Archive of Our Own

They keep asking you if you want a girl or a boy, rubbing your belly and feeling the baby kick. You think of that saying, "as long as they have ten fingers and ten toes," and you think, "but even if my baby has nine fingers and nine toes, I'll still love them. I'll love them no matter what."

It's a boy. He has ten fingers and ten toes and asthma. You hold him, and you hug him, and you tell him you'll always love him.

Scott likes milk and Pokemon and he loves peaches. His skin is as soft and fragile as the flesh of a peach and you try not to think about the way peaches burst against the kitchen tiles when he throws them, the way they ooze and—

Anyway, he loves peaches.

When you take him to the store to pick out shoes, "the ones you'll wear for the rest of the year – pick anything you want, but pick carefully," he points at the pink ones, the ones with glitter.

He says, "this one, mom."

The woman beside you stares, waiting to see what you'll do, if you'll tell your beautiful child who points earnestly and eagerly at the pink sneakers that he can't have them, to find something in blue, wouldn't he rather have the ones that light up, these aren't in his size, why doesn't he see if there's something else in the next aisle

and you say, "okay," and you buy him the shoes.

You can feel the condescension rolling off the woman when she gives you a dirty look and glares as you walk out of the store. Beacon Hills is big enough, you think. You'll find a way to avoid one woman.

The woman is never the problem.

(when your baby comes home with a bloody nose and a black eye, when he tells you the kids in the class over beat him for his pink shoes, you will not be surprised. not being surprised doesn't make it hurt any less though.)

It's not the first time he asks for something pink.

It's not the first dirty look you get in a crowded store.

It's not the first time his peach-soft flesh bursts and oozes.

Rafael finds the pink sneakers.

He screams and he shouts. He throws the pink sneakers and the pink hair clips into the trash. He lights the trash on fire, demanding to know why you would buy those things for your son.

The stench of burning plastic and rubber permeates the house and you tell him to leave, tell Rafael that if he ever comes back anywhere near this house again, you'll have him arrested. He refuses to leave, that "it's my house too, and Scott's my son too!"

Scott cries quietly under the kitchen table. It's the last straw, the years of tension and fighting, the years of staying together for the sake of your son. You can't do it anymore, and Scott shouldn't have do it anymore, either.

You join him under the table, shield him with your body, call 911 and wait for an Officer Stilinski to show up.

Rafael leaves in handcuffs.

He doesn't come back.

Scott starts wearing black sneakers to school.

It breaks your heart.

It's three in the morning and you can hear him laughing quietly in his room, see the bright light under his door from his computer screen, and you want to go check on him, tell him how important sleep is to his health. The thing you don't admit even to yourself is that you want to see him with a smile spread over his lips, the kind he hasn't managed in forever.

You wonder if he's talking to Officer Stilinski's son, the one with the funny name.

You consider. You stop at his doorknob twice and turn back.

(if he wants you to know, he'd tell you.)

(he would, wouldn't he?)

Yes.

He comes in one day, sits you down on the kitchen table, the one etched with years of scars criss-crossing over each other under worn polish. He tells you, "mom, I'm a girl" and-

Sorry.

She tells you, "mom, I'm a girl" and you hold her, and you hug her, and you tell her you'll always love her.

She wears her bruises like badges. When her skin is torn and ragged, the peach split open, crusted with scabs and hurting in places antiseptic cream will never reach, she keeps her chin high and she spits blood in the sink and she says, "fuck them."

You tend to her wounds the best you can and you agree, "fuck them."

You're not sure if mothers use that kind of language or not with their teenage kids, if mothers should be preaching love instead of hate, if they should be pulling out textbooks and demonstrating that non-violence wins over bloodshed. But your blood is boiling and you wish you had a knife and the address of every person who ever hurt your baby and guilt is a thing of the past, a thing of ancestors who endured silently for millennia and saints who believed  in self-immolation in the middle of a busy road and

fuck them.

Before you had your child, before you married Rafael, you sat in the lobby of the Beacon Hills Clinic and read one of those brochures printed on glossy shiny paper, full of vivid yellows and women smiling with all their teeth, holding babies that looked fragile and fresh. You had thought to yourself, that kind of love for your baby must be like a superpower, a cure-all. To whisk away the pain of boo boos with a kiss. To elicit a bubbly laugh just by making a funny face.

(when your daughter is soaking the bruises on her body in a tub full of Epsom salt and scalding water, your superpowers vanish just like that and you wonder if they ever existed at all.)

Mothers should be able to protect their fragile fresh babies.

They should have thousands of arms extending to the sky, claws outstretched, a tongue dripping with acid over fangs filed to points – they should be able to clutch their daughters to their breast while they hunted down the boys who dared lay a finger on them. Mothers should be monsters.

It turns out mothers are just soft skin and wet eyes, words of consolation, a warm mug of cocoa waiting by the bed.

She stops coming home with bruises. She comes home with smiles instead, and once, a lacrosse kit and a recommendation from the coach to join the team. 

"the coach says I can use the girl's locker room to change and shower," Scott tells you, and you make a mental reminder to thank the man at your next parent-teacher conference. Teachers in the past haven't always been so kind.

The next day, she locks herself in her room. You knock but she doesn't open.

You ask her what's happening, and she tells you, "nothing. just tired."

You don't know what to say. A good day is rare, but you'll take what you get. "stay indoors," you remind her as you put on your scrubs and pull your hair up into a bun. "did you hear about the murders going on lately? if Stiles is going to come over, lock the door behind you and call me if something happens."

Nothing happens.

She starts dating.

"her name is Allison," she tells you over breakfast. "I really like her. she likes me, too, I think."

"oh, Scott – does she know?" you ask, a sinking feeling in your gut because heartache can hurt just as bad as bruises.

She nods, and you feel some kind of weight lift from your chest.

When you get to the hospital for your shift, two of your coworkers ask if you're okay. You don't know how to respond, how to tell them your daughter's happy for the first time in what feels like years, that it's like the first time you saw her face light up when she wore her pink sneakers, or when she wore her first dress with Stiles flashing her a thumbs up at their carefully chosen mall three hours away from Beacon Hills.

You tell them, "my daughter has a girlfriend," and the words send a swell of pride through you.

Your daughter has a girlfriend.

You start dating, too.

It doesn't go well.

"are you going to the formal?" you ask.

Scott replies, "I don't actually know if Coach is going to let me go," she says it glumly. She's been having trouble at school, cutting classes and missing tests. It's worrying, and you think Allison might have something to do with it (or maybe that other girl, the one with hair that shines that your daughter was staring at in the parking lot – Linda? Lydia?) but Scott assures you she'll get back on track by the end of the semester.

It can be overwhelming and you don't want to get on her case about it. Instead, you ask, "do you want a dress or a tux?"

"tux," she answers without hesitation.

"are you sure?"

"mooo-ooom!"

A tux it is.

Then you learn the truth.

The other one.

The one where your daughter turns into something with fangs and claws and eyes that glint in the dark, the one where your daughter's bruises vanish back into peach-soft flesh within seconds, the one where her roar is louder than Rafael's screams ever were, and she hasn't used her inhaler in a year.

You learn about her pack, about the incredibly brave boys and girls who stick by Scott even when their own lives are threatened. Scott tells you they all know, they know about everything, and they support her no matter what.

"they really like me, mom," she says, and for a moment you think your daughter doesn't need you anymore, she doesn't need you to keep her safe from women who shoot dirty looks your way, or fathers who scream and set things on fire, or bullies who want to mark her skin with shame.

Mothers couldn't protect their daughters, so the daughters became monsters and learned to protect themselves.

You hold her, and you hug her, and you tell her you'll always love her.

Maybe that's all she ever needed from you.