Shawn wasn't ashamed when Gus mentioned that he hadn't paid the cable bill. He'd known that Gus was going to be upset, but... Shawn had needed that money. He had spent more on Christmas presents than he'd intended and the idea of not getting that one thing that he'd wanted for Stiles had been too much to handle. It wasn't the first time and he knew it wouldn't be the last.
He still felt like a failure of a parent sometimes, not spending more time with his son. John was quick to reassure him and Stiles was quick to shower him with affection but... At the end of the day, Stiles slept in a bed in the house that Shawn didn't pay for, he called someone else Dad and Shawn hadn't raised him.
He'd been there as much as he could for Stiles growing up. John and Claudia had let him into their life with open arms despite the signed papers that read closed adoption, and as soon as Stiles was able to understand it he just accepted the fact that he had a mom and a dad and another dad, without any step-parents or polyamorous relationships.
He felt a lot of guilt anyway, about having given Stiles up in the first place. About being eighteen and on his own and having a squirming infant thrust at him with no explanation other than, it's yours and I don't want it. Shawn had wanted. He wanted to raise that little boy from the moment he looked down and saw his face.
But he knew he couldn't do it on his own, not the way his head was or the way he didn't know what the fuck he was doing with his own life. Adoption was a hard choice for him, but the thought of returning home to his dad with the baby, of having his dad raise the kid exactly as he'd raised Shawn? No, Shawn could never have done that.
He'd chosen a sheriff's deputy in a city a third the size of Santa Barbara, happily married to his wife who could not conceive her own child. He met with them several times, asked them questions about how the baby would be raised. It wasn't easy to leave him with them, but ultimately he saw the way they looked down at his kid and he knew it was the right choice.
When he left the night he signed the papers, he hadn't had the intention of returning. Leaving there was the hardest thing he'd ever had to do, and he knew that if he ever returned he wouldn't be able to leave again.
He drove on from there. He would find jobs that he hated or that he enjoyed and would stick with it for a few months until he found himself halfway back to Beacon Hills with new toy or outfit for his son. After the first year and a half he started mailing them on, unable to stop himself. He didn't know how the deputy or his wife would be taking his presents, but it was all he could not to show up at their doorstep late at night just to see that little boy and know I made this, he is mine.
He finally caved when his son was four, two weeks after getting released from a hospital after a horrific accident on his bike that he was lucky to crawl away from, let alone walk.
He'd spent that two weeks being bullied by the father that had been called when he'd been found bleeding out on the side of the road outside Sacramento, and two weeks being blissfully happy that his dad would never know that he had a grandson.
He couldn't afford a new bike yet, all the savings from four years of flirting his way into jobs and making friends with strangers being pooled into paying off medical bills. But he swiped a hundred from his dad's wallet and left a note on the kitchen table and did his best to disappear again.
He hadn't meant to show up at the front door of the Stilinski house fifteen minutes after eight, his hair plastered to his head and his leather jacket soaked from the rain during the twenty minute walk from the bus station.
Claudia hadn't even asked him a single thing when she saw him standing in her doorway like a lost puppy, just pulled him inside and shut the door leaving him standing there awkwardly for a few minutes before returning with a towel that she gave him to dry his hair, taking his jacket to hang it on a hook between her husband's jacket and her own.
"John and Krzesimir are in the living room. Do you... want to see him?" She finally asked softly, a hand lightly on his arm. He couldn't speak, but he saw the red and white dinosaur jacket he'd sent two days before the accident hanging on a lower hook for his son to reach and he knew that he must have started nodding before she even finished asking.
John was sitting on the couch with one arm curled around a dark haired little boy, his face dotted with moles just like his mother's. He looked so much like his mother but Shawn couldn't deny there was a part of him in the boy too. He couldn't name it, but he knew.
John looked up, and while he was surprised to see him there he was also somehow pleased. Shawn could see it in the way the man smiled.
And Shawn felt like he was falling apart.
His son looked happy here. His son's father-because at that moment Shawn knew it wasn't him anymore-was reading him a children's book instead of asking him to memorize police codes. The boy looked up at him with curious brown eyes and Shawn fell in love with that little boy all over again.
Shawn felt the tears pricking at his eyes but he didn't-couldn't-look away.
And simple as that, John Stilinski beckoned him over and Shawn fell into the hug he should have gotten from his father when he finally woke up in the hospital. He fell into the affection he desperately craved but could never ask for. And he fell a little bit in love with John and Claudia Stilinski too, because they had no reason to let a twenty two year old fuck up into their lives once the ink was drying on the papers, once his little boy was their little boy. They were within their legal rights to have him escorted away by police and prosecuted.
Instead, they were acting like they'd adopted Shawn as well as his son. Like they were waiting for him to come home this whole time.
John Stilinski kept reading the story as if he'd never been interrupted and Shawn fell asleep cuddled up on one side of him to the sound of the man's voice and the echo of his son's heartbeat on the other side.
It changed from there. Of course it did. It had to. He'd woken up on the Stilinski's couch in the morning with a soft blanket covering him, the sounds of his son playing a game of dinosaurs versus pirates with Claudia a few feet away.
"Mommy, he's awake." He stated so matter of fact, his eyes skirting over Shawn so quickly he nearly missed it.
It was a familiar look.
Shawn knew then that his son wouldn't forget that moment. It would be sealed in his brain. The night before too.
He was like his father. Photographic memory.
Claudia never stopped him to ask how many hats were in the room.
"He is. You wanna go say hi while I get him something to eat?" Claudia's soft voice asked instead. The little boy nodded, climbing off the floor but refusing to put down the bright blue tyrannosaurus in his hands and came right up to the couch.
"Mommy says you're family. Like Babcia." The boy said, smiling widely.
"I... am." Shawn managed to murmur, unsure of what to say.
"This is Spencer. He's my fave it dinosaur."
And Shawn knows that's the toy he sent him for his fourth birthday. And... why had the kid named him that?
"What's your name?" Shawn asked, suddenly realizing that he didn't know. He'd called his son a million different things to himself over the years but his birth certificate had said nothing more than Baby Spencer until Claudia and John had gotten to change things. To give his kid a name he could never have chosen.
"Krzesimir Spencer Stilinski. Mommy called you Sha-yawn."
They'd kept part of his name. For him.
"My name is Shawn Henry Spencer."
"Like me?"
"Exactly like you."
He ate breakfast while his kid asked him a million questions with wide curious eyes and he made up fantastic stories for him and Claudia watched on with a fond smile.
John returned in the late afternoon, kissing Claudia's cheek and ruffling the little boy's hair before heading up the stairs to change. He came back down in an old t shirt and sweats, settling down on the floor with Shawn and his son and playing.
It felt real.
Shawn left after supper, with promises to return on the tip of his tongue. He didn't manage to get them out but he thinks they knew anyway.
He returned every few months to spend a few days with the Stilinski's. He called his son every variation of little guy and dude he can manage, his attempts to pronounce his name always getting mangled beyond understanding.
When Stiles was six, he started calling him his father. He reused names for him sometimes, but it was always a variation on the theme. Papaya was his favorite, and he sometimes called his son his little pineapple in return.
When Stiles was about eight, Shawn called him Stiles for the first time. And it stuck.
When Claudia died, Shawn was there was much as he could until he couldn't be anymore. There got to be too many comments and dirty looks from neighbors for Shawn to handle.
It was never addressed at him, but at Stiles and John. And he hated that.
His visit schedule didn't change much after she died though. He still visited every few months, still called once month and still showed up for birthdays and Christmas. He still sent postcards. Once he settled back into Santa Barbara and it finally felt like it might stick, he offered to have Stiles visit. Not to Stiles, of course, but to John. They both knew he wasn't ready-that Shawn wasn't, though Stiles would be ecstatic-but he understood his meaning clear enough.
I'm done running.
When a case got to be too much, or he just needed a break from everything, he'd drive his bike to Beacon Hills and spend the day with John and Stiles. Stiles slowly became a sarcastic hyperactive teenager but he still loved them both and it bled through everything he said or did.
Shawn knew that Stiles didn't have many friends. He was too much like Shawn had been when he was that age. Too weird and too smart. But he tried.
So Shawn tried too.
When Yang kidnapped his mother, Shawn felt terrified that he'd see John or Stiles in that car with her. When it came down to Abigail or Juliet, Shawn was petrified that there was a secret third choice and was frozen for a moment.
As much as he cared about Abigail, he couldn't begrudge her the choice on leaving him.
He just felt lucky she'd gone to Uganda before he'd told her about Stiles.
Everything changed after Yang killed Yin for him though. He knew by her words that she'd known about Stiles. But she hadn't made any moves towards him; instead she'd kept him separate from her father.
She'd protected his son on his behalf.
He visited her once the January after that. She smiled and said that Krzesimir was too cute for anyone to go after.
He hoped she was right.
Juliet had asked him, later, why he'd visited Yang. He didn't know how to answer without telling her about Stiles.
And he was more afraid to tell her about him than he was afraid she'd find out that he wasn't psychic.
He wasn't ashamed that he had a son when he was barely an adult-not anymore in any case. But he was a coward. Five years of hiding that he wasn't a psychic was one thing.
Sixteen years of hiding that he had a child was another.
At the end of the day, Shawn is too afraid of every positive relationship he's garnered over the last five years falling to pieces if they find out about Stiles. He doesn't think even Gus would understand.
So he doesn't tell anyone.