Who: Stiles Stilinski and Joey McCoy. What: Nightmares and late night conversation. Where: The church. When: Day 37. Rating: Mediumish. Status: Complete.
It started the same as it started every night when he actually managed to sleep. His body tensed involuntarily, curling in on itself in fetal position, an instinctive, involuntary response to the things that his mind was seeing.
Sitting at his mother’s bedside, holding her hand. The piercing sound of the heart monitor’s wailing as she flatlined, her hand going limp in his. He remembered a nurse dragging him from the room as he screamed, over and over, tears streaming down his cheeks. Sitting alone in the cold waiting room, head in his hands as he waited for his dad to arrive.
Then a shift. Running through the forest. The sound of dogs barking. And then Scott was gone. Vanished. He couldn’t find his best friend anywhere. He called for him, but there was no response. He was just gone. And then he was on the lacrosse field, running. Running as fast as he could, screaming for Lydia to run, but the strawberry-blonde never had a chance. Peter’s teeth sank into her and there was blood. So much blood, everywhere. She was going to die because he hadn’t gotten there to stop Peter in time.
Another shift. And suddenly he was staring at a morgue full of bodies. People he knew. His mother. Heather. Lydia. Boyd. Erica. At the very end of the row of bodies lay one more, this one covered by a blanket and with dread, he shook his head, watching in horror as Jennifer Blake stood there smirking.
“Don’t,” he whispered. But she yanked the blanket off, revealing his father’s lifeless body. A sob choked him, and he let out a strangled cry. “No!”
“You were just too late. So wrapped up in all this werewolf business, and too busy to notice that your dad’s been dead for a very long time. You killed him, the same way you killed your mother.” Her voice was cold, hard.
“No,” he whispered, shutting his eyes.
“It’s your fault, Stiles. The blood’s on your hands. Look,” Jennifer ordered.
He opened his eyes once more, shuddering as he looked down at his hands. They were slick with blood, blood that wasn’t his own. And there was more, all over the floor and he watched in horror, frozen in place as it rose up, filling the room until he was submerged completely, drowning in it.
Drowning in the blood of everyone he loved.
Stiles woke up, gasping for breath and covered in sweat, heart thundering against his chest.
Usually, once Joey was asleep, she was down for the count. It was a little more difficult, though, with Stiles on one side and Tate a few feet away on the other, laying on a cold, dirty floor of the church when she’d rather be just about anywhere else. Never the less, she usually made it all the way through a night once she’d fallen asleep and, even tethered to Stiles, there was no exception.
She laid close to Stiles, with one hand on his chest to make sure she felt safe knowing that he was right there and she wouldn’t wake up to intense pain before she registered the missing body under her hand. It was more comfortable than trying to hold his hand and it gave her more peace of mind than simply hoping neither of them rolled too far away from the other in their sleep. So, when Stiles woke up gasping and his heart started racing under her hand; the way he was sweating and the way his muscles jerked when he awakened, Joey noticed.
“Stiles?” she whispered, opening her eyes and shifting herself up a little. He looked pale and sweaty, like he was sick or something and her breath caught in her throat with worry. “Hey...are you okay?”
It took him a moment to reorient himself back into the world of the conscious, and he didn’t even hear her at first. All he could hear was the sound of his own heart beating, the blood rushing in his ears. It figured that the time he tried to sleep, tried to get some rest because what else could he do in the middle of the night when he literally couldn’t move more than three feet away from someone, that he’d have one of the nightmares. He’d been having them, and worse, since the ritual. He kept meaning to bring it up to Allison, to ask her if she was having them, too, but part of him was afraid of her answer.
He wasn’t sure if the idea of her having them too made it more or less scary. If she was having them, too, then it probably meant that darkness that Deaton had mentioned was working its way through them. If she wasn’t having them...then he was suffering from PTSD or something. Maybe it was both options. And what the hell was he supposed to do about it either way? Regardless, he was stuck having them whenever he managed to sleep and it made him want to up his dose of Adderall.
Then he heard her voice, the concern in her tone and he shut his eyes, forcing himself to take a couple of deep breaths. He could not have a panic attack now. Not in front of Joey and definitely not in front of Tate, even if the other guy was still asleep. “Yeah. Yeah, just...bad dream,” he murmured, swallowing hard.
Joey looked back at him and empathy etched itself into her features. She had nightmares, too, now. Not all the time, but when they hit, they weren’t pretty. She sat up and sighed softly, taking one of his hands. “It’s okay...I get them, too,” she admitted in a whisper, eyes flickering over to Tate to make sure that he was still sleeping. She paused, looking back at Stiles and nervously worrying at her bottom lip with her teeth.
Giving his hand a squeeze she reached over with her other and wiped his forehead clear of the sweat beading there, wiping her hand off on her shirt. “You wanna talk about it?” she offered.
He drew in a breath and let it out slowly, willing his heart to calm down even though he could still taste the blood in his mouth. Coppery and metallic and stomach-turning. He almost said no, he didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t really understand why she was offering because he was pretty sure that she hated him. Or maybe just strongly disliked him at this point. “They were all dead. Everyone back home.” He swallowed a couple of times. “There was so much blood.” He shut his eyes, trying to block out the memory.
That sounded terrible. Joey couldn’t imagine having a dream like that. Her nightmares revolved around this place entirely. Having a dream that awful about people back home that she loved… “Oh, Stiles...I’m sorry…” she murmured without realizing she was doing it until it was already said. She gave his hand another squeeze and scooted a little closer to him so that her knee — folded up beneath herself in a one-legged Indian style position — was touching his side.
“It was just a dream,” she reminded him gently, reaching over to wipe more sweat off his forehead. “They’re fine, I’m sure. Back home and safe,” she assured him.
Except it wasn’t. Not really. Most of the people in his dream really were dead, at least back home. Sure, Erica was here and alive, but back home she definitely was. Boyd and Heather and his mother...they were all dead. Jennifer was dead. His father had almost died. Stiles had died. And maybe the dreams he kept having was just his brain trying to process all of that and they didn’t really mean anything beyond that. But Stiles just wasn’t as hopeful as he’d once been. Not about things like dreams that felt as heavy as that one had. Not when it involved Jennifer Blake.
“Yeah. Yeah, I hope so,” he murmured, sounding lost.
Joey looked sadly back at him, not entirely sure how she could help him. Somewhere underneath the embarrassment and her hurt feelings and the frustration he’d caused by not being completely truthful while trying to help them, when Joey looked at Stiles now, she still saw her friend.
She laid back down beside him and turned her head to look at him. “How can I help?” she finally asked, at a loss as to what she could do to make him feel better when she didn’t know what was allowed or disallowed; appropriate or inappropriate between how he felt toward her and the line she’d drawn in the sand.
“I don’t think you can,” he admitted, glancing at her sideways. He remained sitting up. “No offense. I don’t think anyone can really do anything. I mean, they’re just terrible dreams, probably.” He pulled the bottle of Adderall from his pocket and popped one into his mouth. At least it would guarantee he wouldn’t be going back to sleep tonight.
Joey looked up at him and, for a moment, she couldn’t think of what to say to that. It wasn’t that he’d offended her, because he hadn’t. She just couldn’t shake the feeling that, if the tables were turned, Stiles was the kind of guy who wouldn’t have let it drop until she felt better, so she wanted to do the same favor. She sat back up slowly again.
Taking a deep breath, she let it out in a slow, soft huff. “You wouldn’t let it go, though,” she guessed, “if you were me right now. Right?” She offered a ghost of a smile and looked down for a moment before her eyes moved back to find his. Unsure whether the gesture would be welcome, unwelcome, or simply unacknowledged, Joey went with her gut instinct and leaned over to hug him, resting her chin on his shoulder and rubbing his back and the back of his head with either hand. “So I’m not gonna, either.”
He was caught off guard by her gesture, but he didn’t pull away. He shut his eyes, leaning into her just a little. And no, he probably wouldn’t have let it go if the situation had been reversed. Not with Joey, and not if it had been Allison or Lydia or Erica or Elle or Scott, or even Derek. “The thing is…” He hesitated, not sure how much he should or could tell her about things back home. “Things back home are insane. Like, really insane. Kinda like here, but not quite as random and…” Actually now that he thought about it, Beacon Hills had become a really terrible place to be. People were always dying or getting hurt.
“Awhile back my dad was in serious danger. He almost died. Because of me and my friends.” Even admitting that hurt. “I mean, it turned out okay but I think -- I think there are going to be serious repercussions to why it turned out okay. We had to do something kind of beyond the pale to make sure he was okay.” He wasn’t going to bring up Allison’s dad or Scott’s mom, or Scott or Allison specifically because he wanted to keep them safe and because it just didn’t feel right, sharing that secret with anyone. He hadn’t even talked about it with them very much.
When Stiles leaned into the hug rather than pulling away from it, Joey pulled him in closer with the hand that stilled on his back. Her other went on holding the back of his head and she tilted her own just slightly toward him. He paused after he started to talk and Joey wondered if he was debating whether or not to keep going. She kept her mouth shut, waiting for him to get it out; whatever it was that he wanted to get off his chest. Her eyes flickered to the far right in an attempt to check whether Tate was still sleeping, but her peripheral didn’t reach that far. Hopefully, he was, because whatever Stiles was saying, she had a very good feeling he didn’t want anyone else to hear it.
“Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better,” she whispered, “but they always get better.” It was something her dad used to tell her when she was a little girl; right after the divorce when her world was crumbling to pieces around her and it felt like life as she’d known it was over.
Slowly, she pulled back from the hug and her hands moved to rest on Stiles’ cheeks. Joey looked him in the eye and waited for him to meet her gaze, so that he’d know she meant what she was about to say. “You have to believe that and have faith,” she told him. “Hope goes a really long way, but without faith to back it up...it’s nothing. I don’t know what you went through...and it’s none of my business; I don’t have any right to ask, so I won’t. But what I do know? Is that everything always finds a way to get better if you can just endure the bad parts and be patient, Stiles. I really believe that.”
Her words were so much like the words Ms. Morrell had told him so long ago. If you’re going through hell, just keep going. It hadn’t been what he’d wanted to hear, but she was a counselor. She was supposed to encourage him to go on. It wasn’t like he’d seriously contemplated other options anyway. He was just frustrated and upset because his dad had been in so much danger, partially because of him and the screwed up life he was involved in, and he hadn’t been able to do a damn thing about it. It was a running theme for him and had been for almost two years now.
But somehow this was different. Joey wasn’t just saying the words because she had to, because she was a school guidance counselor/emissary. She was Joey. He didn’t really know where they stood anymore after everything that had happened, but the fact that she was trying to comfort him now gave him some hope that their friendship wasn’t quite as shattered as he’d thought it was. He sniffed involuntarily, nodding and laying his head back against the pew as he shut his eyes. “I’m not giving up. It’s not who I am.”
Stiles leaned his head back and Joey let her hands fall back into her lap, balling them into fists because she didn’t know what else to do with them. She blamed the sweat on her palms on Stiles’ face and the way her stomach was churning with the fact that she at least knew what it felt like to be afraid the way he looked like he was. Whatever it was he’d gone through back home, it was big, and he looked a little bit better after having gotten what little off his chest that he had.
For a long moment, Joey didn’t say anything. She didn’t look at him, didn’t look at Tate’s sleeping form behind them; she stared down at her hands and opened the fists because it didn’t feel right. She wanted to feel bad for Stiles because he was upset. She wanted to be able to help him because they were supposed to be friends, even if they were fighting. She wanted to be angry with him for chipping away at the wall she’d thrown up between them. But the only thing that Joey could feel was sad...because she didn’t think she could help him and because he’d pulled away.
“I know you’re not,” she finally said, eyes still fixated on her hands in her lap. “It’s gonna be fine, Stiles. Everything back home. It’ll work itself out,” she said and hoped, for his sake, that she was right.
Except it wasn’t. Not really. Deaton had indicated that much -- there were going to be consequences and Stiles had a feeling they were going to be bigger than any of them had realized. It wouldn’t have changed what they’d done, he knew that much for sure. No matter what, they would have done the ritual. They would have still died to save their parents because none of them could live with themselves if they didn’t. But in addition to the darkness, Deaton had indicated that Beacon Hills would become a target for every brand of supernatural badassery that was in existence. Stiles wasn’t sure what that even meant, but it couldn’t be good.
He wondered how much worse it could be than what they’d already been through. Every week seemed to bring something new and horrible to the fray and everything spun out of control. Over and over, with very little break in between the bouts of chaos. This place wasn’t that much different in that aspect. He was always on guard, always hyper-vigilant. Always aware that they could die at any given moment. It was a living nightmare.
“I don’t know,” he murmured. “I’m not sure it will. I don’t think it’s going to get better back home. I think it’s going to just keep being chaos until -- “ He stopped himself before he could say, it kills us all. And that wasn’t the future that he wanted for his friends. For his dad. For himself. “Until there’s nothing left.” Like this place, really.
Joey finally looked up. “Don’t create a self-fulfilling prophecy,” she warned. He sounded so hopeless and it was uncomfortable to hear when he hadn’t ever stricken her as that type. She hoped that he was wrong and that things really would work themselves out for him back home. It bothered her slightly that she’d never know one way or the other.
She paused for a long moment then before she spoke again, falling right back into that uncomfortable familiar zone of thin awkwardness that always seemed to hang over the two of them when they were alone. “...anyway, I’m sorry...it wasn’t any of my business. I just wanted to help, you know, but...for what it’s worth, I won’t say anything, um, to anybody about what you just said. ...and I’m sorry I got all up in your space more than I already have to,” she said, hunching her shoulders and letting out a soft sigh. “You want me to just...go back to sleep and leave you alone or...do you want company?”
He laid his head down on his knees for a long moment, knowing she was sort of right. But the way things were back home, he just couldn’t see a good outcome for any of them. It had been different in the beginning, after Scott had first turned. It had been scary, but also kind of exciting. New. His best friend had turned into a freakin’ superhero and on what earth was that not cool? Sure, there were definite drawbacks to the whole werewolf thing and Scott had faced plenty of them. But the more time that passed, the more things that went wrong. The more things appeared with no purpose but to kill, and usually it was people he knew and cared about.
How much longer would it be until it was Lydia? Or Allison? Or Scott? Or his dad? How much longer could they all keep getting lucky enough to survive each day?
He lifted his head up once more to look at her, hating how awkward and uncomfortable things were between them. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I really am. I -- back home, there are hunters.” He didn’t say Allison’s family, because although some of the things Allison had done had been terrible, he also understood why. Her mother had just died because of a werewolf bite, and Allison hadn’t known why Derek had bitten her. She’d had no clue that her mom had been trying to kill Scott. That was Scott’s fault. But hindsight was 20/20 and they couldn’t turn back time and fix that.
“They’ve gone after Derek before. After his family. After other people that I care about. That’s why I didn’t want to say what Peter was. Because we’re all from the same place and people jump to conclusions.” She’d done it herself, assuming Lydia was a werewolf. “Because I don’t know everyone here and I don’t know who can be trusted and I can’t have anymore deaths on my hands. I just...I can’t.” It was why he wanted so badly to kill Peter Hale. Because if Peter snapped and killed someone, and they could have prevented that, it would be partially his fault. “And Derek -- he’s not dangerous. Not to you. Not to anyone who isn’t trying to kill him.” He said that with absolute certainty. It was a certainty that he didn’t have until this place, really.
Joey bit the insides of her cheeks to remind Stiles that if he’d just said there was one werewolf, at least she wouldn’t have jumped to any conclusions about anyone else. It was when Piper had told her there were werewolves, in the plural that she’d started to freak out. Now wasn’t the time, because she knew it would only start a fight and she didn’t want to do that. Stiles was stressed out enough and it wasn’t like she could get up and walk out if things got too heated, anyway. So she pursed her lips and nodded, because, to some degree, she did understand.
But then Stiles said he couldn’t have any more deaths on his hands and her breath caught in her throat. She didn’t know what, exactly, that meant...but it didn’t sound good. Or safe. Her eyes flickered in Tate’s direction once again, but they didn’t linger there. She remembered that he had said he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her — that was, she assumed, why he was there in the church to begin with — and Joey trusted that. She had to. And Stiles didn’t seem like the violent type, but he’d made an implication that she’d have been lying to say didn’t frighten her a little bit.
“I get that you were just trying to help and you were stuck between a rock and a hard place,” she said slowly, carefully choosing her words before adding, “...but can you see where Piper, Carl, and I are coming from, too…?”
He blew out a breath, glancing at her sideways. “Yeah. I do. That’s the hell of it. I do get it.” He tensed a little at how easily he’d given up information to Piper. He hadn’t done it voluntarily. Not really. He wouldn’t have. Which meant Piper herself was hiding some kind of secret about what she was capable of. It made him uneasy, but he planned to just avoid her if he could because he didn’t get an evil vibe from her. He’d learned to trust his gut.
“That’s why I’m sorry. Because I do get it. I’m sorry I hurt your feelings by not telling you what Peter is. I was trying to protect you by giving you a head’s up about him, while keeping Derek safe.” And clearly he hadn’t done very well at either of those things.
That wasn’t what hurt my feelings, she thought, but dragging up the ghosts of that poorly thought-out night of peach Schnapps and being called out was the last thing she wanted to do, so Joey gave him a small nod of acknowledgement. The corners of her mouth tugged up slightly, but the smile was brief and it didn’t reach her eyes. He said he wanted to protect her, but he hadn’t. Nobody here probably actually could. She liked to pretend that Carl and Piper kept her safe; that Tate could, if he wanted to. But Joey knew just as well as anyone else that none of them could. Nobody could even protect themselves here, never mind her.
“...truce…?” she asked softly. Maybe things would never be the way they were; maybe she could never be as close to Stiles as she’d felt before she’d ruined it that night with the liquor, but at least maybe she could stop hating him for trying to do something good and stumbling on the execution of it.
He was almost taken aback by the weight that lifted off his shoulders at the offer of a truce. He relaxed a little next to her, reaching out and taking her hand, shaking it. “Truce,” he agreed without hesitation.
The handshake, while meant to be a peace offering felt like just another stab in the gut because if she hadn’t been sure before, she was certainly sure now that she was firmly lodged into the Friend Zone and things would never really be the same between the two of them. She’d never ask him to take her to the showers and guard the door again. She’d never invite him over for alcohol. She wasn’t even sure they’d hang out ever again after this, but...she didn’t hate him anymore. The smile she gave him back was a little sad, but it was there all the same.
“Come on, let’s try again,” she sighed softly, laying back down on the floor and patting the spot beside her almost listlessly. “Shitty sleep is better than none at all.”
He shook his head immediately. “No. No, you go ahead. I’m just gonna...watch the door. I mean nothing’s going to happen, but I just took an Adderall so I’m not going to be going back to sleep. But you probably should.” One of them should at least try and sleep.
Joey opened her mouth to protest, but figured that it would’ve been a waste of both of their time. “...okay,” she agreed reluctantly. “Good night, Stiles.”
“Night, Joey,” he murmured, gaze drifting to the door. He just hoped like hell that Peter didn’t choose tonight to show up.