Chapter 5: The Cruelest Comfort
The silence in the room wasn’t silence at all. It was the hum of the streetlamp outside, the distant groan of plumbing in the walls, the frantic, thudding echo of two heartbeats. Stiles stared up at her, his face a mask of confliction in the ochre light. Her breath was hot on his chin.
“Why did you stop?” Her voice was low, a blade wrapped in velvet.
He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. The reasons were a tangled knot in his throat. Scott. Guilt. This isn't us. You’re hurt. I’m the worst friend in history.
She read the hesitation in his eyes. Something hardened in her face, a glacial shift. The vulnerability from the morning was gone, burned away by a cold, focused fury. In one fluid, startlingly strong motion, she pushed against his chest, leveraging her weight. He was too surprised to resist.
She flipped them over.
The world tilted. He was on his back, the stale pillow muffling his gasp. She was above him, straddling his hips, her knees pinning his sides. Her hair fell around her face like a curtain. The orange light from the window cut across her shoulders, making her borrowed t-shirt glow. Her eyes were shadowed pits, but the set of her jaw was pure, unforgiving defiance.
“You feel sorry for me,” she stated, her voice flat. “That’s why you stopped.”
“Kate, it’s not—”
“Don’t.” She leaned down, her hands planted on either side of his head, caging him. The proximity was electric, overwhelming. “You’re in your head. Thinking about him. Thinking about what this makes you.” Her hips ground down against his, a slow, deliberate roll that made his breath hitch. “I’m not made of glass.”
“I know,” he managed, his hands coming up to rest on her thighs. He could feel the muscle tense beneath his palms.
“Do you?” She stopped moving, holding herself perfectly still above him. The challenge was absolute. “Then make it right.” She dipped her head, her lips brushing the shell of his ear. Her whisper was a rasp, a dare that curled straight down his spine. “Fuck me until I forget his name. Until all I taste is you. Until every single place he touched me belongs to you instead.” She pulled back, her blue eyes locking onto his. The fierce, desperate need in them stole the air from his lungs. “Or get off,” she said, her voice dropping to a cold, clear register. “And let me find someone who will.”
The words were a slap. A sucker-punch to every tangled thread of his loyalty and guilt. The image of her leaving this room, going to someone else—anyone else—with that hollow look in her eyes and that bruise on her wrist, ignited something primal in his gut. It wasn’t just possessiveness. It was a darker, more ferocious protectiveness. If she was going to burn this way, it would be with him. He would be the one to match her fire.
His restraint snapped.
A sound somewhere between a growl and a sigh tore from him. His hands slid from her thighs to her hips, gripping hard. He flipped her again, a swift reversal that left her beneath him, a startled gasp escaping her lips. This wasn't the careful, clumsy boy from the morning. This was something else.
“No one else,” he ground out, the words rough against her neck. “You don’t get to go to anyone else.”
He kissed her. It wasn’t gentle. It was consuming. All teeth and claiming pressure, a battle for dominance she met with equal ferocity. Her nails scored down his back, a sharp, bright pain that anchored him in the moment. The taste of her—faint mint and something inherently Kate—obliterated every other thought. He chased it, deepening the kiss until they were both breathless.
When he finally slid into her, it was with a single, driven motion that made her arch off the bed. A choked cry caught in her throat, her eyes squeezing shut. He stilled, the last vestige of control seizing him. “Did I hurt—”
“Don’t you dare stop,” she gasped, her legs hooking around his waist, pulling him deeper. “Don’t you dare.”
He obeyed. He moved with a rhythm that was nothing like before. It was raw, punctuated by the slap of skin, the creak of the bedsprings, their ragged, synchronized breathing. She matched him thrust for thrust, her heels digging into the small of his back, her fingers twisting in the sheets. Every sound she made was a bolt of lightning in his veins.
“Say it,” he muttered, his forehead pressed against her temple. The room was a blur of shadow and sensation.
“What?” Her voice was frayed at the edges.
“His name. You wanted to forget it.” He drove into her, emphasizing the point. “So forget it.”
A sob mixed with a breathless laugh escaped her. “Scott,” she whispered, the name a ghost on her lips. Then, “Scott.” It was softer. Then again, just a breath, as if testing the shape of it. On the fourth time, it cracked. Her body tightened around his, a wave of tension cresting. “Stiles,” she gasped, the name a broken anchor. “Stiles.”
It was the only permission he needed. The world dissolved into a white-hot point of pressure and release. For a few seconds, there was no past, no best friend, no monstrous secret. There was only this: the sharp scent of sweat, the salt on her skin, the perfect, shuddering harmony of their bodies falling apart together.
Collapse was gradual. A slow sinking back into the messy reality of the dim room. Their breathing echoed, loud in the sudden quiet. He shifted his weight off her, but didn’t go far, one arm slung heavily across her stomach. The slick heat between them was a shared fact.
Minutes bled by, marked only by the slowing hammer of their hearts. The high receded, leaving a sticky, complicated residue in its wake. The guilt flooded back, cold and familiar, seeping into the spaces where the heat had been.
Her hand found his where it lay on her stomach. She laced her fingers through his, a surprisingly tender gesture amidst the wreckage. “Your back is bleeding,” she said quietly, her voice hoarse.
“Worth it,” he mumbled into the pillow.
A faint, real laugh escaped her. It was the first genuine one he’d heard from her in days. It was gone as quickly as it came.
“He’s going to know,” Stiles said to the ceiling. The truth hung there, ugly and unavoidable. “Super-smell, remember? He’ll smell me on you. He’ll smell… this.”
Kate was silent for a long time. He felt her chest rise and fall under his arm. “Let him,” she said finally, her tone devoid of its earlier fire, now simply resigned. “Maybe he should.”
“It’ll destroy him.”
“He destroyed my window. He destroyed my trust.” She turned her head to look at him. Her eyes were clear, exhausted. “He doesn’t get to be the only victim here, Stiles.”
He knew she was right. It didn’t make the knot in his stomach loosen. He was now the living, breathing proof of Scott’s failure. He had become the secret he was supposed to keep.
His phone, discarded on the floor, lit up with a notification. The screen glowed blue in the dark, casting a faint square of light on the carpet. They both stared at it. It was probably Scott. Again.
Kate sat up suddenly, the sheet pooling around her waist. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, her back to him. The bruises on her skin were darker now, stark in the low light.
“Where are you going?” he asked, propping himself up on his elbows.
“Shower,” she said, not looking back. “I need to…” She gestured vaguely, a tremor in her hand. “I need to move.”
She stood, a pale silhouette against the cluttered gloom of his room, and walked out. The bathroom door clicked shut a moment later. The sound of the shower kicking on, the rush of water through the pipes, filled the sudden void she left behind.
Stiles lay back, staring at the Dark Knight poster hanging crookedly above his desk. The Joker’s manic grin seemed to mock him. He’d crossed a line there was no coming back from. He’d chosen her, in the most definitive way possible. He had held her together while she fell apart, and he had fallen apart right alongside her.
The water ran. His phone blinked again, a silent, persistent eye in the dark.
He had no idea what happened next. But the fragile, fractured girl in his shower was his responsibility now. And the broken boy texting him was still his best friend. And the space between those two truths was a minefield, and he was standing right in the middle of it, barefoot.