SO, basically, Teen Wolf hurts Corey about fifty million times through his short time on the show and we almost never see him getting better/comforted for it. I got drunk a few nights ago and got angry about it and this came out of it. Many thanks to my irl friend Alice for looking over this for me, and also putting up with me in general! I'll never know what I did to deserve you, you Peter-loving goblin.

Title taken from Marianas Trench's Beside You. Go give a listen to their first three albums, they're awesome. I went off them a bit after album number four, but you might enjoy. Whatever, I'm not your mum. Do what you want.


The wires are moving, wriggling, snaking under his skin. Every movement leaves behind an agonising burn, both where his skin has been torn open, and inside where the cables are crawling into his muscles. He would describe the pain as unbearable, intolerable, except he can bear it because he's had so much worse before. It's something else he can't bear; the thought that he's been forgotten. Finally he had found a boyfriend, a group of friends (kind of – half of the pack seemed to have accepted him, the other half not so much), and was only invisible when he made himself that way.

What Corey couldn't suffer through was the fact that he had been forgotten again.

A rhythmic beeping pulls him from the last vestiges of sleep. Opening his eyes brings a wave of nausea and pain, and he's greeted with a white ceiling and light blue walls, and a scent he recognises immediately as hospital, antiseptic and despair. The beeping is coming from a heart monitor to his right, and it speeds up slightly now as he watches. There's a needle in his arm, too, and a nearly empty bag hanging from a stand. The little liquid left in it is a weird, gelatinous dark green, and truth be told does not look like something he wants going into his body.

Weirdly, this doesn't feel like another hallucination. This feels more tangible, more like he's just woken up from a deep sleep and is still coming round so everything is a little foggy. It can't be, though – Corey can't let himself fall into that hope, or he'll never get through this.

"Corey?"

Damn it. Corey squeezes his eyes shut again. He can't see Mason or he'll lose his resolve. The Ghost Riders are cruel; when they shoved all the wires into him they sent him into some kind of fugue state, where he spends half the time sentient and aware and the other half in a confusing spiral of dreams. It leaves him confused and dazed, which he guesses is the point. He can't exactly focus on escape when his mind is clouded with thoughts of Mason, happiness, safe, then hurt, pain, alone. It's always worse when he imagines Mason, though, because it gives him a rush of everything good before the illusion shatters and he's left with everything bad.

"Corey!"

He wants to lift his hands up to cover his ears but when he tries they won't move, too heavy for the rest of his body. He begins to shake a little, a tear slipping out from underneath his eyelashes. Just a little longer and this will disappear, and stop tormenting him.

"You're not real," Corey rasps, against his better judgement. He shouldn't talk, it will just get him more attached to the hallucinations and then it'll be harder to detach himself from them when they get ripped away from him.

"Corey, listen to me. I am real. I am here."

Corey wants to believe him. He's about to roll over, damn the pain, and ignore him completely when a hand grasps his, an achingly familiar hand that he would know in a heartbeat. He stops breathing for a second. Never before has one of the dreams touched him…in fact, they've always shied away when he's tried to touch them. Corey can't let himself hope, but perhaps…

"This is real."

"Promise?" Corey whispers, another tear escaping from under his eyelids against his will.

"Promise." Mason's voice cracks, and Corey opens his eyes again. Painstakingly slowly, he tilts his head to the left, ignoring the dull, throbbing ache that screams at him in response to the movement.

He sees his boyfriend, his wonderful, amazing, perfect boyfriend, sitting in a chair next to the hospital bed he's in, holding his hand, tear tracks down his face, clothes rumpled, bags under his eyes, exhaustion written in his face. It doesn't matter to Corey what state he's in, because it's still Mason. He gasps, can't help it, and it comes out as a pained croak that gets stuck in his windpipe because seeing him makes him lose his breath, he's so happy. The love that blossoms in his chest can't be because of a hallucination; this has to be real. "Mason," he whimpers, and the floodgates open. He weeps openly, and Mason immediately jumps off the chair and onto the side of the bed, cradling Corey's head in his arms and pressing him against his chest so he can hear his heartbeat easier, so careful and gentle with his movements that it makes Corey want to cry more.

Mason pets at his short hair, whispering nonsensical phrases under his breath to soothe him, muttering apologies too for reasons Corey can't ascertain, and after a few minutes Corey manages to get a hold of himself and wipes his eyes, trying to push himself into a sitting position. He hasn't prepared himself for the searing pain, though, so he falls back with a bitten-off cursed word and can't hold back the yelp when Mason grabs him too quickly.

"Sorry! Sorry," Mason gasps, hands hovering as he tries to figure out what to do, and looks close to tears himself at seeing Corey in so much pain.

"Not your fault," Corey manages, ignoring the shrieking agony as he shuffles into a more comfortable position. Mason retreats back to the chair so they're at eye-level again, and as soon as Corey has settled himself back against the cushions he seeks out his hand, which Mason is only too happy to offer. They sit in silence for a few more minutes, Mason sensing that Corey has something resting on his tongue but not wanting to push him. Finally, he says, "You were there."

Mason squeezes his hand a little bit tighter, the pressure comforting rather than suffocating. "When you were in the train station?" he guesses, knowing he's right when Corey swallows, hard. "How was I there?"

Corey swallows again, bile rising in his oesophagus. Thinking about the hallucinations makes his vision spin but he can see Mason's earnest expression in his peripheral so he tries again, for his sake. "In my head," he whispers, and he's starting to feel nauseous again and his head is pounding from the memory. "I kept having these hallucinations, and when they were happening I couldn't tell if they were real or not. It was always you." Corey breaks himself off but then hurries on again, wanting to get it all out before he chokes on the words. "You – he – talked to me. It always started off sweet so I thought it was real, but then he would change. Say horrible things."

"Like?" Mason presses gently. He needs Corey to tell him everything that's bothering him before he retreats back into his shell.

"He said that I was never getting out, and that everyone had forgotten me already," he whispers, and against his will tears spill from his eyes again. Mason wipes them away with a touch so gentle Corey can't imagine how he ever confused real Mason with the cruel imaginary Mason.

"Not true, at all," Mason says certainly, and wipes at his own tears with the back of his hand. "I'm sorry I said that to you."

Corey wants to laugh in disbelief. Only Mason would apologise for something a hallucination of him said in another dimension. "You didn't," he points out firmly. "And I should have realised it wasn't you, not really. I did when they finished, but I missed you so much that I just kept hoping."

"You had a lot on your mind," Mason retorts, equally as firmly. "I can't imagine what that was like, Corey, being there, so don't play the blame game. Stiles described it, but it was so awful…and he wasn't hooked up to all those wires like you were." Mason swallows when he remembers the state that he found Corey in, even paler than he usually was, pools of bluey-green liquid leaking from the holes in his skin. Even when they were all ripping those cables out of him, he was so stoic and brave, smiling at Mason wanly so he wouldn't worry too much, but Mason saw the flickers of pain shudder across his face when it got too much for him to hide. He only passed out when they finally got him free and were about to leave, finally succumbing to everything he'd suffered.

The memory makes him frown, his eyebrows creasing together. Corey, though, is smiling, remembering a different memory. "You saved me. You came running in and held my hand and you saved me." He smiles wider, cheeks aching.

Instead of smiling back like he usually does when Corey gets soppy and romantic, Mason shakes his head and clears his throat. Before he closes his eyes, Corey thinks he can see a glimmer of tears there. "I was too late," he mutters. "I should have come sooner, found you sooner."

"Hey," Corey chides gently, using his elbows to prop himself up a little more. "I thought we weren't playing the blame game."

"Yeah, you're right." Mason runs his free hand over his face, resting his chin in his palm and propping his arm up on the side of the bed. The other hand brings Corey's fist up to his lips and he kisses the knuckles there tenderly. "But seriously, Corey…I am, so, so sorry. I need you to know that."

Corey's eyes flutter closed at the feeling of Mason's lips ghosting over his skin, but frowns when he hears him talk again. "What are you sorry for?" He honestly can't think of anything that Mason has done wrong, ever, that he hasn't already apologised for. Then again, Mason does have a history of apologising for things he's done right, too. He drags his eyes open to meet Mason's.

"For everything," Mason sighs, and then suddenly explodes into a frenzy of guilt and remorse. "It was my fault you got taken! Mr Douglas was the guy in the tank, the one I got hooked up to when I was the Beast, and he was angry about it so he took you to hurt me! And then it took me ages to come get you, because we were trying to make a plan or whatever, but I just left you there to suffer! I should have found a way to get to you as soon as possible, not just left you there with those monsters!"

Out of the two of them, Mason is the calm one. Corey can easily fall into a spiral of emotion; not anger, so much, as anxiety and panic and despair, but Mason is the rock that grounds him whenever it happens. He's never seen Mason so vehemently angry before; he always calms himself down with his common sense, and calms others down too with his compassion. Corey feels out of his depth here, their roles reversed, but Mason is visibly distressed and beating himself up and Corey will be damned if he doesn't at least try to help.

"I'm not accepting your apology," Corey says, voice calm despite how angry he's feeling. Not at Mason, never at Mason; at the situation. "If it was your fault, then I would."

"Corey…" Mason shakes his head, and then smiles. "Were."

"Eh?"

"You used 'if', so you need to follow it with the subjunctive. 'If it were your fault'."

"You're so adorable," Corey breathes, because he loves it when Mason nerds out. He's relieved when Mason grins at him, and pushes his luck. "So you admit it wasn't your fault?"

That earns him an eye roll, but Corey knows him well enough to tell the difference between an affectionate eye roll and an exasperated one. This is definitely the former. "I am willing to admit that it was not totally my fault," he hedges.

Not good enough. "Not at all your fault," Corey insists, shifting closer so he's nearly falling off the edge of the bed. "For one thing, the only way you could have gotten to me without dying was if you were taken by one of the Riders, and it wouldn't have helped anyone, anyway. It would have just resulted in both of us being trapped there."

Mason acquiesces with a nod, but still doesn't look convinced, so Corey plunges on. "And you didn't make Mr Douglas send me to the shadow realm."

Mason butts in then. "Actually, it was. When I was the Beast, you remember I got hooked up to that weird tube thing in the Dread Doctors' lab?" Corey nods, remembering it all too clearly. "The…thing…in that tube was Mr Douglas. He wanted revenge on me, I think, so he took you."

Corey frowns at him. "I thought he took me to merge the worlds together."

Mason shakes his head, then pauses, then shrugs. "I don't know, Corey. Maybe it was a bit of both…but I can't help that feel like it was because of me somehow."

"It was probably more because Mr Douglas was a Nazi with psychopathic tendencies." One of Corey's more eloquent statements, if Mason's startled expression is anything to go by. "So whatever happened to me wasn't your fault," he adds softly, meeting Mason's gaze evenly. "It wasn't your fault I got taken, and it wasn't your fault that I happened to be the one that they needed to be the link between dimensions or whatever."

"I know." Mason's voice is hoarse. "Deep down, I know that. But my heart won't catch up with my brain. I just feel so…awful that you were there, in pain and alone, while I was here."

"Not your fault," Corey says, voice equally strained. "But, Mason, there's a limit, okay? There's a limit to how much you're meant to do to protect someone. And I think you crossed that limit a long time ago."

"There isn't a limit with you," Mason snaps, sounding peeved all of a sudden. Corey flinches back automatically at the tone of his voice, and Mason's eyes immediately soften and he takes in a deep breath. "Sorry, Corey. Sorry. But…there isn't a limit with you, Corey. Nothing is too much when it comes to you."

Time freezes around them. There's a bubble with just the two of them in it, and nothing is moving, least of all them. Corey can't speak because there are too many and not enough words to reply to that adequately. In the end, he settles for leaning over and kissing him, ignoring the lump in his throat that makes it harder to breathe. He doesn't need oxygen when he has Mason.

When they eventually pull away, after seconds or minutes or hours, Corey whispers, "It's never too much for you either," but then he ruins the moment slightly when an agonising cramp hits his stomach and he flinches slightly, groaning as it grows and bending over in on himself. "Crap, sorry."

"No, no, don't be sorry." Mason tentatively puts a hand on his stomach and massages gently. "Stupid question, but are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm good." It's not totally untrue; he's definitely not good, but he knows that he will be. And he can tolerate this, he's had worse.

Mason regards him with a raised eyebrow. "Could you maybe not lie when I ask you how you're feeling?"

Corey huffs out a laugh and buries his face into Mason's shoulder. "Yeah. Okay. Sorry."

Mason repeats his question. "Are you okay?" He drops Corey's hand in favour of stroking up and down his back.

Corey inhales deeply. "No. It hurts, Mason." His voice cracks and he hates himself a bit for it. "It hurts everywhere. Inside, too." He finds Mason's warm brown eyes and begs him to understand what he means.

Mason's hand settles on the small of his back, the other still rubbing gentle circles into his stomach, which is actually helping somewhat. "I can get you some morphine. Melissa said she could bring some as soon as you work up. As for inside…you could try talking to me."

Corey sniffs, and curls his fingers into the back of Mason's shirt. "I don't want to play the blame game," he says plaintively. "And I'm worried this will sound like I'm blaming you."

"I'll bear that in mind," Mason says easily. "Do your worst."

Corey leans back just a little, looking at him sceptically. He doesn't want to sound accusatory, so he keeps his voice emotionless as he says, "I got turned into a chimera, but it wasn't into anything in particular. I took on the abilities of the creature that reflected me. It's why I can turn invisible."

"Because you always felt invisible."

"Yeah." Corey shrugs, trying to hide how much he hates talking about this. Mason can't hear his heartbeat, or smell his emotions, but the human can always tell exactly what's up with him somehow anyway. "Since then, I haven't been invisible unless I chose to be. But now…I was forgotten. Like before. And I thought I would be used to it so it wouldn't bother me, but it did." He takes in a shuddering, heaving breath.

Mason's hand stills for a second before he resumes the soothing motion. "You weren't forgotten," he says quietly. "It wasn't like Stiles. I have a million theories why, but nobody forgot you. I think it was partly because I found your phone in the forest, your relic, and that made everyone else remember you. But I didn't forget you for a second before that, Corey."

"You never forgot me?" Corey sounds so small and broken in those four words, and Mason gives into the urge to wrap him up in a bear hug.

"Not for a millisecond," he murmurs into Corey's hair. "I never will, Corey, you'll never be forgotten ever again, I promise."

Corey sniffs and pulls back a little so he can wipe at his eyes. He clearly isn't comfortable talking about this anymore, so Mason lets him change the subject without challenge. "Looks like you have another power," he jokes. "Remembering me when I get transported to a ghost train station."

Mason smiles at him. "My powers all revolve around you." Predictably, Corey blushes and ducks his head shyly, but seeks out his hand anyway and clutches onto it like it's a lifeline.

"Can we get out of here?" Corey asks after a few seconds, burying his face into Mason's shirt so his next words come out a little muffled. "I hate hospitals."

"Yeah, I know." Mason would probably hate them too if he'd gone through everything that Corey had. "You can discharge yourself whenever you want to. We used some herbs to help your healing kick in, so you should be fine from now on. You'll heal like normal."

"Good." Corey sighs. "I want normal."


Normal turns out to be Mason pushing him out of the hospital in a wheelchair while his phone blows up with notifications. Apparently Mason told the rest of the pack about his return to consciousness because he has more texts in five minutes than he usually gets in a month. He expects most of them to be perfunctory 'glad to hear you're better' messages, and is pleasantly surprised and touched to see that actually, all of them are personal and pretty long. He reads them while Mason talks to Melissa at the nurses' station, waiting for his discharge forms to be printed off. Stiles sends a predictably rambling message that spans several scrolls, and Lydia's is much shorter but still very sweet, telling him that she'll come visit when he's up to it. Scott's message is littered with text talk and typos but Corey manages to make out what he's saying anyway. Malia's is by far the shortest of everyone's, gruff and to the point. It still makes him smile. Liam sends a gif of a polar bear dancing, for whatever reason, along with a strongly-worded rant against Mr Douglas and a promise to come over to chat some time soon. Hayden's text is similar in content but less sweary, and has fewer polar bear gifs. He even gets a message from Theo, and he can practically feel how awkward his former alpha must have felt as he typed it because it's only two lines long and written like a formal speech.

Corey types out his replies while Mason delivers him to the car. He replies to Theo first, partly because there's still a bit of unwavering loyalty there – the guy did literally give him a second chance at life, after all – and partly because he thinks Theo had changed, become human again after his stint in Hell, and he wants to make amends. Hayden next, because she's been a good friend to him ever since they were in the chimera pack together. Liam after that, because they've had their differences before but he thinks they're on their way to friendship now. Lydia after him, then Stiles, then Malia, all of them getting fairly simple and short replies. He doesn't know them as well as the others, and doesn't know how genuine their words are, but Corey thinks that they do actually care about him. Then finally Scott. He can't think what to say, because he hasn't actually truly accepted Scott yet. He'll call him his alpha, and listen to his orders, but he can't quite forgive him for what he did. Mason understands, and doesn't push Corey to do anything else, and when they arrive at the car Corey silently hands his phone over and Mason types out a suitably polite reply for him.

"Thank you," Corey says quietly, climbing into the passenger seat by himself. Mason looks scandalised when he hauls himself out of the chair without asking for help, which Corey objects to slightly. His legs are a little weak, sure, but he's not completely useless. He swats Mason away when he tries to do his seatbelt for him, pretending to be irritated but actually thrilled that he's being cared for so much.

"Where are we going?" he asks once Mason has returned the wheelchair to the hospital and slid into the driver's seat.

Mason doesn't answer for a second, focused on reversing out, but as soon as he's driving forwards and out of the parking lot he answers, "Back to mine. I told my parents you got beaten up by some homophobes and you aren't a hundred percent just yet. They said you should stay the night."

Mason hasn't told his parents everything about Corey's home situation, because his boyfriend is notoriously private about it. Mason is the only one who knows everything, with the rest of the pack only aware of whatever they've deduced for themselves. He has, however, told his mom and dad that Corey's parents are never there, but that's better for everyone involved, especially Corey himself. They figured enough out from that themselves.

"Do I have to socialise?"

"No, you can go straight up my room if you want." Mason stifles a laugh at Corey's happy expression. He knows that Corey loves his parents and vice versa (because how could anyone not love those three people, honestly) but he also knows that his boyfriend is possibly the most antisocial person he's ever met. He tolerates people up to a point, is quite happy to hang out with his friends, but he gets in moods where he wants to be with one person and one person only sometimes. Usually that person is Mason.

Mason has no problem with that.


So, you may have noticed that I've marked this as not being complete! I'm planning to add a chapter where Corey and Liam talk, and then Corey and Scott talk, because they didn't really get on well at first in the show but then they seem to all kind of become pack and be fine, but there's never a talk about what happened between them. (I have no idea if what I just typed makes sense. TL;DR: Follow if you want bromance.)

I love you guys so much for you continued support for this series! Seriously, I didn't think my fics would get any attention at all, because Corey seems to be almost non-existent in the fandom. You all mean the world to me!

Comments on my work make me so happy, and so motivated, like you have no idea. Don't get me wrong, kudos are always loved and appreciated, of course, but comments are like coming home from a terrible day and being met with a mountain of chocolate and dogs. So, basically, please leave me some feedback! It motivates me to write more and I like hearing if you guys want certain things or if you think I've done something well or badly. Also, prompts. Love 'em. That's it, basically.