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Stiles always wanted a brother.
A sister woulda been okay, too, he guessed, but girls are different from boys. They wear frilly dresses and play with dolls and they say he's got cooooties (even though he totally does NOT have cooties, his mama checked him three times!) They don't like his comic books or his video games or the four wheeler he got for Christmas. Maybe if he had a sister she'd be different, she'd be a girl who liked fun stuff like that, but Stiles wasn't sure. So what he really wanted was a brother.
He had mentioned this to his parents more than once, and they'd always smile at him and pat him on the head and say somethin' about how they'd "see." And Stiles had kinda thought maybe he WOULD get a little brother, maybe when he was a little older.
He'd chatter on and on about what they should name him when they got another baby and how he was gonna be real cute, just like Stiles was. He'd sit in his room and play with his toys and he'd imagine that there was little Simba- Simba was a good name for a little brother- playing with him.
But then mama got sick.
After that, Stiles knew it was a bad idea to ask about a baby brother. Mama didn't much look like she could handle him all by himself, and his daddy wasn't much better. So he kept his mouth shut, and he learned to enjoy being alone, and he got real, real good at entertaining himself.
Sometimes, when daddy was workin' and mama was real sick, so sick she had to live at the hospital for a little while with her doctor, Stiles wouldn't have anywhere else to go. And he'd have to sit there in the real uncomfortable chair by the window, listening to the beep beep beep of the machine she was hooked up to, watching his mama breathe.
Sometimes, he'd just sit there and watch her for hours. Sometimes, he couldn't no more. He didn't wanna watch mama sleep, didn't wanna hear the beep beep beep of the machine. So, he'd get up, vending machine change that daddy gave him rattling around in his pocket, and go look for adventure.
Adventures were kinda hard to find in hospitals.
Sure, they sound exciting, but they aren't, not really. Just filled with more sick people, and more doctors, and sometimes babies if he went up to the right floor. He liked the babies, liked watching them with their moms and dads in the nursery. He thought they were cute.
He had meant to go there, meant to go up to the baby floor, but somehow he'd gotten turned around. He'd ended up in a part of the hospital that he'd never been in before.
There were a lot of sick people here, coughing and hacking and some of them were bleeding! He was scared. He wanted to go back to his mama's room. He wanted his dad. Stiles whimpered a little, and then he started to cry.
"Hey! Hey, hey, hey, calm down. Are you okay?"
A lady with dark brown hair and a nurse uniform stooped down in front of him, putting her hands on his arms, giving him a smile.
"I don't know where I am." He told her honestly, shyly, taking a step closer to the lady, because, even though she didn't look like his mama, she was nice like his mama. "I was looking for the babies."
"Did someone with you have a baby?"
"No. I just like babies."
She gave him a funny look that made him embarrassed, and he ducked his head a little, looking down at his red Adidas tennis shoes.
"What's your name, kiddo?"
"Stiles Stilinski." He knows how to introduce himself when he's lost, when he needs to get back where he's going.
"Stilinski... your mom, she's a patient here?"
He didn't say anything, just nodded a little, shifting on the soles of his feet.
The woman seemed to decide something, giving a quick nod and grabbing him by the upper arm. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to steer him away from the place with all the sad looking people, leading him towards a little area marked 'nurses' station' and then further, behind the nurses' station, to a little room in the back with a tv and a fridge and- and a boy.
"Stiles, this is my son, Scott. Why don't you hang out here with him while I go check on your mom, okay?"
Stiles nodded a little, waving goodbye as she walked back out the door.
The boy, Scott, gave him a lopsided smile. "Hey. Does your mom work here, too?"
"No," Stiles said honestly, hopping up next to him on the little bench, looking at the tv screen. Doug was playing. He liked this show, he guessed, enough. Not a lot of action. "She's sick."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
"You didn't make her sick."
"I'm still sorry."
"Okay."
They sat there in silence for a few minutes, watching the tv together, before Scott spoke again. "Hey, is that Batman?" He pointed to the sticker poking out from the top of Stiles' sock.
Stiles grinned, nodding enthusiastically and pushing his sock down to reveal the whole thing. "Yeah! I love Batman!"
"Me too! I like Superman better, though."
"No way! Batman is way better! Only babies like Superman best!"
Scott seemed upset by that, his lower lip quivering, his arms wrapping around himself as he turned back to look at the tv. "Fine. I guess I'm a big baby, then."
Silence fell over them again, but it didn't take long for Stiles to feel guilty. He reached out to pat at Scott's shoulder, awkwardly. "Just kidding, you're not a baby. Superman is cool, too."
"You mean it?"
Dang. That kid's smile lit up the room more than the Christmas tree did, when Stiles and his mama put it up every December. He rubbed his eyes a little, nodding. "Yeah, yeah, I mean it."
The nurse- Scott's mama- poked her head back in and smiled at him. "Stiles, honey? Do you mind staying here and hanging out with Scott for another hour or so? Your dad's gonna come and get you after his shift."
"Okay. Scott's real cool."
"Yeah! And Stiles likes Batman and Superman!"
"That's great." She said airily, before breezing back out, leaving them alone again.
"So," Stiles began, ultra serious as he swiveled his body to face Scott's directly. "What do you think about Wonder Woman?"
-----
Two years later, when his mother would finally be taken from him, by the cancer that wracked her bones, Stiles would stand alone over her coffin. Dressed in a black suit that hung off of his skin like a tent, face pale and eyes shell shocked, he would look at the face of the woman who gave him life, and see nothing but death staring back at him.
And in that moment, warm, familiar fingers would wind into his, squeeze, pull. A familiar body would come to stand next to him, a voice would whisper, "It's okay."
And Stiles would tear his eyes away from his mother's body to look at the boy next to him. And he would think then that, even if they didn't look alike, with Scott's brown skin and his white, maybe he had gotten a brother, after all.