Follows Hear You Me
“We’ve done all that we can, but now the rest’s up to him,” the doctor had said but he can’t give up hope now, because it’s all he has left to keep him going. Because he can’t lose Stiles, he just can’t. He’s already lost his wife, he can’t lose his son too. So he chooses instead to believe that Stiles can pull through, because if anyone can, it’s his son.
His beautiful, bright boy who even as a baby loved to smile and laugh and would babble on about anything, but especially loved to babble to his daddy. The boy who likes to think he’s a man now, but will always be a little toddler to his father. The boy who couldn’t stay still even in his sleep.
And he can’t even process what’s going on anymore, because there’s his son, his Stiles, laying on the hospital bed in front of him, hooked up to what looks like a million machines and paler than he’d ever been (and as his dad, he’s seen Stiles as pale as he’d thought possible during his panic attacks) and not moving. Which is what really gets to him, because Stiles is never still. He’s physically incapable of being still.
Or, at least he was. And it’s like this body might have a slight resemblance to his son, but it’s not Stiles. It’s not his son. His son’s already gone from his side, from this cruel world. And he wonders if Stiles is already with his mother and if, when he dies, they’ll be able to recognize him. Because he’s not sure if they’ll be able to, because he’s not sure he’s able to recognize himself.
But he can’t think about that because Stiles is still here, hidden beneath the machines that are breathing for him. And he knows his son, knows that Stiles might want to see his mother more than anything, but he won’t abandon his father. Because Stiles doesn’t want to leave anyone alone, he’s too afraid of being alone himself to do it to anyone else, let alone his father.
If Stiles dies, then he doesn’t deserve to see his family again, because he couldn’t protect the only thing he had left, his baby boy, from some drunk in a pick-up truck. So he’ll try to believe that Stiles won’t leave him, won’t choose to go to heaven with his mother, where he’s not sure he can follow them.