the spaces between my fingers
Ensemble; You have two hands. Use them.
(In which there is a lot of hand holding)
Once upon a time Scott and Stiles were just children. Carefree and happy; completely unaware of what the future has in store for them. Stiles grabs Scott's wrist tightly and drags him along behind him when they decide to wander through the woods. In his other hand Scott grips tightly on to his inhaler and hopes he doesn't have to waste any money by puffing it.
Jackson holds her hands between his; asks her if she's okay.
They could've been friends – Allison thinks – if circumstances had been different.
Lydia grabs Stiles' hand and leads him out to dance.
Stiles remembers what it felt like even as she's lying in a hospital bed and the guilt is welling up inside him.
Allison holds Scott's hand tight in hers and she leads him through the dark empty corridors and out into the school parking lot. They're smiling and laughing as she tugs him along. This marks the beginning of an end, she thinks later on, or maybe the end was decided the very first moment they met.
Or maybe, possibly, the end began the moment he held her hands tight in his and she pulled herself away; their fingers lingering.
He holds his wrist and offers him the bite. Stiles thinks of Scott; of Lydia; of his dad. He thinks of the full moon and wolf's bane bullets.
And he yanks his hand away.
Lydia is lying unconscious on a hospital bed and Allison sits next to her and squeezes her hand tightly like she can will her to squeeze back.
"Wake up Lydia," Allison whispers. 'Please be okay,' she thinks. Two days later Lydia will be awake and squeezing back and Allison will think, for a moment, that maybe everything's going to be okay.
It's not.
Erica remembers falling but she doesn't remember hitting the ground; doesn't remember convulsing on the gym floor.
She does remember holding onto someone's hand.
Erica puts her hand on Allison's thigh with a smirk. The Argent girl grabs her hand a moment later to pull it away but pauses when Lydia holds the sugar crystal to her lips. For a couple minutes she sits there with a loose hold on Erica's hand.
She wishes she could interlock their fingers and squeeze and have the hand squeeze back as a reassurance but Erica is not her friend; she's the enemy.
Allison drops her hand.
Erica is convulsing on the floor again and she can feel Stiles holding on to her and Scott is kneeling down next to her. She desperately wants someone to grab her hand and anchor her. She wants to grab on to Scott's hand, or Stiles, or maybe even Derek's.
More than anything she just wants it to stop.
Derek grabs her arm with both hands and breaks it.
Isaac is holding the needle in one hand and staring right at her.
"It's up to us," he tells her, but that was fairly apparent. Erica reaches out for the hand that doesn't hold the needle and grabs on to it lightly. He squeezes back.
"We need some kind of distraction," he says, "some kind of way to get close to him." The look out at the sea of people jammed close together before turning to look back at each other with matching smirks. 'Are you thinking what I'm thinking?' he thinks about asking but he already knows the answer.
They use their joined hands to stick together in the crowd.
The kanima is getting up and Stiles can feel Erica tugging at his shoulder; can feel her hand curling around his; can feel Isaac pushing at his shoulder; gripping tightly on to his shirt. 'I have a second hand,' he thinks for a split second as the three of them are scrambling out the door.
Peter grabs Lydia's hand gently and leads her around; as if he isn't the violent spirit haunting her; as if he hasn't terrorised her and manipulated her. She wants to jerk her hand away but she can't.
There's something about Jackson that seems off, so Lydia reaches out, touches her fingers to his arm. When he grabs her arm, tight and desperate, she thinks something isn't right. Nothing is right, she realises, there's monsters hiding in the dark and the world is not what it used to be. He holds her hand tightly but when she pulls away he lets her.
His fingers linger in the air as she turns away.