today i saw the whole world, teen wolf

𝟎𝟑𝟔 home is where the heart is.

She closes her eyes, composing herself as best she could before wiping her hands against the harsh denim of her jeans. The quick drag against the material throbs against her raw skin, but she fights the pain until the blood couldn't be traced. Feeling as controlled as she could, she finally reaches for the door handle.

But it opens before she could touch the cold metal of the handle.

Stiles swings open the door, stopping it abruptly with his hand pressed to the wood before it could hit the wall beside them. His puzzled brows furrow down on the girl who's hand still lingers where the handle would be. Her drying mouth parts, hanging open as her wide gaze slowly travels up his chest, and to his enchanting eyes.

There was a pause of movement, of breathing, of time, and suddenly they were the only two in the room.

His fingers glide up her cheek, brushing the stray hairs away from her puffed eyes. A stab in his heart once he understood she had been crying. His nose flared slightly as if he might cry too just at the sight of her. His hand rests against her cheek, thumb brushing her skin.

She melted into his hold, closing her eyes for the first time in what feels like forever. Her neck crooked into his hand, giving him a view of her damaged skin. She could feel it, his worrisome stare as he cautiously glances down her body. Her eyes flicker open, a clean hand finding his, she pushes out of his hold while ignoring the way his mouth parts into a perfect circle, or how his forehead wrinkled with the weight of worry.

It was coming together, his own personal theory of her. She didn't answer Lydia's calls, nor his texts, and here she was, drenched in caky blood and eyes puffed like fresh dough.

His concentration never leaves her neck as she looks past him, glancing across the room. "Lydia?" she said breathlessly, like she had been punched in the gut. Her eyes move to Deaton, questioning his reason for being in the room as well.

She wondered if Lydia had discovered another body like last time, and maybe that's why Deaton followed Stiles.

"Paxton," Lydia smiled, though the expression only lasts a second before souring. Her concern is carefully hidden behind a false smile as her uncomfortably widened eyes trails to the parts of Paxton that she could notice behind Stiles' frame. Paxton's bloodied shoelaces, the matted hair over her shoulder that's dipped in a dried maroon substance, similar to her shoelaces.

Stiles stares down to the girl in front of him who seems to be unaware of what she looks like. It's as if she were tied to a string and plunged into a vat of red wax like a candle would be. He stood frozen, lost in her face, or more, her throat.

"Your— your neck," he mumbled out, sharing her same breathlessness. His hand pulls from her face, a crooked finger pointing softly to the red markings along her neck that seems to outline what looks to be a hand, or what will be in a few hours once the bruise settles.

Her brows pull together, twitching with a wave of sadness and pain. She reaches the tips of her fingers out for the raw skin, where a necklace would lay against her collarbone, brushing so delicately that bumps prick her arms with a chill. Out of control of herself, her body squirms with the memory of being choked by someone she could never be stronger than.

Suddenly she and Stiles were no longer the only ones in the room, and the dreamy bubble spread its opaqueness around the others. Everyone's attention falls onto her like a spotlight, blinding her with its beaming light. Studying her reddening neck, and the blood staining her clothes. Staring at what she had refused to see for herself. It felt judgmental, but she knows it's not that way. It's concern and wonder, but most of all, terror.