Stiles rolled around to the passenger side without comment. He was right. Time to get it over with.
He'd never actually had the chance to truly enjoy the luxurious interior of Jackson's vehicle until he stepped inside now and he had to give it to him, the guy knew how to keep a tight ship.
His silence didn't have much chance of holding with the things he was bursting to announce about the pristine condition of the designer seat covers. Somebody was compensating.
"Don't. Touch."
His hand hovered in the air, reaching of its own accord to admiringly caress the dashboard. Even the dashboard looked tempting, Jesus Christ. So smooth. Smooothy smooth.
He slowly curved his hand up in an arc and scratched his fingers through the sparse hair there with a nervous laugh.
"Hey, your car, your rules. buddy" He forced out awkwardly before he slowly, leaning back on his shoulders for leverage, started to rise his ass from the seat, holding his hands in the air in the universal symbol of good will and innocence. He caught Jackson's eye and gave him a lop-sided cocky grin which spoke volumes about how this journey was going to go if the constipated look he got in return was anything to go by.
Alas, nature claimed another victim as he slipped a little from his over-arched back, leaning too far onto his left and toppling straight over the gearstick into Jackson's lap.
Jackson had a grip on his skull before he even had the chance to spiel a convoluted explanation as to how this was all part of his plan to ease the tension and break down those barriers of cold distance that had prevented a beautiful friendship blossoming between them.
Jackson, for his part, just muttered "Freak." as he shoved Stiles back into a seated position.
He was quite blatantly schooling his blank expression as he ignored Stiles shifting himself back into comfort (read: nesting the seat with his butt) and groping blindly behind him for his seatbelt. With Derek's words still echoing in his ears he reckoned any semblance of safety was imperative now that Jackson had him at the mercy of his brake patterns.
For all he knew this machine was full of James Bond gadgets and Jackson's agreement to do this was solely rooted in an urgent need to safety test his passenger ejector seat. Were seatbelts helpful in that situation? Probably not on the same level as parachutes.
It was all relative as Jackson started up the engine, reversing at a speed unnecessary for traversing a cramped school parking lot. Stiles barely had a moment to attempt to duck from the sight of Allison stalking towards them looking determined before they swung around completely and headed for the open road. He was hard pressed to decide which fate he feared most as he recalled her shirts still strewn across his kitchen table.
"So..." Stiles ventured as he toyed with the recline of his seat. If he was horizontal he might be saved from any sudden projectile through the sunroof. Or Jackson would go for it anyway and a fun little experiment could become a hideous dismemberment.
Nah.
Jackson wouldn't want Stiles gore staining the shampooed carpets.
Jackson unsurprisingly ignored the sophisticated attempt at civil discourse and kept his eyes on the road before him.
"Is this a sort of escort service?" He wriggled his eyebrows at that, not that Jackson would have noticed. "And I don't mean discreet ads in the local paper about the perfect date for that corporate event. Not that you don't have the cheekbones for it." He tried again, eyebrows looking like a caterpillar disco, still no luck. "More of a Victim Support Scheme after the physical trauma kinda thing." He'd meant for that to come out in a lighter tone but as he ducked his head mid sentence his voice seemed to drop of its own accord. He shrugged as he sloped his seat backwards again, the mechanical whirring obnoxiously filling the embarrassing silence.
Annoying noise was decidedly better than no noise at all as Jackson purposefully ignored Stiles' second try at conversation, so he carried on leaning up, down, backwards, forwards, up, down, backwards, for-
Jackson's arm was nauseatingly fast as it struck out behind his back to stop him going any further.
"Don't. Touch." He shot, irritated.
Stiles smirked as he returned the seat to its upright and locked position.
"It speaks."
Jackson huffed as he turned back to the road, squinting his eyes as if his werewolf sights really needed that level of concentration.
"You break anything, I'm taking your college fund Stilinski. Remember that."
Stiles huffed "Nice threat, Lord of the Dicks, but I have wolfsbane bullets and a Sheriff's collection to choose from so I'm pretty sure I can top it."
"How about you shut your mouth, or I shut it for you." He quipped right back, claws extending on the rim of the wheel. Impressive. He was threatening his own leather.
"Why, missing the sound of your own voice there buddy?"
Jackson turned right at the next twist in the road, shifting gear as he sped up along the empty route Stiles had followed the day before. And the day before that. Pretty much every day when he realised this was a path far less frequented by other Beacon High drivers, clearly Jackson appreciated the same solitude during high school rush hour. That or he wanted to feed a perverse pleasure in Stiles' discomfort when they passed the scene of the crime.
"Yeah I'm the one in love with hearing himself speak." Jackson smiled, voice turning cocky, "Did you even know Thing One was leaving, or did it take him loading his suitcase into that piece of crap go-cart for you to quit running your mouth for five minutes?"
Stiles took a moment to process this, watching the dials raise as continued their steady rise in speed.
"Thing One? Why is Scott Thing One?"
Jackson scoffed.
"Missing the point Stilinski"
They were going pretty fast now, speed reaching uncomfortable heights as they headed in the direction of last night's incident. Don't get him wrong, Stiles was all for getting through this experience as quickly and as painlessly as possible, but the emphasis here was on painlessly, and crawling his way out of an upturned douchemobile was not how he wanted this evening to end.
"Point wasn't lost on me Jockstrap, but no sweat man, all forgiveness here, I think we both know you're just bummed there's no tweedledee to your tweedledouche. Danny's a little out of the loop on that front." He eyed his driver carefully, noting he didn't look inclined to lose the speed any time soon. "But hey, I'm free as a bird now if you ever wanna grab some tacos between polishing your steering wheel and licking Derek Hale's assh-."
"Thanks, but I'd rather die in a fire." He cut across him, voice a little rougher than before. Stiles was pretty sure he heard the wheels screech around that last turn.
"Yeah, don't let Derek hear you say that dude." His hands reached the dashboard this time as he grabbed it in reflex.
"Hey, ah, you mind slowing your roll their buddy?" He ventured, voice squeaking ever so slightly.
Jackson smirked as he took the next left, drifting a little and no doubt leaving marks in his wake.
"Are you kidding me right now? Is this about the tweedledouche thing, cus you're being a tweedledumbass now man."
Jackson continued on in silence, that deranged smirk still painstakingly in place as he just sped up more.
They skipped an intersection without so much as a look-left-look-right.
"Stop, idiot! You've proved whatever stupid-ass point you needed to prove so just- shit. Just-" His breathing was off now. He could feel that sense of terror looming in from the darker recesses of his chest as the interior of the car started to blur worse than the road that was still flying past.
He felt sick. He was going to be sick.
He couldn't get any air in, couldn't force any out, he couldn't be sick because he couldn't fucking breath.
He leaned forward. Threw himself back. His hands were shaking and everything was just moving too fucking fast.
"Just-" the words came out as gravelled shudders and the noise followed sounding like a chew toy being twisted.
He felt his ribcage start to curl in on itself getting tighter and tigher as he closed his eyes and tried to punch the air in and out of his lungs through short thudding breaths.
He clung to himself, pushed his torso down onto his knees and tried to knot his body into one solid lump that might tamp down on the ache of hysteria.
He didn't know how long he stayed there. Clutching himself, slowing the panic down. He vaguely registered the world around him slowing to a stop too.
He sucked in deep, stuttering breaths, until they smoothed themselves out. Until he was sitting there quietly for long enough that he built the courage to draw himself up fully and lean back in his chair.
Jackson wasn't looking at him. Didn't say a damn thing as he turned the keys in the ignition and just started off again, eyebrows knit angrily together.
They made it to his house in complete silence without anymore infringements of the highway code. Stiles thought maybe this time Jackson had been freaked out enough to learn a God damn lesson but his silence still had that haughtiness that screamed he was somehow in the right.
"Well, I enjoyed this little escapade onto death row." Stiles announced to the still air. "Good to know I don't have to count on supernatural strangers to die young when I've got you knocking about ready to finish the job."
Stiles was reaching for his backpack, seatbelt loosened, ready to storm his ass out of there and never acknowledge Jackson-fucking-Whittemore again when it happened.
"I never wanted you dead Stiles." He spat into the darkness. "You're a fucking moron. But I don't want your guts on the ground. That's the difference between us."