InsaneJournal

Dreamwalking: Alex and Stiles
Who: Stiles and Alex
What: Dreamwalking into a Low Point
When: Monday, November 25
Where: Beacon Hills (kind of)
Warnings: Canon Violence (TW: Blood), Spoilers for Teen Wolf s5, e5
Status: Completed via GDocs


He’d jokingly told Kitty it was getting a bit codependent. The truth was, he was getting really used to falling asleep with a strong arm curled over him. Still, he’d known he’d be up late tonight finishing up some work he’d left even more last minute than he usually did, and sometimes good sense won out over the prevailing thoughts of all Alex, all the time. His boyfriend needed decent sleep, he had classes and studying to worry about too.

It was late (or early?) by the time he finally shut his laptop on what he hoped was a final draft. He’d read over it again in the morning but for now it would do; his thoughts had begun wandering too much for any writing he did to be effective.

Teeth brushed and pajamas dug out of his dresser and he was in bed a little after three, drifting off pretty quickly to thoughts of blond hair and kind eyes.

When he woke again, he immediately knew he wasn’t actually awake, because he was fixing his jeep in the school parking lot, and it was dark. He might have been dreaming, but he knew exactly where he was and what was happening. Things played out the same way they always did and before he knew it he was leaning against a shelf in the library, shoulder burning and bloody wrench in hand. That didn’t matter though. Knowing didn’t stop him following the same motions he did every time, despite knowing what was coming.

His heart was pounding and he was trying to control his breathing, listening to Donovan walking on the mezzanine above as he taunted him with what he was going to do to his dad.

Only a long day of studying and doing band stuff, and then resorting to putting one of Stiles's flannel shirts on his pillow actually ensured that Alex was asleep at all. He tried not to think too hard about missing his boyfriend. A night apart wouldn't kill him. Most of his dreams were the normal swirl of random whatever, almost a collection of what he'd done over the last couple of days, but sped up or slowed down. Fortunately, it wasn't one of his stress dreams.

There must have been some sort of thread to them, though, because he started to drift through Sunset Curve's old garage studio into a low lit place he didn't recognize. There were a lot of books and bookshelves around, though. He tried to read the spines, but nothing jumped out at him.

He heard voices, though. One he definitely recognized. Alex smiled as he rounded the corner, only to find scaffolding looming close at hand.

Stiles was climbing higher, Donovan’s taunts about eating his legs following close behind. He could feel the warmth of his hand just before it grabbed hold of his ankle. He didn’t know if that foreboding moment was a part of what he was dreaming or not, but the thought barely registered before he was desperately kicking his leg to get him to let go, the terror lodging in his throat despite knowing how this would turn out.

How it always turned out.

Reaching for the pin his fingers slipped from the metal once, twice, before he was able to grasp it and pull it free. The sound of metal clattering to the floor echoed off the high ceilings, and Stiles clung to the brace of the scaffolding, breathing heavily. He knew he was going to look, it was inevitable. But he still willed it not to happen as he slowly turned to look down over his shoulder.

Alex froze.


What was the other guy doing? Was he trying to hurt Stiles? The fear on his boyfriend's face should have been answer enough, but it took the mad scrambling for something in the scaffolding for it to really cement just how imperiled Stiles really was.


It all happened in slow motion. The supports fell, a dozen at a time, crumbling like pick-up sticks. Alex's mouth fell open in a silent cry, but something about all this told him it had happened before. There was nothing he could do except for watch as the bar pierced the unknown boy through his chest. It looked like something out of a movie.


The kind Alex didn't like watching, if he could help it.


He could hear Stiles breathing in the heavy quiet that followed. Saw him start to turn his head. Spoke up to try to stop him. "Don't look! Stiles, you don't have to see this!"


He was already scrambling down the scaffolding when Alex spoke, and by the time his feet hit solid ground, his heart was pounding in his ears. Alex. How was Alex here - what did…


He couldn’t get a coherent thought together as his eyes moved from the horrifying picture Donovan still painted, no matter how many times he’d seen it, over to the somehow worse sight of his boyfriend, features twisted in disbelief. Oh god. Oh god, he’d seen. He knew what he’d done.


He took a stumbling step back and nearly lost his footing on one of the pieces of metal.


Between one blink and the next, Alex was across the room. He couldn't remember moving, wasn't sure he actually had, except he was right by Stiles's side, steadying him with an arm around his back and the other on his arm. His heart thrummed in his chest. Terror threatened to choke him. All of this felt less like a dream, and more like a memory. "Hey, hey. I'm here. It's okay, I'm here. I don't think this is real, but I am."


All Stiles could do was look back into equally terrified eyes in disbelief, even as he instinctively clung to him and the comfort he offered. How was Alex here? He felt real. As real as any of the rest of this did. But it wasn’t possible. Maybe this was just a product of thinking about him as he’d fallen asleep. Maybe it was wish fulfillment, wanting someone who could make him feel so safe with him in this moment.


He didn’t know, but he didn’t like it. Not because Alex was here, but because now he knew. God, he couldn’t get past that thought. Alex knew.


“I don’t understand. How -?” He shut his eyes on the thought. “This is just a dream. I just have to wake up. It’s just a dream.” If he said it enough maybe he’d believe it.


All Alex could think of to do was rub small circles in the middle of his boyfriend's back and give his arm a reassuring squeeze. The latter action made a memory of something Stiles had told him about his dreams in the past. Cautiously, he looked at his own hand. Five fingers, just as he suspected. He held his digits up for Stiles to see. "It is a dream, and I think I'm dreaming it with you, but I'm not a part of it. I'm real, I'm just… visiting."


He glanced around the darkened library again, his gaze sliding right around the metal bar and the blood and the body just suspended at an angle. It would haunt him, he knew: this awful, awful thing Stiles had gone through, but what was important right then was taking Stiles away from it. He spotted a set of doors behind him after craning his neck. "Hey, let's get out of here, okay? We don't need to stick around for any of this."


He couldn’t quite get his head around that, looking at Alex’s hand and seeing five fingers. That wasn’t how dreams worked. But his boyfriend was here, so what else could this be? And the familiar comfort of a hand rubbing his back had felt pretty real. Alex’s suggestion sounded pretty good to him. If this was a dream, and Alex was here, things wouldn’t happen in the same way. He didn’t need to call the station, then. But maybe Parrish would still show up and take the body. And that was a whole level of weird on top of weird he doubted he could explain to Alex right now.


“Yeah, okay,” he eventually agreed, keeping physical contact with his boyfriend as they walked back towards the doors, his gaze only flickering to Donovan once. “So this was my school,” he tacked on as they got into the hall, what could only be described as a bit of a manic laugh coloring the words.


"It's a real beacon of education, I can tell." Alex laughed, but it died halfway through. The way Stiles delivered his observation hit like a dropped beat. It sent jitters down his spine and made his stomach clench. His awful pun was definitely the product of misplaced anxiety. He redirected between one shivery breath and the next. "Hey, what's your favorite part of school? Unless it was the library, in which case, the second favorite. Think we could go there? It's your dream. I think we could probably go wherever you want."


Maybe it said a lot about who he was as a person that he laughed at Alex’s words. He couldn’t help it, stupid puns that weren’t technically puns were still funny. Or maybe the thought of what was behind them in the library was an image he’d just become too desensitized to. More likely, though, was the complete unreality of Alex being here with him meant he didn’t know how to react. “Not the library. Uhm…there’s the locker room -” Where Lydia had kissed him so nope, not there… “- I guess Coach’s class.” He resisted every urge to look down the other direction in the dark hallway before leading Alex further away from the library. “Are we just…pretending that didn’t just happen?” How could he possibly want to?


Now that he was relatively sure Stiles wasn't going to fall over if he let go, Alex dropped his arm from around his boyfriend's back and took his hand instead, threading their fingers together without hesitation. His heart was still tripping all over itself for all the worst reasons, but he was steady on the outside. Mostly. Wrinkling his nose, he made a slight face. "As much fun as a locker room probably is, it makes me pretty glad there's no smells in dreams. But show me to the infamous Coach Finstock's sacred hall of learning." His stomach roiled. If they were out in the waking world, he'd be making a straight shot to the bathroom. Alex shrugged feebly. "I didn't think you'd want to talk about that awful accident."


He hadn’t actually thought about the smell. Maybe he was desensitized to that, too. Still, he squeezed Alex’s hand as they approached the room he’d been thinking of. There was no missing what was obviously the very deliberate use of the word ‘accident’ from his boyfriend. He didn’t mean the scoff, it just sort of happened. He tried and failed to say something in response a good three times before he was finally able to form the words. “I’ve already talked about that.” He wasn’t calling it what it wasn’t. “But you’re the one who just saw it.”


Taking a deep breath felt like being in the deep end of a pool. His chest was too tight for air, but Alex ignored all of it in favor of turning around and putting himself in front of Stiles. "All I saw was an accident. You were scared, and he looked like he wanted to hurt you. You did what you had to do to protect yourself. That's what I saw."


There were too many complicated emotions that came with thinking about that moment after he’d pulled the pin from the scaffolding and turned to find Donovan was dead. And he knew without question that he and Alex would think differently about them. Now wasn’t the time for getting into that. It was too raw, and though he hadn’t expected his boyfriend to turn and face him when he said it, he doubted he’d react all that well to being told he didn’t know what he’d seen. So he just set his jaw and resisted the urge to look away from perceptive eyes.


“Fine. We won’t talk about it then.” Because he had no idea what to say. What he needed right then was to wake up, but apparently he’d lost any say so in that. He tugged on his hand to encourage him to keep walking, stepping around him to do it.


A deep, sharp sadness hooked Alex right behind his stomach. While his feet propelled him forward at Stiles's silent urging, his head had already slingshot back to the library. The mortal fear he'd seen in his boyfriend's eyes hadn't possessed a single iota of premeditation. Clearly, he wouldn't be able to convince his boyfriend of that fact.


"Stiles…" he started and stopped. Because what could he say? Tears came unbidden to his eyes. Alex stared at the clench of his jaw until it blurred, and then said the only thing that mattered:


"I love you."


It wasn’t his name that stopped him but the words that followed, looking back at Alex and feeling his entire body freeze at the sight of tears in his eyes. Without thought to anything else he closed the distance between them, letting go of his hand to curl an arm around his shoulders and pull him in close. Regret churned his stomach. “I didn’t even ask if you’re okay.” And who would be after seeing that? God, he really was that selfish, apparently.


He didn’t know if the trembling he felt was him, or Alex, or maybe both of them, but right then he wanted them to be anywhere but where they were. “I love you too.” Was what came out instead of what he was thinking of saying, that he wished Alex had seen none of this.


All of this horror, and Stiles was still more concerned about his well-being than, well, anything else it seemed. Sure, Alex had heard the stories and tried to picture the events in his head, but it was one thing to imagine and overthink a thing to death, and quite another to witness it. On paper, it didn't make sense. This was Stiles's dream, yet Alex had witnessed it as an outside observer, and not from his boyfriend's perspective. Maybe the rest was the subconscious filing in the remaining picture— or it could have been whatever magic had brought Alex there in the first place.


If it was possible to think oneself into a headache in a dream, Alex was well on his way.


He didn't answer Stiles, but he had no doubt the way he was clinging in that moment spoke volumes. A shudder went through him, and tears squeezed out of his eyes, even though he tried to stop them. With his head tucked into the crook of Stiles's neck—one of his favorite places—he couldn't see the darkened high school hallway at all, but all at once a sense of movement came over him, like a shift in the air.


When he opened his eyes, it was daytime, and the line of steel lockers and scuffed floor tiles was gone. A strange sense of familiarity struck his brain, making Alex pick up his head again to look around. "This is… your room?"


This - all of it, wasn’t anything Alex should ever have had to deal with, even as a visitor to his dream in some impossible situation that had to be the latest craziness from this place. Lucid dreams weren’t new, he was familiar with being aware inside his nightmares, but he’d never had someone else show up before like this. Unless he was very vividly dreaming this whole thing? That was possible too, really.


He felt how tense Alex was in his arms, but he couldn’t think of a way to apologize for him having to have seen any of this without using that word they’d banned at some point. And he knew where he’d wind up if he pulled on that thread. Because he was the common denominator to all this crap. The Nogitsune had been bad enough. And now this? It felt like a physical effort to resist the voice telling him he should be pulling away, not holding Alex closer. But he didn’t want that, not really. He loved him too much, and he knew a lot of this was just because of what had just happened. He was tripping too close to panic to be thinking things like that.


Even behind closed eyes he saw the light shift as he felt Alex lift his head, and he loosened his grip in turn, looking back over his shoulder towards the door set in a very familiar wall. “This is my room,” he agreed. He’d been thinking he wanted to be anywhere but the school, and apparently his dream had listened. Maybe it was about being somewhere he felt safe. Maybe because he’d come back here after what happened with Donovan. The reasons why hardly mattered, though.


The bed was unmade, the familiar blue comforter shoved down towards the end, the pillows lying askew. The wall beside his desk still had its collection of photos, articles, and information he’d been collecting on Malia’s mom, mostly connected by red string. But the clear board which stood towards the center of the room told him the when of all this, for all that it mattered. He could see the smudge of white from the words he’d tried to erase in a panic what must have been the night before, now. He could still remember them, though. Donovan dead, the second word underlined heavily. Someone took the body.


Suppressing a shiver, he released his hold on Alex, keeping his hands on his arms so he could look at him properly. He needed the reassurance he really was okay. Or as okay as he could be, considering Stiles knew he still felt a bit like he could throw up.


As much as Alex wanted to look around, he was far too focused on his boyfriend. Separating now, even to satisfy his curiosity alone, would give the wrong impression. So he stayed right where he was and smiled wanly at Stiles. "I always wanted to see your room. Kind of silly, I know. Even in your dream, I keep wondering if it would be a time capsule of your life."


He let out a hiccuping laugh, one that came out a little too much like a sob for his comfort. Everything in him wanted to let go, but he clenched it down tightly. This wasn't about him, and he refused to make it about him. Lifting his hands to settle on Stiles's arms, Alex gave him a wobbly smile. "Show me where you grew up?"


His eyebrows rose of their own accord at that. "You did?" Admittedly, he'd considered the thought before that it would be cool to see the studio Alex had mentioned, the one in Julie's garage. But then his drum kit had shown up here and that had felt like the main 'Alex' part of that anyway. His eyes flickered over the walls and the desk, briefly considering if there was anything he didn't want Alex to see, before realizing that ship had well and truly sailed by this point.


That laugh-turned-sob hit him right in the chest, and Stiles brushed a thumb over Alex's cheek as though brushing away a tear that wasn't there, more for the sake of touching him than anything else. "Well, there's…." He gestured vaguely at the space around them. Obviously, they were standing in it. Then to the wall by the desk, with all the papers and red string. "I sort of toned all that down, it was covering all my walls for a while there." He floundered for a second, wondering what his boyfriend could possibly want to see.


"Oh, here." He released his hold on him to step over to the desk and rifle through one of the drawers, pulling out a photo. It was one of he, Scott, Lydia and Allison. Stiles had a buzzcut and a goofy grin, arm slung over Scott's shoulders. This one hadn't been in the box he'd wished for. This had been on his pinboard until he'd taken it down at some point. He held it out for his boyfriend to take. "That's Allison. I don't think you've ever seen her." The guilt didn't cut quite as deep as it used to, and that felt important. Maybe it was just being overridden by what had just happened, but he wasn't going to dwell.


"I don't know what else you want to see? This is probably where I spent the most time. Or the kitchen and stuff, I guess."


Alex set aside the initial, no doubt rhetorical question, only replying with a very slight "no duh" look before he watched his boyfriend move around a room Alex never thought he'd see again, and then took the photograph in hand. Funny, that he couldn't feel it in his hand, but that didn't keep him from running the edge of his thumb along the outline of Stiles's younger face. He loved that smile more than words could say, and it took a lot for him to drag his attention to the other three. "She's pretty," he observed quietly with a small glance in Stiles's direction. "You all look so happy."


Like life hadn't gotten their claws into them so deeply yet.


He left that part out. Besides, now he was slightly more concerned with wandering around the room Stiles had grown up in. The piles of clothes, stacks of books and papers, the boxy computer, and the desk chair sitting askew made up all the hallmarks of bits of Stiles he loved along with the rest of the pieces that made him whole. Alex took in a shaky breath and shoved his hand through his hair, letting out the former with a small chuckle. "Under any other circumstances, I'd ask you to show me your bed, but… At least we can sit here for a while. Talk about nothing and everything. I could— I could hold you for a while? Until we wake up? It's not as good as me being there, I know, but it could still be something."


"Yeah, she is." Actually the first day Allison had arrived in Beacon Hills he was pretty sure 'hot' had been the word he'd used, which had been in reference to hot people flocking together. "Yeah," he said again, responding to the happy comment. "I don't even remember what we were doing. The photo was probably Scott's doing though." A smile touched the corners of his mouth as he looked down at the image of his friend. "He had it so bad for Allison back then. God they were hard work. Remind me to tell you about the time I had to run back and forward and deliver messages to them like a carrier pigeon some time."


He watched Alex wander the room, taking everything in. He couldn't help but wonder what he saw, and what it all looked like through Alex's eyes. Not that that was new, he was basically always invested in knowing what Alex was thinking at any given point. Watching him and thinking all that was almost, almost enough to forget how they'd ended up here. Or why. He didn't know, dreams were confusing.


He did laugh though, when Alex did. "I like the sound of that, actually." And then when they did wake up, maybe he could just make the trip to the other tower and into his boyfriend's bed. Maybe they could preemptively cancel tomorrow and just stay there all day. That sounded pretty good. Shifting his feet, he looked down at the carpet, then up at Alex. He hesitated for only a second before speaking again. "I'm sorry you had to – that this is something you had to be part of."


The idea of a younger Stiles—the one beaming back at him in the picture—relegated to messenger status made him smile, if only it was one of those things Alex could really picture. He'd been told the stories about his boyfriend's awkward earlier years, always relayed with the kind of self-deprecation that made him think they were slightly less as awful in reality, yet still had a thread of truth to them. He smiled over at Stiles and nudged his shoulder with his own. "I'd like to hear it sometime. And anything else you might want to tell me."


Maybe a loaded offer, but an honest one.


Sure, he wasn't supposed to have seen the memory in the library, but he'd meant what he'd said: the only thing that changed for Alex was the depths of his feelings. To know the person Stiles was now was formed by that kind of darkness—it left Alex nothing short of awed.


He shook his head sharply, and closed the distance to snatch Stiles up into his arms. They were falling sideways and into the bed with the barest hint of Alex's desire to be there. "No sorry. Never any sorry, but especially about this, okay? This isn't just our rule, where we don't say it, but we mean it. I don't want you to be sorry about what I just saw. It was your life, all the dark things you don't want me to know, and I get it. As much as I can. Like, that wasn't my life. Despite dying, despite Caleb, I've never watched anyone die. And you—you've had more than your fair share. Ugh, I don't think I'm saying any of this right. It's just— you don't have to apologize for the things you've been through. That's all I mean."


There was no hesitation to be pulled down onto the bed with Alex and immediately curl into his space with arms he was so fond wrapped around him. He didn't like that his boyfriend had seen what he'd seen, but it wasn't his fault. And he got what he was saying. If the situation was reversed, there was no way he'd be letting him apologize. Still, it was hard to fight the instinct. A fight he'd already lost, in fact.


"I know, I'm s – I mean I'm not sorry. I just hate this, it's not fair." He had his head pressed in against Alex's shoulder, blocking out the sight of his room around them. He did get what Alex was saying, and despite wishing that he hadn't been subjected to this, and despite the fact that Alex had just seen all this, he was showing all over again who he was as a person and why Stiles felt the way he did. "I love you so much, Alex." He didn't say it enough, and he was sorry about that, too.


Alex didn't hesitate to press a kiss to the side of Stiles's head, and then just let his lips linger there, arms around his boyfriend like he could keep them both in this moment and never let anything bad happen to either of them ever again. Emotion clogged his throat. There was no changing any of their past experiences, and that was kind of the irony of the entire situation, because Alex didn't actually want to go back and make anything different. Who knows what small thing would make them different people, to turn this one moment into an impossibility. He didn't love suddenly walking into a memory he knew Stiles never wanted him to know about—they would have talked about it already, if he had—and it was something he'd have to reckon with knowing in the coming days and weeks, but it happened, and now they went from there.


"I hate it too," he muttered, a tear slipping down his temple and into his hair. No, it wasn't remotely fair, the things this place did to them. But he had other priorities, like holding on to Stiles and not letting him go until they both woke up. His heart thudded in time with those last last words, which were the only ones that mattered to him. "I love you, too, Stiles."


We'll get through this.