Chapter Text
Melissa woke with a start, wide awake and alert before she even had a chance to process the terrified screams and cries that echoed through her house.
Next to her Raph stirred with a curse, but she was already half out of bed, telling him to go back to sleep.
She shot down the hall and into the guest bedroom, Stiles’ bedroom, and all thoughts of going back to sleep left her mind as she turned on the light and watched her son’s best friend thrash about in the sheets, his eyes shut tightly as he cried. He looked so small and vulnerable all alone in such a big bed.
She sat on the edge of his mattress. “Stiles, sweetheart, wake up. It’s just a dream. You’re okay,” she murmured, trying to gently pull him from whatever horror he was trapped in. The second her hand came to rest on his arm, he shot upright, his eyes snapped open with panic as he came back to reality. “Hey, hey, hey. There you go. You’re safe now, you’re okay. It was just a dream.”
Stiles looked around at her, his eyes wide, as though he was seeing her for the first time. He stared at her for a second as his brain caught up with him before his face scrunched up and he burst into tears.
“Oh, honey,” she breathed, shifting further on to the bed, so her back was up against the headboard and she could comfortably gather him into her lap, rubbing soothing circles on his back. “There we go, let it all out. You’re okay. You wanna tell me what you were dreaming about?”
“The hospital,” Stiles choked out between sobs and Melissa sighed, pressing her face into his hair. So his mom, or maybe his dad drinking. “He was so angry.”
Melissa’s heart clenched painfully. She remembered sitting in the waiting room, holding this inconsolable boy while his father raged at doctors that he should’ve been called, somebody should’ve told him his wife was dying. She remembered how he’d turned around, his eyes finding Stiles and he just... broke and nobody had been able to pick up the pieces since.
“It’s not fair,” Stiles cried and Melissa tried to stop her own tears from falling. She was an adult when both of her parents died and she lost them both at once to a car wreck. She didn’t have to watch them slowly slip away for months, and she didn’t have to spend months watching the other one fall apart. She couldn’t imagine going through that pain as a child.
“I know,” she whispered. “I know, Sweetheart. It’s really not.”
She held him tightly as he cried and sobbed, rocking him back and forth until he had no more tears to cry.
“Hey, there,” she said softly, looking down at him, “are you back with me?”
She got a sniffle in response.
“Alright, how about I go downstairs and make us some hot chocolates with my secret recipe and you pick out a book for us to read,” she said, poking his tummy, smiling slightly as he squirmed but she could tell how upset he was because he didn’t protest a bedtime story, he just nodded, sliding out of her arms to where his books were scattered across the floor.
He wasn’t officially living with them, but every time he came over he seemed to bring more and more books and comics, and he never took them home again.
“I’ll be right back, alright? Make sure you pick us a good one,” she said, moving towards the door, but Stiles was already laying out several.
She stepped out into the hall, sticking her head around Scott’s door to make sure Stiles’ cries hadn’t woken him but he was sprawled out diagonally across his bed, sheets tangled up in his legs. She smiled slightly before quietly backing out of his room and down the stairs to make drinks.
She leant back against the counter while waiting for the milk to heat up, worrying at the edge of her thumbnail with her teeth.
It had been weeks since Claudia’s death, her funeral had passed and still, Noah still showed more interest in the next bottle of beer than he did his son. She understood that it had to be hard, him and Claudia were the closest thing to soulmates that Melissa had ever seen. They were always perfectly in sync, the type of couple that would finish each other's sentences and be gazing lovingly at each other every chance they could get. Her and Stiles were Noah’s world and she got so sick, so quickly. They’d barely had a chance to wrap their heads around the diagnosis before she had to be permanently hospitalized and it wasn’t long after that that she was gone altogether.
It left Noah alone, balancing a full-time job and his new role as a single parent along with his grief and it pained Melissa that the first thing in that situation to break was his relationship with Stiles. Because right now, what Stiles needed most was his father.
The microwave beeped loudly in the silence of the house and she startled, hastily drying her eyes before turning to finish the drinks.
“You found one?” she asked as she stepped back into the room, carefully setting the two mugs on the nightstand. Stiles rose up from his place on the floor, climbing back on the bed, a thick, old looking book that Melissa recognised well in his hands.
“This one,” he said, flipping the book open to a particular page and she tried not to frown.
“Are you sure, Sweetheart?” she asked.
It was an old book that had been passed down through Claudia’s family, full of old Polish fairy tales, on one page it was written in English and the opposite page had the English translations. The book had sat on Claudia’s nightstand in the hospital, and whenever she was well enough she would read them to Stiles and if she wasn’t well enough, then Stiles or Noah would read them to her.
“This was her favourite,” he said, holding the book out to her and Melissa nodded, unable to refuse.
She climbed back into bed, letting him settle down against her as she tucked them both in, holding the book carefully out of the way, she passed his hot chocolate across to him.
“Alright, let’s see,” she said, looking down at the worn pages, she cleared her throat. “The Whirlwind, by A. J. Glinski. In a far-off country, beyond the sea and the mountains, there lived a king and a queen, with a beautiful daughter who was called Princess Ladna…”
-oOo-
Melissa woke the next morning with a heavy weight against her chest and an uncomfortable crick in her neck. She opened her eyes and smiled softly at the sight of Stiles curled up against her side.
They’d finished the story last night and Melissa had promised to stay with him until he’d fallen asleep, but she must have drifted off herself sometime after that.
She glanced across at the alarm clock, although daylight was breaking through the curtains, it was still early. She had a while yet before she had to start getting the boys up for school, that is if Stiles was even going to school today, she’d decide that one after he woke up.
She brushed a gentle hand through his short hair, before sliding out from under him, careful not to disturb him. He looked so peaceful asleep like this, like he was just an ordinary kid who didn’t have to suffer.
Melissa sighed, picking up the two empty mugs and heading downstairs, moving into the kitchen she set the mugs in the sink and reached for the landline, dialling the number before she could talk herself out of it.
“Hello?”
She sighed again, Noah’s voice was thick, groggy and clearly hungover.
“Noah, it’s Melissa,” she said, her voice hard, “we need to talk about Stiles.”
And if two days later Stiles moved back in with his dad and Noah layed off the alcohol for a while, neither he nor Melissa mentioned it again.