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Language:
English
Series:
Part 3 of Forever a WIP
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Published:
2016-05-10
Words:
1,254
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
11
Kudos:
211
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15
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3,523

With Hands Too Small to Hold

Summary:

Stiles' coping mechanisms leave something to be desired.

Notes:

In my doc, the foreword for this project was "lots of stuff about dead moms".

That hasn't really changed.

This is a bunch of exposition, and I'm sort of sorry about that. I just wanted to get this fic out of my wip folder, so I barely even gave it a glance-over for SPaG.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

The first time Stiles regresses, he’s eight years old. He’s eight years old, his mommy is dead, and his daddy spends too much time having grown up drinks and sleeping. Stiles tries to listen to his mommy. One of the last things she said (that made any sense) was to take care of Daddy because he works too hard. Daddy hasn’t been working that much, but this must count, too. Stiles brings his daddy uneven peanut butter and banana sandwiches with mustard—but only spicy mustard because yellow mustard is gross. He leaves the tylenol bottle and a glass of water by his daddy’s head for when he wakes up. He gives him cheerful drawings of police chases and dinosaurs and Batman because Daddy cries a lot when he thinks Stiles can’t see. Sometimes Stiles sits just out of sight from the dining room table and watches his daddy cry and ask Mommy to come back and help. Daddy says he can’t do this without her—he can’t raise Stiles alone.

Stiles’ chest hurts, and it gets hard to breathe whenever he sees his daddy cry. He wonders what he can do to make it easier when he’s already trying so hard. He’d do anything to help, but everyone agrees. They all tell him that he’s too young. You’re too little, Stiles. Leave it to the grown ups, okay?

One day he wakes up and everything feels simpler. His fingers are clumsy and don’t move right when he tries to make his bed, so he leaves it alone. He can’t decide what to wear, so he stays in his Batman pajamas. Batman is awesome.

He checks the big bedroom, but it’s empty. With a pout, Stiles tiptoes downstairs and into the kitchen. Daddy’s asleep at the table again, so he plays the quiet game and turns on his cartoons while he waits. He curls up on the couch under the blanket that still smells a little bit like Mommy and chews on Rex the tyrannosaurus. Stiles doesn’t need to carry Rex everywhere; he hasn’t in over a year. Mostly Rex guards the bed and makes sure that nothing comes out of Stiles’ closet while he’s asleep. Today he can’t imagine going anywhere without him. Mommy gave him Rex, and other than Scott, Rex is his best and oldest friend. Of course, he wants to watch TV with Stiles. It’s tradition—or it was. Everything is too fuzzy to think about things like that.

Eventually, Stiles gets bored when the Saturday morning cartoons turn into regular cartoons. He wishes that he still had his coloring books, but he let his little cousin have them. Stiles is too old to color. Coloring books are for babies. He can draw his own pictures like a big boy.

A big boy who feels weirdly incapable of making a bowl of cereal. Just the thought of going to the kitchen and getting out the milk and using the step stool to reach the good cereal makes him want to cry or throw a tantrum. Part of him recognizes that this is strange, but he shoves it away. He’s starting to feel hungry and lonely, and he misses his mommy. He’s past ready for Daddy to wake up and help him. He doesn’t want cold cereal and a day of playing quietly with his toys. Stiles wants to be with Daddy and have the funny shaped pancakes that he was promised. They’re supposed to put together his new puzzle with the snake picture and then watch Lilo & Stitch. They’re supposed to do a lot of things, but they can’t if Daddy’s always sleeping.

Stiles sniffles and drags his sleeve across his dripping nose before pushing his thumb into his mouth. He knows he’s not supposed to suck his thumb anymore. Jackson calls him a baby for doing it at school, and Miss Melissa says that it’s bad for his teeth. But he can’t help it. Remembering not to suck his thumb or chew on his clothes or toys is too hard sometimes.

Suddenly, it feels like every awful feeling in the world crashes down on him. Awkwardly holding the blanket and Rex, he dashes into the dining room and settles on the floor by Daddy’s chair. He shuffles around until he can wrap himself securely and sets his head against his daddy’s knee. Finally able to relax, Stiles takes a nap. He falls asleep sucking his thumb and leaking tears while he clutches Rex to his thin chest.

The next morning, instead of going to church Daddy makes Stiles funny shaped pancakes and empties a lot of bottles in the sink. They never talk about how he woke up in the late afternoon with a tear-stained and snotty little boy sitting by his leg. All Stiles knows is that despite missing Claudia Stilinski’s presence like an amputated limb, things start improving from that day forward.

Years and a lot of research later, Stiles knows that an eight year old regressing to the state of a four or five year old isn’t that remarkable. Or it wouldn’t be if it didn’t happen again. This is his life, so of course, it keeps happening. Stiles never quite knows what’s going to trigger an event, but he starts to figure out a pattern. Like his mom’s birthday one year. The first time he and his dad have Thanksgiving in Beacon Hills instead of spending it with his grandparents. The day he sees Jackson kiss Lydia in the hallway right after tripping him into the trash cans. A random weekend when none of his online friends are around and Scott’s visiting family in Texas.

All he has to do is avoid thinking about his mom, experiencing change, being embarrassed, or feeling lonely. No sweat. It’s a tall order, but he can handle it. He has to. So far, Stiles has been lucky. He never seems to regress around other people. Usually, it all hits him when he’s somewhere safe and alone, but what if that’s not always the case? What if he can’t control his stupid feelings and turns little while he’s driving or in class or at lacrosse practice?

Consequences run the gamut from abject humiliation to life-threatening. This is no way to live. What’s the point of all the therapy and drugs if he still needs such a dumb and inconvenient coping mechanism? He’s attempted to hold back the urge with varying degrees of success. Mostly, it just makes him miserable and stressed out—which makes him likely to spend even more time little.

As shameful secrets go, this one could be worse? Barely. It would still ruin his high school existence if it got out, so he manages. He works around the ADHD and the anxiety and social awkwardness and random episodes of regression. It’s all cool.

Then Stiles drags Scott out to look for half a body. Discovering that werewolves are real does nothing to help keep his stress levels down.

The night they kill Peter Hale, Stiles skips class and stays little for the better part of three days. When he comes back to his usual self, they’re out of peanut butter, bananas, and sliced bread.

He rips down the new artwork on the fridge before his dad has a chance to see it. If he scrawls a hasty “#1 Sheriff Dad” on the best one and leaves it on his dad’s desk, then it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a joke, and it’s going to stay that way.

Notes:

I guess this sort of stands alone? I don't even know anymore.

The rest of this fic was going to be right after the end of S2. Peter was probably going to crawl into Stiles' window and discover that he'd regressed. Which would snowball into a weird caretaker relationship into an romantic relationship into a romantic-sexual relationship. Things were going to be gross and codependent and unhealthy. Also daddy kink. I'm sure that no one is surprised that this was the original plan, but I don't think I feel up to the emotional labor of writing the damn thing.

If someone else wants to do it, then feel free. Just let me know.

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