It's terrible, awful, bad.
Stiles can't seem to stop thinking about it. It doesn't matter what he's doing, or is trying to do, or has done. He'll be at school, in the middle of Chem class and listening to Mr. Harris drone on while he tries hard to look interested, engaged. Telling Dad about his day over dinner, pasta with salad on the side for himself and salad with pasta on the side for Dad. On the field, sitting on the bench as he watches Scott own the game and cheering his heart out. In bed, at night, watching the stars in the dark sky through the window as he wills himself to sleep. In the shower, under a beating torrent of hot-hot-hot water as he shuts his eyes and presses his hands against his ears - shut all the sound out, Stiles, shut all the sound out - and tries not to breathe.
Every thought is coloured by blood, every smell poisoned by that lingering metallic tang. Iron filling his mouth as he tries to choke down the Lucky Charms in the morning. His chest is both numb and hurting. A bit like the Lucky Charms or last night's pasta got caught up together and are now sitting stuck in some odd hollow part of his heart that he never knew he had. He thumps his chest a few times and coughs, but it doesn't help. That strange crushed glass ball sits in there, waiting.
Once upon a time, he had known how to make it go away. It had been easy, like second nature. After Mom - after Mom, Stiles had had a lot of free time to himself. Dad had been throwing himself into work and for a while, drinking himself stupid every night. And Stiles, silly little Stiles, had all the time in the world to figure out what to do with himself when he had a panic attack, or when he'd wake up in tears after the recurring nightmare of Mom's death (except it wasn't really a nightmare), or when the boys at school were too much, too harsh on a strange little manic kid who was different.
Stiles had started with hair pulling, because it was easy and came naturally. His hands finding their way to his scalp as he dry gagged into the toilet, heaving and gasping as the panic threatened to pull him under. He'd tugged his fistfuls of hair, not hard enough to pull any out, but hard enough for a buzz of pain to cut through the cloud. It brought Stiles back down, grounded him slightly, like the electric current of panic running through his skin has been earthed. It seemed such a perfect solution. To control himself, without having to resort to the drugs or the therapists - perfect.
It hadn't been enough, though. It had worked, for a little while, and then it hadn't. And Stiles grew bolder as he cycled through each method. Slamming his hands against the walls, bruising himself, scratching away at his skin and then finally, when he was bold enough, breaking skin and drawing blood. That had worked well, really well, and kept him going for a good amount of time.
But Stiles had needed more. Became his own worst enemy, dared himself to go further. Judged himself on the depth of the wounds, the amount of blood he was drawing, the amount of pain he caused. He wasn't so far gone that he couldn't recognise the danger signs. Stiles had done the reading and the research (and that too, was a double edged sword. The more Stiles read about what he was doing, the more he compared himself to the cases presented as severe. And a little voice kept telling him, you're nowhere near bad enough, Stiles. You're not even succeeding in this. You're half-assing it, just like you half-ass everything else. Do more, do worse, go harder.), knew where he was headed. He gave himself a little grace period, told himself he'd stop, that it wasn't a problem. But he didn't, because it was just so much easier to keep going - and so he did.
The catalyst had come one spring day. It hadn't been even been a particularly bad week, or month, or anything, really. He'd just been doing what he always did, when his skin wouldn't stop itching and that recurring brittle and sharp something in his mind kept bothering him, pulling and tugging at the corners until the smooth map of his brain was tangled and frayed, pulled apart.
Stiles did it in threes, because he always did - three is a small number, he's not out-of-control if he only does three, three is good - but he went too hard, too long, too deep on the third. The sight of the gaping wound and the white fatty flesh within hadn't phased him too much, not in the first moment or two, but then the mouth of the wound had filled, red rushing in like the tide at the beach, overflowing and spilling down his leg in the matter of seconds. He couldn't grab at the tissues fast enough to staunch the flow and he remembers kneeling on his bedroom floor, pressing shaking fingers to the wound, trying to close the flesh together to get the blood to stop. He'd made an almighty mess on the carpet that day.
It'd taken him an hour to clean the best part of the blood out. The stain stayed, faint but taunting, and Stiles prayed his dad wouldn't notice (he never did). And after that, he Febreze-d the shit out of his room because it still smelt like the lingering stench of blood.
Stiles had stopped after that day, because he'd scared himself shitless. He still pulled at his hair and bruised himself, but no more blood. No more accidents. No more losing control.
It hadn't been too much of an issue, until now. Until it was. Forcing himself to stop thinking about it didn't work anymore and everytime he got a moment's breath, there'd be blood on his mind and iron in his mouth.
