Archive of Our Own ^beta

You'd think it'd go like this - Stiles would run Roscoe through the wall to reunite Lydia with her true beast to her beauty love, Scott would force Derek to relieve his worst trauma, everyone would leave, and in the ashes of the mess Peter would approach Stiles, tired and hurting and broken, and offer him a shoulder to lean on, hold him close and bring him home and…

That's not how it goes.

Oh, everyone does leave. There's something constant and inevitable about it. That this whole mess builds up to it. They don't trust each other, they all try to make without a clueof what they're doing, and at the end everyone leaves and Stiles stays in that warehouse, beat up and feeling defeated, with just Peter around because Peter has nowhere to leave to.

"You."

"Me." Peter grins at him, curiosity and the inertia of nature keeping him around. Certainly not care. "I suppose you'd like to know how I survived."

Stiles narrows his eyes at him and comes closer, close enough to touch.

"Yeah, there's no way you survived. You've come back somehow but I don't care. You're still a werewolf. I need you to do the pain relief mojo on me."

Stiles looks at Peter.

Peter looks at Stiles.

He could laugh, he could leave. Hell, he has no obligation to take Stiles' hurt away - he could hurt him more. But he doesn't.

Stiles is fascinating. If he wasn't already halfway in love with him - or maybe fully there, already fully devoted to him when there was little for him to be devoted to safe for revenge, Peter would have said he fell in love in that very moment.

But as it is, maybe it happens the way in that quote from one of the books Cora made him read. He fell in love slowly, then all at once.

And now standing there, Stiles asking for him, taking him as if Peter is his to take (he is), there's no coming back from it.

So all Peter does is put his hand on Stiles' neck, draw the pain away, and pretends it doesn't do things to him, the way Stiles appears to trust him, the way he comes in with demands as if it's a given that Peter will listen. That it doesn't do thing to him, the way Stiles melts a little in relief, riding the high of endorphins after the agony stops. That it doesn't to things to him, to feel the soft skin of his neck under his palm, too cold but slowly warming up from Peter's own touch.

Oh, who is he fooling.

It's care.

Somewhere along the way this boy caught Peter's attention and now he's his. And apparently Stiles decided so is Peter - all Stiles'.

"How long does that pain drain thing last?"

"Longer than I'm touching you directly. The longer I keep direct contact though, the longer the relief will last once I let go. Never really more than an hour or so. It's not a one-click solution."

Let me keep holding on - he doesn't say.

"Huh. Too bad. Guess I'm taking you home with me then. You're better than ibuprofen."

It's such an absurd yet simple solution. Peter doesn't take time to linger on the fact the next words out of his mouth, rather than a refusal, are:

"Is your father home?"

"Yes, unfortunately. Guess we can hide you in the closet until he goes to sleep."

Peter raises an eyebrow. How undignified. He can stay on the roof outside the window like Derek tends to do, even if he pretends he doesn't. He won't resort to hiding among clothing like a side piece.

Not that he and Stiles… Well. He wants to be a main dish, if anything.

"You could also tell your father."

Stiles just raises one elegant unimpressed eyebrow at him.

"Good concept in theory. But is "hey dad, this is the guy responsible for the murders that got you working overtime for a month, he's dangerous, older than me and I'm going to make him sleep in my bed because he's magic" really how you think I want that discussion to go?"

Probably not. Actually, for Stiles' sake, Peter hopes it doesn't end up being foreshadowing. He never really ended up having to go through explaining… himself, really, to any human, but he can't imagine it to easy.

"I can hide. Not in the closet."

"Wherever you please. I notice you don't seem to be protesting staying the night with me in general."

And is it… Stiles' tone isn't wary, it's not even particularly confused or surprised. If anything, it's smug. Almost… coy.

When they finally leave the warehouse, in the somehow still running baby blue Jeep CJ5 that may be magic, Stiles takes Peter with him.

Or maybe Peter follows Stiles. Follows Stiles wherever Stiles will take him, like a moth to the flame - and isn't that an appropriate metaphor.

He doesn't end up hiding in Stiles' closet, but does get to share his bed in secret, so maybe there is still an air of the other woman, but just enough for Peter to find it acceptable.

In the darkness of the room, probably impenetrable to Stiles but with just enough weak moonlight coming in for Peter to see the boy, his face free of the pain Peter can still feel for him, relieve for him, there is a certain intimacy.

Despite the two of them lying together under the covers, there's nothing sexual about it, but it's a closeness deeper than that, a kind of closeness Peter isn't sure he ever hoped he'd get.

The kind of closeness he desperately wants to keep.

It's the kind of darkness that almost makes him brave enough to say it out loud. Almost.

But there must be something about the cover of, the blanket of the quiet, that makes Stiles more willing to share to.

"You know, I was more afraid of Gerard than I was of you."

Stiles speaks, and for all that it feels too fresh, too raw, for all that it feels like he felt this feral and unmoored just yesterday, he drinks in every word.

"Maybe it's not wise but it's like… your alpha shift? The beast? That was scary. But when you weren't turned and feral, you could be reasoned with. You had a goal and hurting everyone in your path was just about reaching it."

It's a hard truth, but also a comforting truth. That Stiles understood Peter even in a state that Peter barely understood finding himself in.

"But for Gerard hurting me was the goal, and I knew there's no escaping that. I could barter and negotiate with you but if Gerard wanted me dead he'd have me dead."

Peter doesn't answer. Isn't sure if there is an answer to that. But he squeezes Stiles' wrist ever so slightly more, and offers a kiss on the boy's forehead in turn for the emotional pain he can't seep out.

Noah Stilinski goes to bed completely oblivious to a werewolf hidden under the covers, Stiles bed too much of a mess of papers and dirty hoodies to pay attention, but he does find him in said bed in the morning.

The following discussion is as unpleasant as expected and way more surprising than that.

But it ends, after tears and hugs and too much honesty, with a shockingly simple truth. Noah doesn't exactly seem unconcerned with the fact the man sitting next to Stiles on the couch is the resident "mountain lion", but he certainly seems less concerned than Stiles expected.

"It's simple." He says. "I don't trust him, but I trust you, to an extent. And you invited him to our house to stay and help you. He hasn't yet done anything to prove you've been wrong."

Stiles looks at Peter, and away, unable to take the strange mix of satisfaction and vulnerability in his expression. He looks at their joint hands instead, the faint gray of the lines on Peter's wrist, the pain faded, taken care of, yet the touch still there.

After the night, Stiles feels better, is better - but even as Noah leaves for work and the lines on Peter's wrist fade to nothing, Peter stays.