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It takes Chris four months and probably 17 bottles of whiskey altogether to finally find himself where he is now, on the Stilinski family’s doorstep.
He’s thought about it almost constantly for the past month - obsessively, if he’s honest with himself. He needs to talk to Stiles. Needs to ask him questions. Needs to rage at him. Needs to strangle him with his bare hands. Something.
Are you sure you couldn’t have kept the Nogitsune out of your mind? Did you really try? Do you regret saving your father, if it led to this down the road? Or was my daughter’s life a small price to pay to you? Do you remember it? How did it feel to murder my daughter? Did you know that I loved her more than anything else in the world? I’m not sure I can live without her. You did this to me. I hate you.
In a daze, Chris knocks. He’s not sure he could even stop himself if he tried - he’s pictured this so many times, imagined it second by second in his head. It’s no longer a thought, it’s a scene from a movie that he just mentally replays, and like an actor on a screen, he’s helpless to do anything but what was written.
Apparently no one gave Stiles the script, though, because when he answers the door, everything veers off course.
Stiles is gaunt, looking more dead than alive, and there’s not a trace of his former self on his face. He raises a judgemental eyebrow.
“Took you long enough, old man. Allison would be embarrassed by you, I think. If I had murdered you and left her alive, she would have seen me dead within a week.” Stiles looks at him for a moment, maybe expecting a response. But Chris can’t find his voice, wouldn’t know what to say to that even if he could.
“Well, you’d better come in, I guess.”
Chris obeys mechanically, stepping inside and shutting the door behind him, toeing off his shoes right inside the door. It’s a habit. Victoria had always been annoyed by him tracking mud in the house, so he got used to taking his shoes off. She’s gone but the habit remains.
That’s all he is, now. A collection of habits, a mishmash of learned behaviors that don’t matter anymore. Frankly, it’s probably why he’s still alive. Trying to stay alive had become a habit a long time ago, and now he doesn’t care enough to try to break it or change.
Stiles is standing by the entrance to the living room, his face a study in bored impatience.
“Well? Any last questions for me, things you want to say, names you want to call me, et cetera? I’m sure I know anything you want to tell me, but if it makes you feel better, go right ahead.” Stiles waves a hand and looks at him, expectant. When Chris continues to do nothing but stare back, Stiles almost looks like he wants to start tapping his toe in annoyance, but still waits.
“I’m not here to kill you,” Chris rasps out; months of drinking cheap whiskey and not talking having taken their toll. He didn’t intend to say it and is startled to realize that it’s true. He isn’t going to kill Stiles, probably isn’t even going to yell at him. When did he make that decision?
“O-kay,” Stiles says slowly. He looks, Chris thinks a little hysterically, like Chris is the one who has completely lost his mind. “So why are you here then?”
Chris is about to tell him the truth (which is that he has no idea, apparently) but once again his mouth takes over without any conscious thought on his part.
“I’m leaving Beacon Hills. I can’t…I can’t be here anymore.”
Stiles is still staring at him, baffled. “Uh, that’s great dude. Way to move on and take care of yourself, I guess. But why are you here, telling me this?” Stiles is speaking slowly, deliberately, but with a strange sort of patience, as though trying to get coherent answers out of a small child or someone who is drunk beyond belief.
“Want to come with me?”
Stiles just looks at him for a beat, then shrugs.
“Sure, why the hell not?”
—
So that’s how, ten minutes later, they’re driving down the highway in the middle of the night, with no destination and no clue what they’re doing. Neither bothered to pack a bag, and so far they haven’t said a word to each other.
Four days later, Chris will feel the first thing besides anger and grief that he’s felt since Allison died. Not happiness, not yet, but a bit of contentment as they start driving just as the sun is rising, alone on the road except for some bird, radio quietly playing in the background.
Ten days later, Chris will see the first hint of the old Stiles, when he demands that Chris “change the fucking radio station, jesus, it’s more static than music right now.”
It will be weeks later that Chris will remark to Stiles how he looks less like death warmed over, and that it’s unfair that Stiles is sleeping better in a camping bag in the back of the truck when someone Chris’ age is waking up with more aches and pains than ever. Stiles will quietly admit that he’s known a spell for dreamless sleep for months, and that he always felt he deserved the nightmares, but that he hadn’t wanted to bother Chris so started using it after they left
Months later they will find a cabin in Oregon far from the nearest town, where the forest surrounding it is just unfamiliar enough that they feel like they can breathe in the woods without being assaulted by memories.
It will be two weeks after finding the cabin that Chris will see the first genuine smile of happiness on Stiles’ face, when he kisses him for the first time. That will also be the same day that Stiles first curls up next to Chris in bed when darkness falls instead of continuing to sleep on the incredibly lumpy couch in the living room.
Of course, not a day after that, Stiles will admit with a smirk that this whole thing is turning out better than he expected, since he was still pretty sure when Chris invited him along on his road trip that Chris was just planning to take him somewhere else to kill him.
Even so, it will take Chris a full six months to admit to Stiles that the reason he hadn’t packed for the trip was because he hadn’t planned it at all, it had just come out of his mouth unexpectedly when he was floundering for another reason to have visited Stiles, but he was too embarrassed to tell Stiles that at the time.
And Stiles, for the first time, will laugh and laugh.