Nature and Nurture: Finding the Perfect Blend

Chapter 3: The Sunlight

The first day he was home Stiles would have been jumping for joy if he wouldn't have ended up flat on the ground if he tried. Instead he'd allowed his dad and Scott to help him out of the car, up the path, and into the house with minimal complaining on his part.

He'd been given some time by himself and as he looked around his room and took in the faded bedsheets and the light coming in through the windows, he couldn't help the huge grin that grew across his face. He shook off his slipper and stuck his socked foot into the sunlight. It felt amazingly good and Stiles almost groaned at the feeling. He was so relieved to be home.

The more he let the sun's heat sink into his foot, the more he wanted to lie down in that patch of light and let it soak through every bone of his body until he was nothing but contented feelings and lax muscle.

His dad calling to him had him frowning as he looked around. He had a moment of confusion spiked with a little fear. He was standing with aid of his cane, in the middle of the patch of sunlight. He had one arm out of the sleeve of his flannel shirt and both slippers off. Stiles couldn't remember moving from his bed.

He took a slow step back out of the sunlight and carefully put his shirt back on properly. He was taking deep breaths and trying to stop the shaking in his hands when his door opened and Scott stuck his head in.

"Your dad's putting lunch together for us. You need help walking?"

Stiles gripped his cane tighter and forced out a wiry smirk. "Yeah. I don't want to know what dad classifies as a good lunch. Do we even have anything edible or is the fridge a direct portal to high cholesterol?" He made a mental note to go through the kitchen and throw out all the crap that had inevitably made it's way into the house while he'd been gone.

Scott snorted his laugh, causing Stiles to stumble into him a bit as he placed an arm around Stiles' middle. "Sorry. Um, I saw bacon and some other kind of cold cuts when I had a quick glance the other day. I don't know how much worse it's gotten."

Stiles decided yelling that his dad's bacon days were over and that there'd better be a salad waiting when he got to the kitchen, was a better use of his time than worrying about whatever had happened before with the sunlight.

***

Stiles sat back in his chair and dropped his pen on the desk in front of him before running his hands over his face and scratching at his scalp. It had been two days since he'd come home and his physical health was getter better. His mental health was another matter, but Stiles was a pro at hiding internal angst. It helped that everyone expected him to have some kind of anxiety at any given time.

He didn't have to worry about school for a while, due to getting better, and his dad was watching TV downstairs, so he'd been working on the problem his abduction had brought up. So far, all the information he had was inconclusive. He'd been taking his displeasure out on a poor unfortunate stress ball, stabbing it with his pen so many times it had broken open. Flicking the pieces off his table into the rubbish bin with a snarled, "Fat lot of good you did," Stiles rechecked what he'd written in the back of one of his text books along the margins.

Normally he would have put his findings up on one of his boards, but that allowed anyone who visited his room to know what he was working on. Including his dad. A book was the safest place to hide his research from any prying eyes. Who would look in a statistic school book? Not him. He'd avoid it, if nothing else.

He'd listed all of the 'chance' moments he could remember. All of the lucky breaks that allowed him to do something that was important. Things that could be, and had been, written off as spectacularly good fortune. The list included having his bat hold up the beams under the Nemeton (when werewolf and human strength were failing), and getting phone reception in La Iglesia in time to help his dad save Lydia and Mason. He'd also added holding Derek up in the pool for hours. Because while he had stamina, he didn't have that much, and looking back, what he'd done was impressive and also somewhat impossible for him.