[RESPITE]

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(warning for graphic violence and death but it's in a dream so, nothing too dramatic. OH! - we have a playlist now! *Link in bio*)

He forgets which key opens the front door. It takes him an embarrassing amount of time to get in.

CIA's finest and he's stumped by a key. Oh, if Hurley could see him now. 

He shakes off the thought, shuffling through the door and flicking on the entranceway light through muscle memory alone.

The walls have been repainted, a deep grey. It's just one of the many changes he didn't account for but should've expected. The world didn't stop turning when Stiles left, life moves on.

Irrationally, it makes him feel like he's missing time, like he hasn't existed in nine years and he's just been dropped back into the world and told to deal with all the ways it's changed. Although, maybe that's not all that irrational. 

It kind of is like that, almost. Except he didn't stop existing, he just started existing somewhere new.

He scuffles though the house awkwardly, feeling like he shouldn't be there, and notices two coffee-stained coasters on the coffee table. He sees a woman's jacket slung over the back of an armchair and a 'world's best mom' mug in the sink. The feeling of intruding in his own home comes back full force. 

Resolving to ignore it for the night, he grabs a glass of water and heads up the stairs in the dark, drinking as he goes.

Before he pushes open the door to his room he'd expected that maybe Noah had turned it into another guest room, put anything remotely Stiles into a box and stuffed it away in the garage or attic - out of sight out of mind. 

What he hadn't expected, was for the room to be exactly as he left it, posters on the wall, AP biology book open on the desk covered in highlighter and notes, crumpled clothes on the floor, a closet door half open. It's dizzying. 

He hates it with everything inside him and maybe it's not his place to change anything, maybe he should ask first because it's not his house anymore, but he starts tearing posters and pins and loose pieces of string off the walls.

By the time he's done everything that was Stiles' is either shoved away in the closet or stuffed and crumpled up on the bookshelf. The room looks empty, he likes it a little better now. 

He takes one look at the crumpled blue bedding, comforter half thrown off the bed from when he crawled out of it all that time ago and drags them off. He heads to the linen closet down the hall and finding a spare set of clean white sheets he's sure are for the guest bedroom. 

He makes the bed before dropping down onto it, kicking off his boots and throwing his jacket over his desk chair as he goes, his exhaustion sets in fast and before he knows it, he's passing out on top of the sheets.

()()()()() 

When Noah gets in a little over an hour later the digital clock in the kitchen reads 11:46 pm and the hallway light is still on.

The faucet in the kitchen sink is dripping slowly and he's not sure if he's imagining it but the air in the house feels electric, alive with abstract energy that makes him want to reach for the jar of mountain ash that sits behind the sugar in the cupboard closest to the fridge. 

It's stupid and he knows it, he can't sense energy shifts, or supernatural creatures or auras or anything like that, it's just his bone-deep paranoia rearing its head again. He's finally got Stiles back and his mind is already trying to sabotage it for him. Typical. Damn Stilinski men and their mind-numbing neurosis.

𝑅𝐸𝑄𝑈𝐼𝐸𝑀 - M.R.Where stories live. Discover now