Archive of Our Own ^beta

It happens on a Wednesday. Just an ordinary Wednesday. Not even a full moon Wednesday. And from what he can remember of the movie (both the Jodie Foster and the Lindsay Lohan versions), shit like this is supposed to happen on a Friday. So this is definitely a wacky turn of events all around.

He knows something is up when he wakes, not in his own room or bed, but in Stiles’. John lifts up the bed covers. Yep. It’s definitely his son’s body he’s in. He recognizes the sleep pants and t-shirt Stiles had put on last night before going to bed. And the impressive wood tenting his pajamas and sheets? John knows that belongs to a seventeen year old’s body and not his fifty year old way past puberty one.

He heaves a sigh then gives himself a moment (impressive wood, remember?) before getting out of bed and padding down the hall to his own bedroom, hoping like hell he’ll find his body – with Stiles in it - tucked safely there.

Sure enough, John’s body is sitting up in his bed, fingers scratching at his chest, his face looking sleepy and confused.

John waggles a finger at himself, er, Stiles, er, the Stiles in his body – damn, this is already confusing – and says gruffly, “Fix this.”

And, really, does his face always make that kind of vacant, stupid-looking expression when confronted with something like father-son body swapping? He hopes it’s just the result of Stiles being in there because he kind of looks ridiculous.

John watches his eyes grow wide. “I’ll call Deaton,” Stiles-in-his-body says, throwing back the bed covers and swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He sees the wince cross his face and knows his knee is acting up.

John pinches the bridge of Stiles’ nose.

Yeah. Today is definitely going to be one of those days.

Stiles grabs his cell phone from his bedroom and hits the contact for Deaton’s home number, hoping like hell the vet-slash-druid emissary will pick up. Because this was Emergency with a capital E, italicized, and bolded. In fact, Stiles is going to throw in some underlining and an exclamation mark just for good measure.

Waking up in his dad’s body was a bit of shock and not how Stiles planned for his day to go. It was especially weird seeing his own eyes narrowed and his own finger waggling at him, his mouth forming words, telling him to fix this, like it’s somehow Stiles’ fault they ended up in each other’s bodies.

He gets where his dad is coming from. He totally does. It’s not like Stiles is happy about this whole freaky body swap thingy. It isn’t even Friday, for fuck’s sakes. It’s Wednesday. And not even a full moon Wednesday. That’s just wacky. Wacky Wednesday, he thinks. Ha!

He’s relieved to hear Deaton’s voice answering with a sleepy ‘hello’ on the other end.

“We got a problem,” he says.

Stiles thinks the very loud sigh Deaton gives in response is really rather rude.

While Stiles-in-his-body (it’s the name he’s going to use until they get their bodies back because John needs to impose some kind of order on this new crazy) talks to Deaton, John takes the opportunity to use the bathroom, emptying Stiles’ bladder and showering quickly. Then he sifts through Stiles’ drawers and closet for something to wear and sighs.

He really needs to have a talk with his son about the ridiculous amount of plaid in his wardrobe.

John plucks out a t-shirt with the least offensive words on it, a pair of well-worn jeans, and a plaid shirt in tones of soft blue.

Then he heads downstairs to the kitchen to see if Stiles has found out anything from Deaton that would help them get back into their own bodies. Now, there’s something he never thought he’d have to think about.

“Deaton said it’s the work of a Mischievous Faerie,” Stiles tells his dad, adding emphasis on the first letters so his dad knows they’re dealing with serious capital M and capital F here. “Apparently the faerie gets off on creating mischief – hence the name – so Deaton said the best thing for us is to just play along.”

“Play along?” Stiles!dad asks with a pinched expression and Stiles wonders if his face usually makes that kind of constipated grimace when he’s trying to suppress exasperation.

“Yeah. You play me, I play you, until the spell wears off,” Stiles clarifies. When he gets his body back, he’s definitely going to have Scott do a check of his facial expressions because ‘constipated’ is not a good look on him. “Deaton says if we act out of character, the faerie’s magic only gets stronger and the spell lasts longer.”

His dad sighs. Stiles can hear the lilt of long-suffering in that puff of breath. “Best case scenario?”

“Twenty-four hours,” Stiles replies.

“Worst case scenario?”

“Until the next full moon.”

His dad rotates Stiles’ hand. “Which is…?”

“This Friday,” Stiles tells him. And, really, shouldn’t his dad have memorized the lunar cycle by now, what will all the werewolves and supernatural crazies who fall prey to the phases of the moon? He’s going to print out and laminate a copy for his dad for his next birthday.

John puffs out another sigh. So, turns out Friday figures into this freaky mess after all, he thinks wryly.

Okay. He can do this. He can be Stiles for a day. His son’s life can’t be that complicated. It’s definitely going to be harder on Stiles to play the sheriff’s role. John will have to give Stiles some basic pointers to get through the day. And Stiles will have to give John his class schedule so he isn’t wandering aimlessly around the high school all day. But it’s doable. This is a thing they can do, he decides.

Stiles-in-his-body is giving him a look, his nose scrunched up, his eyes half-squinting.

“What?” John says.

“You gonna do something with my hair before going out?” Stiles-in-his-body asks, twirling John’s finger at his own head.

“What’s wrong with it?” After he had showered, John had dried Stiles’ hair with a towel then had smoothed it down with hands. It looks perfectly fine, he thinks.

It’s Stiles that heaves a sigh this time. “It needs gel,” he tells John with a roll of his eyes and John can hear the ‘duh’ in his own tone. Before John can even squawk a protest, Stiles-in-his-body is leading him back upstairs to the bathroom, squeezing a liberal amount of gel onto his fingers and raking them through the front Stiles’ hair, working the gel through to the ends so that his bangs are sticking up in that boy band style his son seems to favor.

John’s not gonna lie. It’s weird as hell having your own self fix hair that’s on your head that belongs to someone else. Stiles-in-his-body looks him over and seems satisfied with the result.

“Anything else I should know?” John asks in case the need for hair gel isn’t the only piece of information vital to playing the role of Stiles. John was once a boy scout. He likes to be prepared.

Stiles-in-his-body considers for a moment. Then, “Nope,” he says.

Okay. So now it’s John’s turn to get Stiles ready to be the sheriff for a day.

If Stiles!dad tells him one more time to ‘keep my gun holstered, do not draw it under any circumstance’ Stiles thinks he’s gonna have to knock his dad’s forehead repeatedly against the wall. Instead, he pinches the bridge of his dad’s nose, thinking rather dryly that he’s already picking up the usual signs his dad uses to communicate exasperation.

“I know, Dad,” he says for the tenth time.

“And don’t go out on any serious calls,” his dad instructs further and Stiles wants to laugh because he now knows what he sounds like when trying to give orders. “Tell them you’ve got paperwork to catch up on and send another deputy. Got it?”

“Yes,” Stiles tells him.

His dad cocks one of Stiles’ eyebrows.

“Yes.”

Stiles isn’t going to lie, he gets a weird sort of satisfaction out of pushing his own body out the door to go to school. He stands in the driveway and watches his dad get into the Jeep.

“Be careful with my Jeep!” he yells as his dad turns the engine over.

Stiles!dad grins at him (yeah, apparently Stiles just has one of those faces that easily communicates ‘shit-disturber’) then puts the Jeep in reverse and backs out of the driveway.

Stiles reaches up and rubs fingers into his dad’s temples, already feeling a headache coming on.

John sticks to the plan they agreed on – to play Stiles without calling too much attention to the fact that he’s not actually his seventeen year old son by attending Stiles’ classes and doing general Stiles-like things. When Scott pops up at Stiles’ locker, John gives his son’s best friend a friendly nod. He says nothing about the body swapping, figuring the day will go a whole lot smoother (and the spell will be broken faster) if this particular tidbit of information is kept to just Deaton, Stiles and John.

He’s relieved to find that the morning goes pretty smoothly. That is, until John sits down in Stiles’ history class and the teacher begins handing out booklets.

When he had asked Stiles that morning if there was anything he should know, he thinks having a history test should have been the first thing out of his son’s mouth. John muddles through the test the best he can, hoping to pull off at least a C. Stiles is not going to be happy when John grounds him for the below average grade but, really, the kid should have mentioned the damn test.

Stiles is two hours into his dad’s day – pretty much wasting time organizing his dad’s desk and pretending to do paperwork- when Marcie from dispatch comes into the office and asks him to respond to a call.

Which is the reason Stiles is now standing in the Granger’s front yard with Elsie Granger’s granddaughter, looking up at a tree where a small black kitten is perched on a branch.

“What’s your name?” Stiles asks the kid.

“Millie.”

“Okay, Millie,” he says. “I really think kitty will come down on his own.”

“You need to climb up and get him,” Millie insists.

Stiles gives the kid an assessing look. “Shouldn’t you be in school?” he asks.

“I’m three,” Millie responds and Stiles does not miss the implied ‘boy, is this guy ever dumb’ tone.

He returns his gaze to the black ball of fluff in the tree and weighs his options, strongly favoring the one that involves waiting for the cat to come down on its own. Little Miss Articulate crosses her arms then glances pointedly at the tree then back at Stiles.

Stiles huffs out a sigh and shrugs out of his dad’s jacket. He plants a boot on the trunk and reaches up to grab the lowest branch, then pulls his dad’s body up to settle in the Y of the tree, parallel to the branch where the kitten is perched. He feels beads of sweat on his dad’s forehead and makes a mental note to buy his dad a membership at the local gym for Christmas.

The kitten casts a wary gaze at Stiles. “Here kitty, kitty,” he calls then rolls his eyes. Because, really?

The kitten lets out a pitiful meow then edges back on the branch, away from Stiles. He reaches out a hand and makes a grab for the kitten. The thing hisses and swipes a paw at his dad’s hand, which Stiles quickly draws back to avoid getting scratched. Apparently not satisfied with being unable to maim him, the vicious creature leaps – with claws out - at his dad’s face. Stiles instinctively puts his dad’s hands up, trying to shield himself. This causes his dad’s body to jar and the utility belt to somehow catch on a branch. He loses his footing as his boots slip and ends up pitching forward out of the tree.

He lands on the ground – hard – the holstered sidearm jabbing into his side. He groans and gently rolls onto his dad’s back. He peeks open one eye and catches sight of Millie beating a retreat into the house, the evil black ball of fluff clutched to her chest.

How is this his life? Stiles thinks. Wait, no. How is this his dad’s life?

He lay on the ground for a full five minutes, trying to regain the breath that had been knocked out of him, mentally assessing whether he might have broken any of his dad’s bones. Which would just be the icing on the clusterfuck cake of his life.

Nope. Nothing broken, thank God. But his ribs feel sore and Stiles may have sprained his dad’s left pinky finger.

He considers radioing dispatch for help, pleading a pathetic “officer down” but he doesn’t think any of the deputies will see the humor in it. Plus his dad would probably kill him so Stiles mans up and gets to his feet. Eventually.

He can feel the death stare of the demon masquerading as a kitten on him as he gets into the patrol car.

Freaking cats.

At lunch, John piles a tray with a dripping-with-grease cheeseburger, fries smothered in gravy, two slices of pie and a can of Coke. Scott stares at his tray and lifts a judgmental eyebrow, which John blatantly ignores. He’s stuck in his seventeen year old son’s body and he’ll damn well eat what he wants.

When he returns to the station, Deputy Stevens takes one look at Stiles, his dad’s face and neck full of scratches, and raises a questioning eyebrow.

“What happened to you?” the deputy asks.

“Cat,” Stiles squeaks.

The deputy’s eyebrows shoot up almost past his hairline.

Inside his dad’s office, now contemplating lunch, Stiles decides that what he really needs is a bacon cheeseburger, a large order of curly fries and a big ass Coke to dull the migraine that has taken up residence in his dad’s head. But this is his dad’s body so he orders a salad with grilled chicken.

He sighs. Being his dad really freaking sucks.

During Stiles’ afternoon free period, he finds himself being accosted by the Hale girl – Cara? Corey? Cora – the one nobody knew didn’t die in the fire. It’s all together confusing, as far as John is concerned.

She fixes John with a look then lifts an eyebrow. He’s pretty sure eyebrow-raising is a patented Hale thing.

“What’s up with you?” she asks.

John shrugs Stiles’ shoulders. “Nothing,” he says. Aside from waking up in his son’s body this morning, John is just peachy.

“You seem…different today,” she accuses and leans in to – yep – sniff him.

John shuffles back a step, his defensive cop instincts clicking in. What? Cora Hale is an intimidating young woman. “Just me,” he says in Stiles’ cheerful voice. “Stiles. Nothing different here.”

Cora narrows her eyes at him. “Then what?” She waves a hand at John. “What’s the look on your face?”

“What look?”

“The kind of look that makes me wanna punch you,” she tells him.

Okay. So John really needs to have a conversation with Stiles about the kind of girls he hangs around with. He mentally shrugs. Who knows? Maybe this kind of talk is what passes for flirting these days.

He lets Cora follow him to the library, even if he thinks it might be sending the wrong message. Because John is still pissed off about having to answer questions on historical events his own high school training and life experiences hadn’t properly prepared him for.

“Dude,” Stiles says, going for maximum put-upon while gesturing vaguely at the papers on his dad’s desk, “Can’t someone else do it?”

An unreadable look passes over the deputy’s face before he says, “She asked for you personally, sir.”

And why does Stiles get the impression there’s something the deputy isn’t telling him?

Stiles waits until he’s in his dad’s patrol car before he looks up the address to the Greenberg residence on his cell phone. What? It’s not like he’s friends with Greenberg. He’s never been to the kid’s house. And Beacon Hills is small but it’s not small enough that Stiles knows where everyone lives.

He is met at the door by a woman in her mid-forties, who is wearing a housecoat that has clearly seen better days, her hair rolled up in old-style curlers.

So this is Greenberg’s mom. Huh.

“Sheriff, thank goodness you’re here,” Mrs. Greenberg expresses, opening the door wider and gesturing for him to step inside.

Stiles counts four, maybe five, cats milling about in the background and thinks Greenberg’s mom is maybe just one feline short of being a crazy cat lady.

And, really, what is with all the cats today?

“It’s about my boy,” Mrs. Greenberg is saying, shooing away the cats that started winding menacingly around his dad’s calves. “I found something in his room,” she says, giving Stiles a look. The way one eye is bigger than the other and seems to twitch erratically does nothing to disconfirm the ‘crazy’ part of his cat lady suspicion. “I think he might be doing drugs,” she whispers.

Stiles raises one of his dad’s eyebrows at this. If Greenberg is doing drugs, Stiles isn’t going to pass judgment. Because Mrs. Greenberg’s eye tic is getting progressively more erratic and one of the cats is now humping his dad’s boot.

Greenberg’s mom grabs Stiles by the jacket sleeve and leads him to a room down the hall – her son’s bedroom. There’s a shoebox on the bed. Mrs. Greenberg waves a hand at it. When Stiles makes no move, she gives him a little push toward it.

Stiles lifts the cover warily – okay, so maybe he’s a little afraid something is going to jump out at him – and peers with one eye closed into the box. There’s a clear plastic bag in there holding an ounce or two’s worth of a white substance that could be cocaine or could be medicated foot powder. Hell if Stiles knows. He missed the unit on drugs in health class because he was sick with the flu and it wasn’t like his dad had let him see the fruits of any drug bust the sheriff’s office ever made.

Mrs. Greenberg is looking at him expectantly. So, Stiles opens the bag, licks his dad’s right pinkie finger and dips it into the powder. He touches the pinkie to the tip of his dad’s tongue to taste like he’s seen cops do in the movies, hoping to hell the powder is not Greenberg’s secret stash for curing athlete’s foot.

The taste is sweet not bitter. Stiles is pretty sure it’s icing sugar. He spares a moment to wonder why Greenberg would have a small bag of icing sugar tucked away in a shoebox under his bed – because weird, okay? - when he suddenly feels a hand slide over his dad’s butt cheek, fingers boldly squeezing through the uniform pants.

Stiles yelps. He’s not even gonna lie and say it’s a manly yelp.

“Not drugs,” he tells Mrs. Greenberg, his voice pitched to an octave he’s sure his dad would be embarrassed by.

Greenberg’s mom waggles her eyebrows and gives a toothy grin. Well, it would be toothy if two of her top teeth weren’t missing.

Stiles tosses the bag back into the shoebox then cuts a wide path around Greenberg’s mom, intent on making an escape. He fast-walks out of Greenberg’s bedroom and scurries toward the front door, deftly dodging cats that block his path. He flees the house and doesn’t look back, not even when he’s behind the wheel and driving away in the safety of the patrol car.

John had never fully appreciated his son’s ramblings about his crazy economics teacher-slash-lacrosse coach.

That is, until now.

He knows he’s gawking. But, to be honest, John can’t look away. He is fascinated (and maybe a little bit frightened) by the unique brand of crazy that is Bobby Finstock. And that’s counting the number of times he’s had to deal with Stella Greenberg.

Huh. Now there’s a match up John hadn’t considered before.

Finstock is ranting about market theory and the principle of supply and demand, shouting at students randomly and demanding answers to questions that make sense only in the teacher’s mind. The girl currently under interrogation, who sits behind Stiles, starts to cry and Finstock moves onto the next victim. And so it continues until five of the girls and two of the boys in the class are holding back tears and stifling sniffles. John suddenly understands why Stiles wrote an entire essay on the history of male circumcision for that economics test last year.

And if he thinks economics with Finstock is some kind of freak show, lacrosse practice is a whole other nightmare.

John tries to get out of practice but Scott, bless his little werewolf heart, manages to drag Stiles along with him. Stiles isn’t kidding when he says it’s hard to resist Scott’s puppy dog eyes not to mention near impossible to resist the kid’s werewolf strength, especially when Scott is feeling rather insistent.

John is contemplating actually committing suicide to get out of these aptly named ‘suicide runs’ Finstock is making them do when Stiles’ gangly limbs fail him, causing John to trip and then face plant into the dirt.

“Stilinski!” Coach yells, looming over him. “What the hell’s wrong with you? You’re even more clumsy than usual!”

When John gets his body back, he is going to arrange it so that Finstock gets unexpectedly arrested and strip-searched, though something tells him the man would probably enjoy that. He does, however, vow to show more sympathy when Stiles goes into his next tirade about the insanity of his economics-touting lacrosse coach.

Stiles drives away from the Greenberg residence, feeling rather traumatized. Even though what happened technically happened to his dad’s body, Stiles still feels like the victim, still feels violated. He hasn’t felt this violated since that weird shape-shifting creature had sort of ‘fondled’ him (was it fondling when something doesn’t have hands? he wonders) right before Derek—

Oh crap.

Derek.

He’d totally forgotten about Derek.

John quickly makes his escape after lacrosse practice, dodging Scott’s invite to join him and Isaac for some video game battle at the McCall house. All John wants to do is put the day behind him, go home, burrow into his own bed, and sleep until he gets his own body back.

He’s unlocking the Jeep when hands suddenly grip his hips, deftly spin him around then settle on his ass, pulling him forward. Before John has a chance to even register what is going on, a pair of lips – surprising soft – assault his, well-groomed scruff gently rasping across his jaw.

John can’t help himself. He makes a noise that sounds like a strangled cat while his arms flap about.

Huh. Apparently Stiles’ body is naturally prone to flailing.

Also, in retrospect, he now thinks, the history test should have been Number Two on the list of things Stiles should have told him. Being on tongue-tangling and spit-swapping basis with Derek Hale should have been Number One.

John extracts himself from the kissing werewolf and fixes Hale with the best “I’m the Sheriff’ look he can manage with Stiles’ face.

“Son, you had better have a damn good explanation for why you’re molesting a minor in the high school parking lot.”

Hale looks at him like a deer (okay, wolf would be more accurate) in headlights and opens his mouth to say something. He’s saved, however, by his phone buzzing and John watches Hale pluck it from his jeans pocket, his eyes widening comically as he reads the text, which John is 100% certain is his son informing the werewolf of the crazy body swap thingy (Stiles’ word, of course) that has gone down.

“Fuck,” Hale expresses quietly.

“Fuck indeed,” John returns sympathetically.

It’s a toss up as to which one of them is more mortified at the moment, but John is willing to put the bet on Hale.

Hale punches a button on his cell phone and lifts the phone to his ear. He moves a slight distance away, probably to gain some measure of privacy, but keeps a wary eye on John.

John can’t say he blames the man one bit.

Stiles had pulled the patrol car off onto the shoulder to text Derek (safety first, right?) and is now sitting, waiting for a response. The call comes almost immediately.

“What the hell, Stiles,” Derek hisses when he answers.

“Hey, Derek,” Stiles says in his dad’s voice, trying to pretend this isn’t one of the most awkward conversations he’s had.

“I just kissed your dad,” Derek says, sounding somewhere around an eight on the freak out scale. “Well, I kissed you but then I found out from your text just now that it’s really your dad.”

Derek’s tone sounds a little judgy, frankly, which makes Stiles bristle. “You think this body swap is all picnics and sunshine for me?” he returns moodily. “Greenberg’s mom grabbed my dad’s ass! Groped his glutes, Derek. You don’t think that wasn’t a bit traumatizing? Plus I got scratched to hell by a demon cat and fell out of a freaking tree!”

There’s a full beat’s silence on the other end then, “I kissed your dad, Stiles. You could’ve given me a little advance warning on the body swap thing.”

He knows Derek’s right. Stiles pictures the werewolf looking all mopey and mortified and the irritation melts right off of him. Derek is adorable when he looks like that. “Look, I’m sorry, okay?” Stiles tells him. “I should have given you the heads up earlier. I’ve just been, you know, busy trying to be my dad and all. Turns out it’s not that easy being him.”

Derek makes a noise on the other end, which Stiles is reasonably sure is Derek accepting his apology.

“By the way,” Stiles says. “How’s my hair look?”

“What?” Derek replies. Stiles chooses to ignore the incredulity in the tone.

“My hair,” Stiles says. “Had to style it for my dad so I wouldn’t look like a total dork. He still rockin’ it or…?”

“Uh…it’s cute?” Derek says vaguely.

Stiles detects a note of trauma still lingering in the werewolf’s voice. He wants to say something sweet and reassuring but thinks it probably won’t go over as well if Derek hears it in his dad’s voice, so Stiles offers a “Talk to you later?” instead.

Derek gives a dull “yeah” in return and Stiles knows he’s going to have to do something big to make it up to Derek when he gets his body back.

Derek Hale is sitting on the curb, phone clutched in his hand, looking like he’s teetering on the edge of hyperventilating.

“Just put your head between your knees and breathe, son,” John tells Hale dryly.

Hale looks up at him with half a glare.

Okay, so John maybe knows where Stiles gets his propensity for sarcasm.

“Greenberg’s mom grabbed your ass,” Hale tells him.

John cringes. He gets that Hale is probably in shock due to the circumstances so he’ll forgive the spitefulness in the man’s tone. But now John visualizes Stella Greenberg groping his butt with Stiles in his body and it’s gonna take a lot to wipe that image out of both their minds.

He swings by Derek’s loft after his dad’s shift.

Derek slides the door open but casts a wary glance at the man who looks like the sheriff.

“Stiles?” he queries, one eyebrow characteristically cocked.

Stiles holds out the little tub of midnight cookies and cream Haagen Dazs, Derek’s favorite.

Derek waves him in. Stiles can’t help staring at Derek’s very fine ass, clad in a pair of track pants that hug his cheeks nicely. He’s got a tank top on, too, which accentuates the muscles in his back, shoulders and chest and do wonderful things for his biceps.

“You’re ogling me with your dad’s eyes,” Derek says grumpily, arms now crossed against his chest. “Please stop. I’m gonna have nightmares.”

Stiles wants to do more than just ogle Derek. And wow. Wouldn’t you know? His dad’s body actually reacts to Stiles’ lustful thoughts. This is…this is awkward.

“Okay,” Stiles says, thrusting the tub of ice cream at Derek. “Gotta go. Enjoy the midnight cookies and cream. Hopefully I’ll be back in my own body tomorrow so I can jump you.”

Derek’s mouth falls open. Stiles isn’t going to lie, it’s a sight that comprises most of his fantasies.

He backs out of the loft, slides the door shut, and hightails it back out to the patrol car before his dad’s body has a chance to do something really embarrassing that neither he nor Derek will be able to recover from.

John blinks up at the ceiling. He’s spread out on Stiles’ bed, using every ounce of mind energy he can to shove his son’s hormones in check.

Jesus, is Stiles always this damn horny? he wonders. John thinks back to when he was seventeen. He is sure his seventeen your old self never popped a boner as many times in a week as Stiles’ body does in one day. To make things worse, it’s not like John can ‘take care of it’. Because that’s a whole level of creepy he absolutely refuses to engage with.

So he continues blinking, calling up images that range from Stella Greenberg’s missing teeth to Finstock coaching lacrosse naked, wondering if Stiles goes through the same visual techniques to get his hormonally-charged teenage body under control.

Or, more likely, John thinks wryly, his son just rubs one out.

When he comes home, he finds Stiles!dad at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper.

“Derek Hale?” his dad says, arching one of Stiles’ eyebrows.

Stiles shrugs his dad’s shoulders.

His dad returns his attention to the newspaper. “He’s a hell of a kisser, I’ll give you that.”

“Oh my God,” Stiles squeaks, clapping hands over his dad’s ears. “La, la, la, la, la,” he sings defensively. He does not need to hear his dad talking about Derek’s kissing prowess, especially in Stiles’ own voice.

Stiles!dad laughs. Then his eyes suddenly narrow and he points a finger at Stiles. “Why are there scratch marks on my face?”

Ha. Two can play this bitch of a game.

Stiles pulls his dad’s mouth into the best shit-eating grin he can manage then turns to leave the kitchen. He heads upstairs to change out of his dad’s uniform, his grin spreading wider when his dad yells after him. “Stiles!”

He pulls on a t-shirt and a pair of his dad’s sleep pants. Then he grabs his phone and sends Derek a text: My dad thinks you’re an awesome kisser.

It takes about three seconds for Derek to reply: wtf stiles stop

Stiles chuckles. Teasing the Big Bad Wolf is so much fun, even if Stiles himself can’t take the joke.

They’re both in bed by nine o’clock - done with the day, done with the spell, done with each other. John and Stiles each make a fervent wish that when morning comes, he’ll be back in his own body again.

When morning comes, they’re still trapped in the other’s body. So much for the best case scenario.

They’re at the animal clinic by late Thursday afternoon.

“I can’t take another second of this,” Stiles!dad tells Deaton. “I want out of Stiles’ body! Right the hell now.”

Stiles makes a wounded face. “Hey!” he protests. “Hurtful.”

“John, I really don’t think--” Deaton attempts but Stiles!dad quickly cuts him off.

“Do you know what it’s like to be a fifty year old man in a seventeen year old’s body?” he asks Deaton. “It’s a perpetually horny, popping a boner every half hour nightmare!”

“Oh yeah?” Stiles counters. Because his dad isn’t the only one not having a good time here. “Well, being in your body isn’t exactly a joy. Your left knee locks up, there’s a constant dull ache in your right shoulder, and Derek won’t kiss me ‘cause I look like you!”

Stiles!dad rolls his eyes while Deaton tries to hide a smile. Okay, so maybe Stiles hadn’t meant to say that last bit out loud, but the point still stands.

“How do we get our bodies back?” his dad barks.

“The spell will automatically reverse on the full moon,” Deaton reminds him.

His dad fixes Deaton with a glare. Stiles is impressed. He didn’t know his face could look that badass.

Deaton seems to get the point. “Well, there is a way…”

Someone should really remind Stiles that when Deaton says ‘there is a way’, there is a strong possibility that said way will involve bloodshed or imminent death. Quite probably both.

So it’s no surprise that at the current moment the Mischievous Faerie (Stiles was so right to capitalize those first letters) has his hands on his dad’s neck and is choking the life out of Stiles. There’s just enough oxygen getting to Stiles’ brain still for him to think how pissed off his dad is going to be about the faerie-sized hand marks on his neck when he gets his body back.

Suddenly Derek is there, wrestling the faerie off and away from Stiles. With Stiles!dad’s help, Derek gets the faerie into the circle of moon dust (Stiles is still in awe about how they came to acquire actual freaking dust from the moon) and Stiles!dad recites the phrase Deaton had given them while Stiles gulps air into his lungs that had been squeezed out while he was being strangled to death.

Stiles then joins his dad and Derek around the arc outside of the line of moon dust and blinks with assessment at the two-and-a-half-foot-maybe-three faerie trapped within. It wasn’t like he had been expecting, like, wings or flower crowns or anything but a lumberjack shirt, khaki shorts, military boots and a black fedora were definitely not on his faerie vision radar.

It’s quite possibly the weirdest thing he’s ever seen. And he’s been inside the Greenberg residence, remember?

“We’ve done the ritual asking you to free us from the spell,” Stiles!dad says. “We should get our bodies back now, right?”

The Mischievous Faerie crosses his arms and puffs out an extremely put-out sigh. “So it’ll be,” the faerie replies in a high-pitched voice John isn’t expecting. Because the whole lumberjack crime boss look the faerie has going on isn’t strange enough.

John and Stiles wait a moment. Nothing seems to happen. John is still in his son’s body and from the look on his face, Stiles is still in his.

“When?” John asks, becoming more exasperated by the second.

“At morning’s light,” the faerie says. “Now release me.”

John exchanges a look with Stiles-in-his-body, who looks to Hale, who shrugs.

“Okay,” John says, although he’s wary of trusting the fedora-wearing lumberjack-clad faerie. He’s called the Mischievous Faerie for a reason, right? Still, he nods at Hale to break the line of moon dust.

The cackle that rings out as the faerie flies away into the night (using, by the way, not wings but some kind of jetpack contraption that came out of nowhere, which only adds to the weirdness of this whole thing) provides zero comfort.

Freaking faeries.

When he wakes on Friday morning he’s in Stiles’ bed. He has a moment to think ‘that double-crossing, miserable piece of--’ before he remembers that he and Stiles had gone to sleep in their respective bodies’ beds, which means he is right where he should be if the spell was broken.

John has never been so thankful to feel the dull ache in his shoulder and knee as he swings his fifty-year-old body out of Stiles’ bed and heads for the bathroom. His bladder clearly isn’t equipped to handle the amount of liquid his son seems to take in during a day.

Stiles meets his dad in the hallway coming out of the bathroom. They stare at each other for a long moment then his dad pulls Stiles into a hug.

“I love you, kid,” his dad tells him. “But I don’t ever want to be you again.”

“Love you too, dad,” Stiles says with a chuckle. “And same.”

His dad smiles at him. Then his face turns stern and he says, “By the way, you’re grounded during week days for the next month.”

“What?” Stiles goggles. “What for?” There is no way his dad can pin the faerie body swap thing on him. That would be totally not fair.

“For the bad grade you’ll likely get on the history test you should have told me about,” his dad tells him.

Stiles opens his mouth to protest.

“And for not telling me you’re on kissing terms with Derek Hale,” his dad adds.

Fair enough, thinks Stiles.

His dad points a finger at him. “But no more kissing in the school parking lot. Understood?”

“Yeah, dad,” Stiles answers with a grin. Stiles is okay with this because his dad didn’t say no kissing at all. Which is good. Because Stiles really needs to be able to kiss Derek. With this thought in mind, he quickly thumbs a text to Derek letting him know that he’s back in his own body so can they maybe meet up for some kissing later?

“Oh,” says Stiles, looking up from his cell phone. John would lay a bet that his son just sent a text to Derek Hale, probably letting him know that they can get back to kissing now that John is out of Stiles’ body. “Greenberg’s got a stash of icing sugar in a shoebox under his bed. I think he might be trying to freak his mom out.”

John heaves a sigh. Yep, looks like things are back to normal. But he’ll definitely take the normal crazy over the supernatural kind any day.