𝑅𝐸𝑄𝑈𝐼𝐸𝑀 - M.R.

[RESEARCH]

When Noah walks through his front door after a long shift at work there are a lot of things he expects to see, Melissa and Stiles sat together eating curly fries and watching John Wick: Chapter Two together on the couch didn't make the list. 

They turn their heads to look at him over the back of the sofa in tandem when he walks in, "evening Sheriff," Melissa grins at him, waving at him with a particularly floppy fry before sticking it into her mouth.

He squints at her for a second, wondering how far gone for her he must be if he finds that so attractive.

Stiles glances between them for a second before holding up a plastic food container, "we got you a salad," he smiles, shaking the tub for him to see, it nearly reaches his eyes. 

It's all well and good, and when Melissa lifts the blanket that's settled over their laps and asks, "care to join us? There's only like half an hour left but the endings the best bit anyway," he doesn't refuse, it's just-

Well, when he'd gotten a text from Melissa to say she'd found Stiles hunched over on the couch in pain, when she mentioned a frantic phone call from Scott, and - most alarmingly - Lydia screaming being the source of his son's pain, he just hadn't expected to come home to see this.

He'd pictured Stiles curled up on the floor in agony, Melissa coddling him, trying to cajole him into telling her what happened. Which, he'll admit now is a little dramatic, especially since less than half an hour after the first message she'd sent another to let him know everything was okay, but he was worried. Terrified, even, of something happening to his son. He wouldn't be able to cope, not now.

"Yeah, come on Sheriff, you're gonna miss my favourite part," it's teasing, he knows it is, but the fact he doesn't say dad still cuts a little deeper than it has any right to.

After so long in the dark, he should be glad he still has a son that's talking to him at all. At least he thinks so. He should be glad Stiles is in a joking mood, that he doesn't seem in pain and that he - regardless of the sincerity of it - is smiling. 

He does join them, taking his spot in the middle of the couch, and he doesn't miss the way his son flinches when their shoulders brush.

That? The does cut deep. 

"No one should look that good covered in blood," Melissa mutters around a fry, as they watch the assassin on the screen take down a team of henchmen with ease. 

"Yeah," Noah snorts, "shame he's a trained killer, huh?" 

He can practically feel his son's calculating gaze as shoves a cherry tomato into his mouth, so it's not a surprise when seconds later he speaks up, "yeah but it's not like he wanted to kill them, they didn't give him a choice."

"He was a hitman even before his dog was killed Stiles, even if that did excuse a fraction of what he's done in the past two movies,"

"Retired hitman," Melissa pipes up.

"Exactly!" Stiles asserts like he's won something, "and besides, he's killing bad people, don't they deserve it?"

Noah grimaces as he looks at the screen, "no one deserves that, and besides, there's always a choice son, you know that," and if he didn't know any better he'd say Stiles looks pissed off, but that doesn't make sense, "if we kill men like that, what's to stop us from becoming just as bad as them?"

Melissa hums, "at that point, no matter how you look at it, you're all killers, regardless of your reasoning."

"It's not that black and white," Stiles insists, and Noah doesn't understand why it matters so much to him, "what about an eye for an eye? Bad people deserve bad things, you know, like karma."