"You must be Stiles."

Oh brother.

Detective Stiles Stilinski wasn't sure why, but he'd always figured that accomplished white-collar thief Peter Hale would turn out to be a total creep.

Less than three minutes in the man's actual presence confirmed his hunch - he'd been right on the money.

Shifting his grip on his department issued Glock, Stiles blinked rapidly, just to make sure he wasn't imagining the flirtatious edge to the smirk on the man's face. He hadn't slept in three days, had run himself ragged chasing the FBI's ninth most wanted man for the last eighteen months. He was exhausted, physically and mentally, almost to the point of collapse, but everything, all those sleepless nights came down to this.

And this?

This was Stiles winning.

At least… as long as it wasn't all some kind of weird, lucid dream, a waking nightmare brought on by insomnia and the inevitable sugar crash that came after a week spent living off of Mountain Dew and Cheez Its...

The way that Peter was running his eyes from Stiles' top to his toes was awfully lascivious - there was no guaranteeing that he wasn't hallucinating this whole thing.

And that was certainly a possibility, because quite honestly, given his physical state, he shouldn't even be on the streets. Legally he should have been forced into taking recuperative leave a long time ago, but everyone in the department knew how deep he'd sunk his teeth into this one, and even his supervisors had to acknowledge that there was no getting it away from him. This was one bone he wasn't dropping, and by keeping him on the payroll they could at least keep an eye on him.

"A gun Stiles?" Peter tsked, jerking his wandering attention back to the present with a jolt. "Is that really necessary?"

"You just stay right there and it won't be," he said in his calm, firm, 'don't worry, I'm a cop' voice.

"Seems rather rude, don't you think?" the man mused, the picture of repose as he lounged in a wing-backed chair, a heavy book open in his lap. Stiles never would have dreamed he'd finally catch this guy in a public library, but there he was, hidden away at the back of the building in a rarely-visited aisle stuffed full of thick volumes of archaic Latin. He wondered if Peter had stolen the chair and the little side-table, brought them back here himself to create a quiet reading nook located in convenient proximity to a back stairwell, a disused emergency exit, no cameras, no alarms…

"It seems hardly warranted."

"What?" Stiles asked dumbly, his attention once again drawn back to the matter at hand after taking a little tangent in less important directions.

Shit, when was the last time he'd taken his Adderall?

For his part Peter just arched an eyebrow, looked vaguely offended that Stiles wasn't listening as closely as he should be and maybe just a little calculating as he eyed the pistol being leveled at his chest.

"A bit uncalled for, don't you think?" he said again, nodding his chin toward the gun. "You've been following me for almost two years - when have I ever been violent?"

"You've threatened a lot of people Peter," Stiles said calmly, using the tone he took up when he was trying unsuccessfully to reason with his baby cousins, small, petulant children who were convinced of their own versions of reality.

Peter shrugged.

"Words," he said dismissively. "I've never left you a body have I? All this Most Wanted business, it's just offensive." Licking his thumb, he turned the page of his book, slowly, casually, keeping his hands in Stiles' sight. "Lumping me in with the serial killers, the psychopaths. The degenerates."

"You're not exactly a shining example of a good guy either," Stiles snipped, and oh god, was he actually defending the first eight guys on the list now? "You're wanted in more than a dozen different countries for theft. Art, bullion, cash…"

Peter snorted, flicked him a bored look from beneath his eyelashes.

"Let's not kid ourselves, Mr. Stilinski," he purred. "My face wasn't splashed all over Interpol because I stole a few million in bonds. No, it's the information that they're all upset I've stolen. The secrets." Pausing, he looked Stiles slowly up and down, considering. "A man could live quite well off of just one of them," he suggested, and Stiles felt his stomach roll.

"It's Detective," he said coldly, not bothering to hide his derision but careful to keep his voice down just the same. Best to do this with as little interference and as small an audience as possible. "And I get it, ok? You're the best of the best, the king, the Alpha-thief. I know you're work, I've lived it for the last eighteen months. Frankly if I never hear your name again after today, it'll be too soon."

"That was hurtful Stiles," Peter replied smoothly, touching a hand to his chest just over his heart.

Stiles just sighed, weary with exasperation.

"Look, let's just get this over with," he said in a clipped voice.

God, he was tired.

Peter tilted his head, watching him in a way that reminded Stiles of a wolf considering a trap, but then he hummed in affirmation, snapped his book shut and set it aside.

"As we must," he answered, getting slowly to his feet as Stiles kept his pistol carefully at the ready.

Turning away, he set his feet shoulder-width apart and put his hands behind his back, palms flat together as if he were praying, and Stiles suddenly wondered if he'd been arrested before.

"Don't move," he warned, taking two steps towards the man before he freed his handcuffs from the clip on his belt and holstered his pistol. He should really wait for back-up - they were on the way, he'd radioed from the cruiser - but something told him that if he waited Peter Hale was going to slip through his fingers once again, disappearing like smoke. As it was the whole interaction had seemed too easy so far, too calculated, and Stiles wasn't going to give him any more time than he already had to plot.

Reaching out, he placed his left palm flat between the man's shoulder blades, surprised by the heat that radiated through the thin material of his t-shirt. There was strength to the breath of his shoulders but no tension, his muscles relaxed and easy, so he wasn't ready for the speed with which it happened, the terrible quickness of it. Snapping the steel bracelet tight around Peter's right wrist, it only took the space of a heartbeat for him to realize his mistake, to immediately regret underestimating the man who traded in world secrets.

Before he could breathe Peter had latched on to his wrist with a bone-popping grip, twisted him around and pulled him in snug to his front, liberating Stiles' gun from its holster halfway through the spin. One second free, the next cuffed to an infamous thief with a gun in his kidneys.

Shit.

"Oh fuck, ok, ok, easy!" he yelped, trying to shut down the terror before it could send him into a panic attack. "Let's just stay calm."

Yeah right.

"Let's not do anything one of us is going to regret," he continued, the babble bubbling up out of his chest uncontrollably. "You don't wanna do this. I mean, you said it yourself right, you've never been violent. Never left a body behind. Why break that habit now huh?"

"A solid argument," Peter murmured in his ear, and Stiles swore he could feel the guy's stubble on the side of his face, pressed practically cheek to cheek. "What do you propose then?"

"Um, let me go?" Stiles squeaked weakly, his heart racing inside his chest as he suddenly considered death for the first time in a serious, moments-away kind of capacity. "I mean," he chuckled half-hysterically, "I'm way too young and way too pretty to die today, right? There's places I wanna go, things I wanna see… I wanna go home and eat pizza and play Halo 3 and fucking sleep…"

Peter hummed, a small, considering sound and Stiles felt stupid, stupid hope bite at his nerves like electricity. "If I let you go then," he said slowly, and god, yes, this time Stiles was paying full attention ok? The adrenaline flooding through him made sure of that. "If I let you go. You'll trundle on home? Walk away from this and trade a thief for a little sleep? You do look tired Stiles."

A pause, two terrible beats of indecision.

"You know I can't do that," Stiles choked, and it almost killed him not to just cave and promise the guy anything he wanted. It still might. "I can't do that with you walking around out there. God, I haven't slept since this thing started - if the Captain's not drilling me into the ground it's my own damned conscience nagging at me to get after you…"

"Quite the predicament you've got yourself into then, isn't it?" Peter muttered coldly, and then he was jabbing Stiles in the side with his own gun and forcing him forward towards the exit, keeping tight hold of him by the wrist where they were cuffed together. "Move."

"Come on, man," Stiles cajoled, doing his best to push back against Peter's chest as he was manhandled into a dark, dank little stairwell. "Do you really wanna kidnap a cop? Just come with me to the station dude, I'll get you a good deal! Tell them you were the perfect gentleman, gave up without a fight!"

"And be sent straight to Guantanamo for interrogation?" Peter asked, hip-checking the small of Stiles' back to get him moving down the stairs. "I don't think so. I'm not going to prison Stiles - you'll have to think of another compromise."

"Another… What else is there?" he yelped, his brain doing double time as his eyes searched for anything he could use as a weapon, anything that would give him the advantage. Peter might have the gun but Stiles didn't think he'd use it - the guy took a strange sort of pride in getting in and out clean, leaving as little physical evidence behind as possible and frustrating the ever-loving-hell out of Stiles in the process. Like it was some sort of weird honor code.

Crap, get out of this, get out of this…

"You're the clever one," Peter growled, annoyance and something like disappointment creeping into his voice as he wrestled Stiles around the railing to the next flight of stairs. "You were assigned to me for a reason; you've actually kept up the last two years unlike the rest of those federal idiots. You tell me."

High praise from a criminal mastermind.

Might as well live it down.

Casting his eyes heavenward, Stiles said a silent prayer and took his chance, waiting until Peter was off-balance and turning around the curve of the stair before grabbing the muzzle of his Glock, forcing it away as he drove his elbow back into the man's ribs and used the handcuffs to spin him hard. It struck him how silent the thing was, no gun shot, no shout for help, just Peter's hard grunt of pain as the air was driven out of him and then the sound of clattering as the gun went spinning off down the stairs as he abandoned it for fists. He thanked his luck that he'd guessed right - the guy seemed reluctant to kill him at least - but he apparently had no qualms about serious bodily harm.

Just barely managing to dodge a wicked uppercut, Stiles tried to get in a punch of his own, short, powerful jabs to the torso that would hold their own against Peter's greater bulk. There seemed to be a vicious sort of twinkle in the man's eye as came at Stiles that looked almost like amusement, and it made anger flare in his belly as he redoubled his efforts to take back control. But they were still cuffed, locked together, and so it was the kind of fight that was quickly taken to the ground, down and dirty, close quarters, elbows and knees and teeth. He needed space, needed to get a hand on his belt for his mace or his Taser or his radio, but in the brief flash of a second, that heartbeat of stillness as he groped blindly for a weapon, Peter locked his fingers around Stiles' free wrist in a painful grip and made to spin him around, back into the tight, controlled position he'd started out in.

Blood and panic pounding side by side against the back of his skull, Stiles flailed hard, lunging desperately for his last chance as he tried to take Peter's feet out from under him.

He wasn't so lucky.

The railing of the stairwell came up hard and fast and then stars were exploding behind his eyelids, pain searing hot and bright across his forehead before everything went black.