Notes:I am terribly sorry I keep taking people's head cannons.
When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.
- William Shakespeare
I
Stiles was always different than other kids. Day dreamy, some said. Loud, others insisted. His words came sputtering out like a broken faucet. He was sharp as a knife- at least when he was focused. Sheriff Logan Stilinski had learned had learned to dread those times.
What Logan also had had to learn was that the obvious was not always the truth when it came with Stiles. He had learned that the hard way more than once when his son came running in the house to greet him and pressed bloody little hand-prints onto the back of his uniform.
Once it had been red finger paint. Valentines day cards, Stiles said. He made one for him. Did he wanna see?
Another time, dry eyed, Stiles had screamed into his lapels for an hour as Dani tried to explain, failed to explain, how Stiles had managed to get his hands on- into-a dead dog.
"He was trying to bring him back." She insisted, lowering her voice as she leaned into his ear. "I hid the body in the tool shed."
The dog had been a collie mix-not that it was easy to tell with how much blood there had been. It had been hit by a car... because what else could have done that kind of damage, pulled the entrails out, and left it suffering.
Stiles was six, and a young six. He didn't understand.
II
Stiles didn't cry at his mother's funeral.
He didn't cry for weeks. Logan is actually fairly certain he never actually heard Stiles cry for her. Stiles woke up screaming, disappeared into the places his mother used to go, buried himself in her clothes at the back of the closet and hyperventilated. Stiles had full-fledged panic attacks, scared the hell out of Logan, but did not cry.
Stoic, quiet, he had held onto his dad's hand and not said a word.
Sheriff Stilinski wonders if these things should have been a warning for him. A dead dog in the tool shed. The blank little face staring at the casket lowering into the ground.
III
Sheriff Stilinski went to see Daristan first.
She was laid to rest on a grassy space in the cemetery. They hadn't been able to afford a corner plot next to the woods, which would have been more fitting for his wife's disposition, but the plot they could afford got good sun. Both of her boys kept flowers by the headstone.
Once, Stiles had twisted two dozen flowers into a crown and laid it across the granite. He had almost cried then-but, instead, just looked down at the dirt and mumbled how it wasn't the same.
He hadn't gone back to her grave for two months after that. Not until Logan had asked him to.
It had been in the guise of helping Stiles-but Logan isn't so sure about that now.
Your mother probably misses you.
Stiles had been old enough to know that probably wasn't true, but he had gone the next week. And the week after. As far as Logan knows he goes every week still-quietly, in his own time.
Which is why its so hard to be standing at a grave waiting for answers that will never come.
"I don't know what's happening." There are times, dark times, that Logan has though Why her? Why not me? Because he has never been a natural father and he always fancied her, placed her on a pedestal of Natural Mother: One who Knew. "It's like it's all changed when I wasn't looking."
But that wasn't right.
He was always looking.
There was Stiles-sneaking in the woods. Stiles talking to one Murder Suspect Derek Hale. Stiles at the Hale House. The missing confidential police records.
The time he was trapped in the school "with a murderer". A Janitor died.
His date was left bloody on the lacrosse field.
When she runs, later, delirious-who is one of the first spotted her?
Stiles.
Stiles. Sneaking into funerals. Standing over bodies. Missing Prisoners. Dozens of crime scenes-who was always there?
The massacre at the police station.
Then missing.
Logan bowed his head into his hand. There were no words for what he wanted to say. They dry pitch-perfect at the back of his throat and linger, tasting of sulfur and betrayal.
Logan wasn't, will never be, sure if he believes that his wife could hear him if he spoke. But, somehow, putting those thoughts into words felt worse than anything else. Instead he cuts, "I miss you." Through his teeth and hopes she feels his failures through it.
Failure as a parent. Failure to a memory of a woman he remembers knowing just the right thing.
He puts marigold and bell flower on her grave and wished the thoughts in his head to an early grave. It was so cold in comparison. The difference between then and now stark.
The tall woman, bright and colorful, begging him to dance around the kitchen with her.
We're having a son. She'd said.
And he spun them silly. He had no rhythm, never did. She had never cared. How do you know? We could have a daughter.
A son. She insisted and pressed her face into the crook of his neck, laughing. You'll see. You'll see.
Stiles had been her pleasure. Logan saw her in him every day.
IV
It was a dirty secret that everyone knew.
That was what Logan lived with every day.
Eating cereal in the morning, spinning it with his spoon until it was sloppy. He watched Stiles talk animatedly about what he was learning in economics? (If that was economics, why did it sound like history?)
His son could have killed those men.
Stop.
Blood on his hands Dad, the dog was red. All red.
It was innocent. Dani with Stiles slung over her hip. You have to look deeper with Stiles, Logan. Like you did with me.
They met in handcuffs, a thatch of lavender pinned behind her ear while she insisted that she had been liberating her side of a garden on a parcel of land she didn't own.
Logan had been charmed.
Daristan had been less so.
"How was your day?" Stiles asked him at dinner. Every night. Prodding quietly. Intelligent eyes over a carefully cooked meal. "Dad?"
It felt like the whole office knew.
Like they were all just waiting. Waiting. Whispers rather than words.
When he got the call that Stiles was in the ER getting thirty stitches all along his right arm it was a relief.
Relief.
As though that could be anything good.
He ran into Melissa McCall. Literally. He was walking, she was sprinting-but the impact sent her tumbling onto the hospital floor while he was only surprised. Surprised by the sudden jar into the real world. "Melissa!"
And he must look wretched. Melissa takes his offered hand up and spills, "It's only stitches. Stiles is fine."
Simple. Innocent words. Nothing accusing.
And Logan hedges, curved in the middle slightly as though hit. Not too much, but enough. As though all the hurt and worry and what the hell was going on with his son reached into his center and pulled. "It's not that."
Which was how the charade ended.
Begun.
Two parents curved in a forgotten waiting room. Pain and blood. "I think Stiles has done something terrible. Is doing terrible things."
"Stiles? Really." Dry voiced humor and it was enough to make Logan want to wretch. "Your Stiles? Are we talking about the same Stiles?"
"Of course my Stiles." And wasn't that the crux. It was his Stiles. His Stiles and his wife's Stiles-except he was the only one that was left. Left to put the pieces together and categorize every bloody night.
"Logan." That time there was no humor. Just a breathy sigh. "Oh. Logan. They didn't tell you."
"Tell me what, Melissa?" Logan Stilinski hands were empty. He stared at them anyway, not sure where else to look. "Tell me what.
V
Stiles listened from the hallway. Angry looking skin pulled tight and crossed with green thread. He had wanted to go to Doctor Deaton-but Mrs. McCall had seen him first. She had insisted.
He drug his fingers back and forth across the lavender colored cement wall. Back and forth. Swipe. Swipe. Swipe. He imagined the motion wiping off all the red from his fingertips that no one else could see.
It was ten o'clock the last time he checked. It was late. Inside the room the adults were talking about werewolves and safety. "I think he was just trying to protect you. Scott said..."
Stiles stared resolutely at the far wall. He liked to think if he was quiet enough, loud enough, everything would go away.
"Werewolves?"
He remembered his mother swinging him around in the garden telling him, You have to be careful with your father. He's not as strong as he looks.
He protects me. Stiles had answered, childishly sure.
She smiled back at him and nodded, Yes. And one day you will protect him.
His dad finding out would have been be a relief.
If it didn't fill Stiles with such terror.