Just a quick drabble focusing on Stiles' thoughts during that intense scene with Scott in 'Motel California'. All mistakes are my own and I do not own Teen Wolf.
He does remember. What it was like before all this. Before werewolves, hunters and darachs. But he doesn't remember it quite the way Scott does.
He remembers looking at the popular kids with pity. Their facades were perfect only to themselves. He saw every fake compliment and every insincere high-five. They were a massive group but he knew that not one of them knew when another lost their first tooth or stopped using a night-light. They were all popular and sure, they all had a ton of friends. But none of them were actually friends.
The two of them had each other. Scott and Stiles. That was it. They rode their bikes to school together, ate lunch together, did everything together. They were the absolute furthest thing from popular but it never really mattered because who needs to be when you have one person in your life who knows you better than anyone? Who knows every detail about your life, good and bad, yet still plays hours of video games with you. It was Scott and Stiles and while the jocks went home at night needing someone to talk to, they went to each other's homes and talked.
They were terrible at lacrosse. Scott couldn't last more than 5 minutes without having an asthma attack and Stiles couldn't last 5 seconds without doing something to piss Coach off. It never really mattered though. During practice when all of the serious players were running suicides or getting pummeled to the ground, he and Scott watched the cheerleaders and bet on which one would fall off the top of the pyramid that day. And during games, when they were stuck on the bench contributing nothing to the game, they would jokingly cast spells on the opposing team to get them to hit Jackson harder. Their time on the bench allowed them to turn around and chat with their parents, always present despite knowing their children would never play. They counted how many times Coach would yell at Greenberg, how many times Jackson would steal the ball from his own team-mates, and how long they could hold their breath until their faces turned blue. They weren't good at lacrosse, but it was never really about lacrosse in the first place.
Scott was always somebody to Stiles. He was there for him on the first day of kindergarten when Jackson Whittemore, a real snot even then, teased him for having a blue backpack when all of the other boys had red (Scott had a green bag and said they should walk together so it would be like Christmas all year round). And when his mother died, and a town full of mourners came to her funeral, Scott stood resolutely at his side and grabbed his hand tight enough to make the physical pain take away some of the emotional. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter. Every holiday involved the Stilinskis and the McCalls. With his father's odd hours, Scott was often the first person Stiles would see in the morning and the last person he'd see at night. Scott was never nobody and he was never just somebody. To Stiles he was everybody. He was a friend, a classmate, a teammate, and most importantly he was a brother.
So yeah. Stiles remembers how things used to be. He remembers life without Lydia and Allison. He remembers not waking up from nightmares in which his best friend had died. And he remembers not spending every waking moment with an insurmountable guilt. Because he also remembers that he was the one who climbed on top of Scott's roof that night. He was the one who dragged his friend into the woods. Peter may have been the psycho who bit Scott, but when it comes down to it he was the one responsible for everything.
So yes, Stiles steps into the puddle of gasoline because life without Scott is unimaginable. He can't watch his friend come close to death for the second time that day. But for a second, for a single second, he can't help but think that it's actually his own absence that would be beneficial to the people around him.