Stiles stayed too long.
He stayed too long, and he was too quiet and too still, and at the same time he made far too much noise. He said things that Peter didn't understand, things he shouldn't have said, and it made him feel hot and cold all at once, snarled up his brain.
You'd make a good alpha.
Well hell.
That was... that was something wasn't it?
That meant something - to Peter and maybe even to Stiles - but time...
He couldn't stop it moving and he couldn't stop it changing things. He knew now that he could never really be alpha, that he wasn't the type capable of holding on to that spark without letting it consume him, but that didn't stop him wanting it, would never stop him wanting it. He supposed it was much like being addicted to heroin or cocaine, wanting something so badly that was so bad for him, living a sober lifestyle but never being anything but what he really was – an addict always thinking about their next high.
Hearing Stiles express a belief that he could handle it, that he could actually be good at it...
It shook him, threw him off his balance, so much so that he couldn't do much more than sit on his couch with his leg pressed against Stiles' side, breathing in the scent of rain that he'd carried with him and taping idly at the keys of his laptop every once in a while just to make it seem like he was doing something. He wasn't – he was mostly lost in hazy, disconnected thought, old memories – but Stiles had seemed content to sit on the floor with a werewolf at his back and page happily through a stack of Peter's old books, bounding up every once in a while for another. The next thing Peter knew three hours had passed and the coffee table and floor were a mess, books cracked and stacked, pages marked here and there with bits of paper torn out of a notebook the kid had magicked up from god-knows-where, and he was badgering Peter about the thing that had clawed him up weeks ago.
He had mostly muttered and grumbled short half-answers in response, strangely irritated by Stiles' insistance. It didn't matter did it, what the thing was? He'd never found out but it was dead and buried and that was the important part. The wounds on his side had taken a long time to heal but they were almost closed now and didn't even look like they would scar, so that bit had taken care of itself. He'd been ready to snap his teeth when Stiles' stomach started rumbling, and luckily he'd taken the hint quick enough that Peter wasn't going to feed him, sorting his books and notes into a neat little towers and leaving them on the table. In itself that didn't bode so well, indicating that Stiles felt he'd be back sometime soon, but he'd tugged on his hoodie and left without much fuss, so Peter counted himself among the fortunate and refused to see the boy to the door.
He left a mark though, too much of one. Even the next day there were signs all around the apartment that Stiles had been there – the empty coffee mug in the sink that Peter hadn't bothered to wash, the towel he'd hung over the back of a dining chair after wringing the water from his hair, the strong, permeating scent of Spark and musk and strange contentment. It nearly drove Peter mad, and the only thing that stopped him from shredding the drapes in a fit when he went to shove the windows open to air the place out was the fact that there weren't any baked goods left laying around for him to stuff himself with. That would have been the last straw, and even if he had been craving apple pie and pistachio cookies he'd have gutted himself again before he admitted it to anyone.
He lived in an odd state of paranoid anxiety for the next several days, irritable and snappish with himself as he waited for the knock at the front door, or for the Spark to just come walking in like he owned the place now that he had a mostly open invitation. A part of him demanded that he rescind that invitation immediately with a few good swipes of his claws to drive the point home, another part demanded he move. His apartment had been a safe haven for some time and knowing that it had now been invaded - by Stiles and Lydia, by Derek, by Scott - that knowledge made him uneasy. The unusual denning behaviors he'd begun to engage in, even before Stiles' visit, didn't bode well for him either. He'd staged the damn bookcase for god's sake, shelving his best editions at eye-level like prime produce at a farmer's market.
But it was fine.
This, this was just a phase, biological imperative... midlife crisis.
He remembered seeing similar things before, in his own uncles and older cousins, his father before the bastard had finally had the decency to die. Of course most of them had just gotten slutty in the worst way, whoring around in all manner of undignified and poorly thought out fashions...
Maybe he just needed a good lay.
A night of rough, biting sex to set himself to rights.
He knew people, had... acquaintances, other werewolves who would be happy to take him up on any offer he chose to make and who wouldn't expect anything more than a cup of coffee in the morning, but the thought of it, the idea of going outside the pack, outside the family... it set something in his muscles to burning, made him tense all over like he was getting ready to fight or flee.
He supposed that was just punishment for entangling himself into pack again, for setting up his little triangle with Stiles and Lydia, for caring whether or not Scott got himself or Derek or any of them killed by being a soft-hearted idiot idealist.
He should've known better.
Did know better, and yet here he was, pushing through the front door of Hale House four hours late for pack night and only a week away from the full moon.
Late, but still, there, and surprised when Lydia greeted him by placing a hand on his forearm to stop his escape and pressing her cheek lightly to his. It was quick and perfunctory but it was still scent-marking, still more acknowledgment than he'd had in a long time, and then the blonde male he recognized as the lizard boy stepped up behind her, dropped his eyes and ducked his head in deference before holding out a hand for a shake that was just as short and sweet. The formality of it struck Peter hard in the chest, threw him back to another time and another pack and a different set of rules, and he let the man's hand go almost as abruptly as he'd taken it, wrinkling his nose and shaking his head as he walked away.
Strange, when what was right became not right and started to get hazy, watercolor fading out across white paper until it washed away entirely.
Peter's life was starkly color-coded in reds and blues and golds – he had no use for the muddy greens and purples that bled together in the middle.
Slinking into the dining room, he shrugged out of his coat and hung it over the back of a chai, took up a seat that set him apart from the rest, left him with good sightlines throughout the open rooms. Lydia and Jackson set up nearby in the small reading nook between the kitchen and the stairwell, closer to him than the rest of the pack and that was strange but settling, even if he was blatantly ignoring them. The rest were sprawled throughout the living room, Kira and Liam sitting side by side on fat, black bean bags playing a video game and throwing less-than-covert glares at the couch along the wall where Isaac was rolling all over Scott's lap like some sort of pathetic puppy. A girl with blue hair and a lip ring sat beside them, her eyes fixed on the phone in her palm as she swatted at Isaac's legs idlely, and Peter assumed she must be the fiance.
More drama then – a minor powerplay not worth the title.
Wonderful.
Rolling his eyes, Peter pulled his cell phone from his own pocket, tapped through a few apps and began sending texts, setting up some of his own arrangements. He had his eye on some more books, on some wiccans he planned to squeeze some information out of, and needed to set up a threat session and an online payment.
Focused on his own plans, heedless of the ones around him, he didn't know how much time had passed when Derek finally emerged from the back hallway, passing him without a word or a glance to join the rest in the living room. He carried Stiles' scent with him, sharp and acrid with frustration, and it was heavy enough to linger in the air but not a one of the others reacted to it.
Rumbling quietly, Peter chuffed and showed his teeth as he rose, stalked past them down the hallway toward the war room. Stiles was hunched over the table, back to the door when he slipped inside, his hair sticking out in five directions like he'd been scrubbing his hands through it restlessly. Crossing the floor, making sure he was on the noisier side of silent, Peter stepped in close beside him and curled his fingers around the nape of the Spark's neck and squeezing gently.
His heart didn't skip a beat.
No flinching, no twitching, nothing.
Just the continuous tap of a pen on a blank notebook and an exasperated sigh.
"Hey," he muttered, straightening up and leaning back into Peter's grip in the process.
"What are you doing?" he asked, letting go as Stiles threw down his pen, shoved back the notebook to drag a stack of books across the table.
"Consolidation," he answered. "Trying to put together everything we know about the Rubious and everything we still need to know. Three guesses as to which list is longer."
Arching an eyebrow, Peter surveyed the cluttered table, the books and papers, the sticky notes and crumpled manuscripts.
"Learn anything new?"
"Somebody finally went missing," he replied, and the flat, disconnected tone he used took Peter aback, so different from the passionate, empathic voice he'd once had. "Two, three days ago? My dad put out a BOLO, but given who it was..."
Sliding a paper towards him, Stiles turned away as Peter picked it up, stared at the locked cabinets that lined the walls. It was a missing persons flyer, a picture of a young blonde teenager smiling up at him, all the details listed underneath. There was a silver cross hanging around her neck, a purity ring on her finger, and Peter was smart enough to put the assumptions together. There was something about her – clear skin, good teeth, wholesome grin...
He'd put money on Stiles' hunch being a good one.
Tossing the paper back onto the table, he eyed the young man up and down, took in the dejected slump of his shoulders, the weariness evident in his every movement as he reached for another book, picked up his pen and held it over a blank page.
"Take a break," he said, sounding less like a command than he'd meant it to.
Stiles didn't look up, just shrugged his shoulders as his eyes moved across fading text.
"In a minute," he mumbled distractedly, and despite the sudden urge to throw the spark over his shoulder and haul him out of there, Peter decided he'd already done more than his share of the work here.
Sniffing haughtily, he turned around and stalked right back out the way he came, leaving the kid to kill himself over his damned research if he wanted to. Nothing said Peter had to sit around and watch. He was halfway to the door when he thought better of leaving, picked up the sounds of a squabble in the living room and one or the other of the wonder-alpha's intrepid betas bitching about the lack of food in the house. Bold-faced inaccuracy but a common one – those lazy bastards would actually starve themselves to death before a one of them would drag their asses up to cook something. They only managed their weekly breakfasts because of Lydia's careful planning and Derek's insistence.
Not that Peter would really mind if they starved to death, but if they hadn't eaten yet then neither had Stiles.
Hell, if he'd been back in the war room all morning he probably hadn't even had breakfast.
At least that was a problem he could solve.
Forty minutes later, Beacon Pizza was on the doorstep with the Hale House usual – ten meat lover's pizzas for the werewolves and a thin crust, margherita pie for Lydia and Kira to split. More importantly Peter had added a large barbecue Hawaiian to the order - Stiles' favorite - because there was no way he was going to watch the Spark fight for a few slices to himself like he normally did. The whole point was to feed him – the rest were inconsequential. It was Derek's credit card and ordering the full list would be infinitely less of an inconvenience than listening to the complaints and the whining.
Hardly made up for the swarm when he dropped the stack of boxes on the counter, but it gave him an excuse to snap and snarl, to shoulder his way roughly out of the knot of bodies and sequester himself at the end of the counter, waiting for Stiles to emerge from his isolation. If the smell of hot pizza couldn't drag him away from his work then Peter had done all he could do and didn't care anymore. Staring off through the patio doors he watched the tree tops moving in the wind, listened for Stiles' heartbeat above the cacophony of werewolves snapping and scarfing down pizza, decimating the boxes as they went.
From the corner of his eye he saw a hand inching toward him and the box he'd brought down to the end of the counter, felt his wolf crouch low inside his chest, waiting. A growl swelled up in his chest, choked down behind sharp teeth, a predator's patience holding him back until he saw the lid of the box start to rise and indignant anger went surging to the fore.
Isaac yelped, jerked back his hand and drew a badly bleeding wrist in to his chest. Peter snarled around bared teeth, claws still extended and eyes flashing blue, getting to his feet when the fiance puffed up her chest and pulled Isaac behind her.
Greedy, bitch-whipped upstart, taking what wasn't his, wasn't right...
"What the hell is your problem Peter?" Scott snapped sharply, his eyes flaring red. "You can't just..."
"Wolves eat by rank you idiot!" Peter snarled, his voice hoarse and harsh and furious. "You've got a pack member back there working his ass off that hasn't been fed yet and he's worth more than half of you. "
"That doesn't mean you can..."
"Shut up," he hissed, and Scott actually staggered back a step at the venom being thrown in his face, the rest of the pack still and wary and watchful. Derek was pale and looked half sick, like he knew exactly what Peter was talking about and wanted to roll over and show his belly, a pup caught in the memories of the family he used to have, and it only served to sharpen Peter's ire.
"What the hell kind of Alpha are you, can't even feed your pack?" he snarled. "Your right hand? What the hell kind of friend..."
"Uncle Peter?"
The quiet questioning, the familial title he hadn't deserved in years brought Peter up short, made him realize he'd been stalking forward on the wolf he'd bitten so long ago, a child who'd gone silent and nervous and ashamed. Shaking his head, still angry, still bitter, Peter ignored his nephew, ignored Lydia's calming hand on his forearm and forced his way through the knot of werewolves that parted around him like water, slamming the front door behind himself.