Hello, don't mind me, just throwing out this rando idea. A few notes before we start:

1. Okay, I know it doesn't get real wintery in some parts of CA, so let's all pretend Beacon Hills and the Preserve are in a place that's a little more northern and snowier.

2. The timeline is whack. Like, if you're judging characters' ages based on canon, just know that I tried my best. When the story begins, Stiles is 17 and Derek is 21...and everyone else you'll learn as they come.

3. Very important: Peter's never been in a coma, and he's never been abandoned by Derek and Laura. So, he's a little more uncle-y and a little less murder-y. Likewise, Derek is a little less of a sourwolf (but only a little) for reasons that will become clear in the next few chapters. So the main takeaway is: everyone's very slightly less dark and gloomy than canon.

4. The rating is mostly for language, and a few relatively minor descriptions of violence in later chapters.

And without further ado...

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One - Morning in the Burned House

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In the burned house I am eating breakfast.

You understand: there is no house, there is no breakfast,

yet here I am.

-Morning in the Burned House, by Margaret Atwood

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One of the downsides to camping alone in the woods is that there's no one to hear you scream when the serial killer comes for you. Which is what Stiles immediately thinks when he first meets Peter Hale in the Beacon Hills Preserve.

Stiles has been camping alone for maybe two months, he thinks. By the crisp, cold air, it has to be at least November now, probably December. But it's hard to keep track of the passing days, so he can't say for sure. It's almost enough to make him wish he hadn't ditched his cell phone way back when he'd first run off. But he's not out here for kicks, and Stiles knows his dad; having his cell would have made it too easy to track him down.

Even if he had the money and resources to run off somewhere cool San Francisco or Seattle...he'd have probably still ended up camping in the woods somewhere anyway. Maybe not this forest, so close to home, but definitely a forest. Because being alone out here is better than the alternative, mostly because the woods are so conducive to being alone. There's only the trees and the quiet, or the occasional rustle of animals in the brush or birds overhead. No one's staring at him like he's insane. No one's around who shouldn't be.

That's not to say there are no people at all, it's just that the kinds of people who come to the woods mostly want to be alone too. Stiles sometimes sees them from a long way off when he's wandering restlessly: lone hikers or bird watchers or small groups of campers. But he makes himself scarce.

So really, it doesn't matter who they are or when they are, whether they'd talk to him if he called out. And anyway, no one comes to the woods for a chat with a gangly teenage boy with ADHD and a retractable hunting knife stowed in his duffel bag. That's the kind of creep you leave the hell alone.

Or at least, everyone leaves him alone except Peter Hale.

Stiles is dozing beside the dying fire when it happens. It's twilight, and the sky has faded to a blotchy violet in the west, with the first stars flickering to life in the wake of the fading sun. The wind is biting. Stiles's back is frozen, but his front burns with the heat of the fire. He feels lazy, barely coherent, half-curled into the dead grass and half-sprawling over the backpack that holds basically everything he owns in this world.

He doesn't hear the man's approach, which is why Stiles thinks that maybe the guy isn't really there. It happens sometimes, where Stiles only gets the vision but not the sound of someone moving mutely through the past, or he hears or smells something he can't see—loud cheering in an empty library, or the smell of freshly mown grass in the middle of snowdrift.

So when Stiles catches a glimpse of the man around the side of the fire, he gazes blearily at him through half-lidded eyes and wonders when he's from. Except then he realizes the man is staring. At him.

Which means he can maybe see Stiles. Which wakes Stiles right the fuck up. "Uh, hi? Who are you?" he asks warily, pushing himself into an upright position.

The man doesn't answer right away. He's probably in his late thirties, with mud-brown hair and such a sharp jawline that Stiles knows he must be clenching his teeth. It's really the only sign that he might be pissed or something; otherwise, he looks at Stiles coolly, his eyes dark in the firelight, as though he's weighing his response.

"I could ask the same of you," the man replies, still moving forward slowly, purposefully. "It's not really the season for camping."

Stiles's whole body grows tense, and warnings flood his mind (this is how it's gonna fucking happen, a fucking serial killer in the woods at night). Because Stiles's dad is the sheriff, and Stiles has seen enough true crime documentaries to know that nothing good ever happens when two people meet alone in the middle of nowhere. The knife is deep in Stiles's backpack, and he can probably reach it if he's subtle. Without a cell phone, his best chance is to wound this fucker and run like hell if it comes to that.

The man seems to guess Stiles's thoughts, though, because he stops his predatory approach a few feet away from the fire, just at the point where Stiles might have actually freaked.

"I'm not here to hurt you," the man adds at last, sullenly shoving his fists into the pockets of his coat. His expression is still stony, but there's something apologetic in the twist to his mouth. "But a kid like you shouldn't be out here alone at night."

Stiles frowns. "I'm not alone. My dad went to the stream to get some more water for us to boil. We're camping."

The man nods once, slowly, and Stiles knows he knows it's a lie. That Stiles is alone out here. And there's no one around to care if this man decides he wants to wear Stiles's skin as a jacket. "It's freezing," the guy observes. "It'll be worse as the night goes on."

"It's not that cold," Stiles lies again. Up until two days ago, the weather's been fine, more like fall than winter. But with gloomy grey skies came a sharp chill that made Stiles count the cash in his backpack again, wondering if going to town for a warmer coat is worth the chance of getting caught.

Alright," the man agrees casually. "But this land is private. You can stay the night here if you want, but you'll need to move on tomorrow. Might I suggest somewhere south ?"

"Private?" Stiles parrots uncomprehendingly. "It's the preserve."

The man inclines his head. "A common error. We own a few acres of land inside the preserve. Our house is on that land."

Stiles studies the stranger, realization settling into his mind. There's only one family that lives in the Beacon Hills Preserve. Or used to, he thought. "You're a Hale," he says slowly.

"Peter," the man confirms.

Stiles opens his mouth, closes it. Opens it again. He can't figure out a way to say this without sounding like a dick, but he wants to figure out what's really up with this guy, whether his story is true, so he says it anyway. "I thought there wasn't a house anymore," he says carefully. "After the fire."

The man grins. It's not very pleasant. "We're rebuilding."

Stiles doesn't know that much about the Hale House fire, other than the fact that it was brutal, it was arson, and there were only two survivors. This guy could be one of them, he guesses. The story's plausible.

"I'll be out of your hair tomorrow," Stiles agrees cautiously.

Peter nods. "Good. As weird as I'm sure it is for you to have someone come at you in the middle of the night, it's just as weird to have a random kid decide to camp on your property."

Stiles cracks a grin at this. "I guess I didn't think of that."

"Are you...ah, are you and your dad here for leisure?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it's just, you know. A father-son camping trip thing."

"Strange to do it on a Tuesday in December," Peter observes. His eyes flicker across Stiles's face, so Stiles tries to keep cool.

"He took some time off work," Stiles deadpans. "Had to beat that winter camping rush."

The man's lips quirk up at this. "Any chance you'd give me your real name if I asked?"

"Nope," Stiles says firmly.

Peter shakes his head, but he at least looks more amused and less like he wants to kill Stiles. "Then be careful out here," he says, shuffling away. "Keep your fire going." He backs toward the trees, but turns briefly as though he means to say something else. Then he must think better of it, because he moves westward toward the last dark glow of the sunset and disappears into the woods.

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Even though he agreed to the whole one-night deal thing, Stiles actually means to leave soon after Peter does. Mostly because he doesn't need anyone asking too many questions. And he doesn't need to irritate a creepy Hale who wants him off the land. But he doesn't get the chance.

Sometime in the dark of night, maybe a couple hours later, Stiles jerks awake to someone pulling him bodily to his feet. "It's snowing, you fucking idiot," a voice snarls, hands roughly shaking his collar. The fire is just a deep red glow now, but it's enough to show the man's face.

"Wh—Peter?" Stiles stammers blearily, breaking the man's grip with his forearm. He stumbles back to put more distance between them. "What are you doing here?"

"It's snowing, " Peter repeats in exasperation, and Stiles realizes it is. Huge white flakes drift through the air in wisps that cling to Peter's hair and jacket. The ground is dusted with it, though patches of brown grass stand out in the sea of white. Stiles realizes how cold he is; his teeth chatter briefly without his consent. "You let your fire go out."

"I meant to build it back up," Stiles mutters lamely, peering down at the embers.

The man gives him a long look. His eyes seem to glow a little reddish in the darkness, like a replicant from Blade Runner. Stiles thinks it's probably just the light from the dying fire. "Come to the house," Peter orders. "You're sleeping on the couch."

"Um," Stiles says intelligently. He's in no place to argue, mostly because Peter can probably see him shivering, but he'd really like to finish the night out alive, and he's not sure what his chances are if he follows a random stranger into a potential murder den (or potentially a really swanky mansion, he guesses, but you're supposed to plan for the worst, so…).

Plus, it seems like a stupidly terrible idea for him to willingly go to the Hale House of all places. Literally a place where eleven people died horribly in a fire. If anywhere's crawling with ghosts, that's probably it.

But...it's only for a single night. And it's cold as death out here. And if given a bed ( dude, an actual bed), he'll probably pass out before there's time to freak out too hard. "I could probably just get the fire going again," he protests half-heartedly.

"Don't be stupid," the man says flatly. He starts kicking snow into the remains of the fire and crunches it down under his boots. Then, without waiting for Stiles to gather his things, he turns and walks up the crest of the hill to the west.

Stiles spends an extra moment shivering in the cold. Then he grabs his backpack and trods through the snow-crusted grass.

It occurs to him as they walk that Peter didn't even bother to ask about his dad. His dad, who would warn him to never go to a second location. But Stiles has spent a long time ignoring the voice in his head that sounds like his dad, so he's not gonna start listening now.

.

Anyway, Peter turns out not to be a serial killer. Or at least not one goes straight for the throat.

His house towers between the trees, two stories of dark wood and sunken windows. It doesn't look much like a fire ever touched it. But Stiles supposes they've had almost five years. Enough time to rebuild what used to be.

The inside is frigid as an icebox, meaning slightly less frigid than outside, but Peter wordlessly pushes Stiles toward a warm, soft couch, hands him a couple down blankets, and leaves him alone. Before he can think about it all too much, or even properly look around, sleep drags Stiles back into darkness.

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He wakes suddenly the following morning. It's been ages since he's slept on something besides dirt and his backpack, probably since he ditched Eichen House, and the soft sensation is unfamiliar enough to be jarring.

The house feels empty and cold in that silent way of a place with too few people to fill it. There's something wistful about the winter light through the window, the way motes of dust drift through the air around Stiles as he slowly sits up and pulls his coat more tightly over his shoulders.

Now that it's bright enough to take it all in, it's obvious to him that they've recently remodeled. The place is immaculate, with no signs of the typical scuff marks from a family of a dozen or more. The open space reminds Stiles of a college dorm, with only sofas and a coffee table between them. The light bulbs overhead are exposed, and there are no photographs on the walls or collections on the mantle.

There's a distinct lack of life signs here. And that seems like a sign for Stiles to take his exit. Or at least he means to, until he glances away to find that the kitchen is the next room over.

He hasn't eaten anything actually good in ages, and wonders if the resident serial killer would object to him making breakfast.

And so, after an intensive internal debate, he makes pancakes. They're his dad's favorite, and Scott's too, and so Stiles has had enough practice with them that he's pretty confident they'll taste good. And he can make them without burning anything down. He's careful to be as quiet as he can in case Peter is asleep, though his wristwatch reads twelve-thirty.

A shriek comes from somewhere behind him, and Stiles jerks the pan hard enough to lose a pancake to the kitchen floor. He swivels around, but the kitchen is empty.

"Hello?" he calls cautiously. The sound definitely hadn't come from Peter. It had sounded like a young girl, a sound of laughter or maybe fear.

Hadn't there been two survivors of the Hale fire?

"Hey, is anyone there?" he asks. Silence. Stiles creeps forward to peer into the empty living room, and then down the hall. Nothing and no one.

But when he steps back into the kitchen, there's someone facing away from him, standing over the stove. Stiles jerks backward, knocking into the wall, and the guy turns to face him. He's a couple years older than Stiles, with a swath of dark hair and a deep frown that immediately marks him as a relative of Peter's.

"What were you gonna do with that?" he asks, jerking his chin to Stiles's hand.

Stiles's heart is still thrumming. This has to be the other survivor, then—and so whoever was making that shriek must not be real. Must not be now. After a minute, Stiles registers the guy's words and looks down at his hand, which still clutches the searing hot pan. "You never know when you're gonna need to defend yourself," he quips, trying to chill out a little.

The guy seems unamused. "You must be the kid Peter brought in."

Stiles swallows. "Pancake?" he asks warily.

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The shrieker turns out to be a toddler with cherry-red hair pins at the base of her pigtails. And the antagonist is a bespectacled pre-teen boy who tries to flip the pages of her sketchbook without asking. Their heads are bent together over the kitchen table, sitting practically on each others' laps.

"No, stop, stop, stop— " she cries, pounding one chubby fist on the table. She hits his shoulder in righteous indignation.

"I'm trying to help, " the boy says, unmoved. "You can't even make a straight line." His cheeks fold in a little, in the same lightly dimpled way as the cheeks of the guy sitting across the table from Stiles. The guy staring at him like he's an idiot.

"Uh, what?" Stiles says stupidly, dragging his eyes from the kids. It's not the first time he's missed something the guy, who'd gruffly introduced himself as Derek, has said.

Derek only frowns. "I asked how long you're staying. Here."

"I'm supposed to be gone, I think," Stiles admits. "But I thought, like...breakfast."

At least Derek's eating the pancakes, so Stiles feels like he isn't a complete waste of space. The guy's practically scarfing them down, actually—and Stiles is glad he made so many, and glad Peter hasn't shown up to eat as well. "I don't think Peter actually cares," Derek says between bites. "He almost always stays upstairs anyway. Plus, it's supposed to storm later."

"Oh."

Derek glares at him. "Were you really camping?"

"Yeah," Stiles says, as the girl shrieks again and throws the box of crayons at her brother's forehead. "Something like that. I guess I just needed to...not be at home for a while."

"Stupid time of the year to not be at home."

"Tell me about it." Stiles watches the children fight. The drawing is torn, and a flurry of paper spirals onto the floor. When Stiles looks back at the actual here-and-now guy sitting across from him, Derek's pitying expression reads so this is why Peter brought you into the house, you stupid, helpless idiot. Stiles clears his throat. "Your house is...nice," he says lamely.

But for once, this appears to be the right thing to say. Derek straightens a little. "It's under repair," he explains, gesturing with his fork around the kitchen, probably at new details Stiles isn't catching because he doesn't actually live here. "The front of the house is mostly finished. It's just the back that's still kind of a mess."

"Is that...uh, have you guys been living here this whole time?" Stiles asks delicately, not entirely sure if it's rude to put the actual words since the fire into a sentence. Although personally, he wouldn't be offended if someone asked him about his life since your mother died. But everyone handles grief in their own way. Plus, Stiles thinks, his eyes sliding back over to the squabbling children, the Hales got like eleven times as much grief as me and Dad did, if you count it that way.

"Mostly," Derek says without elaborating. He stuffs half a pancake into his mouth.

The girl has begun to cry, pushing mousy brown bangs out of her eyes. The boy—her brother?—tries to console her guiltily. "Cece," he murmurs, pulling her into his arms. She's too big for it, but she lays her head on his shoulder. "Cece, I'm sorry."

Stiles swallows, feeling sick. Dead kids are the worst of all.

The pancakes are gone. Derek sits morosely at the table, chin on his hand. Stiles slides his last uneaten pancake toward him, and Derek takes it without hesitation. Stiles notices for the first time the flecks of paint on his forearms. "Oh. Like, the house is under repair right this second?"

Derek nods. "Painting," he explains shortly. And then: "Looks like you're staying." He jerks his head toward the window, where a few white flakes beat gently against the glass. Stiles looks back at Derek. He can't really tell if the guy means to be glaring, or if that's just the way his face works.

"Yeah, I...I guess I am." The kids walk down the hall, but they're not totally gone. Stiles can hear them murmuring somewhere in the distance. The shredded paper is still on the table. The scrap nearest Stiles shows short streaks of black in a way that reminds him of fur, and maybe a tail. "I mean, if that's okay."

Derek shrugs. "Not like we don't have the space," he says dispassionately, climbing to his feet. For just a second, he hesitates, then he asks: "Wanna see the rest of the house?"

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A/N: Woo, all the main players have already met and it's just the first chapter! Hope you enjoyed :) Please leave me a note if you enjoyed it, so I'll know what you thought?

Peace,

~ket