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2013-03-04
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omniscient eye of the law

Summary:

The Sheriff knows what he's doing, guys, okay?

(Poor Derek, he never knew what hit him; also, who knew the Sheriff was such an awesome actor?)

Notes:

This story is really, by no means, meant to be taken seriously, haha. And I don't even know what's up with show canon, so you can definitely tell I did not abide by it during the writing process. Enjoy, and please let me know what you think!

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

“What a surprise to run into you here, Hale,” is the first thing Sheriff Stilinski says as he pulls himself out of his police cruiser and slams the door shut.

Hale’s broody forehead furrows just the slightest bit more. “… at my own house?” He makes an aborted gesture at the half-erected, bare-bones structure that is the old Hale house in newly renovated glory – which, paired with his dry and disbelieving tone of voice, and his sardonically raised eyebrow, would burn a normal man to the bone.

But please, Sheriff John Stilinski is no normal man. He raised Stiles, for crying out loud. Years and years of biting quips, sarcasm, and verbal misdirection have prepared him well for this moment. 

So the Sheriff ignores all of Hale’s considerable sass and stands in his usual “take-no-prisoners” stance – feet shoulder-width apart, heels dug into the ground, thumbs in his pockets, and his left hip tilted slightly out to show off his gun holster. “Son, I didn’t come here for wise-cracks.” 

He has to give it to the boy, Hale doesn’t even look the least bit terrified. Just baffled, and maybe a little annoyed.

Poor kid has no idea what he’s in for.

Hale sighs and comes down off the freshly sanded porch, with his hands slightly raised. “Is there something I can help you with, Sheriff?” The wording is polite but the tone is just one or two shades shy of pure aggravation. John can literally see the words “Like son, like father” scrolling across Hale’s mind right now, and couldn’t be prouder.

“Yes, I think you can,” he replies sternly. “For starters, you can help me to identify the perpetrator who has been breaking and entering my home, and more specifically, the room of my dearest and only, currently under aged son. I’ve recorded at least two break-ins per week for the past month and a half, so it looks like we’ve got a serial offender on our hands. Thoughts?”

He’s mostly guess-timating that number – he’s good, but he’s also not overly cocky in his own abilities, he’s sure Hale’s slipped past his radar once or twice before – but the way Derek Hale’s face pales and shrivels, he’s guessing he’s pretty much hit it right on the nose. Which doesn’t really make him happy, because, overall? That adds up to A LOT of visits.

“Sir,” Hale rasps, then tries again, “Sir, it’s really not like you’re thinking.”

The Sheriff tilts his head and gives the boy a Look. “Tell me what I’m thinking, then.” Go on, I dare you, is heavily implied.

Hale swallows again. “I know how this might seem to a father, or to any parent, but I swear that –“

Derek Hale could swear up and down to the moon that nothing is going on, but John really doesn’t care to hear it. He instead crosses his arms slowly and says matter-of-factly, “You have twenty seconds to convince me you haven’t peer-pressured my son into some sick mockery of what should have been a beautiful first memory for him…”

“NO.” Hale interrupts, eyes wide. “No, Christ, we haven’t done – that, I swear. He’s just helping me. Uh. Research some… topics of interest. About what happened while I was gone.”

“At night. Alone. In his bedroom. Which you enter through – the window, I’m guessing?” John sighs and gives Hale the most disappointed, disapproving face he can muster. “Look, I know you haven’t… forced him into anything. I’m the Sheriff, I can recognize the most telling signs, and although Stiles is trying his best, he still hasn’t gotten to the point where he can lie to me without me at least knowing it. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that my kid’s been lying to me a lot ever since you came back to town; although I may not know what he’s trying to cover up, I do know that most of it has probably been for you.”

This causes Hale to wince ever so slightly. Interesting. John picks up on it, but decides to leave it be. For now. “I guess I came here because I at least hoped you would own up to this – whatever this is, son, and maybe promise me to keep it all out in the open now, you know?”

Face frozen in a weird mix of shock and horror, Hale doesn’t say a damn thing.

The silence isn’t a good response, though. John’s eyes narrow into lethal slits. “Unless… unless this isn’t the kind of thing you take seriously. Unless my baby boy isn’t the kind of person you take seriously.” He aggressively steps closer and Hale, although looking like he’s considering taking a step back, somehow stands his ground.

“So what is it then? You think of him like some kind of fling? A few quick uses, and then shove him off to the curb?”

Panic, thy name is Derek Hale.

Uncomfortably, Hale spits out, “What? Sheriff, you seriously have it completely wrong. This is ridiculous, I don’t even think of Stiles like that, or in any romantic sense whatsoever –“

John feels like a switch inside him has been flipped – and not in a good way. He lets his voice drop down to dangerously low levels. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

Hale says, “I would never see Stiles in that light, sir, I – “

“Never, huh? So you could never view my son as a respectable and attractive life partner?”

“He – what?”

“You would never even consider him to be on your level, is that what you’re saying, Hale?”

The kid is clearly lost, and looking younger than he has the entire time he’s been back in Beacon Hills. His shoulders are actually sort of drooping. Drooping. “I – yes? I mean, no, not in that sort of. I just.” John then hears him mutter to himself quietly, “What is even going on here.”

“So my boy isn’t good enough for you, Hale?” he continues, voice tight and like steel. “Too hyper, a little too nosy for his own good? Maybe because he comes with a little bit of a geeky side, never shuts up about Batman or Robin. Or is it his physical appearance? Because I gotta tell you, boy, he takes after his mother completely, and she had the rarest, warmest sort of beauty there ever was, inside and out, and I couldn’t’ve done better, and neither can you. You read me?”

“I… honestly don’t even know what you want me to say anymore,” Derek admits, despairingly, pinching the bridge of his nose to try to stave off what is surely rounding up to be a most spectacular headache. A subtle, but noticeable flush is inching across his face and down his neck.

The Sheriff pins him with an even harder glare, not satisfied in the least by that answer. “That’s too bad for you, Hale, because I’m certainly not in a forgiving mood when an old murder suspect of mine stands here looking down on my son –“

That seems to snap Hale out of his submissive, passive, confused state, and put some tension back into his shoulders. A little bit of fire in his eyes at last.

“What. No, excuse me, Sheriff, but looking down on your son is the last thing I’d ever do,” Hale spits stiffly, looking pissed off at the very accusation. “I get that you’re angry and worried over Stiles, but believe me when I say that I will never think he’s anything less than what he actually is.”

John waits a beat, to see if the kid will back down or flush or stutter around his declaration, but Derek Hale remains strong and focused. He asks, “And what is my son, exactly?”

Hale doesn’t even bat an eyelash before saying, “Someone who is loyal, and razor sharp. Someone who looks out for his own and gives it his all.” Hale stares somewhere over John’s shoulder, not in avoidance, but lost in thought. Something loosens in his face and it makes something in John’s chest loosen in return. He knows that look all too well.

“Stiles isn’t perfect, but he’s the one I trust to have my back these days. In my experience, that means… everything.” The quieter, painfully honest tone of voice, paired with the younger man’s fierce expression conveys everything that Derek Hale isn’t saying aloud. The boy stands firm, as if knowing that his last statement might enrage protective!daddy even further, but uncaring of the consequences because all of it needed to be said.

But Derek doesn’t have to worry about that anymore. All traces of angry, near homicidal daddy vanish in that one instant. Instead of continuing his macho posturing, John instead claps a heavy hand on Hale’s – Derek’s – leather-clad shoulder and gives him the ole Stilinski grin. “Great to hear it, Derek! Now that all of that is cleared up, how about you pick him up for an eight o’clock dinner tonight?”

Derek looks like he’s been shot through a forest and hit every tree. And baffled, he looks plenty baffled. John stifles a strong urge to cackle.

“You’ve really lost me. Was this whole conversation just a roundabout way to punish me for the dropped murder charges? Or for getting Stiles to do research for me?” Hale mutters, dropping his head into his hands.

He lets some of protective!daddy slip back into his voice. “Focus, son: eight o’clock. Don’t you dare be late.”

Dazed, Derek can’t really do anything but nod.

John adds in thoughtfully, “Oh, and don’t slack off on restaurant quality either. I know Stiles would be perfectly fine with diner food, but just because he can eat it, doesn’t mean he should have to. He likes Mexican and Korean food, those might be good first-date options.”

“First. Date,” Derek slowly parrots back at him, that flush from before coming back. His face is a delightful mix of embarrassment and caution, like this might be a trap but he’s hoping it’s not.

It’s just further evidence of the conclusion that the Sheriff came to a long time ago – about a month and a half ago, to be exact.

John turns to get in his cruiser, but has to say one last thing before he leaves. “You aren’t wrong,” he admits mildly, “A large part of my decision to confront you today did have to do with punishing you for sneaking into my house all those times and nearly giving me a brain aneurysm. Another huge draw was just the thought of watching you squirm.” Derek maintains his flushed poker face and doesn’t sputter at that, but it’s a close thing. “But the most important reason I wanted to come was to kick you and Stiles into gear. Because as bad as it looks, I know you two really haven’t been up to anything I would consider statutory rape, which is why you’re still currently breathing. I doubt you two have even acknowledged what’s going on between you yet. I’m sorry for speeding you along, son – any other time, I’d let you two move at your own natural pace, but. Well. It’s been a rough year and an old man can only take so much drama under his roof, you know.”

Derek just stares at him, wide-eyed and frozen. John can’t help the cackle that escapes him this time, and leaves.

The picture that Derek makes in his rearview mirror is priceless – a little shocked, a little grumpy, and very flustered. But despite all that, not one bit of him looks unhappy with the way things ultimately turned out, so John can’t regret a thing.

Derek does come to pick Stiles up for dinner. He shows up precisely at eight, and has even traded in his leather jacket for a dark blue sweater; that fact alone stops John from teasing Derek on his pacing outside the house for a good fifteen minutes before knocking. Stiles comes downstairs in a flurry of limbs and nervous babble, but there’s a smile that just won’t go away – not even when he trips over the doorway in front of both his father and his date. They leave without major injury, and promise to return in time for Stiles’ eleven o’clock curfew.

After they’re gone, John sits at the kitchen table for a few minutes, just letting the consequences of what he himself has started wash over him. He guzzles down a small tumbler of whisky, because the considerable part of him that DOES worry about Stiles going out with a much older, leather-wearing bad boy, complete with tragic back-story, needs to be placated a little.

But the rest of him, the bigger part that he likes to think still house some of Anna’s spirit of adventure and romance, thinks that Stiles and Derek might be good for one another, in a way that no one else could be. That part tells him to buck up, because a celebration is in order here. He treats himself to a Meat Lover’s Supreme Large Pizza and feels like he deserves every bite of the three slices he manages to devour before Stiles gets home precisely at eleven. Stiles squawks predictably about heart attacks and unnecessary risks, but the case of stubble burn on his son’s neck eventually buys him another two slices for lunch tomorrow. So, the overall moral of the story?

The Sheriff is nothing if not an absolute boss.

(What, he heard some youngster at the station using that term with his fellow ‘home slices’…

Damn, did he not use it correctly?)

Notes:

So, this story essentially came out of my need for a slightly humorous (slightly cracky?) story with protective!conniving!daddy Sheriff and baffled!flustered!Derek, who I know is, from the get-go, pretty out of character. But I'd like to think that being blindsided by protective!daddy while fighting feelings for his underage son might make one - even one like Derek - unsettled and flustered and out of sorts.

The one part I couldn't really fit into the story without breaking the flow is that when the Sheriff came home, Stiles was already on his phone, receiving six consecutive text messages that went something like this:

Stiles what the hell your dad just came by

?!?!?!

Your dad is insane, I think he might want to kill me

He also knows about me sneaking into your room, did you tell him??

STILES I think he might have just given me his blessing in the weirdest, most convoluted way

Be ready for 8pm dinner date at HeeBeen, you like that place right?

Stiles promptly freaked out, spazzed/panicked at his dad angrily, until the last message sunk in properly and he screeched about his date and ran upstairs to contemplate over four different video game t-shirts to go underneath his blazer. The end!