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Peter was still suspicious.
He had enough suspicions for the whole pack, so generally they didn’t worry about something until Peter raised the alarm and Talia seconded it.
But this time, Joseph was suspicious too. And Talia, Derek, Cora, Savage Grandma, their 3 year old niece Darla, her moms Cindy and Lila, Uncle Bill, and Uncle Phil.
And they were all suspicious of one thing.
Joseph pulled the elk roast out of the oven and checked the internal temperature.
“Oh my god, that smells so good ,” Stiles said behind him.
“It needs another hour, and then we can eat,” replied Joseph.
Stiles shook his head regretfully. “I have to go. If I don’t go home to put together dad’s dinner now, I’ll miss the 5 o’clock bus to the station, and by the time I get there he’ll have already eaten something awful like a double bacon cheeseburger.”
Joseph paused, and looked at Stiles.
“Did he forget his dinner at home today?”
“He,” Stiles brought out dramatic finger quotes, “‘forgets’ about twice a week. He has high cholesterol and heart disease runs in our family-”
Joseph listened to Stiles talk about LDL and HDL levels in somewhat of a daze. This recently turned 13 year old boy was apparently the nutrition nanny for his household.
“-so I have to catch him early and make sure he doesn’t eat an entire side of cow and choke his heart into an early grave,” Stiles said, with the tight smile of someone telling a joke that’s not really a joke.
“Well, there’s going to be plenty here. Would it fit into his diet if we gave him a small, lean portion of the roast with the vegetables? I can put less oil on the rosemary potatoes too. Then we can take it to the station before he gets hungry,” suggested Joseph.
Stiles was speechless for a moment.
“You’d do that? I mean, I can do it myself, I’ve been doing it for years-”
“Years?” Joseph questioned, appalled.
Stiles waved it off. “That would be perfect, thank you so much Joseph!” He darted forward for a hug and then bounced out of the kitchen, calling over his shoulder, “Let me know when you want help chopping or whatever!”
Joseph stood silently in his kitchen for another moment.
Years?
When Stiles entered the lobby of his therapist, he was surprised to see Talia sitting there with a magazine.
“Hey Talia!” he said as went to sit next to her. “What’s up?”
“I’m just waiting for Derek to finish his appointment with Sarah. How have you been liking her?” she asked, putting down the magazine and turning to face him.
“She’s great! She really gets it all. She told me she’s seen selkies and druids and incubi and all kind of people. I really like talking to her.” Stiles paused. “So… do you always just sit here and wait in the lobby for Derek?”
Talia nodded. “I see Sarah too- and I know how draining therapy can be. Sometimes you just need someone to be there for you right after.” She tried not to sound too invasive when she asked, “Where’s John? I would have thought it would be more convenient for you two to schedule your appointments back to back.”
Stiles shrugged. “Dad doesn’t really see her anymore. He said he’ll support me coming as long as I want to, but he doesn’t think he’s a good fit with her.”
Talia gave up on not sounding invasive and asked, “Does he see someone else?” Please be seeing someone else, please be seeing someone else -
Stiles shook his head, and her stomach dropped. “Nah, but he said she gave him a list of books to read. He got one of them from the library and accidentally spilled a drink on it, so he ended up buying it anyway. It’s-” Stiles frowned a little bit. “I’m not sure it’s been super effective for him? He still feels… but Sarah says counseling can take a long time to work.”
Talia’s eyes hardened and her mouth flattened out- not quite a frown but also not far from it. Stiles remembered the same look from when Cora was telling her about their teacher’s insistence on abstinence based sex ed.
It was a face that said “Someone deserves to catch hell but not the person directly in front of me.”
Stiles tried not to think about who “Someone” was.
Talia opened her mouth, but before she could say anything Sarah’s office door opened. Derek slouched out and Stiles jumped up to give him a hug and say hi to Sarah.
Just before the office door closed again, Talia threw out “Stiles? We could wait for you. If you would like that?”
Stiles was silent for a moment as he stared at her. He glanced back into Sarah’s office, and then turned to Talia and quietly said “Yeah. That would be great, thanks.” The corner of his mouth pulled up into not-quite-a-smile, and the door finally closed.
Derek looked curiously at his mom. “What’s going on?”
Talia told him what Stiles had just told her. Derek was quiet for a moment, and then said “At least he’s still taking Stiles, right? That’s what’s most important. Stiles is still going.”
“Yes, I suppose if parenthood demanded the bare minimum, he would be doing fine.”
Derek was surprised at the baldness of the statement.
“Our pack deserves better than the bare minimum, Derek,” Talia said softly.
He sat back in his seat.
Yeah.
Stiles did deserve better.
Stilinski Home Calling
Stilinski Home Call-
Peter picked up his phone.
“Hello?”
There was no sound on the other end.
“Stiles?” Peter asked sharply, already grabbing his keys. Another moment of silence, and then-
“Are- are,” a young, choked voice; a deep breath. “Are you busy?”
“I’m on my way over. I’m putting you on speakerphone, don’t hang up.” Peter popped his phone into the cup holder and backed out of his parking spot faster than any driving instructor would approve of.
Stiles was sitting on his couch when Peter got there, staring at the wall. He came in and sat next to him, waiting. Moment by moment, Stiles came back to himself. He slowly turned to face Peter, still looking a little lost.
“Stiles,” Peter said, frustrated and sorrowful in equal measure. “We’ve talked about this at least twenty times. Why do you keep waiting until the last minute to call me?”
Stiles leaned forward and hid his face in Peter’s shoulder, making a vague little “I don’t know” sound.
Peter wrapped an arm around his shoulders, bringing him in close like he would a small child from their pack.
“What if you’re busy?” Stiles’ voice still muffled. “I don’t want to interrupt you for something dumb-”
Peter cut in, “Your mental well-being has never been, and never will be, something dumb. If I’m busy then I will find someone else to take over for me so that I can come help you.” He’d said this before. He said this every time Stiles called him on a loud day. So why didn’t Stiles listen?
Suddenly the house phone rang. Peter reached over and picked it up without letting go of Stiles.
“Stilinski residence, Peter Hale speaking.”
“Oh, good,” the sheriff answered, sounding relieved. “You’re there. Stiles left a message two hours ago-”
Peter pulled the phone away from his face to look at it incredulously, as if he might be able to see John’s face through the line. Two hours ago?
“-tell Stiles I’m sorry, I can’t get away from this robbery case. I’ll see him tomorrow morning before he goes to school. Thanks Peter.”
There was a click and Peter was left holding a dead line.
Peter thought back to the second time he’d seen Stiles like this, just after the warlock.
Despite Stiles having had this problem his entire life, there was not a single person that he was able to trust with it. His father either couldn’t or wouldn’t help him, and the fear of rejection had penetrated Stiles so deeply that he couldn’t bring himself to ask, regardless of the reassurance Peter gave him.
As he finally hung up the phone, Peter considered a plan to handle this, and then considered again because punching John wouldn’t actually fix anything.
He gently nudged Stiles up to look at him.
“How are you feeling? Do you think you’re up for going to the nursery with me?”
Stiles brightened a little. Bill and Phil, Peter’s brothers, owned a plant nursery and kept a secret stash of plants with supernatural properties in the back. They even had their own Twoey, though less sentient (and they fed it rodents, not humans). Stiles nodded eagerly, and they took off.
As soon as they arrived, they went to the back to see if Stiles could feed Twoey. They walked in just as Phil was pulling a vole out of the freezer.
“Hey, how’s my favorite baby brother?” he greeted. “My teeny, tiny, itsy bitsy baby brother? My ootsy wootsy, little doopsy- oof!” Phil let out a whoosh of breath as Peter tackled him, the frozen vole flying across the room.
Stiles darted over to pick it up and went back to Twoey, dangling the meal above her. Her green jaws opened wide, revealing the red center, and Stiles dropped it in, watching avidly as the plant closed up again around the girth of the vole, and then slowly digested it until no lump was visible.
Stiles’ mouth hung open. He’d seen it before, but still-
“That is so cool.”
Bill came in from the potting bench, wiping dirt off his hands and kicking at the two wrestling on the floor. “You’re setting a bad example for the pup, you reprobates.”
“I don’t- I’m not a pup?” Stiles said with an upward inflection.
“You’re a member of the pack and you’re under sixteen. That makes you a pup,” said Phil from the floor, where Peter was sitting on top of him. Phil pushed him off without fanfare and got up, dusting himself off. “If Dad were still alive, he would’ve called you pup until you were thirty, much less thirteen. Just roll with it,” he said with a pat to his shoulder.
“What can we do for you?” Bill asked, looking between Peter and Stiles.
“I wanted to see if you had any phlox that I could steal for Laura’s box this week?” Peter said.
“I’m afraid not,” said Bill. “However I do have some lovely phlox that you could purchase, as a paying customer who supports the business of his two beloved brothers.” He gave a cheeky grin.
Peter rolled his eyes, but gestured for Bill to show them where it was.
“Laura?” asked Stiles curiously. “NYU Laura?” He’d heard everyone talk about Laura, but he hadn’t met her yet. She was staying at school this summer to do a couple of classes.
“Yes,” Peter said. “I send her a box once a week with things from home. Flowers from the nursery, cookies that Joseph’s baked, pictures drawn by Darla. Things like that.”
“You do that every week?” said Stiles, amazed.
“He missed once,” supplied Bill as they stopped in front of the flowers. “He was antsy and grumpy until he could send another.”
“Excuse me, I was not, and have never been, antsy,” said Peter, appalled at the description.
Phil popped up in the row of plants behind them, saying “He buys Derek all of his language books too.”
Peter sniffed haughtily. “He’s a budding linguist. It would be a travesty to leave that talent unexplored.”
“He’s the only one who’ll spar with Cora, because the rest of us still see her as a baby-” added Bill.
“How else will she learn to defend herself in all the fights she’s constantly picking?”
“-and he does eerily accurate impressions of the city council members after every meeting until Talia can unwind and laugh,” finished Phil
“Only the stupid ones,” Peter protested, and then paused. “It’s just that they’re all stupid.”
Bill smiled fondly at his baby brother, and then turned to Stiles.
“He is a caretaker and protector, through and through. Don’t let him fool you. If he can’t take care of the pack he gets cranky, and his pacifier stopped working for that years ago. It’s best to just let him do it.”
Phil plucked a container of phlox and handed it to Peter. “You can have this for free if you get us another bag of that pixie fertilizer.”
Peter snatched it up and sauntered toward the exit. “We’ll see. The pixies drive a hard bargain, I might not be able to convince them.”
Once they were back in the car, he leaned over and whispered to Stiles, “I already got them another bag and put it in their shed yesterday. How long do you think it’ll take them to notice?"
Stiles snorted, and Peter grinned, pulling away from the nursery.
Two days later, Peter dropped a box in Stiles’ lap and sat on the other end of the couch, kicking his feet up next to Stiles’ head. Stiles whacked them down away from his face with the book he’d been holding.
“It’s a cell phone,” Peter said bluntly.
Stiles’ mouth hung open.
“I want you to be able to text me if you can’t talk and need me to come over. I also want to be able to reach you at any time of the day to tell you how wrong you are about Syfy channel movies.”
“Lavalantula is a masterpiece,” Stiles argued automatically. He was opening the box, slowly checking out the phone. “Peter, this is- I can’t-”
Peter held up a hand, stopping his words. His face was uncharacteristically serious.
“Before you tell me you can’t take it, or it’s too much or whatever, you should know that the cost of that, and the phone bill attached to it, are not even a drop in the ocean of our pack’s bank account. And yes, it came from the pack’s bank account, which technically makes it your money too.”
Stiles’ mouth snapped shut.
He thought about what Bill and Phil had said.
He looked at the tension lines around Peter’s eyes.
The clarity of his next thought struck him straight through:
Stiles needed the help. And Peter needed to provide it.
He nodded, and Peter looked immensely relieved.
“Good. My contact is already in there, under ‘Best Wolf.’ Cora’s is ‘Fight Wolf’ and Derek’s is ‘Frown Wolf.’ Talia and Joseph are under their names, because I value my life. Bill and Phil are ‘Tweedle Dee’ and ‘Tweedle Dum’, but I’m not telling you which-”
The Hales apparently had a lake house and Stiles wanted to stay there for the rest of the summer.
They’d brought Stiles and Scott along with them to spend the first week of July there, grilling and gathering fireworks to set off on the fourth. So far it had been three days of swimming and otter pops. Everyone was happy and relaxed, the lake house being isolated enough that the Hales didn’t have to be so on-guard with their dual nature. Aside from worrying about Scott’s asthma, Stiles hadn’t felt so free in years.
“Aren’t bottle rockets illegal here?” Joseph frowned at the package Peter had just added to their pile for the following night.
“We used to light off piles of black powder when I was a kid,” said Savage Grandma nostalgically, rocking in her chair on the porch.
Peter waved a hand back and forth. “‘Illegal’ is such a nebulous term.”
“It’s really not,” Joseph said flatly. “Stiles, can you call your dad and ask if bottle rockets are legal?”
“Blew up a tree once,” Grandma continued, ignoring everyone around her.
“How’d you blow up a tree?” asked Stiles eagerly.
“First we-”
“Absolutely not,” Joseph interrupted. “He doesn’t need instructions for that. No one needs instructions for that. Stiles? Your dad?”
Stiles shrugged. “I haven’t been able to get ahold of him since we got here but I can try again.”
“We’ve been here three days and you haven’t talked to your pop?” Savage Grandma asked, brow furrowed.
“It’s not that weird. The week of the fourth of July is filled with booze and exploding things, which means a busy schedule for him. Oh!”
Woody Guthrie was suddenly singing from Stiles’ newly acquired cell phone. Sheriff’s on my trail with a big forty-four, the sheriff’s on my trail with a big fo-
“Hey Dad!”
“Stiles, you need to come home from the Hales and give them a break, your room looks like you haven’t been in it all week.”
Stiles looked confused. “How am I going to get home from the lake house without a ride?”
There was a pause.
“What lake house?”
Silence fell on the porch. Stiles took a few steps away, but of course all the werewolves could still hear both sides of the conversation.
“The Hales invited me and Scott up to their lake house for the week, Dad. We talked about it on Sunday night. After dinner, when you were-” Stiles swallowed. “I wasn’t sure you’d remember so I left a note on the fridge. Didn’t you see it?”
“A note? Oh, I see it.” There was a pause as John apparently read the note from three days earlier. “Ooh, yes, I think I remember now. Sorry son, that was- that was right after a hard shift.”
“I know Dad,” Stiles said quietly. “Are you okay? Do I need to come home?”
“No, no! If the Hales invited you, of course you should stay. I was just worried about you making a nuisance of yourself-”
“Nuisan-!” Grandma started to yell indignantly before Peter clapped a hand over her mouth with a sharp look.
“- but it sounds like this was all planned. I’m just gonna go to bed, I have another shift in six hours.”
“Wait Dad, before you go, are bottle rockets legal in California?” Stiles asked.
“Absolutely not, and don’t you try to talk the Hales into getting any,” John said sternly.
Stiles gave an over-dramatic gasp. “As if I would do such a thing!” Stiles said in mock outrage. His dad chuckled.
“Sure kid. Goodnight, love you.”
“Love you too Dad.” Stiles hung up the phone and turned back to the others on the porch. “Bottle rockets are illegal.” He tapped his lip contemplatively. “But maybe if we turn them into something that’s not technically bottle rockets-”
Joseph picked up the offending pack and chucked it into the lake.
“Whoops,” he said blandly. “Looks like we can’t do anything with them now.”
Peter raised an eyebrow at him.
“The Naiads are going to be furious if you leave that in there.”
Joseph cringed. “Shit. Stiles, come help me fish it out."
As they walked toward the water together, Grandma turned a prickly look on Peter, but before she could say anything Peter cut in.
“That boy loves his father more fiercely than a mother wolf loves her cubs. He is just beginning to learn what a healthy, functioning family looks like, and if you force him into a defensive position by criticizing his father before he’s ready to see it himself, then you’re only going to make the situation worse.”
His mother’s mouth clamped shut. “Damn it,” she sighed, obviously accepting that he was right. “What if the liquor store mysteriously changed it’s closed hours to whenever the Sheriff’s off duty?” she asked, determined to find some way to ease the weight on Stiles’ shoulders.
Peter smiled. “That sounds like an excellent job for two spymasters.”
August was the worst.
It was so hot. Sweltering. Blazing. It was just abominably hot.
“What would be the opposite of the Abominable Snowman?” Stiles wondered aloud from where he, Cora, and Scott were laying on the cool tile of the kitchen floor, near the air conditioning vents. “The Abominable Fireman?”
“That’s still abominable, though,” Scott said. “The Pleasant Fireman?”
“The Pleasant Firewoman,” Cora supplied.
“Woman isn’t the opposite of man,” Cora’s Aunt Lila said as she walked into the kitchen carrying a full canvas bag. “Gender isn’t binary, it’s more like an amorphous mass of personhood. So the opposite would probably be something like The Pleasant Firefish, or something with completely different biology from humans. The Pleasant Fireoctopus?”
“Coraaaaa!!” Lila’s three year old daughter Darla came barreling into the kitchen and flung herself onto her cousin, latching on like a limpet. Darla’s other mother, Cindy, followed her in.
“Are you three going to help us paint?”
Scott shot upright. “Paint?? What are we painting with?”
Cindy laughed. “I’ll take that as a yes. We have some watercolors, Darla wants to make more pictures to mail to Laura.”
“Sick, I’m going to paint a bear ,” Scott said excitedly. He hurried over to help set things up at the table.
Cora picked up Darla and brought her over too, popping the art smock over her little head.
“Stiles? What about you? Up for a little arts and crafts?” Lila asked.
Stiles shrugged, uncharacteristically quiet. Lila and Cindy looked at each other, but didn’t say anything. Cindy laid out another piece of paper, just in case.
“I thought you said you were going to paint a bear?” Cora said, squinting at Scott’s picture.
“That is a bear!” Scott said indignantly. “It’s a grizzly!”
Cora turned her head sideways. “It looks like a brown squirrel.”
“Oh, sweetheart, that’s a lovely blend in your sunset,” Cindy told Lila as she kissed her wife’s cheek.
Stiles slowly sidled up to the table, hovering in front of the blank paper.
“If it’s not a squirrel then why does it have that big fluffy tail?” Cora continued.
“That’s it’s head!”
“Where are the ears?”
Cindy nudged a plate of paints a little closer to Stiles, smiling at him encouragingly.
“Right there! Look, ears,” Scott jabbed at his painting with the end of his brush.
Cora still looked at it skeptically. “If you say so.”
Stiles picked up a brush and dropped a spot of red, watching it spread across the paper.
“Cora, look at my bear. It has three ears, even more than Scotts!” said Darla proudly.
“That’s amazing Darla, Laura is going to love that,” Cora encouraged, dropping a smooch onto her tightly coiled hair.
Stiles rinsed his brush and dropped a spot of orange this time, watching it spread across the page just as slowly.
“Do you have the greens, dear?”
“Oh, yes, here-”
The orange ran into the red, making something new.
“My mom used to paint,” Stiles said suddenly, quiet enough that Scott and Darla didn’t hear. “She used acrylic mostly. She liked a lot of texture.”
Cindy looked up at him, keeping her tone casual. “What did she paint?”
“Abstract things mostly,” Stiles said absently, bringing his brush down in a stroke, this time mixing brown into the orange. "She wasn’t empathic exactly like me, she had more precognition of empathic events. She always described it like a burst of color.” He paused. “I didn’t really get it then, but I think I do now.”
He continued adding warm colors, getting darker as he went.
“Dad threw them all away. All the paints too.”
“He threw all her paintings away?” Lila said, appalled and distressed.
Stiles finally looked up. “He kind of needed to. They reminded him of her all the time, made his grief even more constant… it would have been nice to keep, like, one, though. I could have kept it in my closet or something… but he did get a little better after they were gone. For a while, anyway.”
“THIS bear is gonna have SIX ears!” Darla suddenly declared.
Stiles smiled at her, and asked how many feet it was going to have; the conversation passed on.
Later that night, Cindy and Lila approached Talia for a discussion. Joseph and Grandma joined in as well, and then Derek and Cora, with Bill and Phil being called eventually.
They talked for a long time.
Stiles’ jaw cracked with a yawn as he set down his controller.
“Hey Peter, can you give me a ride home?”
Peter looked up from his book to glance at Talia, who was saving the game she and the kids had been playing.
“Actually, Stiles, we wanted to talk to you about that,” Peter said.
Stiles abruptly looked horrified. “Oh! No, I don’t need a ride! I can take the bus, I didn’t mean to be-"
“No, no!” Talia interrupted him. “No, Stiles that’s not it at all. We don’t mind giving you rides at all, Stiles. Everyone here is more than willing to give you a ride whenever you need it.”
Stiles still looked stressed out and unsure. A second later, he found himself surrounded in Hales, being hugged and affectionately patted by at least ten hands.
“No dumbass,” Cora said, face a little squished into his side. “We don’t want to talk to you about rides, we want to talk to you about homes.”
“... what?”
“Cora,” Derek said exasperatedly. “That wasn’t helpful.”
“Oh, and you’re being so helpful?”
“My dear sweet offspring, please shut up,” Joseph said mildly.
Peter sighed loudly. “We’re offering to give you a bedroom here, Stiles. For nights like tonight, so you don’t have to go back to an empty house. You can stay home with us instead.”
“A bedroom?” Stiles felt dazed. Suddenly he was being tugged up by Cora, who had wiggled her way out of the Hale Pile.
“Come look, we just put the bed in today!”
It was on the first floor, next to the library. Stiles had assumed it was the door to a closet, but apparently there was a whole room behind there; one with a single bed, a dresser, and an empty bookshelf.
“It’s a little small,” Talia said, worrying her lip. Stiles could feel her anxiety. He turned around and gave her a huge hug.
“I love it,” he said, an embarrassing crack and wobble in his voice. He cleared his throat. “I love you. I just- thank you so much.”
A week later, the dresser held six changes of clothes and the bookshelf was half filled. After three overnights, Stiles found out that Cora never knocked before entering a room, Peter took almost 40 minute long showers, and Derek communicated exclusively through growls until at least 8:30 a.m.
He didn’t remember ever feeling happier.