A monster lives under Stiles' bed.
He knows it's there. He's seen it.
He tells his mom. He tells his dad. They don't believe him. They say it's all in his head.
They tell him not to worry, that there's nobody else in the house. His mom is all it'll all get better in the morning, and his dad and his skeptical eyebrow ask isn't he just a little too old to believe in monsters?
Stiles might've agreed with them, given that he is twelve and fully aware that he's at the stage in his life where he isn't supposed to be afraid of the dark anymore, let alone any imagined goblins lurking within it.
But that's just the thing.
Stiles didn't see it in the dark.
No, Stiles sees it at 3 o'clock on a sunny Tuesday afternoon.
It's just another boring day. He's just gotten back home from school, racing upstairs and taking them two at a time—his favored method, even though his mom always tells him not to—in a rush to get back to killing virtual zombies.
And then he sees it, through the crack in his door.
Two huge black paws, smokey and ethereal and tipped with razor-sharp claws, reaching out from under his bed and swatting at a passing spider.
Those paws crush the spider, the creature's toes flexing as it slowly drags its prize back under the bed.
Stiles finally blinks—eyes dry and lips twisted in horror—and then the paws are gone.
As if it had never even happened.
So, yeah.
Stiles is pretty goddamn sure that a monster lives under his bed.
Stiles has slept on the couch for the last four nights.
He can't make himself go back into his room. He's been raiding the laundry room for clothes and borrowing Scott's History textbook for class.
His parents have started giving him strange looks, ones that are no longer amused and confused by his behavior but worried.
Stiles knows he can't keep this up. He doesn't want his parents giving him any more of those apprehensive looks and he definitely doesn't want to develop some sort of spinal arthritis at such a young age—seriously, they need a new couch—so it's time to buck up.
And by buck up, he means to try and ignore the situation entirely.
So here he is, on a dark and terribly stormy night—what a horrible cliché his life has turned into—standing outside his bedroom. The door is still cracked just so, the streetlamps outside his window casting a greenish glow into the room.
Stiles can't take his eyes away from the menacing space between the floor and his bed. It's something he's never been afraid of before, but now all he can think about is whether his mangled body can be dragged through a five-inch gap.
His money is on yes, yes it can.
Stiles doesn't know how to stop being afraid, so he isn't even going to try.
All he does know is that he was perfectly content before seeing it, before knowing.
Ignorance is bliss, no question about it—and so he's going to live and hopefully not die by that standard. So he takes his shaky hands and puts on his headphones. Twitchy fingers tap at his iPod, cranking the music louder until he can no longer hear the storm outside.
And then he opens the door farther, flicks on the light, and then steps inside.
He walks tentatively over to the desk, sliding his chair back before plopping himself down. Stiles boots up his laptop, trying to make the way he lifts his feet off the floor and curls them close to his body seem natural.
Casual.
Like he isn't afraid of a pair of claws yanking at his ankles.
It's awkward and uncomfortable, but Stiles slowly lets himself breathe and get lost in the black hole that is the internet.
Hours pass, and Stiles can't keep his eyes open any longer. He decides to play up his usual clumsiness by abruptly wheeling himself over to his bed and launching himself into the middle of the mattress like a whale jumping out of the ocean. Stiles even lets out a loud sigh, letting the monster know that no, Stiles isn't afraid he's sleepy and content, oh so content.
Everything is normal.
Nothing to hear.
Definitely nothing to see.
Stiles falls asleep clutching his comforter over his head and with his headphones still blasting.
This goes on for months.
Stiles ignores what he knows—what he knows deep down in the uncomfortable twist of his gut—to be true, using an endless loop of ABBA's greatest hits and a never-ending game of "the floor is lava" to keep him going.
It isn't perfect, but at least he hasn't answered the question of the five-inch gap.
(He's still pretty sure the answer is yes.)
Everything is going fine—well as fine as it can be with a scary clawed creature under his bed—when of course, things get worse.
Even with Stiles' carefully constructed bubble of ignorance, he still catches glimpses of black fur. He spots wisps of inky smoke curling through the air. There are thin, white scratches accumulating on the hardwood around his bed.
All things he probably wouldn't have noticed, or would have thought nothing of if he had.
But he does, and he is.
Regardless, he's powering through it. In fact, it's become routine.
That is, it was until he gets out of his shower and starts drying off, only to spot the movement of a claw-tipped hand.
One that's wrapped around the almost-shut door of his closet.
It's not furred or black. It's rather gray and skin-like. But the claws? Those look equally as sharp as the ones that live under his bed.
Stiles doesn't move for three straight hours.
So, yeah.
Apparently, there's a monster under his bed and a monster in his closet.
Not one, but two boogeymen lurking in his room.
Stiles can't help but wonder what that says about him.
Even stranger than adding another monster into the mix is that it's somehow even easier now for Stiles to ignore what's going on. It's like the routine he developed for the first monster was practice and now he's just really good at it. He's just added not opening his closet into the routine—not really a chore since he's never put in a lot of effort into hanging up his clothes, he has a chair in the corner of his bedroom he throws his shirts on thank you very much—and so he's not feeling extra stressed about the new addition.
Aside from the occasional creak of the door he hears late at night in the lull between songs. And the tapping he sometimes hears before he walks into his room, the sound suspiciously similar to when Stiles drums his fingers when he's bored—except, y'know, without the claws.
So it continues like that for a few more months. Stiles has perfected his method of ignoring reality and his parents no longer give him strange looks.
The only downside is, well, he has no idea what to do from here. He still has five more years before he can even consider moving out of the house—and even then there's no guarantee that that will actually solve anything.
After all, Stiles is pretty sure that those monsters weren't always there.
They'd just…shown up. In his room. And now they're still there.
Waiting.
For what, Stiles doesn't even want to know.
(That's a lie, but thinking about it makes Stiles' skin grow cold.)
They haven't left, and they haven't done anything to Stiles—that he knows of, anyway, Jesus Christ. So they must still want something from him.
So who's to say those beasties won't just follow him when he leaves?
Stiles spends the weekend at Scott's house when that question first pops into his head.
The worst part of all of this is that Stiles is still afraid. He hasn't stopped. Sure, the severity has leveled off, but he still feels it.
Every. Single. Day.
Stiles has always been afraid of the unknown because he understands that what he doesn't know will hurt him.
Eventually.
Case in point? The month after he turns thirteen when his parents tell him that his mom has cancer.
Glioblastoma.
The first time Stiles whispered it out loud, he almost expected one of the monsters to sneeze just to give him a reason to say it again.
There's a malignant tumor spreading across his mom's brain and there's nothing Stiles can do about it.
A week after they tell him finds Stiles packing up a suitcase for his mom as she smiles softly at him while she sits against her headboard.
"Everything's going to be just fine, Mischief," she promises as he folds up her favorite yellow sweater.
Stiles smiles back at her. "Of course it is," he replies, pretending that his mom's eyes aren't glassy, that her smile doesn't tremble.
Apparently, Stiles isn't the only one wanting to ignore reality.
Stiles is still wearing his suit when he breaks his closet door down. He kicks and he kicks at it with his shiny black shoes.
He throws his whole body at it again and again until his dad finally runs into the room and wraps him in a bear hug from behind.
Stiles rages and screams, trapped in the loving embrace of his father, until they're both sitting on the floor, wrapped around each other as if holding on tightly enough could keep them both from drifting away.
Stiles takes in the wreckage of the closet out of the corner of his blurry eyes, and in that split second moment of deciding to see—to acknowledge—he numbly catalogs a shadowy set of wings.
For most of the year after Stiles' mom dies he oscillates between fits of extreme anger and grief and periods of an intense need to take care of his father.
He doesn't allow the Sheriff to even look at a donut for six months, and Stiles has definitely gotten the hang of ironing and vacuuming.
It's all so precarious, the thin line Stiles is balancing on.
But for some reason, he always feels better when he's in his room. Of course, that might just be the fear taking over, but Stiles isn't so sure.
It's a couple of months after Stiles turns fourteen when he wakes up to the sound of voices. He reaches up to adjust his headphones and then freezes when he realizes that they've fallen off his head. His heart starts thumping in his chest as he realizes that the voices aren't the screechy high notes of the Gibb brothers.
"—how utterly boring you've become in your advanced age, Christopher, I swear—"
"As if you are one to talk, Hound! I am rather surprised your dear sister still has you out collecting. Is that silver I see in your fur?"
"I'm not sure taking potshots at looks will get you anywhere, not with those wrinkles you're rocking around your beady bird eyes."
"You dare! You—"
And it goes on like that, in the dark of Stiles' bedroom. His fingers are still curled around his headphones, but Stiles is way too curious and confused to tune them out with music. Stiles slowly widens his eyes and peeks out, his free hand clutching his blanket close to his chest.
He spots shadows moving on his wall and his floor, the movements fast and in time with each hurled insult.
Stiles shuts his eyes quickly, not wanting to see anything more. He settles back into his pillows and wraps his comforter tighter, head cautiously tilted in the direction of the two arguing monsters.
He falls asleep after a few hours, still very fucking confused.
It turns out that his monsters have been talking to each other the whole time.
Well, he assumes so because they talk every night.
And, well, "talk" in the sense that words are exchanged.
In Stiles' opinion, it's more bickering than anything.
It's usually the one under the bed that starts it. It's voice, smooth and with a note of gleeful malice, will needle the one in the closet until they're both whisper-shouting at each other.
Stiles would've guessed they were married if they also weren't so obvious about their hate for one another.
Stiles makes a list of everything he's learned so far about his monsters.
1. The one under the bed is named Peter.
2. Closet Monster is named Christopher.
3. They hate each other's guts, enough that Stiles is very worried that he'll one day wake up to a floor covered in them.
4. Christopher calls Peter "Hound" a lot.
5. Based on Peter's insults, Chris is some sort of bird-creature.
6. They both really like when Stiles leaves on reruns of The Golden Girls.
7. They only talk at night.
8. Stiles can still see flashes of them during the day.
9. Peter may be the actual devil.
10. The monsters in his room are absolute assholes.
Stiles is quite proud of his list—know thy enemy and whatnot, and gathering information on them has relieved his fear and anxiety to an insane degree.
He's slowly been experimenting on how long he can go in between seeing them, and timing exactly when they start fighting every night.
It's been going well so far, strangely enough, even though Stiles is sure that his change in behavior is stupidly obvious and suspicious. And yet, he still hasn't felt any claws at his ankles.
And for the first time, Stiles has to wonder whether or not the monsters lurking in his room are all that bright.
17. Peter has been eating his socks.
18. When Peter growls, the bedframe rattles.
19. Chris is not a bird—no feathers confirmed.
"Are you doing alright, son?"
Stiles looks up from his mashed potatoes and gives his dad a wide grin. "Yep. Just thinking about school starting next week. I'm just nervous, I guess."
The Sheriff nods thoughtfully. "I remember what that's like. High school wasn't my favorite, either, you know."
Stiles perks up a bit. "Yeah?"
His dad gives him a wry smile and shoots him a wink. "Yeah. And anybody that tells you different peaked there, you got that?"
Stiles' grin turns a bit more genuine. "Yes, sir. I got it."
38. Say they are from different "realms"—parallel dimensions? Aliens?
39. Christopher makes the closet smell like wet asphalt.
40. They are DEFINITELY eating his emotions, holy fucking shit
41. See #40—!
As time passes, Peter and Chris become much more…comfortable.
So much so, that weeks into Stiles' sophomore year of high school, he finally gets a good look at them.
It's 1 am on a Saturday and Stiles is doing his usual routine of eavesdropping on the monsters' argument and trying not to laugh at Peter's dark jokes.
And then he watches, wide-eyed, as a shadowy figure slithers out from under his bed. The creature, flat and two-dimensional, suddenly lifts a paw up from the floorboards. Stiles can't look away, his attention horribly, horribly, rapt in the smoking black creature that drags itself into this dimension.
A large, black dog—Peter—shakes out its fur and stretches its legs.
Stiles thinks it's over, but then swallows dryly as he watches the creature stand on its huge hind legs, body twisting and black smoke condensing as fur recedes and only the outline of a man remains.
Stiles grits his teeth to hold back a shriek as two red eyes flicker open in the dark.
The outline moves, and Stiles can hear very solid footsteps as Peter's body shifts among the shadows.
Stiles hears a light knocking sound and then the closet door slowly creaks open and another large form emerges.
Christopher is…well, to be honest, Chris is butt-ugly.
There are wings and horns and what appears to be very tough, leathery skin. His face, even in shadow, looks fiercely twisted and gaunt. And his eyes shine just like Peter's, only they're an unsettling icy blue.
"You knocked?" asks Christopher's raspy voice.
"Indeed," Peter purrs, his leaner body resting against the wall next to the closet. "We need to talk about the human."
Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shitohshitohshitohshit—
This has never happened before. Strangely enough, they don't really discuss, well, Stiles.
"Hmmm, what about him?"
"What is your endgame, Christopher?"
There's a shift in the air, and Stiles can see from under his lashes that Christopher's body has reformed just like Peter's until only the shape of a man remains.
"What do you mean?"
Peter's eyes flare and his voice loses all levity. "Will you do as your family does and drain him dry until nothing else remains? Will he remain Stiles after you are gone?"
Christopher rears back. "I do not know to what you refer. I take as you do, my fill and no more." Those blue eyes flash over to him and Stiles has to focus on not flinching. "I do not need as much, just as you—not with a mortal such as he. Not…not with Stiles."
"You swear?"
"Where is this coming from, Padfoot? Since when do your kind care about the well-being of humans?"
There's a tense silence, and then Peter lets out a long breath. "I do not know. This isn't even the longest I've collected from a human, and yet I feel…attached. I want no harm to come to him."
"On that," Chris says lowly, thoughtfully. "We agree."
Headlights from the street sweep in through the window, giving Stiles his first real look at the monsters in his room.
"It's funny," Peter continues, voice deceptively light. "I've traveled to this realm for millennia, and I've never felt this curious about a mortal before. The moving pictures he watches, the music he listens to, the way he works on his father's problems. It is all so strangely soothing."
Christopher is quiet when he murmurs, "It is the same for me."
"Truly?"
"Aye."
"Then we have an accord."
"Yes, I believe we do."
213. Christopher and Peter probably won't kill him after all
214. Christopher's family sound like they probably would, though
215. Chris and Peter are…handsome?
It doesn't take long after finally seeing Peter and Christopher—well, the human versions of Peter and Christopher—for Stiles to wake up from a wet dream about them.
He's already told his dad and Scott that he likes guys and girls, so it isn't the gay thing that freaks him the fuck out.
And Christopher and Peter are objectively good-looking, so it isn't that they look a little too old for him.
No, it's more the fact that they're inter-dimensional creatures of the night that have been lurking in his room since he was twelve years old.
Yeah.
That.
Stiles had never really thought about the intricacies of his own sexuality, but when he wakes up, hips twitching and spunk cooling on his stomach because of a dream that Peter and Christopher had fucked it out of him, well, that hit him over the head like a bag of fucking bricks.
And it told him that maybe he should start thinking a little more closely about what he finds sexually appealing.
Apparently, the answer is sexy inter-dimensional creatures of the night that have been lurking in his room since he was twelve years old.
Oh, and Lydia Martin. Can't forget her.
Stiles develops pretty serious crushes on his monsters over the next two years.
It's absolutely horrible.
Because on one hand, hot, strong, man-monsters.
And on the other, man-monsters that, again, definitely eat his emotions.
In other words, he's still afraid.
He's just gotten to the point where he's decided that it's something that he can live with while in this relationship.
And that? Well, that's just fucking insane.
It doesn't help his crushes at all that Peter and Christopher have started collectively watching him while he "sleeps."
Sometimes, they even sit on his bed.
He can feel the ghost of their hands dance lightly over his face, his body. It's like they don't know what to do with him, so they, like he used to, are experimenting.
Stiles can't take it anymore one night, so he does what any red-blooded American would do: he jerks himself off.
Now, it should be said that Stiles doesn't masturbate.
Okay, he doesn't masturbate in his bedroom. He does it in the shower. He's always done it in the shower. He was always too scared of Peter or Chris dragging him to hell with his pants around his ankles.
So he jerked it in the shower.
But, now he isn't afraid of that. In fact, the thought of Christopher or Peter touching him while he's stroking himself off makes him even harder.
So he decides to put on a little show and relieve a little stress all at the same time—and maybe, just maybe, see if his monsters like like him, too.
Stiles pretends to wake up, all pliant and sleepy. He can hear Chris and Peter stop talking, both of them turning to look at him as he kicks off his blankets.
From underneath his lashes, he can see their heads tilted curiously in his direction. He can only imagine how strange this is for them, given that Stiles has been a "tensely silent burrito of blankets" type of sleeper for the last six years.
He shimmies his hips, pushing down his pajama pants and boxers until he's completely naked from the waist down. Stiles moans softly as the cool air hits his bare skin. He hears a responding growl from the foot of his bed.
He drags a hand across his chest and down his stomach, his long fingers slowly wrapping around his cock. Stiles gives himself a good squeeze and then gets to it.
Stiles strokes himself once, from base to tip, and then takes his hand away to lick at his tacky palm. He grabs his length again, working his cock at a steady pace.
He rubs a thumb over his slit, smearing the gentle stream of precum that's leaking out. Stiles works it down his cock, the slick too sticky to be exactly what he wants. Stiles groans deep in his chest as his strokes have a bit more friction—as he starts to jerk himself faster, rougher.
Stiles plants a foot on the bed for leverage as he rocks his hips up into his fist, the meaty sound of his balls slapping against his palm almost pornographic in the otherwise silent bedroom.
Peeking out again, Stiles sees both Chris and Peter crowding the foot of his bed. Both monsters are watching him, glowing eyes noticeably wide and unblinking.
When Stiles uses his free hand to lift his shirt and pluck at his nipples, he hears Chris grunt.
When Stiles moves that hand down to his balls and gives himself a squeeze, he hears Peter start to pant.
His monsters are watching him from the shadows with what Stiles can only describe as bewildered awe.
He'd put money on them never having thought of him this way before—both of them too far removed from any interest in humanity to understand why they were becoming so attached to a mere mortal.
But from the way they hiss as Stiles puts both hands on his cock, stroking himself desperately, head thrown back and eyes now screwed shut, he'd say that they finally understand what's happening here.
And that? Well, that makes Stiles come all over himself, cock twitching as spurt after spurt of cum coats his hands and belly. Stiles gasps as he works himself through it, his orgasm leaving him shaking and his toes curled into the sheets.
He collapses back onto the mattress, limbs pleasantly turned to jello. Stiles rolls to his side and grabs a wad of tissue from his bedside table, wiping up his mess. Tossing it in the vicinity of his trash can, Stiles rolls back over and contentedly squirms into his nest of pillows.
Stiles doesn't know what is said between his two monsters after that.
He's too busy getting the best night's sleep he's had in the last six years.
It's Stiles' last night of sleeping in his childhood bedroom when the conversation between Christopher and Peter really changes.
Stiles is laying on his bed, hands casually placed behind his head as he watches the sun go down, and more importantly, The Avengers.
All of his stuff is packed away and in the moving van in the driveway. His dad had cried a little on his shoulder as they loaded the vehicle, and it took Stiles telling him it's only a three-hour drive between Beacon Hills and Standford five separate times for his dad to stop sniffling.
So here he lays, watching superheroes blow up and save New York (in that order) when Christopher and Peter decide to break the rules Stiles carefully wrote down all those years ago.
"I want to go with him."
Stiles fights not to jump as Peter materializes in the corner and Chris slumps out of the closet.
"I know," Chris whispers, looking down at his hands. "But you know what happens when we consciously decide to follow a mortal to another dwelling."
"Yes," Peter mutters petulantly. "They become troubled."
Christopher nods. "Intent matters, Peter—on both sides. It is already astounding that we are able to take so much of what he naturally emits without harming him. If we choose to follow, his energy will respond in kind and give even more. Too much," Chris swallows, looking devastated at the thoughts. "He would become a shadow of himself, and you know it."
Chris runs a large hand over the edge of the closet door. "If it were freely given, it would be different. But it never is with his kind."
"I still want to go," Peter says softly.
"As do I, Hound—as do I."
Stiles smiles to himself and counts to three.
"So you guys are really serious about a little ole mortal like me, huh?"
In a strange turn of events, it's Stiles' monsters that freeze.
Two sets of eyes snap over to him, wide and startled.
Stiles meets them steadily and bats his eyelashes flirtatiously. "Commitment is a good way to a young human's heart, so you guys are doing pretty well." He cocks his head. "Especially if you would like an invite to come along for the ride."
In a flash, Peter is crawling up the foot of Stiles' bed, eyes disbelieving and mouth steadily growing into a sensual smirk when Stiles meets his gaze.
Peter crawls all the way up the bed until Stiles can feel the heat radiating from Peter's face. He doesn't look away from those wicked red eyes as Peter says, "You can see us." Not a question, just a statement of fact.
The corners of Stiles' lips quirk up. "And hear you." Stiles leans in closer and breathes in. "And smell," he exhales. "I'm still waiting for confirmation on the other two."
Peter's eyebrows climb his forehead, clearly taken aback but so obviously delighted by it.
"How long?"
Stiles turns his head and looks right at Chris, who's crouched next to the bed and leaning in close to Stiles.
Stiles chuckles. "Long enough." He licks his lips. "Did you like the shows I put on for you?"
Chris looks over at the tv, and Stiles reaches out and gently grabs him by the chin.
All of them are shocked when Stiles makes contact and is able to turn Christopher's head back toward him. "Not those shows, Chris."
Stiles looks over his shoulder at Peter and winks. Peter's grin wavers for a second, like he can't quite compute what Stiles just said, and then his gaze starts to smolder and his smile turns positively filthy. "Oh, darling."
Stiles glances back at Chris, who looks like he's having a stroke. He notes that Chris' already large pupils dilate even further, the monster obviously reliving all those nights that Stiles jerked himself off and fucked himself raw for their viewing pleasure.
"Yeah," Stiles says innocently. "Those shows." He releases Christopher's chin and leans back against the headboard. "Like I said, long enough."
Stiles lets his smile turn a bit softer and he scoots to the middle of the bed. He pats each empty space next to him and starts inspecting his cuticles. He looks up at his two monsters, who are both gaping at his indifference.
Stiles suppresses a laugh and shrugs. "Chris, Peter—I'm sure you have a lot of questions, but right now, I'm kind of in the middle of something." He gestures at the television. "So if you don't mind—" Stiles obnoxiously motions for them to sit next to him or get out of the way, and then gives them both his best shit-eating grin.
Peter recovers from the shock first. "Oh, you little shit."
"Actually," he snarks back wickedly. "It's pronounced Stiles. I understand that human language must be hard for you, given you're an inter-dimensional dog-monster, so just let me know when you need a little help." Stiles' smile is so sweet it's poisonous. "That goes for you, too, bird-boy."
There's a moment of complete silence. And then Chris whispers, "I'm going to fall in love with you."
Stiles raises an eyebrow. "Why wouldn't you?"
And then both of his monsters tackle him into the mattress, long limbs wrestling him until he doesn't know who is touching him where—and he doesn't much care so long as one of them is.
"Now that's more like it," Stiles gasps out as two heavy bodies press him into the bedding. "Show me what you've got—no seriously, though. I have so many questions."