Chapter Text
They all pile back into the house and cycle slowly through the showers, scrubbing off the dirt and grime of the fight both literally and metaphorically. Stiles can feel Peter tailing after him and doesn’t look back as he heads for the bathroom in the basement, hoping to get there before anyone else. He wonders if the wolf will follow him right into the water but the tingling feeling on the back of his neck disappears when he passes the stairs, and he tries to tell himself it’s for the best.
There’s a hot, electrical sort of energy thrumming beneath his skin as he scrubs grit and blood from beneath his fingernails, and that’s only one of the reasons that he keeps the water turned ice cold. That crackling tension is absolutely part of the adrenaline come-down he’s so used to by now, but the rest of it - the unresolved sexual tension that’s starting to become familiar, the entirely new feeling of everyone being where they’re supposed to be, puzzle pieces all clicking into place – that's different, and his senses are sharp to it.
Getting out of the shower, he wraps a towel around his waist and stares at himself in the mirror, at the grown man who stands where he still sometimes expects a gangly teenager to be. Broad chest, muscled shoulders, old scars and new bruising that’s starting to spread quickly around his ribs and the warm glow of his spark burning gold in his eyes and crackling at his fingertips. He feels powerful, confidant, even with his chest aching, and he bares his teeth in a slow, wicked grin.
They’ve come a long way, the lot of them. When this all started, he and Scott had just been a pair of stupid kids, and even though it hadn’t seemed that way at the time, so had Derek. Barely twenty, he’d been even more lost, and they’d all come up together in a world of risk and violence and loss. Peter too had been younger than Stiles had first thought, only twenty-six, so much older than his years after the fire and so long a coma without his pack.
Now, twenty-one years old himself, Stiles knows a little bit about loss, a little bit about trauma and fear and feeling alone. Maybe it’s the world’s way of taking him down a peg, but standing where he is now, he can kind of understand, just a little. Forgiveness is a tricky word, understanding is easier, and as he stares at his reflection, at his teeth showing beneath his lip and his fingers digging into the marble countertop, the memory of packsong echoing in his head, he can admit that he appreciates different things than he had back then.
Wants different things.
Peter is almost ten years his senior and Stiles has known him since he was a kid, and in a lot of worlds, a lot of ways, that’s probably gross. Stiles has been guilty of all the creeper nicknames over the years – Uncle Bad Touch being the most egregious – but to be fair Peter had always been too busy trying to kill them or avoid them to be accused of grooming. Yes, he’s always shown an interest in Stiles, but that interest had been about accruing power, not sex.
Knowing Peter like he does now, knowing himself, Stiles is well aware of how much more meaningful, how much more desirable that is to both of them.
He’s flattered, but he’s also turned on.
The last few months, those have been more and more about sex, and Stiles has been the pursuer. Even when it had first started, even when he hadn’t realized it, he had been going after Peter.
“Wolf-wooing,” he purrs, watching his reflection, half derision and half dark, sly cleverness.
Feeding him, treating his injuries, invading his space and scenting him at every turn – Stiles had started to care about Peter and now, well...
Maybe it had started with just giving a fuck, but now he wants to get one.
He’s an adult, Peter’s hot, and he wants him.
Left hand, right hand, mirror opposites yet a matched pair – he and Peter fit and he knows Scott especially is going to be pissed but Lydia has definitely seen it coming and Derek might be happy about it in a strategic sort of way.
In the end, he really doesn’t care.
Tugging on a pair of soft joggers he’d snatched on the way into the bathroom, he steps back out into the hallway and pauses to listen, hears conversation and quiet laughter coming from the den. There’s water still running upstairs, and clatter coming from the kitchen, so he moves back the way he came, trailing slowly through the house and he tracks each member of his pack. Before his spark had given him a sort of sixth-sense that lingered in the back of his consciousness, but now, with the pack bonds solidified like never before, his senses sharpen and sing like nothing he’s ever felt. His hearing is sharper and he thinks he can almost scent the others, can feel them and know them as surely as if he’s standing beside them. He can sense their aches and pains as if he’s laid hands on their wounds, can feel their relief as clearly as he can feel his own, and he wants to romp and tussle and bite like any other wolf.
It’s glorious.
Skirting around the kitchen, he slips silently up the stairs to the top floor where the bedrooms are, a hallway filled with endless doors all thrown open but for one, the last one at the very end, set just away from the others. By right it should have probably been Derek’s, had likely been Talia’s when the new Hale House had been the old Hale House – which maybe explained it – but their newly minted Alpha had chosen one further down, in the very center, and that maybe made sense too. This door, standing hilariously ominous, is almost never used because of course it had been saved for Peter, unnamed and unspoken, but Stiles knows that the room’s balcony looks over the front of the house, the lawn and the drive leading out to the road.
It’s simple logic just as much as his newly sharpened instincts that tell him he’ll find Peter there, and sure enough, when he steps inside without knocking, he finds the wide, glass patio doors thrown open to the nearly barren room, letting in the cool, sweet night air. Peter’s all backlit by the glow of the full moon, a stark silhouette, and Stiles wants to go to him but he wants Peter to come to him even more.
Turning away, electricity crackling beneath his skin and lifting the hair on the nape of his neck, he moves to the dresser and pulls open the drawers, rummaging through the few pieces of clothing Peter’s left there over the last few years. Lydia is clearly responsible for a few pieces – most notably a thick, cable-knit sweater – and Stiles grins as the bonds between the three of them resonate, forged first in anger, violence, and manipulation, now so much stronger for everything that’s come from it. He’s changed, Lydia’s changed, Peter has changed, and for the first time in a long time the future feels like more than just fear and scrabbling desperately for survival.
It feels like potential, like power, and as clawed hands slide around to clutch tightly at his hips, he grins around sharp teeth, the truth echoing like thunder to his core.
The Hale Pack is back.
“Tell me you want this,” Peter rumbles in his ear, his breath hot against Stiles’ throat, and it’s a demand, a request for consent and a plea all wrapped up in a low, rolling growl.
Laughing darkly, feeling bold, Stiles turns in his embrace and watches as his own hand flashes out, grips Peter lightly by the throat. The wolf’s eyes flare bright blue and he snarls, his lip curling back over his fangs, and Stiles snarls right back, holding his gaze, challenging. They press forward, leaning into each other hard, and Stiles’ thumb finds Peter’s pulse point, blood pounding beneath his touch, and then suddenly without warning they’re kissing.
It’s hard and hot and just a little bit painful, just a little bit violent, like everything that's always been between them. They both bite, they both clutch at each other just a little too tight, and Peter presses Stiles back hard into the dresser and neither of them breathe for endless minutes, an entire lifetime until they finally break apart, panting and stunned as they stare each other down.
“I want you,” Stiles snarls, his nails cutting into Peter’s bicep, and he could swear the werewolf preens. It’s not even close to the first time they’ve kissed at this point but it feels like it, his lips aching and his skin sensitive, like sand rubbed over a sunburn, and Peter’s looking at him like he’s prey, or maybe like he’s a meal. “I’m choosing this, I’m choosing us.”
Peter licks his lips, stares, and Stiles knows he understands, knows he recognizes that he means them together as Right and Left hand, as pack, not just as pair. He also knows that even though he trusts him, in that moment he can’t expect Peter to pledge the same out loud yet. It’s too much too soon, too great a change for the wolf who has kept his every thought, every emotion and reaction and instinct to himself for the last decade, and he can still feel the shock and pain and surprise of everything that’s happened tonight rumbling like thunderclouds inside the werewolf’s chest.
But Peter has ever been the contrarian, if only ever out of spite.
Holding Stiles’ gaze, his eyes blazing, he nods, just once, before he ducks his head and presses his face to Stiles’ throat.
And well, Stiles might still be new to this, but even he can tell there’s more to the gesture than scent marking.
Spreading his hand out over Peter’s hip where he knows the Hale Triskele marks him, Stiles gives them another few seconds, just standing close together breathing each other in. He can feel the exhaustion wash over them both in that moment, and he wants nothing more than to tumble into the nearby bed for no other reason than to cuddle up for a nap, but they have responsibilities now that can’t be ignored.
“Tape my ribs,” he says quietly, pushing Peter back, and the werewolf wines low in his throat but takes a step back, reaching for the first aid kit that is somehow waiting conveniently on the nearby nightstand. He’s methodical with his ministrations, not overly gentle, but when he pins the last strip of ace bandage in place he leans in and busses Stiles’ cheek, rubbing his jaw along his temple.
“Do you need to run the perimeter?” he asks, and Peter’s eyes glow but he shakes his head.
“Not tonight,” he murmurs, and little bit of pride has crept back into his voice, sending a shock of heat through the pit of Stiles’ stomach.
“Tomorrow we’ll go together,” he says, and this time Peter’s grin is feral in all the best ways.
Stiles feels it too, knows in his heart that tomorrow, not only will they run the Preserve side-by-side and re-establish the pack territory, but that Peter will hunt and Stiles will cook, and they’ll provide for each other the way they have since the start, meaning it for the first time in a new, conscious way.
But first tonight.
Tonight they’ll go downstairs and find their Alpha, scent him and reaffirm that bond before they make their rounds, each of them checking on their other pack members in their own way. Peter will probably still linger around the edges, silently observing, while Stiles will touch and mingle and talk, but then when they’re certain that everyone is clean and doctored and safe Stiles will pull him into the puppy pile, ground him and keep him present, and maybe, just maybe tease him a little bit.
He’s spent more hours than he’d care to admit already thinking about how to troll the man – he doesn’t think it will take much effort to adjust his tactics to fit their new arrangement.
Grinning, Stiles dips back into the dresser for the worn, V-neck t-shirt he’d dug up earlier, one he knows he’s seen Peter wear before. Pulling it on, he feels another spark of heat zip through his veins as a wicked growl sounds at his back. Turning around to face him, Stiles watches Peter’s face as he reaches down to adjust himself in his sweats, then smirks and saunters slowly out the door, a predator’s hungry presence stalking on his heels.
Oh, this is gonna be fun.