AN: Trigger warning for abuse.
Sort of a tie in with Morning Light.
I'd like to give a super big thank you to my friend Ellie, who not only cheered me on when I wrote Morning Light, but who was fully supportive when I started talking about Snapshot. You're the best, gurl!
Snapshot
1.
Her hair is a deep chocolate color, cut to one length. It's messy and untamed, like she'd rolled out of bed in the morning only to realize she was going to be late, tossed on the first thing she could find, and bolted from the house. It falls to her waist in a wild cascade of dark, and when she turns to smile at her friend – a lovely black haired girl, with a stern expression – her eyes are the sweetest, lightest brown he's ever seen. It's her mouth though, that drives him crazy.
Her lips are painted a pale pink, moving a mile a minute. Every once in a while she stops to smile, a quick flash of white teeth that leaves him aching bone-deep. She's talking to her friend still, not having noticed him yet, and he wishes she'd just look at him.
"John?" And that's Greg McCall, his best friend, watching him with a mix of amusement and bafflement from beneath his mop of unruly blond hair. "Y'okay man?"
"Her shirt isn't buttoned right." He says, instead of yeah I'm good, like he was trying to do. He grimaces at himself and rubs a hand over the back of his head. "I mean." He shrugs, helpless as Greg starts laughing at him, bent at the waist as he gasps for breath.
The sudden noise has caught their attention and both dark-haired girls turn to glance at them.
She's finally looking at him and their eyes are meeting across the hall. He feels his blood run cold before it's suddenly burning, the girls face turning crimson as they watch each other. He opens his mouth to say something – the school halls aren't that wide, they're less than three metres from each other, God – and the warning bell rings.
She startles like a deer, eyes widening. "Holy –" Just like that, whatever connection they'd had going on is broken. She slams her locker door shut with a bit too much force, tossing her friend a hesitant smile, and then they're rushing down the hallway, leaving John in the dust.
2.
He finds out a few weeks later at a basketball game that her name is Amy. Her friend is Melissa and he can count the number of times he's seen them apart from each other on zero hands. Because that's how often they're separated. Never. It makes it incredibly hard to work up the courage to ask Amy on a date, and he resents Greg for the endless teasing he gets for it. "It's not like asking her out is hard, but with the two of them? I'll basically be going 'hey Amy, do you and Melissa want to go catch a flick at the drive-in?' It's not like it can just be us, they're always together." He groans, swinging his baseball bat onto his shoulder.
"Chill, John. I'm sure that Melissa chick won't want to follow you to the drive-in." Greg rolls his blue eyes, stooping low to pick up a ball.
Suddenly, John has an idea. He grins at his friend, pleading with his eyes.
"Oh no. No, no, no. It will be a very cold day in Hell before you get me to ask her out. Have you seen her? She is vicious, John. Plus, she's not my type."
"What, you don't like pretty girls? She's gorgeous! And she's Amy's best friend. Do this for me, please? Just one date, just the first one. If you really hate it, I'll never ask you for anything again, please? Greg!"
Greg and John are fifteen, have known each other for six years, and never once has been able to stand up to his friend begging him for anything. He folds without much pushing and the whole argument ends in a wrestling match in the high schools field, both of them covered in grass stains and mud by the time it's over.
The look on John's face when Amy stutters out a yes – Greg and Melissa both grimace when they realize it means they're going on the date too, because yeah, no way is Melissa leaving Amy with an 'older guy' by herself – is almost worth his discomfort.
They set the date for Friday, and Greg deals with John rambling on about the twitchy, sporadic girl he's apparently fallen head over heels with for the next three days.
3.
It turns out that Melissa is actually pretty fucking hilarious. She doesn't take his shit, which Greg likes, and a snide comment from him has her punching his shoulder enough that it hurts. When they finish their movie they eat greasy burgers, all four of them piled into John's shitty truck, sitting at the curb outside a park.
They decide to go for a walk, which ends up with them playing baseball. Melissa pulls her curly black hair into a messy ponytail, and promptly wipes the baseball diamond with both their asses, Amy cheering her on. Amy herself is horrible at the game, but she's eager to learn even if she falls on her butt half a dozen times.
By the time they're done, Melissa's knees are red from sliding into base and Amy has grass streaks covering the back of her pants.
Happier than he's been in a long time, Greg tosses his jean jacket over Melissa's shoulders since she's forgotten her own. They all stretch out in the bed of John's pickup, four people pressed close enough to be one. Greg listens to Melissa's steady breathing and her soft, interested noises, as Amy's hand flails somewhere above them, pointing out stars to John.
When midnight starts creeping up, John drives the girls to Amy's house. It's half an hour drive out of Beacon Hills, the outside painted the most God awful purple any of them have seen. There's an old, rusted bathtub sitting in the front lawn, full of dirt and flowers. "What the fuck?" Greg mutters, leaning over Melissa to stare harder.
The whole house is positively eccentric, and the garage looks like it's one strong breeze from collapsing in on itself. Melissa pinches his nipple for his comment, and he stares at her open-mouthed as she flings her door open and starts clambering out.
They sit outside the house, amazed as the girls climb from a trailer – they have a fucking trailer parked in their yard, what the crap? – Onto the garage, and then into a bedroom window. A light turns on a second later, Amy leaning precariously from the sill as she waves at John, blowing him a kiss.
"So did you hate her?" John's voice is full of quiet laughter as Greg climbs into the front passenger seat.
"She pinched my nipple, John." He deadpans, buckling his belt and rolling his window up against the autumn chill.
John's face falls. "So..."
"So when's date number two?"
They fall into laughter as the radio's turned on and end up sneaking a six pack of Greg's dad's beer into his bedroom. They're young enough it gets them drunk, and they spend all of Saturday sleeping.
4.
The year passes with Greg only getting a C in science thanks to Amy, and he wonders how he never realized his life was incomplete before. When John had set his sights on the strange little girl their first day of grade ten, he'd been frustrated. Even more so when he realized Melissa was part of the package.
Now he can't imagine life without the girls, and it's a little bit frightening. John and Amy had thrown themselves head first into their romance, leaving him and Melissa sitting on the sidelines, watching, and slowly falling for each other.
He sits up from his lazy sprawl to watch Melissa cheer the others on. Amy is gorgeous and barefoot, her hair strewn with flowers blue enough to match her sun dress. She's twirling, trying to teach John to slow dance, and she only laughs when he accidentally stomps on her feet. Melissa herself is wearing jean shorts, topped off with a red tank top that leaves a strip of her belly bare.
He wants to lick it, but tosses that idea out the window as she finally makes her way over, dragging him up to dance as well. There are parents in the park, staring at the group of teens with a mixture of fondness and confusion as they all flail uselessly, completely destroying the art of dance.
Amy's laughter is sweet like honey, but Melissa's is rich and dark, like the nip of his father's whiskey he occasionally steals. He finds himself drunk on her as they exhaust themselves to a steady beat of music that no one else hears, the lazy strum of wild teenaged hearts.
When they can't dance anymore its dark outside and everyone else is gone. The four of them fall into a tangled heap of limbs, sharing whispers and kisses and secrets deep enough that they'll never tell any other living souls. It's perfect, like each of them is just an extension of the other.
They spend their time off basking in warm summer nights and cool summer streams, dancing and laughing, high off of life and the fullness of companionship.
5.
Amy loses her virginity on her sixteenth birthday. John's seventeen and a half, gentle as he fumbles. It's not perfect, like they'd thought their first time would be, but it's them. It happens in the bed of the pickup, parked deep in the woods, off a forgotten trail.
They lay together afterwards; his hands big and warm as they stroke her body, lips mouthing adoringly at her nipple. She shivers in the soft breeze, body alight with happiness, sated from her orgasm. There's a happy buzz under her veins as she cards her fingers through his hair – he's grown it out from his buzz cut, finally, and she adores it – talking about the future.
He helps her dress afterwards and bundles her into his thick jacket, kisses her eyelids and finally telling her that he loves her. In a few days, they'll be going to school again. She'll be in grade eleven, and he'll be in his last year. She tries not to worry about where they'll be this time next year.
It's apparent enough to her that it doesn't matter where they'll be, because no matter what, they'll be there together.
6.
It's Melissa's first time, but not Greg's, and they're both completely hammered as they fall into his bed. His parents are out, as usual, and they take advantage of it. It's not what she imagined it would be, and it leaves her aching all over. He presses his lips to her throat and takes care of her afterwards, gentle hands coupled with soft murmurs of appreciation as he strokes a cool cloth along her skin. It's soothing, and she falls asleep, only waking when his mother starts screaming.
Amy picks her up in her dad's shit-box Jeep, going so far as to flip Mrs McCall off. Amy is harmless as a fly, never confrontational, but she takes one look at Melissa's face and goes on a rant about how they're teenagers, it's okay to do stupid shit!
"She called me a whore." Melissa grits out over the pounding in her head, the hangover that's lapping at her sanity.
"You're not a whore it was your first time. Having sex doesn't make you a bad person, Missy." Amy's told Melissa all about her first time. "Fuck her. She doesn't know anything." It's weird to hear Amy swear so Melissa shoves at her face.
They eventually stop at an ice cream parlour, and Amy presses for details. They giggle and squeal over their first times, headaches and name calling gone from their minds as they scarf down strawberry milkshakes. Melissa's amazed that Amy doesn't invite John along, but she's relieved that they're finally having girl time.
She's too afraid to go home, thinking the McCall's might have called her parents, or maybe her mother will be able to sense it on her, so she spends the night at Amy's. They sprawl on her living room floor in front of the fire, wrapped around one another. Amy's grandma rocks in a chair and tells them insane stories from her teenaged romances.
Melissa misses when it was just the two of them, but the four of them are almost as good. She lets herself fall asleep, content that the blue and brown she's picked out for her own pair of knitted socks – Amy's grandma is just as eccentric as the rest of them – will be amazing, and in the morning, her feet will be toasty warm.
7.
The next year, John's signed up for the Academy and Amy spends three days crying because she can't stand the thought of him being a cop. It means that he'll be in danger, and there's a ring dangling around her neck that he'd given her when he'd graduated.
Amy goes through a bought of depression that leaves Melissa tired and angry. They have a fight, their first since meeting, and the last two months of high school are spent ignoring each other. They both eat lunch alone, unwilling and unable to make friends with anyone else.
8.
The boys come home for the summer, and suddenly, everything is okay again. She spends her nights at Amy's house, and her afternoons stretched in the bed of a rusted pickup, one she'll never be able to erase from her memory.
A week before he leaves again, John proposes to Amy. It doesn't surprise anyone when she says yes, or when she begins practicing writing her signature as Mrs Amelia Stilinski. Melissa's happy for her, even if she's a bit jealous. She doesn't really expect anything from Greg.
9.
They end up being dorm mates and it's amazing. They're renting an apartment near their college, living in NYC all by themselves. Melissa is taking a nursing course, Amy an art one and really, big shocker there. The other girls twitching has died down as she's grown into herself, and Melissa falls into bed beside her so they can write notes to their guys, send them off in the mail.
Snail mail is the best because they can't afford a phone. They work weird hours to pay their rent and their tuition, and they surprise each other with breakfast in bed. Amy says that she wishes they could be together forever, and Melissa burrows into her best friends belly and tells her that they will, of course they will.
They talk about wedding dates, and Amy confides they've already decided they won't be getting married until after they both graduate, which is three years away. She'll be twenty one, then.
10.
John keeps it to himself when he goes to visit Greg at his own campus, walking in to a slinky blond sprawled naked on his buddy's bed. He asks Greg if he and Melissa are having problems.
The blond man grunts and asks that John keep it a secret. John hates himself, but he doesn't breathe a word of it to anybody.
Greg is more careful after that, to not get caught. He toys with the idea of breaking it off with Melissa, but he can't imagine not having that safety line to fall back on. He spends his alone time wishing he were back in high school, where things were simpler.
11.
They go to Vegas for a shotgun wedding. John wanted to do it right, but in typical Amy flair the girl had tossed her entire dorm into the back of the truck and flipped his world upside down. Melissa and Greg are in the backseat, the girls' entire dorm packed into the truck.
He wants to do it the right way. He wants Amy to be happier even more.
They go to Vegas and do outrageous things, and he pays for their marriage licence. They're all drunk and don't remember the night, but the next day, Melissa wakes up as Melissa McCall.
There had been more than a few guys who asked her out in college, but Greg is safe. She knows him. Waking up as his wife just seems like the next step in their life together – like it was meant to be. She thinks the feeling in her belly that intense absence of feeling is just because she expected this. That one day she'd be a McCall.
12.
Two years later and he's working at a bank, she's interning at the Beacon Hills ER. It's the first time he hits her, drunk, his fist smashing into her face hard enough her nose begins to spew blood. They've been arguing over how to make the mortgage payments – maybe if you didn't buy a case of beer every day, Greg – and he had snapped.
She tells herself it's not her fault but she calls in sick to work the next day before cancelling her dinner plans with Amy and John.
She doesn't speak to her husband for three days, even though he buys her flowers and tells her it will never happen again.
13.
She's twenty five when she finds out she's pregnant. She's always had a stomach made of iron, so she can't make sense of it when she vomits in Amy's bathroom. Amy had been cooking chicken for dinner and the smell had...ugh.
Amy's known about her own pregnancy for three weeks, and John is always walking around with a dazed, dopey grin on his face.
It's Amy who holds her hand at the doctors, when she finds out that she's pregnant too. She bursts into tears and Amy cradles her close, thinking that she's happy.
She's not.
14.
Amy drags Melissa to the book club she's joined. It's held at a little cafe outside Beacon Hills, run by a gorgeous woman whose last name is Hale. She's brought her two children with her today, the little girl eagerly sipping tea as the boy – Derek, and he's just a precious little thing, all dark hair and green eyes like his mum – curls against his mother's chest, half asleep. He can't be any older than five, and Melissa strokes a hand over her swollen belly, feeling a little kick answer her in return.
She can't deny that she's excited now. She reads to herself every night, murmuring the name Scott ever since she's found out it's a boy. She can't pronounce the name Amy's chosen for her own son, and sitting in book club, she fights back tears because she's so happy.
Mrs Hale gives her a knowing smile, and Amy ends up holding Derek for her when the woman leaves to fetch tissues.
Melissa quits book club soon after, because she's never been one for discussing reading in a civil manner – she's a spitfire, she is – but Amy keeps going. She ends up forgetting all about the Hale's as she busies herself with setting up a baby room.
15.
Stiles is six when he breaks his promise and tells his dad that Mr McCall hit Mrs McCall, and it makes Scott sad. He buries his face in his dad's chest and screams when he's told that "Jokes likes that aren't funny, son"
He tells his dad that it's not a joke, and that Scott doesn't want to go home tonight because tonight is Friday, and Friday's are just the worst, dad.
John tells him that Scott can stay, then, and he hands his son to his wife. He gives all three of them – Scott, Amy, Stiles – a kiss on the forehead before he shrugs on a jacket and drives over to his friend's house.
He walks through the front door without knocking because they never knock, and sees red when Greg's hand raises and Melissa flinches away. He ends up beating his best friend black and blue, tossing him against the front door. He tells him to get the fuck out, to never come back, and you're lucky I don't have my gun, Greg.
He takes Melissa back to his house and makes her a cup of tea as Scott nuzzles her and asks her if she's okay. Stiles draws her a picture, complete with glitter, and he watches from the corner of the room. He hates himself for not noticing earlier.
Melissa and Greg have been together since she was fourteen, and it's all his fault.
16.
Things aren't better with Greg gone, but they're good. Life goes on, as they say. The McCall's – Melissa is refusing to change her last name still, even after two years – have Sunday dinner at the Stilinski house, and the Stilinski's have Saturday breakfast and cartoons at the McCall's. They're one big, happy family.
Melissa had tried to thank him, once, but he'd told her she didn't need to. Melissa never had to thank him for anything. They haven't heard a thing from Greg since he'd packed up and left town, and John childishly hopes the man is suffering, wherever he is.
He catches sight of a young lady standing on the side of the road, thumb out, so he pulls over. "Hey, it's not safe to be hitch hiking on the highway." He scolds her, raising his voice so she can hear him over the rain. "Get in."
She doesn't even hesitate, which also bugs him. Too trusting. "Where are you going miss...?"
"Call me Kate." Her smile makes him feel a little off, like he's missing something. "I'm heading into Beacon Hills. Any hotel is fine." She's college aged, maybe a runaway. He's a cop, yeah, but he's not his business. He doesn't bother asking her her last name, just drops her off.
He can't protect everyone, but he's happy that he's kept at least one kid off the streets tonight.
That happiness and the girls name fly out the window when dispatch tells him there's been a collision and the licence plate of Amy's car is read out to him.
He doesn't remember the drive to the hospital.
17.
Stiles won't stop screaming, and he's crying too hard to even comfort his son. Melissa is crying too, but she gathers both little boys into her arms and holds them, rocking them, as John screams in the face of a doctor, trying to hold back the bile in his throat.
Stiles is screaming that it's his fault because he'd wanted blueberries for Saturday breakfast pancakes, and mommy had decided to run out that night to get them, so they wouldn't have to wake up too early in the morning. His son has a gash along his forehead that's been stitched, and he's told it's a miracle that his son even survived.
Stiles tells them that something that looked like a wolf ran in front of the car, and mommy swerved so she didn't it.
The doctor tells Stiles that wolves haven't been in that area for years.
They don't do Saturday breakfast or Sunday dinner anymore after that, although the boys are closer than ever, especially after Stiles begins having panic attacks. His boy won't even look at a car, let alone get in one, for years to come.
18.
Months later there's a fire in the woods – the Hale's, a quiet bunch, all of them are dead except for the two kids that had been at school. Something about it feels off, and John can't shake the thought that he's missing something, some key point. He knows that Amy used to attend a book club with the secretive, eerily beautiful Mrs Hale, but that's it.
He chalks it up to memories of his wife, but he still works the case twice as hard than he has any other. The kids are sent off to live in New York with a distantly related family member, and for all the extra hours he puts in – Stiles spends more and more time with the McCall's, these days, John practically a zombie around the house – this is the year that he becomes Sheriff.
Things start to look up after that, just a bit.
19.
He shows up at Melissa's drunk one night. The boys are in bed, and he's terrified she's going to turn him away. He knows he's not Greg, but once bitten twice shy, right?
She doesn't, though, merely ushers him into the kitchen. She smacks his cheek lightly, and gets him coffee, holds his head against her stomach as he breaks down and just fucking cries. She cries with him, and they sleep beside each other that night. There's nothing sexual about it, just two lost souls seeking comfort.
They wake up in the morning to the boys jumping on the bed. It's awkward, and it doesn't happen again, no matter how hard Stiles and Scott try to get it to.
20.
Stiles slips up one day and accidentally calls Melissa mum. The woman freezes, staring at the boy with wide eyes. He looks equal parts horrified and terrified, so she pulls him into a hug and tells him its okay.
21.
Stiles gets over his fear of cars eventually, and John helps him pay for a run down, shit-box Jeep. It reminds him of the one that Amy used to drive, and he grins. It hurts to think of her still, even though it's been almost eight years – his boy is sixteen now, and isn't that something else? – But he knows she's still with him. He can see her in Stiles' eyes, his dark hair, and he wonders if Melissa is grateful or disappointed that Scott looks nothing like Greg, and everything like her.
Then it all goes snowballing out of control. It'd been hard raising Stiles on his own, but now there's lies, and crime scenes, and he wonders if he's failed at being a parent. He wonders if maybe Stiles is wilting without a mothers touch. Then he thinks of Melissa.
They hardly ever talk anymore, nodding at each other like strangers when they bump into one another at the grocery store. Still, their sons are friends. He has the feeling Melissa sometimes comforts his son, like how he has 'man to man' talks with Scott, when the boy is uncertain.
He's happy in the knowledge that even though they're broken and mangled beyond relief, they still have some sense of family around them.
22.
Melissa has no idea why Scott hates the man she's brought home. He's the first person she's ever been interested in since Greg left – and whoa, does she feel pathetic, or what? – And when he never calls her back she screams and cries until she falls asleep.
23.
Scott is seventeen when Melissa meets Peter again. By this point in time, she knows all about the werewolf nonsense. Peter's been hiding in her back seat, and her first reaction is anger. It changes to fear real damn quick when he tells her they're being followed.
Talking to him is somehow calming, so she just goes with it.
It's her that picks up John this time, begging the man to get into her backseat with his apparent boyfriend, Coach Finstock. Weird.
Her heart breaks as her and John talk about their boys, about how scared they are that they won't be able to protect them – that they know they can't protect him. She can see Stiles crawling to his dad, the sheer panic on his face, remembers the same look from eight years before when they'd tried to pry the boy away from his mother's cold body.
They say that tragedy is the one thing that brings people together, and she can't help but think it's true. They start doing Sunday dinner after that, and Coach – Bobby – begins to join them. The Stilinski house once again becomes a place full of vibrant noise. It's a soothing balm to both Melissa and John's still aching hearts.
24.
Stiles is in grade eleven, and his Coach is living at his house. John thought that it might have been weird, except it's really not. Bobby and Stiles come bursting through the door, cheeks flushed. It's autumn, and the wind has a sharp bite to it. They're laughing and talking about some ridiculous comedy show they both watch, grinning at him as they wind down from their run.
It's their new Saturday morning routine, and John interrupts them to ask what Stiles is making for dinner tomorrow.
25.
Peter asks Melissa out halfway through Scott and Stiles' grade eleven year. It's really creepy, she finds, the way he looks at her like nothing else matters, like he can see right into her. She realizes that John used to look at Amy that way, like she was his entire world. Her heart flutters and Peter gives her a knowing look.
She'd kept Greg's baseball bat, not for the memories, but out of fear. She hadn't trusted a gun in the house, certain her son would do something stupid like shoot himself in the foot. Three weeks after Peter moves in, Melissa throws it into the garbage, feeling a weight she hadn't realized she was carrying lift from her shoulders.
Peter never gets angry, and he never drinks – werewolves can't get drunk – but sometimes his hand comes above her head too fast, reaching over her for a mug, or to put a plate away after he's dried the dishes. She flinches in those moments, and he doesn't comment on them, choosing instead to watch her with calm, soothing eyes.
26.
John is the first to hear that Greg McCall is dead. He stares at his deputy slack jawed, before rushing out the McCall house. Melissa is shaking as she stares at the death certificate in her hands. Scott isn't home yet, but John is sure the boy is going to lose his shit. He leaves after making absolute certain she's okay, and that Peter can handle her.
As soon as John as gone, Melissa rounds on Peter. He holds his hands up, in a gesture of peace, but she knows exactly what has happened.
She slams Scott's Lacrosse stick across Peter's back hard enough it breaks in half. He seems unaffected, and merely lets her do her thing. She demands the he replace the stick and she kicks him out.
It lasts all of two weeks, and she hates herself for being relieved that Greg will never have the chance to come back.
27.
Stiles buys Scott a new, shiny aluminum baseball bat for his eighteen birthday. Melissa laughs so hard she cries, and John buries his face in the back of Bobby's head to stifle himself.
28.
Scott buys Stiles a Batman utility belt for his eighteenth birthday.
29.
Stiles goes as Batman for Halloween, ignoring the look his boyfriends give him. The entire night is fucking perfect because Scott shows up at Robin, green underwear and all. They act like idiots, and they get drunk.
Scott can't handle drunk Stiles, so he passes him off to Derek and Isaac. Batman promptly hurls on the Alpha's shoes, and Derek decides his punishment should be his dad.
Stiles spends the next few hours listening to Garfield, his dad, and Bobby yell at him about underage drinking before he's allowed to go try and sleep it off. Coach wakes him up extra early the next day, out of spite. Stiles vows to never drink again.
30.
They don't know how it happens, but the Hale house is finished, and they're having Christmas there. The entire Pack, humans included, are gathered in the living room. Erica and Stiles have tacked a piece of cardboard over the hearth, and are studiously painting a fire on it. They don't want to have a real fire, not in this house.
After dinner, Melissa nestles into Peter's side. She glances up in time to see Stiles sit on Derek's lap, and the image of Derek, curled up against Amy's chest, where his mother had deposited him so she could search for tissues hits her like a fist to the gut, and she gasps, nails biting into Peter's thigh.
"You alright, darling?" His lips brush her ear, voice low and concerned.
She meets Derek's eyes over Stiles' head, the human leaning forward to give Isaac a kiss on the cheek. She's breathless when she replies, "I'm fantastic."