The idea of 'pop quizzes' always preoccupied Stiles Stilinski; though, strangely enough, the one taking place at that very moment was all about the homework he'd busted his head open completing exactly the Monday before. Even then, as he thought of the answers, he realized he was nervous; maybe a little more nervous than what a little fifteen question quiz should make him. So much, in fact, that he found himself flinching when the tip of his pencil broke. He nearly sighed in frustration, but he remembered the pencil that was so neatly tucked away on the side of his backpack.
As he reached for the other pencil, Stiles allowed his eyes to wonder; they looked around at the class full of concentrating students, some nearly as frustrated as Stiles had been, and some, like Lydia Martin, that didn't even seem to be thinking twice about the answers. Of course, his girlfriend was naturally smart, so he wasn't at all surprised.
Stiles' head automatically whipped to the front of the classroom when out of the corner of his eye he could swear he'd seen something black move on the top of the wall; yet, when he looked, there had been noting there. He sighed and forced his eyes to return to his quiz with his brand new pencil in hand. Were his nerves so high that he was starting to see things? Way to go, Stiles. He thought to himself. Way to go.
What felt like hours later, but had truly only been minutes, the very last question of the quiz had been finally answered, and Stiles nearly sighed in relief and sat back on his chair in triumph; and he was just about to do that, when out of the corner of his eye he saw the same strangely dark moving thing on the upper side of the front wall. Yet, once again, just like the time before, when his eyes fully focused on the place where he could have sworn he'd seen the black thing, there was nothing. With a frown, his eyes fell toward his completed test, and the already deep frown became more prominent as he leaned slightly closer to the paper; the words 'It's your turn to suffer' were printed on the paper with broken black ink as if it were one of the questions on the test, and Stiles sat back quickly when he finished reading as such. "What the…" He whispered before he looked around the room again, wondering if anyone around him had the same thing in their own test. Please, he thought, for he knew it was completely stupid and impossible; no one, not his best friend, Scott, not Isaac, nor Lydia were reacting badly at their own test. So, of course, Stiles forced his eyes to return to the paper on his desk; only when he did, he noticed the letters were bigger this time; bolder. 'IT'S YOUR TURN, STILES!' "Whoa!" The wide eyed boy flinched back on his chair so far that he didn't even realize he'd managed to make it to the very edge of the seat until he ended up falling in a flailing mess toward the floor. What the fuck!? He wondered; the words that had been printed on the test were then completely printed inside his mind; yet, when his eyes saw the fallen test on the floor beside him, the words he'd previously seen were simply gone. It looked completely normal.
So, what? He was crazy now?
His eyes shifted from one side of the room to the other; amused expressions adorned every single visage that looked in Stiles' direction, and he had to force himself to grin sheepishly as the embarrassment simply became overclouded by the confusion. The voice of the unamused teacher reached his ringing ears as if from a faraway tunnel, but his eyes quickly shifted to look in his direction as he forced his frame to stand up in a wildly quick move. "What?" Stiles asked, frowning.
"I asked if this was your strange way of telling me you were done with your test, Mr. Stilinski." The teacher repeated with a halfway angry expression, looking at the young man with scolding eyes and his hands softly placed on the desk.
Stiles' eyes blinked a couple of times before they finally glanced toward his filled test; they narrowed as if that alone were to make the words he'd seen printed before shining on the brand filled out paper, but there was nothing but the lame Chemistry questions. "Uh… no." Stiles finally replied, lifting his eyes to look at the teacher still on his desk. "I mean, yes." The teacher's eyes pierced him completely, and soon Stiles realized what he'd just admitted to; it made a hand lift and his head shake. "No!" He heard everyone around him chuckling, "God, no, that's not what I meant." He frowned. "I mean, yes, I finished my test, but… that's not why I fell."
He couldn't understand what was happening, yet he simply forced himself to follow the teacher's instructions to hand him his test and exit the classroom. Yet, of course, at the feeling of two sets of eyes proving into his back more prominently than the rest, he looked in Lydia and Scott's direction. "I'll be…" And he motioned towards the door with his thumb.
"Dude, you okay?" Scott wondered, whilst Lydia only frowned on her seat. They were worried, Stiles could see that, and he wasn't surprised of it either. Everyone would just have seen his fall, but his friends would see his expression.
"Yeah." And then he forced himself to move; Stiles took his backpack and his finished test before heading toward the teacher's desk, leaving the paper on it, smiling at him as innocently as he dared to through his confusion, and finally leaving the classroom. His hand gripped onto one of the straps of his backpack almost as if his life depended on it, even as he forced himself to remain, leaning his back against the wall of the outside of the classroom he'd just exited from, to wait for Lydia to exit as well. A long sigh escaped his lips in short frustration. "What the hell is happening?" He wondered in a whisper as his one free hand lifted to allow soft digits to rub against his temple. Because this was not the first weird thing that happened to him in the past few months. Am I actually losing my mind now?
Inside the classroom it didn't take long for Scott and Lydia to decide they needed to go check on Stiles. "I'll go, I'm done my test already." Lydia quickly told him and stood before Scott could even reply; the truth was that she had been done her test ten minutes after the teacher had handed it out, yet she'd waited, as every student was supposed to do. So without further ado, Lydia rose from her seat, all of her things in hand, to give the teacher her filled sheet of paper. "There's only a couple of minutes left of class, can I—"
"Yes, go." The teacher told her before she even finished her words, motioning with his hand toward the classroom door, and making the strawberry blond haired girl smile the smallest of smiles before hurrying to exit the classroom.
She walked out the door and quite accidentally slammed it closed behind her; yet she didn't care, because not even seconds after the loud noise, she noticed her boyfriend leaning against the closest wall of the classroom; flinching as if the echo of the slamming door had broken him from some reverie. Lydia walked toward him. "Stiles?" She called, frowning gently as she attempted to search his eyes for the answer to her next question. "What's going on?"
Stiles had been about to speak before she worded her worries, but they shut him up with the wonder of whether to tell or not; sure, Lydia had been his friend for longer than she'd been his girlfriend, his partner in crime during all the supernatural strangeness that had haunted Beacon Hills. But who was to say that his confessing to having lost his sanity wouldn't make her want to look the other way? "Nothing." Plus: Even in the wizardry world, seeing things isn't a good sign. "I haven't slept very well," he admitted, though it wasn't at all a lie. "I just need loads of naps."
"Come on, Stiles." Lydia's eyes rolled; she'd been Stiles' friend long enough to know when something was wrong; not normal, out of the ordinary wrong. She also had logic on her side; the manner in which he'd fallen… she'd never admit it, but she was looking in his direction when the incident happened, she'd been able to see the look of horror that crossed his features. There was something going on. "You know you can tell me anything, what happened in there?"
Stiles' eyes studied Lydia as she nearly drilled a hole in the middle of his skull with her own, as always, knowing gaze; his lids blinked a couple of moments before his head shook. He looked down and took a breath, and when he decided to allow himself the opportunity to look in Lydia's direction again, he exhaled in a exasperated breath. "Look, I've been—" Just as he was about to break his own mental wall of dread to explain to her what was going on, the loud echo of the bell announcing a finished period tooted against the halls of the school; and just for a moment, Lydia Martin stopped being his focus point as he saw seas of people exiting classrooms. And then he finally looked at Lydia again. "I'll tell you." He expressed with the only kind of tone he felt he could make as of late: angry. "But not here." His hold on his backpack straps tightened considerably. "Let's go to mine, or yours; I don't want anyone to overhear."
Lydia frowned, her eyes studying his as if she truly were to find the answer to her questions solely by looking into his amber hues; but when she found nothing but inexplicable anger, she sighed. "Fine." She said, looking around at the plethora of people walking away toward their own classrooms. Where is Scott?! "I'll see you after school, then." And with no other word she turned around and walked away in the direction of her next class; wondering, second by second, if whatever period of peace they'd gotten after Jennifer Blake's death was finally coming to an end.
Stiles' brow furrowed as he watched his girlfriend walk away from him, yet he couldn't even force himself to move. The anger, the frustration at not being able to understand what was happening in his head nor around him, it was changing him in ways he couldn't understand; and it looked as if he'd hurt Lydia because of it. Which only made him the more angry.
In all truthfulness, the thought of sitting at another class to endure his own mind didn't seem appealing, so with a sigh and a shake of his head in personal disbelief at the manner in which he'd replied to a help-offering Lydia, Stiles turned around, walking in the opposite direction she had done. With only one destination in ming: the parking lot where his blue Jeep awaited him.
He thought; Stiles thought about the past few days from the moment he exited the school, he thought about his friends, his dad, his mother. Everything that he possibly could think of whilst always returning to darkened thoughts of the reality that was his present; deeply, soulfully. Yet, what felt like only seconds later, his head snapped to the side when a tapping sound awakened him from a deadly reverie. It was Lydia, right outside is Jeep's window; he frowned. How long had he been staring at nothing? How had he even gotten inside his jeep? How long had he been sitting in there with a hand extended to set the key in the ignition the way he realized he was doing? "Since we're going in the same direction and my car refused to start up, is it okay if I ride with you?" Lydia asked, making Stiles frown even more.
He blinked, head nodding even as he forced his throat to clear and his hand to finally force the key into place to shift in order to start the ignition. "Of course, come on in." He invited prior to reaching across the passenger seat to open the door for her; using the time in which she walked around the back of the Jeep to sit straight once again and lift both his hands to rub against his face.
It was a motion that wasn't lost for Lydia Martin as she settled herself into the familiar passenger seat in the blue Jeep. "Thanks." She looked in his direction for a moment prior to looking down at her feet, unsure of her boyfriend's mood. Her hands settled on her lap once she'd placed her bag beside her and the seat belt across her chest; she worried for him, for the way he frowned, for the strange look he'd given her when she'd tapped on his glass, from the silence that reigned the usually comfortable environment the moment the engine started and the Jeep started moving backwards. All that time, she worried.
And as she worried, Stiles noticed. He frowned, noticing the silence become heavy with unspoken words once he'd driven away from the school's parking lot; it was such a strange notion that before he even realized what he was doing, his right hand had fallen away from the wheel and toward one of Lydia's own in an attempt to lighten and comfort her mood; lacing their fingers together prior to lifting their hands in his direction so he could place a soft kiss at the back of her hand. "I'm sorry." He simply stated before lowering their hands and looking in her direction for a couple of seconds before paying attention to the road before him once again.
And though Lydia felt comforted shortly, she forced her head to shake in short reassurance. "No." She quickly worded. "No, don't be sorry. You don't have to tell me what's going on if you don't want to." Her grip on his hand tightened shortly, yet her eyes refused to move away from his; she wanted to know, but she didn't stop to think: What if he didn't want him to know?
"I never want to not tell you." He replied as if having read her thoughts; admitting such blindly before a short frustrated sigh escaped his lips once more. How could he do it? "I'm not angry for you asking what's wrong, I don't want to hide this." He nodded, keeping his eyes on the road. "I'm angry because I don't know how to explain it, or what is even happening." He finally said, just before returning the gentle squeeze to Lydia's hand and letting go so he could use both his hands to drive.
"What do you mean you don't know?" Lydia frowned, her head tilting shortly forward without stopping her looks in his direction; and just like that her worry returned. "Is there anything that causes you to get upset like this? Or do you get randomly mad?" She softly questioned, resting her suddenly free hand on top of Stiles' so he could continue driving even as she attempted to comfort him.
His eyes remained on the road, but when he felt her hand on his, Stiles couldn't help but feel slightly calmer. He needed to remind himself to never think Scott crazy for thinking of Allison as his rock, or anchor, ever again, for he suddenly felt as if Lydia were his. Stiles cleared his throat and shook his head shortly. "Both?" It sounded like a question, and yet another sigh escaped his lips before he spoke once again. "Look, at first I thought it was just me being a pessimist thinking I was going to lose you, or something bad was going to happen, but then I got angry for pointless little things, like… someone kicking my chair, or my dad getting home without the box of fries I'd asked him to get me." His head shook again, and he took advantage of the sudden red light to slow the car and look in Lydia's direction. "Then I blank out for small moments at a time, I…" He sighed somewhat loudly again. "I feel as if I were losing my mind."
To his last statement, Lydia quickly shook her head. "You're not losing your mind, Stiles." She solemnly stated seconds prior to start doubting her own utterance. What if he is? She wondered; What if it's the darkness around Stiles' heart that Deaton spoke about? Could she possibly help him through it? Could it possibly be like a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?
It was a reverie that she didn't find herself stuck on for long, because soon after, Stiles was shaking his head, starting the movements of the car once again after a loud honk came from behind them. "Lydia," it sounded almost desperate. "I'm seeing things." He admitted, throwing a glance in her direction for only a second, "Black spots on the walls or in the corner of my room, things written on papers and signs that are definitely nor there; I can't tell if I'm awake or dreaming half of the time." Yet another exasperated breath escaped his lips and his head shook, he couldn't say anymore.
Lydia's concern had spiked through the roof, and she shook her head in the softest of motions as she processed everything he'd told her. It didn't sound good, obviously, it sounded terrifying, and though, for once, she felt glad she wasn't the only one seeing or hearing things, the satisfaction lasted only a few moments before the worry overpowered everything else. Not that she could very much show it. "Have you told Scott?" She asked, even if she already knew the answer before it even came.
"No." He admitted, and Lydia nodded; to say she wasn't surprised would be a lie. He'd told her before telling Scott? She should feel good, right? Why was she suddenly even more worried?
"Look," she started, clearing her throat shortly. "I don't know what's going on, but we'll figure it out." She stated. "All of us, you have to tell Scott, we can all figure it out." Watching Stiles, even as he slowly turned the car onto her street, Lydia pushed her fingers so they could laze with his even if from the back of his hand
Of course, Stiles didn't take long to twist his hand in hers so he could lift them both and press a soft kiss against the back of hers once again. "We will try." He voiced, as he single-handedly slowed his car to a messy stop in front of her house, quite unconvincingly, due to the fact that, for some reason as foreign as the reason for his anger, Stiles couldn't come close to believing there was a solution to his problem the way Lydia seemed to. But for his sake, and mostly hers, he had to believe there was.
Lydia solely nodded; using her free hand to hook in her bag's handle prior to opening the Jeep's door to exit it, yet before getting off she turned to look at Stiles once again. "Look, tell Scott, alright? And call me if you need anything." She requested, watching curiously and worriedly as Stiles' head bobbed in a nod; a motion she mirrored while she tightened her hold on Stiles' hand shortly prior to letting go and climbing down from the car.
Stiles felt guilty and worried the moment the door of his car closed and she saw Lydia starting to walk toward her front door; and as soon as she had started walking away he quickly moved across from the passenger seat again to quickly turn the handle to lower the window and call out in hearable tones. "Lydia!" He watched her turn around, and even though she smiled, Stiles could see the concern edging across her features.
"Yes?" She asked promptly, because Stiles had remained quiet.
He was going to thank her, he was going to tell her that she was right on thinking everything was going to be okay, that they'd all figure it out. He was going to comfort her; but no words could come. Instead, he felt a somewhat forced grin crossing his lips before he heard himself saying, "I'll bring your car over tonight."
Lydia frowned, blinking a couple of times in wonder over the strange silence that had come before those weird words, but all she could do was cross her arms against her chest, forcing herself to smile just like Stiles seemed to. "You don't have to do that." She admitted, wondering why such a dire topic felt wrong at that moment. "I can call a tow truck."
"No, I want to." Stiles simply admitted, nodding his head a few times, making the smile across his lips seem a little more genuine. "I'll take care of it."
Lydia scoffed a halfway amused breath, but nodded. "Okay." She allowed. "Thank you." She watched Stiles' grin turn into that satisfied expression where his lips turned into a little tight smiling line and his eyes shone with some sort of victory even for a few moments, before the window of his Jeep started rising again and the roaring of his engine started and slowly faded away.
The smile on Lydia's lips disappeared as soon as he was gone, and her steps simply led her away from the black gate and toward her front door; she unlocked it and walked inside quite automatically, moving straight up to her bedroom regardless of if she'd called out to her mother that she was home. She sat on her bed, with a seemingly permanent frown against her forehead whilst her mind went in overdrive at attempting to think of things that could be making Stiles feel the way he was.
She couldn't come up with anything, no scientific explanation, no strange disorder other than psychosis that could be making her boyfriend see things. Yet she was also quite aware of the supernatural air in the town; she'd heard murmurs, deadly threats whispered into her ear when no one was there. Could that be linked to Stiles? Could any of this be linked to the most recent suicide of one Beacon Hills High student Jordan Wright? Ugh; if only she could understand her own abilities; if only she could figure out a way to know how to use all of the voices to her advantage.
Unfortunately it wasn't a calculus problem; it was important and life threatening, and it made her nervous. It even made her angry; she wanted to understand herself, her power, her abilities. She needed to; but for the moment she simply couldn't think completely straight. All she could think of was Stiles, and how worried she suddenly was about him.
And she was scared.
To Be Continued.
