Paralyzed (teen wolf - stiles stilinski)

suffocated

Stiles was living his worst nightmare.

Trapped inside a body he couldn't move or feel, struggling to breathe and unable to talk, let alone scream.

Since he couldn't shout himself awake, the nightmares got worse, to the point where he couldn't distinguish them from reality. After watching Derek violently rip off Scott's head, he nearly had a heart attack from relief when Scott came in to visit him that same afternoon, not headless at all. He'd smiled at him, rested his hand awkwardly on the top of Stiles' own head, the only part of his body they thought he could feel.

He wasn't sure exactly how much he could feel, though. While anything below his hips was nonexistent, his arms and chest felt muddled, and within the last few days he could feel a throbbing soreness from his broken arm. He kept trying to get his arms to move with the nurses, who helped him to sit up, too, which he never knew could be so difficult. His body just didn't want to work.

The worst part about everything wasn't the nightmares, the needles, the lonely days and awkward evenings silently staring his friends down, or even the possible permanent paralytic state of his body. No, the worst part happened three times a day, sometimes more if his dad or the nurses were feeling generous. Or if he was looking particularly wilted.

"Open your stupid mouth," his dad huffed, trying to force the spoon down his throat. Stiles coughed and spluttered, refusing to eat another spoonful of this dumb applesauce. It tasted horrible, and he wanted to at least do it himself.

Muscles in his arms trembling from effort, Stiles stretched out his hand towards the spoon and blinked twice. Clenching his jaw, his dad dipped the spoon back into the jar, just getting a bit, and placed it into his hand.

Brow furrowing in concentration, Stiles tried to grip the spoon. He really did. But the only thing he felt he could compare his weak hands to was when in the past, he'd used to wake up in the wee hours of the morning and was unable to squeeze them hard. This was just ten times worse. Before he had the chance to completely wrap his fingers around the piece of metal which, he was amazed to discover, felt cold against his numb skin, it slipped between them and clattered to the floor. His hand flopped uselessly back onto the bed.

With a sigh, his dad stooped over and picked it up from the ground.

"I'm..." He rubbed his eyes and placed the jar and spoon onto Stiles' bedside table. After days of trying to hide his obvious anxiety over Stiles' condition, the cracks were starting to show. "I'm going to go get some paper towels to clean this up."

As his father's footsteps left the room, Stiles squeezed his eyes closed, the only muscles he felt he had any true control over. Before all this, he had been causing his dad stress by running around too much, being too energetic and wild. Now that he had finally been forced to a halt, he was causing his dad more stress than ever before.

Now he was trapped here, unable to ease his father's stress. Let alone his own.

How much longer would this continue, he wondered, before he lost his mind? And how did he know he hadn't lost it already?

***

Later that afternoon, Stiles was graced by the presence of his greatest and oldest friend. The one who had landed him in the hospital with a broken neck and thrown his father into so many hospital bills he wasn't sure he could cover Stiles' entire stay. Melissa had said she had worked it out with some higher-ups, but Stiles still worried as he lay there, unable to move a muscle or utter a word in defense of his father's bank account.

"Hey, man," he sighed as he closed the door, letting his bag drop to the floor. As far as Stiles could see, he looked as exhausted as Stiles felt. Dark circles had sprouted up beneath his eyes and his moves were sluggish.