Work Text:
It had been a week since Stiles showed up at school. An entire week, and they hadn't thought to call him. The sheriff could have strangled the school secretary. Was it technically her fault? No. But his son was missing and they waited a week to call him.
He snatched his coat off of the wall, shouting a quick explanation to the receptionist. His mind raced through every time in the past week he'd seen Stiles. He hadn't seen the human version at all, but he thought he'd seen a little ball of red curled up on his pillowcase. He thought he'd seen him. He let Stiles stay home from school for two weeks after his mothers death, and not once had he shifted back to a human. He stayed in his human body during the funeral, but as soon as they were in the car he was back in his fur. John tried tempting him with peanuts, videogames, pizza, nothing could get him to shift back. Now Stiles was gone and he had no idea how to look for him.
He was halfway home before he noticed the brightly colored tuft of red-brown fur on the floor of the passenger side. He pulled to the side of the road and put the car in park.
“Stiles,” John breathed. “You scared me.” The squirrel didn't move. His tail lay over his body, limp, and ungroomed. John scooped him up into his arms and set him down on the passanger seat. Stiles tail twitched, but his body remained limp. He blinked up at his father with dark, bleary eyes.
John's breath stilted. He pressed two fingers right over Stiles chest and pressed down, checking his heartbeat exactly how Dr. Deaton said. He heard the steady, slow rhythm and breathed a sigh of relief. He could feel his little puffing breath against his hand.
He stroked the little squirrel down his back, just grateful to know his son was safe and alive. He would deal with him skipping school later, but for now, all he wanted to do was embrace him and keep him close. He couldn't lose his wife and his son, not both of them. Not ever. He wondered for how long Stiles had been sneaking into his car. The thought of him all alone, tired, hungry, and depressed, curled up in the police cruiser waiting for him to be finished with work and drive them both home again.
“If you wanted to stay close, I wish you would have just asked,” John whispered to him. He could only manage a whisper, because any other noise would have revealed just how close he was to crying. He wasn't sure if it was from relief that Stiles was okay, or grief that Stiles wasn't okay.
School could wait another day, he decided as he drove them both back to the station. As he left the car he tucked Stiles into his jacket so the deputies wouldn't see. He remembered back to when he was just a deputy himself and he'd done the same thing with the boys mother, back when there was only one weresquirrel in his life.
He paused by the receptionists desk.
“Just a false alarm,” he muttered. He felt the subtle little wiggle of the squirrel tight against his chest, and being so, so, thankful for it.
“Is Stiles okay?” the woman asked, her dark brown eyes glittering with worry. The entire station adored Stiles, and he adored them too. Most of them had even babysat him at one time or another. They always said he was the best at hide and seek. Only John knew he cheated.
“He'll get there,” John said solemnly. “Can you just make sure no one enters my office for a little bit?” The woman was more than happy to oblige.
John closed and locked the door behind him. He set Stiles down on his chair and pulled out his desk drawer. He cleared out a small space in the desk, removing files, a stapler, some old receipts, and replaced them with towels, napkins, anything soft and warm he thought a squirrel might like. He folded up one of his extra shirts he kept in the closet - just in case he spilled coffee on himself again – and put that inside the drawer too.
He scooped Stiles up from his perch and set him inside the drawer. He barely moved as he was lifted and resettled. John kept the drawer open just a crack so he could keep checking on him. The only movements that came from within was the gentle up and down motion of the squirrels chest as he breathed.
John went back to work, going through the more mundane aspects of being a sheriff like paperwork. Every so often he peered inside the drawer. Eventually Stiles uncurled, bit by bit, hair by hair. He nestled himself in amongst the shirt and the napkins until his entire body was buried underneath the material, save for his head which poked out one of the shirt sleeves.
All was quiet for several hours, until finally John got a call he couldn't ignore. The department was stretched thin as it was, and he couldn't afford to keep pushing off his actual duties. Unfortunately, it meant leaving Stiles alone in the office while he responded to it. Walking out the door physically hurt him, his heart seized up as he shut and locked it behind him. The entire time he spent at the scene his mind kept drifting back to his son, balled up in a desk drawer, limp, and unmoving. He shook the thoughts from his head, as much as he wanted to wallow and mourn right now there were others who needed his help. He took a deep breath and carried on with his work.
When John returned from the call he found Stiles- the human Stiles – redressed and sitting in one of the plush arm chairs in the corner of his office. His eyes were red and puffy but he wasn't crying. He wore his fathers jacket, which was so large on him his fingers barely poked through the sleeves. In his hands he held a styrofoam coffee cup.
“I miss mom,” he said quietly when his father sat down next to him. He wiped his eyes on one of the oversized sleeves.
“I miss her too,” John said as he sat down on the edge of the chair. He drapped his arm over Stiles shoulders. Stiles scooted closer to lay his head down against him. It was good to actually see his face again, the one that looked like his. He just wished it weren't so sad.
“Sometimes,” Stiles started to say, with water in his voice and in his eyes, “when you had to work really early, mom would take me to the preserve and show me how to forage. She taught me how to build a nest. She showed me how to pick acorns.”
“I know,” John said, smiling. His wife always gave him that guilty look when he asked why the school left a voice mail at the sheriffs station. But he couldn't blame her, even if he wanted too, because Stiles was just as much a squirrel as he was a human.
“You did?”
“Yeah, she was always bad at keeping secrets,” Stiles gave a sniffling laugh.
“Were you mad?”
“No,” John rubbed his shoulders comfortingly. “Only when she made you miss tests and I had to go to those teacher conferences alone; you know the whole 'but acorn seasons almost over,' excuse doesn't really work well, right?” This time Stiles laugh was more genuine. He rested his head against his fathers shoulder.
“Do you think her nest is still there?”
“I don't know. Do you want to go up to the preserve this weekend and see if we can find it?” He doubted it; there were a number of bad storms that year, a few forest fires, but he wouldn't tell Stiles that.
The boy nodded. “Can we go now?” he asked hopefully. He looked up, his big brown eyes wide as saucers.
“Not today, you have to go back to school, and I have to go back to work. But we'll go this weekend. I promise.”
“Okay,” Stiles agreed.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
“This is it! This is it!” Stiles said, jumping over a dead log and pointing towards the giant redwood tree in the distance. “This is her tree!” He had a stupid happy grin on his face, the first grin John had seen on him in months. It had taken them two hours to hike up into the forest. The sheriff gave his son an exhausted thumbs up and collapsed down onto a log, panting and heaving as his breath left him. For the tiny squirrel the trek was no great feat, but for the middle-aged sheriff who ate too much red meat he might as well have climbed a mountain.
“Dad? Are you coming?” Stiles asked, tilting his head to one side. He was practically running in place with the desire to shift, his hands fidgeting anxiously with his clothes.
“You go on ahead, kid,” the sheriff wheezed. “I'll be there once I've caught my breath.” Stiles nodded, and a second later all that remained of him was a small bundle of red fluff, dashing up the redwood.
He watched Stiles skip, leap, and climb until he was nearly thirty feet high. Watching him now, ascend the redwood tree with all the skill and exuberance his tiny body could hold John knew Stiles would always want to climb high, far into the heavens, and he wouldn't let anything or anyone hold him back. John certainly wouldn't try, the boy was like his mother that way.