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They don't really have a proper sleepover until Scott moves back in with his mom, and the welcome back party Stiles threw turns into two and a half days camped out in his living room with steadily growing piles of dirty plates and candy wrappers, attempting to get past the same level they’ve been stuck on for weeks.
“Let me just look up a walk-through,” Stiles whines, throwing the controller aside and flopping to the carpet. His face lands in a sticky puddle, the origin of which he isn’t sure of, and he makes a face into the floor. He still doesn’t get up.
Scott shakes his head, his face determined as he flicks back to the menu.
“If Jackson can do it, so can we,” he insists. Stiles already regrets telling Scott about overhearing Jackson’s boasting in the cafeteria; he meant it as motivation when Scott was close to giving up, but he wasn’t meant to take it this seriously.
He sighs, rolls over to pick up the controller again. He’s thankful for once that his arms are weirdly disproportionate to the rest of his body, because it means he doesn’t actually have to move much to stretch out an arm and grab it.
Scott's waiting impatiently for him to die again so they can test out the latest of their list of tactics, when his Dad pokes his head through the doorway and shakes his head.
“You have school tomorrow,” he reminds them. It’s only three in the morning, they have plenty of time to sleep later. He’s only had his best friend back for fifty-nine hours and seventeen minutes, he’s not giving him up this soon.
--
Stiles waits until his father is two glasses of scotch in before he dares to sneak out his window, the latch making its usual high pitched whine when he unlocks the window. His lower half is still in his room when he hears the telltale scraping noise of his father’s chair being pushed back, and he freezes. The expression “deer in the headlights” has never felt more appropriate.
His father’s chair creaks as he sits back down, and he almost loses his balance when he lets go of the windowsill to fist pump. He imagines that no other fourteen year old has felt the thrill of sneaking out like this from right under the Sheriff’s nose.
Or over, really. Lydia would tell him that he’s technically over his dad’s nose, even if she giggled afterwards and acted like she was dumb. Or she would, if she ever acknowledged his existence.
Scott’s waiting for him at their usual place in the woods, sleeping bags and the cheap tent they found at a garage sale already set up, and Stiles holds up the bottle of scotch he had tucked awkwardly into the front of his jeans.
“He won’t even miss it,” he promises, casually dismissing the wary look on Scott’s face.
“My mom will kill me if she thinks I snuck out to drink with you.”
“But you did sneak out to drink with me,” he points out, grinning wide. Scott shoves him.
“Hey!” Scott shoves him again, and well, that’s just asking for it, so Stiles tackles him into the mud, accidentally pulling out one of the tent poles when the two of them stray too near the tent. Stiles thinks Scott might win, since he’s the one who actually follows the workout regime they promised themselves they would stick to so they could try out for the lacrosse team and not look stupid.
“S-stop, stop!” Scott stutters out, every breath obviously forced, and Stiles springs off him immediately, reaching for Scott’s bag and grabbing out his inhaler almost before Scott finishes pushing the words out of his throat.
“Count of four, remember,” Stiles reminds his best friend, shoving the inhaler into the hand of one of the two people left in this world that he can’t live without. Thinking of Scott being unable to breathe and maybe dying and leaving him makes him feel like he’s the one with asthma, like his chest is caving in on itself until every breath is a chore.
“I’m okay, Stiles, it’s okay,” Scott wheezes out, because Scott would worry about other people on his death bed. He doesn’t really understand it.
“Count of four, asshole,” he says again, and Scott manages to roll his eyes even as he lifts the inhaler to his mouth.
Push down. One. Two. Three. Four. Exhale. Push down. One. Two. Three. Four.
(Spoiler: Scott lives. Stiles wishes he knew that would always be true.)
--
Stiles hasn’t had a panic attack in two years, so waking up on the anniversary of his mother’s death and almost immediately feeling like he can’t breathe right is like knowing that your least favourite aunt is visiting, and then finding out that she wants to go out to lunch, just the two of you.
Needless to say, it’s far from fun.
Inhale, he tells himself. Inhale already goddamn it, you know how to breathe, only idiots like Scott’s dad forget shit like how to breathe.
God, Scott’s dad is such a dick.
Oh. He’s breathing. Awesome.
He opens his mouth and takes another big gulp of air, imagines it filtering all the way down to his toes. He still doesn’t move to get out of bed, and he’s still contemplating whether he should deal with the burn mark on his ceiling at some point when Scott knocks on the doorway.
“How you doing?” he says, like he has every anniversary. Stiles shrugs. The burn mark can probably wait.
“I’ve got Reeses, popcorn, Doritos and some of the salsa Mom made, that good?” Scott asks, holding up a plastic bag full of food. He shrugs again, the movement made awkward by his lying down, but Scott never looks at him with the kind of pity he doesn’t want or need.
Scott puts in The Matrix and settles in next to him, a solid presence that never fails to stable him, like Scott’s a magnet drawing all his scattered thoughts into one place. Getting out of bed is still a distant possibility - he doesn’t think his legs know how to move anymore, and he doesn’t have the inclination to try - but sitting up doesn’t seem so far out of reach.
“Want some?” Scott offers a few minutes in, and he doesn’t really have the energy to move, but it’s Scott, so he can try.
“Nah, I’m good, buddy,” he says, and doesn’t care that his voice sounds dim and colourless. Scott is the only person he can let his guard down with, can let himself be vulnerable in front of and not feel like they’ll feel differently about him in the morning. Scott has seen him though seven anniversaries and still teases him about the year he wore glasses, so he figures he’s safe.
Morpheus is captured and his mom is still dead and the world is still spinning, and Scott offers to make popcorn. His voice doesn’t waver when he says, “Yeah, thanks.”
--
“Lydia’s going to be in this bed one day,” Stiles muses, rolling his shoulders back and sighing contentedly when the cracking of his bones stops. Scott’s spinning in his desk chair, which doesn’t seem to be making anyone dizzy but Stiles.
“Yeah,” Scott says. Stiles narrows his eyes at Scott’s too innocent face, like he’s schooling his expression. He’s better at it than Stiles, but not good enough.
“What?” he demands. Scott shrugs.
“No, what?”
“I don’t know, I just don’t think Lydia’s gonna like your Iron Man sheets, but.” He shrugs again. Scott is his bro, the hakuna to his matata, and he’s always believed in the ten year plan, so he doesn’t know where all this doubt is coming from.
“It’s Iron Man,” he says, like that will make it clear to Scott just how many shades of awesome his bedspread is.
“Superhero sheets aren’t sexy, though. And I don’t think Lydia likes comics, she always glares at us when you keep being wrong about Iron Man being the best superhero,” Scott says, looking disgruntled. Stiles doesn’t blame him. Captain America vs Iron Man is an argument they’ve been having for more than half a decade now, and Scott still refuses to admit that Stiles is right. Which he should, because he is.
“She’s the perfect woman, of course she likes Iron Man,” he insists.
“Maybe she’s glaring at you because she likes Captain America better,” Scott teases, smirking at him. He really shouldn’t be allowed to do that, how is he supposed to argue with The Dimples?
“She doesn’t, and I will prove you wrong the day Lydia Martin makes out with me on these sheets,” he vows determinedly.
“Superhero sheets aren’t sexy, dude, but Captain America ones are acceptable,” Scott tells him, and he’s so incredibly wrong that Stiles just has to tell him, in detail, why Iron Man is the best Marvel hero and Captain America is decidedly not.
--
Stiles goes home covered in dirt, dust, and bits of tree bark, standing closer to his dad than usual because the last time he let him out of his sight, a serial killer kidnapped him and he’s not gonna let that happen again. At least not for a good long while, because now his dad’s involved in the supernatural, it’s kind of inevitable that it’ll happen. Shit.
He hugs his dad goodnight like he doesn’t usually, and trudges up the stairs to his room. He doesn’t bother taking his shoes off, even though he knows he’s have to clean the dirt off the floor in the morning; all he can think about is his bed. It must be so soft and maybe a little cold because he forgot to make the bed this morning, but maybe if he wears two pairs of socks it’ll-
Something rolls through his open window.
“Agh!”
“Stiles, it’s me,” the figure says. It takes his sleepy brain a while to figure out that it’s Scott.
“Scott?” he asks anyway.
“Who else would it be?” Scott teases, looking pointedly at him, and he sheepily realises he has his hands up in a strange mockery of a fighting position. He doesn’t know what how he was going to fight off the intruder with his hands over his face, palms out, but he’s glad he doesn’t have to find out. It’s been a long night.
Scott nods when he says so, looking just as tired as he feels, like his exhaustion has trickled down and cemented itself into his bone marrow.
“Can we just sleep?” Scott says, and Stiles finds just enough energy to gesture grandly towards his bed.
“Make yourself at home, man,” he says, walks towards the bed, and promptly crashes onto it, face planted firmly into his bedspread. They’re no longer Iron Man, because he does actually want to have sex at some point.
Scott settles down next to him, a little more sedately, and the buzzing under his skin dulls for a second when their arms brush. Scott yawns, infectious like his smile but not as pleasant, because smiling with Scott doesn’t usually feel like his jaw is going to unhinge itself.
“Goodnight,” he says while he still has the presence of mind to say anything. Scott’s hand finds his wrist and curls around it, warm and protective, and if he were religious, he would thank all the gods there are that he isn’t alone tonight.
Scott is better than sleeping pills and warm tea combined, and he keeps his eyes on the dark outline of his best friend’s body until he plunges headlong into sleep and can’t watch him breathe any longer.
(Scott no longer has asthma, is the star of the lacrosse team, and is an alpha werewolf, for fuck’s sake, but sometimes Stiles wonders if some day his breath will die in his throat and so will Scott. He doesn’t want to ever see that day, and as long as Scott is next to him he knows that Scott is still alive, and so is he.)