Don't think about it too hard.
The call comes in just after noon.
"Hello," he says, holding a bagel in one hand and a highlighter in the other, jabbing at the button to switch the call to speakerphone while sending disparaging looks at Deputy Riley, who is sitting at her desk outside and could have just as easily taken the call herself. Can she not see that he's in the middle of ten things at once? "This is the―" He chokes back a bite of bagel and cream cheese. "―the Sheriff speaking."
"Yes, Sheriff Stilinski," replies a man's voice. "This is Principal Keeley."
His stomach drops and he holds in a sigh, resting his forehead against the back of his hand and probably getting cream cheese in his hair. "Principal Keeley, yes, of course. How can I help you?"
"Well, it seems we've had a bit of an incident here at the school involving your son."
"What kind of 'incident'?" he asks, putting as much emphasis as he can on the word while resisting the urge to literally hold his fingers up in quotations. His hands are kind of full anyway.
"A fight."
"A fight," he repeats dully.
"Yes, in the boy's locker room, with a couple of the other students. I'm sorry to interrupt you in the middle of your day―" He rolls his eyes. "―but I was hoping you might be able to come down and help us sort this out in person."
"Yeah, of course," he says. "Yeah, I can be there in fifteen minutes."
Which is how Sheriff Stilinski finds himself at Beacon Hills High School at a quarter past noon on a Tuesday in late September, wearing a uniform and a frown and holding matching paper Starbucks cups. He has a feeling he knows exactly who else he's going to find when he gets inside, and he also knows exactly how she takes her coffee.
He's not wrong.
"For me?" Allison says, smiling wide as he passes her her cup. "Stiles, you shouldn't have."
He waves her off. "So what's the word?" he asks, sitting down on the bench beside her.
She hums, sipping at her coffee. Milk, no sugar. "In the beginning was the Word," she says pensively. "And the Word was with God. God, in this case, being Principal Keeley." She winks. "And the Word was that my kid and your kid beat the shit out of some other kid," she says, taking another sip of her coffee. "Or so they say."
"Hearsay is a dangerous thing, Argent," he says, taking a sip of his own drink. Tea; chamomile. Sheriff Stilinski is not a man who benefits from caffeine in the afternoon.
"Isn't it just," she agrees, smiling prettily. "So now, we wait."
Not long, as it turns out, because five minutes later the door to the office opens and they are ushered inside by a harried, grandmotherly receptionist with blue hair and two strings of fake pearls around her neck. Inside the office: Principal Keeley, grim, humourless, and dull as dishwater; Chris Argent, tall, handsome, and petulant, with a rapidly bruising right eye; and one Jack Stilinski, looking a little bit defiant, a little bit uncomfortable, and mostly like he doesn't quite know what to do with his hands. It's a set-up that doesn't bode well, and the conversation that follows doesn't disappoint.
"So what you're saying is," Stiles says incredulously, leaning forwards and squinting. "Chris and Jack here―" He flaps his hand in their direction. "―not only beat up a senior lacrosse player, they also tore a sink straight out of the wall. And―what else?"
"Upended a row of lockers," Allison adds sagely.
"Upended a row of lockers, yeah. With their bare hands." Stiles catches his son's eye and raises his eyebrows. Jack shrugs and shakes his head.
"That is what appears to have happened, yes," says Keeley somewhat uncomfortably.
Stiles frowns. "Their bare, human hands. Made of flesh. And bone. That can probably bench press―what? A hundred and fifty pounds?"
"One eighty," Chris mumbles.
"Okay, Chris?" Stiles snaps, turning towards him in irritation. "Not right now."
He sees Jack fighting a smile, and shoots him a sharp look. Yes, on the one hand, the situation is hilarious, but on the other, it is so not funny Jack control yourself.
"Who were the other students involved?" Allison cuts in. To the untrained eye she would look pleasant and relaxed, with her legs crossed and her coffee balanced on her knee, a dimple pressing into her cheek. Stiles sees the familiar edge in her smile and knows better.
"Peter and Nathan Hale."
Stiles lets out a sigh. Of course they're fucking Hales.
"And where are they now?" Allison asks mildly, casting her eyes about to indicate their absence from the room.
"Their parents took them home about half an hour ago. One of them, Nathan, was quite badly hurt." Chris scoffs loudly. Jack shakes his head, looking up at the ceiling as though pleading for an end to the injustice.
"I'm sure he was," Allison murmurs, in a tone that conveys her unequivocal disbelief. Stiles has got to hand it to her. He's never liked the Hales himself, for a myriad of reason, most of which start with the letter D and end with the letter K; but Allison takes the vendetta to the next level. He's not entirely sure why, of course, but he loves it.
"So what's the procedure, here, Principal Keeley? How is this all going to shake out?" His leg is bouncing up and down and he can't quite make it stop, but he also can't quite bring himself to care. Apparently, he also can't control his big, fat mouth. "And can we maybe hop to it, please? Crime doesn't stop itself."
"So then what happened?" Scott asks, his voice slightly fuzzy on the phone.
Stiles grunts noncommittally, unscrewing a bottle of olive oil with slightly more force than strictly necessary and pouring a generous amount into a pan. "Three days' suspension."
Scott laughs. "Man, you need to learn to keep your mouth shut."
"Come on. This guy calls me in from my job―where I work, Scotty, okay, serving and protecting―to tell me some bullshit story about how my son pulled a row of bolted lockers out of the ground? Does he not realize I'm a licensed detective? Give me a break."
"He was in a fight, though," Scott says, putting on his reasonable voice. Stiles scoffs.
"Yeah, whatever, we got in fights all the time. But I remember the other little assholes getting in trouble too. And I really don't remember any locker room disagreements ever leading to thousands of dollars worth of property damage. I mean, I like to brag about my kid as much as the next guy, but even I know Jack can't tear plumbing out of the wall."
"That is weird," Scott muses. Stiles hears barking in the background as Scott checks on the animals for the night. "You didn't even see these kids?"
"The Hales? Nah. Apparently they were too injured to sit down in a fucking office for five minutes, boo hoo."
"You talk to Jack about it yet?"
"He's doing his homework, cooling off. I can't decide if I'm furious or proud of him. I guess both. Honestly, I hope he broke Peter Hale's fucking nose."
Scott laughs. "Serve and protect, huh?"
"Only when the citizen in question isn't a prick."
"He's just a kid, Stiles."
"Yeah, which is why I said nose, not leg. Or spine."
"No wonder you got elected Sheriff, you're such a humanitarian."
"I'm still not actually sure how that happened." The front door creaks open, and Melissa McCall appears in the hallway. "Oh, hey, it's your offspring―hi, Melissa."
"Hey, Sheriff," she says, smiling wryly. Her hair's pulled up in a ponytail, and she's wearing a BHHS Soccer sweatshirt. "Jack here?"
"In his room. Say hi to your daddy, sweetheart," he says, holding the phone in her direction. She rolls her eyes good-naturedly and smiles. "Hey, papi."
"Hey, bean," Scott calls, his voice tinny through the microphone. "You have a good day today?"
"Wonderful," she says, raising her eyes in exaggeration. "You?"
"We were just catching up," Stiles says, scooping a chopped onion into the pot. Melissa shakes her head.
"Why don't you two just get married already? Honestly."
"But the clandestine affair is so much more fun."
"What was that?" Scott asks.
"Nothing, dearest," Stiles singsongs. "Although I think your daughter's onto us."
"Who's having an affair?" says his son's voice, and then there's Jack, standing in the kitchen in sweatpants and bare feet, squinting against the kitchen light like it's the setting desert sun. For the thousandth time, Stiles reminds himself to take him to the optometrist.
"Our fathers, who else," Melissa says mildly, shrugging out of her hoodie and throwing it over the back of a chair.
"Uh, no offense dad, but it's not a secret if everyone knows about it."
"The youth these days," he says into the receiver, shaking his head. "No respect. Can't you two see that I am literally trying to put food on the table here?"
Melissa rolls her eyes again, grabs an apple in one hand and Jack in the other, and disappears up the stairs.
"Speaking of clandestine affairs," he starts, grabbing a couple of tomatoes and getting to chopping. "Guess who I saw today."
"Stiles, I told you to leave it alone. Besides, I'm not―" Scott lowers his voice to a hiss. "I'm not having an affair!"
"Yeah, but you like her," Stiles says, drawing out the 'like' like a third grader.
"How are you considered a legal adult?" Scott snaps. "Anyway, is she―did she―I mean, did she seem good to you?"
"You could ask her yourself, if you weren't suffering under some kind of misguided self-quarantine. Now who's the real adult?"
"Still me," Scott says flatly. "If I can't control myself around her, then I can't be around her. It's that simple."
"I mean, I'm no expert on love," Stiles starts. (Scott snorts. He ignores him.) "But that is some bullshit."
"Whatever," Scott says goodnaturedly. "Anyway, I'm getting in the car."
"You need to stop working these hours, man. You're a vet, not a trauma surgeon."
"Ha, ha. Talk to you later?"
"You got it, buddy. Hey, drive safe."
As it happens, Scott fails to take his platitude to heart, which is how Sheriff Stilinski ends up out in North Beacon Hills at ten o'clock at night, marveling over the comparative wreck of Scott's car in contrast with the decidedly non-wrecked man himself. He's a little banged up, and he's got dried blood on his face from where his head had hit the window, but considering the fact that his Toyota has actually wrapped itself around a tree, Stiles thinks he's in pretty good shape.
"So what did you say this thing was? A mountain lion?"
"That's what it looked like, yeah," Scott says faintly, fiddling with his inhaler. His face looks drawn and confused in the flashing blue and red light of the squad cars.
"That's weird, right?" he says, looking out at the other deputies. "That it came this far into town. That's unusual."
"We'll tell people to keep an eye out," says Deputy Riley, looking critically at the skid marks on the pavement.
"Actually," says Scott slowly. "You know, it's funny. It looked almost like a wolf."
Out of the corner of his eye, over by the smoking remains of Scott's car, he sees Deputy Hale freeze. "Hale? Did you find something?"
"Did you say a wolf?" The deputy demands instead, standing up to fix his gaze on them. His mouth is drawn into a stern line, and his eyes seem to pierce through the dark.
"Yeah," Scott says slowly. "But that's impossible. There haven't been any wolves in California in…"
"Over a hundred years, yeah, I know," Stiles says, running a hand over his head. "Well, whatever the hell it was, we're not finding it in the dark. You're okay, everyone's okay, let's get this sealed off and clean up the mess in the morning, yeah? Come on, man, I'll drive you home."
Still, as the other deputies get to setting up the traffic cones, Deputy Hale stays by the car, running his hand over the hood, his back ramrod straight, sniffing as though he has a cold. Beneath his hand, against the twisted metal, Stiles can see flecks of blood. And are those...scratch marks?
As though he can hear his thoughts, Derek looks up, fixing him with a cold stare.
Stiles scowls. He fucking hates that guy.
Don't worry, there is a Teen Wolf in there. It's just not Scott McCall. WhO cOuLd It BeEeEe. Anyway, fav/review!