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John just knew that the night was going to be interesting. Of course, working the graveyard shift on Halloween night always meant he was in for a whole heap of surprises, he just had a feeling that something was going to happen.
The first weird thing, unsurprisingly, was Stiles.
“So, you aren’t doing costumes and partying with Scott this year?” He asked his son, who twitched nervously, his tell for when he was lying. John wasn’t going to lie, he was concerned with how well his son was getting at lying to him, but he had about two minutes to leave before he’d be running late.
“Nah, we figured we’d just hang out here this year. Play video games and whatnot.” Stiles replied to him.
John, stupidly, hoped that the reason his son was lying because he was planning on pulling a bunch of only just legal Halloween pranks, as per usual, and that the reason wasn’t whatever the hell Stiles had been keeping from him for nearly a year.
“Okay, see you tomorrow kid, stay outta trouble.” John said, walking out the door, images from months ago flashing through his mind of Stiles, beaten, bloody and bruised, claiming wrong place wrong time as the blood on his cheek darkened to match his lacrosse jersey. John sent out a silent prayer, please don’t be drugs.
They got the usual things, kids getting stuck climbing trees, a couple of break ins with weirdo’s wearing hockey masks, using the fear of the night to try and still antiques to pawn off, and a couple of kids from the town over smoking weed in the preserve.
Which was the second weird thing, two of them seemed very shaken up, claiming they’d seen a witch try and kill a bunch of werewolves and a psycho with a bat. Deputy Richards sent them off with a warning not to smoke underage or the next time there’ll be consequences, and to not eat edibles to the point of believing in the supernatural.
The third weird thing, was that no one was yet to bring in Stiles for being caught doing whatever stupid thing with Scott he had planned. Since Stiles was thirteen, he’d been dragged into the station getting caught on every Halloween night, the fact that it hadn’t happened, was making John almost worried.
It wasn’t until someone rang the station at around four that John felt somewhat calm, in a small town like this, a phone call at four in the morning on the night of Halloween had to be Stiles. Sure enough, deputy Kilmore was walking into his office a few minutes later, at seeing her confused expression though, John sat up a little straighter.
“One of your neighbours just rang, said they thought they woke to the sound car doors slamming and mountain lions growling, yeah, I know, ridiculous, said she looked out the window and saw a group of kids around Stiles’ age, plus two adults, some of them were dressed as werewolves, but all of them were bloody and apparently all limping. And then, two girls opened your front door to let them in. She said one of the kids in the group looked like Stiles but there was so much blood splattered on the kids face it was hard to tell. You wanna swing by and make sure it is actually Stiles and whatever he got up to tonight and not a bunch of idiots breaking into your house?” She asked.
Something felt, off, John couldn’t put his finger on it, but he didn’t like it.
“Yeah I’ll head around.” John said, belting his holster, clipping his badge on and grabbing the keys to the cruiser. He drove most the way to his house speeding, the roads were clear at this point, and he stuck to streets where he didn’t risk running into someone leaving a party late into the night.
He really couldn’t put his finger on it, something just felt wrong. Right as he pulled into the street, for reasons unknown to him, he turned off his headlights, slowly driving down his street in the dark. He pulled into the driveway extra slowly, making sure the front of the cruiser didn’t scrape on the gutter like it did if he pulled in too fast.
The jeep was terribly parked on the street, like Stiles had just thrown it into park the second he was even close the gutter and jumped. John knew what he was looking at the second he saw it, he’d seen enough blood in his working career to know the dark glossy smears on the doors of the jeep were blood, clearly bloody fingerprints. He opened the unlocked door, the fourth weird thing of the night, Stiles always locks the jeep.
It isn’t until he opens the door that he realises the mistake he’s made, because the smell is overwhelming. It isn’t fake blood, its real. The jeep smells like a butchers with the amount of blood, and John prays that the blood belongs to a sheep or a cow, and that his son simply took his Halloween prank too far this year. The sinking feeling in his gut is telling him otherwise. John can just see in the moonlight the blood soaked into the jeep’s seats. He quietly shuts the door, glancing down at his now blood covered fingertips, and looks to the three cars parked behind the jeep. Two he vaguely recognises, maybe Stiles’ friends’ cars. The third car though, has Johns blood running cold, because he knows for a fact, that the camaro parked nearly as badly as the jeep belongs to one Derek Hale.
He doesn’t bother checking to see if the camaro is bloody too, he can tell from the blood all over the pavement next to it that it is, like the person who climbed out the backseat was bleeding profusely. John can see the trail of blood from the camaro go across his lawn and it, unfortunately, disappears under his front door. John follows the smaller drops on the ground, trailing from the jeep up the driveway to the front door.
There’s multiple pools of blood on the ground, some soaked into the doormat, and there’s bloody handprints on the banisters, and though there’s none on the door handle, there are some on the edge of the door, like someone used it to balance on their way in.
John desperately tries to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach. But never, ever, has Stiles involved the house in his and Scott’s Halloween pranks, and never, ever, has Stiles pranked John, so now he’s really beginning to panic. He opens the door slowly and quietly, too focused on what he’s doing to notice that the door wasn’t locked. He thinks back to all his training, keeping his breathing low, his footsteps light, and makes sure he avoids the squeaky floorboards.
He can hear grunts and talking, and crouches down, using the hallway mirror to look through the archway into the lounge, through to the kitchen. The sight makes a wave of nausea pass over him.
There’s a teen girl laying unconscious on his dining table, and John realises it’s Erica Reyes. She has three holes in her body, one in her shoulder, one close to her bellybutton, and one in her leg, they’re obviously bullet wounds, and for some reason or another, there’s smoke rising from them. Her face though, eyes shut, but pain still evident even in her comatose state, is what has John’s heart racing.
Because she has werewolf makeup on, special effects clearly, but it just looks, so, so… real. Someone places a hand on her shoulder, and John watches as thick lines of black travel through the person’s veins.
He begins to entertain the thought that perhaps, just maybe, she isn’t wearing any makeup at all.
John’s eyes travel up the persons- the mans, arm, stopping at the man’s shoulder, which also has a bullet wound in it, which is also smoking, like someone had lit something on fire inside the wound. The thought of the infections that something like that could give a person was making Johns body itch.
Then he gets to the man’s face. And he realises he’s looking at a shirtless Derek Hale. An expression somewhere between pain and guilt on his face as he stares down at Erica, looking equally as sickly and sweaty and dirty and bloody as the unconscious girl. John gets stuck on his eyes though, which are glowing a brilliant red, and he knows, no amount of coloured contacts and shitty kitchen lighting could make someone’s eyes look so… inhuman.
Movement to Derek’s left catches Johns eye, and his eyes flick over to the man in the chair. Peter Hale, looking equally as awful, and shirtless. He’s sitting sideways on the chair, leaning back with his head against the kitchen counter, eyes glazed over as he looks at the ceiling. He has two bullet wounds in his stomach, and there are awful greenish grey lines slowly spreading across his skin from the wounds. And then John see’s just why Derek and Erica’s wounds were smoking.
A girl leans over and places a small handful of crushed up flowers, brilliant in their bright vibrant purple colour, into one of the gunshot wounds. And then horrifically, holds a lighter to the flowers, and lets them burn. The girl swiftly repeats the process with the second wound, and John watches in morbid fascination as the greenish grey lines slowly recede, and Peter’s eyes become a little less glazed over, and his jaw relaxes.
John realizes he knows the girl. It’s Allison Argent. Her hair tied back off her face, rubber gloves on her hands, a light sheen of panicked sweat on her face, and smears of dirt and blood on her white t-shirt where she must have brushed past the others. The look on her face is what has John holding in a gasp. He’s only ever seen it once before, when he was a little boy, and exploring places where he shouldn’t have been.
He’d gone to visit his mother in the hospital she was working at, her having pushed her retirement back a few years when a group of soldiers from Beacon Hills were sent away. A soldier was in surgery, and John had crept and snuck his way up to the window that looked into the room. The man was having both his legs amputated, and there was blood everywhere and it was scary, but he still kept looking.
But then he had looked at his mother’s face and had seen the detached coldness, the seriousness, but still the care that was in her expression. Reminding him that she had been a nurse during the war. He’d started crying the second his eyes had landed on her. He’d decided that day he wasn’t going to be soldier like he wanted, because he never wanted to be the person on the other side of that expression. He settled on a police officer, just as cool, but less scary.
That was the look on Allison Argent’s face. A war nurse in surgery. John found himself blinking away tears.
There are two boys sitting backwards on chairs with their backs to John, and he almost wishes they were facing the other way so he wouldn’t have to look at their wounds. The gashes down their backs are enough to make John feel woozy, and it doesn’t take a genius to tell that the one of the left took far worse hits than the on the right. John takes a guess that the two boys are Vernon Boyd and Isaac Lahey, and when Allison turns to her kit on the kitchen counter and starts talking, she confirms John’s suspicions.
“Lydia, I need you to start stitching up Isaac’s back, the gashes are too deep and he’s losing to much blood, his body is too busy trying to regenerate the blood that it can’t close the wounds. We can pull them out in a few hours.” Allison said, handing over thread, a needle and scissors to the red head girl that Stiles had been in love with for years. In the back of his mind, John wonders if his son still is.
Lydia Martin looks similar to Allison, hair pulled back off her face and rubber gloves on her hands, more pale in shock and less stressfully sweating, but she quickly places the supplies on the dining table next to Isaac’s shoulder, pulls up a chair behind him, and silently starts stitching up the boys’ wounds.
John wonders why Vernon isn’t getting stitches as well, but as he looks at the boy and almost feels like he is hallucinating, he can see why. The dark skin is almost stitching itself together, the gashes getting smaller and smaller and the blood dripping down his back and onto Johns kitchen floor beginning to get sticky and thick as it dries.
John watches as Allison’s eyes flick over to the shaking girl near the fridge, her back also to him, leaning her hands on his kitchen counter. There’s a wound on her shoulder blade, a deep graze from a bullet. Her skin looks different than Peters though, with large yellow-y brown bruises forming around the wound, and white lines stretching out across her skin.
John can’t figure out who the girl is.
He watches as Allison looks at the girls’ shoulder with scrutiny, before pulling out a jar of flowers from the medical kit, these ones white with a yellow stripe in the middle of each petal. She tips a few into her palm and crushes them, before walking up to the shaking girl.
“This is gonna hurt more than the usual stuff.” Allison said to the girl.
The girl turned her head slightly, and John could have sworn he recognised the girls face, but he couldn’t put a finger on it. She reached her arm back and held the hand of the boy sitting at the dining table behind her, and John had to clamp his hand over his mouth to stop himself from making a noise when he realised who was in his kitchen.
Because that was Jackson Whittemore, high school bully, Lydia Martin’s current, or ex, or on and off again boyfriend, who his son had kidnapped. Sitting in one of his dining chairs shirtless, one hand wrapped around very bruised ribs, though John could see the bruises fading right before his eyes. Allison placed the crushed flowers on the girls’ gash and once again lit them on fire, and as the girl gasped John watched as those same black veins trailed down Jackson’s wrist from where he held her hand. Pain clear on his face.
The gasp had both Derek and Peter’s head shooting up to look at the girl in concern, and when Derek spoke John realised why.
“You good Cor?” Derek asked, getting a ‘mhm’ through gritted teeth in response.
Cor? There is no way that girl could be Cora Hale. But a glance was enough, John could see the clear resemblance. His mind began to wonder how she could have survived the fire, why she was back now, and how long she had been back for when there was movement next to her.
John had to look away, fighting the bile that rose to his throat at sight of his son. Stiles was pulling off his jeans. John knew they were blue, but the dirt and the grime and the blood, so much blood, had them looking black. John couldn’t even see the tear in the fabric it was so bad, but then, he could see Stiles’ leg.
The gash was deep, not enough to need internal stitches, but enough for tears to spill down Johns cheeks. It started an inch or two from the edge of Stiles’ boxers, and went down to just above his knee. Stiles limped to his own medical kit, one John knew was kept in the jeep, and put on some gloves before grabbing thread, a needle and scissors.
Stiles hauled himself up onto the dining table with a gasp, and John watched in fascination as Jackson’s hand, which had been cradling his own ribs, quickly reached out to Stiles’ wrist, black veins trailing up from his grip much like he had done with Cora.
“Thanks Jacks.” Stiles mumbled out, and John was hit with a wave of guilt over all the other waves of emotion he was feeling, how had he been paying so little attention to Stiles to not notice he’d become friends, nickname level friends, with Jackson Whittemore?
John watched as Stiles turned to look behind him, his eyes darting from Jackson, to Erica and then to Derek.
“Jackson swap with Derek, you can take more pain because you’re only battling broken bones not wolfsbane, and Erica needs more pain draining at the moment. But I’d still like some werewolf voodoo though because I really don’t wanna feel it as I stitch up my leg.” Stiles said, wincing a little as Jackson let go of his wrist.
John watched as Jackson shifted his grip from Stiles’ wrist to Erica’s, darker and thicker black lines traveling up his veins. Derek however, moved from where he was standing, grabbing a towel, liquid disinfectant and disinfectant wipes from Stiles’ first aid kit as he passed. Sitting on the chair in front of Stiles, Stiles’ socked foot moving to rest on Derek’s thigh, one of Derek’s hands coming up to grip Stiles’ calf, the other holding the towel under his thigh.
The clear routine Stiles went through made Johns blood curdle, wondering how many times Stiles had to stitch himself up. Stiles pours nearly the whole bottle of disinfectant over the gash, flooding the wound, and he doesn’t wince once, but John notices the lines get thicker up Derek’s wrist where he grips Stiles’ calf.
Derek wipes over the gash with the towel, before placing it on the table, and then wipes over it a few times with disinfectant wipes. Stiles clearly deems it cleaned enough and starts methodically sewing his leg up. John can only look at his nearly unrecognisable son, the son who he had thought passed out at the sight of blood and needles, repeatedly pulling a curved needle and thread through his own skin.
Allison moves to the freezer, pulling Johns attention, and pulls out two icepacks, wraps them in dishtowels and hands them to Jackson to hold to his ribs, before she moves over to Isaac and Vernon, clearly happy with how their wounds are going. She looks at Peter with a critical eye, and John notices one of the gunshot wounds has nearly completely closed up, but the other is beginning to look as infected as it had been before.
Allison turns and grabs the jar of purple flowers that John hadn’t even noticed from the table, crushing them in her hand and burning it, as she did with the others.
“Why are you using different ones?” A male voice asks, and it takes John a second to realise it was Isaac.
“The witch was smart, she used different types on all of you to try and make it harder to fix.” Allison explained, her expression almost returning to one of a normal freaked out teenage girls, before quickly slipping back into a critical expression.
Johns mind reels back to the kids doing drugs in the preserve, scared of werewolves and witches and, and… a psycho with a bat, his eyes darting over to Stiles, before noticing the slightly dented metal bat leaning up against the dining table, with blood and what looks like brains smeared over it.
“And how do you know which types she used?” Peter asked her, a darkness in his voice that made John feel uneasy.
That makes Allison stop, and all of a sudden John is looking at a scared girl, with shaking hands and tears in her eyes.
“Kate,” Allison spat the name out, like her name left venom in her mouth, and John couldn’t help but wonder what Kate Argent had done to make her niece hate her so much. “First thing she taught me wasn’t how to injure werewolves, but how to keep you injured, because ‘that’s the hard part, you can rip open their chests but you have to make sure they keep bleeding’,” Allison continues, John making a mental note to do a serious background check on the Argents when he goes back to work. “Inadvertently, she also taught me how to fix you guys up too.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re on our side then.” Cora said bluntly, Allison giving her a small nod in return, before Allison turned back to Peter, who gave the young Argent a small nod too, John wondering what had led to such tension between Allison and the Hales and how they were seemingly fixing it.
The loft door slides open, Peter, Derek, Erica, Isaac and Stiles all looking over to the person standing at the door. Surprisingly it’s Allison, who looks distraught and has violent sobs wracking her body.
She takes one step into the loft and Stiles sprints up to her, thoughts of their previously blooming friendship clouding his thoughts of the bad things she had done. Everyone looks distressed, torn between being concerned for the hunter, but also not really wanting her in the loft because of her past.
“Scott wants, Scott wants me to, and I can’t, and he won’t listen-” Allison starts spluttering, barely making sense.
“Ali, calm down, it’s okay, it’s okay, what does Scott want?” Stiles asks her, concerned. Placing his hands on her shoulders to ground her.
“He wants, he wants me to go into the preserve with him when he goes to talk to the witch, and, and, and he wants me to make sure that none of you guys get close.” She stuttered out, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“He wants you to shoot us with arrows?” Derek asks from where he’s standing near the window, shock clear on his face. Allison nods her head yes at Derek, pain in her eyes.
“And, and, I told him no, because, I can’t, I just can’t, not now, not with everything, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to pick up a bow again, but, he, he, he won’t listen and I can’t, Stiles, what do I do? I don’t know what to do what do I do? I wanna help deal with, with the witch but I can’t fight so I’m useless what am I supposed to do?” Allison sobbed out, everyone’s heart breaking at the words, realising just how traumatised Allison was by her own family.
“Here’s what you are going to do okay? Two days from now, when we go to deal with the witch, once my dad leaves for work, you and Lydia are going to come to my house. I’m gonna go to the loft and help these guys out with the witch, and you and Lydia are going to get my house set up with medical supplies and wolfsbane, so when we come back to my house, inevitably, injured and nearly dead you are gonna help patch us up yeah? That’s helpful, that’s helping.” Stiles explained.
“You want me using wolfsbane? You want me helping the wolves, what if I, what if, what if it’s like a switch flips and I turn into that monster?” Allison asks, and Stiles can tell from the way the wolves try and hide their near gagging noises that the scent of Allison’s pain and guilt and fear must be suffocating.
“Ali, I know that isn’t going to happen, not when you’re this worried about it happening okay? You and Lydia yeah?” Stiles asked.
“Yeah okay.” Allison nodded.
John watches as Peter stretches out, looking in far less pain then when John had first entered the house. Peter moved over to stand next to Isaac, placing a hand on his shoulder, with more black veins sliding up his wrist. John watches as some of the tension leaves the kids’ shoulders.
“How are we going to clean up all this blood?” Jackson asks the room, and John hates that he somehow knows Stiles is going to have an answer.
“Coffee.” Stiles said blankly, nearly finished with the stitches in his leg.
“What?” Lydia asked, everyone in the kitchen looking Stiles in confusion, John included.
“I’ll wipe up the blood as best I can, then make a pot of coffee and drop it. Then I’ll wipe up the coffee and glass, and then bleach everything. There’ll still be a slight coffee smell, and its believable that I’d use bleach to make sure the coffee doesn’t stain. I’ve done it once before and it worked.” Johns heart sunk at those words. He remembered snapping at Stiles for dropping the pot, annoyed that he wasn’t going to have a morning coffee as he read the Sunday paper.
Allison handed Derek a bandage, and John realised Stiles was finished with his leg, wiping over it a few times with more disinfectant wipes before Derek began wrapping the bandage tightly around his thigh.
“I can stop around see everyone tomorrow when I go out to buy another one, plus then I don’t have to lie to my dad any more than I have to.” And that had John once again blinking away tears, because the sheer guilt that radiated off of Stiles erased any shred of anger that John could have towards the situation unfolding in his kitchen.
John only realised as Stiles moved to stand up, that he’d been carding his hand through Derek’s hair, and for one glorious moment, John had a normal parental thought about his sons love life, and if Derek Hale was involved in it. Watching Stiles gingerly pull on a pair of sweatpants brought him straight back to the panic over the fact that his son and his friends had been injured, and god, shot at, and with every passing moment John believed more and more, that some of them were actual fucking werewolves.
John’s attention is drawn to the table when a groan slips from Erica, who slowly opens her eyes and Jackson moves to help her sit up. She looks sickly, and John wonders why she appears to be healing slower than all the other… wolves.
“How come I still feel this shitty?” Erica asked as she leant back on her hands, looking down at her stomach where her t-shirt had been cut open around the bullet wound in her stomach.
“She used a strand of wolfsbane commonly called black wolfsbane, basically takes for fucking ever to heal.” Allison explained as she grabbed her own bottle of disinfectant and some cotton pads, walking over to Stiles who had since pulled his dirty t-shirt off. John hated the scars and bruises that littered Stiles body, most marks clearly days or months old, Allison tending to the new scrapes and grazes. John gets distracted when he notices that Derek has a protective hand wrapped around Stiles’ leg where he sits next to him, and adds another note to his mental checklist for when he asks Stiles what the fuck is going on.
“Why do you look so pissy? We knew this bitch was going to be a fucking pain to deal with.” Stiles asked, John looking around the room to determine he was asking Jackson, who looked antsy where he was standing behind Erica, black veins still travelling up his arm.
“I hate having our senses dulled, I can’t hear or smell or feel or anything outside this room.” Jackson grumbled. John watching as Lydia moved and very slowly and carefully tucked herself into Jackson’s side.
“Yeah sorry dude, I wish I could do something more, by the time you all get some sleep and eventually wake up it should be worn off completely, or at least nearly completely. I’m just glad she didn’t take all of your healing too.” Stiles says back to her.
“Also, dibs not telling Scott that you guys killed her.” Allison remarks, pulling off her rubber gloves and placing them in a trash bag.
“We can make Derek tell him, he already hates Derek, oh wait no, Peter, he hates Peter more.” Erica adds on, a little colour starting to come back to her skin.
“Don’t tell me he was still going on about her changing to be good?” Derek asks Allison, sounding unbelievably done with Scott, John becoming curious as to why.
“Yep.” Allison replied, pulling herself up onto a clean spot on the kitchen counter, looking absolutely exhausted.
“The witch literally threatened to kill you, his girlfriend, and then threatened to kill you, his best friend-” Vernon said, looking between Allison and Stiles.
“I don’t think we’re really best friends anymore.” Stiles cut in, and it very suddenly occurred to John that there was one person who wasn’t in his kitchen. Scott.
“I don’t think I’m going to be his girlfriend for much longer either.” Allison adds on.
John notices Derek look over to her a give her a soft smile, somewhere between comforting and pity, making him wonder for the second time in the past twenty minutes, what was going on between her and the Hales.
“I’m telling you; I think it’s a witch posing as an ogre, making us prepare for the wrong thing. The magic trail isn’t an ogres’, no matter how much Deaton claims it is. We had one come through the preserve when you were young, its magic trail looks like a green swampy fog. This magic trail is too… clean.” Peter explained to Derek, who was standing next to Stiles and Erica going over the bestiary.
“We’ll look into both, and keep our options open, we don’t want to be caught off guard-” Derek started saying, a knock on the loft door interrupting him. He thought he recognised the sent, but there was no way?
Sure enough, he opened the door to find an anxious yet determined Allison Argent. Derek raised his eyebrows in question, wondering why on earth she would think it was okay to come to his loft, aware of the pack behind him going quiet as the listened in.
“I’m just here to say sorry.” Allison said, and sure enough, there was no metal or acrid chemical smells to her, she had no weapons or wolfsbane on her.
“You’re here to say sorry?” Derek asked back, unbelieving.
“Yeah, I know. Listen, I know I have mountains to move when it comes to apologising to you and your family, your pack, and a lot to do to earn forgiveness alongside that, and I certainly don’t expect you to even tolerate me for a long time, I just, I figured I’d let you know that I’m working on it. I am sorry, and truthfully, I’m not sorry for everything, there’s still things in my mind that seem like the right thing on my behalf, or the wrong thing on yours, but uh, therapy is helping, so yeah…” Allison trailed off, clearly accidently oversharing towards the end.
It reminded Derek of Stiles’ rambling.
“Therapy?” Derek questioned, wondering how fast a therapist would throw her into Eichen House the second she mentioned werewolves.
“Uh yeah, after my dad found out about, well, everything, he reached out so a supernatural based therapist, she’s helping me deal with the grooming from Kate and Gerard, and my mother’s death. I just, I wanted you to know if you see me around, I’m not going to try and kill or hurt any of you. I promise.” Allison explained. Derek listened intently, and hearing the truth in her words, he gave her a simple nod in acknowledgment, one she returned before leaving.
“Did she just willingly use the word ‘grooming’, in regard to herself?” Stiles asked the room once Derek had shut the loft door, sounding as shocked as everyone looked.
“Sounds like it.” Isaac said, turning back to the book he was reading.
“I, suppose… if she can acknowledge that then therapy must actually be helping her.” Peter said, and Derek could only nod back dumbly.
“They really did a number on her didn’t they?” Erica asked softly, leaning into Stiles. Derek could smell the guilt washing over her in waves, and he knows the two girls hadn’t always been the nicest to each other.
“They did a number on you too.” Derek replied gently, memories flooding back of his injured beta’s being dragged into his loft by a significantly more injured Stiles.
“But it wasn’t our own family, it wasn’t people we looked up to and loved.” Stiles added on quietly, and Derek was reminded that Stiles and Allison had nearly become really close friends, when he had been playing messenger for her and Scott.
“Well we are all for redemption in this pack.” Peter added on, Jackson snorting a laugh in response, and it didn’t take a genius to know what wasn’t being said. If she proved herself, one day, she’d been welcome.
“I thought these wounds would heal faster.” Lydia spoke as she moved to check on Vernon and Isaac, breaking the brief moment of silence.
“The blades were most likely dipped in a wolfsbane solution.” Allison explained.
“Of course that’s a thing.” Stiles tacked on, sounding every bit an annoyed teenager. John noticing that Stiles had gone back to carding his fingers through Derek’s hair, John wondering if Stiles even knew he was doing it.
“I still don’t get what her problem was.” Jackson grumbled.
“I think she came here to act on some old ass medieval wolf and witch tradition that would give her power over the land but would have her offer protection to Derek. Probably not something we would want anyways; she was clearly going dark side and just wanted the Nemeton. Except good ol’ Scotty got to her first, offended the traditional old hag by not following any of the traditional protocols. Then he showed off his true alpha-ness, pissing her off more, then claimed the land as his, which he definitely believes but it definitely isn’t, which made her think he was lying.” Stiles explained.
“Oh god, now did he not get killed on the spot?” Peter asked, almost to himself.
“Then he pointed out his alliance to Deaton, and witches hate druids, and then he ignored her threats which would seem like he was undermining her power. So, she threatened Allison and I because in Scott’s mind we’re the weakest and more useless members of our little rag tag bunch because we aren’t supernatural. So, like, she was a psycho bitch from the start, but he just made it like, fifty times worse. And on top of that, through the whole conversation she kept looking at me like I was her next meal, which like, not a fan.” Stiles finished explaining.
“Gotta love that Scott thinks of his girlfriend, the trained hunter, as useless and weak.” Isaac commented.
John was in shock, he didn’t entirely know how to handle, or even fucking process the scene unfolding in his kitchen, but he knew he needed to make his presence known. He slowly stood up, his calves aching from where he had been crouched down the whole time.
He finally looked away from the mirror, and very slowly crept through into the loungeroom, heading towards the kitchen.
“I guess I’ll put that pot of coffee on then.” Peter said, moving to grab the coffee pot where is sat on the counter.
“Don’t bother.” John said, making his presence known, having a moment of satisfaction that he was able to sneak up on them, before he registered their reactions.
Isaac moved to stand behind Derek so fast John didn’t actually see him move, and the pure fear on his face had John worried. Lydia and Allison both looked concerned, and John figured it was because he could easily tell their parents about what they were doing.
Peter was looking at him as if it was his own house and John was the intruder. Erica, Vernon, Jackson and Cora looked startled, but more so looked almost challenging, daring him to do, well, something, he wasn’t sure.
Derek stood quickly, his hand dropping from Stiles leg, a closed off expression on his face, John couldn’t decipher what he was feeling. And then there was Stiles. The fear radiating off of him was clear, and there were lines of guilt in the panicked tilt of his eyebrows, but his eyes held that same challenging glint. And John knew, one wrong move, one wrong word, and he’d lose his son. So unbelievably obvious that Stiles would side with the people in the kitchen over anything John could do.
John made his way into the kitchen, slowly, moving closer and closer to Stiles, everyone else seemed to gravitate away from John, except for Derek, who stayed planted a foot or two behind Stiles.
John flicked his eyes over Stiles’ chest, briefly stopping over some of the gnarly scars and sickly yellow old bruises, he eyes quickly darting down to Stiles’ clothed leg, the barely there gasp from Stiles’ letting John know that Stiles had figured out just how long he’d been in the house.
He finally stood in front of Stiles, who looked like he was about to start shaking, from fear, adrenaline or anger John couldn’t tell. He slowly clasped his hand over Stiles’ shoulder, careful to avoid any of the scrapes and bruises, before huffing out a fond sigh.
“Drugs woulda been easier kid.” John said lightly, feeling some of the tension drain from his sons’ shoulders.
“No kidding.” Stiles replied, sounding the most like himself in what felt like a year to John.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” John started, looking at Stiles but clearly addressing the whole room, “I’m going to go upstairs, call in and say that all our nosey neighbour saw was Stiles and his friends coming home from pulling a prank on some kids in the woods, and that everything is all good. I’m gonna get changed into something more comfortable, and we are all going to sit down and have a nice long chat about everything. Then, before the sun rises, those of you that are capable are going to help me wash and scrub away all the blood out the front, and then clean the house, without breaking the new coffee pot. Understood?” John asked, waiting to see nods from everyone before giving Stiles’ shoulder one last squeeze, then heading out the kitchen.
He makes just enough noise heading to the stairs that it sounds believable that he’s actually gone up them, but he stays to eavesdrop just a little.
“Stiles I’m so sorry.” Came Derek’s unmistakable voice.
“Why are you sorry?” Stiles asked back.
“We shouldn’t have even come to your house in the first place, and then we didn’t hear your dad, and now he’s going to know everything.” John felt a little calmer almost, at hearing the guilt in Derek’s tone, it was clear that he cared about Stiles, probably too much in John’s opinion.
“Hey, it’s not your fault, and that goes to all of you, he would have found out eventually.” Stiles replied.
“Still, you didn’t want him to find out.” Replied either Erica or Lydia, it was hard for John to tell.
John presumed that Stiles must have shrugged, done one of his usual Stiles-isms, because there was a small pause, enough that John nearly actually made his way upstairs.
“Do you want us all to go? Or maybe only some of us to stay?” Peter asked quietly, John straining to hear him, his voice almost sounding upset.
“Nah, it’ll be easier for me to tell him if all of you are here, I think. If that’s okay with all you?” Stiles said, the sounds of chairs scraping, people moving, and hums of acknowledgement letting John know that the group were settling into the kitchen for when he came back downstairs.
John started heading up, and he almost missed it, but the tone of Stiles’ voice, well, it sounded exactly like Johns when he would say the same thing to Claudia, and he knew that even in the world of hurt his son was in, he was safe.
“Love you sourwolf.”