fixing things (shouldn't be this complicated) [Teen Wolf]

Third Step, Or, Warp Speed Ahead [2]

The hunt's a bust. Stiles kind of thought it would be, since no one really knows what they're looking for, but it's still frustrating. Neither the woods nor the search over of the town revealed anything, although there was some excitement for a while at one of the motels in Beacon Hills Township, but no dice. Hopefully Peter will have something, and boy there's a sentence Stiles never thought he'd say again.

The clinic is busy when walks into it, so he just darts into the back to tell Deaton that he's back and he's going to walk down the road a bit. Deaton looks up from the male cat whose underbelly he's examining, says, "Be careful," and goes back to what he's doing. Stiles looks carefully away from where the scalpel is going and backs out the door of the surgery.

The sidewalk of Picketer is reassuringly familiar. Stiles can pretend that he's walking with Scott from the clinic to the police station to check on his dad before driving Scott and himself home. Even some of the faces are the same, if younger; he says hello to Mrs. Strutherton and Mrs. Willis, only realizing after he's already passed them that that's a mistake. Now the gossip mill is going to go into overdrive about him (luckily he hadn't greeted them by name, maybe they'll just say he's really friendly and polite and not go into he's such a stalker territory). He bets by early morning tomorrow the rumormongers in town will have found out he lives with Deaton and will show up with casseroles and thinly-veiled smiles and the most invasive questions holy god –

He looks up at the police station then, his heart stuttering in his throat. His dad's been dead for only a few weeks but it feels like forever according to the gaping maw in his chest. From the first days after through the funeral to now, Stiles had been so busy - had kept himself busy - enough that he could get by without throwing all of himself to the kraken in his chest. Doing this, stepping into the police station, would undo all of that. He would be voluntarily stepping over the edge of the abyss, voluntarily letting himself misstep and give in to the sobbing mess of a breakdown waiting patiently on the periphery. But he has to, he has to see him as he was, not as he is, dead as a doorknob.

The doors swing open, then closed behind him. There's the counter, and Deputy White behind it like every day before his death in 2007, two years from now. Stiles doesn't think about that, just looks towards the rec room, where his dad, not yet Sheriff, would be when not on the beat. He drifts over as close as he can get, ignoring White's query of "Can I help you?", peering in without actually blocking or going through the door.

And there he is. His dad is in a wrinkled police uniform, clutching a cup of station coffee as he jokes with John O'Hara. They used to call his dad Johnny at the station as a way to differentiate him from Uncle O'Hara. It looks like his dad has just come off shift, probably waiting for his relief to come in before he heads home. God, he looks so much younger, his wrinkles less entrenched, his smile coming easier, flashing brighter, chuckles coming out without that bone-tired edge Stiles remembers.

Stiles doesn't think he gets angry or resentful often. Normally he has too much to do and/or other things to focus on, and then whatever he's resenting will disappear under the thrill of new research, new information. Such is his way of coping with anything new. But this hot new flare of anger and the desire to wring someone's neck (which isn't actually new), he doesn't think he can bury it underneath research.

He turns on his heel and is out the door before White, who has come out from behind the counter halfway across the room, can stop him. The old man ends up only able to shout after him querulously, "Quit running in the station, boy! Show some decorum!"

The stairs disappear. The sidewalk rushes by underneath his feet like water. His breath pants roughly in his ears, though the sound of his heartbeat threatens to drown it out. He turns down an alley and then another alley before he starts punching the wall, his fist flaring in pain immediately. Ignoring that, he keeps punching the wall until blood runs over his knuckles and the pain is too much to ignore. Then he kicks, kicks and kicks and kicks, until his feet hurt and his legs too. He thinks about bashing his head against the wall, but no, too many brain cells would be lost, and he kind of needs those.