We weren’t trained for this.
Dean seethes, white knuckled and God he wants to hurl the fucking bottle right at the kid’s head. “Everything we know, everything we do, it’s through trial and error. My old man’s blood and sweat made sure we had any of the knowledge we had. And it was nothing. You think salt and silver prepared us for fucking angels?”
One last vicious swallow and the bottle is empty. Dean uses chunking it in the trash as a means to pull in a breath, to shove it all down again. He’s not playing pity olympics with some kid.
“I get it. Trust me, I get it. When you gotta let someone you love bail on you, because they’re pissed or need space or God knows what? I get that. But-”
There is serious weight behind that ‘but’ and there’s the accusing finger Dean has been trying to keep down.
“When I met Stiles? He barely knew how to throw a punch. Didn’t know how to disarm anyone. He’s been a victim, and that’s on you. He’s your responsibility. You know how to fight, you know how to survive. You should have been showing him how, all along.”
He doesn’t hate Scott. Honestly, he doesn’t care one way or the other. But there’s a tie that binds here, so they need to have it out and move on. If Scott can’t get that…then maybe he’s in the wrong line of work.
“So how about you stow the poor, pitiful me crap and start pulling your weight. Because from what I’ve heard? He does all the heavy lifting, and all you do is ignore him when he tells you he’s got a hunch.”
It’s then that Scott starts to really get it.
Through the simmering anger building higher and higher in his chest - because this is probably one of the most frustrating conversations he’s had in years - it stings the way seeing Derek used to. A guy beaten down within an inch of his spirit, drawing strength from whatever he could find - anger and pain being the primary options.
If he were as skilled at Stiles is with arming words and using them to their full potential, Scott would say something about the fact that they’re still adults, and when they were seventeen or eighteen they were still learning from their dad. (Stiles has told him some of their history, after all.)
But then it starts hitting close to home again, about not teaching Stiles ways to defend himself. Because Scott isn’t ever able to see him and Stiles as separate enough entities that he couldn’t do the fighting for him. Teaching a man to fish versus catching the fish for him is Dean’s point, and it’s fair. But the enemies that Stiles has had to fight in the past weren’t physical ones (see: Nogitsune).
To someone he knows, to someone in his pack, he’d concede the point. This man doesn’t know him. He knows Stiles, but not the way Scott does. And Scott isn’t inclined to really listen to a guy who’s perfectly happy to throw every once of Scott’s failings back in his face without any preamble.
(What did Stiles tell him? The hurt of that will go away, he thinks. Scott will have to ask him.)
“I don’t have to defend myself to you.” That’s spending too much time around Malia.
Start pulling your weight. That’s on you. It’s words he’s told himself time and again, and it’s words he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop saying.
But Dean doesn’t know him.
“You say I should shut up and accept your help, but you don’t seem to really want to give it. Which is fine, we’ve done things on our own before. Help Stiles. Teach him how to fight, how to survive. You seem to be good at that.”
There’s no fight in him for moments like these. Not when there’s no point. “I’m gonna go get some food.” It’s a pretty obvious retreat, but Dean already thinks so poorly of him, this won’t make a difference.
The thing that bothers Scott the most is the implication that Stiles put all these thoughts there.