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The light from the waning moon shone through the open curtains, faintly illuminating the outline of Isaac’s body in the hospital bed, leaving faint but deep shadows in the beta’s face, making him look weary and old beyond his years. The monitors surrounding him kept up a constant, slow stream of sounds, signaling to anyone who was in the room that the blond was alive, though only just barely. Scott stood outlined against the moon-lit night, the glow from the monitors’ screens the only thing making his features visible. The hand he had previously laid on the sheets curled into a fist in helpless frustration.
He could smell the burns running up and down the right side of Isaac’s face and the rest of his body, could smell as the flesh rotted; he could smell that Isaac was dying.
The alpha felt his eyes heat, knew they were glowing, knew that if any of the nurses came to check on their coma patient that they’d probably see him. And, yet, Scott couldn’t bring himself to care.
Because Isaac was hurt. Isaac wasn’t healing. Isaac was dying. And no one seemed to care. Amidst the drama of Stiles’ activities and disappearances and reappearances, everyone else seemed to have simply... forgotten. Everyone but Scott. Because Scott wouldn’t. Scott couldn’t.
Scott couldn’t think without his beta by his side. He couldn’t sleep at night without Isaac’s heartbeat in the house, without the blond’s heat suffusing his body as they curled into one another. He couldn’t eat anything without it somehow triggering the memory of Isaac pushing Allison out of the way, of him falling into the electrified water, of the sizzle and crack as the electricity literally cooked Isaac’s flesh until Kira had managed to get ahold of that damn power line.
So he went out. Usually he went for a run in the woods, trying to burn off the excess energy so that he could return to his room and collapse into a nightmare-filled slumber. At least, that was what he told himself. In reality, his runs through the woods almost invariably ended up with him here, at the hospital, wearing nothing but his shoes, sweats, and a t-shirt and hoodie. The nurses on duty always knew him, knew his mom, knew that he and his mom had sort of unofficially adopted Isaac—whom they all knew previously as the Lahey kid that came in all the time with something broken from being so clumsy—and so they never gave him any trouble.
Because it was the only thing he seemed to actually be able to do, Scott grabbed his beta’s cold—too cold, his mind whispered—hand, concentrating. Black lines of pain flowed up his arms, and he hissed as he felt the pain entering his body, alive and writhing and burning, as if it were trying to tear him apart from the inside out. Isaac’s body arched almost involuntarily towards Scott, as if the beta knew from where his relief was coming. Scott felt chest start to heave involuntarily with effort, but he kept pulling, kept taking, because he knew that if this was only what he was taking away, then what Isaac must’ve been experiencing was absolutely excruciating. Tears sprung up in the corners of his eyes as a cry left Scott’s lips, but he kept going, because, if this was all he could do, then he’d be damned if he did anything less than what he was capable of.
The fire searing his nerves came to a crescendo, his vision grayed, and Scott’s body stopped absorbing the pain almost as if it were a reflex. He groaned, blinking rapidly, feeling the black tendrils diffuse throughout his body, spreading out the damage even as his body tried to heal wounds that weren’t really there. Scott refocused on Isaac as soon as the blond’s face was more than a blurry mass, and, growling in frustration, he grabbed onto the other teen’s wrist again, forcing his body to go further.
Something was different this time.
This time, Scott’s eyes blazed in their sockets, adding heat to the flames that were consuming him, and he felt his body begin shifting against his will. The pain came harder, stronger, this time, constricting his chest until it felt like he couldn’t breathe. Scott gasped for air, black tingeing the corners of his vision, his body pushing against some unknown, thorny barrier it refused to pass, until, all of a sudden, he was through. It was as if the barrier itself had shattered and embedded itself within him, twisting and carving his guts into ribbons as more black seeped from Isaac’s body into his own. Some small, detached part of Scott’s mind reminded him of what had happened to Derek, how he’d used up the spark of power that made him an alpha to heal Cora. That same part was telling him, rather urgently, that he needed to stop or else he’d risk the same thing.
He kept going anyway.
“Scott.”
The fact that the alpha hadn’t heard his mother entering the room—no doubt drawn by the shouting—was a testament to how far gone he’d been, how deeply he’d thrown himself into the healing. He craned his neck, the muscles cramping at even the slightest suggestion of movement. And then, before he could even fully process what was happening, his mother was at his side, tugging his hand away from Isaac’s wrist in a frightfully strong grip.
“Scott, stop, he wouldn’t want you to do this to yourself.”
And in the moment when she managed to push him back from the bed and pull him into her arms, his sense returned in a rush, eyes cooling as his body shifted back to normal. His mom’s heartbeat was elevated, and her arms were shaking softly where they made contact with his cotton-clad skin. The room reeked of her fear.
“Mom, I can help him,” he groaned into her hair, the brown curls tickling his nose. His vision blurred as he practically whimpered, “Please, just let me help him.”
“Not like this, honey,” she murmured softly, rubbing a soothing hand up and down his spine. “Not by throwing yourself away like this. Isaac wouldn’t want you to do this. And I won’t let you, either.”
“How can you say that?” Scott asked, anger surging through him suddenly as he took a step back, his mom’s arms falling away. “How can you tell me to just give up on him?”
“I’m not telling you to give up, Scott,” Melissa argued back, her temper apparently flaring as well. “I’m telling you to find another way, or to just let it run its course, alright?” Her anger seemed to deflate as quickly as it’d come, and she sighed unhappily. “Sometimes the hardest thing of all is knowing when to step back and just… do nothing.”
“‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,’” Scott replied, though the fight had gone out of him as well, and even to his own ears the words sounded flat. His mom chuckled.
“Yeah, yeah, mister smart guy, whatever. The point still stands, though, that Isaac wouldn’t want this. He wouldn’t want you to give up your,” she gestured vaguely in Scott’s direction, “you whatever it is you have, for him. You mean too much to him, kiddo.”
The words sent something cold through Scott’s gut, and before he could censor himself, the words were falling from his lips.
“He means too much to me to not try, though.”
He felt his face flame red, but didn’t back down, didn’t look away from his mom. He watched as her brows scrunched in confusion, then saw the moment the words connected in her mind. He could practically see the memories—Scott and Isaac always spending the night in the same room despite the fact that the guest room was now Isaac’s, the two of them always sitting closer together than was probably strictly considered appropriate for best friends, the lingering glances they passed between them—falling into place behind her widening eyes. She raised a hand to cover her mouth, though it was too late to cover her surprise.
“You love him.”
It wasn’t a question. Scott simply nodded.
“When I told you that you fall in love again,” Melissa continued, looking past him to where Isaac’s burnt face was on display, “you already knew that, didn’t you?”
Scott nodded again, his mother’s gaze coming to focus sharply on him at last.
“We don’t need to have the talk again, do we?”
Heat rushed into his face as Scott spluttered in embarrassment.
“No! Mom! No! We haven’t even had—” he cut himself off, the temperature of his face cranking itself up from ‘hot sunny day’ to ‘deepest pits of hell.’
“Uh-huh,” his mom nodded at him, hand on her hip, eyebrow raised as she side-eyed him. “If you say so.”
Scott squirmed under her gaze.
“I just,” he muttered, eyes moving back to land on Isaac’s face, something heavy settling in his stomach, “I know he wouldn’t want me to do it, but I can’t… I don’t want to imagine life without him.”
Melissa relented, bringing her hands up to her son’s face as she took a step towards him, forcing him to look her in the eye.
“Then don’t,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. “Coma patients have been shown to snap out of it if someone who loves them or whom they love is nearby. Just… be here for him, Scott. Let him do the rest. Isaac’s strong, he’ll make it through.”
And, after planting a kiss on her son’s cheek, she turned around and walked from the room, looking back only once she reached the doorway. Scott sent her a plaintive smile, not fully feeling it, but unable to ignore the small kernel of hope his mom’s words had planted inside of him.
Moving stiffly, Scott took a seat in the chair beside Isaac’s bed, reaching out to grasp the blond’s wrist, stroking his thumb over the slow pulse he found there.
“I’m here, Isaac,” he whispered, words barely audible above the soft hum of the machines surrounding the bed. “I’ll be here, waiting for you. I’m not going anywhere.
“I won’t forget you.”