Work Text:
Scott sits cross-legged in one of the blue chairs in the waiting room of Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital.
His backpack is under his seat, zipped shut. He’s waiting for his mom’s shift to end. Normally, his dad picks him up after school, but he’s away for work and won’t be back for a few days, so his mom picks him up after school and he waits for her shift to end in the waiting room, occupying himself by finishing homework or drawing in the animal coloring book he got for his ninth birthday a week before.
Usually, his mom’s shift ends within the hour, but today he’s been here for almost two and a half and he’s bored out of his mind.
There aren’t many people in the waiting room today, and none of them have any kids with them. Most of them are reading the magazines the hospital staff keeps stacked on the wooden coffee table, anyway. Scott had reached the level of boredom where he'd picked one up and leafed through it before quickly tossing it back onto the table. Adults read boring stuff.
The lady at the front desk gave him a pack of Skittles earlier, though, which was really nice of her. Now the empty packet sits shoved in his jeans pocket.
He pulls out the few crumpled bills his mom gave him before leaving him in the waiting room and decides to go find a vending machine. Maybe he’ll walk around the hospital to pass the time and pretend he’s a doctor.
Scott grabs his bag and leaves the waiting room. He turns a corner and makes his way down a quiet hallway empty of people except for the occasional passing doctor or nurse.
The halls of the hospital are all pale and bright. The walls and ceiling are white and the floor is gray linoleum that makes a horrible squeaking sound when he drags his sneakers.
He trails his fingers along the wall and across the doors he passes as he walks, barely touching it. He knows this part of the hospital like the back of his hand because of how much time he’s spent here waiting for his mom’s shift to be over. He never dared to wander too far from the waiting room in case he ever got lost, though.
He turns the corner and spots the vending machines tucked at the end of the hall and he grins. His mom gave him two dollars, which should be enough to buy him a Coke and a bag of chips.
Scott reaches the vending machines and looks at the snack selection, debating whether he wants chips or a chocolate bar.
He’s punching in the number for the Kit Kat when he hears a door open down the hall and loudly fall shut. He doesn’t pay any attention until someone rounds the corner and heads towards him.
He looks over and sees a kid around his own age wearing rumpled clothes. He recognizes him from school. Stiles is in Scott’s fourth grade class and everyone in his grade knows him. He’s the class clown and talks to everyone. Even Scott. They're not really friends, but he's definitely the closest Scott has to a friend.
Scott stares at Stiles in surprise. It's only slightly shocking to see him in the hospital, staring at the ground with his hands shoved in the pockets of his too-large jacket. It’s so big it reaches his knees and the sleeves are rolled back several times, and Scott assumes it belongs to his dad, or maybe his mom.
“Hi,” Scott says because, from the looks of it, he doesn’t think Stiles is going to be the one starting the conversation.
Scott doesn't even think Stiles saw Scott. Or that he's really paying attention to where he's going.
Stiles looks up, eyes wide and startled, cheeks wet with tears. He quickly looks away and wipes the tears away with the palm of his shaking hands before shoving them right back into his pockets.
“Hi,” he mumbles, voice wet.
They stand there in silence, neither boy doing or saying anything. Scott crouches down to grab his Kit Kat bar.
“Do you wanna share?” he asks. “I’m not that hungry.”
Stiles’s eyes are red and his mouth is pulled in a frown, and Scott doesn’t think he’s ever seen Stiles look like this. He doesn't think he's ever seen Stiles with anything other than a jovial or mischievous grin on his face. But he's at the hospital, so Scott doubts he's got anything to smile about at the moment.
“Sure,” he says.
Scott tears the wrapper open and gives Stiles two of his four Kit Kat bars.
He turns back to the vending machines, smoothing out the folded bill in his hands. He presses the button for the coke and feeds the machine his remaining dollar bill. He takes the bottle when it falls in the slot and straightens up, facing Stiles again. They look at each other for a while without saying anything, Stiles nibbling half-heartedly at the Kit Kat bar.
“Did you do Mr. Wilson’s history assignment?” Scott asks. “The one due tomorrow.”
Stiles shrugs. “Yeah. My-- my mom helped me with it.”
Scott grins, ignoring Stiles's brief hesitation. “Good, because I didn’t do mine. Can you help me with it?”
Scott doesn’t really need help with history. He doesn’t really need help in any class. If he doesn’t understand something, then he’ll sneak into his dad’s office and use his computer to look it up, because Scott knows the password and his dad doesn’t come home until late, so it’s not like he’s going to care. Or know, for that matter. Both of his parents are busy-- his mom works long shifts at the hospital and comes home tired and Scott doesn’t want to bother her with questions about homework, and his dad gets angry easily when Scott doesn’t understand and comes home late anyway. Scott can figure out homework on his own.
Still, working with a friend might be nice.
“It’s just labeling a map,” Stiles replies flatly, voice hollow. “It’s pretty easy. You just have to name the mountain ranges and the rivers and the cities and color it.”
Scott shrugs. “I don’t have a phone, so I can’t look it up.”
Stiles frowns. “Yeah, well, I don’t have a phone either, so I don’t know how I can help.”
He shrugs again. “You’re good in history. You always know the answer when the teacher calls on you.”
Stiles clenches his jaw and looks away, cheeks flushing. “I pay attention in class. And I read a lot.”
“D’you wanna sit in the waiting room with me?” Scott asks. “I’m waiting for my mom to finish her shift so she can take me home.”
Stiles looks up from the ground and looks at him. “Sure, I guess. I’m waiting for my dad to take me home. It might take a while.”
Scott grins. The two make their way down the hall back towards the waiting room.
They’re waiting to be picked up in the carpool area of Beacon Hills Elementary, sitting on one of the stone benches lining the side of the school building. It’s a warm fall afternoon. there's a hot summer breeze blowing through Beacon Hills, the last of summer refusing to relinquish its hold. The leaves on the trees lining the brick building are barely tinted with orange.
“Are you gonna go to the hospital with your mom today?” Stiles asks.
Scott doesn't look up from his math worksheet. He's been expecting Stiles to say something for the past ten minutes. He's spent the whole time fiddling with his shirt and glancing over at Scott with those darting, intense eyes.
“Maybe,” he says. “Sometimes she allows me to stay home and watch TV while she’s still at work.”
Scott glances up in time to see a look of disappointment and hopelessness flashes across his face, disappearing into a blank look quickly enough that Scott almost misses it. Almost.
“But we have a lot of homework, so she’ll probably take me with her,” he adds quickly. “Are you going to the hospital?”
He asks, but he already guessed the question.
Stiles shrugs, one of his legs bouncing nervously. “Yeah, Dad insists I visit Mom.”
Scott presses his lips together and falls quiet. Stiles told him what happened the last time he went to visit his mom at the hospital. His mom hadn’t even recognized him, apparently, shouting hysterically that an intruder had broken into her room. Stiles had looked heartbroken when he recounted what happened the following day during morning recess while they were swinging idly from the swingset.
Scott wants to say something to Stiles, but he can’t find the right words. He doesn’t even know if the right words exist. His mother is forgetting her own son; Scott doesn’t think anything could distract from that horrifying truth.
“I’ll be with you if you want,” Scott offers, quickly scribbling down the answer to the last problem. “Wait outside her room. Or go in with you. If you want.” He looks back up at his best friend. “You don’t have to be alone.”
Stiles opens his mouth. Then closes it. He looks at the line of cars and sits up straight. Scott follows his gaze until he spots the familiar police cruiser pulling up in line.
Stiles stands up and swings his bag over his shoulder. “I’ll see you at the hospital,” he says instead, giving Scott a crooked grin before jogging over to the car and leaving Scott to wait for his mom to pick him up.
Mr. Stilinski waves at him and Scott waves back.
Scott isn’t hiding in the hospital bathroom. Not at all.
Maybe he is.
He’s hiding from his mom because he’s mad. He knows it’s not fair to her because all of this has been really hard on her, too. But Scott lost his dad and he doesn't know how to deal with that.
He’s not coming home. Because his parents are getting divorced. Just like Amanda Sinclair’s parents did back in second grade.
He remembers how the teachers acted towards her, how they were always sympathetic and giving her pitying looks. She missed a lot of school days, and when she did come to school, she looked like it was the last place she wanted to be.
Scott didn’t understand then. He does now.
People were going to treat him differently. More differently than they already do. They’ll treat him like something fragile, breakable. And he’s sure Jackson’s going to use it as a way to mock him even more. He’s already the weird kid with severe asthma, whose breathing always comes out slightly wheezing, who has asthma attacks so bad his inhaler isn't enough sometimes and they have to take him to the hospital.
His mom is already being careful with him. Things are different. They've been different. But before, it wasn't acknowledged. His parents were arguing and Scott had thought that maybe they'd leave each other because of how truly unhappy they were together. Now it's acknowledged. Now his dad's gone, and he hasn't been home in days. Now his parents were leaving each other.
His dad is moving to Virginia. He remembers where it is because Mr. Wilson has a labeled map of the United States hanging in his classroom. It’s impossibly far from California. From home.
Scott and his dad already barely know each other, but he’s still his dad. And being told by his mom that he’s never coming home, that he’s moving to Virginia because he was offered a job there, hurts Scott more deeply than anything he’s ever experienced before.
He’s not enough to make his dad stay.
The door of the bathroom opens and Scott hears the squeak of sneakers walking in. he wipes his tears away with his sleeve and glances under the stall from where he’s sitting on the floor.
The shoes are too small to belong to his mom or any adult. Besides, he knows for sure that his mom doesn’t wear battered light-up Skechers.
“Scott?” Stiles asks, standing in front of the stall Scott’s hiding in. “Scott, I know you’re here. I can hear you breathing.”
Scott’s cheeks flush red and he simply buries his face in his folded arms.
“Go away,” he mumbles.
“Your mom’s looking for you.”
“I know.”
They fall into silence. Stiles sits down in front of the stalls with his legs crossed.
“My parents are getting a divorce,” Scott says after a while. “Mom told me on the way to the hospital. She said that my dad’s moving to Virginia.”
He’d been so mad he’d refused to talk to her for the rest of the drive. He simply sat in the passenger seat and kept his eyes on the moving cars and buildings. His mom’s eyes had been red and her face looked sunken, the worry lines more pronounced, and deepened by the deep shadows under her eyes.
“Oh,” is all Stiles replies. “Well, you can still talk to him on the phone, you know. Or video calls.”
“I don’t think he wants me.”
And he doesn’t want Mom either. Scott knows his parents fought every single night. Sometimes the arguments got so bad that his dad would storm out of the house and drive away, and stay gone for hours.
They don’t know that Scott would sometimes sit at the top of the stairs listening, trying to understand. Sometimes they brought him up. Sometimes, after his dad stormed off, his would mom collapse in a kitchen chair and sob quietly.
Sometimes the screaming got so loud that Scott would curl up in his bed with his pillow pressed firmly over his ears and would pretend he wasn’t crying, and he’d pretend that his family wasn’t broken, that they were happy and perfect.
And sometimes Scott would hear his dad’s heavy footsteps on the stairs and he’d flinch and lay there in terror, wondering if his dad would come in his room and yell at him, too. Those nights were always the worst.
“Then he’s bullshit,” Stiles declares, snapping Scott back to reality.
“Stiles!” Scott hisses.
“Well it’s true! I can’t think of any reason why your dad wouldn’t want you. He’s just stupid and you don’t need him.”
Scott laughs and wipes away the snot from his face using the sleeve of his jacket.
“If you’re not sad anymore, can we get out of here? Dad bought donuts on the way here and he said he’d eat mine if I disappeared and he has to look for me.”
Scott laughs and pulls himself up to his feet. He's been sitting in the same position with his knees pulled up to his chest for so long that his legs had fallen asleep. He wheezed and cleared his throat, and wiped at his face again, hoping his face isn’t as blotchy as it got when he cried a lot.
He unlocks the bathroom door.
Stiles is still and quiet as he sits in the hard chairs of the waiting room. Scott slowly approaches and takes a seat in the chair next to his.
Stiles is sitting hunched, hands limp in his lap, feet planted firmly on the ground. He’s staring dry-eyed at the hard gray ground.
Scott doesn’t think he’s ever seen his best friend this still before.
Stiles is always full of life, full of weird facts from whatever three a.m. documentary he watched because he couldn't sleep, full of pent-up nervous energy that manifested itself in the form of drumming his fingers on his leg or chewing on his nails or bouncing his leg. Stiles isn’t meant to sit still and quiet and resigned.
To Scott, he almost looks like a shadow. Silent and unnoticed and still, devoid of life.
His mom is dead.
Claudia Stilinski is dead. It weighs heavy on his heart and thickly in his throat. Scott’s mom was the one who whispered it to him, and she was the one who told him Mr. Stilinski was on his way from the station to pick up Stiles.
Scott doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t think he should say anything at all. He thinks being there for his best friend is enough. At least for now.
Tentatively, he reaches over and grabs Stiles’s hand in his. Laces their fingers together the way his mom likes to do when he reaches to hold her hand.
Stiles’s hand is cold. Scott squeezes it and Stiles lets his head fall heavily on Scott’s shoulder.
They don’t say anything, and they don’t need to. They just sit here, and Scott offers his presence to his best friend, because his mom is dead, and nothing will ever be the same again.