Stiles Stilinski (callmebiles) wrote in blackpoint, @ 2014-02-23 20:10:00 |
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The text Lydia sent to Stiles went through just a few minutes before she was knocking on his door, bag of food in hand. She knew he wasn’t going out much, not that they’d really talked since their little spat and the icy reception at Kira’s sushi party. But they were both learning from the show each and every week, and as much as she hated to admit it, she had a few new things she wanted to try while being in the vicinity of Stiles. And she missed him, damnit. Not that she’d be admitting that part. But he was a fixture in her life now, someone who’d been supportive of her powers, even before they knew what they were. He helped her, he researched with her. Now he was possibly possessed and none of them had any idea of what to do about it. The only small comfort she had was that she was reasonably sure the Nogitsune was awake, unless it was just biding it’s time for them to lower their guard around him. But either way, they weren’t ever going to get anywhere if no one tried, and Lydia was at least willing. Reaching up to knock again, this time a little more impatiently. “Stiles, open up. I know you’re in there because you’re a hermit that never goes anywhere.” She paused, tapping a toe before calling out again, “I have cheetos.” Stiles had ignored the text. He hadn’t gone anywhere near the network either. The show had been over for an hour and he hadn’t done a whole lot besides pace and scribble down ideas in his notebook. Most of them had been scratched out, furiously, with the memory of a dead cop, an injured Isaac, and a sword in his best friend’s stomach guiding his hand, but there were a few things worth looking into. He didn’t have the benefit of lichen grown where a nogitsune had bled, but the lichen had inspired other methods of poisoning a fox. When Lydia’s voice seeped through the door, his head jerked up in surprise. He hadn’t heard any of the knocking and didn’t remember picking up his pen again, but there it was, clamped tightly between his fingers. Swallowing dryly, he dropped it onto the notebook resting on his bed and brushed his clammy hand off on his flannel distractedly as he moved towards the door. “All right, all right, hold on,” he shouted, swinging the door open and stalking back across the room to pick up the notebook with its nearly unintelligible scrawl. “I’m not really hungry, though, Lydia. I need to see about ordering some supplies,” Stiles muttered, already halfway across the room to the makeshift desk he’d made out of the hotel room’s vanity. When the door finally opened, she held up the bag and gave him one of her patented Lydia Martin sarcastic and fake smiles. “Well, you don’t have to shout.” Pushing her way past him and walking into the room like she owned it, Lydia paused only long enough to wrinkle her nose and look around with a cursory glance. She’d been here before, of course. The sleepover, movies, all of them trying to distract Stiles, but this was a little more specific. Or, at least, it was the first time she’d been over not long after the show had aired. Setting the bag of food down on the vanity, she began unpacking things and focusing down on her hands rather than looking at him. “Good, if you’re making a list that means I’m still in time to make sure you don’t poison yourself.” Setting a box of cereal down heavily, Lydia moved onto the next item with slow and precise movements, purposely not looking at him. There was no apology out of her lips, just matter-of-fact statements and a know-it-all attitude that Lydia was famous for. “I know what’s going on in that brain of yours. And I’d rather we try a few other things first. I’ve also never heard you turn down food.” There were a number of emotions battling for dominance inside Stiles as he sat down in the plastic chair he’d stolen from a picnic set near the parking lot. Annoyance was definitely a contender. With Lydia crowded the space next to his laptop and speaking her mind as always. Exhaustion and hopelessness were in there somewhere too, but he was shoving them down deep with the click of his fingers against the keys. Fear was the hardest one to fight, because who was safe around him if Scott wasn’t off-limits? But the one that snuck on him the most was that unnameable feeling he still got whenever it was just the two of them. He was better at ignoring it when there was someone else around. Better at stopping his gaze from lingering. Just better. A flash in the pan pair of memories - her asking if he’d be bothered if her and Scott had sex and Scott asking if he was really okay with it all - were enough to snap his focus back where it belonged: on the computer screen in front of him. “I’m not going to poison myself,” Stiles mumbled. Technically, that was true. He’d need someone else to do it, since it was going to be an emergency plan should the Nogitsune take over. But he didn’t really feel like fighting with her if he could avoid it. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop his voice from taking on the irritable tinge it carried more and more often these day. “Why don’t we skip the part where you make me feel like I’m doing everything wrong and you tell me what you want to try instead.” Lydia steeled herself to his remark and very subtly blew out a breath as she tossed the bag of cheetos to land next to his laptop. She’d already snapped at him when she was projecting her own annoyances and hates in his direction, and this time she was determined to keep a level head while around him. She could already hear Allison muttering children in the back of her head, and resolved not to let it get that far. Once the bag was empty, Lydia spent her time neatly folding it, tasking herself with something menial while she debated the best way to approach her newfound idea in a way that Stiles wouldn’t instantly rebuke. “I want to listen for it.” She never was very good at subtle anyway. Turning around, Lydia braced herself against the vanity with both hands and leveled a look at him. “I can hear things that other people can’t, right? I wake up when you have nightmares. I hear voices. What if one of those voices is the spirit trying to reach out for me?” Stiles narrowed his eyes at her, his fingers freezing over the keys. It was a logical thought, but his defenses came up so fast, it surprised even him. His shoulders were tense has he forced himself to look back at the screen.“What if it is trying to reach out for you? Why would we give it what it wants, Lydia?” he ground out between his teeth. A loud exhale didn’t really help matters, but it did let him soften the edges of his voice. “I mean, I just---that seems like a really dangerous idea. If there is anything there…” Stiles rubbed a hand over his face and leaned back in his chair, giving the laptop a break for a minute. He wanted to know, but he didn’t want to know. Knowing meant the constant worry had substance. Would he even know if the spirit took over? But his bigger concern was still the immediate revulsion that resulted from even considering putting Lydia in that kind of danger. “No, no,” he murmured heatedly. “It’s too risky.” She knew he’d resist, and Lydia had a few arguments already sitting there waiting for his protest. Yeah, he might’ve had a point, and they were so resistant to not letting Stiles hurt himself that they were putting themselves -willingly- at risk. And she really didn’t care. Not if it helped. Lydia had a difficult enough time feeling useful as it was, with a best friend like Allison and everyone having their purpose, but her job still mostly unfulfilled. “If it wanted me, it could’ve had me already.” The innuendo wasn’t intended, so she didn’t follow it up with a knowing smirk or flirty look on purpose, diving right along. “I doubt it’d bank on me coming looking for it. But we need to know, Stiles. Bonnie didn’t see anything and that might be a good thing. What if I don’t hear anything at all? Then maybe you can get some sleep and we can focus on something else.” It was a longshot, and one she already knew was inaccurate, but if it helped her side of things, Lydia was always willing to go for the easy marks. “I may not even be able to figure it out, Stiles. But it’s worth a shot.” He didn’t say the first thing that came to mind - that he doubted his symptoms were going to go away even if there was nothing there - but he did say the second. “You heard it. It’s a trickster. It might need you to open up to use you or switch hosts or whatever screwed up plan it could have. And even if you don’t hear anything, that could be part of the plan, too.” Picking up his pen, Stiles tapped it anxiously against the edge of the vanity. He was purposefully not looking at her. Mostly because he was well aware that Lydia could convince him to do just about anything if she looked determined enough. But then, he was pretty determined too. Determined that no one get hurt either by him or trying to save him. The problem was that he was also tired. He couldn’t handle much more of this waiting and there were only so many tricks up a half-trained druid’s sleeves. “Honestly...I don’t need you to listen to know it’s there,” Stiles eventually whispered, glancing up at her with resignation painted across his face. “I’m missing time. Not a lot. Bits and pieces. But it’s enough.” “Stiles.” Lydia had another argument prepared, determined to do this and do it the way she wanted. But his whispered confession had her pushing away from the vanity and towards him - probably not where he wanted her but Lydia always moved with purpose. She only had a short step to move before she was in his space, kneeling down in front of him with her hand reaching out to gently grasp the side of his neck. Any other time, and a joke about Lydia Martin being on her knees inbetween Stiles’ legs would be appropriate, but her brain was nowhere near that thought process. Lydia wasn’t used to openly caring about people - it happened, they all knew it did - but not often and not with regular frequency. She wasn’t an empathetic person until the emotion was forced out of her, so it was still an unusual feeling to be so overwhelmingly worried for Stiles. “Stiles.” She repeated his name with emphasis, trying to catch his gaze. “Let me try. Please. I just feel like this is something I have to do.” Stiles closed his eyes at first, partly because he’d been avoiding anyone touching him for days now and partly because it was Lydia and old habits die hard. He was also trying not to panic, because if Lydia was pulling out her sympathetic voice, it was going to be a lot harder to pretend he was okay. Not that he was fooling anyone, anyway, but it was easier than falling apart all the time. Everybody had enough to worry about without him losing his shit left and right. Eventually, he took a deep, steadying breath, unconsciously covering her hand with his own. “You have to promise you’ll back off at the slightest sign something’s going wrong. I mean, you know what I mean. You can’t just be stubborn and keep at it no matter what, Lydia,” he murmured, finally opening his eyes to meet her stare. “I mean it. You have to promise.” Swallowing the lump in her throat, Lydia gave a small nod. It was an easy promise to make, with her own self-confidence waivering slightly. She knew the chances of actually being able to do anything were slim-to-none in the first place, but damnit, every person in their group had a purpose and Lydia’s had thus far been on the lower spectrum of things. Muttering under her breath to steel herself up for the task, “I’m not going to be the one that just finds dead bodies.” Maybe she had something to prove, along with helping. But either way, Lydia wasn’t expecting the immediate drop in her stomach as she closed her eyes. Feeling like time was stopping around them, Lydia was unaware that she moved in a little closer to Stiles, lifting up slightly so that she was level to him. Her eyes opened at the moment she was able to look him directly in the eyes, but her gaze went well beyond that, clearly disconnected from their reality. Stiles felt a small wave of regret wash over him at her words. This was a bad plan. They should have back-up. He should have refused. It was a long list that basically boiled down to wtf is wrong with me that I agreed to this, but by then it was too late. He could see she was “gone” and his grip on her hand only tightened instead of letting go like he’d planned. Even though he couldn’t really hear anything, Stiles could feel the charge in the air, the hair on the back of his neck rising as he watched her vacant eyes. He hated to pull a Peter and bug her while she was concentrating, but a minute of silence had him twitching in his chair. She was just so close and his brain was one big, chaotic mess. Staring hard at a point above her shoulder, Stiles finally caved and murmured a droll, “Soooo….how bout them Seahawks?” It was another few seconds before her eyes snapped back and Lydia was blinking the dryness away. She blew out a breath, trying to sort through what she’d just received. It was a garbled, whispered mess and Lydia was cursing herself for not learning Japanese - what she was fairly certain was Japanese - sooner. But she had confirmation now, that there was something sleeping inside of Stiles. It didn’t seem to notice her or react badly, just whispered the same statement over and over, a statement that Lydia only managed to catch a few words. Repeating the words under her breath a few times, Lydia snapped away, pulling her hand from Stiles’ skin and trying to manage a small smile in his direction. The effect was ruined slightly by the water pooling in her eyes. “Odds were 2.5 points in favor for the Broncos, someone could’ve made a lot of money.” The mumbled Japanese was enough to lock Stiles’s attention on Lydia’s face, but not even her matching non sequitur of a reply stopped him from squinting at the look in her eyes as his hands dropped to his lap. He hadn’t needed the confirmation. But if he had, it was there in her face. Stiles tried to counter her smile with one of his own, with equally mixed results, and his eyebrows lifted as he stared down at his own palms. “Betting on the underdog...it’s risky business,” he sighed. Clenching his fingertips into his palms, Stiles forced his gaze to lift back to hers. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me you just felt like muttering Japanese right now and it wasn’t even remotely Banshee related.” The question wasn’t delivered with the wishful thinking that should have accompanied it, but sarcasm was always better than panicking. “Talking in Japanese is my version of pillow talk,” Lydia shot back with her own brand of sarcasm. She instantly felt a little bad, even if it was Stiles, her one sarcastic rival. It was only amped up with all of them under pressure and even worse when she had a headache already forming. Closing her eyes for a second, Lydia shook her head slightly. “Sorry.” Pushing away from being in such close proximity, Lydia straightened her back and turned away from him forcefully enough that her skirt swished around her thighs. Walking to the door and back again was only a few steps, but could still easily be considered pacing. She stopped herself from rubbing a temple, instead just pushing back the voices and the noise and everything to the back of her brain while she contemplated how to fix this. “Maybe the reason Bonnie wasn’t able to detect it was because it wasn’t… alert. There’s the Winchesters. Or maybe any of the other Witches that can draw demons out to destroy them without hurting the human. Or maybe there’s a ritual…” Barely paying attention to Stiles, she continued to pace the short distance of the hotel room, practically rambling now. Watching her pace, Stiles lifted up his chair enough to swivel it out towards the rest of the room. He rested his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hand as she made another pass by him. “Lydia…” He didn’t really know what to say that could ease her mind. Hell, if he did, Stiles would have said it to himself already. Instead, he caught her forearm on her next pass and looked up at her with serious eyes and a pleading tilt of his head. “I’m not going to risk drawing this thing out. Not when it isn’t doing any real harm just yet.” Nodding his head towards the bed that wasn’t all that far away, Stiles rubbed her arm in a platonic gesture of comfort that she probably didn’t need, but he couldn’t quite help anyway. “Now can you sit down and tell me exactly what you heard? You’re making me antsy.” With a heavy sigh, Lydia sat down on the edge of Stiles’ bed and folded her hands into her lap. Forcing herself to steel up and put the mask of impassive Lydia Martin back on, she nodded slightly and met his eyes. “Right, of course. No drawing it out.” Despite the fact that it may have been hurting him, but she knew Stiles was similar to her in that he’d risk himself over any one of them. That thought wasn’t as comforting when it was on the other end, though. “It’s-” Pursing her lips, Lydia closed her eyes and tried to run through the whispers again, to see if there was something she missed. After a second, her eyebrows furrowed and she shook her head. “I couldn’t make out much. It was like something was … muttering under it’s breath? Sleep talking? In Japanese. I heard a word - Oki? Oku. I’ll ask Kira if there’s different translations for it but I don’t know if one word even helps.” While he hadn’t been expecting some big revelation that would stop this mess in its tracks, Stiles was still disappointed. Confirmation that he was possessed? Check. A reminder that there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it? Checkity check. Stiles nodded slowly, his mouth curling down at the edges. He could really use the doc around, more so than ever. “Right. Okay. So. Not exactly helpful. But...at least we know for sure now.” His eyes fell shut as he sighed and dropped his face into his hands. “And it seems mostly dormant, right, so that’s...good. I can--I’ve got time at least, to work on a few emergency plans. Probably. Hopefully.” Stiles was muttering into his hands, so likely only half of what he was saying was even intelligible. But he did finally sit up straight, clasping his fingers over his knees to stop them from shaking. “Thanks. For trying,” he murmured. Awkwardly shifting in her spot, Lydia kept playing with her hands and looking down, rather than staring at him with… whatever range of pity and sympathy that was creeping up past the hardened facade she was putting on. The talk of emergency plans and time made her wince, but she tried not to let it show blatantly that she didn’t like that idea. But her memories from the Kanima incident were there, and Lydia could at least be thankful that Derek, Isaac and Erica weren’t going to get anywhere near him even if Stiles was willing to put himself on the line over the pack. Running her hands over her thighs and smoothing down her short skirt, Lydia bumped her knee against his twitching one. “Do you want me to go or hang out?” Stiles mustered up a smile that was surprisingly genuine. Even if the pity in her eyes was hard to stomach on some level, it was still proof that they were long past the days of childish crush meets cold indifference. He could be warmed by that at least. Nudging her knee in return, he pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “I want you to stay. Just let me order up a few things and we can...I don’t know, watch a movie or something.” His eyes tracked towards the cheetos and cereal she’d left next to his laptop. “Eat junk food and not talk about this for awhile. Man, am I tired of talking about this. I’d agree to a freaking full body wax just get to a few hours without the word possessed coming up in conversation.” Turning his chair back towards the computer, Stiles tapped a few words into a search before pausing to toss a crooked smirk over his shoulder at her. “That’s not a real request, FYI. Just so we’re clear.” |