#co-parent.

[listendumbass-blog]

hc.

there are a lot of things that sucked about divorcing when scott was so young. beyond that, there are a lot of things that sucked about rafael not taking much initiative with their kid to ensure that he grew up into a smart, safe and productive citizen of society. it was hard being mom and dad, but there was nothing that sucked harder than puberty. than knowing her son was going through all of these changes, knowing that she needed to talk to him about them, and being unable to find the words to do so.  and then she got that blessed phone call from john,  who thought it was time to have said talk with stiles, who offered to have it with scott too. and jesus if it wasn’t a relief. but that’s just they way they worked, melissa and john. they were two halves of one parenting whole and with senior year approaching, with both boys still mostly in tact (with both boys having not gotten anyone pregnant), she thinks that maybe they did an okay job. but she won’t delude herself into thinking that she could have done it without him.

[listendumbass-blog]

hc.

in the early days, it was hard. at least when rafael was still around, even though it always felt like he’d checked out even before he actually did, he was still there. he was another body, someone who could run interference when things got too hard.  and rest assured: parenting? it’s hard.  it was worse in the beginning, when she was still trying to figure out how to run a household on one income, how to make it to the parent teacher conferences while having to work, how to make sure her kid got all his homework done. there were moments she was so sure she was going to break.  and then claudia died, leaving john in a similar sinking ship, only his was going down so much faster. both he and stiles were drowning and melissa realized that she didn’t have it quite so bad.  it takes a few months after losing claudia, a few months of coaxing, just trying to get john out of that head space, but when she does, she realizes that they kind of have their own little support group.  that they’re two single parents with kids, both so unsure of what they’re doing, so unsure that they’ll be able to manage to just get through into adulthood without screwing them up too badly.  they took turns babysitting, managing to get on opposite schedules at work so someone was always home. they swapped home cooked dinners, took turns picking the boys up for school and on nights when it was just too hard, they could be found commiserating at someone’s kitchen table over coffee while the kids played upstairs. in some ways, melissa was closer to john stilinski than she’d ever been to rafael. at some point, he’d turned into her best friend, her confidant, her partner in crime in this terrifying thing called parenting alone. and at some point around ninth grade, she realized that she wasn’t alone. that at some point over the last few years, they’d taken two halves of pathetically broken families and made one. their family? the mccall-stilinskis? that’s a family she wouldn’t trade for anything in the world. no matter how hard it was getting there.