Chapter Text
It happens by accident. Mark drags some new surveillance equipment home to play with, gets a call-out in the middle of things and busts out of the house without turning the damn thing off properly. It’s a day and a half later before he remembers and drives home on his lunch break to collect the equipment he’d left bundled on the hall table. So he’s sitting at the kitchen table, eating a sandwich one-handed and unhooking cords and wires when he realizes that something actually recorded.
He switches it on out of idle curiosity, mostly to see if he can remember how to retrieve the files. “Damn digital age,” he’s grumbling, trying out the skip-forward-and-back functions when suddenly it’s Stiles on the screen, bursting through the front door with incredible violence. Mark blinks and rewinds, watches in real-time to see that no, that’s definitely his son slamming the front door open hard enough that it bounces back off the wall.
Fight with Scott. Mark shakes his head and goes to turn it off when he gets a good look at Stiles’ face. The black and white feed doesn’t let him judge paleness too accurately, but the fixed blankness is an expression he’s not ever likely to forget and his stomach lurches in sympathy. Mark’s half out of his chair before he remembers this was recorded days ago and Stiles was fine at breakfast this morning, and well enough to call Mark at the station last night.
He’s been plenty withdrawn lately, though. Been plenty absent, too.
Mark slumps back in his chair and scrubs his hands over his face, heart aching. “Why didn’t you call me, kid,” he murmurs, and watches Stiles stumble forward until he just sinks to his knees in the hallway and curls up, rocking.
God damn it. Is he that much of a shitty parent? He reaches out a hand to trace Stiles’ figure and feels his throat close over. Stiles has been distant for a year or more, wilder stories, more secrets, and that terrible night with the Martin girl ending up hurt and a nurse disappearing from the hospital, but-
Surely Stiles is still his? Enough for this, anyway, for his kid to call when he needs his Dad? He hasn’t lost him entirely, has he? It’s just a part of growing up, right? He’s seventeen now, he’s only going to get more independent-
Mark’s thoughts screech to a halt when Stiles shifts, because it’s getting worse and he’s hyperventilating, scratching on the god damn floor and he’s saying something, repeating something and where are the blasted audio controls?
By the time he locates them Stiles has collapsed, face pressed to his knees and Mark barely has a moment to make sense of it not strong enough can’t leave him he’ll drown before he sees the front door fly open again and his entire world is tipped upside down.
Because Derek Hale is in his house. Accused murderer Derek Hale is slamming Mark’s front door shut and dropping to his knees in front of Mark’s son. And oh joy, clever Mark for locating the damn audio controls because now he gets an earful of Derek Damn Hale calling Stiles’ name in a low, urgent tone, while Derek Damn Hale wraps his arms around Stiles and draws his face up, doing all the things that are rightfully Mark’s to do, thank you very much.
He just sits there, open-mouthed, as Hale shifts Stiles’ weight like it’s nothing, settles the younger boy’s back against his chest with enough familiarity to set Mark’s teeth on edge. “Stiles,” Hale says, and leans them both back against the wall at the base of the stairs. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” His hand smooths over Stiles’ brow and tips his head back against Hale’s shoulder, legs bracketing the teenager’s thighs. “I’m here.”
He’s here? He’s- god damn- he’s here? Mark’s on his feet, pacing and mumbling, and he’s not proud of the fact that when he finally gets control of his temper enough to notice, his hand is resting on his weapon. He uncurls it carefully and flexes his hand, shaken. He’s not- that’s not who he is. He’s happy to make you-know-I’m-the-Sheriff-and- I-own-a-dozen-gun jokes, sure. But he’d never- not really.
Especially since - he swears low and vicious - it seems that Hale is actually doing a good job, damn his black soul straight to hell. On the screen Stiles is leaning back against him, still panting too fast but no longer mumbling, and he’s clutching at the hand Hale has placed over his heart like it’s a lifeline.
Mark gets the sudden, uncomfortable feeling that he might not be ready to see this.
A heartbeat later he remembers that he’s technically an eavesdropper and there’s a sweeping sense of ickiness as he sinks back into his seat. Stiles is entitled to his privacy – and yet. He’s clearly lying to Mark about a hell of a lot. See: Derek Hale in Mark’s house.
His hand hovers over the mute button, moves to the stop button and then back to the audio again. Watching without listening, is that less creepy? Of course, by the time he decides, he’s heard enough to make him hesitate again.
“Just breathe,” Hale is saying into Stiles’ neck. Mark grits his teeth at seeing something that looks so close to a nuzzle. “Nice and slow and even. Breathe with me. That’s it.”
“Derek?” Stiles says without opening his eyes.
“I’m here.”
Yeah, you are, Mark thinks grimly. Sitting on my freakin staircase. How old is Hale, anyway?
“How, h-how, how’d you know?” Stiles manages between gasps.
“Saw you driving past the store. You can’t drive when you’re like this, Stiles,” he says, and Mark hates himself for nodding in agreement. And for feeling better that at least Stiles hadn’t called Hale, either. Yes, apparently he is that petty.
“Was nearly home,” he mumbles, and his breathing is evening out, hand not clutching so hard at Derek now.
“Just call me,” Hale says. “It’s not worth risking a car accident.”
Mark folds his arms and frowns harder. That’s his place to say.
“Not helpless,” Stiles mumbles, and Mark sighs, scrubs his hand over his face again. Stiles. Always taking care of others, always refusing help for himself.
“No-one who’s seen you throw a Molotov cocktail could ever think you were helpless, Stiles.” Derek sighs in a way Mark is intimately familiar with, protective and exasperated all at once. Mark shakes his head, angry with his kid, angry with Hale and angry with himself, for a variety of reasons. Molotov cocktail? That’d better be a damn joke.
“Okay,” Stiles says, and swallows. “I’m good now. Really. All better.”
“Give yourself another minute.”
“Don’t wanna,” Stiles mumbles and Mark bites back a tired half-laugh and then chokes when his son adds slyly, “Dad won’t be home for hours...”
“Stiles,” Derek shakes his head while Mark blinks rapidly.
Oh shit. Oh no. He’d been ignoring the intimacy of their hold, telling himself it’s medicinal, it’s just for the panic attack, it’s not-
“C’mon,” Stiles whines, half-turning. “You can’t drag me into your lap and then expect me not to want to hit that.”
Mark dies a little at ever having heard that phrase come from his son’s mouth, let alone directed at an older, leather-jacket-wearing accused murderer with seemingly permanent three day growth.
I’m seeing someone, Stiles had said, just two nights ago.
“Oh God no,” Mark says and fumbles for the audio controls, for the stop button, anything-
“Stiles,” Hale says again, and thank you baby Jesus his tone is about as inviting as a brick wall, body language just as unyielding.
Stiles nuzzles against that god damn stubble and sighs. “Tease,” he says, hand coming up to cup Hale’s cheek, thumb stroking gently. It’s so... familiar, so intimate that Mark freezes with his hand on the button.
Of everything he’s just seen, that one caress is the show-stopper. That is not teenage hormones. That’s- something deeper. He recognizes that kind of tenderness, he had it, once. Oh God. How far has this gone while he was looking the other way?
“You are a dirty rotten tease with your abs and your brooding and your hot car,” Stiles goes on, shifting to curl up in Hale’s lap, “and I swear to God on my eighteenth birthday you are going to find me rolling around naked in your bed with a ribbon tied around m-”
Mark punches the off button in blind horror and sits silently in his kitchen for a long, long time.