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The desert sucks.
That’s not new information—none of the road trips they’ve taken into the desert have ever gone well—but this time it’s just.
It’s the worst.
No radio because he doesn’t want to wake Scott. No talking because he doesn’t want to wake Scott. No singing increasingly inane and incomprehensible lyrics because he doesn’t want to wake Scott.
Just driving and driving and his own stupid, shitty thoughts.
He’d kept it together for the first three hours pretty well. Counted all the cacti. Gave some animals names. Even passed a car every half hour or so, and he hadn’t woken Scott, not even once. It feels like the tiniest of wins, however pathetic—until he pulls into a real, functioning gas station with glaring lights and humming machinery and noxious chemicals even he can smell, and Scott still doesn’t stir.
Stiles parks the jeep next to a station and pulls out the keys, glancing in Scott’s direction as he pockets them.
Scott’s not a heavy sleeper. Hadn’t really been before the bite, but after, he’d become even more twitchy.
He only slept this obliviously when he was too exhausted to do anything else.
Stiles watches Scott’s chest expand on the inhale; collapse on the exhale. His button-down shirt sticks lightly to his front, damp only with sweat, instead of the blood Stiles had seen days before.
Stiles wishes he’d snore. Talk in his sleep. Something.
He raps his own fingernails against the handle, achingly loud against the silence.
When there’s no response, he gets out of the jeep, feet slapping against the concrete.
He considers the door. He could slam it, just to see Scott react.
He eases it shut.
The time it takes to set up the gas pump feels like an eternity.
Pay with debit.
Six seconds.
Four digit pin.
Three seconds.
Unleaded gas, $3.20 a gallon.
Ten seconds.
His hands are trembling by the time the nozzle is in his hands and he’s finally able to look back at Scott: he’s still asleep, slack jawed and dead to the world.
Dead.
Stiles jams the nozzle into the tank and pulls the handle.
There’s no relief in the gas spilling out, not like before. Scott had been across from him then, actually listening to him. Telling him he wasn’t a monster. That Scott wasn’t leaving him. That despite everything, they were still best friends.
It feels like a mockery now.
He’d told Theo exactly what his punishment was going to be.
I’m gonna lose my best friend, he’d said.
And then Theo had gone out and hand delivered it.
The numbers on the gas pump tick up and up, and he tries not to think about anything at all.
You think he wasn’t terrified?
$17.02. $18.23. $19.47.
That it didn’t still hurt?
$20.65. $21.52. $22.81.
It doesn’t matter.
The automatic brake on the gas pump clicks off with a clang.
Stiles takes it out of the tank and screws the cap back on before shelving the nozzle back in its slot. Then he turns and pushes the jeep’s gas cover shut.
Behind the window, Scott doesn’t react.
The silence is stifling.
Stiles can’t stand it.
This gas station isn’t abandoned, but there aren’t any people outside, either. He needs to—he needs—
He glances back at the convenience store.
Snacks.
They need snacks. He’s not exactly hungry, but Scott will need the energy when he wakes, and—who the hell goes on a road trip without snacks, anyway? And water bottles; they’re in the desert for god’s sake. Why did he pack thirteen bottles of oil and no water?
The bell above the door jangles as he walks in, though thankfully the cashier doesn’t look up. God knows what he’d do if someone tried to start small talk with him.
He grabs a six pack of Dasani, no matter how much more tempting the beer aisle is, and a bottle of disinfectant before he can think too much about it. He lugs them both over to the snack aisle.
Peach rings are the quintessential road trip food. A couple packs of them, maybe, and some Ranch Pringles, and—
His gaze stops on the KitKats.
They aren’t his favorite. They’d eaten so many of them in middle school—Melissa hadn’t been able to buy candy before Halloween, so to make up for it, she’d bought half a dozen half-priced bags the next day.
They’d all been KitKats.
Scott hadn’t minded, because of course he hadn’t.
They come in fours, he’d said, which made them easy to share. One for me, one for you, one for Harley, and one for…
Stiles drops the can of Pringles.
It clangs against the linoleum, eighty Pringles crumbling to pieces inside.
He imagines Scott falling. Bleeding all over the library. Theo’s goddamn claws inside.
He’s going to start laughing.
Maybe crying.
“Can I use your bathroom?” he asks, all teeth and eyes for a smile.
It’s wasted effort. The cashier still doesn’t look up as she tosses the keys on the counter.
“Thanks.”
Stiles grabs the keys and walks very calmly to the bathroom.
He lets the door shut on its own. He stumbles across the tile, clenches his hands around the rim of the disgusting, brown-stained sink, and lets out a pathetic fucking wail.
Worse than when Donovan died, when his dad was in danger, when the nogitsune was haunting his every sleeping and waking moment.
Scott had been dead because Theo fucking Raeken had killed him.
And Scott hadn’t even told him.
Stiles slips down the wall, hands finding his hair, and shudders into his knees.
Yelling was stupid.
If Scott had heard him, he has about ten, maybe fifteen seconds before Scott breaks down the door. Fully wolfing out and fully wasting whatever energy he’d gained from sleeping the last three hours, and then Stiles will have to explain why.
Seven seconds pass. Eight. Nine.
Don’t touch it.
Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.
I don’t know why it’s not healing.
Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen.
Let it go.
Scott doesn’t come.
A sound halfway between a laugh and a sob bubbles out of him, caught once again on the edge of sanity.
His phone buzzes.
He stumbles over himself trying to get it out, in case it’s important. In case it’s Scott.
It’s Melissa.
Is Scott all right? her message asks. I sent him a few texts this morning, but he hasn’t replied.
Stiles stares at the phone until the words blur together.
Melissa’s the opposite of a helicopter parent. As long as Scott shows up in one piece when he’s supposed to, she rarely worries about where he’s been. Definitely not enough to text him about it.
She knows.
Then he laughs.
Of course she knows.
Mom, Scott had said, his one-word response as to how he’d come back.
Whatever the hell that meant.
Stiles drags his hand across his eyes, then his nose.
Other than the humming from the fluorescents, the bathroom is completely silent.
He can’t do this.
There’s too much he doesn’t know: about Theo, the inhaler, Scott’s chest, all of it. Waiting isn’t going to change any of that.
And Melissa has answers.
He unlocks his phone, navigating to her message. He’d told Scott that he wasn’t going to make him talk about it, but this isn’t—it’s different. Scott is still hurting, and Stiles needs to know why so he can help him, so he can fix him, so he can—
Please.
Stiles nearly throws his phone in frustration.
Scott had sounded like he’d fracture right in front of his eyes if Stiles kept pushing, when he’d said it.
But how could he not?
It was not talking to each other that got them in this mess to begin with; surely Scott would understand that?
Didn’t finding out from someone else make it worse?
Stiles scowls at that thought; tries to push it away. This is different. Melissa isn’t—him—and Stiles is just—he wants—
Stiles thumps his head back against the cinderblock.
He wants to talk to Scott.
Slowly, he drags the phone back in front of him and types out a message to Melissa.
his phones got a bad signal but hes sleeping now. ill have him text you when he wakes up.
The three dots that indicate Melissa’s typing pop up almost immediately, blinking on and off indecisively for nearly thirty seconds.
The message she finally sends just says, Thanks.
Stiles locks his phone and slips it back into his pocket.
He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing.
But he wants to do it with Scott.
When he exits the bathroom and tosses back the keys, the cashier doesn’t look up. Neither of them say anything when he pays for the food and drinks. The only sound when he makes his way back to the jeep is his footsteps against the concrete, the bags rustling, and the doors opening and shutting.
Scott’s pale in the moonlight when Stiles gets in. Still sound asleep.
Stiles starts the engine and the needle on the gas gauge wobbles up to three-fourths full. They don’t need a repeat of last time, so he pulls out a pen to scribble down the current mileage and what mile marker it’ll need to be refilled by, before pulling the jeep out of the gas station.
The cabin fills with silence, and Stiles doesn’t try to puncture it.
He does great for the next three hours.
Counts cacti.
Names animals.
Passes cars.
And about six hours after Scott had told him he’d died, Stiles starts to cry.