Chapter Text
In May, in 2026—in the middle of a perfectly ordinary day otherwise, mind you—Stiles felt something collapse in his chest. It’d been a feeling almost akin to a dying star, which was stupid, so he went to the closest hospital instead to have them check for a spontaneously collapsed lung or failing heart or one of the thousand other scenarios that’d made their ways into his head. Even then, though, he’d known, no matter how much he had denied it to himself, that that wasn’t what it was. It’d had him thinking of Beacon Hills, of the shitty high school where he’d spent his formative years, and the creepy forest where he’d run for his life more than once. Even less pleasant memories, too, if that was possible. The hospital, Eichen House—enough to bring back nightmares he’d long since stopped having.
Nightmares he thought he’d long since stopped having.
He was released from the hospital with little fanfare, aside from a strange look from the nurse that drew his blood and a clean bill of health—or rather, as the doctor proclaimed, his health was “Better than clean, even, you are in excellent health, Mister, uhhhh—”
Seeing as he was so perfectly healthy, Stiles was determined to ignore the feeling. Never mind that it felt like his heart had been clawed out and replaced with a shriveled, rotted plum, he was not going to get pulled back into that hellhole, no thanks. Besides, if they really needed him, Stiles was sure they would’ve called him.
Well, maybe not Scott, because Scott was a stubborn bastard, sometimes, and not Malia, because Stiles wasn’t sure Malia would ever understand or care how phones worked, much less want to talk to him—and probably not Mason, because Mason probably forgot Stiles had ever even existed, and—
Well, his dad would call. If he was needed. Which he was not, given his phone hadn’t rung with more than a spam call or work in quite a while.
But still, despite Stiles’s best attempts to go on with his life even with a metaphorical hole in his chest and a metaphorical gaping, squishy wound, the feeling persisted. It affected his work, his life, his sleep, and continued to grow, until it was un-ignorable. Sometimes, Stiles pressed a hand to his sternum to make sure it hadn’t actually split open while he wasn’t paying attention. It came away without blood, but cold, and trembling.
Finally, in the middle of July, Stiles gave up. He’d been tossing and turning instead of actually sleeping for weeks, his vision was blurry with exhaustion and confusion, and he just couldn’t function anymore. He was sick of it, and even if it meant Beacon Hills would get its sharp, unforgiving, murderous talons in him once more, Stiles was going to figure out what the fuck was wrong with him and fix it.
He asked his boss for time off, let his landlord know he’d be gone for “a few weeks, maybe less, maybe more, who really knows, man,” packed a bag, and booked it back to Beacon Hills. Now, if he’d been a little bit less of a Believer-with-a-capital-B, maybe he would’ve ignored it forever. But if Stiles was anything, it was a believer—in his gut instinct. And his gut said Beacon Hills, pronto! and even though his brain said oh fuck god please no, his chest said ow ouch owie ow, so Stiles went, because majority rules had decreed it so.
Even if the majority was comprised of organs.
Stiles respected his body, dammit.
Sometimes, Stiles trusted his gut more than his logical, reasonable, actually trustworthy brain, though the hierarchy of organs said it should’ve been the other way around. But sometimes—most times—logic didn’t apply to Beacon Hills.
Sometimes, there was a big fat gaping metaphorical hole in your chest that said, watch it, buster, I’m calling the shots here.
So, Stiles went—by bus, because, for all he knew, metaphorical-possibly-magical holes in chests that might, maybe explode probably wouldn’t mix too good with airplanes. Besides, Stiles didn’t like airplanes. And airplanes didn’t like him. So that was that.
He was definitely banned from Spirit, but that was irrelevant. And also not his fault, Stiles felt it important to note.
He got as far as two stops before he had to spend a night in a shitty motel in Saint Louis. It was wretched sleep, and in the morning as he continued on he was exhausted—but he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks, anyway, so it didn’t matter much. Then, he made it as far as Utah, to yet another shitty motel on one of those semi-abandoned, sparsely-populated, dusty roads, and collapsed into the next shitty motel’s shitty bed. It kind of reminded him of the Motel Glen Capri, except, thankfully, they didn’t have a goddamn suicide tally, and as near as he could tell, no one died during the night. If it hadn’t dragged him out of bed, it was decidedly not his problem.
In the morning, just outside his shitty motel in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere in shitty northern Utah, Stiles met a kid.
Or rather, as he grabbed his still-packed bag, turned in his key, and made his way towards the bus stop out front, Stiles saw a kid—maybe fifteen or sixteen years old, alone, looking positively miserable, sitting on the wall of the little garden bed right in front of the motel. All the plants in it were long dead, but Stiles doubted anyone would ever care about that.
His bus was still twenty minutes out, and though all he really wanted was to maybe attempt a quick nap on the bench before then, he was, unfortunately, too much of a nosy bitch—er, too much of an empathetic, nice guy—to keep from wondering about the kid. So, with a great sigh and a heft of his bag on his shoulder, Stiles said fuck it and decided to check on him.
The kid didn’t look up when Stiles approached, hood pulled low over his face, and now that he was closer, Stiles could see his shoulders trembling, like he was maybe-possibly crying.
“Hey,” he called, a few steps away, one hand stuffed in the pocket of his ratty jeans and the other tight around the strap of his backpack, “You okay, kid?”
The kid, who apparently hadn’t noticed his presence, jerked. He rubbed the sleeve of his hoodie across his face and looked up at Stiles with red-rimmed, watery green eyes. His nose was red, too, but he wasn’t sure if it was from the lingering cold from the night before or the aforementioned crying. Green eyes looked him up and down, warily, before the kid ducked his head again.
“Yeah,” the kid croaked, “Yeah, I’m good. Thanks.”
And dammit, Stiles’s metaphorically sort-of torn out heart wouldn’t let him leave.
“You don’t look good,” Stiles hedged, after a pause.
The kid looked up at him again, a frown on his face. “You look like shit, too,” he retorted. “Don’t see me telling you about it.”
Which, yeah, fair. Stiles had certainly looked better—he was well aware of the dark bags under his eyes, his old, stretched, faded hoodie that may-or-may-not have had a number of holes in the hem, his aforementioned ratty jeans, his mess of hair that kind of looked like something had died in it. But, in his defense, the hoodie was the most comfortable one he owned, as were the jeans. And his hair—well, he just couldn’t be bothered. Maybe he’d shave it again.
But still, that was not the point.
“You just did,” Stiles said. “Look, kid—my bus is coming in like, eighteen-and-a-half minutes, if it’s on time, but I don’t want to just leave you here like this. Is there—is there someone I can call for you, or something?”
The kid sniffled, frowned, and scrubbed his sleeve across his face again. Stiles wished he had tissues to offer—those aloe vera ones that they kept advertising on the shitty motels’ cable. Those would be good.
“No,” the kid said, “I don’t need to call anyone. I’ve got a phone, anyway.”
“Okay,” Stiles replied. He rocked back on his heels and sucked a breath in through his teeth, then tried, “Is there anything I can do, then? Money? Bus fare? Mine’s going west, but I’m sure we can find a route for wherever you need to be.”
“No,” the kid said again. “I don’t—I don’t need money.” His voice cracked on the last word, and Stiles’s hand twitched from his pocket in an aborted movement to put a comforting hand on his shoulder. It probably wouldn’t have been welcome, anyway, judging from the leave me alone vibes this kid was giving off. Too bad he’d never learned to listen to vibes.
“Okay,” Stiles repeated, softer. There was still at least fifteen minutes until his bus arrived, so he sat down next to the kid, an arm’s length between them. He let a few minutes of quiet pass, and then, quietly, asked: “Do you wanna tell me what happened? I’m not half-bad with advice, or so I’ve been told.”
No one had ever told Stiles he gave good advice. Actually, most people he knew would probably argue he gave terrible advice.
The kid stayed quiet, long enough that Stiles figured he wouldn’t answer. There were no cars in the motel’s parking lot to observe, so Stiles settled for the beetle slowly making its way from the tip of his shoe to the edge of the sidewalk so he wouldn’t get antsy with the silence.
Eventually, the kid confessed, “My car broke down, and I don’t know how to fix it.”
There had to be more to it, but he wasn’t exactly forthcoming, so Stiles said, “No one expects you to know how to fix a car. They’re really complicated.”
Stiles wasn’t great at the whole comfort thing, in addition to the advice thing, and the proof sat just a meter away, because more tears poured down the kid’s face.
“My dad was a mechanic,” the kid managed, between sniffles and wiping his tears on his sleeves.
Was, Stiles pinpointed. Then, ah, shit. Walked right into that one.
“He had an auto shop. Our family did. And I didn’t—I never spent time there, with him. I didn’t want to learn about cars. I thought it was lame—I thought he was lame. But—but now he’s gone, and my car broke down, and I don’t know how to fix—” the kid cut himself off with a choking sob, and dug the heels of both palms into his eyes in an attempt to fend off the tears. “I don’t know what to do,” he continued. “I don’t know why I’m here. I just—I just got in the car and drove. I don’t even know where we are. Is this still Nevada?”
“Utah,” Stiles corrected gently. “Few minutes outside Salt Lake City. You left Nevada a couple hours ago, probably.”
“Oh,” the kid whispered. “I didn’t realize.”
There was three minutes, maybe less, before Stiles’s bus arrived. The next one wouldn’t come around until nightfall. Ah, the joys of being in the middle of nowhere.
Still, he offered, “Do you want to take a look at it together? I had a pretty busted car when I was your age; maybe I’ve still got a bit of a magic touch.” He wiggled his fingers in a shitty imitation of a wizard casting a spell, like one of the characters from the online RPGs he didn’t play as much anymore. “Hopefully enough to get you to a mechanic, or something. Tows are expensive. Especially in buttfuck, Utah, I’d guess.”
“Didn’t you say you have a bus to catch?” the kid argued, weakly. “Pretty soon?”
Stiles shrugged. “Buses come around again. Pretty cyclical. That’s like, their whole thing.”
The kid considered him for a minute more. Then, he shrugged, too, and said, “Okay. I’d—I’d appreciate that, actually.” He stood, and Stiles followed.
“Oh, you’d actually appreciate that, would ya?” Stiles snarked, the words tumbling from his mouth before he could stop them. “As opposed to my offer of money, or a phone, which was not worth actually appreciating, huh?” It was said in the same sarcastic way he tended towards when he was talking to his dad—or to Scott, or Jackson, or Isaac, or Derek, or—well, anyone, really, who knew how to bite back at him, too. But Stiles didn’t know this kid like that, and this kid didn’t know Stiles or his weird sarcastic sense of humor like that, either, so he clamped his mouth shut with a grimace before peering over at him.
The kid looked a little shocked, but then a little smile overtook his face, and he joked back, “Well, maybe you robbed a bank. You look weird enough, and I don’t want stolen money.”
“That’d make me a criminal,” Stiles snarked, as the kid began to lead him out of the tiny abandoned parking lot. His beetle was nowhere to be found. “You’d be leading a fugitive of the law to your car, alone, in the-middle-of-nowhere, Utah.”
“I thought it was buttfuck, Utah.”
“It’s got more than one name,” Stiles amended. “Locals call it buttfuck, tourists stick to the-middle-of-nowhere. They’re not in-tune with the local culture.”
The kid’s laugh was still a little wet, but Stiles was pretty sure he was feeling at least a little less like breaking into tears again, which was all he’d really originally hoped to accomplish. He was glad, even though his chest still hurt and he was definitely going to miss his bus.
Even in the morning, the sun blinded. The kid led them down the dusty road to the west of the motel, the sun at their backs, for about a half a mile. Skittering beetles that were probably cousins of the one in the parking lot were their only company, for a while. Then in the distance, Stiles spotted—
“Oh, man,” he breathed.
It was a Jeep—the same robin-egg-blue one as he’d had, from the time he was old enough to drive until he left Beacon Hills. This one looked to be in better shape, though, aside from broken down, as the kid had mentioned—free of the dings and scratches Stiles’s Jeep had accumulated over its poor, supernaturally-subjected life, free of the cracked headlight and the roof he’d never fixed after Parrish had flipped it on him. Its tires were new, the windows and windshield clean—this was a Jeep that had been taken care of.
It had California plates, but they were entirely unfamiliar—though it was a bit jarring to see, truthfully, the strongest contrast between the image Stiles’s mind projected and the reality.
“You’re from California?” Stiles asked instead, choking down thoughts of his own Jeep, how it must’ve been rusting to death in his dad’s driveway, or worse, an impound or a trash yard.
“Yeah,” the kid said, following his gaze to his car’s license plates. “Little town. You probably wouldn’t know it.”
Stiles hummed. “Me too, man. You know, you’re in luck. I used to have a car exactly like this, a while ago. I bet I can get it running good enough to take you wherever you need to go.” He shot the kid a grin. “Pop the hood?”
The kid climbed in behind the wheel and pulled the latch, and Stiles propped the hood open. It was disconcerting to see the Jeep’s interiors, clean and free of duct tape. A healthy engine belt, unexposed wiring. Bolts that weren’t stripped. It seemed like a sledgehammer attempting to drive into Stiles’s mind that this wasn’t his Jeep.
“Turn it over, let’s see what we’ve got.”
The kid twisted the key in the ignition, and the engine made a horrific scratching sound, but refused to work otherwise. When he let go of the key, it quieted with a puff of foul-smelling black smoke.
“Oh, yeah, I know what this is,” Stiles said, through the collar of his shirt that he’d pulled over his mouth to attempt to avoid inhaling any of what was likely a literal death sentence into his lungs. He looked up at the kid through the windshield, and asked, “You got any duct tape, by chance?”
“No,” the kid said, and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I’ve got tools, though?”
Damn. Well, better than nothing.
“Hand ‘em over,” Stiles beckoned, and pushed himself up to sit on the fender. When the kid heaved the toolbox over, Stiles pulled out the wrench and set to fixing, as best he knew how—which wasn’t much more than he did in high school, with his own Jeep. But at least he knew where the broken, oh-god-put-me-out-of-my-misery sound came from. He’d had plenty of arguments with that particular part of the engine.
The first turn of the bolts squeaked loudly, and over it, he asked the kid,“Where are you going?” It was half-conversation, half-worry—the kid had seemed, and still was, pretty rattled, perhaps not entirely of sound mind.
“What?”
“When I fix up your car,” Stiles clarified, “What’s the plan? Keep going? Turn back?”
The kid fidgeted, Stiles saw, out of the corner of his eye. The I don’t know what to do from earlier hung unspoken in the air once again.
“Not much more to see in Utah,” Stiles offered. “And I’d probably recommend taking this in for a proper fix, when you get the chance. I’m no mechanic.”
“What do you do, then?” The kid asked, abruptly. It was a change of subject, and an obvious one, but Stiles let it be, for now. He had plenty of time to kill while he fought with the engine.
“I work for the FBI, sometimes,” he answered. “How ‘bout you? High school, probably… I’m gonna say, sophomore?”
“What the hell does sometimes mean?” The kid pressed. He peeked over the edge of the hood, and his face took on a complicated, pained expression, and then he backed off to lean against the opposite fender. Stiles couldn’t blame him.
“That’s classified,” he answered, in his best authoritative impression of Tommy Lee Jones. “So, sophomore, yes or no?”
“I’m going into my junior year,” the kid begrudgingly answered. “What’s the FBI like?”
“Pain in my ass,” Stiles grunted, and not even he was sure if he was talking about his job or the car. “What is this, twenty questions?”
The car made a screechy sound that was decidedly not one Stiles had wanted it to make, and he took that as an answer.
“Well, it’s that or the tears,” the kid admitted. Stiles dropped his wrench and looked up at him sharply, surprised. The kid shrugged. Stiles figured that yeah, he’d seen the kid at his worst, and it wasn’t like they’d ever meet again, so who needed anything less than honesty?
“That’s two strangers in the middle of buttfuck, Utah for you,” Stiles muttered as he turned back to the Jeep’s exposed innards and tried to fish out the wrench.
“What?”
“Nothing. Alright, keep on with the questions, then.”
“What’s the sometimes part of your job? How can you only work for the FBI sometimes?”
“Maybe I don’t,” Stiles said, rather dramatic, or at least attempted, since he was elbow deep in Jeep guts—albeit cleaner guts than he was used to—and his hand may or may not have gotten stuck. “Maybe I lied.”
“Did you?”
“Nope,” Stiles admitted, but now the kid had a suspicious, wary look about him. Maybe his dad was right. Maybe he did run his mouth too much and blab too much nonsense. “I’m pretty shit at lying.”
“Are you a weirdo who’s gonna steal my car and try to kill me?”
“I think you could kill me first, since I’m stuck. Can you grab that and—yeah, right there, pull a little—” Stiles braced against the side of the Jeep and pulled, miraculously ending up with both his arm and the wrench intact, if not more grease-stained than before. The kid let go of the engine block and shifted the three millimeters back into its spot quietly. “Perfect.”
He rolled his shoulder a few times, then hunched back over the Jeep. “No, I’m not a weirdo. I have my badge in my bag, but I’m on… well, let’s call it vacation, so it doesn’t count for shit ‘cept intimidation.”
“That sounds illegal,” the kid pointed out, and Stiles had to smother a laugh.
“Yeah, don’t tell my boss I said that, thanks.”
There was a pause before the kid asked his next question. “Why’re you in Utah? I thought FBI was in like, Virginia.”
“Washington DC is the HQ, actually, but there’s field offices in every state,” Stiles corrected. “Virginia has the academy. I was there a while ago.”
“And now you’re in Utah? Shitty state for FBI. Were you the bottom of your class?”
“No, I was not the bottom of my class. I’m on—”
“A let’s-call-it-vacation. Right. Me and this lizard here that was just born yesterday believe that.”
“Lizards hatch out of eggs,” Stiles corrected automatically, before the rest of the sentence registered. Then, he shoved the wrench back into the toolbox with a little more force than absolutely necessary and turned a glare on the kid. “Anyone ever tell you you’re an insolent little shit?” he asked, and as soon as he did, balked. “Oh, god, I sound like my dad. And you sound like me.”
The kid wrinkled his nose, and Stiles only barely managed not to squawk like an offended grandmother.
“Where are you going, then? On your… vacation?”
“Nuh-uh, kid, my turn to ask questions.” Stiles fished out his extra-super-emergency-mini roll of duct tape from his back pack and turned back to the Jeep. “Also, that pause was like, monumentally attitude-y. Zero points for subtlety.”
“‘Nuh-uh’? ‘Attitude-y’?” The kid repeated, in what Stiles assumed was supposed to be an imitation of his voice. “What are you, five?”
“At least five years older than you, so that gives me seniority,” Stiles retorted. He would’ve pointed the wrench in the kid’s face for emphasis, but he’d set it down in favor of the duct tape. Duct tape wasn’t as good for pointing, and he was still offended over the kid’s impression of him.
He heard the kid mutter something about at least in over-exaggerated dramatics, but chose to ignore it, because he was nice like that. And then he realized he didn’t know what the hell to ask the kid without stirring up cry-worthy emotions once more. Dammit, Stiles.
“What’s… your favorite movie?” he tried, and steadfastly did not look up when he heard the kid snort.
“Star Wars,” he said, and Stiles had to high-five that, because, well, it was Star Wars, duh.
“Good taste,” he complimented. “Okay, how about… favorite subject in school?”
The kid groaned. Stiles held back from exclaiming about how he should appreciate the nice years of high school, with all his friends around him, because boy could it be worse—only because he heard the mocking at least replay in his head.
“I hate school,” he admitted. Stiles could mostly-empathize, memories of Harris and Jennifer Blake trudging through his mind unbidden. “All the subjects suck. Skip.”
It was Stiles’s turn to snort then. “Alright, how about sports?”
The kid grew quiet, and after a moment, Stiles panicked. He couldn't think of anything to say, though, so the silence suffocated them for a bit longer before the kid spoke up again in a quiet voice, quieter than Stiles had heard him so far.
“I play lacrosse,” the kid told him slowly, “but I suck. Pretty bad. I’m just a benchwarmer.”
This kid was something else. Everything about him reminded Stiles of himself, which sounded incredibly self-centered, but if Stiles had a lawyer they’d yell objection! and demand everyone look at the evidence anew. Bing, bam, boom. Airtight case.
“I sucked at lacrosse pretty bad too,” Stiles told him. “I was a benchwarmer every year, even though my best friend was team captain. Which, yeah, I’m not promoting favoritism, not really, but goddamn, you know? Not even a little preferential treatment. That sucked massively. I'm still amazed Coach didn’t kick me off the team.”
The kid was quit for a while longer. “I played in one game,” he said, with a heavy sort of voice that made Stiles pause in his attempts at repair and look up at him. “It was the last game of the season, last year. I made the winning goal.”
Usually, that would’ve been something Stiles would’ve hell yeah-ed but the kid sounded awful morose, so he kept his fist bump to himself.
“Yeah?” he prompted.
The kid nodded. He tightened his fingers into the hem of his hoodie, just to have something to do, it seemed. “My dad… my dad liked that I was a part of the team, even though I sucked. He kinda bullied my coach into letting me play one time even though I told him not to.”
Stiles remembered his own father doing something similar once—to a less positive outcome, but still.
“And, um—he wanted to practice with me. He wanted me to show him tricks but I totally blew him off, just like with the auto shop, and—” The kid heaved in a great breath, and Stiles clambered haphazardly across the exposed engine of the Jeep to grab the kid’s shoulder.
“Hey, listen,” he ordered, ducking a little to meet the kid’s eyes, until his chin almost hit the Jeep’s engine, “You can’t feel bad about that, okay? It was once. One thing. I don’t know you, kid, and I didn’t know your dad, but not just anyone bullies their son’s high school lacrosse coach. That shit takes a whole lotta love.”
The kid gave a strangled laugh. Stiles squeezed his shoulder.
“I didn’t play catch with my dad as a kid,” Stiles told him. “Or lacrosse, or football. I stole his radio, and I replaced his burgers with salads before he went to work. I’m pretty sure he was tempted to chip me in case I got lost. I was a goddamn nightmare, and now I barely remember to call him every week, but he’s my dad and he loves me. Not even a little bit less than those helicopter parents with their freaky koala kids. And I can guarantee you and your dad were the same way.”
The kid sniffled. Stiles felt terrible that he'd made him cry twice in less than an hour. About his dead dad, no less. Goddamn, Stiles. He had a real knack for making kids on the side of the road in buttfuck Utah break into tears, it seemed. Too bad it wasn’t marketable.
“My dad hated this Jeep,” the kid blurted, like he hadn’t meant to say it. He looked up at Stiles with those watery, bright green eyes and pressed on, “he hated it. But I kept stealing it out of the yard. It didn’t belong to anyone anymore, and the sheriff kept catching me and my dad had to tow it back to the shop every time, ‘cause I didn't have my license. But my dad fixed the car anyway, even though he hated it. And now I broke it.”
“Hey, hey, it’s not broken,” Stiles consoled him. “Just a few more finishing touches and it’ll be in tip-top shape. If it's anything like the Jeep I had, it’ll keep running ‘til you don't need it anymore.”
“I think my dad fixed it for me,” the kid said miserably. “Because I kept stealing it. He knew I liked it, even though I said I did it because he hated it.”
“Well, yeah,” Stiles agreed. “Who else would spend money on this hunk o’ junk?”
“Dammit,” The kid groaned. His forehead thunked against shiny robin-egg-blue. “I’m the worst son ever.”
Stiles patted his shoulder, then let go. “Me too,” he admitted easily. “But he loved you. Otherwise he would’ve bought you one of those ugly little Priuses with the five-thousand safety features, instead of giving you this car. Some of these replacements parts would’ve cost the entire town I lived in an arm and a leg. At least a Prius-and-a-half, for sure.”
“He didn't even give me the car,” the kid muttered forlornly. He sat on the fender and watched Stiles’s hands. “He didn’t really get the chance to.”
Stiles frowned. “I thought it belonged to your dad’s shop.”
“Well, it sorta did,” the kid said, which explained nothing at all. “The owner left it behind, so his dad had my dad tow it in. He didn't want to scrap it, but I don’t think he was gonna have it fixed like my dad did.”
“Huh. I hope my Jeep had the same guardian angels yours did,” he commented offhandedly. “So then, this guy’s… dad… gave you the car?”
The kid hummed an assent. Stiles’s hands paused, just for a moment, on his duct tape. No way.
“Where’d you say you were from, again?”
“Little town in California,” the kid repeated. “You wouldn’t know it.”
Stiles bit his cheek. His hands trembled, just slightly. “Maybe I would.” His fingers brushed the ugly little scratch he'd accidentally put on the underside of the edge of the hood of his Jeep—invisible to anything but touch. The kid didn’t say anything.
“Let me guess, then. Beacon Hills?”
When he looked up again, the kid was staring at him.
He wiped his hands free of engine grease with a rag in the tool box—washed and cleaned and folded, but still one of his rags, made of a shirt he’d torn a gaping hole in playing lacrosse. Or fighting with Jackson. He couldn’t remember. He tossed his roll of duct tape into the tool box along with it and clambered off the fender.
“You’re good to go,” he told the kid, slamming the hood back down with a clank. The kid nodded, silently, and Stiles nodded back. “Cool. I need to make a phone call. Try it out.”
The kid nodded again, and Stiles took that to be as close of a thanks as he was going to get. He rapped his knuckles against the hood of the car, and hissed at it, “I knew you were faking,” before he grabbed his bag from where it leaned against the traitorous vehicle’s wheel and pulled his phone out.
He stepped away, and watched the kid reluctantly climb behind the wheel again. Stiles turned his attention to his phone, then, and pulled up his dad’s pinned contact. It rang a few times when he pressed call—and Stiles abruptly remembered that, one, it was still pretty damn early in the morning, and two, he wasn’t familiar enough with his dad’s schedule anymore to know if he’d be waking him from a post-night shift coma or bothering him at the station.
Still, like he’d told the kid, Stiles’s dad loved him, and he picked up on the fourth ring.
“Hello?” His dad’s voice was sleep-rough, like when Stiles used to sneak into his bed after his mom had died. Night shift, then, indeed—oops. At the same time, the kid put the key in the ignition and twisted. The engine roared to life, and Stiles and the kid shot each other disturbingly in-sync thumbs ups.
“Wack as fuck,” he mumbled, before adding, louder, “Hey, dad,” as he turned away from the car and took a few steps so the sound wasn’t quite as loud. It was pretty pointless, though, since the engine cut out a moment later, and Stiles heard the slam of the door once more as the kid got out.
“Stiles? It’s early. Is something wrong?”
Stiles hummed, consideringly, but then quickly reassured, “Nothing life-threatening. Didn’t mean to wake you, pops. Forgot what time it was.”
There was a groan from his dad as he stretched. “It’s fine, kiddo. Didn’t mean to fall asleep anyway. What’s up?”
“Whoa, no, wait a minute,” Stiles said. “What do you mean you didn’t mean to fall asleep? Is something going on?”
His dad sighed. “Nothing too bad,” he answered, which Stiles took to mean nothing of the spooky-scary-supernatural nature. Just run of the mill small-town sheriff stuff, he hoped.
“Well, I was calling because, you know, I ran into the strangest thing today,” Stiles started—well aware that it was about the most ominous way to do so. He graciously ignored his dad’s muttered oh, god.
“And judging by that tone of voice, it’s… my problem, somehow?”
Stiles opened his mouth to speak again, but his dad cut him off.
“Wait, where are you? What do you mean you ‘ran into’ it? I thought you had that case you couldn’t tell anyone about.”
Stilinski investigative tendencies should be looked into, Stiles thought. Their patterns of thought were similar enough he suspected it might’ve been genetic.
“I did,” Stiles agreed, “But that wrapped itself up a few days ago. I’m in Utah, now.”
“Utah?” His dad repeated, “Shitty place for FBI. What do they have you doing there?”
Stiles restrained the urge to shoot an analytical look over his shoulder at the kid. There were way too many similarities for Stiles to deal with this early and on such little sleep, so he pressed on, regardless. Wack as fuck, he repeated, if only mentally.
“Well, I’m not here on FBI business,” Stiles admitted. “I was heading back to Beacon Hills, actually.”
Silence, for a long while. Then, flatly, “You what.”
Stiles cleared his throat and tugged the collar of his shirt away from his neck, and then abruptly remembered that he was supposed to be the annoyed one, seeing as his dad had given away his Jeep to some teenager in the midst of a crisis—one of the runaway kinds, evidently.
“I’m heading back to Beacon Hills,” he repeated. “What? Didn’t you miss me?”
“Stiles…” his father warned.
“Dad,” Stiles said, in the same tone. “I am a whole-ass adult. And, as you’ve mentioned but also somehow forgotten in the span of two seconds, I’m an FBI agent to boot. I think I can survive a visit if I want to see my dear old dad.”
“But that’s not why you’re coming,” the sheriff, annoyingly aptly, guessed.
Stiles wrinkled his nose. “No, it isn’t. But it’s hard to explain.”
“Uh-huh. And what? You’re hitchhiking?”
“Might be,” Stiles said, tightly. The feeling of watching one of those spaceship launches on the TV when he was young replayed itself in his head. 3, 2, 1, ignition— “Spotted this pretty nice Jeep close by, but it turns out it’d broken down on the side of the road. Managed to give it a helping hand, which wasn’t too hard, especially since it’s my Jeep that you apparently gave away to some kid who ran away to Utah!”
—liftoff.
Stiles took a fraction of a second to draw in a big breath, caught the very beginnings of his dad’s shaky “Wha—” before he pressed on.
“Utah?! What the hell?! You know what’s in Utah, dad? Nothing! He ran away to nothing! With my Jeep! The Jeep that breaks down! The Jeep that did break down in the middle of buttfuck-nowhere! It’s a miracle my motel was just half a mile away. There is nothing out here, dad, I don’t know how much I can emphasize that. I’m amazed I have reception, actually.” Stiles paused to suck in a breath, and scuffed his foot into the dirt.
“Your Jeep?” His dad’s voice was surprised; almost shaky. “You—”
“Yes, my Jeep,” Stiles hissed. “It’s fixed up—the dents and the scratches are gone, and so is the duct tape, and my plates, but it’s my Jeep. In the middle of nowhere, Utah, instead of Beacon Hills, where it should be. Where I bet this kid should be, too. He looks fourteen, for fuck’s sake. Is he even old enough to have a license?”
“The kid’s there?” the question was frantic, almost desperate, but it was his dad’s next words that cut through him like a knife. “Eli’s there? Eli’s with you?”
“Of course he’s with me, I wouldn’t just leave some kid on the side of the—” His mouth worked faster than his brain, sometimes, and when Stiles’s mind did catch up to what his dad had said, he forgot whatever the hell else he was going to say. “Eli,” he repeated instead, almost dazedly. “Did you just say—” He knew the name, but it took him a moment more to place it. When he did, his phone almost fell out of his hand.
Hale. Eli Hale.
Bright green eyes that crinkled at the corners. “Elijah, after my father.”
Stiles whipped around, shoes slipping over loose dirt and rock. The kid was leaned against the Jeep’s front bumper, and even with the sun working against him, Stiles could see those green eyes he hadn’t recognized before.
“They look just like yours. I think that's fate.”
The throbbing emptiness in his chest felt like that stupid dying star analogy all over again. My dad was a mechanic, he remembered the kid—Eli, Eli Hale—saying.
“Oh, fuck me.”
“Stiles?” His dad said again, but Stiles heard it as if from underwater. It didn’t quite come through the interference that was his racing thoughts. “Stiles!”
Stiles fumbled his phone and almost dropped it when his dad’s voice finally registered once more.
“Yeah, yup, yes, yo, daddio,” Stiles rattled off, only partially aware of his own voice, the words pouring from his mouth. “Um, say again—?”
“Eli. Eli Hale. That’s the kid I gave your Jeep to. Is he there, with you?”
“Eli. Hale. As in—”
Stiles swore he could hear his father’s teeth grinding all the way back in California.
“Eli Hale as in Derek Hale’s son. Stiles—”
“Eli Hale,” Stiles repeated. “Derek Hale’s son.”
“Stiles. I need you to answer me.” Frustration laced the sheriff’s words, becoming more officer of the law than father at that moment.
“He’s here,” Stiles managed. “He’s fine. A little shaken up. Emotionally troubled, if you want to get into it.”
“He’s in one piece?” his father asked again. “Nothing… weird?”
Werewolf. Like father, like son.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” slipped out reflexively. “Yeah, he’s in one piece. No weirdness.”
Blissful silence over the line, just for a moment, and Stiles only heard the crunch of sand and rocks under his shoes. Something churned in his chest, through the dull ache that had settled there months ago. It pulsed in time with his heart, hot, dry, pressurized—frothing.
“Derek’s the one that fixed up the Jeep, then,” Stiles said, the fingers on his free hand drumming up a storm on his leg. “Kid mentioned his dad… was a mechanic.”
“S—”
“Is Derek dead, dad?” Stiles asked, as the heat, pressure, pain bubbled up his throat. He blinked a couple of times to get rid of the stinging, but blurriness began to cloud his vision all the same. His voice was weak, pathetic, almost, cracked and wavering, but still, he sought that confirmation—he needed his dad to say it.
Noah Stilinski paused for a long, long time. Stiles’s knuckles whitened around the edges of his phone. It got long enough that he couldn’t bear it—that he knew what the answer was, even if a part of him still demanded that he hear the words aloud.
“Dad,” he choked.
“Stiles,” his dad sighed, something heavy, reluctant. “A lot of things happened. A lot of bad stuff, really fast. We’re still recovering.”
“Still?” Stiles echoed. The crack in his chest throbbed. His eyes burned. “What do you mean, still? Dad, what happened? What stuff?”
Like he was pulling teeth, his father finally admitted, “The Nogitsune. It… got free. And it came back to Beacon Hills.”
Behind him, vaguely, Stiles heard a shout, and turned to look. Smoke was pouring from beneath the Jeep’s hood as if the entirety of the California redwood forest was aflame beneath it. In Stiles’s hand, his phone creaked in his iron grip. Above, the sky burned white, blinding.
“You didn’t call me.”
Their conversation was starting to become more paused silence than any actual words. The quiet after Stiles’s statement left it standing like a brick wall, high and mighty and near-insurmountable. Brick by brick, though, with every word that came from his phone’s speaker, it came crumbling down.
“I’m sorry, Stiles,” his dad said. “I know I told you I would, if anything happened, but I didn’t want to—I couldn’t ask you to be subjected to that thing again.”
Stiles grit his teeth to stifle a noise, and dug the heel of his palm into his eye. It didn’t clear the blurriness, the brightness. The Jeep was still heaving black smoke, endlessly dark against the glowing sky. The kid looked panicked, but Stiles couldn’t move to reassure him. He couldn’t see well enough to put one foot in front of the other.
“You should’ve anyway.”
“I know,” his dad replied. Then after a heavy breath that Stiles could hear from the phone’s speaker, he finally admitted, “Derek told me to call you.”
Something cracked, in Stiles’s chest, deeper than the ache, the metaphorical hole in his chest, in the air itself—agonizing, entirely unreal, like a phantom. Stiles was forced to close his eyes, unable to stand the searing light that seemed to reflect off of every surface in sight.
“I said you were busy. I didn’t listen. I’m sorry, Stiles.”
His bones felt like they were being torn apart, muscles peeled from skin and tendons. His blood pounded a deafening cacophony in his ears, even though he was near-certain his heart must’ve stopped. The Nogitsune didn’t matter. The Jeep didn’t matter. The fact that he shouldn’t have had signal half a mile away from his shitty motel in buttfuck Utah didn’t matter. The sheer, unbelievable coincidence of meeting Eli Hale in the middle of nowhere didn’t matter.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Stiles whispered.
Over the thunder of his own pulse, Stiles heard how broken his father’s voice was when he admitted, “I didn’t know how.”
The words tore something apart, the earth beneath his feet, the soul from his body, his senses from his mind. The roar that might have once been his pulse drowned out all else, the whiteness that might have once come from the clouds burned away all other images, the ice that might have at one point been the remaining chill of the night drove away any sensation of touch. Iron and acid flooded his tongue, acrid bitterness seared his lungs.
There was nothing else. For excruciating moments that might’ve lasted minutes or hours or days, everything was only pain—blinding, suffocating, isolating, freezing. One single, hapless, thought made its way through, though it seemed to wither away at the same speed it appeared—that this, perhaps, was what that dying star in his chest had been leading up to from the beginning, all those months ago.
And then, finally, with an abrupt, clean break of bone, of space, of time—there really was nothing at all.