(disgusted noise.)

Eli can’t hear what Stiles says, but Pops looks disappointed and a little sad before the look turns idignant. “Aw hell, kid, you know I’d love to - no, it’s not because I’m already full of fast food! You know you’ve got this whole town turned against me.”

He motions at Eli to hand him a cookie and Eli holds out the whole box, grinning when Pops winks at him after grabbing three cookies for himself. He gets settled behind his desk and takes a huge bite of one of them, before continuing to talk around the mouthful. “Yes, I know you’ve got access to my schedule. No, I am not currently eating one of Mary’s cookies, you know that woman keeps those locked down tighter than Fort Knox.” The voice on the other end rises in volume and Eli laughs as Pops holds the phone away from his ear. “Jesus, Stiles, are you trying to make me go deaf?”

Eli has given up any pretense that he’s not shamelessly listening in, so he’s leaning close enough to the desk to hear the buzz of a text message come through Pops’ phone over Stiles’ tinny, outraged voice coming through the speaker. “Hang on, hang on, I’m getting a text message,” Pops says. Eli hopes he’ll put it on speaker so that he can hear what Stiles is saying since he still seems to be going despite being told to hang on, but Pops just looks at the screen for a moment before putting it back up to his ear, casting an indecipherable glance in Eli’s direction. “Never mind, looks like I’m available after all. You got a place in mind?”

The call wraps up disappointingly quickly after that, and Eli doesn’t even get a chance to fish for details before Pops sighs. “I hate to do this to you, kiddo, but it looks like your dad is on the way here to pick you up.”

Suspicion immediately bubbles up in Eli’s gut. “You called him, didn’t you?”

Pops doesn’t even have the decency to feign guilt. “Of course I did, Eli. I didn’t tell him anything you told me, but that was a pretty severe panic attack you had and I felt like it was something he needed to be aware of. I wasn’t expecting him to drop what he was doing to come get you.”

“He’s dramatic like that,” Eli mutters.

“Hey now, cut the guy some slack. You’re his son. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do to make sure you were okay.” The look on Pops’ face as he speaks makes Eli wonder if he’s not just talking about his dad, but before he can ask, the office door opens.

His dad’s eyes immediately fall on him, quickly cataloguing every part of Eli to reassure himself that he’s in one piece. “Am I interrupting?” he asks after a moment.

Eli starts to say yes, but a look from Pops has his snapping his mouth shut, feeling chastised even though he hadn’t said a word. “Of course not. You’ve actually come at the perfect time; something’s come up and I have somewhere I need to be.”

Dad narrows his eyes at Pops. “Everything okay?”

“You know I’d tell you if it wasn’t,” Pops says lightly, and Eli once again quickly busies himself with putting the lid back on the box of cookies so that neither of them notice the way his eyes have gone wide.

Pops is clearly hiding the fact that Stiles called from Dad. But why? He could have hidden it from Eli by stepping out of the room to take his call, but he didn’t, so it obviously isn’t meant to be that big of a secret. But then why keep it a secret from Dad at all? From what little Eli knows, Stiles and his dad were good friends before Stiles left for college -