “Wait, really? I’m not sure I understood all that. It was more, just, saying things. Which maybe doesn’t seem to reflect that well on my newly-declared sanity—“
“No, like, your thought process. I understood that. It’s like—I can feel you thinking? In a weird, vague, oh-my-god-I’m-still-crazy kind of way.”
Stiles thinks about that new space in his mind, near where the door had been closed, the one that felt safe and right but also different. As he pokes at it, he feels a wave of concern that isn’t entirely his own. And, oh.
“Yeah, me too. Oops?”
When they have a meeting to tell all the need-to-know people about their sudden new…attachment, it only takes three tries for anyone to believe them, and about an hour for Isaac to stop laughing hysterically.
Lydia looks at them speculatively. Stiles can practically hear the research study being written in her head. “So you two are…soul-bonded.”
“No!” says Scott, just as Stiles says, “Yeah, basically.”
"We're calling it a long-term Vulcan mind-meld," Stiles adds, because it’s a pretty important distinction.
"Stiles is calling it that," Scott interjects. "Just Stiles."
"Well," Lydia says, looking between the two of them. "Just so we're clear, though--it's actually a soul-bond."
"Vulcan--"
"Fine," Scott sighs. "It's a soul-bond."
“Fascinating,” she says. “Is this just a platonic soul-bond, I wonder? Or—“
“If anything’s going on, it is totally platonic,” Scott says. Stiles doesn’t correct him.
Lydia quirks an eyebrow. “Well, that makes sense, since Stiles is in love with me, after all.”
Stiles curses the day he ever thought her perceptiveness was attractive. “There lives within the very flame of love/ A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it,” he mutters.
“Something you wanted to share with the class, Stiles?”
He smiles too broadly for it to be interpreted by anyone, much less Lydia, as real. “Just commenting on how delightfully understanding and non-mocking you and everyone else have been. Especially Isaac. So helpful.”
“I do what I can,” Isaac says cheerfully. “Since you’re incapable of thinking on your own now, and all.”
Scott pulls Stiles back before he’s even realized he’s lunging at Isaac.
“Huh,” Scott muses. “I guess this might be helpful, after all.”
Stiles can’t even take the time to appreciate the hand on his chest because then the person attached to that hand might realize his inappropriate appreciation, so he just huffs. The hand slides off, and the meeting continues. But the next time Isaac says something snarky (it doesn’t take long), Scott shoots him a glare, and Stiles is filled with a feeling of such gleeful vindication that not even the amused looks Scott keeps shooting him can tamp it down. That’s right, he wants to declare to them all, to the world, he’s on my side.
“We’re all on the same side, Stiles,” Scott says, looking at him like he’s crazy.
Stiles is really going to have to work on his powers of mind-self-control. “Sure, but you’re more on my side than anybody else’s.”
“Uh, sure?” Scott doesn’t seem to know what he’s agreeing to, exactly, but Stiles will take it. He’ll even ignore the fact that Allison, who’s been pretty quiet throughout this whole thing, is now looking at them as speculatively as Lydia has been. “I’ve always got your back. But we are on the same side, so it’s not really—“
“It’s the principle of the thing,” Stiles says.
Scott nods again, uncertainly, and Stiles decides that the conversation has veered far enough into dangerous territory (namely, Stiles’ newly emergent territorialism over Scott). “Who’s up for a game of Taboo?” he asks. “Scott and I will now totally trounce all of you.”
And whatever Lydia mutters under her breath has Scott turning red and Isaac snickering, but Stiles isn’t a brave enough man to pry.
He and Scott stick even closer together than ever, because even though they don’t have to—there’s no separation anxiety, per se—it’s just better when they are. It’s close enough to their normal patterns that no one seems to think it’s that odd (and Beacon Hills students, generally, are a pretty oblivious bunch), but Stiles goes from occasionally passing notes in class to Scott every now and then to sending him mental alerts all the time, and when people ask him where Scott is (like they’ve always tended to), he almost always knows, now, even though he holds himself back from giving more detail than he should know (He’s at Deaton’s office, handing a cat back to its owner).
Stiles’ whole life is different, but no one not directly informed of it seems to know—even fewer than could sense when his mind was falling apart. Sometimes he wonders what that says about him, and about them.
“Your Hamlet has lost something,” Ms. Morrell muses during a rehearsal. “You’re still very good, mind you, but you’ve lost that edge that made you so captivating. I don’t suppose you’re going to bring it back in time for the performance?”
“God, I hope not,” Stiles says fervently. And Ms. Morrell’s wry smile makes him think she understands.
Mostly Stiles loves their bond. It’s like what they’ve always had—his dad’s always said he and Scott have their own wavelength—but more, and more is better. He loves that if anything were to happen to Scott, he would know, and he could go help him. Loves that Scott would do the same. But Scott seems far less enamored, and he’s working on his control far more diligently, and he practices shutting Stiles out far more often. Stiles tries not to take it too personally—he understands the need for privacy—but too many times he gets a faint feeling of embarrassment fear not-thinking-about-that-right-now before things go blank, and the space in his mind that he now likes to curl up in goes cold and silent.
“I want to get rid of it,” Scott says one day, and Stiles winces.
“What if getting rid of it brings back the other problem again?”
“We could ask Deaton,” Scott suggests.
“Uh, yeah, let’s do that. So we can get screwed up in another way entirely, and maybe not even fix this.”
“Hey, he’s been helpful…sometimes.”
“Look, maybe we can just live with it, right? It’s not so bad. It’s not like we had any secrets from each other, anyway.” It’s nice to have Scott in his head, to know when he’s nearby, to know how he feels. It’s like all the perks of being a werewolf, without the violent stuff. And Stiles tries to project all that he’s feeling about that, while, simultaneously, trying not to think about the one really big secret that he does have, but—
“You’re in love with me?” Scott shouts. “And you didn’t think that was a secret?”
Stiles’ mental multi-tasking abilities could apparently use some work.
“Well, to be fair, I’m pretty sure Lydia knows. Probably your mom. Maybe my dad.” Stiles says. “And, uh…now you know, too?”
The incredulous look Scott is giving him seems a bit over the top, Stiles thinks. There’s no way Scott hasn’t at least gotten some hints of it before now, because Stiles has made some attempts at mental discipline, but, really, he thinks about Scott a lot. In ways that can’t be considered standard for even the closest of best friends.
“Now I—why do you think I wanted to get rid of this thing?”
“Hey,” Stiles says defensively. “It’s not like that’s what made me fall for you, OK, so you don’t need to worry about it, like, brainwashing you into liking me like that. It just is.”
“No, you idiot, because—because I didn’t want you to realize I do like you like that!”
“Huh.” Stiles pauses for a moment to consider this, decides there are absolutely no potential downsides, and says, “Awesome.”
The ensuing silence is possibly the longest in their friendship that Stiles can recall.
“Hug it out?” he finally suggests, opening his arms into what could either be considered an opening for a hug or a really wide shrug, if necessary.
“Yeah, OK?” Scott says, stepping into it.
It’s one of the most awkward moments Stiles can think of as they pat each other on the back.
“We had better hugs before this,” Scott says. “What’s wrong with us?”
“Probably too many things to count, at this point,” Stiles says. “But this should be easily solvable. Just, umm, pretend like the last ten minutes didn’t happen, and we’re just bros hugging it out.”
The next attempt goes slightly better, in that they resemble awkward penguins rather than awkward turtles, which is, Stiles thinks, a step up. Or forward. Or something.
“Third time’s the charm,” Stiles says determinedly.
And this time it works, and Stiles thinks, This is what life should feel like.
Yes, replies the Scott-voice in the back of his mind, only, without you standing on my feet.
Stiles steps back quickly, while also trying to pull Scott with him so no contact is lost. They both end up on the floor, but contact is preserved, so it’s not a complete loss.
“I really hope this isn’t an indication of what our first time with sex is going to be like,” Stiles says.
“It probably is,” Scott replies.
They both lie there considering that.
“I’m OK with that,” Stiles decides. “It just means we need to get started early and make sure there’s nothing breakable around.” He looks around the floor of Scott’s room, decides it’s probably as good as things are going to get, and starts sliding his hands into non-hug-like territory.
By the time Scott hears his mom’s car pulling up and hastily calls an end to the proceedings, they’re still supremely awkward in all things, but they’ve both gotten off, and so Stiles thinks he’s going to enjoy the learning process. A lot.
Mrs. McCall looks at them suspiciously as they sit down for dinner. “What did you do this time, boys?”
“Absolutely nothing illegal,” Scott assures her, just as Stiles says, “Don’t worry, we used protection.”
“Oops,” Stiles says into the silence. “I mean, what Scott said.”
“You’d think this brain-bond of yours would help you keep your stories straight,” she says, and there’s some humor in her voice underneath the strain. “Please continue being safe. And—do we need to talk any more about this?”
“No,” Stiles and Scott say in unison.
“Now you get it together,” she says into her hands.
And the thing is, they do.
Their connection, the continual hum of information about the other, it’s something they learn to mute, when needed, and to exploit, when needed (or just when it’s fun—which it really, really can be), and Stiles thinks they’ve reached a good place with things. A place he could happily stay for the rest of their lives. But he can also see that it’d be good to understand the bond as completely as possible. So they do meditation exercises, and Stiles does research, and finally they consult the expert, such as he is.
When they go to talk to Deaton (because he’s Scott’s boss, still, and Scott looks up to him for some reason), Deaton looks at Stiles judgmentally. “Soul bonding is...not good. Dangerous. It is also,” he continues, looking even more judgmental, “quite rare, and even more rarely accidental.”
“Well, what are the odds of a true alpha, huh?” Stiles asks. “I’m going to blame everything on Scott being special.”
“Everything?” Scott teases.
“Yeah, that too,” Stiles says with a wink. “Very special. But Deaton definitely doesn’t want to hear about that.”
Deaton looks queasy. “The bond may amplify some feelings, in a feedback loop of sorts. You should be particularly wary when dealing with emotionally-charged scenarios, regarding each other. There are—“
“Uh, yeah, thanks, we’ve experienced that,” Scott says, scratching at his neck. “It was…interesting.”
“Learning experiences all around!” Stiles says. “So, I’m going to let you two get to work saving little furry creatures, and I’m headed to my costume fitting—tights and everything, get excited—but I’ll see you back at mine for dinner, right, Scotty?”
“Yeah, for sure. Break a leg? Burst a seam?”
“I think you can save the counterintuitive well-wishes for the actual performance. But thanks!”
Later, he messages Scott a picture of himself, half-dressed in pinned-together clothes, with the note, This is why you shouldn’t tell people to burst seams.
Scott picks him up from the fitting, and when Stiles asks why he left work early, Scott just tells him never to send indecent pictures again.
“It doesn’t really count as indecent if half the cast was there, though, right?”
Stiles takes an unhealthy satisfaction in the growl that elicits.
On opening night, Scott pull him aside and tells him, “You’re going to be amazing.”
“I’m already amazing,” Stiles says, though he’s aware there’s not as much confidence in his voice as he was shooting for, and that’s not speaking very well for the alleged acting skills he’s about to be putting on display.
“Yeah,” Scott says fondly. “You kinda are.” And with a kiss for luck—because that’s even better than words, and Stiles is training him well—Scott pushes Stiles through the stage door.
“So nice to see our star has decided to join us,” Ms. Morrell says dryly. “Glad you could tear yourself away from your better half for the performance.”
“It was devastating,” Stiles deadpans. “But we must all make sacrifices for our art.”
And amid the bustle and the wait for his cue, his heart calms, and he knows that’s not him, because no amount of Adderall could keep him from being jittery tonight. It’s all Scott, and he is, again, immensely grateful for it.
When he steps out on the stage, he’s not Hamlet, Prince of the Danes. He’s Stiles Stilinski, best friend, partner-in-crime, and sort-of soul mate of Scott McCall. But he can play at Hamlet, and he does.
At the final curtain call, bowing to applause, Stiles knows: Two weeks ago, he was a better Hamlet. Today, he’s a better (or at least more stable) person. And out there, in the crowd, past the bright lights Stiles can’t see beyond, are people who love him: his family, his pack, and—currently emitting a sense of pride that’s even more blinding than the lights—his boyfriend.
Sometimes Stiles still wonders if he’s awake. If the real nightmare to come is when he finds out that none of this was real, that they’re all still trapped; that he never really got to have this; that they’re not, in fact, OK.
But then a nudge in Stiles’ mind will say, Of course we are, and he lets himself believe it again.