The things we do when surrounded by silence are amazing. When no one is watching, the things we do are the things that define us. When there is no one to entertain or impress we are cold shells, dull and boring, but completely unique. To be silent is to be free. I suppose this is why some people lock themselves away or travel the world, never meeting the same person twice. We are so interested in being interesting that we constantly tire ourselves out.
Then... then there are those people.
Those insufferable, horrible, confusing, alienating people that just. Do not. Fucking. Care. They're the ones who have figured out that you don't have to perform for whatever metaphorical audience your shoved in front of. Out of all the people, far and wide, most are unhappy. They soil themselves with wishes for riches when really, its far easier to just take what you can get and see where you end up. That's what Stiles had been doing for most his entire life. Just wandering around, occasionally making pop culture references and occasionally almost dying because of how annoying he liked being to people he didn't like. Most of the people he met thought he was "an egoistical fool". Then some people thought he was kind. All because he did not give two shits what anyone bothered thinking about, especially if it concerned him and his not-antics.
Sometimes, when life was quiet he would sneak out of his house late at night, not that he needed to considering he lived alone and wander around the city, breathing in the smell of ageing cigarette smoke and forgetting. The moon shone down at him, through the towers of metal and glass, his jacket protecting him from the harsh cold and his eyes shining quietly. The night people would nod to him as he walked and he would smile to them because no one ever did and they deserved it. Sometimes he would sit and make bad jokes to make the old man at the end of the lane laugh, but tonight he wasn't there so he continued deeper into the city. He wandered musingly, buying a coffee and taking sips.
The stars looked down at him and he smiled up at them. Everyone he knew was asleep, mid dream, but he, he was up and about, holding a one-sided debate with himself about the possible existence the power puff girls. People say that you always come up with the best things in the shower, but all Stiles thought of in the shower was how the universe was a warm place and he liked cheese crackers. He came up with his most fantastic ideas when it was the middle of the night and he had nothing better to think about. He was just clever like that. He had a notebook in his pocket in case he thought of anything particularly spectacular, but somehow he really didn't think it was one of those nights. He wasn't in a mood for cleverness, he was in a mood for novelty. Which was stupid really because he was always in a mood for novelty, but tonight he was in a mood specifically for novelty.
Which, eventually, was found in the back ally behind an old bank in the form of three men and a girl spray painting one of the walls. They all wore black hoodies and were laughing with each other. Stiles quietly took out his phone and began videoing them. He wasn't particularly interested in the people in black hoodies, but he just thought that the big street art mural they had obviously just begun was fucking awesome. Like hell he was going to pass up the chance to video it's creation. He sat down, across from them, careful not to be noticed or startle them. He'd seen them around a few times, here and there, and they seemed mostly harmless if not a little deranged, but heck, he was a little deranged. Who wasn't really?
Almost an hour later Stiles had given the three men and single woman nicknames and they were almost done with the mural that he was quite sure was illegal. There was the tall male that seemed to be the grumpiest and most brooding person Stiles had ever seen in his whole life. As far as Stiles was concerned he was named Sourwolf from now to forever. Then there was the dark skinned kid who seemed around his age who seemed just content to be painting. The growling blond guy who simply seemed irritated, if not at ease in the shadows. Then there was the blond woman who was beautiful, seemingly vain and but also a little scathing and a little insecure. They hadn't yet noticed him sitting there and he was actually rather impressed with himself for staying still this whole time.
The mural was beautiful, in an edgy, interesting sort of way. All jagged and bright green. He liked it. He liked a lot of things. This was so going on YouTube.
At some point he kind of dozed off, maybe, he couldn't really remember falling asleep, but if he was waking up he figured it had to of happened, the question was when. Someone poked his cheek.
"He's kind of cute... in a... dorky sort of way" someone said, presumably the someone who was poking his cheek.
"You do realise he was videoing us, right? We could go to jail if this gets out" another voice said, this one a little further away from him and his ears and bordering on irritable.
"We could always just kill him and shove his body in a dumpster" a third voice growled. Stiles immediately felt hard done by. He opened one eye and slid it towards the sound of the voice, his face set in a deep frown.
"Please, if I'm going to die the least you could do is give it a little bit of excitement. I mean at least do something entertaining with the body, being stuffed in a dumpster is about as clichéd as you can get" he hadn't been glared at so hard in his entire life and he was actually surprised he didn't spontaneously combust. He counted the fact that he didn't a win. The man who had spoken was the tall guy from before, the one that did nothing but shout a lot. Stiles hadn't really gotten a good look at his face, but now he could see that the man had obviously stolen his features from some incredibly beautiful god. Dark hair and these stupidly blue eyes. God, someone just really needed to give this man a modelling carrier. Right now.
"Tell me what you were doing videoing us and I just might let your death be postponed?" Normally when getting death threats thrown at you one might squeal or run away or at least make some tensing of the muscles, but Stiles couldn't be bothered. Tensing just sounded like way too much work. Plus the threat didn't bug him much. Sure, the guy talking looked like he would be able to destroy a few Death Stars with a wave of his hand, but he was also suppressing a yawn.
"Sure, I liked the mural and you guys painting it looked cool so I videoed it. It isn't actually that complicated, I'm pretty sure you should of figured it out without me having to tell you" Stiles yawned to himself, taking his phone back from black kid who was offering it to him. A grumpy bunch they were. The second voice, who happened to be the blond guy, muttered something inaudible that was probably an insult to him, but then again, he didn't really care.
"I deleted the video" the black kid didn't give him a smile of apology, or any expression at all. They were all just kind of looking at him as if they were expecting him to jump out his skin and scream himself senseless. He found that actually a little insulting.
"No you didn't" Stiles replied in a singsong-ish manner as he crossed his legs and turned on his phone. He didn't wait for the question linked to his answer, instead he simply stood and walked off. Turning once he was a few feet away. "Cool mural by the way. Seeya round" it was around this point that Stiles noticed that he could actively feel his his soul being burned out by the tall guy's glare. If they ever met again he was going to have to ask him how to do that. Maybe he was just born with the ability to glare someone's soul out. Damn, that would come in bloody handy.
##
He didn't retire to his house immediately. He didn't feel like it just yet. He was still stuck being a person and the whole sleep thing was technically necessary, but didn't mean he had to fall to it like a normal human being. Instead he went to an all night convenience store and got himself some edibles. To say that his house was often bare of things with actual nutrition was an understatement to the extent that it was actually painful.
Stiles still didn't really care, he had a metabolism like the hulk and captain america's love child, some how he put sugar and fast foods into his body and then it was just mysteriously gone the next day. As far as he was concerned genetics had not screwed him over as yet. But then he was probably going to get some sort of genetically passed down cancer to even things out.
He sat down a little way away from the convenience store on the curb, illuminated by a street lamp like an ominous presence. He would of thought he looked kind of cool. He yawned again and figured he really should of been getting home, but it wasn't like he had anything on tomorrow. All hail the world of Saturdays. A few cars went by as he ate and a few people walked past on the sidewalk, giving him strange looks as they did. He didn't care.
He watched quietly as a car came swerving down the back street, constantly rolling off course and jauntily reasserting itself to stop from crashing into any buildings. Whoever was controlling the vehicle either needed to learn how to drive a car or lay off the tequila. Stiles watched half in concern and half in unneeded amusement. His amusement drained violently when he saw the silhouette of a broad shouldered man stumble out of a darkened ally and onto the street. He must of been the only one to notice the increasing speed of the drunk driver's car or the fact that the broad shouldered man had paused in the middle of the fucking road. Someone's an idiot.
It all happened in slow motions, like some bad nineteen 80s pop culture film. Nothing in his life had ever been reduced to the achingly sluggish pace of frame by frame. In his defence it wasn't like there was anything he could do by yell out pointlessly and watch the man fly uh gracefully through the air. The care didn't even slow down, it only screeched around the corner at a speed that certainly wasn't legal.
Stiles ran towards the unmoving figure of the man, that lay slumped on the tarmac. In the dim he could just see his chest moving up and down. Oh, thank god for that. He knelt tentatively beside the man and cupped his cheeks as the moon came out from behind a cloud.
"Ah" Stiles said quietly. "So we meet again" it must of been some sort of freakish coincidence that it was the tall shouty guy from before. Stiles wondered if the other three were just going to come bursting out of the ally and accuse him of beating up their boss. The man had a bloody scrap on the right side of his forehead and bloody was dripping into his eye. It didn't look too bad, not bad enough for stitches at least. Though he was still unconscious so that was probably enough for worry. Stiles ran his hand over the man's chest and stomach like he dad taught him to, patiently ignoring the rock hard muscle and instead focusing on the shift of ribs that usually came when they were broken.
"Fuck... off" his voice was groggy and scratchy and Stiles looked back up to his face, one of his hands still cupping his cheek.
"That's not a very nice thing to say to the person helping you, now is it?" He smiled as if this as what he did on a daily basis and the man scowled at him. Obviously he wasn't used to being in pain.
"Fuck... off"
"Again with the swearing. Plus I can't "fuck off", I'm too nice and if I leave you you're probably going to lie here until sun up" Stiles answered cheerily. He'd already figured out what to do, he'd very clever and he knew what to do. Had he been thinking properly he probably would of noticed that his abilities to make split second decisions usually had a lot to do with atomic bombs, conspicuous amounts of candy and bad endings. It took a lot of work, and a lot of unnecessary grunting on the man's part, but Stiles still somehow managed to get the man up and moving at an, albeit, slow pace. His chin was hooked over Stiles' left shoulder, his chest pressed into Stiles' back, his feet dragging behind him. They must of looked so weird.
"Why the heck do you have tattoos?" The man slurred. Stiles almost left him there, just to teach him a lesson about being nice to people who are doing you a favour. At least the man wasn't hallucinating anything. He did have tattoos, more than most actually, but he was probably mentioning the ones on his neck. He got them back when he was a teenager and loved them.
"The usual reasons. Daddy issues, bar fights, jail time with nothing to do" for the record he had a great relationship with his dad, he rarely went to bars and he had only been to jail once and that was for a very short period of time. The man snorted, but remained silent for a little while.
"When your all fixed and shit we are so going to have a very very long talk about the perks of this wonderful thing called a diet" Stiles legs burned as he struggled up the steps of his house. He'd only had it about a year, mostly because his job paid him well and living with his dad got a little old. It was a nice house, smallish and quietish and friendly. Ivy grew up the banisters and it was painted a peeling light blue.
The man didn't reply to his quip and Stiles is pretty sure he passed out again. Lightweight. The dragging continued, until the door was open and the man was on the couch and the sun was beginning to rise. By this point Stiles was read to collapse into his own bed and punch everyone and then eat some waffles, but like he mentioned before, he was too nice and he didn't want the man to bleed to death on his couch. So he did what he had to do. He wrapped bandages around the guy, and made sure he was comfortable, and put a cereal box on the kitchen counter with a batman bowl and a spoon so that he could have some breakfast when he woke up because, god knew, Stiles was going to sleep into the new millennium.
Author's Notes:
Thank you for reading my new fanfic. I have fallen madly in love with Sterek and I can't wait to really get into it. I apologise if there are any grammar or spelling mistakes as editing is not my strong suit. Favourites, follows and reviews are welcome. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed this!
much love,
Clementine
