Drag Me Down Quick (So they don't notice)

Deal With It (Or Don't)

      Stiles woke in darkness again. His head felt like he had been on the rack for two hundred years, which, fair enough. He took stock of himself. All of his limbs were intact and he was laying on a bed, cocooned in an extremely comfortable fluffy blanket that he had somehow tied in a knot over his chest. At least that much hadn't changed. His dad had always said that he slept like a... 

      Holy shit. His dad. Stiles sat up so fast his neck cracked. He fought off the blanket and jerked out of bed. His feet were bare on the floor again but Stiles didn't even noticed as he jerked open the door and took off down the hallway. He thought he remembered a computer being in the kitchen the night before but he didn't know, yesterday or the day before or whatever was all so fuzzy and holy fucking shit his dad and... Oh god. Stiles stopped dead.  

      Scott. The Nemeton sacrifice. The Nogitsune worming it's way in. Allison. His desperate demon deal. Two hundred years.

      Black was gathering in the edges of his vision and dimly Stiles felt himself hit the floor. He couldn't breathe but he didn't want to because remembering hurt, more than anything they had done to him on the rack, because they were all dead.

       "Stiles!" Someone was touching him, shaking his shoulders lightly. "Stiles, breathe!" It was Sam. Sam was nice, Stiles thought. He was nice like Scott. Oh god Scott...

      "Breathe, Stiles!" Sam grabbed Stiles' hand and pressed it to his own chest. "Breathe with me, Stiles." Somewhere deep inside of the shattered pieces of Stiles' mind resolve formed. He wasn't going to die. Not now. He focused instead on the firmness of Sam's chest and the rhythmic movement of his breaths, matching his own to them. 

      He didn't know how long they sat there but eventually the black faded from Stiles' vision and his mind felt clearer. He opened his eyes. Sam had stretched awkwardly around him where he had fallen on the floor and was supporting his back while still holding Stiles' hand to his chest. Dean and Cas stood in the hallway behind him looking worried. 

      Sam squeezed his hand. "Are you okay now?"

      Stiles shut his eyes. No. No he wasn't. And he didn't see how he could ever be okay again. Without his permission tears began to well in his eyes and suddenly he was tired, so fucking tired, of being strong. Then he was sobbing, pressing into Sam's chest and curling his fingers into the larger man's shirt, clinging. Sam's arms wrapped around him and pulled him close.

       "It's okay." Sam whispered. "You're out. You're out and we'll take care of you. Promise."

      Stiles clung to Sam for a long time, even after he ran out of tears. He felt pathetically young and small but he couldn't bring himself to let go. At some point they shifted so Sam was leaning against the wall and Stiles was basically sitting in his lap. Dean and Cas had disappeared at some point but Stiles didn't care. Sam stroked his hair and told stories about Dean making him dinner when they were kids and that one time they broke into a convenient store just to steal a bag of marshmallows to toast while their dad was gone.

     Stiles listened without comprehending and tried to get his mind into some semblance of order, shoving everything hell related into a double-locked safe and throwing away all the keys. It was easier said than done. He tried to sort through his earlier memories, using the comfort of Sam's arms as an anchor when he felt panic rising again. He didn't remember everything, living three or four lifetimes in hell between now and those memories meant that things were fuzzy and sometimes missing, but the gist was there. He briefly wondered if they had done something to him or if the memories had just resurfaced but decided he didn't care. Either way, there was something in his mind that hadn't been there before, a wall of sorts, and Stiles had the thought that it was probably containing some of the worse memories from the pit. He didn't pick at it.