Stand By You

Colours swirled through the air like a kaleidoscope – blue and white, brown and grey, a rusty green that tempted you to touch almost as much as that flash of bright red. Lydia. In his sleep, Stiles smiled. He reached through those fragmented images, moving so slowly he wasn’t even sure he was doing it. Fingers pinched together, trying to draw Lydia back, but she vanished. All the colours vanished.

Sleep-Stiles frowned, worry starting to set in. The dark had never been one of his phobias, but after the nogitsune had convinced him he was trapped in the basement of Eichen House, it had joined a very long list. It hadn’t long then before the nogitsune had imprisoned him in the light, that bright white, sterile looking room when he’d practically hypnotised him into playing Go so he wouldn’t fight back. This wasn’t that, it wasn’t even like that dingy basement. It was like someone had just flipped the lights off instead and plunged the entire world into some shadow filled abyss.

”Lydia? Lydia!” He spun around in a circle again, bending over as the dumb ass move seemed to throw the world into violent motion around him. Stiles dropped to his knees, his head reeling, the contents of his stomach – he was hungry, why was he hungry when he was about to...? - trying to charge towards his throat. Instead of that gross sensation of everything rushing into your mouth, it was like the whole thing snapped to a stop. He stayed there, doubled over in the dark, swallowing until the feeling passed. The hunger stayed, growing until it seemed to start spilling out of him in a dim light that brightened the space to a sort of red, almost like what you saw behind your eyelids when they closed.

Holding his hands up in front of his face, Stiles tried counting off his fingers. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 … 7. Seven fingers, he was dreaming. Not much of a relief, but it was something. He slapped a palm against his cheek, trying to get himself out of the dream and right back to presumably laying in bed with Lydia. The red light grew, a brighter slit shooting across it like the sun coming up over the horizon. That was in it. Come on, wake up now. Stiles slapped himself again, the sting muted, that tight feeling continuing to grow in his throat. No. It should’ve been fading, not the other way around. You left dreams behind when you woke up, even when there was some evil dick bag kitsune screwing around with his brain.

Slapping at himself again, Stiles tried to throw his eyelids open and failed. All he managed to do was entirely block his airway. His eyes flew open as his body started to bow with the effort. He grabbed at the fingers laced with his, squeezing tight as the panic built. Alarms shrieked, there was that flash of red hair again. Lydia. Lydia! Not even her name could tear its way past the tube in his throat. Doctors poured in, bringing on a fresh wave of nausea – white freaking coat syndrome.

Ten minutes later – he'd coughed his way through the removal of the tube, had rasped answers at them that seemed to satisfy them that he hadn’t managed to turn himself into a vegetable. By the time the doc was calling him lucky and heading out, the burst of energy that had brought him out of what was apparently a week long coma was nearly spent. Lydia’s lips were gentle on his forehead, gentler on his lips, drawing a small sound out of him as she drew back and he saw the tears. ”Don’t tell me … I’m gonna have to add you to the list of people threatening to kill me if I do something stupid again,” he murmured. ”Trust me, I’ve got no desire to go doing it again … whatever it was. It’s not amnesia, I promise, but … what did happen? Did someone kick my ass?” Things were still foggy, despite the doc’s half hearted effort at getting him to tell him what he remembered. The truth was it wasn’t much. He’d picked Lydia up at the high school, had planned to take her home, then it’d been grey road, tries and … nope, still zip.

Tagged: LYDIA MARTIN * Word Count: 726

As Lydia stepped away to grab him some water, Stiles took a surreptitious look around the hospital room. It wasn’t like he hadn’t spent time in one before, but after everything that had happened in them they left him antsy. There’d been years in and out of the hospital with his mom, sitting, sleeping, on those plastic torture devices that doubled as chairs, the times he’d sprawled back in those chairs when Lydia had been the one in a hospital bed, then his own trips there after the nogitsune had gotten in his head. Each experience had laid on another layer of panic until it was like a choking cloud of anxiety. With the docs and nurses cleared out it was a little easier, just a little though.

He reached for the water as Lydia returned and buzzed the bed upright like he was incapable of sitting up himself. Stiles felt his hand tremble from just the weight of the cup and adjusted that thought. He did need the help Lydia offered and he hated it as much as he hated seeing the tears in Lydia’s eyes. It wet his throat at least, a few swallows seeming to take the effort a full lacrosse game would’ve before. It went down on the table attached to the bed a little heavier than it should’ve done and then he was reaching for Lydia’s hand, unsure if he needed the reassurance of it or she did.

One corner of Stiles’ mouth lifted in a wan smile. ”You guess? You better, or I’ll be haunting you forever.” They’d brought Riley and the others back, that meant that there was a chance he’d come bouncing back – not that he wanted to risk it. The way he figured it, he had nine lives by a cat. Maybe by now he’d lost a couple of them, but there was still plenty left – if he kept himself out of trouble.

What sort of trouble they’d managed to find as he’d driven them home still wasn’t clear. Stiles winced as he thought to the way the world had spun like a kaleidoscope in his dream, well, when he was apparently in a coma. He reached for the water again, trying to wash away that tight feeling in his throat as Lydia started to explain. ”That explains the headache,” he tried to joke, but it fell a little flat. ”I was out of it for days from just a cut?” Stiles went to shake his head like he could deny what had happened but the moment he turned his head that ache shot back and he stopped, a whimper squeaking out of him before he settled back.

Dread settled into the pit of his stomach as Lydia told him that Roscoe was badly beaten. He studied her smile, trying to tell if it was a ‘glad we don’t have to deal with that piece of junk anymore’ smile, or a ‘we managed to save it’ smile. ”I guess me and Roscoe are in the same state,” he muttered, trying to force those fears back down inside of him. And there was the truth about just how hard he’d hit his head. A cut alone probably would’ve had him back out the same night, maybe with warnings about a concussion, but a skull fracture? Panic started to claw at him again, leaving him clutching Lydia’s hand as she squeezed his tight. ”You wanna warn a guy when you’re starting in on the scary stuff?” Stiles squeaked. ”You were OK? You were with me, if I was …” Stiles lifted his hand off of hers, bringing it up to her cheek like he could feel out any injuries with the brush of his palm against her cheek.

Tagged: LYDIA MARTIN * Word Count: 625