"Can I get you something?"

Stiles stuffed his cold hands in his pockets and bit the insides of his cheeks, hoping the pain would help to ease the stress, and the warmth to reach him for once. That did not work though, it never did, but he had to make this work, he skipped too many chances to get out, he needs this to work.

The woman behind the counter drummed against it and the sound she made danced right on Stiles' already irritated nerves, the light above his head burned without a stop, flickering at random times, whining for the day to already and, to be honest, so did he.

"can I get you something?" she repeats in clear annoyance, stressing the words exaggeratedly, probably assuming he's reclusive or something.

Stiles' hoodie casted a suspicious shadow on his face but he couldn't care less, although he strongly hoped she was asking the man behind him.

She clearly wasn't.

"Uh- um..." There, he can't even form a coherent sentence, and depends on sentence fillers because no one thinks that silence is better when you have nothing to say.

The woman cocked an eyebrow and the man behind him coughed. Stiles jumped up before deciding that he's wasting everyone's time here, and that it's time to leave.

Someone put his hand on Stiles' shoulder, so he turned around in sweats.

"Stiles."

"Uh- hey." Scott, and he looks surprised to see him here, well he's surprised he is here to begin with, who would've expected him to come out of his house?

"Where have you been?"

"Oh you know, just-" where had he been again? oh right: "home."

"So... how's it going?" Stiles says and almost curses himself out loud, he shouldn't be asking Scott that.

"Good." The other returns awkwardly.

"Yeah, so... Um, I... gotta go." He struggles with words as if thinking wasn't the only thing he'd been doing all the time. Before he might say anything more stupid, Stiles jogs to his car and retreats back to the safety of his house.

Really? How's it going?! out of all the questions he could've asked and all of the things he could've said he chooses to ask Scott that!

He kills the engine and silently walks out of the car, turns the key in the lock twice and gets in. Everything is still the same, even as he closes the door behind him and holds the warm key in his hand it stays the same as it has always been, Stiles glances at the wooden table and just contemplates how it's coated in dust, and how that's more obvious when it's sun lit than when it isn't.

He stays like that for about fifteen minutes or so before climbing the stairs to his room. He noticed he does that a lot, zoning out that is, but it's not like he can really help it nowadays, it just happens.

There's a bottle of adderall on his nightstand but Stiles can't touch it, well he can but he shouldn't. Because if he does, he'll take his usual dose, the one he didn't take in months, that's probably what caused him to withdrawal.

._._._.

That day, Stiles decides he needs to bring some form of control over his life, he can't just stay at home forever, leaving it only for a quick trip to the mall before fleeing back, he's worrying his father too much, so what if he made a bad decision and it turned into a disaster later on? people... learn from mistakes. Life moves on.

His life should be able to move on too, just like everyone else's seems to be. Scott was at the mall today, he seemed to be handling it pretty well, he hasn't seen Lydia in forever but her last text is reassuring enough to say the same about her. He can fake it until he makes it, if that's what it takes.

Stiles begins by cleaning his room, the general mess of threads, newspaper articles, clothes and everything in between had to either be thrown or cleaned; the sheriff, from the doorframe, eyed him quizzically, but he needn't explain what was already obvious and plain.

It takes a lot of cleaning and arranging but when he's done, he's satisfied; it looks normal again, it doesn't give off the idea that he's a total nut job who's planning to explode the town he lives in

He makes a plan for his first day back to school (because he knows he needs one) study, obviously, he has a lot of catching up to do, but with enough concentration (which he doesn't seem to excel at) he could do it.

He knows he should brace himself for what he might hear, gossip runs fast in Beacon Hills... He's also well aware that he should take it easy on the first week or so, with his rhythm of sleeping, the least he can do is skip last period, drown a Xanax down. Sleep, hopefully. Then dive into the cycle of studies and rest.

Pretty easy. Stiles convinces himself as he opens his Biology textbook.

._._._.

Although it isn't his first time Studying without his adderall, Stiles finds it quite a challenge, catching up turned out easier said than done due to the time lapse but he still manages to study for four hours before dinner.

Food, yeah.

So dinner is scheduled at awkward o'clock everyday, and Stiles can't say he likes it when his father stops eating just to just give him a look that translates into a command, when Stiles doesn't take it, does he finally say it:

"You should eat more." He nods but leaves the plate untouched still, waiting for the right moment to leave this conversation and go upstairs into his room, not that there is anything specific he's planning to do there, it's that there's nothing specific to do here beside feeling uncomfortable.

"Did you talk to Scott lately?"

"about what." comes out toast dry, he doesn't look at the food or his father, the wall it is.

"School..." his father hesitates "so he could help you catch up."

Stiles pushes the plate away from him and gets up to leave, his father probably thinks it's a sensitive subject but it's really the food that's twisting his stomach.

"I'll borrow Lydia's notes." he leaves with that.

._._._.

The plan continues in slow motion, he manages to study for another hour but then a quick glance to the clock reveals that it's way past midnight. He still doesn't want to sleep.

His window looks inviting enough, so he walks towards it and stares at the world outside, to him, it's warm as if it's summer, but he knows it isn't. There's a tree right next to his window, two eyes pierce into his own unblinking.

Stiles is about to take a step back when he realizes that those eyes belong to none other than a simple bird.

Owl.

Big and dark and clock like, bringer of bad luck according to many superstitions, not to him anyways, there was this tradition going in his family, like a saying, that owls brought good luck, it's just that his mom said it to him a lot; now that he thinks about it, owls aren't that frequent in this area but whenever they showed up, he remembers getting scared, so she probably said that to ease his fears, it worked.

Stiles noticed that he was in for some kind of staring contest that the owl just wouldn't give out, eventually he did, by blinking to the sky above his head and trying to make out constellations out of shapeless clouds.

When he looks back it's gone.

Soon after that, the blue gets lighter and light climbs sky, Stiles' been on his bed for sometime now, twisting and turning against another nightmare. For the past few weeks, Stiles has been purposefully hiding his pillow in random places so that: a) he doesn't accidentally stumble upon it and b) he doesn't sleep on it. But for some reason, when he did find it (during the great cleaning of his room) the idea of a dreamless sleep seduced his mind enough to give in.

Now that he wakes up in shivers, Stiles realises he's wrong.