Chapter Text
Fall was on the heels of the summer heat, licking at the boys’ faces with a chill as the wind whipped around them. The Stilinski’s front yard was wild, overgrown with naturally growing plants and Claudia’s famous vegetable garden. Stiles and Scott chased each other around the unkempt foliage, stumbling and laughing, a static energy of youth clinging to their worn out tennis shoes. They would start the first grade in a few days, and while their mothers kept insisting that meant they were all grown up, they stubbornly embraced their childish moments with the tenacity only young boys could have.
“Let’s play Cops and Cops!” Stiles exclaimed, ignoring the smack of wet shoelaces around his ankles.
Long ago, Stiles and Scott had given up on fighting about Cops and Robbers. They could bow their heads together and argue for hours about who would be the better robber anyway, but in the end, paternal adoration won out and neither would concede. Wanting so badly to be like their fathers, Scott and Stiles refused to become the evil scum that their parents kept off the quiet streets of Beacon Hills.
Scott abandoned a worm he had been poking at with a squelch of sneakers in mud. His mouth was drawn open in ecstatic reply when the green front door of the Stilinski house flew open, revealing Claudia Stilinski with her brown curls and her favorite apron, brow knit against the dying sunlight.
“Boys, it’s time to come inside!” she called out into her forest of a yard. Stiles and Scott, with their infinite stealth and spastic movements, ducked behind a rose bush and covered their snickers with dirty hands. “We have to wash up those hands before we eat dinner!”
She was met with a silence that she didn’t know was possible from her two boys.
“And we can’t eat dessert without eating dinner.”
Claudia held in laughter as she watched tentative heads poke over the tops of her foliage, wide eyes blinking in curiosity.
“I made chocolate chip cookies.”
They stumbled over each other, a swarm of limbs and mud and excitement, hurling through the door like a hurricane as John’s car rolled into the drive. He was standing at the gate when he heard Stiles yell— he had yet to figure out appropriate volume levels— at his friend next to him, “Maybe next time I’ll be the FBI Agent, and you can be the deputy!”
When he and Claudia met eyes from across the yard, they both laughed, hearing the unison reply of the boys, “Nah!”
After dinner, Claudia sat at the table, a warm mug of tea between her delicate hands, tears caught in the corners of her eyes. John sat beside her, carefully tucking a wild curl behind her ear. “Honey, what’s wrong?” he asked, sharp edges of deputy duty wearing away into husband instinct. Claudia sniffled and offered a watery smile.
“You know, when Dr. Capetta told me that I couldn’t have another child,” she told, “I was so upset.” John nodded knowingly; he had felt rather gutted too, despite not knowing how he could keep up with two Stileses when they had enough problems keeping track of one. “I’m just so happy we got our second son after all.”