Chapter Text
Stiles has never been small. He’s been slim and lithe, but never small. His shoulders are broad and his every muscle is toned. He’s just never showed it off. His clothes are baggy and plaid, hiding his pretty package in camouflage wrapping paper. During lacrosse practice, he’s always been the first in or last out. Scott would be there waiting for him by his jeep and groan about him being too slow. Or Jackson would question him being of the male kind because he never showed any skin but his legs.
But what no one saw didn’t hurt them. It only hurt him.
The pack saw him as the weak link because he was the human with the ADHD and he seemed to lack the muscle mass to put up any kind of real fight. He was the smartass who did their research and that’s it. And only a few people knew different.
Claudia Stilinski was one. Before she died, she insisted that Stiles be able to protect himself. She knew the life she threw on her son with giving him the name she did. She knew he would have troubles. And she knew his ADHD coupled with his smart mouth and him being a cop’s kid would get him into trouble early on, so she took him to self-defense classes with her and his always active mind helped and let his body catch on quick. His mother had also been a health nut, so they also did exercise everyday before bed to help ease his body and his mind.
The sheriff is also someone. He was a major part of turning Stiles into who he is today, but he always reminds his son to keep himself in check. He was already to busy with work for before bed workouts. But he did insist on his son learning to shoot. He still remembers sitting in his bedroom and listening to them yell back and forth over it.
His father wanted him to be able to use a gun if he needed to, and safely, but his mother thought it was too dangerous. From then the yelling turning into hushed hisses. They thought Stiles couldn’t hear, but in the dojo they trained with his mom at, the instructor had taught them to heightened their senses and not rely too much on one. So at a young age, he learned about his mother’s past and his father’s secrets.
When they finally came back upstairs to tell him he would now be going to the shooting range with his father on his days off, he just sat and pretended to be excited, but his heart was racing for a completely different reason.
It hadn’t been much of a surprise to his parents when Stiles had turned out to be an excellent shot. After a few months of learning the ins and outs of guns and their safety, his father had set him up to be taught by some members of the Beacon Hills SWAT team so that he could focus more on his job and on the fact that Claudia was very sick.
Alan Deaton was another person in on his secret. Stiles was still kind of skeptical of him. How did this man seem to know all of his business and why was he keeping it secret for Stiles? He may question all of this, but he doesn’t hesitate to ask Deaton for help every once in a while as he tries to teach himself magic on the DL.
And last, but not least, was Peter Hale whom he’d always been cautious around since the day he attacked Lydia and kidnapped Stiles. But he couldn’t show fear to this undead man. Not anymore. Whenever they had pack meetings or were just in the same room in general, Peter would brush up against him or make some comment to get some kind of reaction out of Stiles, but the teen would just fold his arms over his chest in a signature Derek move and take some calming, inconspicuous slow breaths to keep his heart rate from rising. That’s, incidentally, how he also learned to lie to werewolves, but not why he learned it.
The ‘why’ of him being able to calm himself and his heart rate stems from two situations; Stiles has had chronic panic attacks ever since his mother died. Sometimes his father isn’t home to help him, so during one of his therapy sessions, his psyche doctor taught him how to calm himself in these bad moments. And it was easy for him to do because it had been the same kind of breathing exercises he’d done with his mother while learning yoga and self-defense, and when learning to shoot.
Soon, all his secrets would be out, though. Whether he like it or not.