Chapter Text
“You look ridiculous!” Lydia snapped in all of her eight year old might, hands firmly on her hips as she glared at the pale, lanky boy in front of her. She watched, grinning viciously as tears welled up in Stiles’ amber coloured eyes and he wrapped his arms around himself almost like he could hide himself from her by doing so.
“Lydia!” Jackson barked and she whirled around at his harsh tone. Once her attention was elsewhere Stiles seemed to unglue from his spot and ran away, Jackson watched him go before turned his attention back on the pretty little blonde he had been crushing on for the past few months – Lydia had seemed so perfect! “You can’t say things like that! That’s mean!”
“What? Jackson he does look ridiculous!” Lydia rolled her eyes dramatically.
“That doesn’t matter, Lydia. You still don’t get to say it… especially not straight after his mother died, that’s just mean,” Jackson repeated before marching away from Lydia in the direction Stiles had run off in. It took Jackson less than five minutes to find the younger boy had locked himself in a toilet stall in the boy’s toilet block. “Stiles?” he called through the shut door.
“Go ‘way, J-Jackson,” Stiles sobbed out, “She already t-t-told me I look r-r-r… stupid. You don’t ha-have to say anything more!”
“I thought you looked really pretty,” Jackson replied honestly through the closed door, “She shouldn’t’ve said that… it was mean. Are you going to come out of there any time soon?” After a few moments silence, the lock on the door clicked open and Jackson winced when he caught sight of Stiles’ red eyes and blotchy face, and his obvious attempts to rub the pink lip gloss off himself had only managed to smear it up his damp cheek. “My mum says you’re supposed to use make-up-remover to get rid of it,” Jackson shared quietly as he pulled his sleeve down over his hand and wiped at the lip gloss on Stiles’ cheek to get rid of the evidence it had been smeared there in the first place.
“You thought I looked pretty?” Stiles asked, sniffling back his next sob.
“Yeah,” Jackson shrugged and then hugged the younger boy, “That’s probably why Lydia was so mean to you, she’s probably scared everyone will think you’re prettier than her.”
TEN YEARS LATER
“Have you ever tried wearing it since?” Lydia asked out of the blue one day as she and Stiles sat in her bedroom pouring over old tomes and the bestiary Lydia was still translating.
“Huh?” Stiles asked, pen falling from his mouth to the floor and Lydia raised an eyebrow and very pointedly looked to where Stiles had been re-arranging her make-up on her dresser as he read the passages in Gaelic from the tome sitting on the very edge of the desk. “Oops… sorry Lyds,” he muttered, rolling his chair back and resting the book on his knees instead.
“So did you?” Lydia prodded, recognising that Stiles was avoiding the question.
“Uh yeah,” Stiles nodded somewhat distractedly and then looked at her, “Why ask now?”
“Only just remembered,” Lydia replied, a thoughtful look on her pretty face and Stiles shrugged slightly in confusion, “Jackson completely went crazy at me, he didn’t speak to me again for a long time.”
“About eighteen months,” Stiles supplied as he flipped a page.
“How do you remember that?” Lydia asked sceptically, the half-translated passage from the bestiary long forgotten now and her full attention on her friend and pack mate.
“Eidetic memory helps,” he replied dryly and snapped his own book closed and tossed it back onto Lydia’s dresser to give her his full attention, “Scotty was my best friend even back then but around the same time my Mother died Scott’s Dad left him and his mum. My dad was just a deputy and fell into drinking pretty hard. You probably don’t know this, a lot of people don’t seem to know but I got taken off my Dad about six weeks after my Mother died, I had no other family and Scott’s mum was declared unfit due to ongoing financial difficulties. Mr and Mrs Whitmore fostered me for three years while my Dad got himself clean, and relapsed, clean, relapsed, clean, relapsed – you get the idea. I told Jackson to forgive you, about a year after moving in with the Whitmore’s; that’s how I remember how long he didn’t talk to you for, Lyds.”
“Oh my God,” Lydia whispered, tears collecting in her eyes at the story, “Three years?! B-but… why were you taken from the Sheriff in the first instance?”
“Huh,” Stiles winced and looked away from her, “He was drunk all the time when he wasn’t working double or triple shifts, he forgot to buy food, forgot to pay the power bill… forgot to pay the house loan a few times too. He locked me out of the house all the time, or in my bedroom… anywhere he didn’t have to look at me. I’m not sure who phoned social services on him… might have been Melissa, might have been a teacher at school… might have even been a neighbour. It took them a hand full of visits before they were convinced.”
“What convinced them?” Lydia whispered almost too quiet to be heard.
“When they arrived and found me severely concussed in the kitchen, cleaning up the glass and blood from the Jack Daniel’s bottle he threw at my head,” Stiles replied stonily, then ran a finger along the pearl white scar just in his hair line, “Thirteen stitches to fix the hole in my head and about eight years of therapy.”
“Jesus Stiles!”
“It’s in the past Lyds,” Stiles shrugged and smiled ruefully.
“And they gave you back to him after that?!”
“Nope,” Stiles replied, the ‘p’ popping as he leant back in the roller chair, “Dad signed away his paternal rights just before I turned thirteen and the Whitmore’s adopted me at his request.”
“Wait… so Jackson is your brother?” Lydia demanded.
“He is,” he nodded slightly.
“And you’re somehow back living with the Sheriff?”
“The Whitmore’s and dad gave me the option after everything that happened with Jackson and the Kanima; go to England with the Whitmore’s… or stay with Dad in Beacon Hills. I couldn’t leave you guys, so here I am.” Stiles shrugged again and hung his head back off the backrest of the roller chair and stared at the roof, swivelling himself from side to side.
“Is he better now?” Lydia asked gently.
“I call him dad because it’s weird to think of myself calling him Sheriff or Noah,” Stiles replied to the roof and Lydia bit into her bottom lip – the Whitmore’s had been gone now for just over a year; had Stiles been so unhappy this whole time? “He doesn’t really drink too much anymore, just sometimes when he’s really stressed… it’s like living with a roommate I guess? He doesn’t so much care where I am, or how my grades are so long as he doesn’t have to arrest me or bail me out… not that he would have to bail me out anyway – I’m technically still under the care of the Whitmore’s so they get phoned instead of him but I guess that’s beside the point isn’t it? Sometimes I’m there… sometimes I’m at Scott’s place… sometimes I’m at Peter’s apartment…”
“Peter? As in Peter Hale?!” Lydia all but screamed, throwing a pillow off her bed at Stiles.
“Oof!” Stiles grunted as the pillow glanced off his chin and rolled over his face.
“You called?” Peter purred as he climbed through Lydia’s bedroom window, gracefully stepping over the bookcase below the window and entering the room to Lydia’s outraged look and Stiles slowly rolled his head in Peter’s direction – mostly disinterred. “Pup,” Peter nodded as he crossed the bedroom towards Stiles. Lydia tensed up immediately but Stiles remained sprawled on the roller chair as Peter stopped beside him, running his finger’s gently through Stiles’ hair.
“What are you doing here?” Lydia hissed and Peter smirked at her just to unsettle her more.
“Passing through,” Peter replied after a moment and then turned his attention back to Stiles, “Heading to the grocery shop, will you be dropping by when you’re done here pup?”
“You could have just texted,” Stiles raised an eyebrow at the man.
“You were panicking,” Peter murmured calmly, poking Stiles in the chest lightly right above his heart and Stiles shot the werewolf a guilty look before huffing tiredly.
“Dinner would be nice,” Stiles replied quietly, eyes slipping closed tiredly, “Thanks Peter.”
“The jeep isn’t in the Martin’s drive-way,” Peter suggested.
“Workshop… again.”
“I will come collect you after I am done with the grocer,” the werewolf asserted with a slight nod and turned back towards the window again, already half out of it by the time Stiles replied.
“I’ll just come now,” Stiles replied around a yawn as he slung himself forwards on the roller chair and cracked his neck, “I don’t think we’re gonna’ get much else done tonight, right Lyds?”
“No,” she replied, pursing her lips slightly and Peter looked between the two teenagers thoughtfully.
“I’ll wait in the car,” he announced, disappearing out the window trying to give the pair some semblance of privacy even though both teenagers were smart enough to know he could still hear everything said in Lydia’s bedroom.
“The Whitmore’s allowed you to be so… eccentric?” Lydia asked softly, eyes back on her rearranged make-up.
“Sometimes they even condoned self expression, Lydia. Why do you ask?”
“They always seemed so…”
“Stuck up?” Stiles offered.
“Yes,” Lydia nodded.
“Like you were when you told me I looked ridiculous?” Stiles suggested gently and Lydia flinched, the apology on her tongue but he just shook his head, “Don’t worry about it Lydia. It’s easier to be this; to be the too-pale, lanky human boy running with wolves.”
“They don’t know?” she asked instead as Stiles stood and shoved his book back into his back pack and slung it over one shoulder.
“Some do, some don’t,” Stiles replied carefully, “I don’t do it in public anymore so it’s no one’s business.”