Work Text:
The kid has so much energy.
You take him to go for ice cream. He talks loudly the whole way there. Why is the park so sad in winter and so happy in spring? Where have the baby ducks gone? Do you think trees know how tall they are, so tall their branches touch the sky? Why is there a man sleeping on that bench all the time? Why are flowers all different colors?
He notices every little thing, because every little thing is important enough for him to see and interrogate and ponder. Then share loudly with any available audience. The kid has no filter: an interrupted stream of jumbled thoughts flows from his mouth day in and day out. He’s hyperactive.
He sees the eight trays of ice cream, each with teo different flavors and you think oh here we go again. It takes about half an hour of comparing the pros and cons of each before he decides on chocolate. As you hand him the cone, you can only hope that you’re not too terrible a father.
--
Kindergarten. The teachers complain. He’s loud, he’s messy, he doesn’t pick up the pencils or glue or scissors he uses. He can be treacherously kind, but he gets into fights over stupid things and he’s hurt two classmates last time. It takes a while to calm him down. You worry. Your wife tells you, with a smile, not to do it so much. You try to worry a little less.
--
The kid has a best friend. This is a first. The kid’s best friend’s name is Scott, he says proudly, and one day, they’re gonna travel to the moon together.
“It’ll be so cool! With Scott we’re gonna build a spaceship, a red one, with a very pointy bit and it’ll have the shape of a fish and it’ll go super fast! How long does it take to build a spaceship?” he screams excitedly in the car. And as expected, you don’t need to think up a good answer to that because he picks back up again. “Don’t worry, though, we’ll come back,” he adds much more solemnly. “I’ll tell you about all the cool things you can see in space. Shootin’ stars and black holes and everything. And Scott can tell his mom, too.”
Your wife is smiling. “Yeah? Think this Scott can tell you more about space touring?”
“I tell Scott about space, Mommy.”
--
Your wife is not doing well. She was always a little forgetful, but never about important things. She starts telling the same stories again and again, forgetting dates. Once you tell her about today’s lunch discussion from work, only she retells your story back to you five minutes later into the conversation with “I don’t remember who told me that.”
--
She mostly stays at the hospital now. Very often she doesn’t recognize anyone, and looking into her eyes holding hands only to hear “Who are you?” could just be the most heartbreaking thing in the world.
It could, but it’s not, because the first place on the list is taken when she looks at your son and doesn’t recognize him, either.
--
Your son used to have a hard time shutting up.
--
She looks at him with terror in her eyes and screams. When he tries to say “hi, mom” or hold her hand, she flinches so bad she almost topples over the other side of her bed. She looks right at you with despair and says “Help. Help me.”
The next time it happens, she doesn’t stop there. She looks around and flees, ends up on the roof. You run after her. Stiles follows silently. She threatens to throw herself off of it.
--
As the kid grows, sometimes, he goes to visit her alone. The same happens again, and you’re not always there to talk her down or to shield his eyes or ears.
--
Here’s the thing: sometimes you almost wish she were already dead.
You don’t know how to deal with the guilt of that.
--
He’s sitting in the hospital waiting room with his head in his hands and all you can think is that you failed. You put your head on his shoulder - it’s shaking - and rub his back. He’s so small still. You want to scream and cry and beg, but mostly, you want to know if you really can raise this little boy to be a good man. You know -- God, you know, you see it every day -- that there are tens of thousands of ways to mess up along the way, and you grimly wonder how long it’ll take you to do so.
--
It doesn’t take long at all, because your wife is dead and you’re desperate and for a while, the bottle is the best at taking the pain away.
The kid is much more quiet now. Thank God for his friend and his friend’s mom Melissa and sleepovers in general. The kid doesn’t have to see you drowning in Jack’s all night long. Or at least, not all nights.
--
Eventually, with exhausting excruciating slowness, you start picking up some of the pieces. It hurts every step of the way, but you put away the glass after two, then after one. You start talking again at work - really talking to people, not just colleagues.
More importantly, you start speaking again to your son, whom you know you’ve failed in unimaginable ways.
Stiles is a good kid. Stiles is growing well, and miraculously, Stiles is doing okay. He does his best in school and he is not failing anything, except maybe PE. Some teachers still complain - talks in class, hands in papers late - but they don’t know anything. Each day you’re thanking God that He didn’t take him, too. Each morning you want to hug him for a few minutes before starting the day. Each afternoon you get to pick him up from school and bring him back to work, where Tara helps him with his math homework and you usually get to hear his voice as he thinks over his math problems. Each evening you struggle to find something to cook, usually deciding to order fast food, before you eat dinner together.
But most of all what you want to do, without really knowing how, is to hold him and apologize and tell him that never again will you let him down this way.
You know that’s not the answer, though. You know by now how words can fail you, can be all deceit and lies. And Stiles knows that too - he must.
So you set to showing him through your actions. You’re gonna be the best goddamn parent you can be, and fuck everything that’s already happened. If there’s an ounce of joy or pride you can get in the future then you’re damn well entitled to work for it. You can see he’s surprised by this, your newfound determination. You can clearly see he does not expect it to last.
Well, it will.