Long Day (Longer Night)

[sickle_stories]

Fandom: Teen Wolf
Summary: Stiles finally makes it home after the events of the season two finale.

Long Day (Longer Night)

However long the night, the dawn will break. - Proverb

Stiles can barely keep his eyes open on the way home, even though his heart is pounding in his chest like it thinks he’s still running for his life and his hands are claws on the steering wheel, squeezing so tight his joints ache, and can we not think about claws please?

There’s a stillness in the air when he reaches home, that teetering moment when late night turns into early morning, and his breath is coming out in quick white puffs.  The promise of a new day is still a whisper, with the world still shrouded in shades of grey. 

Somehow it makes Stiles feel just a little worse that he’s not even coming home at dawn.  He couldn’t even make it back during the witching hour, which sounded like a way cool time of night.  No, he has to sneak back at some sort of Schrödinger time window that doesn’t know if it’s day or night or anything at all.  Like it doesn’t exist, or the world doesn’t exist. 

Although honestly he’d be pretty okay with that right now.

He stumbles out of the jeep - the door creaking high and long like some dying animal and stop it Stiles stop it - and he wonders how much he’ll have to pay for repairs this time before remembering that he’ll have to find a new mechanic first, and then that brings on a wave of memories and -

“Stop it, stop it, stop.”  He’s on his knees on the sidewalk and he can feel his house, his home, looming over him, and suddenly he sees himself as the empty windows would, as anyone would if there were anyone outside at this non-hour.  A beat-up teen sprawled on the ground by a beat-up jeep, small and alone and aching all over. 

He thinks about how Proxima Centauri is the closest star to Earth but even that is over four light years away (which is ten to the sixteenth meters because it’s science so it’s metric) and how that’s nothing compared to that pulsar and its Diamond Planet but-not-really-a-planet (because those two are four thousand light years away, and four thousand years is enough to go from the Bronze Age to the Digital Age) and how very, very far away that is and how lonely it must be.

Eventually, because there’s nothing else he can do, he pulls himself up.  The jeep groans under his weight and hides his own whine of pain.  He makes it to the door and stands there swaying until he remembers the next step to take.  He pulls his keys out from his pocket but his hands are claws again, stiff and curled like they’re still holding onto the steering wheel, and the keys fall down, light years down, and when he stoops to pick them up he almost curls up on the floor again, right on the welcome mat.

It takes three tries to get the key into the lock.  His hands start shaking at the second try and he almost drops them again, the skin on the back of his neck prickling, and the night is still hovering over his shoulder, the world still matte and grey and waiting.

He finally manages to sink the key in, a scrape and slide that makes him think of claws again, long sharp nails digging into flesh, and before he can stop himself - he can never stop himself - he’s wondering what kind of holding power nails would need to lift a man clear off his feet.

He slips inside, crossing over that magical threshold of outside and inside.  Here he’s home, and safe, but he feels like he’s tainting it all, like he’s dragging the grey in with him, something stuck to his shoes and on his skin, in his hair and under his fingernails.  Inside it’s dark and quiet and waiting, and it should be comforting but Stiles finds himself waiting for the floor to drop, for the stairs to hit him in the ribs again, for the dank basement smell to crash over him, and no, no, no, stop it, no.

He thinks about other stairs, carpeted and soft and going up, to his room, his bed, his space.  (Where a murder-suspect-slash-werewolf broke into, where his best friend gutted a chair instead of Stiles’ face, where his lifelong crush decided to go stare death right in the gullet.  Where his father said, “Trust you?” like he was asking to set a bone-saw to his father’s arm.)

He thinks about the colour of his bedsheets, the texture of his blanket, the stains on his bedside table.  He narrows his world down to that one small space and puts everything that’s left inside of him towards getting there.

Stiles puts his hands out in front of him in the dark house.  He knows every inch of it but still can’t fight the feeling that he’s going tumble down a flight of stairs any moment now. He focuses his eyes on the floor - grey at this hour even though it’s not - and focuses his mind on his room.

He’s past the charcoal grey that is the open living room door when something moves.  Grey shifts past greys and Stiles is cringing back, hitting the wall like it’s a basement floor, the shock jarring his back and shoulders and rattling his heart in his chest.  His lungs are taking in chlorinated water and the bruises on his cheek wake up with a scream.

Something heavy clasps his shoulder and squeezes and Stiles flinches and twists, and his elbow hits the stair railing and his mouth is open before the pain even finishes cresting up his arm.

“Stiles!”  His shoulder is shaken.  “Stiles!  Jesus, son are you alright?”  His other shoulder is squeezed and he’s pulled back up onto his feet, steadied against the wall, and Stiles looks up at the grey.

“Dad?” he says and he hates that it twists into a question.

“Are you alright?” repeats his father, and now he can see it’s his father, and dawn must have decided to show up after all.

“I’m fine, Dad, I’m fine,” his mouth says, old habits dying never, and he’ll probably be lying in his coffin still saying that he’s fine.  His body screams out the lie at him, aches and bruises and cut skin all clamouring for attention.  Stiles clears his throat and focuses.  “I’m fine.”

“What happened to you? Where were you?  Did those kids from the other team-“

“No!  No, Dad, I’m fine, it’s wasn’t- I was-“  Stiles swallows and waits for the words to come, the easy lies that sleep beneath his tongue, but they’re not stirring.  He doesn’t know what to say, so he sticks to the one lie he still has.  “I’m fine, Dad, I’m okay.”  He twists under his father’s grip, raising his arm to press a hand to the figure in front of him.  “I’m okay.”  He doesn’t know if his hand is squeezing or pushing.

His shoulder is released, slowly, like they were Stiles’ hands wrapped around the steering wheel, and fingers slide up to the base of his neck.  “Dad-“

“Okay, okay,” whispers his father, and that word is starting to sound like so much nothing, like grey light and puffs of breath and the non-hour between night and day.  “Let’s just get you to bed.  Come on, kiddo.”  He walks Stiles up the steps, hand slipping down between his shoulder blades, steady and strong.  It’s nothing like the other steps - up, not down; carpet, not concrete - and Stiles starts letting his world wind down to just the hand on his back and the promise of sleep.

The reach his room, Stiles shuffling his feet over the worn carpet, and his eyes close as he lets himself fall on the bed.  For one split second as gravity takes him, he stiffens, remembering concrete, but his face lands on a pillow and his body relaxes.  His dad’s still in the room, shuffling around carefully in the dark - although it’s not dark anymore, is it?  Dawn’s coming and the sky’s blushing instead of grey. 

He vaguely registers his feet being moved, shoes coming off, then he’s being picked up and he’s four again.  He stirs a little when he’s put down again, cool sheets stretching out beneath him and a blanket settling over him.  A hand touches his cheek like it’s scared he’ll fall apart; the bruise wakes up beneath the feather-like touch and so does Stiles.

There’s something hurt in his father’s expression. “I’m sorry, Dad, I’m-“

“Go to sleep, Stiles.”

“No, but, Dad, I’m-“

“We’ll talk later, kiddo.”  The hand moves up to his hair and strokes it gently, and Stiles can feel the bed swallowing him up.  “Just close your eyes now, son, and go to sleep.”

Stiles does.