Chapter 8

"You punched him?" Peter laughed as Stiles told him what happened at school. Peter couldn't believe it; honestly he had been surprised that Stiles had even wanted to go to school today, he had thought after waking up in the middle of the night screaming that he wouldn't want to face school. He had felt proud when Stiles told him he couldn't hide away, but right now he felt even more proud, Stiles had confronted Theo - the psychotic who wanted him dead and punched him.

"Yep." Stiles said grinning.

"That was a stupid thing to do." Peter scowled. "A good, unexpected but stupid thing to do."

"It just kinda happened." Stiles shrugged and grabbed a bag of frozen peas from the freezer and covered his knuckles. "Though I probably did more damage to me then to him."

"It's because you don't know how to punch." Peter said matter of factly.

"Well I never had to before." Stiles sighed.

"I can teach you." Peter offered and Stiles looked up at him gratefully.

"So, erm...what have you been doing today?" Stiles asked as a silence washed over them both.

"I spoke to a few more leads for advice. They all fell through. And I started to make dinner. I didn't expect you to be here this early."

"Wait you made dinner?" Stiles laughed.

"I hate sitting around doing nothing." Peter shrugged.

"But you made dinner." Stiles grinned. "That's very domesticated of you."

"I have you know that before all of this, I cooked all of the time." Peter smiled back simply and Stiles raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything else, another comfortable silence washed over them and stiles found himself getting distracted watching as Peter finished up a chicken pasta. It looked and smelt delicious and Stiles couldn't wait to eat it.

"Your dad said he will phone you later, he's working tonight." Peter said and Stiles nodded with a shrug. "He work a lot of nights?"

"Sometimes." Stiles shrugged again.

"When he's at work what do you do?" Peter asked curiously.

"Sometimes hang with Scott, though that wasn't happening much the past couple of months. I'd just hang here on my own or I would just wonder. A couple of times I would actually hang with Derek. Well not hang. We would just sit in a rather awkward silence. But silence doesn't count as silence if you're not on your own."

"You must have been lonely." Peter comments gently.

"Nah." Stiles dismissed him quickly with a wave of his hand. "Do you need any help?" He asked wanting to change the subject.

"Sure." Peter smiled. "Set the table?"

"Dinner at the table?" Stiles raised his eyebrows. "That's very fancy."

"You don't eat dinner at the table?" Peter frowned.

"Well not really. If it's just me, I normally just eat in my room." Stiles shrugged, or I don't bother eating at all, he thought to himself.

"Back when we all lived together at the house, every night if we could we would sit around the table and have a family dinner." Peter said, his voice soft but distant and Stiles found himself completely drawn to it. "We would talk about our day, what we did at school."

"That sounds really nice." Stiles said gently.

"It was." Peter said and the conversation drifted to an end. Stiles set up the table grabbing some glasses and some juice looking up at Peter with a fond smile, he was learning a lot about Peter, he never thought he could actually like Peter or find some common ground with him. Truthfully Peter had always scared him more than anyone else. Peter was ruthless and manipulative and you could never really believe what he was saying. But this Peter, the Peter that was opening up to him about his past, he liked him. It was easy talking to him like this. It was more than easy - It was nice.

Once dinner was on the table the two ate with a light hearted chatter amongst them. Stiles wanted to talk about Theo, to work on their plan, to tell Peter about Scott and how he thought he might be coming around but Peter had steered clear of those topics. All Peter wanted was just one dinner where he didn't have to think about their impending doom. Stiles seemed to get that and he was grateful, for the first time in a long time he didn't feel as though the walls were closing in on him, instead he thought just maybe there was a light at the end of all of this.