Archive of Our Own ^beta

AFTER:

…

“Thirdly, werewolves are real. Show him, Scott,” Stiles said, arms braced on the kitchen table, like it might actually anchor him to reality in this new low of compulsive lying and familial distrust. His father had hoped they were over this.

“Come on, Stiles, you don’t really expect me to believe--” John Stilinski complained.

Uncharacteristically, Scott interrupted him. “Don’t freak out,” he said, actually sounding nervous.

And then Scott was gone and in his seat was an animal, his eyes glowing yellow and his face transforming into a half-human visage out of a B-movie, complete with claws.

John took a gulp of whiskey then stared at the boys. It made a strange kind of sense, things coming together, like a blurry scene snapping into focus.

He should probably be more freaked out, he mused. But that creature was Scott, the kid who had gotten his head stuck between the bars of the banister when he was nine. John had nothing to fear from the kid he’d held in his lap and rocked the day his own father ran out on him. He couldn’t be a threat. And last night, John had confronted Derek Hale on a deserted mountain road and escaped unscathed, so there in the grand scheme of dangerous situations, the shift in Scott’s face didn’t really register.

“Were you always--”

“Not until four months ago.”

“Ah, so the sudden lacrosse skills--”

“Werewolf stuff.”

“And Derek--”

“Alpha werewolf.”

“And the murders--”

“Peter Hale, also werewolf.”

“So Kate--”

“Werewolf hunter.”

“That night in the station--”

“Matt controlling a kanima.”

“Kanima?”

“Failed werewolf who does revenge killings.” “Looks like a lizard.”

“Jackson?”

“Was the kanima, now a werewolf.”

“Lydia?”

“Bitten, but immune.”

“Erica Reyes and Vernon Boyd--”

“Werewolves, runaways.”

“Any other werewolves?”

“Isaac Lahey, also not a murderer.” “And Peter, who is like a werewolf ghost, or maybe a werewolf zombie. Long story.”

“And the danger now?”

“A group of alpha werewolves trying to kill or recruit or maybe fuck Derek, we’re not really sure.”

“Huh,” John said, finishing his whiskey as the boys watched expectantly, like he might explode or suddenly turn into a frog. “I actually think I prefered it when I thought Derek was an ordinary human murder suspect who was nailing my teenaged son.”

“Yeah,” Stiles said with a sigh, “if only.”

***

EARLIER:

John Stilinski didn’t realize his mistake until long after he’d made it and by that time, it was far too late to correct the collision course between Stiles and the wrong side of the law, maybe even too late to continue to be a father-figure to his son at all.

“I’m a horrible father,” he said to the bottle of Jack Daniels. Jack probably didn’t care. Jack didn’t judge.

John knew that statistically, the odds were not in Stiles’s favor. Children from one-parent households were more likely to be incarcerated, more likely to be teen parents, more likely to commit suicide, and less likely to get a college education. And it didn’t end there. Losing a parent, especially to something as drawn-out and gruesome as cancer, was never good for a child’s psyche, or so John’s many social-worker colleagues told him.

But Mirela’s death had only brought John and Stiles closer together. Neither of them was over it, and probably never would be, but Stiles had never blamed John or pushed him away the way he had seen other children react to the death of a parent.

Stiles had always been supportive of his father, understanding, even eager to pick up the slack in the household by cooking and cleaning (when he felt like it) or running errands for his dad. The freedom of getting the jeep once he passed his driver’s test had been both a deserved reward and a necessity of convenience. Maybe that’s where it started. Maybe John had treated Stiles too much like an equal: a friend, sometimes confidant, sometimes a replacement for his mother (as twisted as that was), and even though Stiles seemed to have handled it all with his typical frenzied eagerness to please, maybe it was too much to put on a kid.

John shook his head, disagreeing with the judgement of the wallpaper and the acussatory stare of the teapot. He’d leaned too much on Stiles, but if he treated his son like a friend, his son should be able to confide in him like a friend.

Despite all the odds stacked against him, John had never thought Stiles would end up one of those statistics. Stiles was a good kid. He was mischievous and John had never been able to quiet the back-talk, but he knew right from wrong and had always been interested in John’s work. Hell, he was still interested in putting the bad guys behind bars!

“Maybe that’s what all parents of teenagers tell themselves,” John mused, wondering if the whiskey could wipe the image of a grown man crawling out of Stiles’s bedroom window from his mind. It couldn't erase the images of those bruises all over his son's pale face and the way he insisted, like every battered spouse that John had ever seen, that it was nothing, that he couldn't say who'd done it. “Maybe we all get complacent. Maybe we think bad things could never happened to us and ours.” They'd already had enough tragedy in their family. Was it foolish to hope that they'd get a reprieve?

John forced himself to leave Jack alone. Jack wouldn’t solve any problems. He went to the photo album, cracked it open to the portrait of Mirela not long after she’d given birth to Stiles. She was beautiful and John was a maudlin drunk. “He’s lying to me,” he told her. “Our son is lying to me.”

John knew his son sometimes enjoyed lying, but in the past it had all been so harmless that John had never learned how to coax the truth out of him, even though he usually let Stiles know that he’d been caught in a lie. Up until recently, Stiles was covering up a pleasant surprise that he’d planned, or hiding Scott in his room past curfew, or pretending he’d been doing his homework when he’d obviously been out playing in the woods. John had let it all go, feeling that he owed his son a few teenaged antics.

John thought they had the kind of relationship that meant that Stiles could tell his father anything. He’d never doubted for a second that Stiles would come to him with something important. But maybe Stiles had focused too much on being supportive and holding down the fort for his dad and maybe the only thing that would make him truly afraid was telling John something that would disappoint him. Maybe John hadn’t done a good enough job of telling Stiles how proud of him he was and how he’d accept him no matter what.

“How is getting a restraining order against him not a disappointment?” John asked the picture of his wife. “How is getting his father fired going to help our family?”

At least it had all seemed to have settled down until two nights ago. Two nights ago, John came home early to see a black-clad figure climbing out of Stiles’s window and edging along the roof to the back. It wasn’t Scott, because Scott had had a key since he was twelve and even when he’d been over when he wasn’t supposed to, he always just smiled at John and pretended like he had no idea he was breaking the rules; John usually let Scott get away with it. But two nights ago, when John rushed inside, hand on his sidearm as he barrelled down the upstairs hallway, Stiles’s door was open and he’d been sitting at his desk, belatedly minimizing his browser window and blushing a little. They’d stared each other down and Stiles had proceeded with his nervous, guilty babbling.

The only reason John could think of for someone to climb out Stiles’s window was if that person was a girl who Stiles didn’t want John to know about, John had tried to rationalize. A plausible theory, except there was no way a girl could have managed the jump off the garage roof onto the top of the toolshed that was the only plausible way down from up there. John supposed it could be Stiles’s drug dealer or some other shaddy character, but why would someone who knew they could be in trouble with the law come to the Sheriff’s house when Stiles had keys to a car and very little parental supervision?

John decided to wait on it rather than confront Stiles, confident that he would get a clearer picture with more observation. And sure enough, John had gotten the clear outline of the brooding, ex-murder suspect shaped problem tonight when he noticed a familiar black Camaro parked at the end of the cul de sac around the corner. That explained why the Odes to Lydia Martin had become a bit route as of late.

“I fucked up, Mirela,” John said, because it was true. “You were the one he could come to. You were supposed to be the one he’d tell all his secrets. He doesn’t even trust me.”

Derek Hale had climbed out the window and just like that, John’s mistake became painfully obvious. What was it that he always patronizingly told the parents of the juvenile delinquents he usually picked up? Oh, right, that they should try listening to their kids. John couldn’t even seem to follow his own damn advice. Stiles had tried to tell him, that night outside of Jungle, and John had just shut him down and now he was rebelling with the worst person possible.

John tried to think back to that night, as much as it pained him to do so. He was a cop, so he needed to look at the facts and the facts were these: John hadn’t told Stiles that he couldn’t go out, so the only reason Stiles would have acted so damned guilty was if he thought his reasons for being there were wrong. If he really was just helping out his friend, Danny, there was no reason to feel guilty and no reason to act so evasive and flustered. The only possible reasons that Stiles could have acted guilty were either that he was the cause of the attack, which the evidence didn’t support, or that he felt guilty for simply being at a gay club, being gay.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” John said to Mirela. The tea kettle still looked condemning.

Because then John had done the worst thing he could possibly do, according to the pamphlets they kept for parents at the station. He’d dismissed Stiles’s shaky attempt at coming out with a joke, and a particularly crude, stereotype-reinforcing one at that.

John thought that he’d done a good job of raising Stiles to not be prejudiced. Stiles had been a friend to Danny and he’d even stood up to a kid in seventh grade who tried to call Scott a faggot because he wasn’t any good at sports, full rant about homophobic slurs included. John had told him how proud he was of him, hadn’t he? When he found out that Mr. Henson was beating his fourteen-year-old son for being gay, hadn’t he deliberately showed his rage at the hate crime in front of Stiles? Didn’t Stiles know that even though John was more of a man’s man himself, he had always been accepting of gay people? He’d even invited Deputy Ryan and his partner over for a barbecue one day to hopefully answer any burning questions Stiles and Scott might have.

But as a cop, John often saw the worst of people. He knew that being gay wasn’t completely accepted yet, how bullying still happened, and how gay characters rarely got universal acceptance and happy endings even on TV. He wasn’t one of those dads who said, “but not for my boy.” At least he didn’t think he was. He didn’t want Stiles to be bullied or maybe even to become of victim of a hate crime himself. He didn’t want him to have to face the increased danger of AIDS or the struggle that was the adoption or surrogacy process. But if Stiles had sat him down and seriously told him that he was gay, John knew he would have responded with a hug and all the assurances in the world that he would support his son no matter what.

“I would have accepted it,” John argued to the room at large. “If he’d said it honestly, I wouldn’t have made a joke.”

There was just something about the way Stiles had said it - like he was joking too. And even though Deputy Ryan had driven home the point that not all gay guys were fashion gurus, John had meant what he said about the way Stiles had been dressed. He hadn’t been dressed to impress anyone, let alone the kinds of guys who hung out at Jungle. In fact, he’d seen Stiles put on his best shirt and practically drown himself in cologne purely on the off chance that he might run into Lydia Martin at the dry cleaner’s, so if he wanted to attract someone, he would have put in the effort.

Of course, John’s determination to catch Stiles in a lie had overridden his common sense. There was more than one possible explanation for Stiles’s lack of fashion effort: if Derek Hale were Stiles’s boyfriend, then maybe he was deliberately trying not to attract anyone else’s attention. Thugish murder suspects were likely to be possessive, after all. Possessive over John’s seventeen-year-old son. Christ. Now that John really thought about it, maybe Stiles had said he was gay jokingly because he wanted to chance to play it off as a joke if John didn’t react well. It was a test that John had outright flunked.

Just because Stiles was hiding something, probably Derek Hale, didn’t mean that his cover-up couldn’t come with a ring of truth. What John should have done if he were any kind of good father was to tell Stiles that he knew he was up to something, but that they would have that talk when they got home. If he were a good father, he would have given his son a hug, told him he loved and supported him no matter what and told him to get the hell out of the middle of his police investigation, please.

Except John had been so sure that his son was straight. The evidence all pointed to that fact. When Stiles had been twelve and forced to use the desktop computer in the study, John had found plenty of big busted evidence of his son’s hetereosexuality. And there was the way that Stiles broke down into incoherent babble in the presence of an attractive woman.

“It’s not as though it was an obvious case,” John told Mirela. Even though Stiles was not particularly good at sports or interested in watching them, he didn’t like shopping and musicals and interior design. John knew that there were plenty of “straight-acting” gay men, but John liked to think that he was observant enough as a cop and as a father that if there had been even the slightest sign, whether it was a lingering look or a shy blush, John would have noticed it.

“Have I been in denial?” he whispered. “Am I that kind of father?”

Parents, even cops, lost objectivity when it came to their own kids. What Stiles did have was a secret, one that ran deeper than the usual teenaged hooliganism. And he had always been curious about homosexuality, even going so far as to wonder if gay guys found him attractive. His tastes in pornography could have evolved since John had first accidentally stumbled upon it. There was no doubt that Stiles still liked girls, but . . .

“Bisexual. How did I not even consider that?”

And now that he did consider it, he saw that Stiles did have a type, if Derek Hale and Lydia Martin fit it: both were intelligent, secretive, assertive, and objectively gorgeous. Even though John loved his son, he knew that they were both way out of Stiles’s league. Except Stiles seemed to actually have succeeded with Derek, against all odds.

It’s not that Stiles was unattractive, but Derek Hale was a twenty-four-year-old former MVP of the CIF Division II Lacrosse All Star team, with a degree in Theater Production from NYU and a fucking modeling portfolio (if the few pictures John had found on the internet were any indication). What could he possibly see in Stiles?

“Oh, god.” Other than a way to get to the sheriff.

John’s blood ran cold, because even though he’d been released, there was still a very good chance that Derek Hale was a murderer who had every reason to cover it up. John practically ran into his office, pulling out his copy of the case file.

He knew most of the facts like the back of his hand:
Laura Hale drives to Beacon Hills and is killed in an apparent animal attack.
Derek Hale arrives in Beacon Hills by plane and buries his sister in the backyard of his burned-down house.
Someone connected with the fire is killed in an apparent animal attack.
The first evidence of Kate Argent’s presence in town is when her car has its window repaired at a local autobody shop. Date and time of her actual arrival are unknown.
Someone else connected with the fire is killed by an animal who may or may not be able to walk upright.
The mountain lion is put down, which should be the end of the ‘animal attacks.’
Scott, Allison, Stiles, Jackson, and Lydia are attacked in the school, supposedly by Derek, though Scott is the only one they say actually saw him.
Two more people connected with the fire are killed by an animal.
Harris tells John about the necklace and is subsequently attacked.
Peter Hale and his nurse disappear from the hospital, presumed dead.
Scott recants his accusation against Hale.
Lydia Martin is attacked by an animal at the formal.
Kate Argent is found in the Hale house, also supposedly killed by an animal.

When John looked at it now, it seemed so obvious that Kate Argent couldn’t be the only killer. John didn’t even know why he went along with that. Probably out of his own rage that she’d murdered eleven people in cold blood. It had been easier to close the case with justice served then dwell on the wildly improbable odds of Kate actually being killed by an animal at the scene of her earlier crime after committing a string of murders designed to look like animal attacks. Even if she had been using an animal to make the killings, where had it gone after it killed her? Why was there no evidence anywhere of her keeping that kind of creature?

John looked at his scribbled notes. There had always been two theories of the crime, after all. Kate could have been killing all the witnesses to her crime, but why all of a sudden after the case had been closed for years? And if Kate was the killer, who killed Kate? The second theory was that Derek was killing all of the guilty parties involved in the fire, Kate included. That theory made a whole hell of alot more sense than Kate being conveniently killed by wild animals before she could kill Derek, the last survivor. The problem was that it didn’t explain the first victim. Derek had absolutely no reason to kill his sister.

Except then there were the photos from the fire, Derek’s young face twisted with rage and grief. Derek had suffered an unspeakable trauma at a young enough age to completely destroy him psychologically. Who knew what he was capable of in a fit of anger or in the grips of a flashback? Maybe Laura had accidentally contributed to the fire and he’d found out about it and killed her in a rage so wild that it looked like an animal attack? Maybe her accidental death at Derek’s hands had triggered the revenge spree.

But then why did Derek and Laura suddenly return to Beacon Hills and why days apart? No, Derek wouldn’t have killed Laura and then driven back to New York in order to fly back a week later. That was too premeditated for the kind of passion needed to kill his own sister.

What made sense was that Laura had come to investigate and Kate had found out about it and killed Laura. Her former lover, Harris, had also survived. He could have tipped her off that Laura had come to see him. Then Derek had obviously gotten worried and come to find his sister, discovered the body and, understandably, buried the part of her he could find near the house where the rest of their family had died in a fit of grief. After that, either Derek had gone on a revenge spree or Kate had started the cover-up. Derek had seen his sister’s body, so he would have known to make it look like an animal attack. Regardless of who killed the others, Derek had to have killed Kate. John couldn’t think of better motive than her setting fire to his family and then killing his sister and his uncle, the only other survivors. And Derek had buried Laura at the burned down house. He was the only one so wrapped up in the ritual of grief that he would have staged Kate’s death at the scene of the crime.

It didn’t explain why Derek had attacked the kids in the school, though by that time Stiles and Scott had been so wrapped up in the case, he probably thought they knew something. Or maybe he just wanted revenge for them accusing him of killing his sister? Because that made more sense than sweet, reliable, Scott making a false accusation, not just to the police, but to the other kids in the middle of the attack.

But then Scott had recanted, with Stiles urgently backing him up. John had trusted that, because it was Scott, who John never had any reason to doubt. But when he really thought about the evidence . . . it was too convenient.

A troop of squad cars had pursued Derek running to escape them on foot. If he were innocent why would he run? The noose was closing in around Derek and all he’d had to do to get the charge to drop was to get Scott to recant and the only person who ever really convinced Scott to do anything he didn’t want to do was Stiles.

Derek Hale was smart enough to know that threatening Stiles only made him a mouthier immovable object, but love . . . Stiles had always been stupidly loyal to the people he loved. He would lie to protect them. And Scott and Stiles were an indivisible unit. If Stiles asked Scott to lie to cover for his boyfriend, Scott would do it.

If a murder rap was hanging in the balance, Derek would have every reason to keep Stiles and Scott close. Maybe Derek needed to control Stiles enough to attack Lydia, the only person who could compete with him for Stiles’s affections. Maybe he was even clever enough to drug her so she’d run around naked in the woods for three days and ruin her credibility as a witness. Maybe he’d even beat Stiles up after Lydia had come to enthusiastically root for him at the lacrosse championship game. If Derek were unstable enough to commit murder, John wouldn't put it past him.

“Jesus Christ,” John said to the file. He didn’t have enough evidence to take down Hale, but he needed to get him away from his son.

John didn’t know what to do. His son didn’t trust him, that much was clear. It was too late for talking. And John couldn’t watch him 24/7, not when he needed to work to keep the mortgage paid and food on the table. Should he call the guidance counselor? Get Stiles back to his shrink? Send him away to military school far away from Derek Hale and risk putting a nail in the coffin of the father-son relationship?

No, Stiles wouldn’t budge. Even if John could get concrete evidence of statutory rape, prosecuting it would only drive Stiles away from John and straight into Derek’s waiting arms. Derek would have to be the one to get out of the picture. Stiles could afford to suffer his first heartbreak so long as he got away from Derek Hale - that was all that mattered. And the only way to get Stiles away from Derek Hale would be to force Hale to break his son’s heart.

“I think,” John said, alone his office and feeling more scared and lost and alone than he’d felt since Mirela’s death. “I think that I’m probably about to make it worse.”

***

John knew better than to go off half-cocked, especially against someone he knew to be a murderer. He needed more confirmation of the crime before he acted. He needed leverage and even if he couldn’t risk actually prosecuting Hale for rape, he could certainly use the evidence to convince Hale to leave on his own.

John came home in the middle of his next two night shifts, hoping to catch Hale in the act, but the first time the house was silent and the next Stiles wasn’t even there. John wanted to punish Stiles for breaking curfew -- and probably for shacking up with a crazy man seven years his senior -- but that would tip his hand.

John couldn’t just keep randomly popping up and hope to catch them. Stiles was smart; he probably varied the time and location of their meetings to prevent exactly that. John briefly considered video surveillance, but he couldn’t, in good conscience, breach his son’s confidence that way. If Stiles ever found out about it, then he would never forgive John.

The roof, however, was fair game.

While John was waiting for evidence on his roof camera, he decided to resolve the communication situation. If John wanted Stiles to trust him enough to tell him about Derek, maybe ask for his help, then he needed to earn that trust. And in order to earn that trust, he needed to be a bigger, more stable presence in his son’s life. So he hired a new deputy and scaled back his shifts. He made a point of being home for dinner every night. He even decided to take Stiles’s advice to exercise more, if his son would join him on a hike.

“You know, dad, I can’t help but notice that you’ve been hanging out a lot more,” Stiles said, probably thinking it sounded nonchalant, when it was obviously anything but. He scrambled to the top of a small hill, grinning down at John like running around in the woods was nothing.

John was breathing a little hard. Maybe his son was right about needing more exercise. “What, you’re not happy to spend more time with your old man?” he panted.

“No, dad, that’s not what I’m saying! Of course I’m happy you aren’t working yourself to death anymore. I just . . . it’s a pattern.”

Time to lay the guilt trip on. “I guess I have wanted to spend more time with you. In case you haven’t noticed, you’re kind of all I’ve got, kid. And you’ll be going off to college soon.”

“In two years.”

“Trust me, son, that’s soon.”

Stiles was getting farther ahead. Not only was he much fitter than his old man, but he seemed really familiar with the terrain, like he came out here a lot. God, John knew nothing about his son.

“I’m happy to have you home for my nutritious dinners, dad, but doesn’t that put a strain on the other deputies? I don’t want to get on Angelina’s bad side.”

“Please, that woman adores you. After what happened at the station--” He didn’t have the heart to say it. Five of his deputies slaughtered in cold blood. Five people he knew and worked with, a few of whom had seen Stiles grow up. “The county comptroller agreed to divert funds out of our travel budget into hiring an extra deputy. Now with all the new replacements more-or-less trained, I can take more time to be with my son.”

“So no ulterior motives, here. No suspicions. No doubts. You’re just suddenly all about family time?” Jesus, had he been neglecting his son that much that he didn’t even believe that spending time together was a priority?

“Well, I have noticed that we’ve grown apart lately.” He didn’t have to mention all of the lies and little betrayals of trust. They both knew the score. “And I’m starting to realize that I’m to blame for that. You take good care of me, but I haven’t taken good care of you, like a parent is supposed to.”

“Dad--”

“No, Stiles, I haven’t. You’ve always been independent and your mom’s . . . you’ve grown up fast. You’re so self-sufficient that I forget that you’re still a teenager and even though you don’t need me to pack your lunch or take you shopping, you are my child and as your parent, I’m supposed to take good care of more than putting a roof over your head.”

“Dad, I have no idea what you’re talking about. You are a good father. Is Uncle Andy giving you shit again? Did you suddenly read a parenting book? Are you and Mrs. McCall getting together for single-parent guilt trip sessions? Because whatever I do or haven’t done isn’t your fault. I make my own stupid decisions; you know that.”

That deserved a hug, which John gave, also providing him with a little break to catch his breath. “I’m aware of your stupid decisions being of your own making. But whatever breach of trust there is between us goes both ways. You haven’t been honest with me. Even now, after it’s all over, I can’t get a straight answer out of you. No, no, that’s not what I want to talk about. I do still want answers, but what I really want is for you to trust me enough to be honest with me, even though I maybe haven’t earned it.”

Stiles hadn’t resumed walking yet. He worried at his lower lip the way he always did when he was deep inside his own head. Finally, he replied. “I want to be honest with you, dad. But it’s hard. It’s not that you don’t deserve my trust. It’s that I just . . . I need to not tell you for a little while longer. Can you live with that?”

John really didn’t want to live with that, but he would. If all Stiles needed to come back to him was space, John needed to give it to him. His skin crawled at the idea of Stiles seeing Derek one minute more than he needed to, but he couldn’t afford to rush this, not when Stiles was actually the kind of kid that might run away with a crazy serial killer if he thought he was in love. “I can. Not like I have a choice.”

They hiked in silence for a while, until they got to the stream. Stiles abandoned the trail to walk along it, bringing John to a little spit of flat rock that made a perfect place for a picnic. Stiles must’ve known it was there, even though he was not the outdoorsy type. Hell, he’d barely survived cubscouts. Of course the Hale house wasn’t far from here and all the Hales had always known the preserve like the back of their hand. John really hoped his son wasn’t taking him to his outdoor lovenest.

Stiles took off his backpack and pulled out an impressive array of unfortunately healthy foodstuff and they ate in relative peace while John drummed up the courage to breach the other critical topic.

“Did I ever tell you about my friend Gerry?”

Stiles shook his head, looking wary.

“Well Gerry was my best friend in middle school. We weren’t as close as you and Scott, but we spent a lot of time together. We went fishing, saw movies, road our bikes around town doing I don’t remember what.” This was it. This was the secret he’d kept for thirty-odd years. “Gerry’s parent had a VCR. Yes, I know, I’m an old man. Anyway, Gerry managed to get ahold of a copy of some skin flick, I don’t ever remember the name. When his parents were away (and they were away a lot) we would watch it and, you know, do what boys do.”

“Ew, dad, I don’t need to know about how you spank the monkey. Didn’t we already have the ‘it’s okay to mastrubate’ talk? What did I do to deserve this?”

“Just listen to me, Stiles. People didn’t have multiple VCRs back then and there was no internet porn. Hell, there was no internet. So we’d ‘spank the monkey’ together. You may or may not have done that with Scott. I won’t judge you if you have. And we spent a lot of time imagining what it would be like with a girl or with anyone other than the trusty right hand. I know you’ve done that with Scott.”

“Where are you going with this, dad? Because I’m getting really close to my parental horror quota here.”

John took a deep, bracing breath. He could do this. For the sake of his son, this embarrassment was a ring of fire they would walk through in order to strengthen their bond. He just had to get it out fast, like pulling a band aid off. “Gerry and I jerked each other off to see what it was like with another person.”

Stiles gaped, a bit of salad falling out of his mouth. “Oh. My. God. Are my ears bleeding? I need to rinse out my brain. Uggggg, dad, that’s so much TMI! Your father’s youthful homosexual experimentation is like, practically in the dictionary next to TMI!” Stiles looked about as horrified and uncomfortable as John felt. But it would be worth it. If Stiles needed a safe space to not feel ashamed, John would fall on the sword of mortified embarassment to get them there. And then a look of absolute doubt appeared on his son’s face. “Wait, it was youthful experimentation, right? I mean, you’re not coming out to me. You loved mom, didn’t you? I didn’t see you guys ever . . . but you used to kiss all the time. She wasn’t your beard, was she?”

It was just like Stiles to jump straight to the most extreme conclusion. “No, Stiles, your mom was not my beard. And, trust me, you don’t want more TMI to confirm that. I’m not coming out because there’s no closet to come out of. I’m pretty straight. I mean, I was thinking about girls every time Gerry touched me. It was just good that it was someone else, you know? Enjoying another man’s hand on your penis doesn’t make you gay. I’m just saying that I had a summer of touching another guy’s junk, so I’m not going to judge you if you’ve had feelings or done things like that.”

“Wait, you think I’m gay? That’s what this was all about? Fucking hell, dad, you could have just asked instead of seriously scarring me for life. Ew. I need a time machine so I can go back and stop this conversation from ever happening.”

“If I had a time machine, I’d go back in time and meet the founding fathers, maybe make a few investments, and I definitely wouldn’t have dismissed you the first time you brought it up.”

“The first time I--” Stiles looked honestly confused, like he didn’t remember John auditioning for world’s most insensitive parent. “You mean outside of Jungle? When the kan-- When the candid, um, candid crime scene photos were taken?” Stiles winced. Still telling lies, and doing a piss poor job of it.

“You said you could be gay,” John reminded him. “And just now you said that I should just ask, so I’m asking. Are you?”

Stiles squirmed, looking anywhere but at John. “No. I don’t think so. Maybe? I don’t know.”

John sighed. “That’s a confusing answer, son. You don’t have to hide from me. Stiles, I’ll love you no matter what.”

“It’s confusing because I’m confused! And, duh, of course you’ll love me no matter what.” At least Stiles was assured of that.

“If you’re confused, we could always talk about it.”

“That’s just what I need, more embarrassing sex talk with my dad.” It was a good thing that John did still know some things about his son, like when he was using sarcasm as a deflection for what he really wanted.

“Are you like me and Gerry?” John prompted.

“No. I mean, I’ve never. And Scott probably wouldn’t mind, but we don’t do that together; that’s what a wifi connection and our individual laptops are for. Ah, the internet is for porn. We did kiss once, but that was in the second grade on a dare, so I don’t think it counts, even though Scott does have some kissable-looking lips.” Hm. Did Stiles have a crush on Scott? They were a little too close, but John had never gotten the sense that it was anything but brotherly affection. Then again, Scott had been hanging out with Allison recently. Had Stiles turned to Derek because he felt abandoned?

“Okay, but have you ever wanted to do that with someone?” John asked.

“Not that, exactly. And any gay porn I’ve watched has been mostly for curiosity's sake. I mean, I’d still get it up, but I haven’t saved any of those. Also, don’t look up sound docking. Never, ever look up sound docking.”

“Okay, you don’t watch gay porn. You still like girls?”

“Well, yeah, haven’t I been rotting your ear off with my undying love for Lydia Martin?”

John shrugged. “You seem less enthusiastic recently.”

“Oh, no, I would still . . . definitely, but I have like the most concrete confirmation a guy could have that she’s still in love with Jackson.”

“Is that why you kidnapped him?”

“Off topic, dad. We’re talking about my gay thoughts.” Stiles was right, better not to get back on the touchy subject of the restraining order.

“So you are having gay thoughts.”

Stiles shrugged. “I just, sometimes I notice guys. Like Jackson. I hate him, but over his rotten core of spite and his molten layer of douchebaggery, there’s a thin veneer of work-of-art-level beautiful. Or, so you know some guys have really nice pecs, right? Or nice chests or whatever? When I look at them I think ‘I wish I looked like that,’ but I also want to touch them a little, maybe lick them, just to see how they feel. But that could just be me ADDing it up, you know? And I do want gay guys to find me attractive. Like I don’t want to do anything with them, necessarily, but it’s important that they like me. Because I’d really like to lose my virginity before I die and if the ladies aren’t lining up to get a piece of this,” he gestured to his long limbs and comically ill-fitting clothing, “I want to have a backup plan.”

“You’ll lose your virginity before you die, Stiles.” That was seriously the last thing Stiles needed to worry about. “Every teenaged boy feels that way, but trust me, if high school girls don’t appreciate you, someone in college will.”

“Yeah, if I make it to college,” Stiles murmured.

“What? You’re going to college, mister. Not whatever hairbrained--”

“Gayness, dad. We’re talking about the gay now. You brought it on yourself. I mean, I watch the guys in porn. I imagine I’m them, but I also appreciate them as them. And maybe, every once and awhile, if a guy is really, really inhumanly, scorchingly hot, like nuclear levels of attractive, Brad Pitt and Colin Farrell levels, I’ll entertain the notion of having sex with him.” John didn’t have a gay bone in his body, but even he could see that if he’d stop frowning all the time, Derek Hale was nuclear levels of hot. He also looked a little like Colin Farrell. Damnit. But Stiles said he was a virgin and ‘entertain the notion’ so maybe it was just a crush now and John still had time to nip it in the bud.

“Is that normal?” Stiles pleaded and John couldn’t help but pat himself on the back, because this conversation was important regardless of whether it concerned a murderer. John was actually helping Stiles work through something rather than just hanging on for the ride. “I mean, I’m not going to go choke on a cock like it’s a lollipop and I’m not like ‘hey, look at my nubile young ass, you ass bandits,’ but I’m not completely horrified by it. Maybe I’m a bit curious about how it would feel. Not ‘I wonder how I’d survive the zombie apocalypse’ curious or ‘what does a microwaved Barbie doll look like’ curious, but more like a ‘look for a dead body in the woods’ kind of curious.”

Stiles had already been looking for a dead body in the woods. But he’d also microwaved his cousin’s favorite Barbie doll. Knowing Stiles that probably meant he’d gotten curious enough to stick something up there already, just not another guy’s dick. “I don’t really see the distinction.”

“It’s like, I know it might happen one day. That day isn’t today and it isn’t tomorrow and I’m not going to go looking for it, but if certain circumstances work out with very little effort on my part, I could see myself trying it. Just to try and see if I like it. Have you ever felt that way?”

John thought about it. He’d been to the sensitivity seminar discussing LGBT issues. He didn’t get all of it, but he did get that sexuality was complicated and nuanced and probably most labels didn’t accurately describe it. “Personally, Stiles, I can’t say I’ve ever felt that way. I will notice how men look, but I’m usually evaluating them for their threat level. Haven’t paid them much attention otherwise and the idea of sex with a man does not appeal to me whatsoever. But there’s no such thing as normal. You’re definitely less straight than I am, but I think a lot of people are. I don’t know if you have to have sex with a man to be considered bisexual and I’m not sure it matters. If you get to the point where you are of age and in a safe situation where you want to have sex with a man, I’m sure you will and then you can call yourself bi or gay or whatever you want to call yourself.”

“Klingon?”

“You can call yourself a Klingon, if you really want. All those things are just labels and they don’t come close to describing sexuality. What’s more important is that you’re with someone you love.”

Stiles nodded.

“Is there anyone who’s caught your eye? Anyone that you might love enough to do that with?” John probed. He didn’t actually expect Stiles to say Derek, but he had to ask.

“Not Scott!” Stiles yelped, a little too quickly.

“I wasn’t really suggesting Scott. Anybody else? Danny just had a breakup, right? And there are other guys. I heard you and Scott are spending time with Isaac Lahey.”

Stiles shook his head, “Sorry to disappoint you dad, but nobody at my school, other than Jackson, whose general terribleness knows no bounds, meets the incendiary levels of hot qualification.”

John noticed how Stiles had deliberately narrowed the net to people in his school, a population that deliberately excluded Derek Hale. John decided to let it drop for now. He still needed more leverage over Hale.

“Okay, can this little slice of trauma be considered over?” Stiles whined. “Because I don’t think I can take anymore TMI bombshells and we’re stretching the bounds of my emotional honesty.”

“I love you, son.”

“I love you too, dad.”

Hugging there in the middle of the woods felt like a victory. Now all John had to do was remove Derek Hale from the picture.

***

The video surveillance bore fruit nearly a week later. It was definitely a leather-jacket clad, stony-faced ex-murder suspect on John’s roof. John had no idea how the hell he got up there, but the serious muscles the kid was sporting probably answered that question. Gotcha.

This was enough evidence of criminal trespass, but it wasn’t enough leverage by a longshot, especially if Stiles claimed that he’d invited Derek up there. John needed more. Luckily, he knew exactly where to get it.

The weak link in the Scott-Stiles united front had always been Scott, even though Scott was the better liar, by far. Stiles couldn’t lie worth a damn, but his half-truths and untruths were so scatterbrained that you could only get information when you had a theory to force him to confirm or deny. But lying wasn’t as important in getting information as blackmail and as much as John loved his son, Stiles had a much more questionable conscience. John knew his son thought he was doing the right thing, but sometimes Stiles had an interesting interpretation of what the right thing was. If he got committed to a path, he had no compunctions about ignoring the means to get there. Scott, on the other hand, had at least ten different avenues of emotional blackmail available and John intended to use them all.

John used his key to open the back door of the McCall’s house, bait in hand. Bait being a box of fancy chocolates from the little bakery in town.

Scott was sitting at the kitchen table doing his homework. He didn’t startle, but he did look suspicious. Perfect. “Oh, Scott, I didn’t think you would be home,” John said, smiling. “I just dropped by looking for Melissa.”

Scott eyed the chocolates like they were a bomb that might go off. John moved them out of his line of sight and Scott leaned over, trying to get a better look. “Who are those for?” he squeaked.

“Oh, these? Nothing big. Your mother stopped by the office to bring me lunch the other day. I thought I’d buy her favorite chocolates as a thank you.”

Scott and Stiles had speculated about John and Melissa’s relationship endlessly. They wavered between excited at the prospect of legally becoming brothers and horrified that their parents would want to do those things with each other. In truth, John liked Melissa and she was a beautiful woman, but it was hard to see her as anything other than just Scott’s mom. Maybe once the boys were off at college things would change, but for now, he’d be content in knowing how much she would approve of how he was about to screw with her son.

“Lunch as in--” Scott stammered.

“Lunch as in lunch,” John said in his ‘and that’s final’ voice.

There it was: that look of overwhelmed confusion that said Scott was well and truly lost in all the implications of what John was and wasn’t saying. The first trick with Scott was always to catch him flat-footed. Scott was a smart kid, but he wasn’t fast. He either needed to plan things meticulously or boneheadedly rush in hoping for the best. Scott was not so good at multitasking or so good at thinking on his feet.

“I’ll just leave these here.” Melissa would enjoy them, fictitious lunch date or no. “So how are things going? Did you guys finish your econ project?”

“What? Econ? Yeah, we did. Well, we’re almost finished.” It came out bewildered. Perfect.

“Stiles said you were hard at work on it Friday night.”

“Yeah, hard at work.” Part of the reason that Scott was a better liar was that he’d stick to saying what a person wanted to hear rather than inventing something wildly improbable like Stiles. It fortunately left him prone to entrapment.

“So that’s why I saw you and Allison in a discussion that looked far too serious for teenagers at the taco truck on Friday?”

Scott hung his head. Another good thing about Scott was that he conceded when he was bested. “Okay, we weren’t working on our project. Stiles was covering for me so I could go out with Allison.”

Now that was interesting. Scott was generally content to let Stiles suffer the consequences of his own bad decisionmaking if the punishment would be minor. For Scott to be taking the fall, he’d have to be hiding a major infraction. A Derek Hale shaped infraction.

If Scott’s protective instincts were engaged, he’d go down with the ship, so it was time to switch tactics. “You know that Stiles is going to be punished for this and I’m going to have to tell Melissa.”

“Okay,” Scott said, sullenly. The other thing about Scott was that he hated lying (unlike Stiles, who took some perverse thrill out of it). He’d already been caught in one lie so his conscience would make him not want to tell another.

“How’s it working out with you and Allison? Stiles said you’d had another fight.”

Scott shrugged. “We’re working things out.”

“Well, if you need any advice, I’m a little out-of-practice, but I did manage to successfully woo Stiles’s mother.”

“No, that’s okay. I mean, I don’t think it’s wooing Allison that’s the problem. We just can’t be together right now. We will be, though. I just have to wait for her to figure some things out.” Poor Scott seemed like he was on his way to his first heartbreak as well, but there wasn’t anything John could do about it.

“That’s very dedicated of you, Scott. I’m proud of you. I just wish that Stiles had someone like that.”

“Stiles is getting closer to Lydia. He has a ten year plan!” Scott offered, because Scott always wanted people to feel good and would cling to optimism accordingly.

“Please, Scott, you and I both know that Stiles’s eyes have been wandering far away from Lydia Martin recently.”

Scott shrugged. “They’re friends now, I think.”

“It’s just that I screwed up pretty badly. I wasn’t a good father and I didn’t make Stiles feel like he could talk to me.” It was a low blow, pushing the buttons that both made Scott want to give reassurance and reminded him of his own douchebag of a father.

“No! You’re not a bad father! I mean, I thought you and Stiles talked, you know, about the bi thing?” John knew Scott knew already. He’d heard Stiles loudly moaning about ‘children should not know that about their parents’ and ‘I will never, ever try to make him exercise again.’

“We did, but we haven’t been communicating very well lately and I’m still not sure Stiles feels comfortable enough to tell me if he’s seeing anyone.”

Scott smiled his brilliant, guileless smile. Whatever came next wouldn’t be a lie. “I think he would have no problem telling you. I just don’t think that right now there’s anything to tell. I mean, he’d have to be serious about someone first.”

That was exactly the opposite of what John wanted to hear. An older man could take a lot of advantage of a kid if he could convince him it wasn’t serious enough to tell anyone. “I just want to know that he’s being safe.”

“Oh, don’t worry. We put a lot of condoms on bananas in Health class.” That was practically an admission right there. “And Stiles almost fainted when the teacher showed slides of herpes.”

To be honest, John had never seriously thought that Stiles would have unsafe sex. He was smart enough to know the risks and to inform himself rather than listen to stupid teenaged rumors. Plus, after Melissa had found that box of condoms in Scott’s room, John knew that at least one of the boys wasn’t too embarrassed to buy them. Of course, nobody would blink twice at Derek Hale buying a whole trunk full of condoms.

“That’s not the only kind of safety, Scott. I know you know that. I mean in the past few months we’ve had more murders than this town has seen in the past fifty years. You and Stiles have been in not one, but two hostage situations and you boys just keep popping up at crime scenes. I’m worried, son.”

John did kind of think of Scott as a son, but he also knew that invoking his place as the only real male authority figure in Scott’s life also usually produced honesty. Scott just nodded.

“I know your first instinct is to keep secrets for the people closest to you, but if my son is in danger, protecting him is more important than keeping his confidence.”

“I will protect him!” Scott insisted, right on cue. “I mean, I would do anything to make sure that Stiles doesn’t get hurt. He’s my best friend.”

“I know you think you can, Scott. But you’re only sixteen. There are some things you’re not equipped to protect him from.”

John hated that look of guilt on Scott’s face, but this had to be done. “You couldn’t protect him when he got beat up,” he said softly.

Scott tightened his jaw in determination, but his eyes were watery. “I don’t want him to get hurt, but I can’t keep him out of things. I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t know exactly what has gone on this past semester, but you two have been involved in things you shouldn’t and with people you shouldn’t. You have no idea how it feels to be a parent and have your kid lie to you and not know where they are and who they’re involved with.” That was it, laying on the guilt trip nice and thick. “Being acquitted of a crime just means that there’s not enough evidence to convict, not that the person is actually innocent.”

“But Derek didn’t do any of those things! I know he didn’t do them. We withdrew our statements.”

And there it was, Scott finally admitting that he and Stiles were much more involved with Derek Hale than they should be. “Scott, if he intimidated you . . . if he threatened you or Stiles into recanting your testimony . . . if he got to my son’s big stupid heart so that you would recant, it’s either extortion or obstruction of justice, if not worse. I know you think you can handle these things on your own, but you need to trust me and the courts to do our job. If Derek really is innocent, he won’t be convicted.”

“I swear that Derek didn’t do those things! He’s broody and angry and incompetent and not very nice, but he isn’t a murderer.” Well, there was that. ‘Not a murderer’ was the best pitch that Scott, who liked almost everybody, could come up with?

“Well, I don’t know that I want my son involved with broody, angry, incompetent and not very nice. And he’s twenty-four! What’s wrong with people his own age?”

Scott gulped. “He’s not really all that mature, if that helps. I mean I don’t like him, but his whole family was killed. I feel a little bad for the guy.”

“No, Scott, that doesn’t help. I was there at the fire. I feel for him too and he obviously needs some kind of help, but of the people in the world who could be helping him, why does it have to be my son? Why can’t it be a trained psychologist?”

Scott sighed. “I can’t tell you everything.”

“Scott, what would your mother say if--”

“No, it’s not my decision to tell you. You just have to trust me when I say that I don’t want Derek Hale in my life and I do my best to make sure me and Stiles interact with him as little as humanly possible.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Well, even if that wasn’t everything he expected to get out of Scott, it was confirmation of the relationship. Enough to talk directly to Hale at least.

***

It wasn’t difficult to find the black Camaro going way too fast up the preserve road. Hale wasn’t the kind of guy to drive cautiously and the speed limits on the road were definitely cautious.

“Sheriff,” Hale said, looking murderous, though that seemed to be his default expression. They both knew that this wasn’t a routine speeding stop.

“Why don’t you grab your license and registration and get out of the car so we can talk?”

Hale glared and made sure to make his physical presence as intimidating as possible, but he complied. He even stayed silent while John issued the ticket.

“One more thing,” John said. Not that Hale made any move to return to the car, even with the ticket in hand. “I know you’ve been climbing in my son’s bedroom window. I have video of you doing it and I have a witness who will confirm your relationship.”

Hale met John’s eyes. There was something deeply discomfiting about his stare, like he could gaze indefinitely without the need to blink. “Who?”

“It’s not important.”

“It is important, so I can tell you how they misinterpreted what they saw.”

John absolutely did not want to paint a target on Scott’s back, so he hedged. “Someone close to Stiles.”

“Scott?” Hale asked, completely incredulous. He obviously knew the boys well enough to know that Scott was the only one who was really close to Stiles. “He wouldn’t do that.”

The utter certainty in his words made John see red. Before he knew it, he had Hale slammed up against the cruiser, hand around his throat. “Why? Did you threaten him? You son-of-a-bitch, if you threatened Scott, I will make sure you rot away in prison cell where you’ll see exactly what it’s like to be on the receiving end of what you did to my son!” By the end of it, it was almost a sob. Even if Stiles thought he wanted it, he couldn’t lose his virginity to someone this dangerous. John couldn’t bear to think about all those big muscles pinning down his little boy, those hard features being the ones that Stiles fell in love with.

Now Hale looked absolutely bewildered. “I haven’t threatened Scott,” there was an obvious pause, a blink, “to not testify against me.” Jesus, he had threatened Scott in some way then. “And I haven’t done anything to Stiles.”

“Maybe you haven’t gotten around to it yet, but if you think I won’t catch a case of statutory rape in my own house with my only child, you are the boldest idiot, soon-to-be-felon that I know. You may have gotten away with murder, but I’ll be watching you from now on. Not just me, but my deputies and my friends. You won’t be able to take a shit without me knowing about it and even if you can get Stiles to lie for you, I’ll tap his phone and search his room and put a GPS in his car and a videocamera on his ceiling and all the things you’re not supposed to do to keep your child’s trust, because I would rather have him hate me than see him killed by a psychopath.”

Hale’s muscles had gone tense and John suddenly realized that even if he put the handcuffs on now, even with his gun, there was a good chance that Hale could overpower him on this deserted mountain road and bury his body far away from his burnt out shell of a house, where no one would ever find it. John let go, stepping far enough back that he could get his gun up before Hale could make a move. It was policing 101 and he’d been too blinded by rage to remember it.

Hale panted, like he was fighting to contain his own anger. “Statutory rape? You think I would--” he was almost hyperventilating now. “I couldn’t. I’m not like her. I would never,” he mumbled desperately to himself, looking absolutely devastated.

A part of John wanted to reach out and comfort him. He looked small, suddenly, and young, the way he’d looked huddled in the passenger’s seat of John’s cruiser after the fire. He was a victim, there was no doubt about it. But victims could grow up into victimizers. John’s instincts said that Hale was telling the truth, but he couldn’t trust it, not with everything that had been happening, not when Derek Hale came to town and somehow brought murder and disappearances and violence right to John’s doorstep. John was an inch away from putting a bullet in his brain just to keep him away from his son.

Finally, Hale composed himself, straightening his shoulders and dropping the expressionless scowl back over the real pain that had humanized him just seconds before. “I don’t know where you got that idea,” he said slowly, the only sign of life being his nostrils flaring with barely contained rage, “but I would never do that to Stiles. I--” he stalled, frowning like the next words were being yanked out of him like a sore tooth. He looked absolutely deadly serious, like he was ready to issue a death threat. “Sheriff, I care about your son. I would never intentionally hurt him. He’s pa--” he looked stymied. “I swear to you that I will do everything in my power to keep him safe.”

The terrible thing was that John believed him. There was no faking that kind of emotion, no faking that sheer conflicted mess of anger and devotion and soul-deep hurt and desperation. But trauma broke people. It had clearly broken Derek Hale, maybe even enough so that he could convince himself that abuse could be born out of love. Maybe he hadn’t attacked Lydia in cold blood. Maybe he’d actually convinced himself that he loved Stiles back.

“Okay,” John said, slowly approaching Hale to awkwardly pat him on the back. “But that still doesn’t explain why you’re crawling into his bedroom at all hours of the night or why you’re associating with a seventeen-year-old at all.”

“Because we’re friends?” Jesus, he could barely get the word ‘friends’ out of his mouth. John briefly wondered if Hale had any friends at all, if he even knew what that was.

“Once more with feeling, son. Kids do not randomly befriend adults who they accuse of murder.”

“Stiles helps me sometimes.”

“Helps you with what?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Bullshit, you can’t tell me. You think I don’t know already? A confession alone in the woods won’t give me any more evidence than I have. Tell me: did you kill Kate Argent?”

Hale shook his head, looking down at the ground, small again. “I wanted her dead,” he agreed in a weak whisper. “But it wasn’t me that killed her.”

That implied that someone had killed her and Derek was certain of it. He sounded so certain that he must know who, if he didn’t witness it himself. “Are you in trouble, son? Are you on the run from something? Is whoever killed Kate Argent after you too?”

Derek looked hesitant, but so intent, like he was cataloguing every twitch of John’s features, every subtle note of his voice. He wasn’t denying it, but he stayed silent. It was incredibly unnerving.

“I can’t even imagine what you could possibly need Stiles for, but by now you probably realize that there isn’t a whole lot I wouldn’t do to keep my son safe. If the only way to protect him is to protect you, I would do it. I would call in every favor and abuse the shit out of my resources. I’ll take my son and move away to live in a secluded cabin in the woods if that’s not enough. But you need to tell me so I can help you. If you really care about him as much as you claim, you’ll tell me.”

“You can’t help me,” Hale replied like a man looking up from rock bottom. “There’s nothing you can do to protect me. I would tell you to take Stiles and move away, to a big city, not the woods, if I thought you had a chance in hell of keeping him there.”

“And there’s no chance of running you out of town?”

Hale gave a tired, defeated smirk accompanied by a gallows laugh, “I actually think that would make things worse.”

“So that’s it? You’re going to tell me that my son is in something so dangerous that we can’t even run from it and not tell me why?”

Hale stared straight ahead, his face stony and determined. John suddenly realized that the scowl wasn’t directed at John, or even at the world; it was pure, unadulterated self-loathing. God, that boy was too young to carry that much weight. “You’re right. You deserve to know. I should have ignored Stiles and told you myself. I don’t trust easily.” John couldn’t blame him, after what he’d been through. “I don’t trust people when I should and my instincts . . . something’s broken. I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time. I’ve been a terrible leader and I’ve done so many things wrong.”

Coming from anyone else, that monologue would be a sobbing breakdown, but Hale’s voice was even, his eyes still staring straight ahead at nothing.

“Stiles will tell you everything tomorrow,” Hale said. “If he doesn’t, come find me.” He looked down at his hands, realizing that he’d crumpled up the forgotten speeding ticket. He handed it to John. “I’m not going to pay this.”

Hale moved stiffly, but there was something about the way he carried himself, like power just barely leashed. John stood there holding that useless ticket as Hale got in the car and drove the rest of the way up the lonely road to his burnt out house.

I’m not like her, he’d said. Jesus Christ, John could see why Stiles would want to help Derek Hale. And not just because of the bisexual thing. It seemed so shallow and stupid now, in retrospect, to think that Hale had charmed his son with looks alone. Stiles was a bleeding heart, attracted to hopeless cases and broken things just like his mother.

John went home and drank.

***

When John came home the next day, Stiles and Scott were in the kitchen, arguing.

“You told my dad that Derek was climbing in my bedroom window to have sex with me!” Stiles shouted. “First of all, have you seen Derek? How is that even plausible?” John at least felt vindicated that he wasn’t completely off-base about Stiles’s crush. “And even if I could somehow, magically, bag someone with supernova levels of hotness like Derek, there are still the layers and layers of self-hatred and moodiness and inability to communicate that you’d have to wade through to even get to the miniscule part of Derek that’s capable of having a non-terrifying human interaction. I don’t care how mind-blowingly perfect his ass is; so not worth it.”

“Dude, the way you smell when Derek takes off his shirt says otherwise.” The way he smelled? What the hell?

“No, no. We agreed: no using wolf-powers against Stiles. No sniffing or pulse listening or creepy eavesdropping. And, by the way, even if I were letting Derek, of all people, pop my ass cherry, in what world is that the best lie to tell my dad?”

“No, man, I didn’t tell him that! I swear. He had me all riled up thinking that he’d been on a date with mom and then the econ project and Allison and you having someone to love, which you totally deserve, by the way. And then somehow we were talking about safe sex and then he said that safety isn't just condoms and I was getting embarrassed and then we started talking about Derek and, yeah, a condom is like the least of anyone's worries when it comes to Derek and safety. So I thought we’d transitioned from safe gay sex to people who are just plain unsafe. I tried to reassure him that Derek isn’t like a creepy axe murderer, but I couldn’t tell him anything, so I just said that I’d try to keep you away from him and . . . now I realized how that probably sounded.”

There was the hard sound of a punch and Scott’s shriek of protest, “Ow!”

“Come on, that probably hurt me way more than it hurt you.”

Scott sighed, sounding both resigned and reassuring. “I’m sorry, Stiles. I know you didn’t want to involve your dad, but it’s time.”

“Yeah,” Stiles agreed. “It’s time.”

John took a deep breath, wondering briefly if he needed a drink for this. He didn’t get everything Stiles and Scott were talking about, but he would soon, he supposed.

“Your dad’s been here for the last few minutes,” Scott said. How the hell did he know that when they had been yelling so loud?

“Dad!” Stiles shouted. “Did Derek’s creeper tendencies rub off on you in just one conversation?”

When John approached the kitchen table, Stiles and Scott were already sitting there looking much more somber than their earlier animated argument implied. Stiles fiddled with a scrap of an old receipt and jiggled his leg, while Scott looked more like a puppy left out in the doghouse. There was a full tumbler of whiskey already waiting in front of the empty seat.

John knew that Stiles worried about his drinking habits so it was downright terrifying to see how much whiskey Stiles thought this conversation warranted.

“Okay,” Stiles began. “First order of business: I am not dating, sleeping with, fucking, or in any way romantically attached to Derek. And I don’t want to be.”

Scott looked skeptical, but John was too anxious to get to the big revelation to call him on it.

“Secondly, I’m sorry we didn’t tell you this earlier even though we probably should have. I never stopped trusting you or started feeling like I couldn’t tell you things and I’m really sorry that I made you feel like I didn’t. I just thought that secrecy would protect you.”

“Stiles, I don’t need you to protect me. I’m so proud to know that you care that much about your old man, but I’m supposed to protect you, not the other way around.”

Stiles ignored John.

“Thirdly, werewolves are real. Show him, Scott.”

The End.