Psyche
bloodwritesPart 3 of the Ruined series.
They run out of an alley only a couple of blocks from the loft. Stiles saw it first, raised the alarm. He thinks he felt it first, too, but he's light headed, something sitting thick and painful behind his eyes, the black band in his chest tightening, so much so that he can feel the struggle his heart has to pump. It fights, though, each beat thundering in his ears.
Stiles is desensitized. He knows this feeling, it's familiar, so he's still on his feet, still running. Stumbling, but moving forward with Derek dragging him along, his hand a tight grip around his upper arm.
Allison went down early. Isaac's carrying her out, and he's gone ahead. Scott stops every few steps to double over, to claw at his own chest as though trying to tear his heart right out, roaring like Stiles has never heard before.
Then the noise stops, and Stiles looks back to see Scott go down, and Derek's screaming, wolfed out and scared, all up in Stiles' face, yelling, "Get out," before going back for Scott.
Cora tries to steer him, but then it's too much. Not enough blood to his brain, darkness swirling at the edges of his vision and sparks going off in his fingers and toes. His heart's going to explode out of his chest and that thing, the oily wisp of a thing will get him.
Stiles dreams. He dreams of Allison stringing Isaac in a tree, cutting him in half with Gerard's sword and Gerard's smirk on her face. He dreams of Scott, shifted into something monstrous, black fur and red lights for eyes, biting freshmen in the woods, making an army of werewolves that devour the town. He dreams of Derek laid out with his torso split open from belly to throat, a bloody knife falling to the floor in silence.
Stiles' dreams are bathed in red, his arms are slick and shining to the elbow, there's copper and salt in his mouth. And always, that wisp of darkness, right there with him, curled around his heart like it belongs.
Lydia's there when he wakes to white walls, fluorescent lights, and an incessant beeping that threatens to make him crazy. Her eyes are bloodshot, and her chipped scarlet fingernails are tap-tap-tapping at the edge of the mattress.
Stiles claps his hand over hers, silencing the scratch, but she twines her fingers in with his and lifts his arm.
"Why?" she whispers. "You should have talked to someone. You could have talked to me."
Stiles thinks she's talking about the needle in his arm at first. The one with a tube attached, connected to a bag of clear fluid suspended over his head. Then he looks closer, at the scars so faint now he doesn't notice them. "Derek," he rasps, and his mouth is dry. "I talk to Derek."
"Your heart stopped," his father says later, when he comes after his shift is over. "Allison and Scott, they passed out. They're fine. Your heart clean gave up. We almost lost you."
He speaks calmly, but Stiles can see the tension in his father's face, can see the way his eyes track up the inside of Stiles' forearm, where he can't hide the scars because of the needle.
"Derek brought you back."
Stiles hasn't seen Derek yet. When he thinks about him, he sees blood, feels the weight of Derek's heart in his hands, the drip of blood between his fingers. "What about the thing? It was coming. What happened to the thing?"
The sheriff scrubs his hand over his face, forehead, through his hair. "None of the others could give a description, said you were the only one who'd seen it. It wasn't until you told them that Allison and Scott started feeling the effects, and as soon as you hit the ground, they both woke up. I don't know what to say, Stiles. I don't know what to make of it."
He looks as confused as Stiles feels.
Stiles takes the lid off his sandwich, eats the tomato and pushes the rest away. "I'm not doing anything," he says. There's panic coiling in his gut, threatening to break free. He can't let it, but he doesn't know how to stop it here. They've seen his skin, his scars. There's a note on his chart and they're not going to give him the opportunity. "It's not me."
Derek sits and watches him in silence, thumb stroking back and forth over the pulse in his wrist. Stiles wishes he'd clamp down on it, grip tight until Stiles' fingers turn red and start to tingle. He doesn't, just holds Stiles' wrist gently and strokes back and forth.
"It was real," Stiles insists.
Stiles gives all the right answers in the psych evaluation, because he's smart and he knows what they want to hear. They discharge him, and he goes to Derek's with a gym bag full of clothes that his father eyes but doesn't comment on.
His dad is a little afraid of him, Stiles thinks, but he can't bring himself to try and change that. It's probably for the best.
Derek fucks him slow that night, pressing him down into the mattress, holding his weight up and off. The thing, the oily black wisp of a thing, coils around Derek's throat, pulls tight, but Derek doesn't seem to notice, even when the whites of his eyes turn red.
Stiles turns his head away. He doesn't want to see, doesn't want to panic because bad things happen when he panics.
He wraps his hand around Derek's wrist, brings Derek's fingers to his throat. For long moments he doesn't think he's going to get what he needs.
Then Derek's fingers tighten, cutting Stiles' breath to a rasp, making Stiles' pulse pound in his ears. Stiles opens his eyes to see the wisp dissolve into nothing.