Entertain Us (It's Less Dangerous )
Chapter two : It's Fun To Lose And To Pretend
Memory is a knife, which stabs at the most unlikely of times.
It cares not whether it hits you from the front or the back, on you worst days or your best.
Like death, it takes equally the young and the old. He can feel the ache flaring in his chest, an old companion as he sits.
In the quiet hours, when silence creeps like frost on a window in winter, he questions.
Why? He wants to scream, but the words never pass his already ragged throat.
Tears leak down his face as he claws himself, shaking in horror.
Why? He pleads silently, desperation leaking slowly from him like sand out a sieve.
Nothing answers.
Then ultimately, when he's scraped himself raw, opened down to the marrow, something - anything - does reply.
Beacon Hills is the sort of "blink and you miss it" between two lay lines with intersecting old graveyards and folk willing to turn a blind eye.
It's perfect.
Sprinklers doused lawns with precious water, offering to quench the thirst of hungry roots that dug down deep into the bedrock below mundane sidewalks.
Fresh asphalt that lay glittering like obsidian in the heat of day leads to its cracked and decrypt forebearers riddled with hidden potholes.
Even further after that rested dusty gravel roads and the occasional clump of mailboxes.
Nothing much happened in midday , Stiles mused.
The monster hid, tucking away behind slightly toothy smiles and letting the human beasts take over.
What Beacon Hills lacked in day life (and hills), it made up for in nightlife
The thing is, for someone of his nature... He's always sought the harsher side of things, drawn the way piranhas are to blood, aching for darkness.
He seeks it, covets it, as many would a fine wine. What is sunlight without shadow to exemplify the light? Dawn would never be so beautiful without the fading night.
The retreat of blues and midnights purples accent the splash of bronze and oranges that kiss the morning causing you to be breathless with quiet wonder.
When Stiles first meets Derek, he's worked at "The Jungle" for almost a year. Discreetly of course. It pays to know people.
By that time, he's seen miles of toned muscle and does not have to struggle valiantly not to drool.
In fact, he almost pulls a sick face from being in close proximity to all that manliness. Besides, he used to do barbaric things like swim in the river naked after hours of drilling with the weapon master.
Sometimes even wrestling with other dudes and being up close and sweaty with their shlong.
The horror, he still has scars.
So, when he finally reaches the club about the disturbance and remembers to ask for a description, he's less than impressed.
"Dark haired, about yay big." Bert, raises his hands, spreading them in an example of height, then scrunching his brows. "Scowly, looks like he comes from the pits of Tartarus. Broke a wall, then almost ran out of here when I asked for a statement." He hunches over a bit. "Looks like Atlas carrying the weight of the world."
Derek then.
Stiles sighed, defeated, looking at the gaping hole in the wall. This was going to be so much paperwork.
"Yeah." He admitted reluctantly.
" I might know him."
"Some billionaire businessman?" Stiles shook his head placing papers in a box. He needed to get the files from the incident report.
"Sure." His best friend shuffled his feet, smiling that big dopey grin of his that screamed I'm lovesick and ain't it great?
"So you want me to go be a sugar baby?"
"Wait, no, what even - nevermind, I don't want to know, do I?" He shook his head mirroring Stiles agitation.
"I was more thinking-"
"That's a dangerous pastime-"
"-The mechanic next door," Scott valiantly finished despite the interruption.
"Please, as if ," Stiles snorted. Really, Scotty? Great attempt, but not my thing.
"Next thing you'll say is he's been making eyes at me from the start. That I should totally go interrupt his hard work, at his steady, probably moderately well-paying, job to have an awkward double entendre conversation."
Stiles placed the lid on the box. Scott raised his eyebrows imploringly.
"Ok. Maybe I will go talk to him"
"Seriously?"
"No".
"What? Why?" Scott ran a hand through his hair. He scrunched his eyebrows back together as he watched Stiles heave the box onto the shelf and sort through yet another file.
"Scott, he sometimes realigns the tires on my Jeep. That's the basis of our interaction"
"Exactly he works on your wrangler!"
"For the last time it's not a wrangler, those are 1987 hello!"
He angrily shoved aside a box his baby was a CJ-5 for god's sake.
"Woah, Stiles, what's in that box? It smells rank." Scott wrinkled his nose, taking a step back.
"A severed head."
"Be real! Come on what is it?"
"Trust me, Scott bug a boo, you really don't want me to answer that."
"You're a sucky main man to my foil," He whined. You never tell me anything I'm worried about you, his best friend left unsaid.
"Yeah? You're a sucky bro, but you don't see me complaining!" Stiles countered, tossing the file aside toward his go bag.
"I still think you need to get out there I mean it's been ages since-"
"Hush, there you are again with that thinking! I'm fine. This conversation is going, going, gone."
He flailed his arms about like an electric eel in the ocean, brandishing the other folder he needed like a sword.
Scott rolled his eyes and dropped his shoulders.
"No, really man, I'm fine. Besides, I've always been more of a foil anyhow."
When would he pull his head out of a play and realize not everything was a Shakespearean drama between good and evil?
Scott had recently become obsessed with the things.
Stiles blamed Isaac the scarf wearing douche, who now worked at the bookstore across the way and spent his time being "respectable" and "refined".
Bleck. He scowled at the folder. There was no helping it then. He tossed a hand behind him and signed a prayer across his chest.
"Uh, Stiles?"
"Yeah."
"What are you doing?"
"Throwing salt over my shoulders. I have to go see Derek." Enlightenment and hope dawned on Scott's face.
"Right then you should ask the Hales if they can find anybody who-"
"I would rather dramatically die on the spot due to frothing mouth disease. Now, shoo, Romeo. I have big important adult work to do."
He pulled up at the Hales loft hours later, extra copies of paperwork made (just in case they met an ill fate at the jaws of their recipient's rage).
He clambered out and only tripped twice on the way to the door; the second time was thanks to the porch step, and not the old maple tree's enthused greeting.
"Hey, Peter," Stiles said by way of greeting as he leaned against the man's chair.
"Hay is for horses."
"Neigh neigh, mother fucker"
Peter looked unimpressed, turning his gaze back to his book.
"Hey, Peter."
Stiles grinned, draping his body across the chair, carefully dangling his sore arm over the front, catching the man's flinch. One point for him.
He was not so subtly trying to catch a glimpse of the writing on the pages.
The pages that Peter was equally not so subtly trying to conceal with his body.
Stiles placed his chin on the man's shoulder, enjoying the minute start of surprise only betrayed by the quick twitch of one finger curled around the edge of the book.
Cue exaggerated long-suffering sigh and eyebrow raise as Peter tilted his face to look up at him.
"What is it now, Stiles?" He cast his eyes over the script.
"How is the werewolf army coming?"
He caught the barest hint of a smile behind the paged book the man was currently wielding like a shield.
Peter wasn't fooling him any; he knew he had the man's full attention and interest at this moment.
"You have to keep it in the family," Peter said solemnly closing his book in a final manner.
"Regulate your own, recruit your own, you know how it is?"
Peter gaze burned with curiosity and something else his narrowed eyes darkened as he ghosted a hand over Stiles' arm barely touching the bruise.
"You smell like blood" Peter began to gently knead circles into the flesh with his hand. Stiles heart rate skyrocketed, his mouth going dry.
"That has nothing to do with it." Blip went his heart beat.
Stiles stood there dumbly, snared, by Peters stare a deer caught in the headlights of oncoming traffic. He shook himself, then jerked his arm back like a live wire.
"On the contrary my dear, it has everything to do with it."
Before Stiles could exhale a breath and be witty, Peter stood shaking him off with a smirk.
Bastard.
"Derek's in the kitchen moping about life staring at the refrigerator in an act of not to choke on the fumes of his self-hatred."
He gestured vaguely down the hall with a wave.
Huh.
Well, that answers one question and raises several more. He turned to leave and took a left down the hall, opening a door, surprised when towels tumbled out.
Peter ghosted into the doorway blocking the hall.
"I'll be going uh." He looked around.
"Some other time then." His eyes were too amused. "The Kitchen's the other direction."
Behind Peter. Of course, it is.
"Can you move?"
The werewolf stared at him arms still crossed. Asshole was keeping him here on purpose.
He took a deep breath and glared. "Please." Or I'll move you. Trust me It'd be my pleasure. Just give me a reason.
Peter stepped aside a little, making a wide enough gap for him to squeeze past.
Fine then.
He started walking past the small space, bringing them a hair's breath from each other.
Stiles barely contained a shudder in disgust, not because his stomach was doing strange clenchy things.
"Stiles, I have to say it's been..." He paused sounding very contemplative, heat radiating off of him like a poorly banked fire. "Interesting." Peter finished with a purr.