Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Do you want the bite?”

“What?”

“Do you want the bite? If it doesn’t kill you, and it could, you’ll become like us.”

“…Like you.”

“Yes or no?”

“I don’t want to be like you.”

“Do you know what I heard just then? Your heart, beating slightly faster over the words I don’t want. You may believe you’re telling me the truth,” Peter leaned in close, brushing his lips against the thin skin of his wrist. He was afraid Peter would go ahead and bite him anyway. Then blue eyes met his. “But you are lying to yourself.”

Stiles swallowed and watched him go.

-THEN-

“Dad?” he called out, entering his home with an acute weariness. He dropped the spare key into the dish on the mantle. The clatter was loud in the otherwise empty house. Turning around to close the front door, Stiles lingered over the empty space where Roscoe should have been, then carefully set about flipping all the deadbolts.

He called out for his dad one more time, but when no response sounded from his bedroom or study, he slowly made his way to the landline on the wall outside the kitchen.

Getting it down hurt, but he managed. As he dialed the familiar number, he wondered if he should be in the hospital. Something had to be broken, surely. And he was pretty sure falling unconscious after a head injury was a bad thing. . . god. Maybe Scott would take him. Or Melissa. He. . . really needed some help, right now.

The dial tone clicked over. “Sheriff’s Office,” a slightly breathless voice quickly said.

Stiles leaned his weight against the wall and winced. “Hey Tara.”

“Stiles?! Are you okay? Oh, sweetie, we’ve been so worried—"

“Is my dad there?”

“No, honey. He’s out looking for you. I can patch him through. Just give me a tick.”

Stiles nodded—a bit uselessly, nobody could see him—and closed his eyes, letting the noise from the receiver wash over him.

“Sheriff speaking.”

“Dad,” Stiles said. “Hey.”

“Stiles? Thank god, you’re alright. What happened? Where are you?”

“I’m at home,” Stiles hurried to say. “I’m okay. I’m at home.” Given the state he was in, it was a fucking miracle he’d managed that much. Glancing out the window showed the first fingers of dawn creeping over the horizon. He’d been gone so long. . .

“Are you – will you be home soon?”

A disgruntled sound crackled over the line. “I want to, but there’s been disturbance calls over by the Grogar Lot. You know, those old warehouses?”

“Yeah, I know them.”

“Some passers-by called in, said they heard screaming. They didn’t stick around though, so – Jesus, Stiles. You worried me.”

Stiles tried to smile. His face hurt. “Sorry.”

“No, no. I’m just—you stay home, you hear? Unless. . . do you need Melissa? I think she’s on duty but maybe—”

“Dad,” Stiles interrupted. “I’m fine. I’m not going anywhere. Go check out those warehouses.”

“If you’re sure…”

“I am. We can talk when you get home. Just – promise you’ll be careful.” The plea fell flat. How can his dad promise to be careful when he doesn’t know what’s really out to get him?

He needs to tells him. And he will. Tomorrow, when he can think.

The Sheriff sounded his agreement with an age-old pattern. With their good-bye’s said, Stiles made to hang up, before he suddenly remembered and slammed the phone back to his ear. “Wait! Dad!”

“What is it, Stiles?”

“Erica and Boyd,” Stiles blurted. “I know where they are. Please, you have to go get them.”

The exasperated silence, broken only by a faint “Christ”, summed the entire evening up perfectly.

Hanging up shortly after, Stiles looked around his empty house, decided nope and went upstairs. The emergency box in the bathroom beckoned him and at the thought of a warm bath, he thought he might actually cry. Warm water. Soap. He’d probably need stitches.

He made it as far as his bedroom before he collapsed into the desk-chair. Limbs floppy and exhausted, the bathroom had never seemed as far away as it did in that moment.

Gingerly wriggling so he could lean his forehead against the desk with minimal pain, Stiles groaned and considered his predicament. The talk with his father had woken him up, some, but that was more a curse than a boon right now. At least half-dead on his feet he’d been able to move in a fugue state that covered the pinch-sharp jostling of bones and muscle deep bruising in a thick blanket of apathetic lethargy.

Now he just hurt.

And he swore that if whoever was knocking on his window didn’t fuck off in the next three seconds, he would happily brain them with his desk lamp. You know, when he could lift it.

Fumbling through a draw with a bitten off yelp of pain as two of his fingers—broken, or close to it—encountered the general clutter, Stiles unearthed his spare phone and brought it into to his lap. Clumsily fiddling with the buttons, he switched it on and waited for the load up. The number was the same as his actual phone, so any calls or texts he had missed should show up on it. It was a cheap thing—black plastic verging on grey and screen so small it put a watch-face to shame and the pixels were literally visible in the corner where he’d once stepped on it, but the damn thing was near indestructible. And with the turn Beacon Hills had taken—sharp left onto Dark and Deadly Avenue, folks—he’d figured a bit of forward thinking when it came to the inevitable destruction of his property could only be to his benefit.

“So this is what you do when you aren’t setting people on fire.”

Okay. Creepily familiar voice in his bedroom.

God. He was too tired for this shit.

Straightening up with a pained whine firmly locked between his teeth, he slowly toed the chair into spinning around.

Peter Hale stood in the center of his room, looking around with an air of genuine curiosity. His window stood open behind him, letting in a draft of fresh, cool air that Stiles’ really could have done without.

When the body went into shock, it started shaking. If he wasn’t there already, he was one sarcastic exchange away from nosediving.

Also, the chatter of his teeth reminded him that Argent’s men had had a little too much fun hitting his face with their fists.

“Good to know,” Peter continued, finished with his inspection of a teenage-boy’s bedroom, then he focused on Stiles. Stiles hoped the expression on his face was the creepy discomfort of being in what amounted to a kid’s bedroom and not something stupid, like pity. He didn’t think he could handle pity right now.

In counterpoint to his wishes, Peter’s gaze travelled from his face, to his neck and landed on his torso with an intensity that suggested he could see beneath his shirt and he didn’t like what he found. “You’re hurt.”

Stiles rolled his eyes. “Yeah,” he bit out, squeezing his eyes closed because fuck, even that hurt. “Thanks for that, I had no idea. What are you? Sherlock?”

“You smell like an Argent.”

Stiles did yelp and jerk away this time, if only because Peter was suddenly right there. Heart jackrabbiting in his chest, Stiles fixed Peter with the dirtiest look he could muster. Judging by Peter’s rapidly thinning mouth, he wasn’t all that successful. “And you look pretty spry for a dead guy.”

Peter smiled. Stiles’ eyes were drawn to the movement. It wasn’t a nice smile.

And right about then, he remembered that he had been intimately involved with aforementioned death.

He wanted to ask if his day—his life could get any worse, but, again. Beacon Hills.

“Are you here to kill me?” He said then, sighing. “If you are, can we just get this over with, please? ‘Cause while I would really rather prefer to start tomorrow not as a corpse, I do need sleep. And stitches. Probably. So,” he waved his hand. He couldn’t remember what his point was.

“I’m not here to kill you,” Peter replied, sounding unfairly done with this conversation. Had there been a conversation?

“Yeah okay,” Stiles scoffed. Against his will, he found himself relaxing by increments. This. . . this was familiar, at least. Sort of. Maybe. Unless resurrection had fucked with Peter even more.

“I’m not hallucinating, am I?” He had to ask. “I don’t think I can deal if I’m just imagining you.”

Stiles didn’t expect Peter to catch the hand he had lifted to check the wound on the back of his head. Nor did he expect Peter to hold it for a long moment, as though uncertain what to do with it now that he had it within his grasp, then flick dark eyes up to Stiles’ own and, ever so gently, move to cup his chin. Big and sure, Stiles shivered at the warmth and kind of hated how he leaned into it.

“You’re not hallucinating,” Peter said lowly. Intently. If he were less delirious with blood loss and pain, Stiles probably would’ve realized now was when he should move away, put a stop with this strange proximity which, he distantly suspected, was the threshold to the Bad Touch he’d read about in his dad’s stranger-danger brochures when he was five.

But he wasn’t. Less delirious, that was. He was feeling pretty damn woozy, actually. So he let it happen.

He blinked heavily. “Shouldn’t you be dead?” he murmured, when the silence stretched on. Or felt like it did. For all he knew, there hadn’t been a silence at all.

Peter shrugged. “Probably.”

“Do I want to know how?”

Peter smiled mysteriously. Best not, then.

“Dammit.”

“What?”

“I can’t be mean to you.” At Peter’s perplexed eyebrows, Stiles expounded. “You resurrected. You’re, like, werewolf Jesus. Fuck, you even have a goatee. I can’t be mean to Jesus.”

“I can assure, I am not Jesus.”

“That’s something Jesus would say.” Stiles paused, then corrected himself. “Or should’ve said. When Judas was doing his. . . doing his thing. Or did he—wait, was that Peter? I think it was Peter.” He blinked again. “Why are you here?”

“I like you, of course,” Peter said, nonchalant like a boss. Stiles almost believed him. “Woe be me if I don’t check in with my favorite human. Why else would I do anything?”

Stiles scoffed. “Oh, I don’t know, Magneto. What new plot have you concocted in that head of yours?”

“Really, Stiles. It’s like you don’t know me at all.”

“I don’t know you.” His response was a knee-jerk reaction. And even as he said it, his mind flashed back to all the research he had done in the name of getting to the bottom of the Hale fire. Tucked between Talia Hale’s employment documents and Derek Hales missed counselling sessions, had been Peter. All his hospital records, speeding tickets, school records. Stiles wondered if Peter knew, and if that’s why his amusement was plain to see. He wondered if he was just paranoid and reading too much into it.

And then he remembered that annoying werewolf habit, and figured it was all null and void anyway.

Peter confirmed this for him, saying “You and I both know that’s a lie,” then, before Stiles could hunt down a response, the man straightened and held out a hand.

Stiles eyed it skeptically. Werewolves bite, don’t they?

“Were do you keep your med-kit?”

“…the bathroom?”

“Come on then. Up. You need a shower and Tylenol and rest.”

Stiles wasn’t buying it. “And you’re going to help me with that?”

Peter heaved a sigh. “Yes. Though god knows why.” He remained firm beneath Stiles’ suspicious eye. Then he took Stiles hand, pulled him to his feet, and took his choice away from him.

Nearly two hours later, when Stiles was clean and bandaged and snug in bed, he couldn’t find it himself to complain.

It had been. . . well. Strange was the best word. Peter had been strangely gentle in touching him, turning away when he’d completed his cursory inspection when Stiles undressed. It had been so long since somebody else cared that he got hurt, and did something about it, Stiles had found himself at a floundering loss—embarrassed when Peter helped soap up the places he couldn’t reach with his ribs the way they were, and then shy when, dizzy from the steam of the shower, Peter had helped him into worn pajama pants and a faded shirt. He’d been touchy but not Bad Touchy and Stiles. . . really didn’t know how he felt about it.

“I killed him, by the way,” Peter said, taking an (uninvited) seat on his bed.

Stiles pulled his face from the pillow. “What?” Then, belatedly, “Who?”

“Gerard.”

Peter smiled thinly when Stiles flinched. “He is currently quite dead and rotting away in a very deep grave in a place nobody would care to look.” He paused. “Just so you know.”

The thought. . . didn’t upset him. Who was he kidding? This was possibly the best thing he’d heard all week. “Good,” he said vindictively. “I hope you made it hurt.”
“Violent little thing, aren’t you.”

“You should know.”

Amused, Peter crawled up the bed and lay down alongside him. Stiles should push him off.

“What happened tonight?” he asked instead.

“I’ll tell you in the morning.”

“Do you know what happened to my car?”

“Lydia drove it through a wall.”

That woke him up. “What?!”

Peter sighed. “Sleep, Stiles.”

“But—”

Rolling his eyes, Peter lifted a hand and pushed it up under Stiles shirt. The warm fingers were a welcome shock, one that Stiles disagreed with deeply but his reaction was quickly swallowed by the sudden lack of pain.

“That’s not playing fair,” he slurred. Sleep sounded very good, right now.

Peter pulled his gaze from the thick black lines crawling up his arms. Stiles didn’t hear his response. If asked, though, he was sure it was something unnecessarily sassy.

-NOW-

“So what do we do if we find him?”

The question was standard fare, and well deserved. Any number of things could go wrong with what they were about to do. Scott being cautious was a point in his favor that Peter would have preferred to never give him. As it was, Peter was holding back from ripping his ungrateful throat out by the thinnest of moral threads.

“You’re going to have to guide him out somehow,” Peter said. He shrugged. “Try to give him back control of his mind, his body.”

From where she sat on the couch, back rigid and shoulder’s tight, Lydia huffed. “Could you elaborate on the ‘somehow’?” She asked. “It’s not feeling very specific at the moment.”

Peter levelled her with a flat stare, unimpressed. “Improvise.”

Her lips twisted, dissatisfied. Peter wondered what Stiles saw in her. She could be intelligent, when she wanted, and with her kind of smarts she could have easily made it work for her if high-school popularity was truly so important.

Scott, standing behind Stiles, rolled his shoulders, saying “What if this is just another trick?”

Peter laughed. “When are you people going to start trusting me?” And why question his input now? When their best friend was in such need?

“I meant him,” Scott said, nodding at Void!Stiles.

“Oh.”

Fair enough.

-THEN-

“Again?” Stiles demanded, dropping his bag at the door of his bedroom, ready to just be done with the day.

Sunday had been a shit show, starting with telling his dad the truth. To say his dad took news of the supernatural well would be like saying randy flatworms are secretly pacifists at heart—both wildly untrue and unbelievable.

To be fair, Stiles doubted anybody would react well when presented with proof of claim that every lie your son has told you over the last few months starts with a rabid monster in the woods that moonlights as a werewolf when he’s not plotting the deaths of all the people involved in the mass-murder of a family of fury fuzzies living out in the woods and end with that same son’s very recent kidnapping and torture at the hands of a family devoted to wiping out the self-same monsters your son spends his time hanging around with.

He hadn’t spoken to his dad, since. They’d exchanged texts, something they’d done since Stiles was seven and sitting outside his mother’s hospital room, so. There was hope yet.

Monday had been miserable. Cooped up in his room with nothing to do and no energy to do it even if he did, Stiles had spent the day folded in a noodle on his bed with his laptop, mindlessly watching Iron Man. It hadn’t made him feel any better.

Neither had the glaring lack of calls or texts on his phone.

And so, today. Tuesday. Harris had been an ass; Coach had been in turns utterly normal and plaintively concerned and Scott. . . had barely looked at him. He’d offered up a quick, mindless hello, patted Stiles on the back, oblivious to the slowly healing wounds and, just. Left. His best friend hadn’t noticed the bruises, or the bandages, or the pain Stiles couldn’t hide every time he moved, too busy chasing after Allison, who was giving him the cold shoulder. And he hadn’t been the only one. Lydia had ignored him. She hadn’t said a single thing about the damage to his car—if not for Peter, Stiles doubted he’d even have his keys right now.

Nobody had asked after him, had inquired to see how he was. The only topic on everybody’s tongues was the discovery of Erica and Boyd. Found on the side of the road, they’d whispered during classes. At the station, now. Reckon they’ll come back to school? What do you think happened to them?

Frankly, Stiles was over it.

So of course Peter was in his room. Again.

Stupid werewolf, assuming he had blanket permission to just come and go.

“Seriously?” Stiles continued, hesitating between shucking his shirt or keeping the layers as a weak, superficial shield. “Look, don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful you did what you did the other night, so thank you—” Peter cocked an eyebrow “—but you can’t just—” Stiles flailed a hand “—do this.”

Humoring him, Peter slowly looked around. Finding nothing nefarious, devious or, god forbid, incriminating, he turned back to Stiles. “And what is it I’m doing?”

“… You’re in my room.”

“So I am.”

Stiles groaned and, with a thought largely featuring fuck it, took off his shirt. A long-sleeve in this weather had been a stupid idea to begin with, but it had been the only way to avoid the awkward Adult Questions. He wanted his t-shirts back.

Quickly pulling on an old T that was too big for him, and therefore perfect, Stiles cautiously dropped into his desk chair and booted up his laptop.

“What are you doing?” he asked, while he waited. He could see Peter hadn’t been idle, for however long he’d been in his room. Unsupervised. Propped up on his pillows, the man was staring intently at his laptop—the keyboard of which had been imprinted on his cheek so long ago—and was surrounded by dozens of brochures.

“House hunting,” Peter replied distractedly. His eyes narrowed, then he clicked the enter bar with extreme prejudice.

That was so far outside of Stiles’ expectations, he was momentarily stumped.

“Alright,” he said at last. Then he turned away, determined to put the matter out of his mind. “I have homework, so. . .” he trailed off.

“What do you think of these?” Peter asked, ignoring him.

Stiles narrowed his eyes, debating the merits of turning around. Peter had to have known what that question would do to him. . . but homework. . . crap. There goes his attention span.

He span around to find Peter had pivoted his laptop so Stiles could just barely see the screen from where he sat. Begrudgingly acknowledging such devious strategy with a sigh, Stiles wheeled himself closer until he might as well have been sitting on his bed.

“Meh,” he said, eyeing up the little photographs of the immediate responses to Peter’s search query. There was no way he was going to let on how desperately his eyes wanted to pop out of his head at the price-range. “I’ve seen better.” He shot a challenging look at the werewolf. “What else have you got?”

Two hours later, don’t ask him how, he has no idea where the time went, Peter turned to him and said, “Come with me on Saturday.”

Having migrated to the bed somewhere between laughing over the idiotic placement of a bathtub in a bedroom and mocking the choice in drapes adorning a two-story colonial, Stiles realized he was close enough to Peter to count each individual eyelash. Not that he wanted to. Clearly it was time to put a stop to this.

He smiled. “No.”

“It’s not like you have anything better to do,” Peter said in a tone that called him out on his lies.

“Uh, yeah. I do. Can’t you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Wikipedia, calling my name.” And with that, Stiles pushed off the bed.

“Now that’s just sad.”

“Story of my life, dude.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Peter replied and, no matter how Stiles pestered, he refused to explain himself.

They made plans for Saturday.

------

Closing the cabinets, Stiles wondered out of the kitchen, into the living room, and came to a stop by the bay-window. The view was gorgeous. Up on the ninth floor, the apartment overlooked the best sights of Beacon Hills and caught enough natural sunlight to brighten up the airy living area in a way that turned the wooden floors to a warm honey and negated the need for additional lighting during the day.

He bet the night would look stunning up here, the town lit up gold and the stars bright and close.

He crossed his arms and hip-checked the window seat. He really liked it.

He didn’t turn when he heard Peter approach him, even though he wanted to. But, considering this had to be seventh apartment they’d visited together, the animal instinct to protect his back had tapered off into something almost resembling comfort in the man’s presence. Stiles would have to look into this, obviously.

“Thoughts?” Peter asked, just as he’d done with every apartment once he’d finished getting the run-down of need-to-know from the agent. And each time, Stiles couldn’t shake the feeling that Peter’s ultimate opinion on the place always come down to Stiles’ own feelings. It was weird.

“I like it,” he said, because it didn’t feel right to be disingenuous, not now, and partly because he wanted to see what Peter did. He turned away, playing at nonchalant. When the corner of Peter’s mouth twitched in his periphery, he knew he’d been found out.

“So, this one?”

Stiles glanced around once more, as did Peter. Stiles wondered what Peter saw, if he could also feel that sense of warmth, like an after-image of home caught up in something familiar and ordinary, all at once.

Stiles looked at the empty room and the bare walls and saw a life playing out.

“This one,” he said decisively, then he left Peter standing behind and went to check out the bedroom again. He hoped Peter turned one of them into a library.

In the hallway, Peter turned to the agent and said, “I’ll take it.”

The agent smiled blandly, not daring to ask questions, and glanced at her clipboard.

-NOW-

Lydia shivered as she fell through the doors and into the white, cavernous space of Stiles’ mind. Heels clicking off the glossy floors, she stepped forward. Looking around, she couldn’t help but think of how. . . sterile, the place felt. Neat, rectangular skylights checkered on ad infinitum; square columns marked off interminable space.

Seeing Scott moving to rejoin her, Lydia swallowed and refocused on the matter at hand: saving Stiles. But no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t shake the oozing feeling of discomfort trickling down the nape of her neck. Something was wrong. Something. Something didn’t fit—something was out of place.

She just didn’t know what.

Not until they were screaming for Stiles. Not until they were shouting his name.

There were no shadows. There was no recognition.

His mind was alien to her.

-THEN-

Stiles woke to the jostling movement of Peter crawling into his bed with all the grace of a snuffling kitten. Bemoaning the loss of sleep and trying to reconcile the strange image in his head, Stiles sighed and twitched aside the covers.

He was pretty sure he wasn’t imagining the smugness oozing from the man like a palpable cloud. It left him feeling all tingly.

Peter crowded in close, sharing his pillow and shuffling until he found a satisfying position. Flapping out a hand to keep him firmly on his side of the invisible line and falling short, Stiles let his hand drop instead on to Peter’s stupidly defined chest.

On second thought, it might not be the smugness causing the tingly sensation.

“God,” he groaned. “What do you want?”

“Many things,” came Peter’s prompt and perky reply. Stiles wanted to kill him. “But let’s settle for the PG version and see what comes later, shall we?”

Stiles peeled open an eye. It was too late for this shit.

Catching his murderous drift, Peter huffed, snaked an arm around his waist and yanked him so that he was suddenly pressed against Peter from chest to toe. But, see. Warm. So warm. Whatever. Stiles would rag on him the morning. After sleep.

“What do you know of the Alpha pack?”

“First time hearing about it,” Stiles mumbled, and rubbed his nose over Peter’s sternum. “Tell me—” he yawned, then forgot what he was going to say. He made some unintelligible noise that Peter took to mean go ahead, regale me with your tales.

Peter started talking. Stiles was asleep in seconds, drifting off to the sound of Peter’s voice.

He didn’t want to think on why that was so preferable to the silence.

-NOW-

“Stiles is part of your pack.”

Scott frowned at Lydia. Her eyes were wide, hopeful and bright—the way they got when she’d just then thought of something that would go on to help solve whatever crisis was at hand. “What?” he asked. “What do you mean?”

Lydia smiled, then, looking back towards Stiles’ bent-over figure. “He’s human, but. . .” She paused, tongue pressing against the back of her bottom row of teeth. “He’s a part of the pack, right?”

“Yeah,” Scott instantly replied. He didn’t know why she sounded so hesitant. “Yeah, of course.” Of course his best friend was in his pack. Where else would Stiles be?

Lydia met his gaze, the thrill of success flushing her cheeks. “So how do wolves signal their location to the rest of the pack?”

Frowning, mind racing, Scott tried to divine her meaning. She raised her eyebrows and looked pointedly at the pair atop the Nemeton’s stump.

“They howl,” he said aloud, following his train of thought and in the same instant, as though it could sense his intentions, the Nogitsune’s bandage-wrapped head snapped towards them and the rotting cavern it called its mouth hissed.

When Scott howled, the room shuddered.

-THEN-

Watching yet another pack meeting descend into a pissing contest interposed only with the seemingly prerequisite dick-measuring tournament, Stiles turned to Peter. Neither of them were technically even supposed to be here. Peter had wanted to speak to Derek about something that Stiles had lost interest in the minute it turned to a riveting session of the blame-game and Stiles had had a question about creating alliances with other packs that had quickly gotten misplaced in the face of Derek’s generally awful reception to all things Stiles, apparently.

Then Scott had turned up, bursting with a whole lot of something, and Isaac hadn’t been far from his heels. Lydia had entered with a regency completely unsuitable to the dump-pile Derek called home, Jackson trotting along behind her with an impressive scowl, and Allison had brought up the rear.

Peter and Stiles had been overlooked in the sudden chaos.

Now, having claimed the staircase as their own while everybody else milled about in the open space—carefully fleshed out with a sagging, frayed sofa and equally sad table—Stiles leaned back and braced his weight on his hands. Peter was a warm line along his side where they sat shoulder to shoulder but it was such a familiar position, it barely even registered anymore.

From what he’d gathered in the shouted snippets of conversation, the Alpha pack had been making moves against the weaker members of the pack and gone so far as to try kidnapping Isaac.

This was the first time Stiles was hearing any of this. Judging by Peter’s tight expression, it was the same for him, too.

Swallowing the bitter taste on the back of his tongue, Stiles watched and he saw.

When he met Peter’s eyes, he didn’t need the man to tell him what was happening.

He swallowed tightly and plastered on a smile. If he had to look away and discretely wipe his eyes, he blamed the dust.

-NOW-

With the echoes of Scott’s howl fading, he and Lydia stared, dumbfounded, at the unseemly pair atop the Nemeton. Evidently the Nogitsune’s turn, it fingered a piece before moving it. Stiles watched on. Too far away, they could not tell if his eyes were narrowed in thought or dismay. And they had no way of getting closer, because Stiles hadn’t heard them.

Stiles hadn’t so much as twitched.

“It didn’t work,” Lydia said faintly. She span, facing Scott. “Why didn’t it work?”

Scott’s jaw worked for a moment. For the first time, a cold, sickly weight settled in his stomach. “I don’t know,” he said at length. “I—” but there was nothing he could say, no way to finish that thought.

Their plan. . . it hadn’t worked.

Reaching over, Lydia grasped his arm and peered up at him beseechingly. “Do it again. You have to—we have to try again.”

And so Scott howled again, louder this time, even a dull, blunt pressure built behind his eyes.

And still Stiles does not move.

-THEN-

“Why are you doing this?” Stiles asked one evening.

He was at Peter’s place, familiar with it like it was it’s own. His backpack waited for him by the door but his books and papers were scattered over Peter’s coffee table. His favorite pillow waited for him on the couch, where he knew they’d eventually wind up watching some show and pulling it apart while studiously pretending to ignore the way they pressed up together.

He had spare clothes in Peter’s dresser. Peter kept a second toothbrush in the bathroom. Stiles had taken to wearing his shirt to school when he woke up late and left in a rush. There wasn’t simply nothing going on.

Peter watched his knife slicing through the steak with an intensity that suggested the answer was hidden somewhere in its tender, pink depths.

“You’re pack,” Peter said at long last, shrugging as if to say what else is there?. It was so matter of fact, so. . . unequivocal, that Stiles bit back the question of Am I?. He didn’t want to know if it wasn’t true, didn’t want to second guess.

Peter was silent as he scraped the large spoon through the mushroom sauce. When he was done, he wiped his hands on a dishtowel and rounded the island, coming to a stop beside Stiles and forcing Stiles to tilt his head back to look at him. Stiles wondered what the wolf was looking for. He hoped, somewhat ridiculously, that he wasn’t found wanting.

One of Peter’s hands came up and brushed through his hair. Scent-marking, Stiles’ mind supplied, but he was focused on other things. Namely, the way Peter was looking at him. He’d never felt so desired before. He was almost afraid of what he would be willing to do, to keep Peter looking at him like that.

“I take care of my pack,” Peter said then. And then, like the unsolicitous ass that he was, he shattered the moment by nudging Stiles off the barstool and telling him to get the plates.

-NOW-

Out of breath from near constant yelling of Stiles’ name, Lydia bent over, hands braced on her knees, and greedily gulped down mouthfuls of air. By her side, Scott sprawled on the floor. He, too, was out of breath, but he handled it with far more grace than she.

Of course, she imagined he had a quicker refractory frame with his werewolf physiology so he did have an easier time of it. Feeling her heart start to steady, she sucked in one last deep breath and attempted to straighten.

They’d been at this for what felt like hours. There was no way to tell time in the clinically minimal layout of Stiles’ mind, and, according to everything she had read on the subject, time, being an arbitrarily ambivalent concept, moved differently on the psychological plane than it did in the physical world. For all they knew, they’d barely scraped ten minutes.

Lydia certainly hoped it had only been ten minutes, even if she was beginning to think they be stuck here for an eternity without making a difference.

Nothing they’d done had worked. Scott had howled until he couldn’t breathe, and then he had roared and growled and done any number of things to fight the vast nothingness between them and Stiles. The empty space remained just that. When that hadn’t worked, Scott had tried running. He never advanced. No matter how viciously he forced his body forward, space stood still.

Lydia cleared her throat, wincing a little at the harsh rasp of parched tissue. Nothing and no one had answered her screams. Letting her eyes open a sliver, she swayed at the painfully bright light, and rubbed her temples where a deep pounding had steadily grown stronger. Having regained his own breath, Scott rose to his feet. A pinched crease had appeared between his brows, no different from his usual contemplative expression unless one counted the lines and measured the depths of the divots. His mouth was a tight line of confusion and something a little like denial.

Lydia knew what it looked like. She wore the same expression intimately. Only, unlike herself, she suspected Scott wasn’t all too sure about what it was he was denying.

She opened her mouth to suggest they look for a way out—they were getting nowhere; they needed to go back and regroup—but all that left her was a vacuous wheeze of noise as they were suddenly and viciously. . . yanked away.

Mind and body jerking, Lydia felt her neck flop to the side as her consciousness slammed into place.

For a moment, she couldn’t see. Sounds were muffled and faraway and the couch behind and beneath her felt like needles against her hypersensitive skin. A whine escaped her, confused and frightened, and she jerked back when a dark chuckle broke through the cotton-thick wall.

Blinking rapidly, her vision cleared. She did not immediately understand what she was looking at. The world tilted at an angle—on account of her fallen head—the carpet of the McCall’s living room was immediately in her line of sight, as well as the bottom part of a shoe. She followed the line of the shoe up to the ankle, covered by a trouser-leg rumpled up, then up to the knee and finally, through her disorientation, the clues came together and she realized she was staring at the unconscious and bound forms of Mrs. McCall and Deaton.

With that horrifying thought at the forefront of her mind, she whipped her head up—or tried to, anyway. The world once again swam away, leaving her lurching and nauseated on top of the sinking feeling that everything had gone terribly wrong. She shut her eyes and swallowed, praying that she didn’t vomit. She needed to—to. . .

A man’s voice tutted, close by her eye. It almost sounded as though it come from directly in front of her. She opened her eyes to check, and Peter Hale’s face met her. Far too close to comfort and oozing a smugness she would so happily kill to hit off his face, Peter crouched down and ran a cursory eye over her.

“Well now,” he said, the hint of a smile tugging on his mouth. “That didn’t go as planned, did it?”

Lydia didn’t give him the dignity of an answer, not that she thought herself capable of one. But Peter didn’t seem like he minded. If anything, her silence appeared to please him greatly.

It was when he reached for her that she freaked out and made a valiant effort to get away.

“Hey now,” he soothed and she shuddered. “You’ve got a little something just here,” and she felt him swipe his thumb over her upper lip, below her nose.

His fingers, when he pulled back, were painted in blood.

He hummed, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together. When he looked at her, his expression was pleasant enough to strike true fear into her; the likes of which she hadn’t felt since she’d teetered on the brink of an insanity he pushed her to.

“You know,” he said, “You should have never encouraged Scott to send me away—oh, don’t look at me like that. I know it was you. So does Stiles, in case you were wondering, but you.” He tutted, shaking his head in a mocking show of disappointment. “You. It couldn’t have been Derek; he cares too much for the few scraps of family he has left to actively push me away. Scott wouldn’t have thought of it on his own—he doesn’t have the spine. So. That leaves you. Little Miss Martin.”

He coos then, his hand returning to cradle her jaw with a hissed, “Always so controlling.”

Lydia swallowed, the words dead in her mouth before they could take shape. Pinprick pain sparks across her neck as his shifted nails break the skin.

“How does it feel, to know this is your fault?” God, she wants to cry. “The signs were obvious. If I was here, I wouldn’t have missed them. If I was here, I would have never let Stiles’ go so far. But no. Instead, I was ordered away by my Alpha. Sent away like a dog to heel and none of you considered the consequences.” He sneered. “You can’t just break a bond like that. Both parties feel the loss. But you didn’t care about that, did you? You never cared about Stiles—all you ever cared about was the power his regard for you could give you. So tell me, Lydia Martin. How does it feel, to know that because of you, dear sweet Allison is dead and the blood spilt in this town is on your hands?”

He cocked his head to the side, listening to her weak breaths. He smirked. “Fine. Don’t tell me.” He made to rise, then, but paused halfway to doing so. “I should thank you, though,” he admitted, sounding as though nothing could pain him greater. “Without you, I likely would have continued with my plan and wasted years convincing Stiles to speak to me again.” Peter grinned. “I’m sure this is certainly not what you intended, but. Well. What can I say? All’s well that ends well, eh?”

The last thing Lydia saw before the world went black, was a flash of red where blue once sat.

-THEN-

One look, and Stiles instantly knew he didn’t want to have this conversation.

Dripping blood that was in parts his and not his with an ankle that was likely—if not probably—broken and a headache to rival the complexity of Canadian French, Stiles passed Peter and started up the stairs.

He didn’t even want to know why the man had taken up residence in his living room. Disregarding the fact that his dad could come home anytime, Peter leaving his scent all over his home would undoubtedly piss off Scott when he came around on Friday for the traditional game night (if he didn’t cancel again) and Stiles would really rather not spend the little time he managed to steal with his best friend discussing, yet again, Peter’s creepy lurking past-times.

All he wanted to do was shower and figure out what the fuck had been chasing him so he could inform the pack.

After he found a way to kill it.

That son of a bitch was going down.

Unfortunately, Peter was not on board with that idea. Sure, he followed him up the stairs and onto the landing in silence, but that was apparently as far as he could go while holding his tongue.

“They don’t appreciate you,” he said, which… not where Stiles thought he’d begin.

Even so, Stiles laughed. “Preaching to the choir, dude.”

Peter caught Stiles by the arm, unheeding of the blood. “I’m serious, Stiles. Let me guess—” no, no, Stiles did not want to hear this. He futilely tugged on his arm “—there’s a new monster in the woods, and nobody thought to tell you.”

Peter may as well have taken a brick to Stiles head for how suddenly he stopped moving. He pressed his advantage. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

Grinding his teeth together, Stiles finally pulled free. “Fuck off,” he said, in lieu of outright acceptance. Right then, he thought he could find it in himself to hate Peter easily.

“Where was your True Alpha this time?” Peter spat, dogging his steps.

“OH MY GOD!” Stiles shouted in frustration, it seemed like every few days, they had this conversation. “This again?!”

“When are you going to wake up and realize what he’s doing to you?”

Stiles whirled around. “Scott isn’t like that.”

Peter sneered. “You are so loyal—”

“Oh, of course you would see that as a bad thing.”

“How much longer are you going to let them push you around, huh? How much longer are you going to play ignorant while they push you away?”

“Stop.”

“Can you even feel the pack bonds, anymore?” Peter demanded. “We had human’s in the pack, Stiles. I know you can feel them if they’re there.”

“Stop it,” Stiles said, louder this time. Instinctively aware of the thin ice he skated, Peter bit back the words he wanted to force into Stiles’ head until the boy finally, finally woke up. The pack were pushing him away. It was plain as day. For all that he couldn’t believe how stupid they were being, this had gone on long enough.

He couldn’t stand by and watch Stiles’ tear himself apart over this. He needed Stiles to wake up and admit it to himself so they could get over this. And that was never going to happen if he didn’t push.

“Scott isn’t like that,” Stiles repeated, fixing him with a look. Peter wanted to shake him apart and see if he knew he didn’t believe his own words. “Alright? We’re just – we’ve just got our own interests now. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Really?” Peter asked, stepping forward. Stiles eyes darkened. Peter ticked his head aside, baring his neck, but he didn’t stop. Not now. “He has everything he’s ever wanted. The girl, the crowd, the game—”

“Exactly! He’s got a lot on his plate right now!”

“THAT’S NOT GOOD ENOUGH!” Peter yelled, slashing his hand through the air. He never came close to touching Stiles, but even so. It was enough to frighten him and Peter was morbidly pleased. Breathing hard, Peter curled his hands into fists at his side. “Are you honestly – you’re telling me it’s fine if you’re injured and terrified and alone so long as he’s having a good time getting his dick wet? Do you really think so little of yourself?”

Arms wrapped about himself, Stiles watched him. His eyes glistened with the hint of unshed tears. While Peter hated that he was the cause, he was too upset to do anything about them.

“Stiles—”

“Get out,” Stiles whispered. “Get out. Get the fuck out of my house right now.”

Peter remained where he was for a moment longer before he scoffed. “The only reason you are this upset,” he told Stiles on his way past, “is because you know I’m right. You just don’t want to admit it.”

------

Shaky after three days of no sleep and nowhere near enough food, it took Stiles an awfully long time to realize the door he was standing in front of was not his own.

He absorbed this in silence. Then, pulling his keys from his pocket, he thumbed through them until he found the right one, slipped it into the lock and let himself inside. Taking care to lock the door behind him, he toed off his shoes, hung his jacket on the hook and padded through to the bedroom.

As he’d hoped, Peter was in bed. Granted, he was reading—some thick monstrosity Stiles would be interested in on any other day—but Stiles didn’t let that deter him.

Ignoring Peter’s questioning look, Stiles crawled under the covers.

“I’m not part of their pack,” he said finally, head on Peter’s chest. It was probably awkward for Peter, reading like that, but Stiles’ wasn’t in the mood to care. He’d been turning the thought over in his head for what felt like weeks now. It had just. . . taken him a long time to admit it.

The way they’d closed ranks at school. The way nobody seemed to have time for him or invited him to the pack meetings or outings. The way Scott barely spoke to him anymore and was always, always backed up by Isaac, like the beta thought Stiles was too much to handle alone.

He sniffed, hating that he cared so much.

With a quiet snick, Peter set his book aside and shifted until they were lying face to face. “No, sweetheart,” he said, unbearably careful, and the smallest of sobs escaped him. “You aren’t.”

“You know what he told me today?” Stiles asked struggling to modulate his voice. He laughed brokenly, hysterical around the tears. “He said it was my fault. That I didn’t care what happened to everybody else. He doesn’t even—” he breathed unevenly “—he doesn’t even know that Gerard tortured me. He just cares that I’m a – I’m a liability and they all – they all agreed with him. Even Lydia and she, and she—”

Unable to continue, Stiles broke off.

Peter held him close while he cried and didn’t utter a word to stop him. “It hurts,” he gasped raggedly and clung to the way Peter hushed him. He hadn’t known how much he need it, this quiet support, until Peter gave it to him.

And, out of everybody he knew, Stiles figured Peter would have the most experience with losing his pack.

He just never thought Peter would be the one he would turn to.

He never realized Peter would be the only one to stay for him.

-NOW-

Spotting Stiles atop the Nemeton, Peter let out a breath and—looking a bit closer—rolled his eyes. Of course. . .
He approached the pair.

“You’re playing with him,” he said flatly. At his words, Stiles hummed without looking away from the game and bared his neck. Peter laid his hand on his shoulder, letting his thumb swipe of the warm slip of skin. Stiles moved another piece and color shattered through his mind—a powdery blast of red and greens and blues and yellows and pinks, spidering out from their location.

The Nogitsune hissed and shifted, putting more effort into holding itself up. Peter allowed his hand to wonder, finger’s slipping beneath Stiles’ collar to feel the smooth skin of his collarbone.

“Does this mean you accept?”

“What do you need, an invitation?”

“That would be nice.”

“Peter, I swear to god.”

Peter grinned, brushing a kiss to Stiles’ cheek. They’d have all the time in the world for Stiles to make good on his threat. He hoped it was something suitably creative, and pleasurable for the both of them—although that was beginning to sound like a reward, so. Ah well. Best get this done with, at any rate.

Ticking his head to the side, he cracked his neck, and felt the beta-shift prowl beneath his skin, ready.

“It’s time to wake up, sweetheart.”

Then he lunged, teeth bared and eyes red.

The Nogitsune never saw it coming. It met its end with a howling scream to drown out the crackle and pop as the change ripped it apart.

-THEN-

Stiles looked up from the book in his lap, finger marking the page he’d been staring at for the past several minutes. He gaped at Peter, whom sat across from him. Likely sensing the intensity of his incredulity, Peter’s eyes met his just as the man took a sip of coffee.

“Have you been courting me?!”

Calm as you please, Peter swallowed and set his mug aside. Stiles half expected him to deny it, and he suspected Peter would have, if his eyes hadn’t dropped to the book and lightened with understanding. Stiles didn’t need to be inside his head to know Peter knew what was written in it.

Letting him essentially choose the nest. Making him food. Always sitting next to him, pressing their shoulders together. Baring his neck when they argued, sleeping near him whenever the opportunity arose.

It was all so obvious now.

Stiles just couldn’t believe it hadn’t clicked when he’d been reading about the mating habits of actual wolves barely a week ago.

“It depends,” Peter said.

Stiles couldn’t help himself. “On what?”

“On you.” Peter shrugged. “On if you choose to accept it. Accept me.” Catching Stiles deer-in-the-headlights expression, he snorted and turned back to his magazine. “You don’t have to decide now.”

And, well. Biting his lip, Stiles looked away. His cheeks burned red, yet… he couldn’t deny he was pleased. When he nodded, a tiny tick of his head, he would’ve needed to be blind to miss Peter’s grin.

In his chest, the bond he’d taken to thinking of as a golden tether burned hot and bright. Stiles settle back, lifted his book and let it warm him.