Chapter Text
At fifteen years old, Parrish Stilinski-Hale – young, overly proud of his newly emerged spark, and too much in love with a pretty girl – spent over a month researching tricks and spells that would allow him to spend more time with her. His papa was overprotective (let’s capital, bold, underline, and try that again: Overprotective) about the idea of him dating in a way Parrish couldn’t really begin to understand, and even his dad couldn’t pull him out of the compulsive “when hell freezes over” scowl he’d gotten as soon as Parrish had mentioned the senior girl from the lacrosse team who’d asked him to the homecoming dance last fall. At fifteen. As a sophomore. The whole thing had pretty much been the talk of the school.
But then Parrish had come home and his papa had clenched his jaw, tensing up in a way he usually only did when the pack was being threatened, and shut the whole thing down before it started.
“Come on, Derek,” His dad had said, before Parrish stalked out of hearing range. “You know how young I was when I fell for you.”
“And you know how young I was when I fell for Kate.”
Which had fallen from his papa’s lips like a dropped grenade and seemed to wound each of them in equal measure, setting off a week-long cold war of overly polite comments and secretly pining glances that Parrish never wanted to witness again. His dads fought, alright, they didn’t do polite.
Dating was a taboo subject in the house, apparently.
So Parrish had very pointedly not told either of them when he’d started seeing Theresa three months later, and thus the great spark-fueled subterfuge began.
He’d tried little things at first – like the muffling charm to keep papa and the girls from hearing if he talked to or about her on the phone or met her in the woods behind the yard – before he’d stumbled across the spell for the golem and that had been glorious. For an entire week, Parrish had a ready-made duplicate, a clay-and-magic molded stand in to hang around the house when he wanted to sneak out and spend some time with Theresa. He even started taking a pottery class at school to explain the earthy scent that clung to it.
Of course, it had been a bit of a rush job, and Parrish missed some key elements. He hadn’t put all that much thought, for example, into the fact that the duplicate couldn’t mimic his memories. He’d thought that teaching it enough basic facts to make its way around the house would be enough to skate by on for a little while. His family’s names, where important things in the house were. It would only be for a few hours at a time anyway; how much trouble could it cause?
More than he’d realized.
It had taken five days for him to notice his dad’s face going pale and drawn when he looked at him, and he figured he was probably skating on thin ice. Then his papa had started nuzzling more often, like he was trying to scent something foreign on him, and Parrish figured he was caught. What else would his father be sniffing for, after all? Finally, after his papa had pulled him into a compulsive scenting after dinner on the seventh day, he’d had enough.
“Yes,” he’d snapped, pushing himself out of his papa’s clinging grip. “Yes, ok, I have a girlfriend. I know I’m fifteen and you think I’m too young but I’ve been dating her for a month and a half and it’s been great.”
His dad had stared at him, brown eyes glassy with something Parrish couldn’t read, but it definitely didn’t seem like his usual “you’re grounded” look. His papa had just gone back a step, braced a hand on his dad’s hip, and echoed, “girlfriend?” in a tone that suggested pretty clearly that Parrish had blown that secret for no reason. They hadn’t had a clue.
There were tears in his dad’s eyes, then, his breaths coming out too fast. His papa had shifted to stand halfway behind him, arm looping his shoulders and massaging his chest the way he usually did when the pack had narrowly avoided becoming the victim of whatever supernatural threat was intent on invading Beacon Hills that month.
But his dad didn’t usually look this shaken.
Parrish had been stunned right out of his defiant posturing, swallowing thickly and offering: “Yeah, my girlfriend. Theresa? She’s in my chem class, she’s really…” He trailed off though, because neither of his parents really looked up for absorbing more than the barest details right now. His papa leaned forward, scanning Parrish’s face critically, rubbing his stubbled cheek against his husband’s own and murmuring “Could that explain it? Just being girl-stupid?”
His dad had squeezed his eyes shut, lifting a hand to clutch at the one massaging his chest, and shook his head. Then he’d opened his eyes, and said evenly: “Parrish Stilinski-Hale, tell me exactly what you’ve been doing this past week or I swear to god I’ll…” and then he’d faltered, which had worried Parrish almost more than anything. His papa wasn’t really one for creative threats, generally letting an even glare scare whatever guilty confession was on this children’s conscience out of them, but his dad... his dad excelled at wordplay. He had a lightning-fast list of one-liners and creative punishments that had never, in Parrish’s memory, gone on repeat. But now his voice was coming out thin and reedy, his creative faculties failing him, and Parrish had felt so sick with guilt and nerves that he’d found himself ducking his head and explaining all about, Theresa, their secret rendezvouses, and the golem.
And his dad had squeezed his papa’s hand tight enough to fracture something in a human, breathed out a ragged “oh, thank god,” and then gone forward to wrap Parrish in a fierce hug.
And that’s how Parrish had learned the details of his grandmother’s death: her illness, and his dad’s deep-seated fear of contracting it or passing it on. His papa had come to his room that night and explained it, stilted and with few details – that the golem hadn’t been answering questions properly, that it had seemed lost and confused in its own home more than once, that his dad had spent the last several nights praying Parrish was on drugs or possessed (a bitter smirk had touched his papa’s lips at that) because the alternative was too terrible to think about.
And nine years later, and twenty years back, he saw that same drawn expression on his grandfather’s face when he explained how his son had been admitted to the hospital.