"Oh god. What hit me?"
Stiles' ears were ringing like he'd stuck his head inside a bell and rung the damned thing. He felt dizzy nauseous, and he had the mother of all headaches hammering away right at the front of his skull, and still over everything, like a thick quilt putting a damper on the world, the lingering exhaustion he hadn't been able to shake weighing his limbs down like lead.
Squeezing his eyes shut when cracking his lids resulted in the searing pain of artificial light against his retinas, he wriggled a little, frowned when he recognized the springy surface beneath him as a mattress but didn't recognize the soft, silky fabric under his cheek. Those weren't his scratchy, worn out jersey sheets. Where was he? What the hell had happened?
Getting one elbow underneath him, he struggled to sit up, recognized the cold bite of steel around his left wrist in a flash of hot, copper-flavored panic. Heart pounding in his chest with the sudden burst of adrenaline flushing through him, he launched upright, yelped in pain as the skin of his wrist was caught in the cuff, his shoulder wrenched, and ten times worse than that, a sledge hammer collided with the base of his skull, sending his vision hazy.
"If you puke on my bed I'll kill you."
Nine words and the world stopped.
Just for a moment, the skip of a single heartbeat, but it stopped.
Because that was Peter Hale's voice, that was the man himself stepping into the room with a frown on his stupidly perfect face, and Stiles had no idea where he was but his gun was missing and his belt and his shirt and oh shit, shit, he was handcuffed to a bed…
Flailing, Stiles scramble backward across the sheets, pressing himself into the corner and jerking frantically against the cuff around his wrist, so hard that he was lucky he didn't break the skin.
"Oh my god, I'm kidnapped," he moaned, the panic-babble rushing up out of his chest just ahead of everything he'd eaten for lunch that day. "Oh, no no no, li… listen dude, you really don't have to kill me, my dad is gonna take care of that. Believe me, he's gonna bury me for this, if I don't die from embarrassment first, you…"
"Don't call me dude," Peter interrupted with a frown, taking another step forward and dropping a red metal toolbox onto the foot of the bed.
Oh god, torture tools…
A fear-induced adrenaline surge had Stiles jerking backward again even though he'd come to the end of his leash, his arm stretched across the headboard as he tugged frantically at the metal restraint, pain stinging in his wrist.
"Stop pulling," Peter snarled, reaching out to wrap warm, rough fingers around Stiles' wrist where it was connected to the bed, ignoring his flinch but no doubt aware now of the rapid drum beat of his pulse. "Christ, you're already bleeding."
"Wait, what?" Stiles yelped, looking down at himself, taking stock and not finding anything. "What did you do to me?!"
"You did it to yourself," Peter scoffed, taking a step back, but it didn't help because he was reaching for the box again and Stiles' body automatically shifted forward, his knees drawing up beneath him in preparation for a fight before his brain had fought even halfway through the panic.
Peter rolled his eyes in clear disdain, obviously recognizing the movement, but then the box was open and Stiles felt bewilderment wash through him, the top pulled back to reveal what appeared to be an extensive first aid kit. Gauze, pills, needles and thread, and a tiny, square hand mirror that Peter held out on the flat of his palm, gestured for Stiles to take. No way was he reaching for that though, and he apparently realized this, sighing heavily before he tilted the thing, giving Stiles a glimpse of his own pale, frightened face, thin trails of blood both new and old running down his temple from a nasty lump on his forehead. Curious fingers came up to prod before he could stop them, and then he was hissing in pain, wiping blood from his cheek with the back of his wrist.
"So that's why I feel like I caught a wrecking ball to the head," he muttered between gritted teeth.
"Caught the railing in that stairwell," Peter corrected, tucking the mirror away again and pulling out disinfecting wipes, a packet of butterfly bandages. Turning back to face him, he grinned wolfishly, making Stiles' throat go dry. "Lucky it didn't ruin that pretty face. A broken nose is never quite the same."
"Speaking from experience?" Stiles gulped, but Peter just smirked. "What now?" he asked, shaking his handcuff and darting a glance at the door as his heart pounded in his chest. "You gonna kill me?"
"Not at all," he replied smoothly, and there was just a little too much sweetness in his tone for Stiles' liking. "I'm offended that you'd even ask such a thing - I've never killed anyone. I distinctly remember going over that point once already today."
"Then why am I here?!" Stiles demanded, fear shredding through whatever cool he'd started out with.
Peter's smile faded and he felt his stomach go tight as the thief watched him with a flat, cold-sort of interest that was chilling and strangely invasive. Bright blue eyes trailed over him and his gaze was like fingers on the nape of his neck, ghosting down his spine.
"A compromise," he said at last, carefully, like he was explaining things to himself as much as to Stiles. "I told you I wasn't going to prison."
"Right, so you thought kidnapping a detective would help with that little plan?" Stiles sneered. The panic was rapidly beginning to wear off, strangely enough, the underlying anger boiling up in its place and burning it away as fast as it was flooding through him. "You know I never believed the rest of them when they said you were fucking insane, but you're doing a good job of changing my mind!"
It was a lie.
He'd never listened when the other detectives, the cops, the media, even his supervisors said that Peter Hale was mad. It was an excuse, a way to humanize him, because how else could you explain the things he was capable of doing, his practically supernatural ability to elude capture when so many agents were combing the country, even everyday citizens on alert for his face after it had been splashed all over the internet?
Stiles had known better.
He'd been raised to understand that immorality didn't exclude intelligence, that murder more than anything often made cruel sense, and crime wasn't reserved to any race, gender, religion, or socio-economic status. He knew how to see the cunning, the intelligence, the quiet sort of smugness that Peter managed to emote whenever he let the law get close before slipping away again. There was no real crazy in Peter's cookie, but that just made him all the more dangerous.
Still, he'd spit the words out with such venom that he thought he'd seen the older man flinch before his face shuttered, all teasing and smirks disappearing as he went cold and distant.
Right, Hostage 101 Stiles, don't piss off the kidnapper.
"Sorry," he muttered, a poor, sullen attempt at placation.
If that was the best he could do, he shouldn't even try.
Unfortunately he needed to get out of this mess.
"No you're not," Peter replied, but the smarmy smirk was back and so at least for now he thought he might be ok. "Now hold still."
Shit, maybe not.
Lurching to the side as Peter reached for him, he came to the end of his tether with a sharp, biting jerk on his wrist, his eyes huge as he froze, back pressed into the corner with his arm stretched across the width of the little twin mattress as he kicked at the coverlet in his attempt to get away.
Peter rolled his eyes, tipped his hands open in a placating manner to show him the antiseptic wipes and bandages he held. He'd never been called a dumbass so eloquently without words before.
"Would you rather do it yourself?" he asked in a tone that suggested stupidity on Stiles' part and boredom on his own.
He didn't answer.
Didn't move.
Sighing, sounding terribly put upon, Peter once again raised his hands for emphasis, place one knee on the bed, and slowly, slowly leaned in.
With nowhere else to go, what could he do but pray?
He was surprised by the gentleness of the man's hands, though he supposed he shouldn't be. He did delicate work - lock picking, forgery, handling art that cost more than Stiles would make in a lifetime - but his hands were still large and rough with callous, strong. They held his chin tightly but not enough to bruise, cleaned the blood from the side of his face before moving higher, careful over the throbbing lump at his hairline though the antiseptic stung painfully. Stiles hissed and tried to pull away but Peter's grip just tightened, his gaze dropping to meet Stiles' with a warning glare.
"Don't," he said firmly, coldly, and it was a chill reminder of his current reality.
A heavy moment passed in the small space between them, but then Peter seemed to determine that Stiles had been cowed into stillness he leaned in again, dropping his chin to reach up and tape the sides of his lacerated forehead back together again. Flinching against the pain, he did his best not to pull away again even as his heart pounded in his chest, his breathing short and tight. As thankful as he was that he apparently didn't need any stitches, the dull throb at the back of his skull, the nausea sitting low in the pit of his belly, and the growing dizziness that threatened to double his vision suggested a mild concussion might be coming on.
That was bad.
Being cuffed in Peter Hale's basement bedroom was bad.
Sure the guy was hot but it was still...
Oh dear god, bad, so bad...
"Don't be a baby," a low voice rumbled, and Stiles jumped when he realized he'd been muttering out loud. "You'll live."
He caught the mirror entirely by reflex, slapping a palm against his chest to trap it before it hit the bed. Peter had tossed it casually, turned away to trash the bloody wipes and dress wrappings. Keeping one eye on the man as he moved back toward the end of the bed, Stiles briefly examined the neat row of butterfly bandages standing stark white against the purpling bruise. It would do the job, as long as he didn't get gangrene down here.
Carefully, gripping it tight to make sure that his fingers didn't shake, Stiles extended the mirror back to Peter, who stood waiting at the end of the bed with his first aid kit all packed up. For a moment he didn't move, just stared at Stiles with those intense blue eyes he'd studied for so long in the tiny handful of grainy surveillance videos and pictures the FBI had…
Stiles wasn't sure what he saw but he seemed satisfied with it, taking back the mirror and tucking it away before Stiles had time to flinch. Snapping the case shut, he dropped it onto the floor and kicked it away, well out of Stiles' reach before he turned again, folding his arms and looking him up and down.
"Three days," he said, and Stiles felt his heart skip a beat.
"Three days till what?!" he yelped, setting off another firework at the back of his head, but oh shit, that didn't sound good…
"You're going to stay here for three days," Peter elaborated. He didn't sound happy and that wasn't reassuring at all, but he pushed on despite the inarticulate spluttering sound that had worked its way out of Stiles' throat. "Three days, no more than that and no less. You eat, you sleep, you get back on your feet, and then we put a nice little blindfold on you and I'll drop you off at some back lot mini mall. We both go back to our own lives."
Stiles blinked.
That had to be the concussion talking right? That wasn't…
"I'm sorry, what?"
Amazing, what a single sigh could communicate.
Peter's said nothing nice about Stiles.
"Call it a vacation," he said sarcastically. "You need the sleep Stiles, I think we can both agree on that."
"Ok fine, but why are you doing this?" he argued, unable to fight the fact that he was practically dead on his feet at this point. How else could he excuse his current situation? "Seriously, why would you help me?"
"I'm helping myself!" Peter snapped, and Stiles quailed a bit before the man sighed again, scowled but relaxed back onto his heels. "If I'd left you," he said, much calmer this time, "You'd still be chasing me, either because of looming career consequences or your own pesky moral objections. This way we both win. You get some much needed rest and I don't have to go to jail."
Turning around, he strode across the room toward a piece of paneling, touching it just right to reveal a door that swung out of the wall. Glancing back over his shoulder, he paused for just a moment, his expression unreadable.
"Go to sleep," he commanded. "I'll wake you up in two hours - make sure you haven't gone from concussion to coma."
And then he was gone, the door disappearing behind him.