Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Wait, you let her go?” Stiles is agitated, even jumps up from his seat, and David rubs at his aching temple then slams his hands down on the table in front of him, meanly grateful when Stiles flinches and shrinks back. He never wanted his son to be afraid of him, would have much preferred to keep the respect he once took for granted, but if this is what he has left, it'll have to do.

“Let her go? She is the victim, Stiles. Your victim. If I'd ever thought I'd see the day I'd nearly have to arrest a son of mine for assault...”

Stiles looks down and David searches his face desperately, hoping for some guilt, some remorse, something.

“Nearly?” Stiles says quietly. It's not there; his face is blank.

He wipes his hand over his mouth. “She's not pressing charges. I have to finish up here. Go wait in the car.”

* * *

The ride home is silent. David prepares a speech, another one like so many he's delivered over the past couple of years. Your future, the people you hurt, right, wrong. Me. None of it ever seems to take and by the time they get in the house, Stiles subdued and hunch-shouldered, he's too heartsick to say any of it.

He pours himself a tumbler of whiskey straight off. He can feel Stiles hovering but he doesn't look at him when he says, “You know, some days I don't know which of us your mom would be most disappointed in. I can't look at you right now, Stiles. Get out.”

There's a choked sound behind him, and then Stiles is gone.

* * *

There's no stirring the next morning and he raps on the door and opens it without waiting for an answer.

The bed hasn't been slept in. The laptop is gone, cell phone charger and external hard drive too, and when he opens the drawers and closet on a feeling of dread there's far too few clothes even for a kid who cares as little about what he's wearing as Stiles does.

He dials Stiles' phone on the way down the stairs. “I just meant go to your room,” he tells the voicemail. “This is – this is a rough patch. But I am not, I would never kick you out. You're my son, and this is your home. Call me when you get this.”

He calls the school next, willing the panic to die down.

“Yes, Stiles was in attendance at homeroom,” Angie in the office says, unruffled and polite. “Do you need me to pass a message to him, Sheriff?”

“No, it's fine,” he says. It's fine. This is good. A night away, some time to cool off, and he will sit Stiles down and by God they will finally have this out and maybe he'll see his son again, the one who came on ridealongs with his old man and had a good head and a sweet heart on him, the one who talked and talked until David knew every thought that passed through his brain, and got into harmless trouble he got himself out of before David ever heard about it.

He clasps his hands around his coffee mug and doesn't get in the car to drive to work until he's stopped shaking.

* * *

He gets a text around lunchtime, just I'm ok but something unclenches around his stomach and he actually manages to focus on his work in the afternoon. Stiles doesn't come home straight after school and he thinks for a second before dialling Scott's house.

“Sure, let me get him,” Melissa says, and then Stiles is on the phone.

“Hi, Dad.”

“Hi, son,” he says. “You staying at Scott's?”

There's a pause. “We have a lab report, so...” Stiles says carefully, and David shuts his eyes and rests his head on one hand at the distance behind it.

“Good, good.”

“Look,” he starts at the same time as Stiles says, “Dad-”

“Sorry, go ahead,” he says.

“Just – I'm sorry, okay?” Stiles sounds defeated. “I know you don't believe me anymore and I'm sorry for that too. But it's not – okay, whatever you think is going on with me, it isn't. And it's not you. It's nothing you've done, or not done. It's just me, and the stuff I have to do.”

“You don't have to do anything,” David says softly. “We can work this out. Trust me.”

“It's not a question of trusting you,” Stiles says dully and David aches to take him into his arms, to pull Stiles onto his lap and rock him as if he were a tiny child again, crying about playground booboos, easily fixed and quickly forgotten. “It's – you don't understand, and I know teenagers say that all the time, but this really is. Something. It's not easy.”

“I can help you.”

“I need some time,” Stiles says. “I'm not – I don't know when I'll be home. I'm sorry.”

* * *

The I'm ok texts keep coming, every day, and he relaxes and starts thinking of it as something Stiles needs, even late at night when the house echoes with silence and it's almost a physical pain not to have his child with him. He goes grocery shopping on the fourth day of Stiles' absence, having been blindsided by the fact that no Stiles means no food magically coming into the house, and wanders round, somewhat guiltily enjoying putting burgers and cheese and frozen fries in his basket.

He sees Derek Hale in one aisle and nods cordially; Derek gives him a rictus smile back and almost flees. Some people never get over being arrested, although he'd have figured Hale for the type to brush it off pretty easy. He sees him again further into the store, on the phone, and grins when he overhears some of the conversation, recognising the cadences: “... think I know when meat's cooked through but fine, do it for fifteen, don't blame me when the cheese is burnt. What? Yeah, you too. Hey, can you check if we need toothpaste?... Okay. Yeah, about half an hour, see you later.” Looks like Hale finally got himself a lady friend, although with that face he bets it wasn't too much trouble.

It's not until the next day that he thinks about the groceries and the vastly reduced bill and feels guilty. Melissa McCall already has herself and Scott to support on that nurse's salary, and no doubt Scott eats the way Stiles seems to, enormously and often. He doesn't know her shift pattern but he calls the house anyway and is pleased when she picks up; easier to have this conversation while the boys are in school.

“I'm sorry for not thinking about this earlier,” he says. “I need to make some arrangements to cover Stiles' keep with you.”

“What?” she says.

“Food, gas,” he says. “You shouldn't be covering him. I appreciate this more than I can say, Melissa, I really do, I think this is going to help a lot when he comes home. Which will be soon, I hope. You've been great, but we can't impose too long.”

“David,” she says slowly. “Do you think Stiles is staying here?”

“What?” he says back. “He's – I spoke to him, at your house. He said he was at Scott's.”

“For the evening,” she says. “I've seen him a couple of times, he's fine, he looks fine, but I'm sorry, David, I don't know where he's sleeping, but it's not here.”

“Jesus,” he says faintly. He feels ill. Where the hell – and what the hell kind of father is he that he doesn't even know, didn't even check? Is Stiles sleeping in the Jeep, in the open? He thinks of all the things that could have happened and the whiskey is in his hand before he even registers opening the locked bottom drawer.

“David,” Melissa is saying, “David, I'm so sorry – if I'd known – come over, I'll call Scott and get him home from Allison's and he will tell me what's going on. I saw Stiles two nights ago, he's fine.”

* * *

He goes straight out of his office and over to Mindy Barnes. Mindy is a fuschia-lipstick-wearing blue-rinse-and-perm-having sixty-something secretary and general good luck charm. Her family have lived in the town for a hundred fifty years and she knows everything about everyone, often before they know it themselves.

“Mindy,” he says, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice and failing; screw it, she'll smell it on him anyway and it's not like the question he has to ask isn't going to show him for the sorry wretch he is. “Do you know where my son is living?”

She looks at him over her glasses, the look which means she's seen to the depths of your soul and sorry, sunshine, but some of it is rotting away.

“That Jeep of his has been outside Derek Hale's apartment building all night, all week,” she says.

Jesus. That's – Hale. How old is he? A man, anyway, when Stiles is still so much of a boy, and for all nothing was never proven against him David has often suspected it's more skill at getting away from trouble in time than staying out of it. Older and dangerous and handsome, and for all Stiles is smart as a whip he's so innocent in some ways, hungry for attention and longing to be wanted, and how the hell did he miss this?

He nods and stumbles away, back to his office.

“Sheriff,” she calls after him. He looks back and she stops typing to level a stare at him. “It's been there on and off through the days this last nine months or more.” She adjusts her glasses and leans forward to her screen. “Thought you might want to know that.”

He does want to know that. He would have liked to know that nine months ago.

He doesn't know how he didn't.

* * *

“What do you think about statutory rape?” He asks Morton next time he comes into the office.

“Professional opinion?” Morton says. “I think it's pretty hard to get a conviction when the kid in question turned 18 already, especially since he'll get up in front of a judge and swear to God and everyone nothing happened when he was underage.”

David barks out a humourless laugh. “So what you're saying is, everyone knew about Stiles and Derek Hale except for me.”

“Knew? No.” Morton takes a seat. “Just plenty of rumour. But even then, you'll get people see them together, that's it. You won't find anyone in this town who's actually seen them doing something inappropriate.” His tone turns sly. “It's almost like one of them's the Sheriff's kid or something.”

He flicks a glance up at him – not the time – and Morton puts his hands up with a nod, gets down to business.

* * *

After Morton goes he leafs through the papers left in his in-tray, aimless and unable to concentrate. One of them falls out and he picks it up.

It's a BOLO from upstate, three men left in suspicious coma-like states, and he's drawn to the photofit of the suspect, an attractive middle-aged woman. A minute's racking his brains and the memory is back and he's picking up the phone to call the Sheriff of Batason County, to give him the name and details of the woman who was in town a week ago, the woman Stiles assaulted that night.

The pieces are falling into place, he's enough of an old lawman to sense that, but he's damned if he can make out what the picture is.

* * *

He abuses Sheriff's privileges to get Hale's address and heads over straight from work. Stiles should be out of school, but he doesn't know what Hale does – tends bar, apparently, possibly, at one of the rougher bars out by the highway where the truckers stop, but Mindy wasn't sure if he was even still doing it, never mind when he might be there. He doesn't know what he's hoping for: a chance to punch the son of a bitch in the mouth wouldn't be half bad, but he doesn't want to drive his son away forever and if Stiles thinks he's in love, well. Loyalty to the point of wilful stupidity is something they have in common.

Hale’s place is in neither the best nor the worst part of town, about five minutes from the woods which house the old Hale property, and it looks decent enough from the outside; it’s a utilitarian apartment block, four storeys high with eight apartments, with the outside well kept up and a smattering of grass and an unenthusiastic flower border at one side of the parking lot. The Jeep is there, parked next to a shiny, sleek black Camaro. He’s not sure whether that’s better or worse, but he figures if he wanted to talk to Hale without Stiles he’d have headed out to his workplace, not his home. He wants to see his son.

David firms his mouth and gets out of the car. It’s his lucky day: a young blonde lady heading out nods at him and his uniform and holds the door open to let him in, which means at least he’s going to get inside.

He walks up a flight of stairs and knocks on apartment three. A few moments later and then Stiles is there in the open door, grinning and saying, “Yeah, what’d you for- Dad,” eyes big and round, and he steps forward and has Stiles in a hug before he even knows that’s what he’s going to do. He can feel Stiles shudder against him, hard, and then, thank God, he relaxes and puts his arms around David and David shuts his eyes and lets himself feel his son safe and well.

They pull back and David sees Hale further into the apartment, hovering. He’s wearing an apron. “Come in,” Stiles is saying, and he pushes the door closed behind David with a sense of finality, making an aborted gesture towards David’s arm as if to pull him inside. David raises his eyebrows at Hale over Stiles’ shoulder and Hale shrugs at him, a set to his mouth that on somebody else might almost look like the faintest hint of a smile.

He’s not sure what he expected, feared, from Hale’s apartment. Fratboy chic, beer can mountains and mess and – well, if he’s absolutely honest he’d been afraid of finding evidence of what this man is doing to his baby boy, shirts or worse off or items lying around. But it’s clean and fresh and fairly neat, and when Stiles brings him into the kitchen it could almost be their own, domestic and normal, scent of roasting chicken in the air, half-chopped vegetables on the counter and a pot waiting on the stove, and Stiles’ homework spread out over the table.

“You remember Derek,” Stiles says brightly, obviously having decided to bull on through like he hasn’t left his father’s house to shack up with an older guy David had only previously known from the other side of a holding cell.

“Sir,” Hale says politely and David shakes his hand. He’s been in some weird situations with Stiles – Stiles is just that kind of kid – but acting like this is all totally normal and okay is approaching the weirdest.

“Derek has to go watch some TV now,” Stiles announces and when David looks between them he catches Hale rolling his eyes and has to hide a reluctant smile. He knows how irrepressible Stiles is, has been worrying since he first heard about this – thing between Stiles and Hale that his son might be working too hard to please an attractive older man, all his brightness and personality squashed, but there’s still a ready smile on Stiles’ face and it seems clear they're comfortable together.

“Fine,” Hale says. “You know where I am.”

“Yes, in front of the TV,” Stiles says, nodding. “With the sound turned up. Loud.”

“Not too loud,” Hale says, with a smile that shows teeth. “You and your father need to be able to hear yourselves talk.”

David looks between them, well aware there’s another conversation happening than the one he’s hearing but without much idea of what the hell it could be. Whatever it is, Stiles appears to concede the point and Hale heads out of the kitchen. David’s looking for it, so as they brush past one another he sees how Stiles’ hand seeks Hale’s, how their fingers weave together and squeeze for a brief moment.

The TV switches on in the next room and blares obnoxiously loud for a second before settling to gentle background noise. Stiles sits down at the table, pushing his homework to one side, and waves David into a seat. David’s struck by the casualness of it, his confidence and easy ownership in the space; it’s obvious Stiles considers David his guest, not Hale's, has himself been a permanent fixture in the apartment much longer than the week or so since he left their house.

“I thought you were staying at Scott’s,” David says, pleased that it comes out level and neutral.

“I didn’t say that,” Stiles says quickly. “I didn’t lie.”

“Maybe not about that,” David mutters. Stiles looks down, picks up his pen and bats it distractedly at the table a couple of times, and there’s a creak from the next room, as if somebody who’d been relaxed into the sofa has gotten up. “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean – I haven’t come here to fight with you, Stiles. I just want to know you’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” Stiles says. “I really am. I’m at school every day, my homework is in on time, I’m taking my vitamins, in bed by eleven...” he trails off, going red, and David could have also lived happily without such a specific reminder of where and who Stiles is going to bed with these days, but he moves manfully past it.

“How long has this been going on?” he says instead, keeping his voice as gentle as he can.

“About a year,” Stiles says quietly.

A year. Jesus. That’s pretty serious; if Stiles weren’t so young, he wouldn’t be surprised they were at the living together stage. He’d been engaged after six months, himself. “You’re eighteen,” he says, instead of admitting it. “You’ve been eighteen only about four months. And Derek is-?”

“Twenty-four,” Stiles mumbles and David is about to call him on it when Stiles seems to come to some sort of decision: his head comes up, he stops fidgeting, he looks David in the eye and says more strongly, “He’s twenty-four. But it was my decision. Everything, all of it. He never would’ve – he’d have waited. He’s never pressured me or asked for anything I wasn’t ready to give.”

David chooses his words carefully. “I’m not trying to say you haven’t made your own choices. But it’s very easy – you know the kinds of things I’ve seen, Stiles, and it can be very easy for an experienced older man to convince somebody that what they’re thinking and feeling is all them.”

“I know that,” Stiles says. “I can’t convince you that’s not what happened, I guess. But you’ll – you know, now, and you’ll see us together, and you’ll see what it’s like.”

It’s a surprisingly mature answer and David wishes ruefully for a second that Stiles had been histrionic, insisted that they couldn’t be understood, been in the grip of some ridiculous Romeo and Juliet fantasy where he could have had a comfortable script and dragged Stiles out home by the scruff of his neck. He wasn’t really prepared for this to be a functioning relationship.

“Is he good to you?” he says instead.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, and at least the involuntary smile that lights him up is heartening. “He is. He’s – he makes me happy, Dad.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” David says. “Because I can’t help but notice that it was around the time Derek came into your life that you started getting in trouble, Stiles. And if this has been a year, it hasn’t got better since you’ve been together.”

Stiles looks stricken and David leans across the table, anxious, capturing Stiles’ hand against the table in his urgency. “If there’s – if he’s gotten you into something – something you think you can’t get out of – I can help you, Stiles, I promise.”

Stiles is shaking his head, showing the remorse he’s been looking to see for months now, and he gets desperate, says, “I can help you both, I will. You can turn this around.”

Stiles leans away, moving his hand slowly enough not to be a rejection, and David’s heart breaks a little at his small, pained smile. “I can’t – okay.” He takes a deep breath and looks earnestly into David’s eyes. “One day I’m gonna tell you what’s been going on with me. And you won’t like it. But what you need to know now is that it’s not Derek, okay? He’s – he is involved. But it’s not his fault, and he does what he can to protect me. We look after each other. And we’re trying – we’re trying to look after everyone. I know what you think, how it looks. But we’re doing our best, we really are, and – I have no right to ask you to trust me, after everything, I know that. But I wish you could.”

David doesn’t know what to do with any of that, with this adult looking out at him from the warm brown eyes of his child, locked into something he thinks David can’t comprehend, against the world with a stranger instead of with his family. Instead he impulsively says, “Come home.”

Stiles shuts his eyes and breathes out. “Dad.”

“Just – think about it,” he hurries to say. He doesn’t want to hear no, not right now. “And as for the other stuff.” He puts the BOLO on the table between them and slides it forward. “Came through this afternoon.”

Stiles looks at it, glances up at him and picks it up. David knows as soon as he takes it in: he curses under his breath. Hale appears in the doorway behind him almost instantly, one moment absent and the next there, and Stiles holds it out to him.

Hale looks at it, looks at David, and then he looks at Stiles and there's a whole conversation in a grimace, the quirk of an eyebrow, a bitten and licked lip, and David hurts suddenly, briefly, because he's been there, he's had that, he was once that in tune with another person, and he realises that without actually wanting to he's already accepted Stiles and Hale as something real, even – maybe – something precious.

He can't tell what they've decided but Hale leans in before remembering his presence, glowers at David before visibly also remembering that this is Stiles' father and looking disconcerted in a way that somehow reminds David that Hale's father was dead by the time he was Stiles' age.

“I'm okay,” Stiles says and he leans up to press a kiss to Hale's lips, quick enough to be habit and slow enough to be meaningful. “Go take care of it.”

“This is police business,” David says, more for form than anything else, because there's something that isn't adding up with this case, and what is adding up is the man his son was fast becoming before they seemed to get so spectacularly derailed. The man he still is becoming, or maybe already is; the one that sees the right thing, and does it.

“It really isn't,” Hale says flatly, then to Stiles, “I'll call you.”

“You better,” Stiles says and David doesn't follow them to the door, trying to sort through what he knows against what he thinks is going on.

Stiles comes back in, rubbing his forehead; he looks tense, and he glances back at the door once as if he'd have liked to follow Hale out. “What does this mean, Stiles?” he asks.

“Well,” Stiles says, and stops. “Right now it means you get to eat his chicken. If you want to.”

It's not Stiles' secrets – or Stiles' and Hale's secrets, maybe. It's not even Stiles' trust. But it's his company, and his hand reached out, and for this evening it's enough.

“Show me where you keep the cutlery,” he says, and his son smiles.

Chapter Text

He gets the first scent through the open window: something that's both Stiles and definitely not-Stiles, which is a pretty impressive feat by his nose considering he's currently rolling around Stiles' ridiculously narrow dorm bed, which smells like Stiles, and Stiles is rolling around with him, smelling – obviously – like Stiles, tongue in Derek's mouth and hands in Derek's hair and generally filling Derek's senses with pleasure and comfort.

He presses Stiles' head to his neck, briefly dragging his mind off the way Stiles obligingly licks before biting down, and takes in a deep breath.

It's not that hard to identify once he concentrates on it. After years of Stiles' house and all the places in Beacon Falls that need the loving correction of the law, Sheriff Stilinski's scent (gun oil, duty and sarcasm, which is where his scent overlaps with Stiles') is familiar enough.

“Are you expecting your dad?” he asks.

“What?” Stiles says. He shakes Derek's hand off him and lifts his head off Derek's neck, getting a better vantage point for a look of squinty disapproval. “No! Why would I be? Why would you bring that up? Why would you talk about my dad in bed?”

“I think he's downstairs,” Derek says.

“No he isn't,” Stiles says instantly. “Crap, are you sure? Maybe it's not him.”

He looks conflicted and Derek automatically noses at the closest part of him, which happens to be his right wrist, and takes in his scent: spice-sharp arousal and affection, pretty much always present around Derek but intensified from their earlier activity, a complex woody mix of guilt and missing-you, a sly teaser of clean excitement and the abstraction of his studies, a month into college. “When are these senses wrong?” Derek says pointedly. “I know what your dad smells like.”

“And it disturbs me that you do,” Stiles says. “And also, do you actually want to know when your senses have been wrong? Because there is a column for that on the spreadsheet o' shit that tried to kill me.”

There is a spreadsheet. Derek's seen it. And he has no doubt that there is such a column: werewolf-related disappointment, S for Scott, D for Derek, P for pack (in Derek's mind) and puppies (in Stiles').

“What's he doing?” Stiles says. He swarms off of Derek and grabs a pair of boxers from the floor.

“I don’t know,” Derek says irritably. “I can smell he’s there, I can’t see through walls.”

Stiles looks at the open window and looks at Derek. Derek raises his eyebrows at him. Going through the window of Stiles’ Beacon Hills bedroom, with its helpfully located trees and scaleable roof, is, for Derek, more or less as easy as going through the front door, easier if he includes the sporadic gauntlet of Sheriff Stiles’ painfully polite conversation. He’s not about to jump out of a window three storeys up in front of a crowd of people.

There’s also a part of him that wants to make Stiles deal with this finally, sick of being the dirty little secret. But that’s not fair: Stiles hangs around a lot talking about school and werewolves and how hot he finds Derek but it’s always been perfectly clear he’s a long way below Stiles’ dad and Scott on the list of priorities. It’s not his fault Derek is maybe a little more attached than that.

So he says, “I’ll go wait in the hall downstairs and leave when he comes up here. Don’t worry about it.”

Stiles’ face twists. “But you just got here last night!”

“Yes, and now your father is here,” Derek explains. “So I have to go.”

Stiles stops rummaging through a cardboard box which is either an important artistic statement on the function of transience as a concept in modern life, or a complete failure to do any unpacking in the month he’s lived here. “Fine. When will I see you again?” he says quietly.

“Soon,” Derek says, forcing carelessness into his voice. “You’re at school now, you’ll be busy. Meeting new people.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says. Derek’s heard more enthusiasm from him at the prospect of being harpooned by rogue merpeople, and that is a genuine problem they have had. He hates everything.

“You’ll probably have got yourself a boyfriend next time I see you,” Derek’s mouth says next, because he especially hates himself.

“What?” Stiles says. He drops the (ugly, garish) shirt he was holding back into the box and gives Derek a big-eyed look. A fine tremor runs through his body and his scent turns metallic with anxiety and indignation. “Oh my God, you’re dumping me? I can’t believe you’re dumping me! What the hell? I knew you thought this was too far away, I’d have gone to San Diego, I told you that-“

“What? You didn’t,” Derek says. There’s an extremely unpleasant clenching feeling in his chest, not unlike waking up after running with the pack during a full moon and really regretting catching that third rabbit.

“I did, I said, look, Derek, I’ve got these acceptances, where do you think I should go, and you said, it doesn’t matter to me you should go wherever you want, and now you’re dumping me for picking the wrong one, that is so outrageous-“

“What?” Derek says. “Just – what?”

“What?” Stiles repeats. He stares at him and Derek looks back helplessly. “For Christ’s sake, is this - you’re my boyfriend, Derek, you are aware of that?”

“Um,” Derek says.

“How can you not know that?” Stiles complains but his scent is settling to pinkish relief and his heartbeat is returning to its usual reassuring dull thumping rhythm; the contrast is like a relaxant and Derek feels the Stiles-is-unhappy tension seep out of him. “It’s been months! We have romantic dinners alone! You stay at my house! You hold my hand in front of the whole pack!”

“Yeah, but not-” Derek trails off, horribly aware that what he’d been about to say makes him sound like a thirteen-year-old girl.

Stiles glares at him. “Not what?”

“Not in public,” Derek mumbles.

Stiles stares at him, mouth hanging open. It’s not attractive, but Derek is doomed and pretty much thinks everything Stiles does with his stupid face is adorable, so. “Do you want to hold my hand in public?”

“Yes!” Derek says. “I want people to know. I want you to want people to know.”

“Fine, we can hold hands in public, jeez,” Stiles says. “This is not a conversation I ever pictured us having, by the way.”

“Tell your dad,” Derek says abruptly. The Sheriff is inside the building and unless Stiles really does push him out the window it’s about to become a done deal, but he wants to think that Stiles would’ve anyway.

“Dad knows!” Stiles says, throwing his arms around in a way that seems meant to demonstrate his, Stiles’, general engagement with the world compared to Derek’s appalling dysfunctionality.

“But the-” Derek says, and he makes a gesture intended to include the window, Stiles getting dressed out of his box, and the whole general tragedy that is his life, illicitly making out in a mildly grubby single-bedded dorm room with the eighteen-year-old human boy he loves.

“Because he has been very clear to me about the extent to which he does not need to see it happening,” Stiles says pointedly. “Which, speaking of, can you put some clothes on? I can’t believe you didn’t know this, I thought you just avoided him all the time because you thought he wanted to arrest you, which he doesn’t, by the way. We’ll probably go for breakfast, try not to admit you spent the last however many months thinking of his son just as a hot piece of tail, okay?”

Breakfast would be pretty good, actually. He knows damn well Stiles planned to offer him Pop Tarts and instant coffee. If they go out he can get bacon and eggs and fried bread.

“And if you’re a good boy you can hold my hand,” Stiles says, grinning and slightly flushed, and when Derek kisses him he laughs.

Chapter Text

If Stiles hoped to never, ever have to admit to his dad that he'd got himself mixed up with werewolves – freaking werewolves! - because of his dumb-ass best friend, then this is the opposite of what he wanted.

Of course, if Deputy Marsham wanted to live a long and happy life and die in his bed surrounded by grandchildren then he got the opposite of what he wanted, too, so Stiles guesses his life isn't too bad. He thinks he's probably good for oh, at least another five minutes. Marsham is lying at their feet drained of blood and his kid (kids? Stiles isn't exactly sure, but he thinks there's at least one poor thing lying in bed right now hoping Daddy makes it home from work) is going to grow up really hating May, and probably in about ten years Derek is going to think it's a great idea to turn the by-now-teenaged kid and give it some big dramatic rage vendetta against vampires and Stiles is going to have to be the one that talks him out of it and God, his life.

(Stiles, incidentally, is smarter than his teachers give him credit for, and he knows how his hyperactivity works, and he knows he's focusing on this, now, because that means he doesn't have to think about how Dad is here, right beside him, finding out about what a freakshow Beacon Hills actually is not in the mature and calm conversation in their own den Stiles has occasionally imagined, but rather in the latest of many scenarios in which Stiles has found himself staring death in the face in the last couple of years, and. Danger for Stiles is fine. In fact at this point it's approaching the boringly normal state of things. Danger for Dad is not something Stiles woke up this morning prepared to deal with.)

“Stilinski, I think?” the lead vampire says. She smiles and her sharp little canines protrude over her lower lip and her eyes glimmer dangerously. It's all very Twilight and disturbing. Part of Stiles' brain is noting it, cataloguing the differences between her teeth and werewolf teeth, both Scott's beta teeth and Derek's longer toothier set, now he's turned 25 and grown into his full-wolfass alpha form. Stiles hates that part of his brain.

“I'm Stilinski,” Dad says quietly and oh hell no because now she knows. Stiles thinks about how proud he is of his dad, fronting up to this weirdness without even a quirk of the eyebrow to show it's anything out of the ordinary, but when Dad actually steps in front of him he has to do something. Dad may think he's just doing his job, but she and her little pals are fucking vampires, and from where Stiles is standing that makes them pretty much down to him.

“Wonderful,” she says tartly. “I wasn't talking to you.”

“Yeah, it's me,” Stiles says.

Her full set of teeth glint in the moonlight. “Just you?”

One of her goons cracks his knuckles, closing their loose semicircle behind her in towards Stiles and his dad, and then-

Fucking finally. A huge black shape bowls into the goons, roaring, scattering them like Lydia fishtailing through the school parking lot in one of her I-rule-this-school moods. There's a discordant echo of howls in Derek's wake and then Scott and the betas are crashing through the woods as well, mopping up the goons Derek isn't currently occupied in tearing into tiny bloody bits.

“It's pretty much never just me,” Stiles says. He reaches out without looking and puts his hand on Dad's wrist, trying to communicate I got this, I know them, for Christ's sake don't shoot anything through touch. From the tension running through his father he's not sure it's taking. He's spoiled by werewolves, by now Derek can read that kind of thing off him practically from the next state. “I'm not saying I don't sometimes think longingly of the days when five werewolves didn't feel free to pass comment on my every move, it's true, but mostly it works out okay.”

“Werewolves-” Dad grunts next to him, quietly. The word is a pretty major part of Stiles' vocabulary these days and it surprises him how weird it sounds in his dad's mouth.

Stiles swallows and ignores him, even though it kills him. Vampire first. Vampire, then he can fix things with his dad.

Maybe.

He keeps one hand securely hanging on to Dad. It's as much protection as it is wanting to keep Dad near him, and it's not just the vampires – well, the one remaining vampire. Like this, territory invaded and bloodlust up, the betas wild and hyped by Derek's fury... if Dad took off, he's not sure he could be in time to stop the pack chasing him, faint Stiles-scent or not.

His other hand, he stretches out. Careless, confident; he keeps his gaze on the vampire leader and doesn't show any reaction when Derek comes to him, circles Stiles and Dad protectively, growling, before he slinks under his hand and lets Stiles curl trembling fingers into the thick dark fur between his ears.

“Stiles,” Dad murmurs, alarm running through his voice.

“Dad, please,” he says out of the corner of his mouth, praying for Dad to trust him, just this one time.

The vampire is watching them with an expression of polite distaste. “It's true, then,” she remarks.

Stiles summons up as much fake joviality as he can, under the horrible circumstances. “What, that the second I so much as hint I'd like to see your head ripped off your neck, it's done? Yup. All true.”

It is true. And it's still – okay, Stiles shouldn't admit it, because it's petty and stupid and maybe even slightly crazy, but it's a rush, just how true it is, Derek's leashed power under his fingertips, the pack behind them both. The pack is Derek's and Derek is Stiles' and it's just – yeah. He likes it more than he hopes any of them know.

She glances pointedly at the bodies around them. “Let's talk plainly then, child who runs with werewolves. What do I have to do to leave here alive?”

He stares at her. It's pretty unusual, in his experience (which by now is extensive), to be asked.

“Stiles,” Dad says softly. He risks a look over. Dad's face is open and – and awful, red and shocked and sad.

Stiles looks down and takes a deep, raggedy breath. He looks around. The pack is arrayed behind him, poised to fall into defensive positions or attack as necessary. He's vaguely aware of a cracking-leaves-and-twigs sound in the woods that means Allison, wanting to let him know she's there with her bow, ready.

Dad is next to him, alien in this environment, like a sunflower in the middle of a smooth grass lawn. Derek rumbles under his hand and Stiles pets him absently.

“How many kids does Marsham have?” he says quietly.

“Two,” Dad says.

Two kids. Two – well, he's already thinking it. Two kids like Stiles, crying way too young at their parent's grave.

He lifts his hand off Derek's head, slow and deliberate, and says, “Go.”

She doesn't get far, although further than Derek probably would've let her get if Stiles and his dad weren't so close. It's a quick, clean kill, and then the pack is surrounding Derek to be nuzzled (checking for injuries, Derek calls it, whatever, Stiles knows being nuzzled when he sees and feels it), faces melting back smooth and human, eyes losing their inhuman neon light. Scott looks over guiltily at Stiles and his dad when Allison joins the huddle and Stiles nods at him. He wants to be over there too, of course he does, but – Dad.

“That's a crossbow,” Dad says.

Stiles blinks. “That's what you're focusing on?”

“Animal attacks... seemed clearcut,” Dad says heavily. “The damage we could never figure out. Must've been the arrows.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “So. There's some things I need to tell you?”

“That was vampires,” Dad says. “Is that Derek Hale? The big one – the alpha wolf?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says. He'd hoped maybe he could get away without going into this part right now, at least, but clearly nothing is going his way tonight. Derek detaches himself from the pack love-in and trots over, leans against Stiles' leg and noses at his foot in a way that conveniently hides his scary, scary glowing red eyes.

“So this all-” Stiles is briefly heartened to hear his Dad's tone falling all businesslike and cop. “All of this, since – all the way back to his sister? Jesus. I want to talk to him.”

Okay, that was not the direction Stiles was looking for. “He doesn't like to change around people,” he says, which is true, it's painful and Stiles is used to it now but it looks seriously whatthefuck in parts, and also Stiles himself does not like Derek to be naked around his dad, which is a thing that would happen if Derek changed. Derek sighs dramatically, wolfy sides heaving, and Stiles automatically drops his hand back down to rest on Derek's head.

“Right,” Dad says. “Right. Stiles. I need – we need to talk about this. But first, I need to get this straightened out. Paul-” he gestures helplessly and Stiles looks down. Right, Paul Marsham. “And then I need to look again at two years' of case files. I want you to come with me,” he adds and Stiles looks over at his friends. They're still standing in a tight knot, watching them, and Scott shakes his head no at Stiles, wants him to stay with them.

“You can tell Scott-” Dad says sharply and Scott starts and looks straight at him. “Jesus. They can hear me? From there?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “You don't have to- it's Scott! And Boyd and Isaac and Erica, Dad, come on. They're not some 'them'. They're at our house all the time.”

There's a pain in his chest, a tightness that feels almost like when he used to get panic attacks, even though he hasn't had one in years. Derek picks up on it, stands up at his feet and growls softly, hackles raising and then Dad is, for fuck's sake, he looks almost surprised to find the gun in his hand but it's there and pointing at Derek's head, practically point-blank range, and Derek's red gaze is fixed on Dad.

“Oh are you – are you kidding me with this right now?” Stiles shouts. “Both of you! Dad, Christ, put the gun down. And you, you stop that.” He swats at Derek, who subsides, grumbling, and turns to the pack.

“It's okay,” he calls over. “I'm gonna go with my dad, help explain this. I'll come over later.”

“Yeah, we'll see about that,” Dad mutters behind him and Stiles closes his eyes, suddenly exhausted and feeling about a hundred years old.

“No, we won't,” he says quietly. He swings around to look at Dad, coldness in his limbs but needing, willing his dad to understand, to see that he's not being defiant, not being rebellious, just – being who he needs to be. “I'm an adult. And I've been dealing with adult things for a long time now, and you're – you're my dad, you're my family, I love you. But they're my family too. They're my pack. And none of you are going to make me try to choose between you, okay? I can't deal with that.”

Derek whines, then, and Stiles drops to his knees and hugs him, burying his face in Derek's wiry black fur. Derek nudges at him and then fits his jaws very gently over the scruff of Stiles' neck like a cub, just for a second, because even after years Derek is totally weird and doesn't know what to do with his feelings.

Then Derek breaks off and starts herding the pack away, back towards the old Hale place, and they fall in with him. Scott gives Stiles a forlorn wave and Stiles stands there, hating to watch the pack leave without him.

But, no, Dad. He meant it – he doesn't want to choose between them. He's lost people to things he had no control over and couldn't hope to stop, he's not losing anyone over something as stupid as a difference of opinion.

They're in the car before anyone says anything else. “We're gonna work this out,” Dad says awkwardly. “And I – you handled yourself well, back there, Stiles. I'm proud of you.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Stiles says softly, and he winds down the cruiser window and smiles at the distant sound of howling wolves.