Disclaimer: I do not own or am in anyway associated with the property of Teen Wolf. Nor is this work or fiction making me any type of money. It is purely out of my own time and energy.
Author's Note: I got this idea because I was pretty sure Stiles being Stiles, he would have kept his Jeep keys on him, but then exhaustion and habit take over. I also wanted to be able to showcase Mr. Stilinski's sleuthing ability because Stiles got the initial spark somewhere. I'm trying to keep the timing of this chapter close to "Code Breaker". Assuming that was a Saturday night prom, this is set two days afterwards, making the "all weekend" that Stiles spends 4 days away. This was suppose to be a one-shot. It... may turn into two more chapters?
Chapter 1: Keys
word count: 1637
Noah Stilinski had a problem.
The subject of said problem was his son Stiles and it kept circling around in his head. On one hand, it was nothing new - Stiles was often the cause or the catalyst of weekly happenings that had become the normal for their family. But on the other hand this was nothing like the usual trouble Stiles would get into which included - but certainly not limited to - hanging out at crime scenes that would keep junior officers up at night. Or trying to prove he was right about the local well being haunted. Or trying hair-brained bike stunts. All with Scott glued to his side through bloody knees, noses, asthma attacks, and fractured bones.
No, this was nothing like the usual.
Those had been the results of Stiles' just flowing with whatever thought came into his head. None of them included a Beacon Hill's student in the hospital with a potentially life threatening unknown infection. This… well, that was the problem. He didn't know what this was.
"I'm sorry. I-I lost the keys to my Jeep. I had to run all the way here."
The stutter, the drop in voice even as his son's eyes never stopped darting towards the room. Something wasn't matching up, and the more Noah thought on it the more the assumption that his son had been irresponsible to his prom date just wasn't working.
So Stilinski had a problem that he had no idea where to even begin on how to start cracking it. And, as he often found himself doing when there was one problem he couldn't solve, he tackled something he could. And since he actually had the Monday afternoon off and couldn't do anything at the station, the dishes had been washed. When that didn't dull the restlessness, he moved onto the clothes.
"Oh, Stiles." He muttered in resigned exasperation as the flick of the light revealed clothes haphazardly strewn in the laundry room in some sort of attempt at sorting. If you tilted your head and looked at it from a certain angle. It was hard to say if this was an aftermath of the prom or sometime before. How that son of his found anything in the mess he left behind, was able to see patterns faster than most people, was a miracle.
He started picking the clothes off the washing machine, floor, and door knob and pitching them into one of the sorting bins. It wasn't much, before there use to be three or four bins. Now it was just two bins, neither men needing to sort any deeper. Two for the two of them. He sighed.
He didn't register the heavier feel of the pants before he'd tossed them into the heavy/dark bin until they landed with with a muffled jingle. Grunting in irritation - he hated pausing in the sorting phase - he picked up the pair of pants and dug a hand into the pocket. The resulting keys in his hand felt heavier than they had any right to be and for a second Noah forgot to draw in a breath as he stared at the bent points. This, this was a piece of the puzzle to "it".
"I lost the keys."
He heard his son's voice again, the stutter in his tone barely there but suddenly so blatantly to a parent who was use to his ADHD kid who barely stopped to take a breath as he talked. Because this was a kid who asked a multitude of questions as his mind was already working ten steps ahead, trying to make sense of the things around him. Especially in high stress environments.
Except… Noah hefted the keys in his hands. Except when everyone was still trying to figure out what had happened to Lydia Martin, Stiles had only asked one question. When everyone was trying to figure out how an animal had gotten on the field, what type of animal could have made a bite so big, all Stiles had asked was…
"Is she going to be okay?"
There was no way even getting a text about what little they had know would have stopped Stiles from asking questions. Questions that should have been along the lines of "what happened" and "what kind of animal" or even "did you know that the grizzly bear has 42 teeth". None of that. No, those questions came afterwards about that stupid pendant. Noah dragged his free hand over his face, feeling the certainty settle in his gut. The fact that Stiles didn't ask any questions was because he already knew what had happened.
His son had looked him in the face and lied to him when he answered that he didn't know what had happened. The expected anger didn't come, instead it was just an apprehension.
Noah looked down at the keys in his hands, rolling the metal around in his hand. Bent keys that would have prevented Stiles from using his Jeep. Yet his son hadn't said anything, had rather said he had lost his keys. And if he still hadn't said anything to him still… Then the whole thing was either not connected with the Kate Argent mess or It wasn't over.
Whatever it was. That part again.
Oh for the love of- Noah resisted the urge to hit something finally feeling a brief flicker of anger. He didn't know which one of those scenarios was worse. How, Stiles, how did you manage? Couldn't make this simple, could you? Like racing your cars in the middle of the night?
If it wasn't over, there had to be more players involved. Someone that Stiles thought held enough power that his father couldn't defend against. Slowly Noah picked up the pants that he'd dropped and put the keys back in. Then he dropped it back on the floor before pulling a couple more clothes out and attempting to recreate the mess earlier. It wasn't the same but Noah was willing to gamble that Stiles would be too distracted to notice.
Just like he'd been too distracted to take his keys out of his pants. Noah also suspected that if Stiles realized he'd been found out, he would try to muddy the waters instead of coming clean.
No, Noah the dad was going to get to the bottom of this one way or another and the first thing experience told him was not to chase away his prime suspect. He just never in his life could believe it was his son. Actually he still couldn't believe it. He did, of course, since he was acting on it. But he held onto the hope that his son was just caught up in something he hadn't wanted to be in and was just doing the best an inexperienced teenage could do to keep his family safe. Despite his son's social awkwardness, Noah knew he had a good heart and never did anything half measure.
Taking a deep breath, he turned off the light and headed up the stairs. A glance through his son's doorway showed the teen hunched over his laptop, school books strewn on his desk and bed.
"Hey Stiles," he called out as he headed for his room, hoping it sounded normal. "I'm about to do laundry, make sure you didn't leave any medicine or cards in your jeans, okay?"
"Yeah dad," came the distracted reply. But Stilinski had a hunch so he stood just inside his room, pretending to flip through some mail while keeping an eye on the hallway.
Two minutes later there was a sharp, strangled to a whisper, swear from his son's room and the clatter of his desk chair being shoved aside. Stilinski watched as Stiles bolted out the door, a frantic look on his face, then listened as his son did his control fall down the stairs. The sound would have given most parents a small heart attack but Stilinski had long ago learned it usually didn't produce any broken bones or black eyes.
Usually.
The last time involved Scott. And it was Scott who ended up with the black eye and knocked out breath.
For some reason the following silence felt especially ominous to Stilinski and he had to stop himself from heading down the stairs himself. He had to give Stiles time and not scare him off.
Five minutes, he told himself. Then I'll see if Stiles somehow managed to bury himself under the laundry.
Thankfully before the five minutes were up, Stiles came clattering up the stairs again and darted for his room, too quick for Stilinski to try and waylay. So he gave it another minute before setting down the mail that he never looked at and headed for his son's room.
He knocked on the doorway before he stuck his head in. "Got what you needed?"
Stiles jumped in his chair, something like panic flickering across his face before he attempted a casual pose. The elbow slipping off the computer chair kind of ruined the image, but that was just Stiles. "Uh, yeah. Yeah. Got it. Thanks dad. Wouldn't have wanted that to go through the wash. Nope, not at all."
Stilinski raised his eyebrows at his son's rambling. "What'd you forget?"
Stiles blinked but Stilinski had to hand it to his son, there was not a flicker of panic this time. "Oh… Uh… My medication. Yeah, took some with me to school. Didn't want to miss my dosage before… You know." Stiles waved his hands all over in the air as if to convey some big picture that only he could see. "Yeah. So. Thanks dad."
"Hm," Noah nodded his head as he glanced at the computer desk. "Welcome, now get back to studying."
He headed back down the stairs, thoughts filled on what his next step would be. Scott maybe?
