A/N: Things have been going pretty well for Peter and Stiles... it would be a shame... if something... happened to them...
"Bet I could give a better blowjob than you," Stiles says from where his head is dangling off his bed, Peter frustratingly occupied with the laptop he's propped up on Stiles' desk, like whatever's on the internet is more interesting than Stiles taking his pants off. Stiles doesn't know where Peter's getting his information, but he can personally say from firsthand experience considering that for seventeen years all the hot action he was getting was the warmth from his laptop on his legs, sex is a marginally better way to spend his time.
It's one of his last days before Stiles has to stop procrastinating and start actually throwing all of his most useful furniture into a box provided that it will all still fit in a dorm room so small it could probably give Harry Potter's under the stairs cupboard a run for its money, and the air is thick with something heavy that for once, isn't the lingering smell of successful sex. It's an uncomfortable, unspoken admittance of the fact that Stiles feels palpably, that Stiles' departure date creeps closer and closer still, and the most frustrating part is not knowing if Peter feels it as well.
But Peter likes competition, as does Stiles, always eager to prove himself. He remembers June as mostly a haze of blowjobs and sore knees just to keep up with the contests they would throw at each other. Who can be teased the longest without coming? Who can deep throat during head? Whose hand jobs are mind blowing rather than fairly adequate? They're both creatures of habit, obsessed with the chase and the challenge, so Stiles figures a good BJ-Off might diffuse the tension.
"Your mouth is obscene, that's for sure," Peter murmurs, clearly distracted. Stiles didn't know when it became acceptable for Peter to start bringing his laptop and camping out on Stiles' desk almost like they're honest to goodness hanging out, clothes and all, but it feels strange in his stomach. Like he's eaten too much Jell-O. Like it's domestic.
"It's more than just my mouth," Stiles persists. "I've got mad tongue action."
"Mad tongue action?" Peter repeats faintly. "Your technique is a B+ at best. It'll improve."
It'll improve. There it is again, the subtle reminder that soon Stiles will be at college sucking off random students in campus cafeterias and Peter's encouraging it. He might as well be handing Stiles condoms and pamphlets. The reminder that Stiles will no longer be around and that Peter has no interest in following.
Okay, no, Stiles doesn't really care. It would just be nice to know if spending the last few months playing hide the salami left any impression on Peter at all. He's not expecting Best I Ever Had mugs to come gift-wrapped on his doorstep, but honestly, a little acknowledgment that Stiles was even in his life at all and so very differently than the others at that shouldn't be so radical of an expectation.
"My technique," Stiles grits out, confident and aroused and horribly aggravated, "is in the A range. Forget that, I'm at the top of the class. I'm an oral sex valedictorian."
Peter raises an eyebrow over his shoulder from where he's devoting unnecessary attention to his computer. He says, "Would you like to prove that?"
"Hell yes," Stiles says, and it's all the motivation he needs to crawl off the bed and swivel the desk chair Peter's occupying in his direction. "If you shut that down already."
Peter looks down at him, much too smug for Stiles' liking, like it's his god given birthright to be sexually serviced by young boys. At least he's paying attention, Stiles thinks, and he wonders if that's problematic. How much he enjoys Peter's eyes on him.
He pulls away Peter's belt buckle and unzips his pants, Peter obediently lifting his hips for him to slide his jeans off his legs. His hand is still fiddling with his mousepad, and Stiles watches while pulling aside Peter's underwear to make sure the cursor is drifting down to the off button. Eleven long seconds later, the screen goes black. Stiles feels like he just won a contest for attention against a machine, and that's either the saddest or most satisfying moment of his day.
"Well?" Peter prompts, spreading his knees. "It won't suck itself."
God, so damn cocky. Stiles grabs the base of his length with an almost ferocious annoyance at his boldness, at the things Stiles lets him get away with.
"Remind me why I'm with you again?" Stiles grits out. For a man with currently no control over the safety of his penis, Peter stays frustratingly smug, smirk plastered on his face like it's a permanent installation.
But he knows a surefire way to remove the smirk and wipe every trace of haughtiness off his face, and he ducks in tongue first and licks along the length of Peter's erection. Sure enough, the smirk makes way for a pleased curve of his lips as Stiles flattens it against the head.
And god, it's almost embarrassing how much Stiles loves giving head. The way he gets to pull Peter apart and listen to his unrestrained groans of pleasure, the way his mouth fits around the head of Peter's dick and the way his tongue is used to his taste. It makes him want to wreck his throat and pull back to rasp out "I'd do this all day" just to watch Peter's hooded eyes flash and his thumb press into his cheeks where he can feel his own dick in Stiles' mouth. It's addictive at best.
"Mmm, perfect," Peter is saying above him, going lax in the chair as Stiles takes him in to the back of his throat. A hand curls into his hair, pulling him further on his cock, and that's all Stiles needs to take Peter in further and start up a rhythm. He flattens his tongue under his cock right where he likes it best and presses himself closer just to feel the answering twitches of pleasure vibrate off his legs.
And it's a bit unfortunate, Stiles thinks, just how well Stiles knows what Peter likes. Peter probably knows too, knows where Stiles' most sensitive spots are and has catalogued them in his brain, and then Stiles thinks about how Peter wants him off to college without so much as throwing a wave over his shoulder. It feels like a waste for a moment there, two people discovering each other's bodies and their needs, learning what makes them gasp, what they sound like when they come, and all of the dirtiest details, just to move on without a shred of remorse. Where does all the intimacy go? Does it stick around in the universe, untouched by both of them, or does it get passed along to the next guy where they'll have to do the familiarizing all over again?
"Teeth," Peter hisses above him, the grip on his hair tightening, and Stiles remembers the task at hand. Dick in his mouth, right, right.
He probably deserved a little bit of teeth anyway, Stiles knows that much, but dives back in regardless. His throat already feels sandpapered and his jaw is aching, so he sticks to slow, lollipop licks up his head that he knows will satisfy Peter. The taste on his tongue goes bitter as he runs his tongue along the dotting of precome there, just salty enough to make him pull back for a second. He wraps his hand around the base of Peter's cock as he does so, keeping his fingers occupied.
"We should really invest in some pineapple juice or something," Stiles says as he smacks his lips together. His voice is ruined like crackling spots in a wall, raw around the edges, and it seems to arouse Peter that much more as he yanks Stiles back onto his cock and feeds his hips into his mouth.
The hand on his hair is just on the side of rough, pulling Stiles onto his length as he rolls his hips, and Stiles flicks his eyes up to maintain eye contact. He shouldn't poke the bear like this, revving Peter up like a race car that could run him over, but then Peter's moving his hips and Stiles is moaning as he pushes further into his mouth and nudges his throat. Peter should be gentler, softer, more delicate with Stiles, but Stiles doesn't mind, his entire being thrumming with the weight of Peter in his mouth, on his tongue, leaving his taste there. His own dick is straining in his jeans, and it's almost embarrassing how much he enjoys this.
"You love this," Peter mutters, and it doesn't even have to be a question. He can probably smell Stiles' needy arousal in the air, can hear the way his staccato heartbeat is pulsing against his ribcage, and pulls out before rocking back in with a breathy sigh. This is the best part, the portion of the program where Peter lets loose moans of approval that shoot straight south that sound like praise meant only for Stiles.
Peter's thumb reaches down to trace where Stiles' mouth is stretched around his dick, his finger rubbing over his lower lip before skirting upwards where he can feel the press of himself through Stiles' cheeks. His touches, even fleeting, feel reverent and hot and unbelievably stimulating, every slide of his hands over Stiles' cheeks, lips, throat all making him that much harder.
"Look at you," Peter is murmuring, his hand moving to Stiles' jaw to hold him in place there. "On your knees for me."
Stiles should really tell him to stop talking to him like he's a low class prostitute, but he's a little too occupied and a little too turned on to complain right now. Peter's stomach is twitching, just a few telltale flutters of his abdomen muscles, so Stiles moves to take the tip in his mouth and suck, and that's enough for him to be grabbing Stiles' hair hard enough to rip off the strands and finish with jerky bucks of his hips straight onto his tongue.
It's almost overwhelming for a moment, Peter's come bitter in his mouth, but he swallows it down as Peter stills above him, the hand in his hair going lax.
"You've gotten so much better," Peter is murmuring, and then he slips a finger in Stiles' mouth that Stiles licks on instinct. Something in Peter's eyes flashes.
"Thanks," Stiles rasps out in response. He sounds like he just got out of dental surgery, his voice raw and scratchy, and he takes in a deep breath of air before remembering the throbbing dick between his legs still in need of attention.
But before Stiles can stuff his hand into his jeans to rub at his stiff cock, Peter is yanking him off the ground and all but throwing him on the bed, the mattress croaking in response. He's cupping him through his pants, tugging him in for a kiss that's all teeth, and then Stiles' pants are gone and there's delicious skin on skin contact.
Peter's hand is fast on him, too swift to focus on like the landscapes that whizz by from the car window or punches that smack into him over and over, too quick to recover from. Stiles grabs for Peter's shoulder and lands unsuspectingly on his hip, squeezing hard as Peter pumps him unrelentingly.
They aren't even kissing anymore, their mouths just pressed together, Peter's teeth a ruthless pressure on his lower lip while Stiles tries to breathe. It's always too much with Peter, always like he's being pushed blindfolded off a cliff as he gets close, and then Peter's slipping from his mouth to behind his ear to the sore bite marks littered down his neck. It feels like overkill, like he's experiencing too many senses all at once, one or two of them probably otherworldly. His hand finds the back of Peter's neck, gripping tightly where the hem of his hair bristles against his fingers, and he pushes his hips into Peter's grip.
It happens too fleetingly—one second Stiles is gasping for breath and the next he's spilling out over Peter's hand, his form convulsing with the force of his orgasm. The stars align for a few blissful seconds where all Stiles feels is pleasure, not a care about if Peter doesn't want to see him in college or isn't planning on missing him at all, and then—
"Well, that didn't take long," Peter drawls, and then has the gall to wipe off his hand on Stiles' sheets. "You must've gotten worked up just from sucking me."
"Yeah," Stiles says, hazily at best. "I liked it."
"Me too," Peter murmurs, planting a few lingering sticky kisses up his collarbone. "Especially when I think about you getting hard just from having my cock in your mouth."
He leans in to kiss said mouth, Stiles lazily responding with a few swipes of his tongue. He never wants to get used to sex, for sex to be anything but this good. To come as hard as this and then start downgrading would be a serious flaw in life.
He feels like he's melted into the bed, bound to become just another wrinkle in the sheets, but his body still tries to convince him to drape his leg over Peter's knee. Three agonizing seconds of movement later, Stiles thinks it was a good use of mustered energy. He looks at Peter's face, something quiet and satisfied and almost content in his eyes, and Stiles feels the unexplainable rush of an urge to capture it on film, almost like this is the sort of thing he won't be convinced really happened ten minutes ago, that Peter could look so soft. He feels like if he blinks, he'll miss it forever, which is a shame when his eyelids have become so heavy. A camera would be useful.
But he still hasn't recovered the urge to move, not while he still feels like a Lego who was removed from his bottom half, so instead he lets out a comfortable sigh and shifts his thighs. It's all comfortable even in the sticky aftermath of him coming, Stiles not even willing to grab tissues. Vaguely, he wonders if that's what love is all about. Not wanting to grab tissues right away.
He's going to miss this, he thinks fiercely, his brain unable to let it go. Peter pulls him back to present day California with a soft brush of his knuckles over Stiles' temple where the beads of sweat have gathered.
"So was that A+ or what?" Stiles asks, quite proud. Peter's still looking directly at him like he's the most riveting thing in the whole room, and that includes the giant snowboarder stuck on his wall.
"You'll pass the class," Peter tells him. Stiles loves his voice after sex, all rough and tumble.
"Get this," Stiles starts, a grin already forming. "So you'd say that that blowjob was a sexcess?"
He starts cracking up over his own joke—grade A humor if he does say so himself. Peter sighs, so loudly it can probably be heard echoing in outer space, and the sight only makes Stiles laugh harder.
"Oh dear," Peter shakes his head. "You're very lucky you're such a pretty boy."
"You love my fucking jokes!" Stiles says, punching him in the arm.
"I just love your fucking."
"You love me," Stiles says, Peter's teeth nibbling down his neck, and it falls out of his mouth easily, even if it hangs in the air like an uncomfortable confession.
But Peter says nothing, and it's in moments like this when Stiles wishes he was a werewolf just to listen in to the sound of his heartbeat, just to hear if it stutters that tiny fraction like a telltale needle on a lie detector test.
"Stay," Stiles says on impulse. For a while, for a bit longer, for enough time to pass for him to make peace with the idea of Peter walking out of his life. It's stupid, he knows, because back in sophomore year it would have been a blessing from above to have Peter Hale and company perish from the earth and his nightmares, but that's the thing about sharing sheets. Things get personal.
"What would daddy say?" Peter drawls, but it isn't an outright dismissal like a throaty laugh and a smooth slide to his feet to grab his pants and hop from the window would be.
"Just lock the door," Stiles mumbles, mentally reviewing his father's work schedule. If he comes home late enough, he won't even bother sticking his head into Stiles' room to see if he's passed out face first on his bed.
Peter heaves a sigh but gets up anyway, plucking Stiles off his chest and wandering to the door. First Stiles is sure he's leaving and raiding the pantry on his way out, but then he hears the snick of the door shutting and the lock sliding into place and he relaxes on the bed. Peter actually comes back, nudging Stiles' shoulder for him to make room.
"This bed isn't suited for two people, Stiles," Peter reminds him. Sometimes Stiles feels crowded when it's just him, the mattress too small and the sheets too short, but he scoots over anyway to make room. The mattress still doesn't dip with the weight of a man.
"Just a nap," Stiles says. "Just for a minute, old man."
Peter huffs and that's the extent of his displeasure, Stiles smiling into the fabric of the pillow as the bed creaks to signal Peter's arrival. He manhandles Stiles by the shoulders so there's room for them both, Stiles hanging halfway off the edge right before Peter reels him into his chest.
"Half a minute," Peter grumbles, like the idea of taking time off to sleep is him doing Stiles a personal favor, and it makes Stiles roll his eyes under his eyelids.
And then he breathes in and smells Peter's aftershave, the scent tickling him where he's pressed into his neck, and half a minute turns into a few hours. Peter doesn't complain.
In the light of the golden sunrise, Stiles' skin looks like he's been spending his evenings rolling around in red grapes making wine.
He pokes one bruise, particularly purple under the bright yellow illumination provided by his bathroom's overhead lamps, and mutes the yelp threatening to slip from his mouth. His chest looks like he was in a mauling with a polar bear, a fight that including biting, scratching, and bruising. Stiles traces a few angry red lines courtesy of Peter's nails down to his stomach and thinks control might be a good thing for Peter to start learning. Stiles too, probably.
He looks like marked up territory, full of spots that seem awfully symbolic of possession. It's a miracle Peter hasn't peed on him yet.
Then again, it's not like Peter cares that much. He might be possessive during sex, with hands that cage Stiles in and growls of promises to never be touched by another's hands murmured on his neck, but it's all heat of the moment. Stiles gobbles it all up too.
He grabs his toothbrush as he pokes and prods at himself, vigorously brushing as he twists around to see if his back is in the same sordid state as his front. It is, reddened and demanding to be seen from the back of his neck all the way down to where his boxers curve up his behind.
The sad part is that his flesh is not the only sore thing he's waking up to today. He has a crick in his neck and a few more in his back from sleeping like a pretzel on his mattress, Peter pressed up against him and monopolizing most of the room. He wants a bigger mattress. He also wants a mirror on the ceiling just for fun and to give a waterbed a try, but what he wants most of all is for his father to not find out about the strange man sleeping a room away.
It's six a.m., a ghoulish and unfair time of day that offers him nothing but circles under his eyes, but this is the price he has to pay when conducting an undercover sexual affair in his own home. Any longer and he risks his father knocking on his door or hawk eyes distributed in the rest of his nosy neighborhood. He strolls back out of the bathroom with his toothbrush stuck in his mouth to see if Peter's still asleep.
He is, completely unaware of the surrounding world, his body draped over the entirety of Stiles' bed and soft exhales leaving his lips. He looks relaxed and unshaven, like he belongs in Stiles' room among everything else from the superhero trinkets on his desk to his shoes by the door to his crooked music posters up on the wall.
He reaches a hand out to trace the line of Peter's hair on his forehead while the other steadies his toothbrush, foam warm in his mouth, and brushes his palm over the soft skin on his jaw right before it reaches stubble. Stiles snatches his hand away a second later, because hello creepy. He's hanging out with Peter too much.
He goes to head back to the sink before the toothpaste starts dribbling on the carpet, but Peter keeps his attention before he does. Maybe it's because he's deep in slumber, still unperturbed by the morning, and something about him looks at peace this way. Completely uncalculating. Almost human, even.
Stiles leans in closer and catches sight of the barely there wrinkles scattered up to his forehead. They look just like Derek's stress lines, premature and telling a million tales of running from hunters and healing in huddled corners of the woods, and in Peter's case, scheming murder with narrowed eyes from his hospital bed. But in the soft light of a dim sun, everything about him looks innocent.
I think you're actually sort of amazing, Stiles thinks.
He pulls back from the bed like he's been burned, mattress springs screeching at his sudden departure. And woah, where the hell did that come from? Probably flew all the way from the Land of Ludicrous Thoughts just to lodge itself into Stiles' brain.
And god knows why he thinks so. Peter's a fucking mess, too hot and cold to ever gauge properly, too insane to comprehend, like an abstract painting that no matter how long he looks at the brushstrokes, he still doesn't understand the meaning.
Like the bit about the frat boys and his pretty mouth. Stiles frowns at the bare expanse of Peter's back, because his brain must be a horribly dusty place. He goes from possessive to the point of animalistic to blasé about what he used to make clear was his property right before Stiles would slap him in the balls for creeping him out.
Mine, mine, you're mine, Stiles, he would say, hands gripping bruises on his hips, the spot Stiles is always blue and purple because of Peter's demanding fingerprints.
And then he wants Stiles to go to college and blow a kiss goodbye over his shoulder without bothering to turn his head. It sounds easy enough in textbook form—fuck your fuck buddy, and then don't—but Stiles' brain keeps popping up with a defiant that's it?
And yeah, that's probably it. It's sex, the very thing Stiles was foaming at the mouth for for years, and Peter had seemed like a good choice at the time because the idea of messing around with him was safe in all the ways he never was as a person. Stiles didn't think he was in danger of falling prey to feelings or real life emotions when a man that irreparably damaged was involved, and he's pretty sure Peter hasn't even grown a heart yet, so the understanding was mutual. It was sex, and when Stiles goes to college he'll go and find someone new to dazzle with his newfound knowledge about all the ways he can use his tongue.
Yours, always, Stiles would pant back, voice raw.
Even thinking that Peter is interesting or fun or cool to hang around is stepping into dangerous waters. The appeal of Peter Hale is just how unlovable he is, and that's why this worked for a few months without the fighting and screaming and inevitable compromise that comes with an actual relationship. Stiles wasn't promised an actual relationship, he was promised sex, and that's exactly what he was delivered. Sending it back now with an angry customer complaint and the receipt hardly seems possible.
No one else touches you like this. Mine.
He's angry by the time he's leaning over the sink again, spitting out residue toothpaste and sticking his head under the faucet to rinse away the bubbles, and the worst part is that it's an anger he's technically not even allowed to be feeling. He's angry because why—he wasn't memorable enough to be asked to stick around? Because the fact that he's actually enjoyed rolling around naked with Peter is in sharp dissonance with the rational part of his brain wired to distrust and generally dislike him?
Stiles reaches out to poke Peter in the ribs when he emerges from the bathroom again, eyes flicking to the clock on the wall. His dad will be up and running in half an hour at the earliest, and even worse, the curmudgeon old lady across the street with the bibles practically sewn into her hands will be tending to her garden in twenty minutes and won't take lightly to Peter jumping shirtless out of Stiles' window and strolling out of the neighborhood on his way home. She's already seen enough if the mailbox chats she's been secretly having with Stiles' father are any indication.
"Get up," Stiles says to the lump in his bed, and it seems very small when he's lingering over it. Too small to fit them both. Did they really stay that close all night that nobody was in danger of toppling to the floor? "Or did I wear you out that much?"
"Don't flatter yourself," Peter mumbles, voice thick with sleep. It's nothing like how Stiles has seen Derek sleep, eyes snapping open at the slightest footstep, almost like Peter's let himself be comfortable around Stiles. That, or he doesn't view him as the slightest threat. Stiles pokes him hard in the ribs again, only to be yanked down by his wrist.
"You talk too much," Peter growls, dragging Stiles close as he tumbles gracelessly onto the mattress.
"Let go," Stiles tries to pry his wrists free, eyes wary of the clock and warier of the sounds of footsteps in the hallway alerting him of a father awake earlier than expected. "You have to jump out the window."
He probes Peter in the stomach with his free hand until Peter snags his second wrist too, lazily peeling open one eye to survey Stiles. There are lines on his face from Stiles' wrinkly pillowcase and he seems very soft here in the morning, body harmless from sleep, and Stiles fights the urge to nuzzle against his cheeks, rough without the trimming of a razor.
It makes him wonder how often Peter is like this, or better yet—how many people does he let see him like this? Unguarded and open, like he'd be willing to share secrets and build a pillow fort right now.
For a second, nothing but sadness suspends over Stiles at the thought, because maybe this is the extent he sees of Peter's secrets, just the thin surface they might be hiding under. He's so in the dark about who Peter even is, his knowledge extending to how he likes his dick sucked.
"Hey," Stiles says, Peter grunting in response. "What do you do all day?"
Peter doesn't miss a beat. "You."
"I'm serious," he arches his knee up to nudge him. "Other than cruise for underage boys. What's your goal for the future?
Peter gives him an odd look, slightly calculated, like he's wondering why Stiles even wants to know. He tugs sharply on Stiles' wrists until he's situated on his chest with little to no grumbling about the handsy maneuvering, Peter's legs parting so Stiles slips between them.
"What about you?" He asks, a real master of diversion.
"Stop answering questions with more questions," Stiles says, hardly amused. Then again, it's not like Peter owes him any life stories and ultimate goals and personal anecdotes.
"Fine, I'll guess," Peter says. His fingers trail circles around Stiles' wrist as he thinks. "You find yourself a nice girl daddy will dote on after rebelling through college—presumably sucking dicks—and start an apple pie family in Beacon Hills because no matter the trauma you went through here, humans are creatures of habit. You will stay the eternal jokester who hides behind sarcasm, and try your hardest to make a difference in the police force. Maybe you'll do some good catching speeders and writing traffic tickets."
He finishes his prediction with a flourish and a shark-like grin, like a politician very pleased with himself, and Stiles counts in his head exactly how many indirect insults were just tossed at him.
"You could make a profession out of being offensive," Stiles says, wrestling his hands free. "Have you considered that?"
Peter lets him slip free with little struggle, nestling back into the pillow the moment Stiles pushes himself off the bed. His eyes close a second later, perfectly content to fall back asleep without a single worry creasing his forehead. It must be nice, Stiles wonders, or maybe a little twisted, to live such a demented life with such a free conscience.
If only he had a heart, or a functional soul, or even just emotions Stiles could work with, mold into something tolerable. He looks at him, sprawled over Stiles' bed in a rumpled shirt that looks like it's calling out to him for an innocent morning snuggle, and pokes him in the hip.
"Did you say all that stuff to get out of telling me about your future?" Stiles asks Peter's firmly shut eyes.
First, he says nothing, feigning a deep slumber Stiles is getting increasingly annoyed by, and then he mutters, "You're a good fuck, Stiles. You don't need to know what my favorite color is or what my dreams in life are."
It actually makes Stiles blink and step back, because wow, Peter goes from hot and cold like a shabby motel's plumbing. His nastiness is always right there under the surface whenever Stiles gets too close or prods too close to home, asks that one question that's crossed the invisible lines he's drawn up. Stiles is tired of being unaware of the walls he's stumbling through.
He thinks about how they will fall apart, that much is sure, and how much easier it would be to tell him right here and now how much of an unlovable asshole he is and get it over with sooner rather than later. He could tell him to stop lurking under his window, stop texting him invites to his bed for the weekend, and stop pretending to indulge in Stiles past the point of making him come, but he doesn't.
Instead he says, "Get out of my fucking bed and jump out the window already," and grabs the nearest pillow to punch forcefully over Peter's head. The soft thump that sounds in result doesn't sound nearly as satisfying as a porcelain vase or a glass bottle might have, but before Stiles can follow through on his ideas Peter is getting to his feet and pulling his pants on. He looks rumpled, from his furrowed eyebrows to his sleep-mussed hair, and Stiles thinks a good second hit to the head with a stuffed pillow is exactly what he deserves.
"Whatever you say, sweetheart," Peter mutters, all acid as the words drip from his mouth, and then he's out the window before Stiles can come up with a good comeback.
The being offensive and annoying and a generally hard to deal with crusty dickwad, that part Stiles is used to with Peter. The rusty chains around his heart as he watches him jump out Stiles' window, just one step closer to jumping permanently out of Stiles' life, is something he's not used to, and doesn't even want to be.
He probably needs to talk to someone about this, Stiles rationalizes as he examines the situation. Find someone impartial and unload all of his prickly feelings off his shoulder. They'll probably explain to him how unreasonable he's being, and they'll make so much sense that Stiles will have no choice but to believe them and go back to living an uncomplicated, simple life. How long has it been since he's had that even?
Honestly, it's Peter Hale. The only genuine feelings he should get around him should be discomfort or concern for the mental health of the people walking this earth, because if even only a fraction of them are as fucked up as Peter they're all doomed to a grisly end.
He sits down on his bed that smells like Peter on top of the sheets rumpled by Peter's legs in a room where Peter's touched every object and tries to divide and conquer his emotions. He's probably just feeling unloved and unmemorable and overwhelmed by change to boot. Maybe all he wants is the confirmation that Peter has noticed his presence in his life the past few months and might even be upset over the lack of Stiles in the months to come. Maybe then he'll be sated.
The thing is, those are all things Stiles is feeling. He's actually going to miss Peter, the rotten bastard, and not just the way he makes fireworks explode in his every limb when he fucks him. He's going to miss having a second apartment to sneak off to for a late night rendezvous and someone to bicker with over takeout in nothing but socks. The idea of saying that particular thought out loud is making him nauseas.
And that's probably because no matter what happens, this could never work in a setting beyond just a bedroom. For many reasons. One, his father. Two, the shame and embarrassment of being publicly enamored with a cold-blooded murderer. Three, the horror that would inevitably come the morning of a repeat of such a cold-blooded murder with Peter licking his chops and telling Stiles to put his grave-digging shoes on. And four, Stiles' dignity. That's four too many reasons for not being with someone.
So it kind of sucks that he's grown attached even when he continuously promised Peter he wouldn't. It had been rip-roaringly hilarious to think about falling in love with Peter back when this all began, because this isn't Beauty and the Beast.
He backtracks a little in his mind for a moment because hold up—he's not in love. He's slightly fond at best. He's feeling the clench of prematurely missing someone in his chest. He's being supremely stupid because he cares about keeping someone in his life who doesn't share that same interest. Since when does that translate as love?
He's still hopeful that he'll move into a tiny dorm he hates and forget all about Peter. The way he sees it, one adage has to be true, either absence makes the heart grow fonder or out of sight, out of mind, and he'll figure out pretty soon which one is.
Well, Stiles thinks holding onto the one comforting bit about his thoughts, at least he will never, ever, ever tell Peter any of this.
"You should tell Peter."
The scariest part of the sentence is that Scott is being perfectly serious, like he genuinely believes he's just come up with a good idea. It's not. It's a dumb idea that happened to find an ally in Scott.
"Why on earth would I do that?"
"I don't know. Maybe he'd like to see you when you leave too."
"And how would that conversation go?" Stiles asks. "Hey Peter. I know you're too batshit to understand the concept of feelings, and I know that we said this would only be hot sex, but I'd like to see more of you. You know, like a real relationship. The thing you're probably allergic to since I'm not sure you have a heart."
He finishes it off with a dry flourish, his gaze boring into Scott's as he waits for him to step in and correct him. Scott sighs.
"You know that's not what I meant," Scott says. "Just tell him that you enjoy spending time with him."
Peter would laugh at him, he's sure. He can practically see it happen in front of him, how Peter would smirk and snicker and say something infuriating akin to you realize that orgasms and love aren't actually related, right and Stiles would be forced to suffocate him with his t-shirt. Peter's made his stance on his relations with Stiles perfectly clear—no attachments, no emotions, hardly any talking. And all Stiles had to do was look in the mirror each morning and forcedly tell his reflection that Peter Hale is the worst just as a daily reminder. Apparently, he forgot.
"He doesn't want to be anything other than naked friends," Stiles mutters to the ground, rubbing at his forehead. And it's not like he doesn't like that bit. He loves getting naked for hours at a time and learning what his penis is really good for. Turns out, a lot. But he also likes some of the other things, the things he was told not to like from the very beginning. "He doesn't even want me to know what his favorite color is. His favorite color, Scottie."
"Just ask him how he feels," Scott says, like it's just that easy. Maybe if this was a normal romance, the kind of cookie cutter high school movie you find on TV courtesy of John Hughes, it would be. Stiles would saunter up to his locker and leave an invite to prom in his binder. He doesn't have that luxury. "Worst case scenario, he doesn't feel what you do."
"And then I shrivel up into a prune from humiliation."
"And then you get to go to college, far away from him," Scott reasons. "And you never have to see him again."
It's a good point. It's hard to be tormented by someone's rejection when he's miles away buried in beer kegs and partying, shirtless freshmen. Still—
"How would I even phrase it?" Stiles asks. This still feels hopelessly pointless, like he knows perfectly well what the outcome will be without having to experience it for himself. It's not like he's low on his embarrassment quota of the month.
"Any way you're comfortable saying it," Scott tells him. He's being so reasonable about this, making it sound like it might actually be a productive conversation, and Stiles hates that. He heaves a long, heavy sigh.
"Okay," he acquiesces, grumbling only a little. "Maybe I will."
There's only about four hundred ways this could go wrong, but it might be worth a try.
"Whatcha working on?"
Stiles peers into the dining room in time to see his father sitting at the table with opened folders and strewn papers in front of him, a beer in one hand and his reading glasses in the other. It's not the first night he's taken his work home with him, but Stiles wasn't aware that there were any cases prevalent enough right now in his pile that merited him studying evidence at home.
"Just a case that we got some new information on," his dad tells him. It interests Stiles more than packing up any belongings that can actually fit in a two feet by two feet dorm room upstairs does, so he slides into the dining room and leans against a chair's headrest.
"Yeah? Which one?"
"That one from a few months ago," he says. "The one with the woman in our backyard."
"Oh," Stiles remembers the night in vivid detail, and not just the bit where Peter slinked up to him and touched him through his boxers next to the police cars tempting him with offers of stress relief. "That was a while ago."
"I know, but I guess other cases took priority in the lab," the sheriff shrugs, setting down his bottle of beer. He sets his glasses on his nose and starts shuffling papers together.
"So you found some information? Do you know who killed her?"
"We got some prints off her body. Of course they don't mean anything definite, but it certainly makes this guy a person of interest." He leafs through the papers in his hands, clearly exhausted if the droop to his eyes is anything to go by, and he hands over the pages without a single half-hearted lecture about how police stuff is none of Stiles' business.
"Who was it?" Stiles asks, eyes scanning the papers.
The heel of the sheriff's palm massages his temple as he shrugs. "Some guy, don't remember his name. It's on the bottom of that page there."
He taps his finger on the edge of the paper, right underneath the scans of the partial fingerprints gathered from the body. There, in capital letters, reads EXACT MATCH FOUND: Peter Hale.
Peter Hale.
It feels like the world drops around him for a moment and he's suspended in space, like falling out of an airplane, probably, and Stiles stares hard at the letters as if waiting for them to rearrange before his eyes on the page. They stay still, staring at him like hard, black, inky facts. Peter's fingerprints were found on this body, on the body of a slaughtered murder victim right in his backyard. The night Peter had come strolling out of the shadows and had first touched him past the point of grabbing him by the scruff of his neck. Peter's involved. Peter's probably a murderer—again.
It's like a punch to the stomach. His dad had said it himself—he's only a person of interest—but Stiles doesn't need more evidence. It's damning enough, combined with Peter's notorious search for power and his telling history. Once a killer, always a killer, it seems.
But why? What was the point of killing a strange woman that no one in the town could even identify? Is he just that fucking crazy? Stiles feels the air drop out of the room as he shakily gets to his feet.
"You okay?" his dad is saying, eyebrows furrowed as he watches Stiles stand up. He probably looks pale, just on the side of ill, and Stiles nods instantly.
"Fine," Stiles assures him. "I just—I just have to check something out."
He knows Peter arrives by the breeze that wafts in from the window, a subtle wind that slides over his cheek. He looks up from the bed and there's Peter, already on his feet and brushing dust off his pants. It looks so casual, so endearing and almost human, that Stiles feels something lodge in his throat. Probably his heart.
"You're insatiable," Peter says, and he shrugs off his jacket. "But I will say that I have dinner reservations, so less foreplay would be appreciated."
"It's not that," Stiles says. He fiddles with his hands, pressing his palms together, lacing his fingers, tapping out rhythms against his knees. He sees Peter's eyes flicker down to his nervous ticks. "I was just with my dad."
"Oh?"
"Yeah," he gets to his feet, wishing his legs felt sturdier underneath him. He has to confront this headfirst, like ripping off a bandage, and wonders if Peter would kill him for what he knows. He always told him that he wasn't a threat, that he knew too little and had too little bravado, and now here he is with all the prime cards in his hands for once. "We were going over some evidence from the station, and turns out he has fingerprints from the body that was in my backyard months ago. Remember her?"
Peter's eyebrow raises slowly. He seems interested, not the least bit nervous, and Stiles wonders if his heartbeat increases at all and Stiles' ears just don't pick up on the sound. He's a good actor, always has been, and Stiles feels unbelievably stupid.
"I do," Peter says. Mildly, he seems to test the waters and asks, "They know who killed her?"
"Not yet," Stiles says. "Just found fingerprints. But that's pretty damning, don't you think?"
Peter looks at him levelly, as if mentally drawing together a picture of how much Stiles actually knows, or how much he's pulling out of his ass for effect. He smiles, something taut that twists his mouth. "Whose prints were they?"
"Oh," Stiles says. "Yours."
The admittance hangs in the air between them like lightning, like someone's turned off the volume and all that's left are the cold stares of people who want more answers. Peter's still smiling, the sight like a mask that Stiles can see cracking.
"Any reason why?" Stiles speaks up when still, Peter says nothing.
"Why my fingerprints were on her?" Peter asks. Stiles nods, face tight and jaw set. "We had a chat that night."
A chat. Stiles is positive that that isn't all that happened, not with the way Peter's fixing him with a smile that could probably harden fire into ice. He murdered that woman for reasons Stiles can't even begin to understand, that much he knows—was it because he missed the feeling of taking human life? Because he wanted to feel powerful? Because she knew too much of something?
"A chat," Stiles repeats slowly. "About what?"
And this is Peter's chance, his chance to admit exactly what happened. His heartbeat feels unnaturally fast in his chest, pounding like a siren, and he wishes there would be an explanation available here, something to make it feel less like a slap to the face. That it was an accident, that he didn't know what he was doing. That he was in the wrong place in the wrong time.
"Nothing important," Peter says, vague as always. It makes Stiles boil over.
"I know you did it, so just," he searches for the words stuck in his brain. "Just tell me what the fuck it meant," Stiles manages to get out. It feels like something's lodged in his throat, wet and insistent like a flu's cough tickling his body. "Tell me what you're plotting, jesus."
"Plotting?" Peter says, and he's not taking Stiles the least bit seriously.
"What is it you want?" Stiles yells this time, anything to break Peter's skin. "To get revenge? To infiltrate packs? To become the alpha again?"
Peter's eyebrow twitches almost imperceptibly. Stiles picks up on it like it's a certain nod and feels his entire body cramp up, something cold and clammy wrapped around him like eels.
"Oh god," Stiles murmurs, feeling light-headed. "What exactly was your plan? To kill my best friend and steal his alphahood?"
He's so not fine. Everything is spinning, spinning, and he has nothing to zero in on to ground himself. Peter is saying nothing, and that's answer enough.
"What was my role in all this?" He asks, and he wishes his voice could sound as angry as he should be. It's frayed and helpless, like threads falling off a hem, nothing at all like the steady anger he expects to come out of his mouth. "Put Scott's guard down? Help you? Entertain you because I was willing?"
Peter's lips fall open, ready to speak, but he seems to think the better of it and Stiles fights the urge to scream and throw plates just to get the truth, the god forbidden truth out of his mouth.
"Well?"
Peter steps forward as Stiles persists, and whatever explanation he's drummed up, he's replaced with steely frustration.
"You do a good job of pretending," Peter says, "but I know that you could easily be exactly what I am. I know that you're not nearly as ethical as you pretend."
What he is. And what is he? A plotter, a murderer, a man with a one track mind that happens to take lives on its journey? He says it like he knows exactly who Stiles is, and what he wants to be, and how they're the same, both sharing the same brand of crazy. Stiles looks up and he sees something that chills him, a smile contorting Peter's face that is lacking all the smug warmth and fond exasperation he was used to.
It's barely there, but Stiles picks up on it, how the corner of Peter's mouth quirks up like he's the fisherman who's just roped in an unsuspecting catch, and there's Stiles struggling to breathe who didn't even know that there was a life outside the water. It's a grin no one's meant to see, the kind of grin Peter's face only adopts when he's planning and plotting, and oddly enough, Stiles had convinced himself that that grin had died. That it had been rehabilitated. He's so out of his mind he doesn't remember the last time he even thought clearly around Peter.
"Oh god," Stiles says, and he feels the world start to spin. "It's true. And I'm just—I'm just the kid who fell for it. Fuck." He looks up at Peter's eyes, a steely blue, and feels the temperature in the room drop further. "
"Stop it," Peter says, his voice hard. He steps closer. "I didn't do anything to you, Stiles. This isn't about you."
"Yeah, it really isn't, and that's the problem," Stiles says. "You only care about power, about being the baddest, about being the fucking Alpha. Who cares who gets in the way, right?"
He feels numb and fiercely humiliated, his hands shaking as he tries to turn away. He doesn't want to be here, even in his own home, and just wants to drive until he hits an unfamiliar city and unfamiliar lives. Peter grabs hold of him by the wrists even as Stiles struggles to get away, to seek out the distance he hasn't wanted to put between their bodies for months. Peter's grip is unrelenting, yanking him closer even as Stiles' wrists turn red in his attempts to slide free.
"Fuck off," Stiles spits, and he doesn't stop writhing. It's a side of Stiles Peter's clearly never seen before—frightened sophomore, snarky junior, even perpetually aroused senior—but never this, fierce and angry and unyielding.
"Stop fighting," Peter hisses, and he's too close, close enough that Stiles feels his eyes sear on his face, and Stiles just wants to get away.
He finally succeeds in ripping his arms free, eyes trained anywhere but Peter's face. He feels duped and used and unbelievably humiliated, the embarrassment burning on his face and behind his eyelids. It feels like they've reached a crossroads, the very place Stiles knew they'd have to reach inevitably, something along the lines of this is amazing, but I don't even know who you are or thanks for the sex but that's all we have in common.
And for a moment, all those thoughts where Stiles has led himself to believe that he was seeing a Peter kept dormant from the rest, a man more human than the monster, feel naïve and shallow. Peter's always been the same, and never pretended not to be, and that's what Stiles gets for disillusioning himself into thinking that people could change. That Stiles could change people.
"The woman. The one in my backyard—it was you." Stiles doesn't ask. He's pretty sure he already knows, he has all the evidence in front of him, and he refrains from swallowing back the uncertainty in his mouth for fear that it's audible enough for Peter to pick up on.
"Yes," Peter finally admits, and Stiles feels the bottom drop out from under him.
He was there, the very night he had touched Stiles for the first time with a purpose and suggested it become a routine, there long before Stiles saw him prowling out of the shadows. He was there, committing murder, and even if it's something Stiles is acutely aware of as being a skill in his repertoire, he had filed it away as something of the deep past. Acts of insanity. Acts of rage fueled revenge. Being deceptive, being manipulative, that's on a whole different level from murder.
"God," Stiles mumbles, and bites down the urge to be sick right here on the carpet. "That's why you were—so why did you even—"
He has so many questions, questions like why did you involve me and why did you even come up to me and stick your hand down my pants and was it just because I was convenient? Forbidden? Willing? or the very worst, was it because I could lead you to Scott? His brain is somehow unable to wrap around any of the words long enough to say them out loud.
"It doesn't have to be like this," Peter says. For a moment, it sounds like an apology, like regret, and then, "I could use you. You could join me."
And this time Stiles is physically falling through the hole ripped out underneath him, because here Peter is, trying to rope him into being his criminal apprentice with filthy nights on the side. Peter is so transparent, nothing but bad, and Stiles should've stopped trying to find anything inside him beyond that.
"What?" He mumbles, cold.
Peter steps forward and Stiles' reaction is to flinch. It seems like he wants to reach out and touch him, the look in his eyes fierce. Not yet, not ever, get away, his brain is shouting. "I know who you are. I know exactly how your brain works. I even know when you're lying," he reaches out to touch Stiles, hand poised in the air to do so, and seems to think better of it a moment later. "I know you're not stimulated here, not with your friends."
So the logical solution is to run off and start a murder brigade. Stiles looks in front of him and sees the crazy he's actually tried to pretend was curbed, was maybe even treated, and feels sick inside. He looks at Peter and wonders what Peter sees in him—a pet, an assistant, a liability, a toy to manipulate. Peter probably thinks he has him all figured out, that all it would take is one snap and Stiles would be just as evil, just as vindictive as him. Maybe he's right, but Stiles doesn't want to snap. He wants to fight to stay how he is, to stay good no matter how damaged he gets, and that's the difference between them Peter's not grasping.
"I don't want to," he says. He bites down on his lip, overwhelmed and upset and feeling like he's been cut open down the chest. "I don't want to be like you."
And he hopes Peter hears the way his heart doesn't skip, not like it did years ago in the parking garage, but instead stays steady and unyielding the whole time he talks. Because yeah, it might be freeing to cut loose those last inhibitions binding him to sanity and let his urges run wild like Peter, but he has responsibilities. He has friends and family and people who keep him from wanting to be so irreversibly free.
"You don't even know how much potential—" Peter cuts himself off, and he's looking at Stiles like all he sees are wasted opportunities and a useless moral high ground. "You're going to waste away here."
"Peter, you don't fucking get it," he slams his fist on Peter's chest, and Peter doesn't step back. Doesn't even look surprised. "I don't care how big and bad you think I could be. I want to be good, dammit."
This was never how he imagined this. He wanted it to be easier, lighter to look Peter in the face and give this all up. People kept warning him left and right—Peter is bad, Peter will hurt you—but nobody ever told him this would happen.
"What did all of this sickening morality ever give you?" Peter growls, and he's nearly nose to nose with Stiles now. "Does it stop the pain? Does it make your world a brighter place? It doesn't do anything for you."
This is probably the most Stiles has ever learned about Peter that mattered. It's what he always wanted, something underneath the exterior that gave way to the person beneath. The little things had always seemed so shallow, like how he likes to keep his feet bare and his coffee black. Those things were probably better. They were easier to swallow.
"Neither did you," Stiles says, and now that he's admitted it, it feels like it rings true. Peter gave him sex. Peter gave him passion. And what does that really matter at the end of it all? Who lies on their deathbed remembering those fleeting seconds of unattached bliss? Who looks back and thinks their time was well spent indulging in useless affairs?
And this is the moment, the moment Stiles had known would come. The moment they fall apart, long before Stiles had time to understand how any of it even happened in the first place. It hurts more than he thought it would, probably because he never saw it going down this fiercely. He thought maybe one morning he would wake up and Peter wouldn't be there and he wouldn't come back, and Stiles would go to college and drift into indifference about the whole ordeal, and then eventually he wouldn't remember any of the details, like how Peter had his heart in his hands and how Stiles hadn't even tried to stop it.
But no, this is the moment, here and now, and it isn't indifferent at all. He doesn't even know what to say, he doesn't know how to act. This is his biggest fault, he thinks, he never knows how to think ahead.
And he doesn't want to hear the explanations anymore. Why he killed that stranger—was she an Alpha? Was she an emissary? Was she important at all? Stiles doesn't think it would change anything to hear his reasons.
How wonderful, he thinks, that here they are not understanding each other. They probably never will.
"I don't—" he worms a hand into his hair, searching for something to pull on forcefully. "I don't think we should do this anymore. Whatever the fuck this even was."
A conspiracy, Peter should say now, even though he doesn't. Because that's what they were. Something fleeting and crazy that nobody even understands, something the history books will laugh at. Stiles has never felt this hoodwinked in his entire life.
Peter stares at him levelly, eyes hard, and that's when Stiles notices that this isn't the man he's been looking at for weeks. He had known someone softer, or maybe Stiles had made him soft, or maybe Stiles' eyes had been blurred over, but the man in front of him is harder. The indecipherable murderer, the dangerous monster better left alone. He waits for him to say something, something human, something that dissolves the coldness in his eyes, but he doesn't. Maybe Peter knows it wouldn't matter now. Maybe he doesn't know how to say something human.
Instead, Peter says nothing. He looks as if he wants to use his hands to convey the words his tongue isn't speaking, his head tilted forward like he wants to kiss Stiles on the neck as a goodbye or slot his thumbs in their familiar spot on Stiles' hipbones. Stiles doesn't want him to do any of it, not while their entire conversation is still ringing in his ears, and he nearly backs away when Peter wraps his fingers around Stiles' fragile wrists. For a moment it feels all too reminiscent of years ago, the two of them in the parking garage, Peter's warm breath poised by Stiles' forearm.
He leans in. He still smells like all those years ago, a strong cologne and an even stronger disposition. "What a shame."
And then he's letting go of Stiles, leaving warmth where he had him by the wrists, and he's out the window like always. It would so easy to disillusion himself that it's just like always, and that he'll be back tomorrow night, and the night after.
A shame. A shame that Stiles refuses to conform to his ways, a shame that Stiles is not as evil as he had hoped? A shame that all of this is crashing and burning? He wants to know more, he wants to know if Peter is sorry, but he refuses to ask.
Instead he locks his window, latch shut tight, and presses himself into the blankets that are too hot, too stifling on his body.
He wakes up alone, the bed empty. His hand sweeps over the mattress before he even opens his eyes, searching out a warm patch or the soft expanse of a body stretched out next to him. There's nothing, and that's all it takes for him to remember.
What a shame.
A/N: Enter the break-up stage.
If you're surprised that Peter is a big bad murderer again, a) why are you surprised? are we watching the same show? and b) stay tuned for more illumination on the matter. I just love a good curveball.