Linear Equations

[sickle_stories]

Fandom: Teen Wolf
Summary: Stiles is getting ready for something he can't cope with just yet.

Linear Equations

Stiles thinks about lines.

He thinks about how they go on forever, how Euclid said they had breadthless length and how the first time Stiles read that, his eyes flicked over the page so fast that he thought he’d read breathless instead.

He tries not to think about breathlessness.

He thinks about how lines are everywhere, in the walls of his house, the lay of the town.  They’re on faces, laugh lines and worry lines and all manner of other lines that bring life to familiar faces.  They’re even etched on the skin of his palm.  Life lines, and isn’t that a laugh.

They’re even in our words, peppering phrases.  Lines get draw and dropped, run down and read between, they get fed and they get crossed.  Stiles can come up with dozens of idioms wrapped around lines with hardly a thought, and come up with a couple dozen in the next breath.  He can’t think for lines.

First line. Lacrosse.  Being on the team, scoring a goal, hearing voices cheering out his name. 

My son is on the field.

Stiles reaches for his tie and stands in front of the mirror.  He doesn’t look up.

His tie is a mess of lines.  It should be a contradiction, because lines are practically the definition of order.  Just one thing, going on forever, coming from forever.  Immutable.

Finish line.

But lines don’t finish.  Not in theory.  Not really. 

The lines around his neck and down his chest - myriad shades of grey on black - crisscross over each other.  Aside from the lines there’s no pattern, no order, and they grey takes over some portions of the tie and leaves other corners dark and empty.  Stiles wraps the lines around each other, intersecting planes and creating curves.  

Put your neck on the line.

Stiles tugs the knot up close to his throat and thinks about line-line intersections.  Two lines destined to meet, their very nature making it impossible for them not to meet.  Some people are like that, walking around with lines at their core.  They’ll have that one aspect of themselves - personality, responsibility, loyalty, duty - that means you know, just know in which direction they’re going to run. 

Sometimes, the intersection is a point, solid and present.  In theory, on paper, the lines keep going, like the intersection never happened, like they didn’t just barrel through another line in the void.  Sometimes the intersection is an empty set, zero.  He wonders what keeps the lines going then, once they’ve hit that vacuum. 

Stiles shakes out his jacket and slips it on, pulling on the edges and sleeves and seeing yet more lines.  He tries to ignore the colour.

Most times, when two lines meet, they do hit something.  On paper, the lines keep going.  In real life, sometimes one of those lines drops to the ground.  It’s messy and it hurts and it’s everything falling apart over one simple intersection and it’s an empty set all wrapped up in the blink of an eye.

He flinches, standing alone in his room, dressed in black but no Johnny Cash, and thinks about other lines.

Line of duty.

Line of fire.