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Right after his mom dies, Stiles doesn’t sleep for a week.
He reads somewhere that a healthy person can last up to eleven days, and he wants to see how long he can make it. Scott stays up with him for two days before he crashes, but Stiles is on his eighth day when his dad finds out.
He doesn’t know he knows, though, not until the next morning, when Stiles wakes close to noon after a drug-induced slumber. His dad is sitting, slumped, on his sofa futon, out cold, but the second Stiles moves to get up, his dad is jerking awake and ordering him back to bed through a wide yawn.
He’d taken three emergency personal days off from the station, explained the situation to Stiles’ teachers, and that was how they began the healing process. Stiles still feels it sometimes, though, the overwhelming urge to just stay awake and let his body fail, and that’s always when the nightmares start again.
That second night after his mom dies and his dad drugs him asleep, Stiles dreams about falling through empty space. It’s hot, though, like fire, and it’s tight, like he can’t escape. He tries desperately to wake, clawing at himself—because pain makes you human, and he feels so far from okay right now. He starts screaming, but he doesn’t know if he’s awake or not, but his whole body is thrashing, and someone has to notice.
The door swings open, and, like a switch, Stiles chokes, gasping for air as his throat gets smaller and smaller until his dad is behind him and around him, one strong arm bracketing over his chest, the other coming up so he can soothe a hand through Stiles’ hair, the way his mom used to, and he calms until he can breathe again, until his chest doesn’t hurt so much as ache.
He had nightmares when he was younger, and his mom would sing to him, hold him tight and lull him back to sleep. His dad tries valiantly, and though Stiles doesn’t mean to—because this makes it real, her being gone, that his dad has to fill her shoes like this—but he falls asleep. When he wakes up the next morning, his dad is still there, and Stiles barely makes it out of bed before he’s vomiting, and his dad helps him through that, too.
In the end, three days isn’t enough, and Stiles misses two weeks of school before he can’t stand to be alone anymore. It’s another month, though, before he climbs through Scott’s window and falls onto the floor. Scott grunts and turns over, opening his eyes as little as possible. “Dude,” he says before shuffling over. Stiles clambers upright and into bed, tucked under the blankets, and he doesn’t wake screaming that night.
He sleeps better at Scott’s, and though he still spends some nights at home, most of his time is spent at Scott’s.
——
Things start to get better, and then the werewolf thing happens.
Stiles dreams about Derek and his yellow eyes, his fanged teeth ripping into Scott’s flesh and tearing him apart until he’s nothing more than a mangled mess that Stiles can’t recognize anymore. And then Derek is turning his yellow gaze on Stiles, and, when he wakes with an aborted, terrified scream, no one is there to hear him.
His dad had to work late, and Melissa is trying to prove a point. And so, he’s alone when Derek tries to tear his throat out and he ends up on the floor, flailing away from the tangle of blankets on his bed, but he still feels like he’s suffocating, and he can’t breathe. He sucks in a breath, an inhale so ragged it scrapes at his chest, desperate. He starts crying without meaning to, and then his head is throbbing, and he still can’t breathe.
Stiles forces himself to his feet, stumbling. He hits the wall, his dresser, and the door before he manages to get into the hallway, and then he’s sagging to the floor, gasping and trembling. Cold sweat drips down his face, blinding him.
“Please,” he rasps, head thudding back against the wall.
Everything is hazy, his vision going black around the edges. All he can hear is the erratic rush of his heartbeat, and it makes him dizzy.
Distantly, Stiles hears the door open, and then he passes out.
——
Stiles wakes up slowly, afraid of what he might find when he opens his eyes. He can hear a game, though—baseball, he decides a moment later, after the echoing crack of ball against bat—and he can smell meatloaf, his dad’s favorite.
A hand lands on his shin, and Stiles coils tight, ready to fight. “You’re safe now,” his dad says, and Stiles deflates, opening his eyes.
He’s in new clothes, he doesn’t smell like sweat and panic, and his hair is wet. He taps his toes against his dad’s thigh. “Did you bathe me?”
His dad shrugs one shoulder. “You were soaked when I found you, figured you wouldn’t want to wake up that way. Heavy as hell, too. Hungry?”
This is why he loves his dad, because he’s like Scott. They both know how to handle him, how to diffuse the always ticking Stiles bomb.
And so he nods, sitting up and shifting his legs until they’re folded under him. His dad goes to fix him a plate, and Stiles settles in, grabbing a fleece blanket from the back of the sofa before he turns up the volume a little because he knows his dad still hears her voice, chiding him for keeping it so loud while Stiles is sleeping.
“Dad,” he says as he’s handed a plate of food. His dad grunts as he sits, and Stiles sighs. “I want to visit mom’s gave.”
They sit in silence while Stiles finishes his dinner, and then, when he starts to get up, his dad takes his plate and says, “Okay. We’ll go together—this weekend.”
The weekend arrives, and Stiles isn’t ready, but he gets up early and gets dressed anyway. He starts to find something nice to wear, but his mom had always hated dressing up as much as he did, and so instead he tugs on his favorite jeans, her favorite green thermal because it made his eyes brighter and a little golden, and a comfy sweatshirt that she bought when he was little—that had always been too big and now isn’t, but she’s not been here to see him grow—and when he goes downstairs, his dad is dressed the same way, as she would have wanted them.
His dad has made breakfast—scrambled eggs and toast and even hash browns—and it’s quiet until Stiles starts babbling on about nothing, and his dad just smiles and tries to keep up. It makes it easier when they get to her grave, but even then, they stand apart, and Stiles can’t remember the last time he felt so hollow inside.
“Dad,” he says softly, looking over, “I miss her.”
“I know, Stiles,” his dad sighs, “Me too.”
And then Stiles can’t stand the distance anymore, so he steps closer, lifting his dad’s arm until he gives a small laugh and loops it around Stiles’ shoulders.
It’s as they’re heading back to the car that his dad says, “I have to go to the station later. Is Scott still in trouble?”
“I think so.”
His dad sighs and scrubs a hand over his face. “Okay. Listen, don’t fight me on this. I’m going to give Melissa a call, see if it’s okay for you to go over. I don’t want you alone until we figure this out.”
Stiles is quiet, weighing his options before he nods. “Yeah, okay. Thanks, actually.”
His dad shrugs and asks Stiles about school, and though Stiles knows it’s a defense mechanism to get him talking to distract them—knows because he uses it constantly, and he wonders if Scott has ever figured out why he babbles on and on so much—he takes the bait anyway, telling him about his classes and what Lydia was wearing this week and lacrosse, which takes up the car ride until they’re home.
He heads for his room, waits in the hallway until he hears his dad says, “Hey Melissa,” and then he sits, listening, “I have a favor to ask. I know Scott is in some kind of trouble, and I respect that, but things have been really difficult with Stiles, and—” he stops, and Stiles frowns. “No, he’s fine, he’s—well, he’s not fine. He hasn’t been sleeping again, and the nightmares won’t stop, and Melissa,” he pauses, taking a deep, unsteady breath that makes Stiles want to disappear, so he draws his knees to his chest and rests his chin there. His dad lets the silence hang for a few moments before sighing and continuing, “When I came home the other day, he was passed out and shaking, drenched in sweat, in the hallway. It’s gotten so much worse, Melissa, and I don’t want to leave him alone tonight.”
There’s a long pause, and then his dad is talking again, but Stiles doesn’t hear it. He loops his arms around his head, blocking his ears, and he bites his lip until it bleeds, exploding copper into his mouth, to avoid crying.
This is how his dad finds him. “Oh, Stiles,” he sighs. Stiles starts to move, starts to get up, but his dad is suddenly next to him, sliding down the wall and sitting with him. “I’m sorry I told Scott’s mom.”
“How much have you been telling her? It sounds like she already knew most of it,” he snaps, looking up and over.
“I don’t know how to help you, Stiles, without your mom. I’m—I’m lost, kiddo. I don’t know what to do. Scott’s mom is a nurse, and I thought—I don’t know, I thought she could help.” Stiles looks away, quiet. After a moment, he lifts a hand to his face, rubbing away unshed tears. His dad tugs him close, pressing a kiss to his temple. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”
Stiles nods before shrugging away and getting up. He goes down the hall and to his room, shutting the door.
Around noon, his dad comes by, knocking before he enters. Stiles looks over and then back at his computer. “Huh, night terrors,” his dad says as he sets down a plate with a sandwich on it.
“Not yet,” Stiles says, “Night terrors are violent and usually continue when you’re awake. People with night terrors should not be woken suddenly or held down.”
“Not yet?” his dad repeats, squeezing one of Stiles’ shoulders.
“Nah, just vivid and ongoing nightmares. Alas, it appears I do not reign supreme.”
His dad laughs softly and tousles his hair before leaving. At the door, he says, “I’m heading out to the station. Melissa said you were welcome to stay the night, if you want. I might be late getting home.”
“Alright, have fun, be safe, all that jazz.” Stiles starts to pick up his sandwich, and then pauses. “Hey, dad.”
He looks over, and his dad nods. “Me too, kiddo,” he says before he’s gone.
Stiles waits until he’s gone before shutting down his computer and going to pack a bag. He eats his sandwich while he goes about his room, and, before long, he’s piling into the jeep and heading over to Scott’s. He decides to go through the front door, if only to make Melissa happy, and she smiles when she opens the door.
“We’ve missed you around here, Stiles,” she says as she turns away, and he just grins crookedly and shrugs.
“Your fault, mom,” he says, and though he’s usually fine with it, this way he’s somehow adopted Melissa as his surrogate mom, it stings today, and he almost retracts it, tries to pull it right out of the air and swallow it down, but he can’t, and so instead he just puts his head down and strides past her and hurries up the stairs.
Scott is lying on his bed, head hanging off the edge, tossing a hacky sack into the air when Stiles opens the door. He frowns at him, blinking, before he says, “Dude, what are you doing here?”
“Your mom let me in, dude. Slumber party, you have no choice.”
“Dude, yes,” Scott groans, flipping upright and bumping fists with Stiles before he goes to turn on his tv, doing a little dance when it turns on. “Turned all my shit off, man, it’s been absolute hell. Hey,” he says, turning suddenly.
Stiles drops his backpack on the floor and dumps onto Scott’s bed, stretching out. “What?” he says when Scott doesn’t continue.
“Everything okay, man?”
“Yeah, course.” He can tell Scott doesn’t believe him, but he doesn’t really care, not until later—after a dinner Stiles knows was made with him in mind, and now he’s so full with good food, he’s actually smiling genuinely—when Scott rifles through his movies and comes up with a horror. Stiles makes a noise, and Scott looks over, quirking an eyebrow. “I’d like to actually fall asleep at some point,” Stiles tries to make a joke of it, but Scott just frowns and folds his arms over his chest, turning his full attention on Stiles. “Um—fuck off?” Stiles tries, and Scott rolls his eyes, tossing the movie toward his desk and going to sit next to Stiles.
“What’s going on, man? Why are you here?”
“Ouch.”
“Your turn to fuck off. What’s up?”
Stiles looks away, drawing patterns in his denim thigh with his finger. “I’ve been having nightmares again. I just—I can’t sleep when I’m at home,” he pauses, and Scott lets the silence hang until Stiles continues, his voice quick because he just wants to get this over with, he wants to stop being pitied, “I passed out the other day in the hallway during a panic attack, and my dad found me, and now he doesn’t want me to be alone.”
After a moment, Scott nods, bumps shoulders with him, and says, “Yeah, okay. Romcom it is.”
“Scott,” he groans, “Transformers, dude. Let’s marathon the shit out of that.”
Scott complies, and Stiles gets comfortable. It happens that he gets drowsy toward the end of the first one, starts nodding off halfway through the second one, and then he’s out cold by the time the second one ends, and he sleeps peacefully for the first time in weeks.