Who: Stiles and Sheriff Stilinski What: Having a serious discussion about sleep-related issues. Where: The kitchen. When: Tuesday night, after dinner. (Backdated) Rating: Low. Status: Complete!
Stiles had lingered in the kitchen after dinner, taking his time doing the dishes and periodically glancing at his dad, who was still seated at the table, going over some kind of paperwork. His stomach was tight with anxiety as he remembered waking up early that morning sprawled across the Nemeton like it had chosen him to be its own personal human sacrifice -- except this time he hadn’t died. But he knew that sleep-walking and waking up atop the thing that had been causing all of the town’s problems wasn’t exactly great, either. It didn’t bode well. It made him feel kind of sick and full of dread.
He watched as Ariel made her way up the stairs and he pulled his hands out of the dishwater, drying them on the towel and hesitantly making his way to the dining room. He lingered there for a moment, silent, and looking as nervous as he felt. “Dad? Do you have a minute?”
“Hm?” The sheriff hummed distractedly as he shifted through the mound of work he had to take home his office. Between the new arrivals in town, missing persons, and recent spike in new hires in the job market of people with paperwork claiming to be locals; he had a lot of attention to divert before the FBI really started in on his case about things he couldn’t and wouldn’t explain.
He forgot Stiles wanted to talk to him about something earlier. He didn’t even notice the nervous look Stiles’ face as he glanced up at him briefly before turning his attention back to the papers in front of him.
Stiles chewed his lower lip for a moment, eyes roaming the paperwork now spread all over the table. He hated that his dad was always so busy with work that he had to literally bring it home from the office so often. “Nothing. Um, do you want some coffee?” he offered. “I can make some.” It looked like the sheriff had hours of work ahead, and he knew that he and the others were only adding to it. Guilt tugged at him.
“No thanks.” He wrinkled his nose. Coffee was actually becoming the least favorite part of his daily routine these days, thanks to vampires. He could hardly remember what coffee tasted like when it wasn’t laced with vervain at this point. “If you can go ahead and pour me an ounce of whiskey though, that would be great.”
He hesitated a moment, then reluctantly pulled the bottle of Jack from underneath the cabinet, briefly contemplating taking a long drink of it himself. But no, that wasn’t going to do him any good if he wound up passing out earlier than usual and woke up in the woods again. He poured his dad just a little of the stuff as he’d asked, then carried it to the table and set it down silently, leaving the rest of the bottle in the kitchen. “Long day?”
“That tree.” He started before downing the drink and setting the empty glass back down. “The Nemeton. Causing all kinds of trouble. It’s-” He faded out as he read over one of the files. “Isn’t there something you wanted to talk about?”
“Yeah, sounds about right,” he murmured, rubbing his neck as he remembered his own fear that morning -- intense and palpable as he woke up. He gripped the back of the chair for a moment, trying to decide what to do. But looking at how tired and frustrated his dad looked made his chest tighten and he shook his head. “It’s not important. We can talk about it later.”
It was important enough to send him a text about earlier. The sheriff paused over what he was reading and looked sideways over at his son, realizing for the first time how unsettled he looked. He set the paper down flat on the table and took off his reading glasses, wishing internally that Stiles hadn’t left the rest of the Jack Daniels in the kitchen.
“What is it?”
There were a lot of ways he could answer that question, but only one that was at the top of his list of priorities. He just wished it wasn’t going to make his dad worry even more than he already did, but he knew already, what he was going to think about. Because it had dawned on him, too, and he didn’t want to think about it. “I think maybe we should invest in an alarm system for the doors and windows.”
He drew his brow together at the suggestion. It seemed harmless enough but he wasn’t even sure if he wanted to know why Stiles thought they needed an alarm system for their home. If it had anything to do with Ariel and Vanessa, he definitely didn’t want to go down that road again, especially since for the most part it seemed like they had gotten past it. If it was about Ariel, he wouldn’t argue about it. Not if it would give Stiles peace of mind, which he needed from the look of it. With that thought, he braced himself for whatever Stiles was going to dish out as an explanation.
“Yeah?”
For a moment, he contemplated telling his dad with the rush of new people showing up, it was hard telling how many of them were bad guys. Even so, he doubted any of them would try and break into the sheriff’s house. Not if they were smart at all. The alarm would serve the purpose of alerting them to intruders but it was the other reason that Stiles thought it might be a good idea that made him bring it up at all.
Stiles was scared. And it wasn’t because of most of the refugees or because he was afraid of some random crime spree striking the neighborhood.
He swallowed heavily and sat down on the chair, resting his hands in his lap. “You uh -- you remember how I used to sleepwalk?” His voice grew more quiet now, and of course his dad was going to remember that because he always woke up terrified not knowing how he’d wound up in the attic or the basement or one time at Scott’s house at three in the morning and Melissa having to call and wake his dad up to come and get him.
“You’re sleepwalking again?” He gaped. “When?” Stiles slept right down the hall from him, how didn’t he realize that this started up again right under his nose? First night terrors and now sleepwalking, it couldn’t be a coincidence that the two were starting up again at the same time. The sheriff swallowed back the rise of panic in his throat and kept his gaze on Stiles but he couldn’t shake the feeling that all of this wasn’t being caused by stress alone. He knew it wasn’t just stress as much as he wanted to believe it was. Something was very wrong.
He winced at the shocked look on his dad’s face, and he could practically see the fear that he was trying to hide. “Last night,” he admitted, shifting in his chair. He knew it wasn’t a coincidence and that it wasn’t just stress, even if the stress was probably making his sleep-related issues a lot worse than usual. He dropped his gaze to the table and then looked up again. “It was probably just a one time thing.” Even he knew his voice didn’t sound very confident about that.
Last night. The sheriff had slept right through it; he noted sleepwalking as another thing to be hypervigilant for after Stiles went to bed, and he should start keeping track of all these symptoms, see if there was a pattern forming here and why. He let out a slow exhale and nodded. “All right, I’ll call someone first thing in the morning, have them install some alarms and a security system… with cameras in here so we can see what’s going on.”
“Is there anything else?” He asked, shifting slightly so that he was looking Stiles full in the face. He didn’t mean it to be specific just for sleeping problems either if there was more on Stiles’ mind than that. Stiles operated under an enormous amount of pressure and that was well known fact, at least to him. Work could wait.
Stiles was quiet for a moment, knowing he should tell his dad the rest simply so he didn’t worry about the thing he knew his dad was now worried about even if Stiles was also worried about it and trying not to think about it. “I uh -- woke up at the Nemeton,” he admitted. Not that it was that much less terrifying, but it did seem to have more of a mystical spin than the other option and maybe at least that would give his dad some peace of mind that he wasn’t dying of frontotemporal dementia. He shifted in his chair uncomfortably.
“The Nemeton.” He echoed and raised his eyebrows. So there was a possibility, or a good likelihood that all of this was just another crazy side effect of the magic tree stump; maybe nothing was really wrong with Stiles after all. Everything started happening after the thing became active so it made sense that it could all be related. Yeah, it made sense. “But you didn’t go missing for a few minutes, get pulled through the stump and then pulled back, right? You actually walked there?”
“No, I didn’t go missing.” At least he was pretty sure he hadn’t. He had, however, gone without shoes. “I just walked and woke up there.” His dad didn’t need to know that he’d literally woken up sprawled across the damn thing like some kind of subconscious offering of sacrifice. It creeped Stiles out badly enough as it was. He rubbed the back of his neck, gazing at the stacks of paperwork that his dad had piled around the table. He hesitated a moment. “Do you want some help?” he asked, motioning to the papers. It wasn’t exactly legal, of course, but it also wouldn’t be the first time he’d helped his dad with work-related things, even if his dad usually tried turning him down at first.
The sheriff flicked his eyebrows up and sighed, “Okay, well, we’ll get those alarms first thing tomorrow.” And he’d keep a closer eye on Stiles at night because Nemeton weirdness or no, this was messing with Stiles’ head and it was unsettling in too many familiar ways for him to pretend it wasn’t there even if he wanted to.
“No. No, you know you can’t.” He dismissed lazily, turning back to the mass of papers and becoming instantly re-absorbed in the workload.
He rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “You realize that telling me I can’t makes me feel like a rebellious, defiant teenager, right?” Mostly he was kidding. Mostly.
“Really, because it was supposed to make you feel like getting the hell out of here to go do something productive.” He countered lightly. “Don’t you have homework to do?”
Stiles held his hands up in a gesture of mock surrender. “It’s already done, but I could go play Halo for awhile. Even though helping out would be a much better use of my time, but hey, if you don’t want help sorting out this gigantic explosion of work…” He shook his head, rising to his feet.
He waved him off without looking up from his papers distractedly, “These missing person reports are going to need their own zip code pretty soon. Starting to think these all these new people would be better off just posing as one of these guys instead of forging all their government papers.” He didn’t mean that. Insensitive things said in the privacy of his own home didn’t count.
He winced a little at that, but the look on his face dissipated as quickly as it appeared, then reached out and picked one of the papers off the nearest stack and studied it. “It’s almost like the tree’s trying to keep some kind of population balance. New person shows up, someone else vanishes in their place.”
That was an interesting theory, he hadn’t thought of that. “You think so? But these are all random. There’s no pattern here. And then you have to take into account the people who vanish and show up again like Scott, Allison’s dad, and… me, I guess. I woke up next to the Nemeton before anyone had a chance to realize that I was missing but I was still missing.”
“Yeah, but I mean it’s the supernatural. I don’t think the Nemeton has an actual MO,” Stiles pointed out, reaching for another one of the papers. He had no doubt that his dad was right. If there was some kind of pattern to it, some sort of rhyme or reason, he would have found it. He chewed on his lower lip as he realized he knew the person whose name was on the missing report in front of him. Benny Johnson had gone to Beacon Hills Grade School, Middle School and High School and Stiles had known him since they were 9. “But maybe they’re not all tree-related either.”
“They’re not all tree related,” He started in agreement before pausing to think about how ridiculous that sounded, “but a lot of them happened at the same time. Right when that apartment building appeared out of nowhere. I’d say the majority of these are tree related... and unfortunately for those families, that makes them low priority.” It also made his rate of unsolved cases so unbelievably high that he refused to think about it.
“And of course it’s not like anyone can tell them that a mystical tree stump kidnapped their missing family members,” Stiles mumbled. He started to make two piles of his own: reports that came before the day the Nemeton had activated -- the day of the sacrifices, and another pile for the ones that came after. It would be easier to narrow down which was which that way even if it wasn’t one hundred percent accurate.
He paused as he spotted another familiar name and he held his breath, looking over at his dad. “She’s here.” He slid the paper over to the sheriff.
“Malia Tate?” The Sheriff read out loud, looking over the paper Stiles handed him. That was a cold case from years ago that he just recently decided to look back into. “What do you mean, she’s here? Where is she? Do you know her?”
If there had ever been a question where Stiles’ penchant for asking a lot of questions in a very short amount of time had come from, it was officially answered. “She’s here in Beacon Hills. I’m not sure where exactly. I don’t exactly know her, but she says she knows me from the future.” He sighed. Because the whole future thing still bugged the hell out of him and he couldn’t imagine that his dad was going to have an easier time with it, really. “Apparently she spent about ten years as…” He paused, trying not to smirk because it was almost funny at this point how weird their lives were. “As a were-coyote.”
He squinted at Stiles for a moment to see if he was joking. He looked like he was about to smirk but his tone was completely serious. The sheriff flicked his eyebrows up and rolled his eyes. “I’m sorry I asked.” He huffed as he dropped Malia’s paper back down. The futuristic were-coyote wasn’t quite as bad as the Little Mermaid theory but it was up there. Stiles really needed to get some more sleep.
“Just telling you what she told me,” he assured his dad even if the corners of his mouth turned up just a little with amusement. He wasn’t going to fill his dad in on the rest of what she’d told him, of course, because well. Being possessed by some kind of demon and being locked up in an asylum and having future sex with said were-coyote in that asylum just...painted a rather bleak picture of his future. Also he was pretty sure that would make his dad request the entire rest of the whiskey bottle. Sometimes ignorance was bliss.
Besides, he wasn’t sure Malia was trustworthy or not since they’d only talked over the network and not in person. It was a lot harder to tell if someone was lying over the internet.
“What Malia Tate, the girl who’s been missing for eight years who is also a were-coyote from the future told you.” He nodded, “Did she also tell you that I wound up strangling you tonight? Or did she forget to mention that during your little chat?”
Stiles grinned. “You know, for the town’s sheriff, you make a lot of very violent threats to your only son. I mean if people found out about this…” He shook his head and reached for another paper.
“I’d probably be elected Mayor.” He finished with a quick tap to Stiles’ reaching hand. “Get out of here, go play your games.”
He laughed. “Hey, I’m helping. And you wouldn’t want to be mayor. It’d be even more stressful than being the sheriff.”
“Work-related stress, I can handle. It’s Stiles-related stress that throws me through a loop believe it or not.” But he did like the way the table was clearing up with the extra hands as always, even if Stiles really should be playing his games instead.
Despite the fact Stiles knew there was truth in that statement, he wasn’t going to take it personally. Telling his dad about his sleepwalking adventure the previous night had lifted the burden of secrecy off his shoulders and even though he knew he should probably tell Scott and Allison what had happened, he didn’t really want to. They were dealing with their own issues. “Then I guess we’ll just have to go camping more often for stress relief,” he said cheerfully as he sorted several more reports into his piles.
The sheriff looked over at his son and gave him a frown of approval followed by a smirk he couldn’t hide. Their last camping trip had been the high-point of his year so far, if he could spend every free weekend out there with Stiles, he would. He just knew that his teenage son was still his teenage son and had friends that he liked to hang out with on weekends, which was a good thing; a great thing, actually. It was about time the kid branched out and made some connections outside of Scott, as hard of a concept as that was to grasp sometimes. But if wanted to make this a more regular thing despite all of that, he was more than eager to take him. Nothing would make him happier, in fact.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Stiles glanced up and caught his dad’s smirk, grinning back at him momentarily before getting back to work. So maybe he needed to ask Scott about his “Be a Better Scott McCall” program and how it worked. He had a feeling he was going to need it even if he’d have to rename it. But maybe he wasn’t off to such a bad start.