"I friggin hate birthdays man."
Stiles stood with his back to the mirror as his hands aligned with his hips before deciding he wasn't comfortable and adjusting again. The fidgeting wouldn't stop. Not today...even with an Adderall iv pumping through his system, Stiles would still be hyped. It was an inevitable. A curse. Watching his father move from room to room, his head shook. "Can't we just skip it this year? I mean..it's not like we have ti-.." Trailing off when his father gave him the worst glare he'd seen since stealing his eggs that morning, the boy rocked on his feet.
"Right...right...sorry I asked." He swallowed heavily, a hand going up to rub the back of his bald head. Angry words of his father's floated into his brain and Stiles had to resist the urge to vomit. They hadn't been his father's words. They'd been Lydia's crazy wolfsbane concoction. Yet, they could have been his dad's words. They could have been all him and would that have made things anymore true? Or how about any less.
Jaw tensing, Stiles turned his dark eyes away from the room his dad had disappeared in and shoved his hands into his pockets. "Okay so are we going now?" Nodding just once to his dad's groan, he pointed upwards and headed away from his father and towards the front door, grasping a hold of the keys and making his way to the powder blue jeep her kept in the driveway.
His father had always refused to drive with him. Especially on this day. He needed the solitude and Stiles all but served it up to him on a god damned silver platter. It wasn't like getting through today was going to be easy. It never was. His life was one supernatural nightmare after the next and yet this was still the day he dreaded the most. The one he sometimes wished he'd never wake up to.
As he drove, Stiles found his jaw tensing and fingers drumming against the steering wheel. A light symphony of 'The Verve' played in his ears and tears already sprinkled his eyes as he drove, weaving ever so slightly.
"I looove this song. Please, leave it on."
Her laugh radiated through the paper thin walls of the house as her hand fell upon her husbands. She refused to allow his fingers to switch from the channel and instead she closed her eyes, swaying with the music. Long dark curls cascaded down her back and as Stiles tottered his way into the room, those six year old eyes became transfixed on her swaying.
Well I never pray, but tonight I'm on my knees, yeah. I need to hear some sounds that recognize the pain in me, yeah. I let the melody shine, let it cleanse my mind, I feel free now, but the airwaves are clean and there's nobody singing to me now.
All too quickly, she turned and Stiles' lips fastened into a large grin. She giggled at his face and picked up his tiny hands, letting them lay flat in her own. The smoothness of their skin felt like satin as they both swayed to the music. Solstice finding them both as the woman's curled engulfed his head, his senses when she leaned down to kiss his head.
She smelled of jasmines.
The cemetery was empty. As per usual and the only sound for miles was the ill conceived slam of the jeep's door as Stiles hurried his way through the path. The path he'd known for years now and the path he wished he'd never been forced to remember. Finding his way to the vine laden tombstone, his balled fists found his jean pockets.
"H-Hey mom."
He tried to keep the sarcastic air in his voice but it failed the moment his lips formed around her name. The mom quivered in the back of his throat and he heard the tell-tell crunching of his father's work boots behind him. He never came as close to her as Stiles did. Couldn't bare to read the words he had to pick out years before. Couldn't bare to know how the granite had worn around the 'S' of her name...how 'inski' had hairline cracks in the black paint, its weathered tips threatening to break off with every hiss of wind.
She wasn't getting any better. The smile on her face was a lie and Stiles knew it. Stiles could see it all over her face. Happy damn Birthday to him. Ten was supposed to be a big thing. Something with pizza and lazer tag; maybe even a kiss from the strawberry blonde girl he'd always had a crush on.
Instead he got the hiss of hospital machines. The squeak of shoes along the heavily polished floor. Stiles got the paging of Doctor's and his mother's very broken voice. He had stayed by her side for a long time. Both un-moving as she slept off the pain medication. The chemotherapy had caused those once dark curls to fall limp and eventually leave her all together.
Even as his father brought in Stiles' cake, the boy's bottom lip trembled. Setting it upon the tray as his mother stirred, Stiles watched the candles lighting one by one.
He got one wish.
One birthday wish and it would come true right? It had to come true.
Watching his mother for a long time as she stirred and mumbled a breathless 'happy birthday', he was reduced to tears. Happy Birthday tears, Stiles thought bitterly. The candles flickered haphazardly and Stiles knew he only had moments. Moments to make his mother better. All better so she could come home with them.
He closed his eyes...and exhaled.
Tears leaked from those deep brown eyes and a hand was pressed over his mouth. Memories floated in and out of him with painful regard and he hovered over his mom's final resting place. Dropping down onto his knees now, his fingers grasped to something inside of his pocket and he let out a watery giggle.
"Uh, Happy Birthday, Mom."
Eyes tipping from the tombstone, he slid a worn yellow candle from his pocket, tipping it to his lips. Six years had gone by since he'd lit this candle, a reminder of his last birthday together. He couldn't bring her a cake, and he couldn't sing but he could make a wish god dammit...the same wish he made every day.
"Second time's the charm right?"
His teeth gritted tightly together. If a normal wish wasn't powerful enough than a birthday wish had to do the trick. It had to. Closing his eyes, blocking everything from his mind, he lit the candle, plunging it into the dirt just above his mother's grave. The candle flickered and Stiles bowed his head.
You only get one wish right?