#practical magic-ish

“You’d leave me?” Somehow Scott manages to look like a sad puppy, even with what must be about half a slice of pizza in his mouth.

“You’d go with me, duh,” because no one, not even a school for magic, could separate Stiles from Scott. Duh.

“Cool,” Scott says with a shrug, cramming the rest of the slice in his mouth.

They’ve spent all day eating junk food and binging the first four Harry Potter movies because the fifth one comes out next week and Scott’s mom got them tickets to see the first showing - at midnight! She’s going with them but Melissa is cool, for a mom. And she promised she wouldn’t sit with them. So, it’s still cool. 

Stiles is worried though. He read the books. He knows what’s coming next. 

Thestrals. The creature that can only be seen by someone who’s witnessed death. The first time Harry comes across them, he thinks the carriages are horse-less or pulled by invisible horses. But after the end of the tournament in book four, after Harry watches Voldemort kill Cedric, when the carriages pull up to the train station, he sees thestrals for the first time. 

All Stiles can think about is that if thestrals were real, he’d be able to see them, too, now. 

He had seen death in stages. Her laughter had been the first to die - replaced by confusion. Then her confidence, and her sense of self, disorientation had been quick to follow. Her kindness snatched away by cruelty. He had heard the death of motherhood from where he’d been hiding from her in the hall closet and he’d seen it with his own eyes when she’d dragged him out by his hair, called him a monster and thrown him down the stairs. His bruises had healed. She had not. 

His mom, his real mom, had never really come back after that, replaced by an illness that was bit by bit decaying everything she was.

The day his mom had taken her last breath was the first day that Stiles himself had taken a full breath in months. He’d just been waiting, sitting in hard plastic chairs in the hallway for months, too afraid of the violence in her hands to get close enough to her bed to say goodbye, waiting for her body to die. He couldn’t mourn his mother until the monster living inside her skin had finally let go.

So, yeah. He’d be able to see a thestral now. Not that they’re real. Not that witches or magic are real. But, if they were…

If they were, maybe they could fix his dad, remind him that Stiles is still here, still alive, still worth living for. Worth being sober for. That Stiles needs him. And not just for food and a roof over his head but also to talk trash with during Mets games, to hug after a rough day, to just be alive with.

But his dad can’t seem to live in a world without his mom. When his dad had gone up to his room during the funeral reception and not come back down, Melissa had hugged Stiles close, told him that grief was love with nowhere to go. That losing someone you loved sometimes made people forget to keep being part of the living. That his dad just needed time.

But that was six months ago and the only thing that had changed was that now dad stumbled up the stairs to his room stinking of whiskey instead of walking up them quietly after Stiles had gone to bed.

Why would anyone want to love someone else that much? So much that they gave up on the things that made life worth living? So much that they couldn’t stand to keep living, not even for the people still alive?

“That’s it,” Stiles declares, rolling off the couch from where he’s been lying upside down with his head hanging off.  

“Wha…?” Scott asks barely avoiding getting kicked in the head as Stiles tumbles off the couch.

Whoa, headrush. 

Stiles gives himself a light shake to unscramble his brains, “I’m going to do a magic spell.”

“Cool.” Scott jumps up, brushing unidentifiable crumbs off his T-shirt and onto the floor that Stiles vacuumed earlier. Heathen. But at least he’s on board.

After dragging Scott into the kitchen, Stiles digs around in the cabinets until he finds the bowl his mom always made chocolate chip cookies in. It was her mother’s before her and Stiles had never had anything from this bowl that wasn’t perfection. He’s hoping that means his spell will work as well. 

Opening the cabinet that houses the spice rack, he begins to cycle through them, no, no, no, maybe...

“What’s the spell for?” Scott asks as he watches Stiles pulling out various jars and giving them a sniff.

“I don’t want to fall in love,” Stiles tells him, not missing the way Scott bites his lip. Whenever Scott bites his lip like that, Stiles can guarantee he won’t like whatever Scott has to say. “What is it, dude?”

“Well, it’s just,” he lightly kicks the base of the cabinet he’s standing in front of, “remember in Aladdin? The Genie said there were.” He kind of whines it and Stiles has to stifle a laugh because oh Scott, already so in love with love. He’ll find out one day, too. “Like,” he starts counting off on his fingers, “no wishing for more wishes, you can’t bring anyone back from the dead and you can’t make anyone fall in love with you.”

“The point is for them not to fall in love with me,” Stiles reminds him, shifting the little jars around pensively.

“I just mean–if you can't make them love you, you probably can’t make them not love you either.” Scott shrugs.

He’s got a point. “Okay okay. I’ll just make them impossible. Cool?”

After a moment of thought, Scott nods, “Cool.”

Read the rest of Lift My Heart to Your Ear on Ao3

Pre Stiles/Derek, Rated G, Practical Magic-type anti-love spell fic