Sorry, Spag, if the first one was stupid, then this one’s just idiotic. I’m going to bed. This is your fault.
They name it Herald. It was supposed to be Harold, after Derek’s grandfather, who Derek says was a weird old man and Stiles says that’s fitting, then, but Stiles was asleep when it came time to fill out the birth certificate and Derek couldn’t remember how to spell Harold, so he sounded it out.
So their kid’s name is Herald, but mostly they call him It. They don’t tell him it’s because they didn’t even know if he was human when he was born because he may be a little weirdo, but he’s their little weirdo, and they don’t want to stunt his mental health. Stiles almost tells him it’s because they loved The Addams Family, but then he thinks about how Cousin It was a weird thing covered in hair and maybe that’s not a great comparison.
It creeps them out. He is unnaturally silent, always with this bucktoothed little smile on his face that makes Stiles sure that he and Derek are going to be killed in their sleep. Stiles distinctly remembers playing hide and seek with him when he was young, Stiles and Derek crammed together in a cupboard and Derek mumbled, “I can’t hear his fucking heart,” and then It’s creepy little eye was pressed up to the crack in the door like the killer in a slasher fic and Stiles screamed like a little girl.
Still, they’re sad when he grows up and heads off to college. He’s still creepy; he’s got bad skin and his heavy eyebrows almost touch in the middle, but they kiss him on the forehead and say “We’ll miss you!” which is probably true. And when he drives off into the battered Jeep, Stiles says to Derek, “I think we just unleashed a hellion unto the world,” and Derek says, “Too late now.” And Stiles does miss him, up until a few days later when he goes to clean It’s room and finds a box of desiccated frog corpses under his bed.
They don’t hear from It that often, which isn’t unusual, nor unexpected. One time they lost him for a few days and Stiles found him sitting in the attic, perfectly still. He said he’d been counting heartbeats and neither of them really wanted to ask whose. Still, they miss him. Probably.
One morning Stiles goes downstairs and there’s a stranger standing in the living room. It’s near Christmas and he has a vague idea that It should be coming home soon, but he is not prepared for the sight of a handsome young man standing next to the Christmas tree. Stiles screams.
“That’s It,” Derek says from behind him.
“Oh my god,” Stiles says. “Where’d our ugly little boy go?“ He’d told It once not to worry about his looks, that everyone starts out awkward. Look at your dad, Stiles said, pointing Derek. He had to grow into those stupid buck teeth and big ears, and It had turned his eyes on Derek and didn’t blink for five minutes. Stiles hadn’t really believed that It would ever, uh, grow into himself, but it appears he was wrong, because his weird kid has turned into a GQ model. “Just like his dad,” Stiles says out loud, and Derek pushes him down the stairs.
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