Work Text:
somebody call out to your brother
he’s calling out your name
one – hayden.
With every person that forgets he exists, he feels a small part of his soul get ripped away. First it’s the mechanic, who acts like he hasn’t worked on Stiles’ Jeep a million times before, and then it’s his teachers, his acquaintances, the principle.
Bit by bit, Stiles Stilinski is sliding away.
The rest of the pack remembers him, however, and being surrounded by them in Scott’s living room is almost enough to put his nerves at ease.
Almost.
“I’m texting Hayden again,” Liam declares, yanking out his phone and mashing his fingers down on the buttons.
“She did know there was a meeting tonight? To discuss our problem?” Lydia’s voice is tense, and Stiles can’t help but feel grateful that she didn’t say to discuss stiles because that would make it all too real, all too fast.
“I think so.”
Lydia shifts next to him on the couch, and her finger starts to twirl at her hair. She’s never been a hair twirler, but now she looks like her nerves are a bubbling volcano inside of her.
Scott is on his other side, his shoulder warm against Stiles’ – as if to say, i’m still here.
i haven’t forgotten you yet.
Hayden arrives then, all flustered.
“You’re lucky I was in the neighborhood,” she snaps, “since nobody seemed fit to tell me we were having a pack meeting today.”
They all stare at her, and Stiles remembers telling her this morning, remembers that Hayden had given him a reassuring smile and told him she’d make sure to be there. He had told her.
“We did tell you,” Liam is confused at first, until the dawning realization surfaces in his eyes and he stares at Stiles in horror.
“Who’s that?” Hayden crinkles her nose at him. Lydia lets out a startled little gasp, and Scott’s hand moves to rest on top of Stiles’ and it’s starting, it’s starting, it’s starting.
“That’s Stiles,” Malia says firmly, “Stiles.” It’s almost like she thinks that saying his name will keep him in her mind.
“Stiles?” Hayden goes, and Stiles feels his stomach curl in on itself.
He’s already disappearing.
two – mason and corey
Stiles knows that Scott is only trying to make him feel better by giving him a job to do, but Stiles doesn’t exactly count dragging Mason out of watching the soccer team practice is a worthwhile job.
In reality, it’s Mason and Corey sitting together, biology books open on their laps and laughter in the air.
“Hey Mason!” Stiles calls, bouncing up the bleachers, being reminded of a different couple, a different time.
Mason looks up, and his brow furrowed. “Yes?”
“Scott wants to ask you about that research you’ve been doing,” Stiles says, “about my – “
“I’m sorry, but Scott told you about that?” Corey looks shocked, and Stiles registers the confused look in their eyes – the blankness. The point of no remembrance.
“You don’t know who I am,” he says, feeling hollowed out inside.
Mason catches on fast, “Am I supposed to remember you?” he asks, alarmed, his book clattering to the ground and Stiles sees that it’s a book about the wild hunt.
He thinks the pity on Mason’s face is worse than anything else.
He may not remember Stiles, but he can already tell that he’s not going to be here much longer.
three – liam
He learns things. Mason, Corey and Hayden could be told of who he was, what he meant to him, but even those words would slip away after a day. The words who are you? become familiar terms.
He hates them.
“We’re going to figure something out,” Scott keeps saying, and he takes to sleeping on Stiles’ floor so he’s there all the time.
Lydia takes to holding his hand in the halls at school like she can anchor him to this world.
It makes him ache to remember that two years ago he would have given anything to have Lydia hold his hand in the hallways. Now she is holding his hand, but it’s because she’s scared of him slipping from her memory.
Liam forgetting him hurts more than he thought it would.
Liam and he were never super close friends, but he had always loved the younger boy anyways even if he was so annoying sometimes.
Liam’s sitting in the passenger seat of his Jeep when it happens, and Stiles turns his head to comment something like ‘this jeep is not your limo’ when Liam screams in terror.
“What’s wrong?!” Stiles automatically reaches into the backseat for his baseball bat, but Liam just yanks on the door handle and tumbles out into the road, even as the car is going at least fifty miles an hour.
Stupid werewolves.
He stops the Jeep and runs out into the road.
“LIAM?” he shouts.
“If you want Scott,” Liam shouts over the meters of road between them, “you’ll have to go through me!”
Stiles feels something in his chest curl up and die.
four – melissa mccall
“This is an awful time for this,” his dad says, yanking off his tie and throwing it to the floor.
“Yes, it is,” Stiles bends down and picks up the tie, “but you also need it. We’ve all been waiting for you to ask out Melissa for ages.”
“I should stay with you,” he says again, and Stiles shakes his head.
“Scott and Lydia are coming over. I think I’m finally going to make Scott watch Star Wars,” he tries for a weak smile. In reality, they’re going to tally up the disappearances to the best of their ability and figure out how to save him, but his Dad doesn’t need to know that.
His dad nods, and steps forward and hugs Stiles so tightly that Stiles feels like he wasn’t being forgotten, that every day he wasn’t slipping further and further away from the frame of reality.
“I love you,” his dad says, and Stiles’ heart swells.
“I love you too,” he promises, and the doorbell rings.
Stiles goes to answer it, and finds that it’s Lydia.
“Hey,” she says warmly, and gives him a tight hug, like she’s saying i still remember you. He hugs her back, burying his face in her hair.
“Hi,” he murmurs, and she pulls back.
“Scott coming with his Mom?” she asks, and then cheers as the Sheriff comes down the stairs, “You look great!”
“Thanks Lydia,” he smiles fondly at her, “you’re not just saying that to make me feel better are you?”
“Never,” she takes Stiles’ hand and pulls him into his dining room, where the remnants of their last night of investigation lay in a scattered mess on the table. The warmth of her fingers makes him feel more solid.
The doorbell rings, and they both can hear the Sheriff take shaky breath before he opens the door.
“Don’t eavesdrop,” Lydia teases, pulling a book about the wild hunt towards her.
So he tries not to, until he hears Melissa say “I didn’t know you had a son.” And his knee bumps up into the table with a crash.
“Stiles – “ Lydia reaches for him, but suddenly not even she can make him feel fully solid again.
He’s becoming a ghost.
When Scott comes into the room with a billion apologies on his lips, Stiles is already miles away.
The Sheriff comes home later (Stiles had insisted he continue with the date) he looks Stiles in the eye and says: “You still got me Stiles.”
but for how long? Stiles doesn’t ask.
five – malia
He hides himself away with about ten books about mythology in the woods, the printed off page of ghost rider’s from the bestiary lying in front of him.
He doesn’t realize that not finding him at his house would make Lydia alarmed.
So it’s Lydia who tells him, once she finds him curled under a blanket in his Jeep, that his ex-girlfriend doesn’t remember him.
“She said ‘who’s Stiles’,” Lydia says bluntly, because he thinks she knows that he needs to the cruel, hard truth.
He remembers Malia’s smile on their first date, where he had taken her to her first movie since the car accident, remembers how her eyelashes had felt against his cheek, remembers the way her hands had always been yanking him places.
He remembers her curled up at his side, her breath on his neck.
He and Malia hadn’t been in love for a long time, but the fact that she didn’t remember him – that she didn’t remember any of the moments they’d shared – makes him throw all of the books he’s been researching out the window.
He’s not going to make it.
The books clatter to the dirt, upsetting leaves and sending a few bugs flying into the air, and something like grief and anger erupts out of his mouth.
Lydia catches at his hands, holding them still. Her eyes are big and wide and she looks like she’s falling apart with him.
“You’ll forget me,” he gasps, because it’s true, because she can’t possibly hope to hold onto him forever, no matter how hard she tries.
“I won’t,” she promises, but they both know it’s a lie.
six – the sheriff
The ghost rider’s are still riding around town, and Liam has made the mistake of raising Theo, and more and more pieces are falling down around them like autumn leaves.
“The school,” Lydia whispers into the phone, “they’re at the school.”
He finds the members of his pack with their backs against the wall, eyes squeezed shut so they can’t see them, so they can’t be taken.
He doesn’t have to fear that anymore.
He’s already half gone.
“They’re gone,” he promises Scott, placing a hand on his best friend’s shoulder, and entwining his other hand with Lydia’s.
Holding hands has become their thing.
“Someone called the police,” Mason says, and Stiles is so glad that he doesn’t ask who Stiles is, not today.
“My Dad?”
Scott nods.
“Police!” someone shouts, and his Dad steps into the hallway, his gun raised. Stiles breathes a sigh of relief and immediately turns to run up to him, reassure him that he’s okay – they’re okay.
“Son you okay?” the Sheriff asks, concern in his eyes, and Stiles breathes a sigh of relief that shudders through his entire body. Stiles is panting like a dog – “Slow down, slow down.”
“Okay,” he sighs, already ready to be engulfed in a hug. He needs one more than ever.
“Now why don’t you tell me your name?”
As Stiles takes several steps backwards, he remembers the day his mother forgot his name too.
Who are you?
He’s stumbling now, needs to get away – now.
You’ve still got me Stiles.
He’s turning away, and suddenly Scott is there – hugging Stiles like he’s trying to squeeze the life out of him. Stiles holds on tight.
You’ve still got me.
seven – scott
It takes three minutes for Scott McCall to forget his best friend.
Stiles goes to the bathroom (he’s only at school because Scott had insisted), his head aching. He’s been staying at Scott’s house, and Scott tells Melissa every day that his Dad’s just out of town, but in the morning she always forgets his existence.
It’s enough to make anyone crazy.
He gets back from the bathroom and finds Scott by his locker.
“So I was thinking – “ he begins.
Scott laughs, “Let me guess. About lacrosse tryouts?”
Stiles blinks. “I’m already on the team.”
“I think I’d remember your face, considering I’m the team captain,” Scott says easily, a warm smile on his face, but his eyes are vague. he doesn’t remember.
“Yeah, add the name Stiles to the list,” he says painfully, “Stiles Stilinski.”
He sees Lydia approaching them from down the hallway, but he can’t bear it. He can’t bear it if she doesn’t remember him. He’s practically running, pushing into the nearest empty classroom.
He collapses against the wall and puts his head in his hands and just sobs. He sobs like everything has been ripped out of him, and it has. He is becoming a ghost.
Lydia finds him, and she doesn’t say anything but takes him into her arms. He’s still shaking with sobs, and when she presses her face into his shoulder he can feel that she’s crying too.
She’s already saying goodbye to him, he thinks. If Scott can’t remember him, how can she?
“What happens to me,” he cries, “what happens to me when I’m gone?”
eight – lydia
“You’re going to forget me,” he tells her again and again, “Lydia you can’t hold on to me when nobody else is.”
“Watch me,” she snarls, and the defiance in her eyes is enough to make him laugh.
“Lydia,” he says softly, “do you remember the dance I took you to?”
He can see in her eyes that she doesn’t, and he knows that it’s almost over.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen to me,” Stiles says, and reaches out and traces a thumb over her cheek, “but I know you won’t remember me.”
“Yes I will.”
“So I have to tell you,” Stiles breathes, “you’re my counterbalance Lydia.”
“What?”
“I killed Donovan,” he whispers, “and by saving your life I felt – I almost felt like me again. It’s you – it’s you Lydia that’s always made me feel like myself.”
“I am not going to forget you,” she says firmly.
“But you already are,” he whispers, “and I wanted you to know that I love you.”
He leans forward and kisses her, and it’s a thousand times better than their first kiss, because she’s kissing him back and it feels like the world is erupting into a thousand beautiful colors.
She forgets him before the kiss ends, and he literally fades away, bit by bit, moment by moment, until she’s just a girl sitting alone in her bedroom – wondering why there’s tears on her cheeks.