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A million thoughts should’ve been racing through the Sheriff’s head at that moment, he had just been made privy to the existence of werewolves after all, but the only thing he could think about was the fact that his son was dating a twenty-something year-old exonerated murder suspect.
John tried to form words but the part of his brain that handled communication seemed to be melting. He tried to say ‘Stiles, could you please step away from the—objectively, hot—murderer?’ but all that came out was, “Your mom would’ve been jealous.”
Crap, I didn’t mean to say that! Fix it, Fix it, dammit!
“I’ve imagined you coming out to me a few times ever since I had a son and I can honestly say I never imagined this.”
Tongue, what are you doing? Can you start responding to what I actually want to say, please?
Then he thought back; hadn’t Stiles tried to come out to him before, outside The Jungle? And hadn’t the Sheriff responded in the worst way possible? He had dismissed it and then made a joke that abused a stereotype.
Fuck! Is that what drove him to rebel by dating someone too old for him? It’s my fault, isn’t it?
The Sheriff took a moment to gather together his words, but got cut off by Stiles before he could say anything. “Dad, are you okay? I’m glad I took your gun; you look about ready to shoot yourself. Understandably.”
“Of course I’m not okay!” John’s hands were flailing around wildly, occasionally pointing at Stiles and Derek accusingly in order to drive home his points. “I may have responded to you coming out of the closet badly last time but I think you’re the only person in history to come out of the closet badly. We’re in the middle of talking about werewolves and kanimas when suddenly you’re talking about your boyfriend!”
“I just thought I’d get it all out quickly, like a Band-Aid!”
“THAT HAS GOT TO BE THE WORST METAPHOR EVER!”
Okay, calm down, there’s no need to yell. The Sheriff took a moment to convince himself of this, because he certainly didn’t believe it at the moment.
“Okay, sorry, I shouldn’t yell. But seriously, did it have to be him?” John looked at Derek threateningly. John had practiced this look over years of interrogating suspects, but Derek just shrugged it off and John recognized why. Derek was too used to being on the other side of this stare to fall victim to it.
“What do you mean by that? We told you, he’s innocent! Peter’s the one who killed all those people!” Stiles began to act nervous again and John knew how Stiles acted when he was nervous. He did not want that.
“You know, ‘killed’ is such a literal word. I consider myself more of an avenging angel then a killer, so I prefer ‘smited’. Or is it ‘smote’?”
Everyone but John turned to face Peter and shouted, “SHUT UP PETER!”
“Well you do realize that Stiles’ dad is going to have no choice but to arrest me now, so thank you for that. I think I deserve to defend myself.”
“You deserve absolutely nothing! Now shut up while I talk to my dad.” Peter’s lip curled upwards, but he silenced himself.
It was a true testament of the severity of the current situation that John put ‘Talk to son’ higher up on his priorities than ‘Deal with murderer’.
“Sir, I promise you, my intentions with your son are just.” Stiles shot Derek a look that clearly said ‘did you just use the word ‘sir’?’. “I only want to protect him.”
The Sheriff flinched. It sounded too rehearsed. He knew what it meant when something sounded rehearsed; he dealt with that from suspects all the time. It meant one of two things: they either cared that the person they were talking to believed they were telling the truth or they were trying to convince themselves it was true.
John sighed. He knew which one it was, Derek cared. He cared about Stiles and he cared about John’s opinion of their relationship.
But more importantly, Stiles cared about John’s opinion of their relationship.
Sarah, what should I do? How am I supposed to respond to something like this? What would you do?
John searched for the answer to these questions before settling on something. “Derek, I think you should come over for dinner so we can talk about this properly. And privately.” The Sheriff glanced at the rest of the pack, who were still staring between Derek and John like they were playing tennis.
Tennis with grenades.
“Yeah, that sounds good.” Derek stared at Stiles, clearly thankful for the Sheriff’s offer. “And I swear, we’re being safe and using protection.”
The whole room flinched, including Derek.
Derek had swung just a bit too hard and now the grenade was blowing up in his face.
“You guys are sleeping together? What? You guys are… WHAT!?”
But then the look on the Sheriff’s face changed from anger to horror, and he looked from Derek to Stiles. “Wait a second, is that where my handcuffs went?”