Chapter Text
The ugly leg braces took three appointments.
First the measurements. Then the casting where a woman with careful hands wrapped damp plaster around both of Stiles’ legs while he sat awkwardly on the exam table trying not to think about the fact that his body needed blueprints now. The third was when he tried them on, which – yuck. They were plastic down the back of his legs, wrapping around his heel and encasing his entire foot. The straps around the front made them snug.
Everybody kept sounding excited about it.
“That’s actually a really good fit for hypermobility.”
“We caught this early.”
“These could prevent long-term damage.”
Every sentence landed with the same strange underlying implication: your body is a problem we can solve if you cooperate correctly.
Noah had been excited, trusting the doctor’s words that they would be a huge improvement.
Stiles was not optimistic about that. He’d had to give them a Wikipedia-level overview of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome at the first appointment.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Very sexy. Real teen heartthrob stuff.”
Noah ignored that. “The orthotist said they should help keep your knees from overextending.”
“My knees aren’t the only joints attached to my body.”
“You said your knees hurt.”
“They do hurt.”
“Then maybe try the thing designed by medical professionals to help.”
The problem was that Stiles had tried them.
For two weeks, actually.
Stiles hated it.
Two weeks of plastic clacking loudly every time he sat down at school. Two weeks of the entire contraption making it utterly uncomfortable to sit. Two weeks of his hips aching by the end of the day because changing the way he walked changed everything else with it. His knees didn’t even feel more stable, just not hyperextending, which was only half his problem – gravity pulling his joints apart as he walked was the other half. Only now his lower back burned and both hips clicked every time he climbed stairs. And if he took his shoes off, he couldn’t even walk anymore. Who thought rounding the plastic on the feet so he turned into a human roller derby was a good idea?
They looked less like clothing and more like something designed in a lab to restrain a medium-sized cryptid.
It felt like winning a raffle where the grand prize was different pain by preloading other joints to bear the burden of them.
And every time he tried explaining that, adults got this expression on their faces. Like he was refusing vegetables instead of describing an actual physical problem.
“You need to give your body time to adjust.”
“Most patients take a while to get used to them.”
Noah had picked up the phrase almost immediately after that.
Adjust.
Every conversation somehow circled back to adjusting.
“I don’t want to wear them anymore,” Stiles admitted.
Noah looked up from the paperwork he’d been pretending not to read.
“You haven’t worn them consistently enough to know if they’ll help long term.”
“I wore them enough to know my hips are getting worse.”
“That’s temporary.”
“You don’t know that.”
“The specialist said-”
“I know what the specialist said.” The words came out sharper than he intended. “Everybody keeps telling me what specialists said like that somehow matters more than what my actual body is doing.”
Noah’s face tightened a little at that, and Stiles felt a little worse. He had that wounded look when his concern stopped being received as love.
“I’m trying to help you.”
“I know.”
That was the worst part. Stiles knew.
If his dad were being cruel, this would be easy. If he were mocking him or dismissing him or acting embarrassed about the whole thing, Stiles could push back against that. He could get angry. He could slam doors and feel justified afterward.
Instead, his dad just looked tired all the time now.
Scared, too, sometimes when he thought Stiles wasn’t looking.
Like every new diagnosis arrived wrapped around another invisible terror Noah didn’t know how to name.
And somewhere inside all of that fear, decisions had quietly stopped belonging to Stiles.
Doctors asked Noah questions first now. Noah kept track of medications because “it’s safer this way.” Noah sat in on every appointment even when Stiles asked him not to. Half the time people spoke about him like he wasn’t sitting right there.
“He’s resistant to mobility aids.”
“He struggles with compliance.”
“He pushes through pain.”
Like he was a difficult case study instead of a person having the deeply unreasonable reaction of not wanting his entire life redesigned without permission.
Noah sighed. “Just keep trying a little longer. For me?”
Something inside Stiles curled inward immediately. Exhaustion more than anger. The kind that made him want to disappear upstairs and sleep for twelve hours just to avoid having this conversation again.
Stiles looked at him for a second. Then he looked away.
“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”
He went upstairs. He lay down on his bed and stared at the ceiling and the thing in his chest — the thing that wasn't quite anger, that didn't have a shape yet — pressed against his ribs and waited.
The braces stayed in the closet of his room for another two weeks.
He didn't wear them again.
The Jeep had always fit him strangely well.
There was something about the familiar looseness of it, the cracked vinyl seats and stubborn steering column and the way the engine complained before finally turning over that made it feel less like a vehicle and more like a friend.
It was his.
That mattered more lately than it used to.
So it came out of nowhere at dinner when Noah set down his fork and said, “I've been looking at some options. For a vehicle.”
Stiles looked up.
“Your Jeep,” Noah said, like that clarified anything. “It's old. And it might be better for your joints to get something newer that we can adapt.”
Stiles stared at him unblinking.
“I know you love it,” Noah said quickly. “I'm not saying tomorrow. I'm just saying down the line it might be worth thinking about something more—“
“It was mom's.”
Noah's mouth closed. Something moved across his face that he didn't let finish.
“I know that,” he said, quieter.
“Then why are you researching it without telling me.”
It didn't come out as a question. Stiles wasn't sure he meant it as one.
Noah looked at his plate. “I'm trying to stay ahead of things. That's all.”
“Ahead of what? I can still drive. I drove today.”
“I know.”
“Then what are you staying ahead of.”
“I don’t know, this is all new for me too. I mean, what if you dislocate your knee pressing the gas—or the clutch? Maybe something more—modern will be easier. We can even adapt it so you can drive with your hands—”
“So my fingers can dislocate instead?”
“But what if—”
“What if—what if… Dad, I can create hypotheticals too. I have. What if you die in your sleep. What if you die on the job. What if you get in a car accident. Doesn’t mean they’re going to happen. It’s just fear after mom—”
The kitchen went quiet. Stiles looked back down at his food. His hands were unsteady. The thing in his chest was too. His dad was already building a future where Stiles needed saving — already measuring him for it, quietly, without asking.
Like the question was never if.
Like it had always just been when.
The first time Stiles needed a dose of the new pain medication he’d been given, it wasn’t with the other bottles his dad had brought home from the CVS.
He checked the bathroom cabinet. He checked his nightstand. He went back downstairs and found his dad in the kitchen.
“Did the pharmacy not fill the oxy?”
Noah set his coffee down on the table, “Well, good morning to you too.”
“Dad. I hurt. I need to know if—”
“They’re in the safe.”
Stiles stared at his dad. He’d said it with such a finality, like it was something they had both agreed on.
“The safe,” Stiles repeated, because maybe if he said it back out loud it would start making sense as a normal sentence and not something his dad had apparently decided in private without him.
Noah nodded like that settled it. “It’s a controlled substance.”
“So is my Adderall.”
“That’s different.”
It came out too fast, which meant it was either true in a way his dad hadn’t figured out how to explain yet, or it wasn’t true at all and he needed it to be.
Stiles kept one hand braced on the back of the kitchen chair, trying not to shift his weight too obviously. His hips were doing that deep, grinding ache that made standing feel like a negotiation he was losing one second at a time, and the stupidest part was that the medication existed. It was in the house. Filled and paid for and close enough that he could almost feel the shape of the bottle through the walls, except apparently it had been promoted from prescription to evidence.
His dad had never done that with the Adderall. Not even after sophomore year, when Stiles had gone through it too fast and Noah had found the bottle nearly empty before it was supposed to be. There had been a fight then. A real one. His dad had looked terrified and furious and Stiles had felt cornered enough to say things he knew would land badly because sometimes the only way out of being watched was to become too sharp to hold.
But even after that, his dad hadn’t locked it away.
He’d talked and hovered. He’d checked in too much for a while. But he hadn’t made Stiles ask him for it dose by dose, like a child with a fever or an interrogation suspect needing the bathroom.
“This isn’t about it being controlled,” Stiles said.
Noah’s expression changed, barely, but enough.
“Stiles.”
“No, because if it was, we would’ve had this conversation already.” His voice stayed quieter than he expected, which somehow made it worse. He wanted anger and got exhaustion instead. “You’re not worried about it being a controlled substance. You’re worried because this one scares you.”
Noah looked down at his coffee. It had probably gone cold by now. Stiles wondered suddenly if his dad had been sitting there waiting for this conversation, rehearsing versions of it in his head where Stiles reacted better, or maybe where he didn’t notice the missing bottle until Noah could explain it first and make the whole thing sound reasonable.
“It should scare me,” Noah said finally. “These drugs are serious.”
“So is being in pain.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
That landed too hard. Stiles saw it the second it hit and hated himself because a part of him was glad. Not because he wanted to hurt his dad, but because some ugly little survival instinct in him wanted proof that his words could still be heard.
His dad rubbed both hands over his face and for one second he just looked tired. He wasn’t just some adult anymore or the Sheriff, just his dad, sitting at the kitchen table in yesterday’s undershirt, trying to build a fence around every bad thing that might happen before it got close enough to take another person from him.
And Stiles understood that. He understood it so well it made him want to crawl out of his own skin.
“I’m not saying you can’t have them,” Noah said. “I’m saying I want to know when you take them.”
“Which means I have to ask.”
“It means we keep track.”
“No, Dad. You keep track.” Stiles swallowed, his throat suddenly tight in a way that had nothing to do with pain. “I stand here and tell you I hurt badly enough to need it, and then you decide whether that’s true enough to open the safe.”
Noah flinched.
Good, some mean part of Stiles thought, then immediately felt sick about it.
“That’s not what this is,” Noah pushed back.
“Then give me the bottle.”
The silence after that was too complete. They both stared at each other amid the ordinary kitchen hum of the refrigerator and the faint tick of the wall clock, neither of them moving.
Stiles nodded once, because there it was. There was the whole conversation, stripped down past every careful explanation and every terrified justification.
His dad loved him.
His dad was scared for him.
His dad wanted him safe.
His dad still wasn’t getting up.
Something in Stiles’ chest folded in on itself, small and hot and nameless.
“Okay,” he said, even though none of this was okay. “Can I have one, then?”
Noah stood immediately, like being useful again was a relief. Like this version of the conversation made sense to him. He could open a safe, hand over a pill and watch Stiles take it and call that care.
Stiles stayed at the table staring at the place where his coffee mug had left a pale ring on the wood, while Noah went down the hall.
The worst part was that he was going to take it.
Of course he was. He hurt.