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“We drawed today,” Teo told his fathers after Stiles removed a rumpled paper from the back pack.
“The word is drew, Tay,” Stiles instructed. “If it already happened we say, ‘we drew today.’”
“We drrreeewww today,” Teo repeated with force, so that his papa knew he understood.
Stiles quelled his suspicions his kid was making fun of him and just commended the correct grammar.
The smoothed out drawing was laid on the kitchen table and so he could see it better Derek helped Teo onto a chair, on his knees.
As soon as Teo had been able to hold a crayon (without trying to eat it) he’d been given paper and coloring books to scribble all over. He’d been so happy to find out he could draw in school too like he did at home. On some school days the teacher, Miss Yu, said they had “art class” and everybody got to draw for an extra long time. Teo liked those days a lot.
They’d had “art class” that day.
“So tell us what you drew, Tay,” his papa asked, though with three figures there on the paper, one smaller than the other two, Papa had a pretty good idea what.
“That’s me.” Teo pointed to the smaller figure, a self portrait since the shirt and pants shapes were the same orange and blue as the sweatshirt and jeans he’d worn to school that day.
“That’s you, Papa.” That day Stiles was wearing one of his plaid flannels, with a lot of red in it but Teo had confined his color choice to just red for the shirt on his drawing-Papa, who had brown scribble-hair, brown dots for eyes and a red half-circle smile. Teo had drawn Stiles between himself and Daddy, holding hands with them.
“That’s you, Daddy.” Derek had put on a sweater since leaving Teo at school and so no longer matched his drawing version, but the black hair and beard designated him obviously. Teo had colored in the beard around a red circle mouth, with small points in it. Drawing-Daddy’s eyes were black circles colored in with yellow and his left arm stuck out, ending in a circle-shaped hand with little points too.
Teo had given his self-portrait the same yellow eyes, point-filled mouth and the hand not holding his papa’s had points on it as well.
“Teo,” Derek asked, gesturing at all the little pointy shapes, “are those our fangs… and our claws?”
Teo nodded.
“Why’d you draw us like that?”
“We’re pr’tecting Papa, Daddy!”
It wasn’t out of the ordinary for Teo to “protect” his papa. It was a running theme in their pretend games, Teo confronting monsters and bad guys and usually just scaring them away with a show of his werewolf awesomeness. When Daddy joined those games Teo’s heroics saved him too.
What Teo had drawn, though, was a scene that had never actually occurred.
It made Stiles wonder.
“What are you protecting me from?” he asked his boy.
The look on Teo’s face suggested thought-processing under way.
He answered, shrugging, “Everything.”
“I feel very protected with you and Daddy, Tay,” Stiles began then fumbled for a way to ask what he sensed could be a very important question. “Why do I need protecting… in your drawing?”
Apparently it was the right question.
“Zack says hoo-yoomans arnt strong,” Teo answered.
“Zack who?” Derek questioned. “What’s his last name?”
Teo didn’t know.
Stiles hadn’t ever heard the name Zack as one of Teo’s classmates and while he didn’t want to seem like Daddy and he were interrogating their five year old, Stiles needed to know.
“When—where’d this Zack boy say this to you?”
“The playground.”
Ah, the playground. That’s where Teo also had heard wolfsbane could make him die—not in health class, where teacher introduced the subject of wolfsbane poisoning much more factually and far less traumatically, but on the playground, where young, misinformed minds meet.
It had called for an unanticipated discussion of werewolf facts of life, stage one.
Now Stiles regretted he hadn’t just bought those light sabers when he’d seen them at Toys ‘R’ Us. They could’ve been opposing the Empire, been freedom-fighters instead of playing Perils of Papa.
“You know Papa’s strong, Tay,” Derek assured. “In different ways than werewolves are.”
“Papa’s smart, too,” Stiles was sure to add.
Derek had lived long enough with Stiles to acquire the habit of never ignoring an opportunity for a snide remark, but the current circumstance seemed a bit too delicate for that.
He just raised his eyebrows, intended as enough of a joke between Stiles and him. But Teo saw it.
“Papa didn’t lie, Daddy,” he chimed in unexpectedly. “He’s smart.”
“Ha!” Stiles pointed a finger at his husband’s face. “Thank you, my perfect, beautiful child.” He leaned over to hug said child and kiss his cheek.
“So you understand, Tay. If somebody’s smart—even if they’re a human—they don’t always need to fight or be scary. They can outsmart the bad guy.”
“That means be smarter than,” Stiles, all for vocabulary building, said.
Feeling the situation somewhat defused, Derek left the kitchen, returning with a sturdy folder for the drawing and another one to stay in Teo’s backpack for the safe-keeping of future drawings in their passage from school to home.
Stiles meanwhile told Teo they were eating dinner at Grandma and Grampa Hales and they had to get ready soon. He sent him to the bathroom.
“Go wash your hands and face,” he said to Teo, and to Derek, “Tell me when you hear the faucet running.”
Soon as he felt some confidence they’d be unheard but still speaking low, “How did you learn about mountain ash?” he asked his husband.
“My mom told us. And Deaton showed us. Mom made Peter try to cross it. We were kids.”
Stiles advised Derek of his plan.
Before leaving, and by himself, he went to the closet in his and Derek’s bedroom. From its top shelf he took down a lock box, lined with genuine silver. Inside the box were several airtight jars of mountain ash. Stiles pocketed one, to show their son that his human papa was not helpless.
That at least was what he hoped…
The only other Hale at home for dinner was Aunt Cora. Teo loved her especially because she liked to run and chase and jump and climb just like he did.
While the two of them scrambled around the yard, Stiles cleared it with Alpha Talia to demonstrate how he could use mountain ash to shield himself from threats by those of lycanthrope nature. He promised to conduct this demonstration at some distance from the Hale house.
“You don’t need to do it far,” Talia said, though her expression was guarded. “Once the line’s broken it’s just powder.”
Stiles decided the unenthusiastic tone he heard arose from Talia’s not appreciating reminders that even pack alphas as powerful as she still had limits.
Nonetheless he paced, Derek in tow, maybe a hundred steps away from the back door, then farther until he’d found an area where the grass was sparse, near the Preserve’s tree line. When he called for Teo to come Cora followed, catching up on what was happening as the conversation at the Stilinksi-Hale kitchen table was rehashed.
“Teo, this is to show you that humans can protect themselves and do things even strong werewolves can’t.”
Again, that was Stiles’s hope.
He unscrewed the lid from the jar of mountain ash and tipped it a bit, inviting Teo to sniff it. Mountain ash was folk medicine for humans and smelled like an herbal tea, though that particular batch, sealed up for a few years, had little aroma. But Teo, signaled by his papa’s speedy heartbeat, was already looking troubled, especially since both his daddy and aunt smelled funny too.
He backed away from the jar without taking a whiff, bumping into his daddy’s legs.
Stiles instructed them to step back farther, then, calling on his spark (which he didn’t even think about usually) he cast the circle around himself.
“Derek,” he invited, “you want to do the honors?”
“Just watch me, Teo,” Derek instructed. “Stay there and just watch. Do you understand? Just. Watch.—Everything’s OK.—Cora, care to join me?”
Keeping some space between themselves Derek and Cora approached the mountain ash boundary. Derek stopped where he felt the initial resistance to forward movement. Then he took a forceful step forward but bumped into an invisible wall preventing further progress. Cora, always the rebel, though halted at that same wall attempted to press her hand through the barrier.
Teo saw his Auntie Corey jerk back her hand.
All three pairs of eyes were on him. At the sight of the significant frown warping Teo’s mouth Stiles’s inner voice warned Maybe this is a bad idea, but not in time.
Teo suddenly charged toward the circle, barred from collision with it by his daddy’s instantly outthrust arm. Still the boy pushed forward and Derek let him nudge ahead, until the skin on his arm was prickling even through his sweater against an impassable blockade of seething energy.
As he’d seen his aunt do, Teo thrashed a clawed hand at the unseen thing in front of him. It felt like it bit him when he touched it and there was something like a strange, strong wind in his face. He stopped trying to move; he stopped trying to do anything. His head drooped and he was full-out bawling an instant later.
It all happened very quickly.
“Ohmygod!” Stiles yelled, slashing his hand through the ash line immediately and dropping to his knees to clasp his child in his arms. He even tugged him over where the line had been, to show the obstacle was gone, not that Teo was aware of anything like that at that moment.
Cora stood there swallowing some choice words once her mother appeared as if by a magic of her own.
Looking on where her son and son-in-law crouched in a huddle around the sobbing Teodor, Talia said nothing.
Stiles looked at her desperately, hoping for some of her alpha psychic insight into her pack, but when nothing came forth he kept on apologizing to Teo and examining the hand that had struck the phantom barrier.
“Teodor, are you hurt?” Stiles was crying too.
Derek took Teo’s hand, to draw out any pain, but there was none to be drawn.
“Does it look alright to you?” Stiles asked, panicked.
“His hand’s not hurt. That’s not why he’s crying,” Derek answered.
Teo was answering nothing, responding to every question only with continued sobbing. Finally Stiles stood up, with Derek’s help since a five year old werewolf was a lot heftier than a human one. He carried Teo indoors, to one of the sofas in the Hale parlor where it was quiet and the scent of pack was strong.
Cora came in too, taking a seat nearby, adding to pack presence. Talia stood at the doorway, and Malcolm looked in as well.
While Derek wiped Teo’s face with a washcloth, Stiles carded his fingers through his hair.
Once Teo settled some Stiles risked the question tearing at his insides.
“Tay… what happened out there? Why’d you get so upset?”
His features twisting into a frown again, “Because I—I couldn’t reach you!” Teo cried, tears flowing once more.
“OK! Ohkayohkayohkayohkay!” Stiles pulled Teo into his lap, easily because Teo was climbing into it. “That’s all! Papa just wanted to know. I’m so sorry, Tay!” Apologies gushed from Stiles, then promises. “That will never happen again. Never! I only wanted you to see how Papa can protect himself.—You didn’t hurt your hand?”
“It just stinged.”
“Papa’s so sorry, baby boy.” He held Teo close and rocked in place.
It took a while but Teo calmed down, helped along the second time by hugs from everyone present. Then Stiles got hugs too, though still he muttered about how stupid he felt, prompting Talia to remind him, “Childhood’s a time for learning—that includes parents learning too.”
She looked right at Derek, then Cora, as she continued, “Don’t think your father and I didn’t have to learn new things with each of you—with all of you.”
(“After me,” Cora whispered to her brother, “they’d learned everything they ever needed to know.”
“After you,” Derek sighed. “They learned the smart thing to do was give up having kids.”
Then he returned to comforting his husband and child.)
Grampa Malcolm’s culinary skills were always top notch but that day, fortuitously, they excelled. Once Teo’d been seated at the dinner table bearing a pot roast with roasted potatoes and carrots, salad full of black olives and crunchy celery (Teo’s favorites), he was soon distracted from any thoughts that caused tears.
Stiles was able to eat only after seeing Teo’s appetite no less ravenous than usual.
When dessert was set down in front of them both, chocolate custard pie heaped with whipped cream and topped with cherries, happiness prevailed over all.
Derek volunteered to clear the table and wash the dishes, volunteering Cora to help him and banning his father from the kitchen altogether.
Meanwhile Talia informed everyone that after the dishes were done there’d be a little meeting in the parlor.
Life with werewolves forced Stiles to learn to disguise, as much as he possibly could, emotions he’d prefer stay private.
At that moment the emotion he’d prefer stay private was apprehension.
Invited to lead the way into the parlor Stiles took a seat on a different sofa, because the one where they’d sat before would still stink of distress, Stiles knew. Teo scooted up beside him with a little twist so he could hug his papa and Stiles put him in his lap again—a strategic move since he was pretty sure even in her alpha mode Talia wouldn’t yell at him with her grandson between them.
Derek settling next to him made him feel even safer—until he saw the slight nostril flare, then the furrowed brow.
“Stiles?” came Talia’s voice. She was in the wingback chair Stiles had never seen anyone else sit in—her throne, as he’d secretly dubbed it. The sight was not intimidating at all.
“I called us together for Teo’s sake. But—are you alright?” she asked.
Following a sigh Stiles limited his answer to the admission he still felt angry at himself for upsetting his kid.
Teo snuggled closer and Stiles caged him in his arms, lowering his head so that it pressed against Teo’s.
With the scent of their relief in her nose, Talia began telling Teo about a time when humans and werewolves were enemies. Leaving out graphic details, she told of hunters who wanted to hurt werewolves and of werewolves who hated humans for that reason.
“Though not every human wanted to hurt werewolves,” she told, “some werewolves didn’t believe that. Some werewolves hated all humans.”
That was when humans learned to use mountain ash, Talia explained, because the same power that allowed werewolves to change their bodies was the same power that wouldn’t let them cross a line of mountain ash.
As the Hale alpha talked her grandmother came to mind, speaking with reverence and respects for the mysteries that ruled werewolves’ lives.
“Teo, darling,” Talia went on, “your papa has mountain ash because a few years before you were born there was a rogue werewolf in Beacon Hills.—Do you know what a rogue werewolf is?”
Teo shook his head. He liked stories, but not this one.
“A rogue werewolf has no pack—”
“How?” Teo interrupted, abruptly agitated.
“It could be for a lot of reasons. Not every pack is big and strong like ours. Sometimes little packs don’t stay together if their alpha isn’t strong or if the alpha dies. Sometimes, if a ‘wolf causes lots of troubles for the pack, they chase him away. Sometimes a ‘wolf chooses to live alone.”
All of that sounded very bad to Teo.
“But a werewolf without a pack can have a hard life, with no alpha, no pack mates, no family or friends. They wander from place to place. Sometimes it makes them… dangerous to others, to humans and to other werewolves.”
Derek’s arm pulled Stiles closer, his other hand stroking Teo’s chest.
“So when we started hearing about a rogue werewolf wandering here in Beacon Hills, and none of us or even the police could find him, your daddy and the Sheriff—your grandfather—”
“Big Poppa,” Stiles whispered.
“We all made sure your papa had mountain ash with him, so the rogue couldn’t hurt him if he was alone.”
Stiles broke in. “And that’s the only reason Papa has mountain ash, from that time. With the rogue. But I never had to use it. I never saw him. Nobody we know ever did.”
“What happened to the roke?” Teo asked.
Talia looked both Derek and Stiles in the eyes before answering. “We don’t know, Teo,” she admitted in honesty. “The only sign of him was a scent trail around some buildings in town, which was the only proof people weren’t just imagining they’d seen him. But after that nobody ever talked about seeing him again.”
Teo was quiet.
“What is it, Tay?” his papa wanted to know.
“I’m sad.”
“You don’t have to worry about that rogue, Tay,” Derek spoke up. “It was years ago. Some people said they saw him but nobody said he hurt anyone.”
“I’m sad for the roke.”
“’Rogue,’” Stiles corrected automatically.
By the time they returned home Teo was nodding in his car seat, so Derek carried him indoors.
“I’ll put him to bed,” he said.
“OK, I’ll be up soon for my goodnights. It’s tomorrow morning in Delhi and I gotta talk to some clients first,” Stiles replied, laying a little peck on Derek’s cheek and another in his dozy little boy’s hair.
His business took longer than he’d expected, of course. When he got to their bedroom he found Teo, in a t-shirt and his Wolverine briefs, in their bed asleep literally on top of Derek, who was also asleep, also in only a t-shirt and some pajama pants.
It was way too early for Stiles’s bedtime but he shed his pants and shirt and lay down anyway, rolling to his side to look upon his two loves.
Derek opened his eyes, smiled sleepily.
“To what do we owe this honor,” Stiles asked, quietly as possible, tipping his chin toward Teo.
Derek replied almost inaudibly. “He was clingy.”
To Stiles it was always a close call, which of them, Derek or Teo, was clingier.
“Sleepy as he was,” Derek kept whispering, “he still asked about the rogue.—I made a bedtime story of it, said the rogue wandered till he found a pack to adopt him, up in Oregon.”
Stiles lay a hand on Teo’s back, stroking it. His mouth slowly frowned as the memory of the afternoon’s events weighed on him again. Derek sensed it but since he couldn’t move without disturbing his sleeping son he only spoke.
“We can’t be afraid to teach him truths even if they hurt.”—This from the daddy who’d given the rogue werewolf’s story a happy end.
Stiles knew Derek had made the pronouncement to remind himself as much as his partner in parenthood.
“I know,” he sighed, nonetheless loud enough that Teo opened his eyes, saw his papa and slumped off Derek’s chest, to burrow between his fathers and nuzzle against Stiles.
“I like our house,” Teo mumbled, talking in his sleep.
Attempting to stifle his giggles caused Stiles’s body to jolt, so he let them out, at as low a volume as he could.
Then Derek rolled to his side, embracing husband and child. Stiles hugged him back, with one arm, the other half-cradling Teo. Soon enough it would get too warm; Teo would wake and want his shirt off. Until that happened though they lay together, at peace and perfectly safe holding onto each other.