stiles-and-the-sourwolf on tumblr asked for people to write some whumpy Stiles fic. They wrote out a list of prompts two caught my eye and I decided to combine them.

Prompt 1 - Smoke inhalation problems that don't show until later

Prompt 2 - Stiles gets trapped in a garage with a running car, toxic fumes, or some other potentially lethal circumstance where he needs to fight to get out

I've written a LOT of fic, but never for Teen Wolf before. I avoid writing for American fandoms because I'm English (and know how bugged I get by stuff like 'Hermione's valedictorian speech at graduation' in Harry Potter fanfic.) I hope my Englishness isn't noticeable.

Burnt Marshmallow

Burnt marshmallow.

If Stiles had just smelled the scent of burnt marshmallow and thought, 'Huh, somebody must have been toasting marshmallow and gotten a little overzealous', everything in their lives would be totally different now.

But, of course, Stiles had an inquisitive mind.

They were both in therapy now.

He had argued that he had every reason, both times, to believe that his son had Frontotemporal Dementia. He had Googled the hell out of Münchhausen by proxy in order to defend himself against the accusations of child abuse.

"He's nearly eighteen! This is a thing people do to much younger children"

Melissa had to do a lot of work to gather evidence to defend him. She knew what she was looking for. She managed to get her colleague to agree to testify if it came down to it. There was no way that he, no matter how much power a county Sheriff might have, could fake MRI results in front of two medical professionals as the MRI was happening.

There was a halfhearted and utterly lame suggestion that the MRI being incomplete, due to a power surge and power failure at the hospital, could have been down to the Sheriff, but the burden of proof was on the accuser and they had nothing but a shrug to offer to back up the theory.

He'd looked it up when it was first raised as a suspicion. He had to concede, if Stiles had been much younger he'd be thinking the same thing.

The child sees a lot of doctors and has been in the hospital a lot.

The child often has had many tests, surgeries, or other procedures.

The child has strange symptoms that don't quite fit any disease. The symptoms do not match the test results.

The child's symptoms are reported by the parent, but are never seen by health care professionals. The symptoms are gone in the hospital, but start again when the child goes home.

Blood samples do not match the child's blood type.

Drugs or chemicals are found in the child's urine, blood, or stool.

Now he did have to own up to something there. He'd had no idea how much Stiles was abusing his Adderall. He'd been so careful with the anti-depressants but hadn't monitored the other medication. They were both prescription drugs and yet he'd only taken one of them seriously.

The restraint it had taken him not to mutter, "Well, when isn't he covered in other people's blood?"

Thanks to Melissa, the symptoms the hospital never got to witness thing was thrown out as soon as she pointed out the part of Stiles' file that covered the time he took himself to the hospital to see his doctor, listing the exact same symptoms his father had reported.

So, he wasn't a child abuser and wasn't even officially suspected of it.

Just questioned...a lot.

That on top of two separate dementia scares, and the real things going on to cause them, he almost welcomed the idea of therapy for both of them.

'Hell, therapy for all', he thought, 'the therapy's on me!'

The knock on the door jolted the Sheriff out of his thoughts. Stiles stampeding down the stairs, wrestling himself into his jacket as he went, flattened the last remaining thoughts into dust.

"It's for me, dad, bye!" Stiles yelled toward the kitchen, before seeing his father standing right in front of him.

"Where are you going, with who, and what time are you coming back?"

"With whom, dad, with whom?"

"Whom am I kicking your ass in front of today, son?"

Stiles grinned and swung open the door to reveal a bored looking Derek Hale.

"Derek's taking me to therapy," Stiles said, patting the unimpressed man on the chest, "and he's mighty thrilled about it."

"How did this happen to you?" The Sheriff asked Hale.

"I ask myself the exact same question every day." Hale spoke in a monotone, jaw clenched and eyes refusing to meet Stiles'.

"Scott's got work and Lydia's got three advanced placement classes worth of homework to do, so she'll be done by noon and then want to go shopping as a reward. Derek gets to spend his Saturday reading really old magazines in a waiting room." Stiles grin fell quickly as he glared at Hale. "And no listening in to my session, right?"

"I have neve-" Hale began.

"No starting today."

"What's today?" The Sheriff asked with a frown.

"Nothing special, nothing unusual, same ol' same ol'. Come on Derek, let's get in the..." Stiles deflected attention badly away from the question and peered over Hale's shoulder.

"Stiles?" The Sheriff said, with suspicion.

Hale glanced over his shoulder to see what had caught Stiles' eye, then looked back, none the wiser.

"Nothing," Stiles said, still distracted and searching the street, "I didn't forget if I forgot my Adderall and took some just in case I did and then... Dude, where's your car?"

"You took too much medication and then watched an awful movie?" The Sheriff rubbed at his deeply furrowed brow, before shaking his head and realizing that couldn't have happened. "Wait, I have your Adderall"

"Not all of it," Stiles said, looking at his father as if he had no idea what the problem was.

"Get him...to therapy...now," the Sheriff said, with more weary tension that Hale had ever managed to muster in all his encounters with Stiles.

"My car?" Hale almost winced as he asked the question.

"Yeah, did you walk or something? You came to pick me up so we could take the bus together? That's not a ride, y'know?" Stiles reached for the keys to the Jeep and Hale and the Sheriff both reached to take them back at the same time.

"No driving until you get the all clear!" The Sheriff snapped, snagging the keys and putting them in his pocket.

Hale simply sighed, very deeply, and his expression changed from one of disgruntlement to compassion.

"We're taking my car, like all the times before," Hale gestured to his car, parked on the street right behind him.

Stiles looked suddenly plaintive. He fussed with his jacket and pretended to be checking for his phone and his wallet.

"Okay, so see ya, dad. I'll call you when we get back home and start dinner when the alarm goes off." He waved his phone, humorlessly, as he mentioned the alarm he had to set daily to remind him to eat.

"Stiles," Hale said, leaning in and lowering his voice, "it's okay."

Stiles shook off his momentary melancholy and smiled at both of them, bouncing on the balls of his feet and pocketing his phone.

"So, which one is it?"

"The Toyota."

Stiles gaped.

"You got rid of the Camaro for that? I got so messed up I forgot you becoming a soccer mom?"

"Same joke, every time," Hale said, back to his usual demeanor.

He steered Stiles toward the car by the shoulder and cast a look of commiseration back to the Sheriff.

The Sheriff watched them go. He put the key for the Jeep on his key-fob, where Stiles couldn't get to it, and trudged up to his son's bedroom to search for a secret stash of Adderall.

Damn burnt marshmallow.

"Yeah, it smells of burnt marshmallow," Stiles said into the phone as he walked around his Jeep, looking for any signs of a problem.

Well, further problems.

"Huh? The steering? Come to think of it, yeah, it does get this whining noise when I turn the steering wheel. It's been like that a while, though."

He crouched down to look under the Jeep before jolting back upright at what he heard.

"The whole steering rack? How much is that gonna be?"

The answer was not a good one. He slumped back down into a squatting position and peered under the car.

"No, there's no leak, no fluid. There's nothing under the car at all. What boot?"

Stiles lay on his side and activated the torch on his phone, directing it at the underside of his Jeep.

"So I could get away with just replacing the rubber thing then?"

The garage door opened and his dad stood for a moment, wearing his uniform and carrying his coffee cup, waiting for Stiles to hang up.

"So, did you toast marshmallows and forget?" His dad looked like he knew this was going to be expensive.

"I have a power steering leak, the guy thinks I'll have to replace the entire steering rack." Stiles rubbed the back of his head before getting back to his feet.

His dad sipped his coffee, then looked over to Stiles' old bicycle.

"You know what never leaks and still works fine?"

"I'm not riding the bike!" Stiles said, firmly.

"Well then, I'd say you were getting a job."

"Or, I'm going to learn how to fix this myself."

"No."

"It could just be this rubber boot thing that needs replacin-"

"No Googling auto repairs. I don't want to see you and this Jeep wrapped around a tree."

Stiles waved a dismissive hand towards his dad and turned his attention back to his Jeep. He had to focus, find the right information, clear instructions, and he could do this.

No being ripped off by smug mechanics. No having his car held to ransom while a dozen other fake problems are found, or rather deliberately caused. More than anything, no more watching people screaming as they were crushed to death beneath...

"Stiles!"

His dad had obviously been trying to get his attention for a while now.

"Sorry, I was just thinking."

"Now I am worried," his dad muttered.

"Go to work, dad, I promise I won't completely dismantle the car while you're gone."

His dad gave him a stern look and lifted his coffee cup, as if they were drinking to agree on those terms. Stiles gave a nod and walked out of the garage with him.

After seeing his dad off for the day Stiles felt uneasy from the memories of the incident at the mechanic's garage. He'd completely zoned out on his dad. He must need Adderall. Dry swallowing two pills, he told himself he was doing nothing wrong. He'd said he wouldn't completely dismantle the car. He could dismantle a small part of it, that was within the rules they'd agreed upon. He was just going to dismantle the part that wasn't working and make it work again.

Good old Internet was going to be his mechanic, his trustworthy, cheap, not 'screaming through their horrific death throes' mechanic.

The dry swallowed pills felt as if they had stuck in his throat so he hurried to the refrigerator and downed the remaining contents of a carton of orange juice. He grabbed a bag of chips on his way out of the house and took out his phone to start searching for a place to buy what he needed for the repair. He'd found some videos of how to stop a power steering leak so knew a stopgap cheat he could try.

After calling Scott and whining until he agreed to pick up some fluid leak repair gunk and bring it to the house, he got to work under the hood.

By the time Scott arrived Stiles was singing 'Ho Hey' and waving around a plastic bottle of what really looked like urine.

"Please tell me you didn't," Scott winced as he spoke.

"What?" Stiles saw the bag in Scott's hand and hurried over, swapping his bottle for the leak repair bottle in the bag. "Thanks dude. I've seen three Australian guys doing this on their cars, I'm like a pro now. Fair enough, none of their cars were Jeeps but an engine is an engine, right?"

"Um..."

"A fluid reservoir is a fluid reservoir and, yeah, the brake fluid reservoir might have been the first reservoir I drained and then had to refill but I got it eventually. I'm saying reservoir a lot aren't I?"

Scott nodded, dumbly.

Stiles eyes lit up as he pointed at the bottle Scott was holding for him, "Smell it!"

Scott looked at the bottle he was holding away from his body, doubtfully.

"Do I have to?"

"It's like burnt marshmallow, it's really cool. Most stuff that's not supposed to leak stinks of bad stuff but that's not bad."

"Oh, this is the steering fluid?" Scott relaxed now that he knew what he was holding. "I was worried. It was...warm."

"I may have drained it all. The video guys said only drain a bit and the back of this bottle says that too. It won't matter will it? I emptied the whole thing. I can put it back and it'll be fine, right?"

"Stiles," Scott approached, visibly relaxing now he was on familiar turf, and not holding a bottle of his best friends pee, "how many Adderall, dude?"

"Only some," Stiles shrugged and poured the whole bottle of the leak fixer into the appropriate reservoir, well he hoped it was.

He paused.

"That was the one for the steering fluid wasn't it?"

"I don't know," Scott said with a helpless shrug, "smell it?"

"It smells like this stuff now!" Stiles flailed, before leaning over and unscrewing another cap and sniffing. "No, that's not burnt marshmallow, we're good. I didn't just gum up my brake fluid!"

Stiles raised his hand for a high five and Scott obliged with a fond smile.

"You know nothing about what you just did do you?"

"No idea!" Stiles beamed, before making grabby hands at the bottle in Scott's hands. "Let's see if that matters."

Scott stayed for reheated leftovers and a couple of hours on the Playstation before a date with Kira took priority. Stiles headed straight back to that garage to see if his quick fix had worked.

He climbed into the diver's seat and turned the key in the ignition. The Jeep roared into life and Stiles gripped the steering wheel and turned it left and right, listening for the whining sound he'd become so familiar with. There was nothing. His face brightened and he drove outside the garage. Engine still running, he put the parking brake on and hopped out to hit the switch to close the garage door, then jumped back into the Jeep. He was going to take his baby for a spin to make sure he'd solved the problem.

As soon as he took the parking brake off, however, the Jeep rolled backwards, back into the garage. The door was still slowly coming down, just grazing the roof of the Jeep as it passed under. Stiles slammed his foot on the brake but nothing happened.

"Oh shit."

He had done something to the brake fluid. How had he done something to the brake fluid? He'd smelled it and everything!

He pulled the parking brake again and the Jeep stopped. Stiles jumped out and ran to stop the garage door from closing, fell over the damn bike his dad wanted him to ride again, and scrambled towards the door just as it was about to meet the floor.

Then the stupid kicked in.

He slid his fingers under the door to try to pull it up.

The door crushed down on his fingers, the mechanism stopped. Stiles was trapped, face down, in the garage door. The Jeep's engine was still running.

"Oh my God, I'm going to be one of those Darwin Award people," he whimpered.

The Darwin awards, for those people who caused their own death in such stupid ways the gene pool was better off for it.

Of all the ways he could have died, nobly saving his friends, fighting a supernatural threat, from a debilitating illness that was totally not his fault, and here he was. He was going to be the guy who accidentally killed himself because he shut his fingers in the garage door.

Stiles felt around with his free hand for his phone and tried to keep his face as close to the tiny crack of fresh air his crushed fingers afforded him. He dialed Scott's number.

No answer. Of course, date with Kira, Scott dating was like Scott being deaf and blind as far as anyone else was concerned.

His dad? Ugh, no, last resort.

Derek?

Okay so his dad, then.

"Peter!" Stiles suddenly exclaimed.

Then he blinked and shook his head. His head must be lost the fumes already.

He dialed. His dad's phone was going straight to voicemail. Stiles tried to take a deep breath through the narrow slit beneath the garage door, then dialed dispatch.

"Beacon County Sheriff's Departmen-"

"Hey, it's Stiles, can you get my dad please?"

"Stiles, you know you're not supposed to c-"

"Anyone, send anyone, I'm locked in my garage with the engine running and I can't get out!"

"Are you serious?"

"You want to talk about it for a little while?"

"Somebody's coming right now, Stiles, is there any ventilation? Anywhere you can get some air?"

"I'm literally pressed up against the only bit of fresh air there is," Stiles said, head starting to spin.

He heard the Dispatcher shouting to somebody to go and get his dad. He tried to think. The average time for a police response was...it was...

He knew this stuff.

Why didn't he know this?

"Stiles?"

The dispatcher was back on the line.

"How long?" Stiles wheezed.

"They're coming, okay? The closest car is on it's way. All the cars are on their way actually. We have an ambulance coming too. It's going to be okay? Okay, Stiles?"

The dispatcher didn't answer the question. Was it one he knew? Was it a new one? They had a lot of new people after he'd killed most of the force when he was the Nogitsune.

"Stiles!" His dad's voice. It was his dad now. He could ask his dad who it was.

He drew in a breath and vomited.

"Stiles, they're coming, they're almost there. I'm coming too but you've got to get to the air. Smash a window, break the garage door, I don't care, just do it."

"I can't move," Stiles slurred, then spat out some revolting bile.

"God," he could hear his dad starting to lose it.

"S'okay, dad," he mumbled, "I'm just dizzy. I feel sick."

"Can you reach the fresh air? Any fresh air?"

"I puked on the fresh air," Stiles said, groggily.

"That's...That doesn't matter. I know it's unpleasant but you keep as close to the fresh air as possible. We're all coming, okay son?"

"Dad? 'm sorry dad." Stiles felt so woozy now, he just wanted to sleep.

"No, come on, they're right there. You must be able to hear them now. Listen, Stiles."

"It's not the Jeep's fault y'know?" Stiles mumbled.

"Cordova, keep talking to him," his dad said to someone, "I have to get there. Don't let him stop talking."

Cordova! He knew Deputy Cordova. His dad liked Cordova. His dad was coming. That was nice. The smell was not. It was awful. Why didn't things smell of better stuff? Why didn't things smell of different types of marshmallow? Power steering fluid had the right idea.

"Stiles, it's me again, your dad's coming right now and the other officers are practically pulling onto your street right now. It's all going to be okay. Okay Stiles?"

Stiles retched, then coughed up some more bile.

"Stiles?"

"I said reservoir a lot today," Stiles slurred.

"O...kay, that's good. That's a good vocabulary word. You need that for your PSATs. They're coming soon, right?"

"Tara?" Stiles whispered.

"No, Stiles, not... Tara d... Tara doesn't work here anymore, remember?"

"Tara wants me to do well," Stiles signed, closing his eyes.

"You're going to do so well," Cordova said.

It sounded so far away. He wanted to be sick again. Everywhere smelled so bad. What was with the awful smell?

"Stiles, can you talk to me? Can you tell me some more vocabulary words?" Cordova said from a thousand miles away.

Stiles eyes were too heavy. He sighed on the heavy air and mumbled one last thing.

"Burnt Marshmallow."