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1. His Mom
At first, it was only a few people coming over to watch the fight. Then it was a few more, and then a few more, but before long it was the entire police department. His mother, as always, handled it with grace. She refilled bowls, made sure the beer was cold, and even managed to appear in the living room at random intervals to thinly mock all the testosterone in the room.
She wasn’t a boxing fan, though she loved football, and she and Stiles' father had had more than one argument about whose team was better (she loved the Cowboys, he loved the 49ers). Stiles always enjoyed those arguments, she always saved some of her best material for those fights, and his father seemed to be at the top of his game as well (“Tony Romo holds on to the ball so long it’s like he’s in love with the other team’s defensive line!” “Romo holds on to the ball too long? Are you kidding? Have you even seen the passes that Alex Smith has been making this season? He has to have taken one too many hits to the head—because that’s the only excuse that could possibly be made for those crap passes he’s been churning out. The kid has to be seeing double. Or maybe even triple, because wow. I mean, we were watching the same game, weren’t we babe?”).
He was pretty sure his parents enjoyed the arguments more than the actual football. Adults were weird.
His mother liked the sudden get-togethers just as much as his father did, no matter how many references she made to being a ‘poor over worked housewife’. She loved to entertain people; she loved playing the host.
After everyone left, and his father was sleeping off the four beers that he’d drank during the fight, his mother would pick up around the house--she hated anything being out of it's place for longer than it had to be. Stiles would usually lounge around the living room, reading, doing homework or watching TV while she tidied up. Today though, his mother had joined him on the couch.
There were red solo cups on the coffee table in front of them and someone had spilled bean dip on the carpet by the couch (quadruple layered bean dip—because his mother was fantastic. No one actually knew what was in the fourth layer—and that was probably for the best.)
She and Stiles had been sitting quietly chatting for about fifteen minutes before he noticed the cups and the dip still out.
“Everything okay?” he asked, closing his book.
“Hm?”
“Is everything okay? You seem tired.”
“Baby, ‘All parts of the human body get tired eventually – except the tongue.’ Especially yours, I believe. Which isn’t a criticism. I think anyone with a healthy vocabulary and the skill to use it will go far in life. Do you know who said that?”
“The part about the healthy vocabulary?”
“No, the part about the tongue.”
“No.”
“A man named Konrad Adenauer.”
“Who’s that?”
“Hm, oh, I’m not sure. He was pretty smart though, wasn’t he?”
“I guess so.”
They sat in comfortable silence for a bit, before Stiles said “So you’re okay? You’ve seemed a little off today.”
“I suppose I am a bit tired this week. It’s probably nothing, you know, there’s been a lot going on recently, your fathers been so busy, and the election is coming up. It’ll pass.”
Stiles nodded, and looked at the red solo cups. He could tell they mocked his mother from where they set, tipped over and messy on the coffee table. “So… why don’t I pick up? You can set here and pretend to read while really bossing me around.”
She smiled, considering. “Alright then, I suppose you need to learn sometime. I won’t be around forever to wash your dishes and fold your tighty whities.”
“Mom.”
“Yes, yes, I know. Get to it then.”
So Stiles cleaned up the living room, took out the trash and actually washed the dishes while he was at it. His mother had fallen asleep ten minutes into the operation, the book opened upside down and to a random page as she’d followed her instructions to fake-read. He made sure things were cleaned up and put away just the way his mother liked, and then he sat on the end of the couch and watched TV with the sound down, waiting on her to wake up.
2. His father
His mother had been dead for just over a week.
It was weird, because it felt both like she could still walk around the corner at any moment, and as if she’d never really been there at all. Stiles had been existing in a vacuum of shock and numbness since the night of her funeral. His father had been the exact opposite. He’d graciously greeted people; he’d made sure all the arrangements were perfect and just as his mother had wanted them.
He’d wrapped up and put away the (mostly uneaten) food that neighbor after neighbor had dropped off at their house. Neighbors that Stiles hadn’t even realized they had, had come by to drop off food. In fact, if beforehand Stiles had been asked how many people lived near enough to be considered a neighbor, he would have guessed considerably lower.
But now, a week after his mother had died, been buried, and every person that they knew (or might someday know) had been by their house—it was just them. Stiles and his father, setting silent at the kitchen table with paper and note cards spread out before them. Stiles father had a determinedly normal look on his face, and his hand clutched somewhat forcefully around an ink pen. He was slowly and surly writing out thank you cards.
This wasn't going to work. Stiles slowly reached forward and dragged some of the cards towards his side of the table. He knew what he wanted to say, but for some reason saying the words out loud seemed difficult, which was a problem all by itself. When had words ever been difficult for him? That strangeness alone was enough to make him brake the tense silence at the table. “She never would have forgiven us for acting like this.”
Stiles father looked up at him, his face still strained with its pretense of normalcy. “Everything is going to be alright.”
It wasn't, really. Stiles knew that this wasn't good, it wasn't good to lock up your emotions, and it wasn't OK to act like something wasn't wrong when something was. His mother had hated untruths, especially when it came to emotions; she was never one to let things go easily. If there were an argument, no one went to bed until it had been talked to death and all parties had had their say. If there was no solution, then there would at least be a compromise. His mother had been a big fan of beating the proverbial dead horse. Stiles wondered how much their lives would be changed without her. Things already seemed so different. It felt strangely as if he were mourning both her, and the life they had lived before her death.
“Why don’t you go to bed? I’ll take care of these.” He said finally. His father shook his head, but before he could argue Stiles took the pen from his fathers fingers. “Seriously, you’re tired. Take five, or even ten. I’m all over this.”
A small amount of relief broke through the nothingness on his father’s face, “You sure kid? I know there are a lot, I should-“
“Go to bed, Dad! I think I can handle a few thank yous—I can’t screw that up too badly can I?” His father set for a moment, and Stiles could sense the uncertainty him--the battle between getting some rest and letting Stiles help him, and letting him stay responsibility free for as long as possible. It suddenly seemed like more than a few thank you cards were laying on the table between them. Finally, his father smiled a little, and Stiles knew that he had won what ever little battle had been gently waging between them. He stood up and ruffled a hand through Stiles hair, then pressed a quick dry kiss against the side of his head, “Good night, don’t stay up much longer, ok?” And he was off, up the stairs, alone in his bed and finally alone with his grief.
Stiles finished all the thanks yous that night. And then he cleaned out the fridge, and got rid of most of the food that the neighbors had dropped by—the food that wouldn’t go quickly. His father didn’t need a reminder every time he opened up the fridge. He kept three lasagnas, and the large pan of meat loaf that Mrs. McCall had made for them. They needed something to survive on for the next couple of weeks, at least. After that, Stiles would figure something out.
3. Scott
“It’s not that big of a deal, so you cried a little.” Scott gave him what Stiles liked to think of as his ‘dead eyes’ look. “Okay, so it was a lot. In front of the entire class. It’s not like anyone was really paying that much attention.”
Scott rolled his eyes, because there had been some obvious pointing and laughing as he’d helped Scott hobble out of the gym and down the hall to the nurse’s office. “Okay, so people saw—but still, not a big deal! I mean, come on man! It was a pretty hard fall, I would have cried too!” Who knew that an innocent game of PE basketball could go so wrong? “And you fell right on your knee, it could be broken!” It definitely was not broken.
He put his hand on Scotts shoulder. “It’s no big deal, don’t worry about it.” Scott dropped his head into his hands as the nurse finished rubbing some sort of clean smelling ointment around the raw place on Scott’s leg. Stiles waited to speak until she had started wrapping an ace bandage around his knee and upper calf.
“No one’s going to remember that you fell—“
“Jackson shoved me.” Scott muttered, and Stiles nodded in agreement, but really? He’d been watching, and he wasn’t sure that the ‘Jackson shoved me’ defense was going to hold up in court. Exhibit A: the sloppily tied laces that were currently holding Scott’s shoes on.
“Right, right,” he said loyally, “I’m sure that no one is going to remember that Jackson shoved you, and that you fell, and then cried a little bit. Or… a lot.”
The nurse patted Scott on the shoulder without saying anything, and Scott took that as his cue to stand up from the cot he’d been sitting on. He tested his knee a couple of times, but the first shocks of pain seemed to have worn off and he was able to walk on it pretty well. “Do you really think that no one’s going to remember?” Scott asked, rubbing viciously at his face, which was still slightly red from both the embarrassment and the crying.
“Of course!” Stiles told him, keeping up with Scott’s slow, careful pace as they walked out of the nurse’s office. “I’m sure someone else will do something even more embarrassing before the end of the day, and no will even remember the small, tiny, minuscule moment that you had.” Stiles was pretty sure that he was going to have to be the one to do something stupid in order to take the spotlight off of Scott. Scott was fragile, he couldn’t take the mocking and ridicule like Stiles could. Stiles even sort of thrived on it—he liked a good challenge.
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Scott seemed to stand up a little straighter.
“The day is young my friend!” Stiles threw his arm around Scott’s shoulders and wondered how hard it would be to accidently run into a suddenly flung open door—if things took a turn for the worst.
4. Lydia
Lydia Martin was beautiful—more than beautiful, she was a goddess sent to lavish her presence upon Beacon Hills High School and it probably wouldn’t be too of bad an idea to fall and worship at her feet as she passed them in the hallway. They might also need to invest in roses, to throw in her wake as she walked by. Or so Stiles was busily telling Scott.
“You should try that. Maybe she’d actually talk to you that way.”
Stiles rolled his eyes “You my friend, are sadly mistaken. Lydia isn’t ignoring me. We have an arrangement! There’s a certain order to things, there’s a routine happening here. You’re just too limited to see it.” Scott tilted his head, so Stiles continued “And you’re short. You should look into that.”
Scott opened his mouth in protest, but Stiles held his hand up, pleased that he’d officially diverted the conversation. “Don’t complain to me. That’s just how life is. You’re short and you’re probably always going to be kind of scrawny. It’s best you just learn to deal with it now.” Stiles was actually a couple of inches shorter than Scott, but he figured now wasn’t the time to call attention to that.
Scott gave him the ‘dead eyes’ before he closed his locker door and hitched his backpack up on his shoulder. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m short. But at least I’m not delusional.” He smirked, and then walked away, ignoring Stiles indigent “Hey!”
Stiles got back to the business of fake-rummaging through his locker, while really trying to listen to the conversation that Lydia was having with her very own personal Cordettes five lockers down. Who knew, if he stood there long enough, and broodingly stared into his locker she might deem him worthy of a passing glace. It wasn’t long, because it never was, before a braver soul than he approached Lydia. Mistake!! Stiles wanted to shout, or perhaps paint in glowing and/or neon colored letters across the face of the lockers. You never made the approach when there was a group of them all together! It was a huge mistake, one which Stiles had, in an unfortunate moment, learned the hard way. The guy approaching Lydia made a heartfelt attempt at complementing her beauty (Stiles sooo could have done better. In his SLEEP!) and Lydia metaphorically kicked him in the groin after about ten stumbling words.
Her minions giggled behind their hands and looked slyly over their shoulders as they walked away. The guy leaned his forehead a little forcefully into the lockers, because man, being in 8th grade and in love with a woman—and Lydia was a woman, a goddess, a queen even--was tough stuff. The guy turned and leaned his back against the lockers when he noticed Stiles sympathetic look. In fact, Stiles was just about to tell the guy, in detail, every single thing he had done wrong—he was above helping his competitors, but this guy was obviously not at his level and therefore not actual competition.
However, before he could open his mouth the guy said, “What a total bitch, huh? Not even getting laid is worth going through that again.”
There was a brief pause, before “Laid? You really thought you were going to get laid? Are you a moron and also delusional? Because I’m pretty sure you’re a moron if you think that Lydia Martin would ever actually lower herself to the level of you. There’s probably not even an actual level for you. You’re probably a sub basement of a sub basement in a parking garage kind of person. You just thought you’d what? Tell her you liked her hair and then you’d get ‘laid’?” (He used actual finger quotes around the word ‘laid’, just for effect. Because it sounded just that stupid.)
The guy pushed himself off from the lockers. “Well, fuck you too then.”
Stiles slammed his locker closed, indigent. “And if I ever hear you calling Lydia Martin a bitch again, you’re probably going to get punched in the face. How do ya’ feel about that, assface?”
In the end, it was Stiles that got punched in the face. But it was totally worth it, even if it still didn’t get Lydia to notice him.
5. Melissa McCall
Stiles was eating dinner at Scotts, mostly because he knew that Thursday nights were the nights that Melissa ordered pizza. And he tried to keep most saucy foods out of his own house—willpower, his father had none.
Admittedly, it was a little tense. Stiles wondered if it had more to do with the fact that Melissa now knew that Scott was a beast of the night, and was probably out in the woods swinging from trees, or if it was that Scott was half an hour late for dinner and she was stuck sitting here in somewhat awkward silence with Stiles.
“So,” Melissa finally said, “how’s your father doing?” Melissa always asked about his father, but ever since the horrible, no good, hate to remember it night where they’d all been trapped in the police station with a crazy kid and a weird lizard creature—how was this his life again?—she’d sounded different when she asked. Stiles was a rational type of guy, he could see facts and he could add those facts together. One plus two equaled three or maybe four or five—this was Beacon Hills, after all. Life was weird.
Stiles’ father had been pretty bad ass that night, he’d managed to stay calm while completely terrified, and he’d managed to rip a chain out of the wall in order to free himself—and how awesome was that? It was pretty awesome, and he realized that Melissa probably thought it was pretty awesome as well. “He’s good,” he said, measuring “working a lot. You know…” he hesitated “now that he’s back on the job. And since… half of the department is…” He trailed off; he didn’t need to say it. Melissa already knew that several members of the department were dead.
She nodded and drummed her fingers on the table top a couple of times before saying, “He’s doing a good job, I mean, he always has of course. But there’s been so much going on around here recently… he’s handling it really well. Especially considering that he’s not aware of everything that’s… really going on.”
Stiles managed, like a pro, not to wince. It was an internal battle, really, between letting his father in on the random mystic happenings of the town, and keeping him in the metaphorical dark. Either way his father was in danger. At the moment Stiles, selfishly maybe, was more comfortable with the danger that he was actively used to his father being in.
Melissa continued "He’s been doing a good job. He was… great… that night.”
Stiles set back in his chair, realizing… did Scott’s mom have a crush on his dad? That was… unexpected, but interesting. Stiles said “He’s um, glad to be back in the thick of things. Not that he ever really wasn’t, he was still investigating after he… was put on leave. For awhile. It’s you know, in his blood. He thinks he has to take care of everyone.” Melissa smiled at him, and Stiles was somewhat relived that the awkward tension had mostly dissipated. Scott was now forty minutes late for dinner.
“So, you guys seemed to get along pretty well at the game, a few weeks ago.” Melissa set back in her chair a little bit, and hey—there was that awkward silence back again. Ah, his old friend. “I just mean, you two. You know, could… hang out… or whatever it is that… people your age… eh, that is—adults. That is, you two, as adults, could be… you could be… friends… or something. You know… It’s nice… to have friends. People to talk to. About stuff.” Oh, my God. Where the hell was Scott? “You know… and. Yeah.”
She nodded at him, slowly. “Right.”
“I’m just saying it’s… okay. If you guys… want to be friends. Or whatever.”
She raised an eyebrow at him, and gave him a version of Scotts ‘dead eyes’ oh God, it ran in the family! “Thank you Stiles. For your permission.”
“Yeah, sure, of course! I mean, not that you needed my permission... I’m just… saying.”
She smiled for real this time, and he let the subject drop. It would be okay, if they were friends. Or whatever. He thought that if he and Scott ever got into trouble that they couldn’t get out of (and let’s face it, how long did luck really hold out, and his luck in particular) then at least their parents wouldn’t be alone. They would have each other to lean on; it was sort of a comforting thought. Though, maybe not really since he would be, you know, dead in this scenario. He decided not to dwell on the morbidity of that thought. He also decided not to dwell on how quickly his mind had gone to that scenario.
Scott finally walked in the door, “Sorry! I’m sorry—I’m late.”
“Yes! Yes you are you heathen!” Stiles shouted at him. “And I ate all the good slices as punishment; I left you the piece with the big crust bubble though.”
“Cool.” Scott said, throwing himself down in the chair and all but inhaling his first slice. Stiles watched him, absently thinking about how if their parents started dating, then he and Scott would almost, kind of sort of, be brothers. Weird, but, kind of not.
----------------------------------
“Stiles.”
“Dad.”
“Froot Loops.” His dad shook the box that Stiles had shoved back into his hands, or tried to shake it, since his arms were occupied with not dropping anything. “It has marshmallows.”
Stiles sighed, and pretended to consider—after all, he’d been planning on allowing the Foot Loops anyway, but his father always felt like he needed to bargain for at least one thing. “Yeah, okay. Froot Loops. But everything else--“ He made sweeping away motions with his arms, and his father, pretending to be put upon, turned to take the rejected items back to their places in the store.
“Impressive.”
Stiles snapped his head around. Of all the voices he would have expected to hear in the middle of The Food Lion, Derek wasn’t really one of them. Stiles looked him over before replying; Derek had an actual cart, with what looked to be about 20 pounds of random types of meat (he ate bologna, and Stiles did not approve). He also had a couple of boxes of chicken broth (what the…), a case of Coors Light (apparently, Derek watched his figure. Stiles found this endearing, he could admit it) and a few boxes of cereal. “No milk? Also, what are you doing here?”
“I haven’t gotten to that aisle yet. And I’m grocery shopping. What else would you do in a grocery store, brain trust?”
Stiles glared, he tried to give Derek Scott’s dreaded ‘dead eyes’. “You’re just… not someone I picture buying groceries. I figured you killed and ate your food raw.” Derek didn’t dignify that with an answer. “Right. What’s impressive?” Stiles finally asked when the silence got to be a little too much.
“You’ve got your Dad pretty well trained.”
“Ha, no. Off limits. Don’t even start in on—“
“I just meant you that take good care of him. It’s good to have family like that. It’s good to have people to take care of.”
The compete honesty of this actually stopped Stiles in his tracks, verbally speaking. He finally managed to say “Uh, yeah. I mean, you know. Thanks. It is.”
Derek looked like he was chewing up glass, but he said: “Laura used to look out for me, before she died.” Before she had been murdered. “It was good, having her to lean on.” He paused, Stiles wasn’t sure what was compelling Derek to talk to him, or for that matter be kind to him. It kind of looked like a struggle for him though, so Stiles kept quiet (hard as that was) and let him forge on. “You take care of Scott too; I know you look out for him. But you should make sure that you don't forget about taking care of yourself.”
Stiles hesitated before answering, completely taken aback. He squinted at Derek for a moment, just to make sure it was actually him. “Yeah, I know.” He finally said, because, what did he say to something like that?
“Good.” Derek said, like he really meant it. “They care about you too, that’s not something you should forget.”
Stiles could see his father making his way back towards their cart, probably saving him from saying something embarrassing.
Derek probably sensed him approaching as well, via wolfy senses, and pushed his cart away (again, endearing) just as his father reached their cart and dumped a pineapple in.
“Really, a pineapple? What am I supposed to do with that?”
“I don’t know—whatever people do with pineapples.” His father looked suspiciously after Derek. “Why are you talking to Derek Hale?”
“We were exchanging recipes for pineapple upside down cake.”
“Right.”
His father pushed him out of the way, and wheeled the cart towards the checkout lane while Stiles watched Derek pick out a couple of gallons of milk. He wondered if he should grab some bread or something for him. Who bought lunch meat and no bread? It was strange; Derek was probably going to end up with scurvy or something. Stiles made a mental note, and started helping his father unload the cart.