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Don't sleep don't eat don't think don't breathe--hyper vigilance, she calls it. Stiles thinks that figures; hyper activity, hyper focus, it's always hyper something. It would be funny, if levity wasn't so fleeting these days. It would be funny, if Stiles could just figure out the joke.
So, great, he's got a name to put to the face that isn't kind enough to show itself, a label to paste on the monster under the bed. Don't sleep don't eat don't think don't breathe; it's not the monsters under his bed Stiles is fucking worried about.
--
The thing about victory is that it's fleeting; the thing about victory is that it's rare. Stiles wouldn't trade it, the rough roar of a crowd that's just for him--so what if it's fleeting. So what if, in hindsight, it feels stupid and fucked up and small.
After, after, after, when the latest blood's stained the earth brown, when the latest bruise has faded to blotched yellow, when the latest calamity has left him in tatters, Stiles picks himself up and starts again. Because that's what you do, right, and he thinks it's pretty rich that Winston Churchill's gone and taken credit for something life taught Stiles at eleven years old; the world keeps going, whether you want it to or not. Whether you're ready for it or not. The world, as far as Stiles can tell, doesn't give two shits about what you can't handle--the world doesn't take excuses, apologies, doctor's notes.
The thing about victories is that they're cherished, lauded, fought for. Sixteen years old, and Stiles is beginning to understand why.
--
"I'm not afraid of you," Stiles tells Derek Hale. It's his second go at it, and Stiles finds himself wishing he was less convincing; there was something to be said for the kid who'd forced it out the first time, even if Stiles himself wouldn't have been the one to speak up. He sounds old, now, in a way he's too young to be running from. He sounds tired, and that's the hard truth of being a terrible liar.
"You should be," Derek says, knuckles beating a funeral dirge against the hood of his Camero. He moves like he's not sure of the world around him, like even this shit-bare parking lot is a battleground, and Stiles wonders how much you have to endure, exactly, to be left so raw a cool wind smarts. Is he there already? Will he be there tomorrow? Is this knife-edge he's straddling, everything he needs to be sharpened on all he isn't capable of, already buried too deep within him for anything to endure?
"Oh, believe me," Stiles says, and his Jeep groans her discontent under his spread palm. "Believe me, Derek, there's a lot of things I'm in the dark on here, but that one? I already know."
--
If Stiles wanted to be rescued, he'd put out an ad in the paper. What Stiles wants to do is save someone.
"You know that's the same thing, really," Derek tells him, once. He's angry. Big surprise. "Wanting to save people so badly that you put yourself in danger, that you make people rescue you--it's the same fucking thing, Stiles. You're just dressing it up for company."
"Are you counting yourself as company now?" Stiles snaps back, bruised and bleeding and beyond the point of caring about either one. "Because if those are the new rules, I'm going to start demanding courtesy gifts every time you show up at my house unannounced. You think you could help me the hell up here?"
He hadn't known, though. It hadn't even occurred to him. Mark it down on the calendar, Stiles thinks, as he's hauled up out of the dumpster to fight another goddamn day: for the first time in known history, Derek Hale bothers to teach someone something.
--
"Someone else is going to die," Stiles says, and it's been six months, six months since his best friend sprouted fur and fangs, six months since Stiles caught his breath. He can't catch it now, riding shotgun in a stolen big rig that Derek's driving like hell itself is chasing him--maybe it is. Stiles wouldn't be surprised.
"Could you just focus, please," Derek snaps, and if Stiles knows that means he's right, he doesn't bother saying it. Derek's knuckles are white on the steering wheel like Stiles' air is hitching in his chest; everybody drowns a little different, after all.
--
Summer blooms yellow and sickly, like even the earth knows better than to get its hopes up, and for two months nothing comes up danger. Stiles waits for the tension to ebb, for the corners of his eyes to stop chasing shadows; they don't, and it's worse, somehow, than having something real to panic about. Hyper awareness, Stiles thinks bitterly--yet another pile of energy with nowhere to fucking go.
He finds Derek, in the end, or Derek finds him; Stiles is less surprised than he should be, that they seek each other out when trouble hesitates to find them both. Stiles casts fleeting looks across the length of the couch and Derek keeps his eyes on the movie they're not watching, and for once in his life the silence doesn't demand a word from Stiles, is content to let him sit silent.
"We can't," Derek says quietly, when the credits roll. "Not what you're thinking about. Not yet."
And if Stiles thinks, Well, hell, guess that makes me a death wish courting someday, he's grown. He's learned. He's vigilant. He only lets the last word slip out.