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What's normal? What is it?
Stiles wants to scream as his shrink drones on about finding normalcy.
He's 23, honorable discharge, a metal plate in his leg, someone else's skin growing up his arm. A slightly different pigment. The scarring barely there.
The doctor claims he's healing really well. That the pins in his leg will come out in a few years if everything keeps progressing so smoothly. That he should keep going to physio for the limp and that the moments of pain as his muscles scrape against the foreign metal is normal. When he's tried. When he moves.
He's always exhausted and he can't sit still.
He can't keep a job because the medication interferes with his other medication. One or the other. Can't take both. Pain or concentration. He got fired again recently. This time because he missed too many days. Too many days during which he couldn't get up in the morning because it hurt.
He lost the one before because he couldn't stay focused.
So what's normal?
The way that his former officer hooks his arm around the back of his neck? Kisses him. The way he pins him back into the bed, more force than necessary and so, so careful.
‘Older’ his dad had said. Stiles couldn't know what he was getting into. Stiles should know that his dad would always have his back. But. Stiles should be careful.
Because he didn't know what he was getting into.
Those words kept ringing in his head.
He certainly hadn't known what he was getting into when he'd enlisted. Certainly had no idea what would happen when he walked into the recruiters. When his dad had smiled at him proudly and talked about how important it was to serve your country. How the government would help pay for an education to show their appreciation.
The government did do that. They let him take classes, encouraged further training. Encouraged specialization.
Encouraged him to walk straight down a path that left him breathless at nothing, hyperventilating at tiny sounds, that had him watching people suspiciously out of the corner of his eye.
He kept wondering why he couldn't just throw a punch. Hit people with the butt of his gun and just make them step back, stand down, back the fuck off and lower their voices. Evidently that wasn't normal.
So what was normal?
His assignment as an escort for doctors, that he could rationalize away. He could excuse himself for bursting into family homes and holding parents from their children at gunpoint, their voices wailing. Pinning children down as they screamed while doctors stuck them with needles.
It stopped the spread of disease. It was holding back measles. It helped stem polio, prevent permanent, preventable disability.
He could understand that. Get that. Even support that.
Even if it made his skin crawl.
But what about bursting into homes, shoving through battered doors, spilling dinners, all in the search for hidden weapons? What about the early commanders who had them back outside and on the street without moving to straighten anything. Leaving wreckage in their wake as the occupants of those crowded rooms huddled in terror.
What about the pale faces of the women in his unit after another attack?
That had been so normal back there.
Here. Here it was ‘inappropriate behavior’. Here people were allowed to shoot home invaders and call it 'defense'.
That was arguably tied to when he had started to fall in love. Because even if it didn't change what they were doing, Derek had apologized in careful, rough Farsi if Arabic wasn't understood. He had been abnormal among captains when he'd tried to straighten up as he left. When he'd ordered those under his command to right the few pieces of furniture.
That abnormality had been so. Attractive.
So what was normal? What did it mean?
It was supposedly the way things are. What can reasonably be expected.
Stiles thought those claims just excused abuse. Discrimination.
The whole ‘it's just the way things are’.
Which was when Stiles knew he was in love. The whole sordid episode when one of the women in his unit filed a complaint and Derek tried...something. Stiles didn't know what, exactly, but Derek looked livid after talking to their commander. Furious.
Stiles never asked what happened next, but the guy ended up wounded in the next patrol. A shot from nowhere and a black eye. Medical. Stiles didn't know what happened to him next.
Stiles couldn't be upset about that. Not when the women in the unit looked relieved.
So what was normal?
That people had bought him drinks in bars when he was on leave? That they had thanked him for his service to his country when all he could see at their words was the terrified faces of the children. The bloodied bodies of the bystanders.
And now?
How they whispered that he hadn't come back from the war quite right?
Were these suburban streets supposed to be normal? How were the cocktail parties and those shiny, polyester dresses supposed to make sense?
The shrinks claimed he had PTSD. That he should keep coming to the VA. That people understood what he was going through. That he wasn't alone.
He thought that that was part of the problem. That he wasn't unusual at all.
He wanted to know about the psychiatric services offered to the families he had battered. What happened to the people he had hit, locked up, humiliated.
So what was normal?
Derek claimed that there wasn't a normal. That there were just 'norms' for particular communities. The 'please' and 'thank you'. The appropriate eye contact. That there was nothing 'common' about common sense on a grand scale. That cultural standards were different everywhere. That 'normal' was a fallacy.
Derek thought that the important question was what you could live with, what you could be comfortable with. He liked that 'normal' here included refraining from violence. That violence was the prerogative of the state. Part of the point for the state. So that people didn't have to be afraid when they left their houses.
Stiles claimed that you couldn't rationalize away actions.
Derek claimed that there was nothing else. That sticks and stones would break your bones, but words would make you believe you deserved it.
So what was normal?
That in this lovely, calm, accepting society some guy on the street called him a fag, a disgrace to the service, and punched him in the gut? That charges were pressed against Stiles for hitting back, for flattening the guy_ For knocking him on his back and fracturing his leg? That charges were dropped when Stiles agreed not to press charges regarding a hate crime?
So? What was normal?
Stiles couldn't say what it was. Couldn't stake a claim. But he was starting to think that what was more important was deciding what he wanted normal to be. To work towards that.
He thought he would start by holding Derek's hand until people stopped staring. Stopped caring. Thought it was normal. Until he thought it was normal.
He could work his way up from that.