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They’re all moving into position, creeping through the trees almost silently.
John crouches behind a crumbling wall held together by the pervasive tendrils of ivy that tickle his palms as he leans forward, peering into the clearing where the abandoned house seems to loom. The heat of the July day hasn’t faded with the setting sun so the air is thick with humidity and bugs. He yearns wistfully for the bug spray he knows is in his trunk but stays put.
“Be brave but not stupid.” John hears Scott growl softly.
He flicks his eyes to the right, where Scott and Stiles stand, hands pressed against the back of each other’s necks, foreheads together.
“Be brave but not stupid.” Stiles echoes, his tone utterly serious when he says, “I love you.”
He briefly wonders if maybe there’s something going on between the boys that he hadn’t realized.
Scott tightens his grip on Stiles neck for a second before he releases him. “Love you too bro.” He then turns to Lydia, pulls her close too, repeats the previous statement, like a mantra, “Be brave but not stupid.”
She huffs like she might tell him off but her reply is what Stiles’ was. “Be brave but not stupid.” She wraps her hand around the back of Scott’s neck, squeezes tight, says a little fiercely, “Love you.”
“I love you too.”
The process repeats with Lydia and Stiles, so unless they’re all three in a tri-romantic-thing then there’s something going on that John doesn’t understand.
Scott turns to John, nods and says, this time with a small smile, “I love you, Papa Stilinski.” He turns and takes off silently, disappearing into the shadows.
Papa Stilinski? “Uh, love you too, Scott?” He barely manages to get it out, but he knows Scott probably heard him. He turns and Lydia steps up, pressing a kiss to his cheek.
“Love you, Papa Stilinski.” She moves to the left and disappears into the dark, pretty quietly herself, even though her shoes have heels that are several inches high.
When she’s gone, he turns to Stiles. “What was that all about?”
Stiles is half-focused on the thingy-majig in his hands as he answers quietly, “It’s just something we do now, say the phrase to remind each other not to do anything dumb and that we love each other or even just something we like about the other person.”
“Why?”
Stiles pauses his tinkering, flicks his gaze up, and shrugs with one shoulder, mouth a sad moue. “You know… just in case.”
Just in case. It makes his chest hurt.
“Jesus.” John says, clenching the hand not holding his gun and taking a deep breath. “You’re all just kids.” He mutters, ignoring the fact that most of them are twenty or so and in college, before turning back to watch the clearing.
“Well,” Stiles chuckles, not arguing with him like usual. There’s absolutely no mirth in the sound. “They never stop trying to kill us, one way or another, so I don’t think they care how old we are.” Stiles’ voice gets dark as he mutters, “They haven’t ever cared before.”
John doesn’t know what he would say because there’s a solid-sounding whump and a bright spark of electricity bursts over the house. Stiles vaults over the wall, chanting and waving around the weird thing he’s holding. John stays in place, clenching his hands and waiting, just like they planned. He hates it, just watching, but he stays where he is.
The hags - yes, hags, this is his life now - that have been terrorizing and kidnapping the teens of Beacon Hills for the past few weeks put up a pretty solid fight. They burst from the old house, screeching and hissing with foaming mouths and neon-green eyes, hands outstretched with fingers hooked like claws as they launch themselves forward.
Stiles slams the whatcha-call-it into a hag’s face with a grunt. It keens, skin rippling as it starts to decompose, so Stiles’ half-magic, half-science invention works. He’ll be happy about that. John watches Kira dart around a hag, her sword an almost-invisible blur of silver as pieces start falling off the creature. Scott, Liam, and Malia have their claws out, eyes glowing as they growl and grapple with their own opponents. Lydia hangs back, watching everything with her bright eyes, calling out warnings and spinning a blue rope around like a whip whenever one of the hags looks like it might try to get away or charge her, whistling lowly and making the hags stumble back clutching their ears.
When the terrifying creatures are just piles of horrible smelling stuff, John hops over the wall, claps Scott on the shoulder, ruffles Stiles’ hair, and heads into the house while the group of them hide in the trees so they don’t scare whomever is inside, since most of them are splattered with weird bile-like blood. Also, the whole fangs and glowing eyes thing.
He emerges a little bit later and leads the two terrified middle school kids - the missing ones that he found shoved in a cage hanging from the ceiling what the hell - out of the shack and toward his waiting police cruiser.
He closes the door behind the kids, walking around to get into the driver’s seat. He pauses before he slides in, watches as the group - pack, Dad, we’re a pack, it’s an important distinction - comes out of the trees and presses close, talking too low for him to make out the words. They all stare at one another, eyes a little too wide, fingers digging into clothes and grabbing at chins and shoulders and hands, nodding with something like relief when they see that everyone is okay. Exultant smiles start blooming on their faces.
It’s a moment that almost feels intimate, even though it’s totally chaste, and John ducks into the cruiser, looking away from them and picking up his radio, calling in that he’s found the missing kids and he’s en route to the hospital now.
They all turn as he starts driving and raise a hand or nod to him as he goes. They look like a family as they stand there, arms tangled and leaning against one another, like a solid unit.
Pack, he reminds himself, repeating it so he won’t forget it next time, pack, pack, pack.
“You’re pack too, you know.” Stiles tells him later, after his shower as they sit at the kitchen table and eat leftover pasta as the sun comes up.
“Am I?”
Stiles nods, rubbing his shoulder, mouth tight as he works the muscle. “You always have been, even before you knew about everything.” He takes his last bite, puts his plate and silverware into the dishwasher, and moves to go upstairs. He pauses where John sits, lays his cheek on the top of John’s head for just a moment and mumbles, “Love you.”
He smiles, happy that he has an excuse to say this more often, despite the reason why. “I love you too, son.”
Stiles smiles as he walks away and stumbles his way up the stairs.
—–
Not the next time something goes down, but the time after, Derek Hale shows up, surprising the hell out of everyone. He bursts onto the scene just as one of the lamias - not kanimas, Dad, there aren’t anymore kanimas right now, at least I hope not - throws Kira at Scott, knocking them both to the ground.
He grabs the snake-creature, wraps one arm around her neck and the other around her waist and squeezes. There’s a sickening pop and she shrieks, the tail that makes up her bottom half falling limp. John assumes Derek’s broken her spine.
Around the alley behind the mall, most of the pack is writhing on the ground in pain from the venom, Stiles and Lydia darting around to them and quickly shoving a mixture of herbs that smells positively vile into their mouths, both of them cursing vehemently.
Stiles rises from where he’s crouched next to Malia, patting her arm when she nods at him. He looks up and sees Derek and his jaw drops.
“What…” Stiles starts, then stops, mouth moving without a sound.
“I…” Derek looks almost as shocked as Stiles. He shakes his head a little and continues, “I was coming to get something from the vault…”
“Oh.” Stiles’ face is carefully blank all of a sudden.
Scott’s cheerful, “Derek! Hey, man! What’re you doing here?” cuts the conversation short, but John continues to look between the two of them for a moment before he extends a hand to Liam and pulls him to his feet.
When they get their discarded shopping bags and the rest of the pack off the ground, they head to the house. John sits in his armchair, pressed into it by Malia’s firm hand on his shoulder, and she settles next to him on the floor, resting her hands on her knees.
They talk strategy, how to take down the nest of lamias with the smallest amount of collateral damage, when to strike, etcetera. John nods and contributes when he’s supposed to but mostly he watches Derek.
Derek… who watches Stiles the way he remembers watching Claudia. It makes John tense, wary for his son.
He feels the slightest bit of sympathy, though, when he sees the look on Derek’s face right before they burst into the warehouse a few hours later.
Liam reels Stiles in by the back of the neck and says with a lopsided grin, “You’re an asshole and you make me smile and I love you.”
Derek looks a little devastated and also a little angry and maybe confused. Poor kid. John feels the same way, most days.
Stiles laughs and presses their foreheads together and says, “You have great hair, you annoying little shit, and I love you too. Be brave but not stupid.”
“Be brave but not stupid.” Liam repeats and the two of them knock their heads together a little, grinning stupidly, before separating and Liam goes charging off down the hall to his assigned spot.
Stiles doesn’t have to say the mantra to John, but he does knock their shoulders together and say, “Love you, Dad.”
He settles into his spot, waiting once again to be The Sheriff and rescue people held hostage by supernatural beings. “Love you too, son.”
John watches as Stiles starts walking before pausing and turning to Derek. He bites his lip then reaches out, cupping the back of Derek’s neck and whispering from inches away, “Be brave but not stupid, Derek. I, uh, just, be safe.”
John has a moment to think ‘still including Derek in the pack stuff, that’s good’ before Derek breathes, “You too.”
Stiles’ eyes get a little wild and he nods rapidly, backing away before turning and jogging off down the hall.
Well then, that answers the question he hadn’t asked.
“You could come back, you know.” John says airily, leaning against the wall.
“Hm.” Derek mirrors him, raising one eyebrow with a soft smile. “That so?”
“Yep.” John shrugs. “We’re always hiring at the department.”
Derek looks down the hall where Stiles disappeared and nods. “I’ll… keep that in mind.”
—–
It’s months before the next time things go sour and really, he thinks, it was about time.
He’s needed in an official capacity again so he’s standing at the fringe of the pack in uniform when he sees Stiles pull Lydia close first. They whisper to each other then move on to other pack members. Stiles hugs John and they say the words too.
Last, Stiles stands in front of Derek, who’s out of uniform and definitely not here in official capacity. They have the same interaction, faces close, words whispered, though they’re close enough for John to hear them.
This time, though, the conversation ends with a kiss, which isn’t unusual for them as they’ve been together since Derek got back. However, Stiles then utters a soft, honest, “I love you.”
Derek stands there, too busy blinking in shock to reply as Stiles moves away toward the trees with a bright smile on his face.
John walks over, clapping him on the shoulder. “Be brave but not stupid.” He advises. The additional 'with my son's heart' goes unspoken but he knows Derek understands.
He nods, still a little dazed, and looks John straight in the eye. He says, “I will.”