Chapter Text
10 Years Ago -- Beacon Hills, CA
"That's it, Stiles, you're out of the pack. You are no longer welcome in this house." Just like that, years of friendship, of experiences over. Stiles just stood there in shock as one-by-one he watched his friends turn their backs on him. Erica, Isaac, Malia, Liam, and Scott, until only Derek was facing him. "Why are you doing this? After everything I've done to keep you alive, the things I've done to help this pack, how can you? If it weren't for me, you would have drowned years ago Derek!" Stiles stares at Derek, waiting for some kind of answer, his vision blurred by the tears that are now streaming down his face.
Derek looks at Stiles, no, not at, through Stiles. "This is my decision, this is no longer your pack. You're a human Stiles, this shouldn't be a surprise for you. How many times have we had to save you? How much time have you spent in the hospital because you're just a fragile human? This is a wolf pack Stiles, for werewolves and our supernatural allies." Just like that Derek turns his back on Stiles and watches as the rest of the pack file out of the room, until it is just the two of them. He starts out, pausing by the door, half turning to Stiles, to say "I expect to be gone by morning." Just like that Stiles' life, and his love walked out the door. It was around 3:00 am when Stiles recovered enough from the panic attack to get in his jeep and drive home.
Present Day -- New York City, NY
"Yeah....Ok, I'll be on the next flight I can book a seat on. Thanks for calling Melissa." Stiles hung up the call and looked out the window into the winter night, and pressed his head against the window. Stiles walks over to the kitchen table where he left his laptop, buried in a pile of essays that he had been grading when he received the call he had been dreading ever since he was a child. His father had been shot during a routine traffic stop and was in emergency surgery at Beacon Hills Memorial.
So many emotions come swirling through his mind, all triggered by one phone call. Not so much that his father was in critical condition, having surgery to remove a bullet from his chest, but that he was going to have to go back to that god-forsaken town he grew up in. He had been so happy with his life in New York, things were looking up for him and his boyfriend. No, fiancé, Jordan. Stiles was still getting used to the idea that, just a few hours ago, Jordan proposed to him in central park, not far from the hot dog they first saw each other at, four years ago.
Their relationship had progressed slower than would have liked, but Stiles had a dissertation to finish, and Jordan always seemed to be working weekends at the zoo. It worked for them though, it gave them the time to understand what life with each other would look like. Stiles the obscure academic and Jordan the, in-demand herpetologist at the Central Park and Bronx zoos. Stiles was disturbed at first when he would come home and find poison dart frogs in the living room, but Jordan assured him that they were safe to handle as they did not feed them the toxic insects they usually would eat when in the wild. They had their ups and downs, but what relationship didn't? They worked them out like adults. Usually, Stiles had been know to end up at Lydia's apartment, drunk and crying his eyes out after a particularly bad fight or an agonizing three-day breakup.
Jordan came out of their bedroom, hair tousled from tossing and turning in bed from Stiles not being there. "I thought you said you were coming to bed after you finished grading one more essay." He shuffled over intending to give Stiles a kiss on the head and refill his water bottle until he noticed that Stiles had been crying. It wasn't the red, puffy eyes that gave it away, as his vision was still a bit blurry from waking up in the middle of the night, but he saw the tear marks smudging the ink on the paper in front of his fiancé. "The papers can't be that bad, whats wrong?" Stiles looked up at Jordan, and sighed, finding it difficult to give life to what happened, by actually saying the words himself. "I got a call from Beacon Hills Memorial, my father was shot in the chest during a traffic stop tonight. He is in critical condition, and they rushed him into surgery. I need to go out to be there for him when he wakes up."
Jordan sits down next to Stiles and embraces him, taking him in close to offer any support he can. "Is there anything I can do for you, do you want me to go with you to deal with those Judases?" Stiles had told Jordan about what brought him to New York, but he may have left a few details out, like the part that "those Judases" were werewolves. He didn't want to sound like a crazy person after all. Stiles looked up at Jordan and gave him a gentle kiss on the cheek. "I already booked two tickets for a flight in the morning. The flight is at 10:00 am, so we should probably get some sleep before waking up and packing for this nightmare."
Jordan closes Stiles laptop as he stands up to walk an exhausted Stiles to bed. "Let's go to bed, its midnight, you can grade those papers later, besides tomorrow is going to be a long day, you're going to need all the rest you can get." With that, Stiles stands up and lets his fiancé lead him to their room, for a sleepless night dreading the strained interaction that will occur once his father wakes up, not to mention the inevitable reunion with his former friends.