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There were a lot of things Stiles would have rather done with his Wednesday afternoon.
Watch paint dry. Alphabetize Derek’s spice rack by threat level. Shave a cactus with his teeth.
But instead, here he was. In line at a Wells Fargo, trying to convince the world’s most skeptical bank employee that yes, Hale was their son’s last name, yes, both parents were on the paperwork, and no, he didn’t want to discuss the “unusual guardian structure” with a woman who had a butterfly tattoo drawn in ballpoint pen on her wrist and a crucifix necklace that looked older than the Cold War.
“Are you sure your son’s last name is Hale?” she asked again, head tilted like a confused golden retriever. “Because the birth certificate you uploaded has—”
Stiles didn’t look up from the clipboard. “Unless someone’s out there faking preschool immunization records and report cards just to troll me, yeah. I’m sure.”
She blinked. He smiled. It wasn’t a friendly smile. It was the smile of a man who had once hacked into a city-wide emergency alert system to shut down a parking ticket server. Legally, he was reformed. Emotionally? Questionable.
He slid the form back across the counter and turned toward the bank lobby, where Eli—ten years old, shoelaces untied, Batman Band-Aid on his elbow—was kicking his sneakers against the base of a chair and sipping on an apple juice box like this was the DMV and not a scene from their supposed stable domestic life.
“You okay, bud?” Stiles called, watching as the juice box squelched.
Eli gave a half-hearted shrug. “You said there’d be candy.”
“I said there might be candy. It was a conditional clause.”
“This place is boring.”
“You know what’s not boring? Fiscal responsibility.”
Eli narrowed his eyes in betrayal.
And that was when the front doors exploded.
Like, literally exploded—kicked inward with a bang that sent glitter and purple smoke pouring into the air like someone had detonated a unicorn rave grenade.
Someone screamed. A kid dropped a lollipop. The security guard—who had been deeply invested in his phone—yelped and sprinted for the back like a cartoon sidekick.
Out of the smoke stepped four figures in matching outfits.
Well, mostly matching. There were tactical black hoodies with neon stripes, but two of them wore the hoods backwards, and one had bedazzled their mask. BEDAZZLED. Stiles took one look and sighed so deeply he felt it in his molars.
“Oh no,” he muttered, already bracing for disappointment. “They’re babies.”
The leader—by default, Stiles assumed, because they had the loudest voice and shiniest sneakers—did a dramatic spin and shouted:
“THIS IS A ROBBERY!”
There was a beat of stunned silence. The smoke hadn’t even cleared yet.
Everyone looked around like they were waiting for Ashton Kutcher to show up with a camera crew.
The robbers leaped into action. Sort of.
One of them tried to vault over the customer service desk and immediately fell flat. Another tossed a glitter bomb that bounced harmlessly off a ficus and landed near the coin machine, still fizzing. The third began herding civilians to the floor, only to stop mid-yell and pull out what appeared to be a script written on note cards.
Note cards.
“Oh my god,” Stiles muttered under his breath. “They rehearsed.”
Next to him, Eli squinted into the haze. “Is this a play?”
“Nope,” Stiles said, crossing his arms. “This is embarrassing.”
“Phones in the bin! Everyone down!” yelled the leader again, voice cracking slightly under the pressure of trying to sound scary while dressed like a Hot Topic catalog.
Stiles didn’t move. He was too busy watching them work—disjointed, frantic, no real pattern. No overwatch. No hacker. Not even a decent set of earpieces. They had no exit plan, no crowd control strategy, and definitely no sense of how many people had seen their faces.
This was amateur hour, and Stiles didn’t do amateur.
He did precise, orchestral chaos. He did citywide traffic diversions and timed EMP pulses.
This was… insulting.
Honestly, it was offensive. If you were going to bust into a bank, at least pick a Tuesday. Wednesdays had the worst cash flow.
One of the robbers—Mask #1, who clearly thought he was the main character—stalked toward them, holding a handgun in one gloved hand like he’d just Googled “how to hold crime tools” this morning.
Stiles watched Eli’s eyes track the guy, calm and curious. No fear. Just calculation. They’d trained for this. Not because they expected it to happen—okay, maybe a little—but because if your family history included multiple felony charges and one confirmed demon summoning, you didn’t leave things to chance.
“Phones,” Mask #1 snapped, pointing his gun between them. “Now.”
Stiles met his eyes and gave him the kind of smile usually reserved for diplomatic assassinations.
“You always open with threats?” he asked. “Or is that just part of your charm package?”
Mask #1 bristled. “I said give me your phone.”
Stiles reached slowly into his pocket. Pulled out his cell. Flipped it lazily toward the metal bin they’d set up, watching it bounce off the rim and land on the floor.
“Oops.”
The guy took a step closer.
Stiles didn’t move.
“Dad,” Eli said, voice low.
“I see him.”
“Is this banana time?”
“...Almost.”
Mask #1 raised his weapon a little higher. “You think you’re funny?”
“I am funny,” Stiles said. “You just don’t have a sense of humor. Or a real plan. Honestly, this is kind of sad. Glitter bombs? Matching masks? This isn’t a heist. It’s an Instagram story.”
The guy snarled.
Stiles let his smile sharpen.
“You know what happens when you try to rob a bank with a script and a dream?” he asked. “You get kicked in the nuts by a third grader with blood sugar issues.”
And then—loud and clear—he called out:
“BANANA!”
Eli dropped his juice box like it was a mic and lunged.
Mask #4 barely had time to react before there were thirty pounds of fury wrapped around his shin, growling like a jungle cat and biting like a feral chipmunk. The guy screamed. Loudly.
Chaos erupted.
Mask #2—who’d been guarding the lobby—tripped backward over a rope stanchion and fell into a fake plant. Mask #3 tried to grab Stiles, only to get slammed in the ribs by a thrown office chair. The legs made a satisfying clang against the guy’s tactical vest.
Stiles was already moving, eyes sharp, body thrumming with muscle memory.
He wasn’t the strongest, but he’d never needed to be. Not when he could calculate the angle of a security camera based on the reflection in a window. Not when he could grab a metal signpost and use it to knock someone’s weapon across the room.
Mask #1 came at him, fast and wide-eyed now.
Stiles ducked, grabbed the base of a security rope, and swung. The weighted metal hit the guy in the thigh, and he crumpled with a satisfying grunt.
Behind them, Eli let out a gleeful howl. “RAAAAAAAARGH!”
Stiles grinned. “That’s my boy.”
And then—
Then came the voice.
“STILES.”
It was deep. Low. Fury wrapped in a monosyllable.
Stiles froze.
Mask #1 groaned on the floor, “What now—”
“That,” Stiles muttered, “is the sound of my husband arriving.”
The front door banged open.
Derek Hale walked in like the wrath of God dressed in black.
The first thing Derek registered was the feeling.
That tug in his chest. Low and sharp—like something had slipped out of place inside him. Not pain. Not panic. Just wrong.
He looked up from the hardware aisle, the pair of cabinet hinges still in his hand. The store around him blurred, noise falling away. His heart kicked hard once against his ribs.
And then it hit.
Not a full-on panic alert. Not like when Eli scraped his knee at recess and Derek had to stop himself from transforming in the parking lot. No—this was subtler. Laced with adrenaline. Protective. It wasn’t fear. It was Stiles.
“Shit,” Derek breathed, already moving.
He was supposed to have today off.
One day. One quiet, normal day with no supernatural emergencies, no drama, and no caffeine-fueled disaster spawned from Stiles deciding to “fix” the basement plumbing at 3 a.m. But no. Of course not.
Because he’d barely made it out of the Lowe’s parking lot before the rest of the bond clicked into place.
His husband. His son. Both nearby. Both surrounded by—
Glass. Smoke. Gunpowder.
Bank.
His foot hit the accelerator.
The bank came into view like a punch to the chest.
Police cruisers half-parked on the sidewalk. Pedestrians scattering. A plume of glittered smoke still wafting out of the busted doors like the world’s worst party trick. Civilians crouched behind cars. A woman in a pantsuit was screaming into her phone.
Derek didn’t wait.
He slammed the car into park, threw open the door, and crossed the sidewalk in six long strides. His heart was hammering, breath sharp and focused, every nerve screaming mine mine mine—
“STILES.”
It wasn’t a shout. It didn’t need to be. Just one word, heavy as an avalanche.
And there he was.
Stiles. Standing in the middle of a warzone with a rope stanchion in one hand and glitter in his hair like this was just another Wednesday. Around him, four masked would-be criminals were groaning on the floor in various stages of pain. One of them was leaking purple smoke from a glitter bomb lodged in their hoodie.
Eli had latched onto one guy’s leg like a feral barnacle and was currently chewing through the hem of a tactical pant.
Stiles looked up. Blinked once. And had the gall to smile.
“Hey babe,” he said, way too casually. “Fancy seeing you here.”
Derek’s blood pressure spiked.
“What the hell is happening.”
“Light robbery. Low-tier threat. I handled it.”
“You’re supposed to be at the grocery store.”
“Technically, we were on the way.” Stiles dropped the stanchion with a thunk. “But then we had to stop at the bank for reasons. Very adult reasons. Financial stability.”
Derek growled.
One of the masked idiots tried to stand up.
Derek moved.
It was instinct. Motion. Efficiency. He crossed the floor, disarmed the guy, and slammed him into the carpet with enough force to rattle the loose glitter in the air. The guy made a sound like a dying goose and went limp.
“See?” Stiles said. “This is why I love you. So helpful.”
Eli finally let go of the leg he’d been chewing. “Dad, I got his ankle! Like we practiced!”
“You what?” Derek turned sharply.
Eli beamed. His teeth were purple.
“I went full raccoon,” he said proudly.
Stiles gave a weak shrug. “Banana Protocol.”
Derek stared.
Stiles winced. “We’ll talk about it later.”
The room was still full of shell-shocked witnesses and the sad remains of a poorly planned robbery. Somewhere in the corner, a glitter bomb let out one last puff and died.
Derek exhaled slowly through his nose.
Then he crouched and picked up Eli in one arm, lifting him off the floor like a suitcase full of glitter and joy.
“Are you hurt?”
“Nope.”
“Scared?”
“Nope. Can we get pretzels?”
Derek closed his eyes. “We’ll see.”
The cops arrived late, loud, and disorganized—guns drawn, shouting over each other. It was unnecessary. The real damage had already been done, and most of it was to the robbers’ dignity.
Derek watched the nearest officer assess the situation: a man covered in purple glitter, a bloodthirsty child, a guy groaning under a desk, and Stiles with his arms crossed, already giving someone attitude.
“Put your weapons down!” someone barked.
Stiles pointed at the security camera. “I literally disarmed them. Not sure why I’m getting yelled at.”
“You trained your child to attack people,” an officer snapped.
“Incorrect,” Stiles said. “I trained him to attack criminals. There’s nuance.”
Derek didn’t say a word.
Not when they were escorted out. Not when a very tired woman from the force offered Eli a blanket and a juice box. Not even when Stiles made finger guns at the paramedics and said “no thanks, I’ve had my tetanus shots.”
He waited until they were in the back of the squad car—quiet, finally—headed toward the station for questioning.
Then, softly, “You told me you were just running errands.”
Stiles slumped a little. “I was.”
“You were supposed to be off-grid.”
“I didn’t rob the bank.”
“You beat up four people.”
“I outmaneuvered four people. With props. There’s a difference.”
Derek sighed.
Eli was asleep on his shoulder again, warm and solid and glitter-sticky. His small fingers curled around Derek’s shirt like he knew something was off. He always knew.
Stiles turned, quieter now. “I wasn’t looking for trouble.”
“You didn’t look away from it either.”
That landed like it was supposed to. Stiles glanced down at his hands. There were scratches on his knuckles and sparkles under his nails. He looked older in this light. Not old—never that—but tired in a way that only came from too many identities and too much pretending.
“I didn’t want to scare him,” Stiles said softly. “Our kid. I wanted him to feel safe.”
“And your instinct for that was to throw a chair at someone’s spine?”
“They had a gun.”
“You didn’t even hesitate.”
“Would you have?”
Derek went quiet.
Because he wouldn’t have either.
By the time they made it to the station, Eli was awake again—groggy, snuggled into Derek’s side, and demanding snacks with the quiet entitlement of someone who’d earned it via justified violence.
Stiles leaned against the interrogation table, arms crossed, watching Derek pace the corner of the room.
“So,” Stiles said, prodding gently. “On a scale of one to ‘you’re sleeping on the couch,’ how mad are you?”
Derek didn’t answer.
“I mean, technically we saved lives.”
“Technically, you trained a child to attack on command.”
“He’s got boundaries. He doesn’t bite unless we say banana. It’s a safe word.”
Derek gave him a long, flat stare.
Stiles winced. “Okay. I hear it now.”
There was a pause.
Then Eli—curled up on the station bench with a sticker sheet and a half-eaten cookie—looked up and said: “Dad was awesome.”
Derek glanced at him.
“Really awesome,” Eli said, eyes wide. “Like pow, wham, crack! And then I got his ankle, and we won!”
Stiles beamed like he’d just been knighted.
Derek sighed.
He should be furious. He was furious. But watching Eli bounce with pride, and Stiles smile through the guilt and chaos, he couldn’t help the flicker of relief threading through the anger. They were okay.
That didn’t mean he was letting it go.
“Stiles,” he said, stepping close enough to speak low. “Next time I say ‘day off,’ you don’t go within five miles of a crime scene. Understood?”
Stiles nodded solemnly. “Cross my heart, no glitter bombs without permission.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
Derek stared at him.
And Stiles—soft-eyed, sheepish, and a little bruised—just gave a shrug.
“I wasn’t trying to be the Catalyst again,” he said. “I just didn’t want our kid to be scared.”
Derek didn’t say it out loud, but he understood.
Because that? That was the part that scared him.
The house was quiet when they got back.
Not the tense kind of quiet. Not the kind filled with unsaid things and coiled silence. Just... still. A softness that settled over the furniture and under the light fixtures, like the walls themselves were sighing in relief.
Stiles dropped his keys in the bowl by the door and stood there for a moment, taking in the absurdly normal sight of their living room. Legos on the floor. One sock dangling off the coffee table. A forgotten juice box—unopened, somehow—on the armrest of the couch.
Derek walked in behind him, Eli asleep again against his shoulder, arms wrapped around his neck like he never wanted to let go. Derek didn’t say anything. Just shot him a look that said you’ll handle bedtime, and carried the kid down the hall.
Stiles didn’t argue.
He didn’t want to argue. His adrenaline had long since faded, and what was left in its place wasn’t self-righteousness or satisfaction.
It was guilt.
Sticky. Heavy. Familiar.
He wandered into the kitchen like his body was moving without him. Opened the fridge. Closed it. Thought about a beer. Rejected it. Settled on water, because that was the kind of person he was now. Hydrated. Responsible. Only slightly feral.
He stood at the counter and stared at the calendar on the wall.
There was a little sticker next to the day—gold star, placed there by a tiny hand this morning. Because Stiles had said it was going to be a calm day. No drama. No danger. Just a bank trip and maybe a cinnamon pretzel if things went well.
He snorted to himself. Quiet. Bitter.
He could still see the way Eli had looked at him when it was over—eyes wide with admiration, sparkling with leftover adrenaline. He’d seen it before. On pack members. On strangers. On enemies who realized too late they’d underestimated him.
But on his kid?
That hit different.
The sound of footsteps padded back in. Derek, shirt rumpled, the edge of a bite mark peeking out above his collarbone where Eli had hugged him too hard. He stopped in the kitchen doorway, arms crossed.
Stiles didn’t look at him.
“You mad?” he asked quietly.
“No,” Derek said. Then added, “Not anymore.”
That somehow made it worse.
Stiles turned to face him, leaning back against the counter. “I didn’t mean for it to happen like that.”
“I know.”
“I wasn’t looking for trouble.”
“I know,” Derek repeated.
Stiles rubbed a hand over his face, dragging it down to his chin. “But I didn’t stop it either.”
Derek stepped closer. Slow. Careful. Like Stiles might bolt.
“You protected our son,” he said. “You kept people safe.”
“I used him,” Stiles whispered. “I turned him into a weapon. Banana protocol was supposed to be a joke—like, one of those fun what-if drills. He wasn’t supposed to enjoy it.”
Derek didn’t argue.
Didn’t soften it either.
Stiles felt the words crack in his chest. “What if I messed him up?”
“He’s not messed up.”
“You would say that.”
Derek raised an eyebrow. “He cried when I threw out his glow-in-the-dark socks, Stiles. He’s still a kid.”
Stiles tried to smile. It didn’t quite land. “A kid who knows how to take down a grown man by the ankle.”
Derek gave a slow shrug. “You knew how to make napalm when you were fourteen.”
“Okay, that’s not comforting.”
“He’s got both of us,” Derek said quietly. “That’s what matters.”
Stiles swallowed the lump in his throat.
He wasn’t scared of what happened in the bank. Not really. He was scared of how easy it had been. How natural it felt to slip back into that mindset. Stiles Stilinski, chaos architect. One half of a disaster duo. Catalyst, retired but not forgotten.
He wasn’t proud of that part. He’d worked so hard to bury it.
And now it was smeared in glitter across Eli’s favorite hoodie.
He turned away again, busied himself with wiping the counter even though it was already clean. “He thinks it was cool,” he said, voice tight. “He thinks I’m cool.”
“You are.”
“No,” Stiles said, too quickly. “I’m dangerous. That’s different.”
Derek came up behind him, rested a hand on his lower back. Warm. Grounding. He didn’t speak right away.
Just let the silence settle.
Eventually, he said, “You were dangerous. Now you’re just annoying.”
Stiles huffed a laugh. “Gee, thanks.”
“You’re his dad,” Derek added. “That’s what he sees.”
Stiles closed his eyes. “I don’t want him to think solving problems means hitting first.”
“He didn’t hit first.”
Stiles opened his mouth, closed it again.
Because Derek was right. Eli hadn’t jumped to violence. He’d waited. Watched. Followed the plan. He was small, yeah, but smart. Careful. He chose to act. He didn’t panic.
That part—that quiet composure under pressure—that was Derek.
Stiles sighed. “He gets it from you.”
Derek didn’t deny it.
The kitchen light flickered softly above them, buzzing in the comfortable quiet that came only from familiarity.
After a long moment, Derek nudged him with a shoulder. “Come on.”
“What, why?”
“There’s glitter in the bed.”
Stiles blinked. “...That’s not a metaphor, right?”
“No. It’s literally everywhere. Including the dog.”
Stiles made a face. “You wash the sheets. I’ll handle the kid.”
“Deal.”
Upstairs, Eli was half-curled on top of the blanket, one leg dangling, the same stuffed werewolf he’d had since toddlerhood tucked under one arm. He was still wearing the oversized police hoodie and one glitter-covered sock.
Stiles knelt by the bed, careful not to wake him. He peeled the hoodie off, wiped his face with a warm cloth, and whispered nonsense about ninjas and glitter monsters while coaxing him into pajamas.
Eli stirred only once—murmured something about “kickin’ ankles,” and Stiles kissed his forehead, soft and fast.
“I know, buddy,” he whispered. “You did good.”
He stayed there for a moment. Just watching him breathe.
Perfect, innocent, his.
Then he stood, walked out, and shut the door behind him with a quiet click.
Later, they sat on the couch together. The laundry machine whirred softly in the background, full of sparkly jeans and one tactical jacket. Stiles nursed a cup of tea. Derek read a book that looked suspiciously like a werewolf-themed parenting guide, but Stiles didn’t ask.
The TV played low in the background—one of those home renovation shows where everyone was always happy and nothing exploded.
And for a while, there was peace.
Stiles let his head drop to Derek’s shoulder.
“You think we’re good at this?” he asked.
Derek turned a page. “What, parenting?”
“Life.”
Derek hummed. “We’re trying.”
“Trying’s not always enough.”
“It is tonight.”
And Stiles let that be true.
Just for now.