Peter has seen the young warlock around the bookstore a few times before, usually browsing through the fantasy section while a Shadowhunter lurked nearby. He was handsome as far as warlocks go, little horns curling up from his forehead that only those with the Sight were able to see, and even then they were nearly obscured by his carefully styled brown hair.
The Shadowhunter with him wasn't nearly so interesting, just a girl with distrusting eyes and the thick lines of Runes dotted here and there when clothing wasn't obscuring them. The only interesting thing about her was the scent of an Alpha that clung to her, and there weren't very many of those in California as a whole. In fact, there were only two and something told Peter that she wasn't hanging around Deucalion.
Either way, Peter did his best to put the teenager out of his mind as he went back to the novel propped up on his knee. He had more pressing issues to worry about, like the fact that the Seelie Queen—bitch that she is—is demanding an audience with the leaders of certain groups of Downworlders. Peter would decline if he didn't value his health and good looks so much.
Still, he finds himself tracking the boy's movements from section to section until he reached the counter to pay for his finds. His jeans were tight in just the right way and Peter only felt a small flush of guilt as he eyed the boy's round, perky ass. Of course, that's the moment the boy decides to glance over his shoulder and meets Peter's gaze head on.
And the warlock winks.
The next time he sees the warlock is as he's leaving the Beacon Hills entrance to the Seelie Court, a small cove near the beach that Mundanes saw as a rundown hut. The boy was dressed to the nines in a shiny blue suit, hair stylishly messy and revealing those beautiful horns that glittered blue and green like a mermaid's scales under the moonlight.
"Is your master sending you here in their place," he teases, hands in the pockets of his own suit of charcoal gray. Black just didn't look good on Peter, it made his aura something straight out of a Disney movie, and not in a favorable light either. "A chance for you to learn how the Seelie Queen is when she's not happy?"
"Not quite," the boy answers in a voice like honey. "I haven't had a master since I was a kid." Peter arches a brow, not subtle as his gaze moves from the boy's horns to the ratty Converse he wore on his feet. "I'm six hundred years old. I know, it's a shock to everyone that doesn't already know."
"A nice one, at least." And the boy grins at him, cheeky and wonderful and Peter could live for that flash of white teeth. "I'm Peter." He holds out a hand and the boy reaches out to shake it, a spark of something shooting through the wolf on contact and a static shock seems to rip through his chest as his eyes flash Alpha red. The boy's eyes flash in return, fire bright before fading to their usual amber in sunlight.
"Stiles."
Battles were hard things no matter your species, though why he was called to New York of all places could only be explained by the text his nephew had sent just twelve hours before. Sometimes it really sucked to like one's family and their continued existence. And to make matters that much worse, the fight was on a goddamn boat and he was surrounded by all kinds of Shadowhunters.
The one good thing to come out of it was seeing Stiles in all his glory fighting alongside his Shadowhunter buddy. He was a force to behold, flinging spells every which way when he's able or even just a bat with Runes burned into the wood to enhance its strength as he flings it left and right against the oncoming demons. The Shadowhunter wasn't awful, he supposes, but he's never been a fan of the Clave and all their rules.
After it was done and Derek's reason for dragging him all the way here was rescued—a relatively young werewolf that had been meant to be sacrificed—Peter was intending to just go back to Derek's apartment and sleep for seven hours and then go find Luke and have a drink. Things didn't end up going that way, however, because Stiles was bleeding and his pet Shadowhunter looked ready to play a game of Murder Time with whatever had caused the deep scratch along the warlock's cheek.
"I take it warlocks don't have the best healing factor," Peter snarks, sidling up to the pair with a smirk. The Shadowhunter went to step between the pair, but aborted the motion when Stiles touches her wrist.
"It's alright, Ally. I know him."
"So does everyone in the Institute," Ally remarks, sending Peter a frown that more than hinted at I saw you at the Christmas party three years ago, you nasty fucker. And really, how was he supposed to know the punch had been spiked and that he'd end up banging a shifter named Peg in the women's bathroom?
"Oh, that was you, huh? Very impressive, man."
"I rather thought so," Peter agrees, trying his best to ignore Ally. It wasn't hard, not with the way the dawn light highlighted the small moles scattered over the left side of Stiles' face in a way that made Peter want to follow that trail with his teeth.
"Peter," yelled the familiar voice of Magnus Bane," stop creeping on my protégé!"
So, it turns out that pale warlocks with amber eyes and magic bats are Peter's type.
Who knew?
Stiles likes to smoke. It's not really a big deal for Peter because Stiles' just uses his magic to make the smoke scentless. Whenever Peter finds Stiles' in the little park down the street from the school, the warlock is usually swinging slowly and blowing smoke rings. When he wants to show off, he'll turn the billows of smoke into little ships or paw prints or, once, a triskelion.
Peter asked him why he smoked once, after he learned that Stiles had changed the cigarette's taste to strawberries. "Because I like watching the smoke curl and dance," he'd answered, doing just that as he turned the smoke shades of blue and bright red.
Sometimes he'd find Stiles just wandering through the town as though he was searching for something, smoke floating over his shoulder and grief in his scent. Peter never bothered him on those nights, just watched to make sure no one tried to sneak up on him while he was lost in his thoughts.
One night, the second one Stiles had ever spent with him, the warlock woke him up with a bitten off curse and it took Peter a moment to realize that the wriggling boy next to him was still deep in sleep. He writhed and twisted as though trying to escape, Polish rolling off his tongue as easy as English, calling and begging for his father to be saved.
When Peter had finally managed to get Stiles awake and convince him that he was safe, Stiles told him about the mother that had abandoned him after she realized her child wasn't human; he told him about the father that fought and protected him through thick and thin until the man's heart had given out. Then, in the early hours of the morning, he told Peter how his father had always smoked a pipe at night, how he'd blown smoke rings to Stiles' delight and would always grin so proudly when Stiles managed to turn those rings into flowers.
After that, Peter never asked about Stiles' obsession with smoking.
Their one year anniversary sneaks up on both of them and they only realize how momentous the day is when Stiles checks his Facebook and the memory of their first date pops up in his feed. Their first date had been the thing of legends, the one you tell future generations about because it had been perfection; a high end restaurant that needed reservations three years in advance unless you threatened to eat the owner's pet rabbit (Peter wasn't proud of that, but he'd stand by his choices), a walk along the beach to a blanket with chilled champagne and strawberries waiting on them, and the sweetest kiss goodnight to finish it off (followed by mind-blowing sex, but he'd save that until his kids were old enough to really embarrass).
Their first anniversary was just as perfect in a different sort of way; Pizza Hut delivery that they got free because Stiles glamoured their apartment so that the pizza was exactly thirty-one minutes late, a Parks and Rec marathon on TV that they could quote word for word (and they did, they even made a game out of it that was bound to become tradition), and a garlic-laced goodnight kiss that had Peter laughing because he'd never pictured this being how he and Stiles spent their anniversary during the first few months of them dating (followed by sex on the couch because they were too full to actually make it to bed).
After that, Peter swore that their second anniversary would be different and they'd at least have something fancier for dessert than a shared pint of Ben and Jerry's. Stiles had laughed, baring the pale column of his throat, and he'd curled tighter around Peter as they attempted not to slide off the couch.
"This was perfect," he said, flashing Peter that grin he loved so much.
And Peter really thought it was.
Turns out dating the best friend of a Shadowhunter has more drawbacks than Peter had originally thought. There were two of them in his apartment when he got home from his shift at the bookshop, just dirtying up his couch like they had any right to it and it took all his years of training not to at least growl at them in warning. Instead, he sets the new stack of books down on his kitchen table and turns to face his intruders.
"You know, normal people call before dropping by," he tells them, arching his brows.
"You're dating Stiles," Ally says in response, as though that gives her every right to break a perfectly good window and climb inside using the fire escape.
"Is this the part where you tell me that you'll kill me if I break his heart? Before you do that, you could at least introduce your friend." The other Shadowhunter, a man around Peter's age with hard blue eyes and blond hair that was slowly graying, looks unimpressed with Peter altogether. If he didn't want to see me, then he shouldn't have broken into my apartment.
"My name is Chris Argent," the man says, all condescension and arrogance that Shadowhunters are well known for. The Argents were fairly high up in the ranks, the Inquisitor's lap dogs from what Peter had heard. Still, they weren't as prominent as the Lightwoods or the Waylands. "And I'm fairly confident that Stiles could dispose of your body with barely a flick of his pinky if he wanted to."
"That's lovely. Now, if you'd see yourselves out I'd be forever grateful." He gestures at the broken window, already making plans to send that particular bill to the Institute or wherever these two were holed up.
"We're just here as a reminder that Stiles won't have to kill you himself, Hale."
"Since when are Shadowhunters so concerned about warlocks? Is it some new fad or just something that happens when you hang around Magnus Bane for long periods of time?" Which reminds Peter that he needs to send Bane a fruit basket for not threatening him this way.
"Just remember that you're outnumbered here," Ally states, and the glint in her eyes tells him that she's already thought up seven different ways to kill him slow should Stiles even sneeze wrong.
Magnus Bane wasn't getting a fruit basket, but he might get a foot up his ass for breaking Peter's window again when he could have just used a portal for God's sake.
It's three years later when Peter's stumbling around the famed city of Alicante that he realizes just how much he loves Stiles. Dead bodies are littered all over the ground from the what would come to be known as the Dark War, there's blood basically painting Stiles when he comes around the corner, but neither of those things stop Peter from grabbing the boy and just holding him.
He buries his face in the crook of Stiles' neck, breathing in the heady scent of home and pack and mate. And Stiles was doing much the same thing, shaking as he tangles his fingers in the back of Peter's ruined coat, clinging to him like some kind of shell-shocked koala as he worked through the panic attack.
Peter never wanted to let Stiles go again, barely managed to free an arm to wrap around his nephew and pull him close. This was his pack, his goddamn family, and the Fair Folk had nearly torn that away from him in one harsh sweep against the Nephilim stronghold. He'd nearly lost control of himself during the fight and the only thing that kept him anchored was that constant pulse under his ribs that said Stiles was still alive, Derek was still fighting tooth and claw.
He would kill the next person that thought they could destroy his pack, he would tear their heart out and feed it to his mate like a delicacy, paired with the finest wine he could get his hands on. Looking at the other two confirmed they felt much the same way, Stiles' eyes flecked with gold and Derek's blazing a bright electric blue.
No one would ever threaten them again.
Seven years later, Peter didn't think Stiles was actually capable of shocking him anymore. Not after he'd learned about the warlock's banishment from Peru (something about psychotic monkeys and trying to one-up Bane), or the fact that Stiles could change into a fox if he felt like it, or even that his father's side of the family were made up of Shadowhunters that had ended up forming the Argent line (which, yeah, that connection cleared a lot of things up).
So, when he'd come home for lunch that day and found Stiles sitting on their kitchen table wearing only a silk tie and matching boxers with a velvet box balanced in the palm of one hand, Peter realized that there were still plenty of ways Stiles could still shock him. "So," Stiles said, swinging his feet back and forth through the air," you wanna tie the knot or not, old man?"
"I guess we should since the neighbors are starting to gossip," Peter replies, and he takes a special interest in getting Stiles out of those purple boxers. He never did make it back to the shop that afternoon.
Now, was that the most romantic way to propose to a person? Probably not. Did Peter actually give a damn about elaborate proposals? Not really, but that didn't stop him from standing outside Stiles' window with a boombox blasting In Your Eyes with a velvet box of his own.
"You're such a fucking showoff," Stiles tells him as he comes outside.
"It'll make sure all our stories are memorable, sweetheart," Peter promises as he hands the box over. Stiles flicks it open and tilts his head back in a full body laugh that never failed to make Peter revel in his beauty all over again. He also manages a smirk this time because the delicate silver band has the Batman logo etched into it.
Their wedding turns out to be nothing fancy, just the two Argents and Derek attending with Deaton replacing a priest. Their vows were simple things, their first dance was uncoordinated because apparently Stiles is only graceful when he's fighting, and everyone had tears in their eyes once it was done. Even Peter did, though he'd never admit that to anyone but his husband.
Peter spent the afternoon and early evening just trying to process the fact that the beautiful man sitting next to him, the one with the glittering horns and sweet-as-honey voice, was really all his. That he'd get to wake up every morning and see Stiles for the rest of his life; he'd get to listen to Stiles' off-key singing in the shower, eat the unpronounceable Polish meals he whipped up for special occasions, and hold him whenever he wanted.
And Stiles seemed to be just as excited, unable to sit still even through the speeches the other three insisted on making. The Argents had managed to slip a few thinly veiled threats into their speeches, something about sticking tasers in Peter's squishy bits if he ever even entertained the thought of leaving Stiles. Derek's was by far the classiest of the speeches, though that didn't take much effort.
"You guys really belong together, you're the same level of assholes," he had said, and raised his glass of champagne.
It's not until they get home from a great honeymoon in Mexico that they realized they'd forgotten to inform Magnus of their nuptials. They realized that because the older warlock was sitting in the living room of the newly rebuilt Hale House when they returned home, and all the glitter in the world couldn't hide the rage burning in those gold-green eyes of his.
"Really," Magnus had practically growled," you couldn't even send a fucking text that you two were getting hitched? Couldn't shoot me an email or just mention it in passing or even use smoke signals so I wouldn't be blindsided when Derek talks about how nice the fish was?" He glowers at them from across the room (he'd broken another window and the glass was scattered deliberately across the hardwood floors), and Peter was legitimately scared the warlock might blast them into next month.
"Did you still get us a present," Stiles asked, because he has no sense of self-preservation and he's the world's biggest asshole at the best of times.
Peter really did choose the perfect mate.