Stiles swallows hard, focuses on creaming butter and sugar together with the back of a spoon. He'd asked for this, because he'd wanted Peter to be able to talk about it and because he'd wanted to know, but very, very suddenly it seems like it's going to be harder than he thought to listen.

"Love at first thunk huh?" he asks, clearing his throat when the words come out tight. "Course it was a meet-cute."

Behind him Peter makes a questioning sound, and he turns just in time to see the guy cocking his head.

"A what?"

"Never mind," Stiles shrugs. "Just... it sounds romantic."

Peter barks a laugh.

"There were only twenty people in our Anthropology major," he says, like that explains anything at all. "We both needed a copy of Cannibals and Kings for our final project. She got to the library before me and was hoarding all the texts, carrying them around from shelf to shelf. When she dropped it..."

He shrugs, his eyes far away.

Stiles blinks, stares at him for a long minute, then starts laughing hard enough to make his sides hurt. Peter scowls at him but Stiles just waves him off, wipes his eyes.

"Aw man, that's awesome," he chokes, turning back around to measure flour and baking soda. "You tried to swipe it from her and she dropped the rest of them on your head!"

"Finders keepers," Peter growls, but there's a softness around his mouth that betrays him.

Stiles chuckles, feels like it's easier to breathe. That story makes a lot more sense, is a lot more similar to, well, their story than what he'd originally thought, and for reasons he doesn't want to contemplate, he finds that comforting.

"Those sociology books weigh fifteen pounds apiece; she dropped six of them on my head before stomping out," he mutters, crossing his arms over his chest. "We bickered that whole year."

Stiles hums, smile still soft on his face, glancing at Peter over his shoulder. He decides to give him a minute because he's gone quiet and far away, tries not to think about what's going on in the werewolf's head right now. This has to be hard – he knows how hard it is for him – and the look on Peter's face is just... kinda heart breaking. He wants to cuddle him but doubts that would be welcome, so he focuses on preheating the oven and bringing his cookie dough together.

"What changed?" he asks quietly, when he finally turns around to grab the candy Peter had chopped for him, keeping his eyes on the cutting board in his hands.

"Her mom got sick," Peter murmurs, and Stiles feels his heart drop. "Our senior year. When she passed, Sarah, she... she said more than anything in the world she just wanted to run away. So I put her in my car and drove her down to Tijuana, watched her drink and dance and cry..."

"You took care of her," Stiles says, and very suddenly he's struck by the realization that nearly everything that Peter's ever done has been to protect someone – his family, his pack, himself. "She fell in love with you because you helped her escape."

"No," he disagrees, shaking his head, "She fell in love with me because I brought her back home."

More silence.

Seems right in the moment, which is fine by Stiles, because there's a large, soft lump in his throat that he can't swallow down. His hands shake as a he starts scooping little balls of cookie dough onto a baking sheet and he can't bring himself to turn around, to look at his soulbonded as he contemplates a love and a loss that is so much bigger and larger that Stiles has yet seen...

"So," he says in a voice that's far more gritty and rough than he would like. "Your cousins wanted to go into town huh?"

Peter scoffs, then a slow, chill tension suddenly settles across Stiles' shoulders.

"It's dangerous, what you did," he says, heavy and completely cold. "You have to know that."

Stiles sighs, his shoulders sagging.

"Things aren't the same Peter," he murmurs, knowing how stupid and ridiculous the sentiment is, even as he offers it.

"If you really think that than maybe you are just a stupid kid," Peter rumbles back.

"Kate Argent is in prison," Stiles insists. "Gerard is dead and Allison has completely re-written the code that the family follows..."

"There will always be people like the Argents out there Stiles," Peter says, and it comes out slow and heavy and serious and it sends a shiver down Stiles' spine because he thinks that's maybe the first time Peter has said his name after that one, disastrous time in the beginning. "Always. You can dress things up any way you want, focus on the rosy good nature of all our modern-day equality, but underneath things are still the same."

Swallowing hard, Stiles tosses two sheets of cookies into the oven and turns around to face his soulbonded, who is watching him intently with a quiet look that Stiles can't read. Pulling out a chair, he takes a seat across from him, doesn't open his mouth because he's afraid if he does Peter won't say another word, and he thinks maybe the guy has something he needs to say right now.

"Vinny was blinded by a crossbow bolt," Peter says, and Stiles feels something tighten sharply in his chest. "The physical damage to the eye itself healed, but his vision never came back. Paige, the human girl that moons around after my idiot nephew? She was his best friend growing up. She and her parents were targeted because they were friends of the pack, so when her mother and father were killed in the bomb blast that took her sight, Talia adopted her."

Bile stings the back of Stiles throat – he hadn't realized that anyone outside of the Hale pack had been targeted, that the Argents had gone after regular, human families too. It was a crime no better and no worse than the holocaust they'd attempted on the werewolves of Beacon Hills that night so long ago when war had broken out, but somehow it drives home a horror that Stiles hadn't fully recognized before.

"Talia and David's oldest, Seth," Peter continues, calm and flat and quiet as though Stiles can't feel his insides twisting them both in knots, "He was murdered by Gerard Argent when he tried to save his father from a hunter's sword. Nick was the only human of my sister's brood, third in line and never meant for anything, so when Seth was dead and Laura had to accept that she really would be the Alpha one day, everyone as good as forgot about him. He watched his family get slaughtered and they abandoned him."

"Jesus," Stiles breathes, choked.

Peter makes a humming sound that doesn't mean anything, shrugs like it doesn't matter.

"Vin got him out of the house before he killed himself," he says, a casual brush-off betrayed by the high set of his shoulders and the cold, banked horror and disgust that slides across their bond like oil. "Taught him to paint instead of cut. Cora was born deaf, because of the wolfsbane David and Talia both inhaled the night the Argents tried to burn our houses to the ground."

"Peter..."

"It's all guilt now," he says, turning his face away. "That's all that's left. Guilt and bad memories. Derek's guilt and Vinnie's guilt and Laura's guilt... and mine."

"Yours? Peter that wasn't your fault!" Stiles insists, aching down to his very core. "None of that was your fault."

Peter chuckles, bitter and hurt, and turns back to meet his gaze with eyes that glow bright, steely blue.

"I haven't told you how my wife died yet," he says, and there's something in his voice that makes Stiles want to run. "Pack enforcer, it was my job to protect them, always had been. Maybe there wasn't much more I could have done, maybe that much of it wasn't my fault, but her?"

He looks away again, his jaw clenching, but then he takes a measure breath and forces himself to meet Stiles' gaze again, haunted, broken, and defiant.

"We were in the basement," he says, his voice far away, and Stiles' heart pounds against his ribs. "There were tunnels, before, but they'd found out about them somehow. They trapped us down there, lit the fires..."

The color surges in Peter's eyes and Stiles thinks for one brief moment that nothing separates them anymore, that they no longer exist in different bodies but are only one bond, one, single point of pain and fear and regret.

"Have you ever been burned Stiles?" Peter asks quietly, his hand creeping up to trail down over his own jaw and throat. "Ever been trapped somewhere and known there was no way you were getting out?"

He can't answer, can't find words, couldn't speak them around the rock in his throat anyway.

"I couldn't let her die like that," he rasps, and there are no tears but it feels as though something is ripping Stiles' chest in two. "I couldn't let her be burned alive, choking on the ash... I snapped her neck, and my only regret is that the rest of them somehow pulled me out thirty minutes later, my face and shoulder all melted down to bone and my lungs full of smoke... I should have died in there with her; that was my place, that was my... that was what I wanted."

Stiles doesn't remember getting up.

All he knows is that one minute he's sitting across from Peter reeling with nausea and horror, and the next he's standing behind him, his arms crossed over the werewolf's collarbones and his face pressed to his hair, hugging him as tight as he possibly can. He's crying on him, and holding him too close, and it's probably everything that Peter doesn't want right now, but Stiles can't tell which one of them is shaking and his heart is pounding so hard he can't breathe.

"So you understand?" Peter grits out, not pulling away, but not leaning closer either. "Guilt and blue eyes and bad memories – that's all that's left Stiles. That's who you're aligning yourself with."

"No it's not," he promises, and it feels like a promise even if he doesn't have a clue how he's going to keep it. "It's not Kate anymore, or Gerard. It's Allison, and it's her cousins and her dad. It's Laura and it's me and it's you Peter. That won't happen again; you and me, we won't let that happen again."

"What are you going to do to stop it Stiles?" he asks, dull and far away, and that resignation scares Stiles more than anything else has so far. "We're fighting all sides now – you have to see that. You're not stupid, and neither is my niece; you'll have realized the kind of trouble we're in. With Laura coming into her power, and now this, being able to go back into town... if she and my sister don't lay down the law there will be even more fighting than that. Hell, I'll be so busy keeping those cocky bastards in check I won't have half the time I need to..."

"Breathe," Stiles murmurs automatically, stunned when he feels the painfully familiar tightening of a panic attack in his chest. He wouldn't think Peter the type, but it just goes to show you that anxiety is a universal emotion, and god knows it's not unwarranted. "Come on, five breaths in and seven breaths out."

Too his great surprise, Peter does as he's told, sucking sharp breaths in through his nose and huffing them out through gritted teeth, trembling but still subconsciously following the rise and fall of Stiles' own chest where it's pressed against his back. More surprising than that, his hands come up and wrap around Stiles' forearm where it crosses his chest, one around his wrist and the other around his elbow, firm, tight, but not painful.

Just... holding on, a half-desperate anchor.

It takes a while for them both to calm down.

Stiles doesn't know how much of that is him and how much of that is Peter, but he doesn't think it matters. There's hurt and fear and a heavy, heavy responsibility all tied up in his stomach, and he has to swallow hard more than once to get his heart back down into his chest where it belongs. He presses his face to the top of Peter's head, breathes in the scent of his shampoo, hair softer than he'd expected, and squeezes his eyes shut, forcing himself to take the moment for nothing more and nothing less than what it is.

A single breath of relief, a stolen, hidden moment of much needed connection.

The timer on the oven goes off with a quiet ding and breaks the tension, and he's more grateful for it than he probably should be. Peter lets him go with an ease that's far too casual, unwraps his fingers from around Stiles' arm and doesn't say a word when he moves away, turning his back to pull out the cookies and put in a new batch.

If he has to blink really, really hard for a minute, well it's just the blast of heat from the open doors – the band around his chest has loosened more than enough for him to breathe again. He resets the timer, then spends a few minutes scooping the hot cookies onto a piece of wax paper to cool, trying to think of something to say. He can't, not really, so he plates a few cookies for each of them and fetches milk from the fridge. He pushes a glass and a saucer across the table silently, then sits down across from his soulbonded and lets go of the very last of the tension in his muscles.

They're quiet together, and for the first time it's a simple, easy quiet, with absolutely nothing painful or fearful or sharp between them. There's no awkwardness, no hurt, no attempt at intimidation or to impress, and it's so good that he kind of wants to shiver, to...

To sleep.

He watches silently as Peter picks up a cookie, stuffs one of his own in his mouth to stop himself from grinning when he dunks it in his glass of milk before taking a bite. They're both nearly finished before he realizes what it is he wants to say.

"I want your help with something."