Just a really quick Stiles/Malia oneshot as of 4x02. (Based off of Stiles's conversation with Scott early on.) Hope it's okay. xoxo
It's 2am when Stiles jerks himself awake. He struggles against invisible hands at his neck, cold air scraping the back of his throat as he gasps his way to calmness. Stars dance above him lazily. His room is blanketed in darkness except for the eerie shadows on his wall, which is little comfort. He focuses on breathing, on slowing the horserace in his chest to a nice stroll.
He's still not quite comfortable with sleeping. His dreams are haunted by bandaged faces, by pretty girls who are no longer breathing. It's a pity—he used to be quite the night owl when he was younger. He'd spend all night on the computer if he was able to. Now, he'd give anything to skip to daylight.
He feels a cooling breeze on his face, realizes with a start that his window is open. And then that he is not alone. A small figure is burrowed into his side, nested in his blankets.
Malia.
He tries and then fails to resist the urge to make sure he's not still dreaming. It's a habit he can't break. He pinches himself, hard. It hurts, but confirms it: Malia is really here, again, like she has been every night this week. He looks at her for a moment. Even the way she sleeps is reminiscent of her canine childhood; always curled up tight, with her knees at her chest and her face hidden by her mass of dark hair. A dark eye blinks up at him, wide open. Of course.
"Hey," he says hoarsely. "Didn't hear you come in."
She lifts her head, says nothing in reply. She's taken to not speaking around him when they're alone, communicating more with her expressions. As she'd told him once, "There are no words in the animal kingdom." She reaches up and touches the side of his face, questioning. There's a dent between her eyebrows.
"I'm okay," he tells her. "Just a bad dream."
"I get those too," she whispers, and she sounds less like a werecoyote and more like a girl that hasn't been a girl in a very long time.
He says, "Hey, it'll be okay." He lifts up his arm and she fits into the space comfortably. "Just go back to sleep." He lays back to do so, but feels her eyes on him. "What?" He looks at her, frowning. She's wearing a familiar expression-mouth slightly open, teeth set lightly on the curve of her lower lip, eyes bright and suggestive and focused on his mouth. "Oh," he laughs, which she takes as affirmation. She leans forward, smelling like grass, kisses him and kisses him and kisses him and kisses him...
"STILES!" His father's voice booms through the door, followed by several loud knocks. "Time for school!"
Stiles flails awake, hits the floor hard. In a sleepy daze, he scrambles to his feet, thanking God the sheriff hadn't barged in. Although, trying to cover up is sort of pointless. While he has yet to say anything about Malia's presence, Stiles knows his dad isn't clueless. He looks toward the bed and finds the cause of his abrupt meeting with the floor. Malia's shuffled to the middle of the mattress and bundled up into an almost unrecognizable lump except for her eyes, which now meet Stiles's calmly.
"Hungry?" he asks. She nods and sits up, suddenly alert. (She isn't naked; she's wearing his t-shirt instead.) "Cereal?" Her nose wrinkles. "Toast?" Her brow furrows. He scratches his head. "Uhh, eggs." Her brows shoot up. "Eggs and bacon?" No response. "What, you've never had eggs and bacon?"
"I've had eggs and ham," she says.
Stiles groans. "Oh, god. Oh sweet lord. We need to fix that like right now." Well, after his dad leaves. He sits Malia at the kitchen table and slides around the kitchen on his best slippery socks while iterating to her his best experiences with this particular form of cooked pig. He probably looks like an idiot, flinging oil and bacon and eggshells like a madman, but it's worth it to see the look on her face when she eats.
"I like bacon," she tells him with her mouth full. "I like bacon a lot."
He grins. "We'll add it to the List," he promises. (The List being their endeavor to help Malia remember how to be a person again, it encompasses things like: Malia likes—chicken, chocolate, ice cream, green beans. Malia dislikes—green beans. Malia hates—green beans.)
The first thing she does when they get to school a half hour later is run up to the group, push Scott out of the way mid-sentence, and say, "You guys, I really like bacon."
"That's great, Malia," Scott says as he regains his balance. He glances at Stiles, who returns it with a pointed look.
Kira catches on quickly. "How do you feel about ham?" she asks.
Malia starts what Stiles calls Malia-talking (verb, meaning to talk so fast it's hard to follow/make out words; usually occurs when Malia gets excited). "It's okay, but it's not as good as bacon. In the woods I didn't..."
Lydia raises an eyebrow at Stiles when no one's looking.
Stiles shrugs. "Progress."