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“When there’s nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire”
Stiles’s hands start shaking about seven seconds after Scott is whisked away behind automatic doors into Trauma Room 2. He pretty much falls into a seat in the waiting area and spends a good few minutes wonder which will be worse – if Mrs McCall finds him first, or his Dad.
Stiles’s life being what it is, they arrive within moments of each other. Considering Mrs McCall only had to come from the third floor medical ward, that says a lot about Dad’s ability to speed through the streets of Beacon Hills. Lights and sirens, Stiles imagines. Shit.
“Stiles,” Mrs McCall says, voice shaking, and he blinks up at her.
“I’m sorry,” he bursts out miserably, realizes a half-second later that she couldn’t give a shit about his apologies right now, and instead raises one of his trembling hands to point in the direction they took Scott. With his hand at eye level, he’s staring straight at the blood, tacky but still glistening, Scott’s blood, and yep, that’s about it, he’s on his feet and staggering for the bathrooms as Scott’s Mom hightails it in the opposite direction.
Stiles crashes into Dad’s chest as he reaches the doors, and Dad, thank God, doesn’t waste time with talk, just shoves the door open and ushers him inside, gets him into a cubicle so he can heave up the fully loaded pizza he and Scott had shared right before Stiles had his brilliant idea.
When it feels like his internal organs have all exited his body, Stiles flushes it away and leans back, slumps for a second against the wall and then hauls himself upright. Time to face the music, he thinks, and runs the back of his hand over his mouth as he lurches for the basins. He’s leaving traces of blood everywhere he goes, so the first thing he does is wash his hands like he’s prepping for surgery. When he’s done, he has a whole new appreciation for Lady Macbeth.
Dad, silent, hands him a wad of paper towels and Stiles washes his face clean of tears and other fluids, almost cracks into sobs as he feels his father press a second, damp wad of towels over the back of his neck, right where it’s fever-hot.
“It’s my fault, Dad,” he croaks it. “My stupid idea.”
Dad sighs, near silent. “Come on, kid,” he says, voice full of worry. “Let’s get out of here.”
Dad doesn’t take him back to the waiting area, he commandeers an office instead and they sit, face to face, Stiles slumped over and staring at the floor.
“I know you’re upset, son,” Dad says, “but I need you to talk to me now.”
Stiles swallows, manages a nod. Yep. Witness statement and all that, seeing as how Stiles has dragged Scott into an actual crime this time.
“We were just driving around,” he mumbles. Tears are threatening, and he swallows hard and forces himself to be clear. “I thought – no humans had been hurt, I never thought- we weren’t even supposed to be getting out of the car, Dad,” and he risks a glance up, sees the resignation and sorrow on his Dad’s face, and God, he deserves so much worse than that.
“So, just to be clear, you thought you’d drive around the Preserve and look for the animal that’s behind these attacks,” Dad says, voice very calm. Official levels of calm. “Despite the warnings distributed around town, and the very specific conversation I had with you about police work and how you and Scott are not, in fact, the Hardy Boys.”
“We weren’t going to get out of the car,” Stiles says again, and big fucking help that is now, with Scott’s side shredded by a fucking sabre-tooth tiger or whatever.
“Just tell me what happened,” his Dad says.
Stiles nods, licks his lips and stares down at the floor as he tries to get his thoughts together. Simple facts, not justifications. “We went in past the picnic areas,” he begins. Dad already knows who and what. “Took the old fire trail east.”
Dad nods. He’s writing this down now.
“Scott needed to take a leak,” Stiles says. “I pulled over. There was nothing – no sounds or anything.”
“No animal sounds at all?”
Stiles shakes his head, “None. I mean, looking back now, not being able to hear any other animals probably means it was nearby, right? All the other animals were hiding.” he bites his lip. I should have thought of that. “But I don’t know, we just thought – anything that brings down a deer would have to be a fair size, it’d make some noise. There should be growling or something, there should have been some fucking warning-”
“Stiles,” his Dad says. He puts a hand on Stiles’s knee.
Right. Can’t lose it now.
He takes a deep breath. “So Scott got out and found a tree. I was messing around on my phone but my window was down. I’d have heard if there was anything, I’d have-” he catches himself before Dad has to intervene again. He takes another careful breath. “Scott finished and, y’know, he turned around to come back. He pulled his phone out of his pocket on the way, he was only... I don’t know, like, ten yards from the car, Dad, and then he stopped because his inhaler fell out when he grabbed his phone and he didn’t want to lose it, they’re like, seventy bucks, y’know?”
“Yeah, son,” Dad says, soothing, “I know.”
It’s a stupid thing to think about now. About Scott’s voice, and how the last proper sentence Stiles heard from him was about his stupid fucking inhaler, which is probably still lying on the grass somewhere. In a puddle of blood. Stiles swallows.
“So he bends down to pick up the inhaler, I think he must have been using his phone like a flashlight to see it on the ground, I mean the Jeep’s headlights were still on but he’d gone behind the jeep and so I didn’t see, I couldn’t, there was nothing to see because then he just screamed, just fucking, screamed, Dad, I mean I jumped so high I slammed into the car door,” he touches the tender spot above his temple, “and I busted out of the Jeep in like, half a second but there was nothing there, whatever it was had just, like, gone, just, fucking gone and he was bleeding, shit, there was just so much blood everywhere-”
“Ssh, Stiles,” Dad is saying now, which makes no sense because he wanted to know, he asked, and that’s when Stiles realizes he’s crying, and he was maybe kind of shouting because now he’s wrapped up against his Dad’s chest, like a little kid and Jesus, he feels like a little kid right now because Scott, oh God, Scott.
Stiles's mind, for once in his life, goes very, very quiet.
Scott. Scott. Scott.