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He stares. Sideburns sprouting like a 70s nightmare. Lips bloodied by impossibly sharp teeth. Eyes glowing gold under a glowering brow. John Stilinski doesn't know what he's looking at. Or he knows, his ever helpful brain tells him, but he doesn't believe it.
Stiles runs. His son comes home late, again, with barely an excuse. Dirt on his shirt, smelling like pizza and ashes and blood, and something else John doesn't recognize but that finally tipped the migraine he'd been fighting all day over the edge.
"Dammit, Stiles, stop fucking lying to me!" he shouts, anger hot and white and so pure that he barely notices when he smashes his fist into the picture on the wall—glass, paper, and drywall crash to the floor.
Stiles' eyes go wide. He stops breathing. The stink of acrid sweat floods the room and just makes John angrier, makes him want to finally give Stiles the wake-up call he needs, shake him until he listens.
"Dad." Stiles' voice cracks, a broken sound that makes John's steps hesitate. Fear. That's what is in Stiles' eyes, in his scent, John realizes. It makes part of him sing, and then his blood runs cold because he's never expected, never wanted Stiles to look at him like that.
He doesn't have a chance to say anything. Stiles runs. As he watches him go, John turns and catches the sight of himself in the dark reflection of the window. He sees sideburns and glowing eyes, teeth and claws.
John prides himself on keeping his temper. He has to with the number of shitheads, asswipes, and mouthy teenagers he drags through his station. Only his own mouthy teenager has ever infuriated him so much, but he's always been able to keep it locked in and under wraps, because Stiles is his kid and he's the fucking adult, and no matter how many bad choices Stiles makes over and over again, he's not ever going to stop loving him.
He doesn't know what happened tonight, and now that he's had a moment to acknowledge that he's turned into a monster somehow—those missing hikers in those fucking woods, those fucking howls, those shadows he told himself didn't move, the fucking tree branch he'd tripped over, tangled and caught by something that ripped a hole in his side, which he must have dreamed was worse than it was because this morning it was gone, leaving just the edges of a migraine for the rest of the day—the normal tricks for reigning in his temper aren't working.
Breathing deep, thinking about the fast food he'll sneak for lunch tomorrow as a reward for keeping it together, about next week when he can sit with his feet up and watch a football game with nothing to worry about while Stiles makes jokes about fumbled passes and wussy sports that give the players a break every thirty seconds. None of it is working.
All he can see are his teeth with the taste of blood thick on his own tongue, his body craving more, and Stiles, Stiles, Stiles smelling like fear. This new part of him likes it. Only his own freak out is keeping him frozen in place because thinking about tomorrow or next week all he can focus on is, what if this doesn't go away? What if he's a monster forever? What then?
The howl breaks the dread silence. It resonates in his bones, singing to the monster inside, and John knows with perfect certainty that they're coming for him.
He's moving outside before he thinks about it, circling the yard and driveway because it's his house dammit, and he's not letting anyone near it.
The howls get louder. Then closer. Instinct has John dropping to his hands and feet, crouched and ready to spring, a snarl ripping out of his throat as a figure with red eyes bounds out of the trees and attacks. All thought leaves his head and there's only teeth, claws, and blood. Fighting, running, the burn of claws against his chest, it all blurs in his memory until a new scent catches his attention.
The nearly full moon is bright in the sky, filtering through the trees and lighting up the figure before him. Part of his mind catalogues her: female, brown hair, shredded jacket, kneeling, terrified. Blood soaks the ground beside her, traces of another fading away. His fellow monster, his red-eyed attacker, circles around behind her, but he doesn't care about him anymore. He only has eyes for his prey.
She smells delicious, and his mouth waters. He stalks closer, taking another deep whiff of her fear, and something familiar on the air makes him pause.
It's the only warning he gets.
He's bowled over, claws digging into his side before he's thrown into a tree. The hit dazes him, the claw marks, like the earlier swipe across his chest, hurt. He shakes it off, thirsty to strike back. On the other side of the clearing, he hears the rustle of kicked up leaves, the snarls of a fight, can just make out his red-eyed attacker tangled up with a new monster. He's ready to jump in and defend his former adversary against this new threat, but that scent, again, stops him.
He whips around—and freezes. There's a boy by the prey now. A familiar boy with a familiar smell. The prey is still terrified, but the boy, whose fear he knows, stands between them.
"Dad," the boy says. His heart beats fast but steady. He carries a stick in his hand and he doesn't look away like prey should.
Unsettled, he growls.
"Dad!" the boy repeats. "It's me, Stiles. Listen to me. Listen to my heartbeat. You know me."
He doesn't want to listen. He wants to rip the boy apart, chew on his bones, only the boy doesn't smell quite like prey should either. It's confusing and he hates it. He prowls forward, but the boy stays between him and the girl, mouth still moving. He doesn't listen, can't hear through the pounding in his head, but the words don't stop coming.
"Dad, you know it's me. I know you do. You can recognize my soap and the smell of the leftovers I ate for dinner and our house. You bought me this shirt before school started even though you said it made me look short, whatever the hell that means. You think I'm a spaz sometimes, and even though I'm terrible you come to all my lacrosse games. You cheer even though I sit on the fucking bench, and I know I've been making life miserable for you the last year, but you still sometimes make dinner anyway. You even cook vegetarian because you know I worry, and I guess I don't have to worry about your heart and cholesterol anymore, but I'm going to still worry about you. I'm so sorry about the lying and the secrets and turning up at crime scenes, but I couldn't tell you because I didn't want you in any danger. And now this—you gotta come back to me, Dad, please."
As he talks the boy takes a few hesitant steps toward him. His hand is outstretched, but low, his palm open. His smell is stronger, and the tingle of familiarity only grows.
It gets interrupted by a pair of bodies slamming to the ground between them. The red-eyed monster that led him here lands heavily under the one that threw him into a tree. All thought of the boy flies away—until he shouts, "Dad! No!" surprising him to stillness with the power of that voice that is as weirdly familiar as his scent.
The monster on top has eyes that flash red, too. "You were told to leave and never come back." His claws pin the other to the ground, who struggles, but doesn't shift his adversary.
"I'll have my souvenir," he snarls, but he's barely said the words when the top one growls,
"I gave you your chance," and rips out his throat.
Like that, the drive to kill fades and John is left, crouched and on guard, staring at a transformed Derek Hale—sideburns and red eyes, teeth and claws—the creature he just killed, one of the missing hikers sobbing on the ground, and Stiles.
The look on Stiles' face isn't terrified anymore. "Dad!" He seems to know that it's okay to approach because the next thing John knows is Stiles is slamming into him and his claws are ripping through Stiles' sweatshirt as John clutches him close in return. The scent of their house and soap and dirt and blood, but mostly his son, seeps in, grounds him. Over his shoulder he sees Derek, human again, helping the hiker to her feet, and everything falls into place—Stiles showing up at crime scene after crime scene starting with Laura Hale's, the injuries, the blood, the lies.
"Dad." Stiles' words are muffled against his neck, and all John can do is breathe, feel his features shift, shrink to human size and give thanks that Stiles has run back to him.
"So. Werewolf." John likes having a name for it. It sounds better than some generic monster, feels better knowing there are rules.
He's wrung out, sitting in the reconstructed kitchen of the restored Hale House. After cleaning up, Derek makes him coffee while Stiles talks and talks and talks. It's all out of order and with a hundred asides that John only follows because this is how Stiles has always relayed information. He filters out the random and focuses on the essential bits. Like how he's a werewolf now. And it's permanent.
"There's not a cure, not one anyone knows of, but I'll do more research, or come up with one," Stiles says. His leg has been bouncing ever since they sat down. "I'm sure Deaton knows more than he's letting on. He always knows a guy who knows a guy, or a helpful witch, though she turned out to be not that helpful after all. I mean who actually uses kittens in their magic rituals? Cats are supposed to be familiars channeling power, not supplying it. Everyone knows that. They're too cute to just-"
"Stiles." It's the first thing Derek has said but Stiles, miraculously, shuts up. He bites his lip and stares at his hands, and that's when John realizes—Stiles' hands are shaking.
He lays his hands over his son's. They're cool, but immediately turn until they're gripping John's hands tight. "It's going to be okay," says John though he has no idea if it is or not.
Stiles didn't get much blood on him, but his hands are dirty.
"Can you get us a wet washcloth?" he asks Derek, who stares at him for a long moment before nodding and leaving them alone.
John rubs his thumbs over the backs of Stiles' hands. He doesn't know where to start. But Stiles has never known a silence he couldn't fill.
"I'm sorry," he says, and this time John hears the hundred little things he's apologizing for.
"It's not your fault," he says.
"Yes, it is. If I didn't run with wolves, if I hadn't dragged Scott out that night—I wanted to keep you away from all this because it's a clusterfuck and a half and-"
"Listen to me," John interrupts him firmly, tugging his hands a little to get his attention. He waits till Stiles looks him in the eye. "Wrong time, wrong place can happen to anyone. It's not your fault."
Stiles doesn't look like he believes him, unhappy and on edge, and it hurts when John realizes that it's the same expression he's been wearing all summer when he doesn't think John's looking. But then Derek is walking back down the hallway and into the kitchen, and Stiles pulls himself together.
Derek has a wet washcloth that he hands off, saying quietly, "Stiles, give us a minute."
Stiles takes a shaky breath and checks with John first, then goes when John nods that it's all right. Stiles looks like he needs a minute. He tracks his son by sound through the hallway, out the front door and into his jeep. The engine turns over and the radio comes on, but he doesn't drive away.
"He's just getting some privacy," says Derek, startling John's attention back to the kitchen. He leans back against the counter. In just a t-shirt and jeans, for the first time since he's come back to town, Derek doesn't look like a crime waiting to happen. But John can still taste the traces of blood of the alpha Derek killed with his teeth. He's so far past knowing how to reconcile that act with his own urge to kill the hiker, an act that would have bound him to the dead alpha, according to Stiles.
John takes his own long shaky breath. "Thank you," he says. "For not letting me kill that girl," he adds when Derek looks confused.
"I'm sorry I wasn't there sooner."
"You got there just in time." John doesn't know what he'd be doing right now if he'd gone through with it. "When I was. . . I couldn't . . . I wasn't myself."
"Bloodlust," says Derek, giving him another name for what happened to him. "It's common for newly turned wolves this close to the full moon."
"You were in control," he says, but it's more of a question.
Derek nods. "I can teach you. Probably not by tomorrow night. It can take time."
"How long did it take you?" John asks, instead of what will happen to him tomorrow if he can't control himself.
"I don't know," Derek shrugs. "I was young."
Derek is still young, John thinks. He's only twenty-three. "How old were you when you were turned? The fire?"
But John knows he's wrong by the way Derek's head tilts. His answer still surprises him. "No. I was born a werewolf. The fire was hunters killing my family."
And another puzzle piece falls into place. "Kate Argent."
This time Derek's jaw clenches, and John knows a tell when he sees one. There's history there.
Derek says, "You'll need an anchor to keep control. Something to think about and hold on to when the full moon comes. You responded to Stiles out there."
John nods and lets the subject change go. Hunters had come up in Stiles's roundabout explanation, and they were pretty self-explanatory. Kate Argent's body had never been found. He wonders if she's missing her throat, too. "How do I-"
"It's easier with a pack," Derek cuts him off. "Stiles kind of glossed over that part."
"A pack." Saying it out loud doesn't help make it seem less surreal. Stiles had mentioned Scott and Derek's "crazy uncle Peter," something about Jackson being a lizard—John isn't touching that one until he figures out how to control himself—and all the weird deaths in the past six months having, "totally logical if supernatural explanations." He also said something about only alpha werewolves being able to turn someone, and that they had red eyes. Like Derek's had been in the woods.
"You want me to join your pack," says John.
Derek is impossible to read. "Yes."
"And if I say no?"
"I'll still help you. I'd never hear the end of it from Stiles—on the off chance he doesn't teach you everything he knows tomorrow anyway," he adds in a way that says he knows Stiles far better than John thought he did.
"But?"
"But being pack would be better. Pack makes us stronger. Not just me, but the betas, too. Omegas don't last long on their own. Usually." Derek's eyes flicker to the side, and John hears it a second later, the Jeep door slamming shut and Stiles coming back inside.
He stops in the doorway of the kitchen, looking better—John's nostrils involuntarily flare—and smelling better, like he hadn't just been about to fall into a panic attack. Now he just looks hollowed out.
Stiles frowns at them both as they watch him slump into his chair. "That's creepy," he mutters. John wants to reach out and hug him, but he is too far away.
"Who is in your pack?" John asks, and Stiles' head shoots up.
"No," he says. Behind him, Derek immediately tenses.
"He needs a pack," says Derek.
"No. We'll be fine." Stiles shoves his chair sideways and twists so he can argue with him better. "He doesn't need to be any more involved."
"He's a werewolf now. There's no changing that," snaps Derek. "He's involved whether he wants to be or not, and I can't protect him-"
"Like you're so good at protecting anyone!" Stiles jumps to his feet and they scowl at each other, like John isn't there; he can feel the tension between them like it's a tangible thing. The scent coming off Stiles can only be identified as his anger. John's about to let them know that he's still present and part of this discussion, when Derek's eyes flash that alpha red and he says,
"Then why did you call me instead of Scott? He not answer you again?"
Stiles's scowl deepens, his shoulders inching up the way they do when he knows he's losing an argument and doesn't want to admit it.
"I may be as terrible as you think I am at this," Derek goes on, "but I'm here and this is my territory whether you like it or not."
John clears his throat because now he can't look away from Stiles. "Are you and Scott fighting?" he asks, because Stiles has been telling him all summer long that he was hanging out at Scott's. He'd known there was more to it because Stiles isn't that good of a liar and the tension has been thick between them, but John hasn't had any reason to doubt the fundamental truth that Stiles and Scott are joined at the hip.
"No!" Stiles protests, but this time John can hear his son's quicker pulse that accompanies the familiar unhappy cant of his shoulders and the way he won't meet John's gaze. Stiles realizes it at the same time that Derek snorts, and turns his indignant glare from Derek to John. It doesn't stop him from trying to explain. "He has a girlfriend."
"Allison," says John, remembering.
"Argent," Derek adds darkly, looking at John, and the rest of the pieces fall into place.
The look Stiles sends Derek's way doesn't even try to deny the implications heavy in the room, as if the girl John met is as bad as her aunt.
"You're still a terrible alpha," says Stiles.
"Yeah, it's a real easy job when people are stabbing you in the back," says Derek. There's a history there too, and John wonders how everything got so far out of control so fast.
"Tomorrow, you and I are having a long talk about those details you forgot to mention," John tells Stiles in the silence that settles. Hands on the back of his chair, Stiles nods miserably, looking so goddamn young and incredibly old and weary at the same time. How did his son get here? John wonders.
"And you," he pins Derek with his fiercest Sheriff glare, "are going to explain to me exactly who is in your pack, how they got there, and what it means to be a part of it." He catches Derek by surprise, his eyes wide, body completely still, looking every inch as young as he did the night he lost his family. He's the only one left, John thinks, and it's like a punch to the gut because he knows from loss. Does he ever, and for tonight, John is done.
"Tomorrow," he repeats. "Right now I need a drink."
"Um." Stiles fidgets, and John just knows he's not going to like what comes out of his son's mouth next. He's right. "Werewolf healing. You can't get drunk."
But Derek's pulling a full bottle of whiskey out of the cupboard above the fridge. He gives Stiles a withering look as he crosses and slams the bottle down in front of John.
"You can you if you chug it," he says.
John does.
The next day, John meets Isaac, Erica, and Boyd as werewolves. Jackson's a werewolf now, too, he's told, but he and Lydia, who is immune to the bite, apparently tend to avoid the rest of them. He learns that Derek's crazy uncle is still alive too, but living off the reservation, in more ways than one. Scott's the only one who doesn't show. Not pack.
The kids are all wary, lost and hurt around the edges. They don't say much and stick to the porch, but John read all their files when they were officially listed as runaways. They were all lost and hurting before they became werewolves, and he can see the shape of what Derek was trying to do when he turned them.
But Stiles is right, too. Derek is struggling. He tries to explain, badly, how to hold on to an anchor until Stiles finally takes over and says, "Okay, God, shut up. Let the pro do this. Dad." He takes John's arms and wraps them together in a hug and says, "Just smell my neck and then remember it tonight."
He hears Erica giggle and feels a little silly about smelling Stiles, but hugging him is easy. He holds on for a long time.
When they finally break apart, Derek is sitting on the porch steps, scowling at the ground with Isaac and Erica sitting on either side, a hairsbreadth separating them from him. Neither one of them can hold his gaze when he looks over, Erica wistful and Isaac hunched in on himself. Boyd hovers by Erica and stares back, giving John a faint smile that's not really a smile. John doesn't have to be a werewolf to understand why his eyes flicker between Stiles and him and the easy way they stand together.
He spends the day with Stiles by his side—"To learn your scent," he repeats though Stiles doesn't seem to mind—pushing Derek to explain pack and wondering if Derek even realizes it when what comes out is a description of where everyone in his family had fit in. The kids are quiet, even Stiles, like they had known but they hadn't known just what had been lost when the house burned.
John can feel the moon as it gets closer to sunset. Boyd and Isaac go get pizza for a mid-afternoon dinner, and Stiles is a distracting spigot of information whose eyes constantly flicker to the windows. John's eyes follow as that little pit of worry in his stomach wars with the urge to let go and run.
He catches Stiles' elbow in his shoulder when his son dodges Erica going for the last slice, and their eyes catch. Stiles tries to smile then gives up, his nerves a steady thrum against John's side. John pats his arms and gives him a reassuring smile. Nerves or not, one way or another, they'll get through this.
Later, John follows Derek back to the kitchen with the dirty dishes. He sets the plates on the counter and looks up to see Derek watching him.
"Two conditions," he says, and he wonders if they will even matter against the will of the alpha. But Derek nods.
He holds up a finger. "You get a job. I don't care if it's part time or not, but you need to be gainfully employed and part of this community. No more being a creeper." He gets a half an eye roll for quoting Stiles, and mentally congratulates himself when some of the stiffness bleeds off Derek's shoulders.
He raises another finger. "You have lunch with me, twice a week, you don't tell Stiles what I'm eating, but you tell me what’s going on. No secrets. I'm still the Sheriff and I need to know what's happening in my town, especially if Stiles is out here running around with you. Clear?"
"Us," says Derek, inexplicably.
"What?"
"You'll be pack. Stiles will be running around with us." He says it slowly, inexorably, his eyes flashing red and staying red, and that's when John finally gets it. With the moon thick in his blood and teeth long in his mouth, this is playing for keeps.
"Us," he says and bares his throat.
-end-